"led it be!"

(397.7-399.34)  Today's reading -- the final passage from Book II of the Wake -- consists of three distinct sections.  The first section begins with the narrator reminded, "like another tellmastory repeating yourself," of the days when the four old men "used to be in lethargy's love, at the end of it all."  They would huddle up, worn out, at the end of the day and eat their not-so-savory meal, which included "their bowl of brown shackle and milky and boterham clots, a potion a peace, a piece aportion."  At this late date, "they were all sycamore and by the world forgot," having caught a disease from the Flemish invaders and eaten that bad crab that appeared in Wednesday's reading.  They would read letters by the candlelight and eventually "one by one sing a mamalujo" (with "mamalujo" being in one sense an abbreviation for Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) to Tristan, "the heroest champion of Eren."

The second section focuses more on the lovers, Tristan and Iseult, particularly on the time after the affair described yesterday, when Tristan "got a useful arm busy on the touchline, due south of her western shoulder, down to death and the love embrace."  With the two united, the four old men are set to "say oremus prayer and homeysweet homely, after fully realising the gratifying experiences of highly continental evenements."  The four old men are "right glad" and will never forget the two lovers, for "still they loves young dreams."

The chapter (and Book II) concludes with a song for Tristan and Iseult.  The wealth of King Mark is not enough to buy Iseult's love, and rather than "bide with Sig Sloomysides or the grogram grey barnacle gander," she will wait for Tristan to get "his glut of cold meat and hot soldiering."  Tristan knows that "she was always mad gone on me," and Iseult consents to his proposal at the song's end, saying, "Mick, Nick the Maggot or whatever your name is, you're the mose likable lad that's come my ways yet from the barony of Bohermore."

With the song concluded, the four old men and their mysterious companion (here a braying ass) laugh with joy as the boat continues to move down the river.  "The way is free," the narrator says.  "Their lot is cast."  The closing words of this ultimately positive chapter are "led it be!"  What a peaceful dream for the embattled HCE.

"it was then a pretty thing happened"

(395.26-397.6)  In writing Finnegans Wake, Joyce wasn't afraid to get a bit salty.  That much is clear through the first 395 pages or so that I've gotten through.  References to sex appear frequently, and there's quite a lot of talk of urination.  But for my money (which isn't worth all that much . . . remember, I'm doing this blog for my own edification), today's passage is the bawdiest so far in the Wake.  It's clearly sexy and provocative, but Joyce's achievement here is that the passage can be as erotic as the reader wants it to be.

The four old men have finished their addresses to each other, and now the narrator takes over to recount "a pretty thing happened of pure diversion mayhap."  Tristan, groping Iseult with "his flattering hend," finds a proverbial sweet spot, causing that "vivid girl, deaf with love" to let out a "queeleetlecree of joysis crisis" (a wee little cry of "Jesus Christ!").  The two are now presented with "the golden importunity of aloofer's leavetime," and this is the moment when readers can choose their own adventure, in a sense.  Tristan, the narrator says, "as quick, is greased pigskin, Amoricas Champius, with one aragan throust, druve the massive of virilvigtoury flshpst the both lines of forwards (Eburnea's down, boys!) rightjingbangshot into the goal of her gullet."  (Note how this passage echoes those lines from the book's opening page:  "Sir Tristam, violer d'amores, . . . had passencore rearrived from North Amorica . . . .")  In one sense, the narrator describes Tristan and Iseult "frenching," with Tristan sticking his tongue past Iseult's teeth and into her throat.  In another sense, the narrator describes the act of Tristan sexually penetrating Iseult.  McHugh notes that "massive" stands for "missive," which stands for tongue.  On the other hand, it doesn't require much of an imagination (or depraved mind) to take "massive of virile victory" one step further, especially in a book full of genitalia puns.

In the next paragraph, the narrator explain's Iseult's part in this affair.  She's "a strapping modern old ancient Irish prisscess," with "nothing under her hat but red hair and solid ivory . . . and a firstclass pair of bedroom eyes, of most unhomy blue . . . the charm of favour's fond consent!"  Iseult's role as seductress is fairly clear.  "Could you blame her, we're saying, for one psocoldlogical moment?" the narrator asks.  "What would Ewe do?"  It's not right to expect Iseult to be dedicated to King Mark, "that so tiresome old milkless a ram, with his tiresome duty peck and his bronchial tubes."  Instead, Tristan and Iseult come together for an affair, "the twooned togethered, and giving the mhost phassionable wheathers, they were doing a lally a lolly a dither a duther one lelly two dather three lilly four dother."  I dunno, it sure sounds to me like they're having sex, and the narrator says that this is "a fiveful moment for the poor old timetetters [the four old men, who are peeping on the lovers], ticktacking, in tenk the count."  As the encounter concludes, the narrator describes "her knight of the truths thong plipping out of her chapellledeosy, after where he had gone and polped the questioned."  That "thong plipping out of" Iseult could either be Tristan's tongue, or his "member," and your reading of that phrase will color your interpretation of whether the paragraph's final, one-word sentence -- "Plop." -- describes the sound of that tongue coming out of Iseult's mouth or the result of Tristan's ejaculation.

See what I meant?  Pretty bawdy.  But also stellar prose.  The passage ends with a short paragraph describing the effect of the scene on the four old men:  "it was tootwoly torrific, the mummurrlubejubes!"  As a result of this terrible, yet terrific thing that they've witnessed, the four old men are "now happily buried," indicating that they're either dead or happily (re)married.  

It's going to be hard to top this passage in terms of pure, Joycean fun, but we'll see what happens tomorrow, when we reach the conclusion of this final chapter of Book II of the Wake.

"flapping and cycling, and dooing a doonloop"

(393.4-395.25)  Today we get to our fourth (and final) address from the four old men, this one coming from Matt.  After beginning by passing the Eucharistic loaf introduced by Lucas, Matt laments "Poor Andrew Martin Cunningham," one of the chapter's drowned men.  With that preface complete, Matt begins the proper part of his address by foregoing the sad times recalled by Lucas and instead going back to the happier times of their youths, when they were "in auld land syne (up) their four hosenbands, that were four (up) beautiful sister misters, now happily married."  (McHugh notes that the parenthetical "up"s found throughout this chapter could be the drunken four old men hiccuping.)

It's worth emphasizing how much Matt's whirlwind tour of the happier scenes of their youth serves to counterbalance the gloomy tone of Lucas's reminiscences.  There was plenty of seafood (in contrast to the scraps of food available for the wretched Matt in Lucas's address), and the four friends spent their time "always counting and contradicting every night 'tis early the lovely mother of periwinkle buttons" (of an alluring lady, quite possibly ALP).  The coo-coo clock would wake them at all hours of the night, and they'd peek out the window to see if the morning paper had come.  They never rested and instead played, delivered their gospels, and dreamed.  They repeated this cycle ("dooing a doonloop," spinning around like Dunlop tires) and followed "the wake of their good old Foehn again" (Finnegan, again) on their "clipperbuilt."

Soon after these idyllic memories are recounted, Matt slowly transitions (almost as if he's coming to his senses) to the scene that's before them, which Lucas totally ignored during his address:  Tristan and Iseult on the boat.  This begins with vague near-references, such as "till he was instant and he was trustin [Tristan], sister soul in brother hand, the subjects being their passion grand," when discussing the foursome's early love for nursery rhymes.  Eventually, Matt fully returns to the present when he describes the four old men, "like a foreretyred schoonmasters, and their pair of green eyes and peering in, so they say, like the narcolepts on the lakes of Coma, through the steamy windows, into the honeymoon cabins."  They're peeping into the cabins, just like HCE was accused of doing, and gazing at "all the hunnishmooners and the firstclass ladies."  Now fully in the present moment, Matt concludes his address by lustily describing Tristan and Iseult as they embrace "all improper" in their cabin.  He ends by saying, "And all, hee hee hee, quaking, so fright, and shee shee, shaking.  Aching. Ay, ay."

"Ah dearo dearo dear!"

(391.12-393.3)  Today's passage is the biggest downer of those that I've read to date in this chapter.  Gone is the "leaping laughing" that Marcus spoke of in yesterday's reading.  Lucas, continuing to talk about the four old men's time at the auction with Mrs. Dowager Justice Squalchman, remembers how "poor Mark or Marcus Bowandcoat" embarrassed himself by when "he forgot himself, making wind and water, and made a Neptune's mess of all of himself" (in other words, when he peed his pants) and when he "forgot to remember to sign an old morning proxy paper" that was to be delivered to the Mrs. Dowager Justice.

Worse off than Marcus was "poor Dion Cassius Poosycomb."  Dion is another man who drowned, like those we encountered earlier in the chapter.  He didn't drown literally, however.  His fatal mistake was having "eten a bad carmp in the rude ocean," or eaten bad crab in the Red Sea.  His terrible food poisoning left him "dead seasickabed . . . in the housepays for the daying at the Martyr Mrs MacCawley's."  There, Dion slipped away as he tried to hold his nurse's hand and remember what day he was born on.  Lucas can only exclaim, "Ah dearo dearo dear!"

"And where do you leave Matt Emeritus?" Lucas now asks.  It's not immediately clear whether this Matt -- "The laychief of Abbotabishop" -- is the Matt of the four old men, or whether the "Emeritus" signals that Lucas is thinking of a previous Matt (perhaps HCE).  This Matt was poorly dressed, and sat below groud in order to perform an expiatory rite.  His sin is unclear, but we learn that he was joined by a woman (perhaps his wife?) who gripped "an old pair of curling tongs" with which she was considering killing Matt.  "It was too bad entirely!" says Lucas after cataloging the scant food present for Matt and the woman.

Concluding his depressing address, Lucas finally exhorts his peers to participate in the Eucharist with him:  "and so now pass the loaf for Christ sake.  Amen.  And so.  And all."

"The good go and the wicked is left over."

(389.30-391.12)  Today's passage begins with an interruption to Marcus's address:  "Queh?  Quos?"  (This seems to be someone -- the narrator, maybe, or one of the other three old men -- seemingly asking, "And?  Who?")  Marcus resumes by saying that it was "so scalding sorry" for the four old men, along with "their familiar" (a mysterious figure who has been hinted at before and pops up at least twice in today's reading) and Lally (some kind of public servant associated with the four old men).  At this point in their shared history, Lally was down on his luck:  he "lost part of his half a hat and all belongings to him."  Lally was trying to forget the past when Buckley shot the Russian General ("when the burglar he shoved the wretch in churneroil").  Marcus establishes Buckley in opposition to both Lally ("the ballast master of Gosterstown") and the Russian General ("his old fellow, the Lagener").  With the General lying down dead, "with his ladder up" (like Tim Finnegan, who "died" after having fallen off his ladder), Buckley "couldn't stop laughing over Tom Tim Tarpey, the Welshman, and the four middleaged widowers."

Thinking about the four old men again reminds Marcus of themselves -- "the four of the Welsh waves" -- in their better days, when they went about "leaping laughing, in their Lumbag Walk, over old Battleshore and Deaddleconch, in their half a Roman hat, with an ancient Greek gloss on it."  This was four years after they were all divorced, when they would part without sadness, but rather "raining water laughing."  Those days are over now, however, and all that is good is gone:  "The good go and the wicked is left over.  As evil flows so Ivel flows."

Next up is Lucas's address.  He jumps right in, remembering when "Carpery of the Goold Fins was in the kingship of Pooland."  His thoughts are focused upon "Mrs Dowager Justice Squalchman," who wore "her fullbottom wig and beard" at "the Married Male Familyman's Auctioneer's court in Arrahnacuddle."  Johnny, Lucas says, was frightened of the Mrs. Dowager Justice "on account of her full bottom."  As they walked around the auction grounds, the mysterious familiar person (here referred to as "a hing") trailed them because he was derelict in his duties "grooming her ladyship." 

"O weep for the hower when eve aleaves bower!"

(387.32-389.29)  After a relatively straightforward first four pages of this fourth chapter of Book II of the Wake, I've hit a denser -- or perhaps more accurately, a more obscure -- passage today.  The reading begins by resuming Johnny's address.  He's still on the subject of Merkin Cornyngwham's drowning.  Johnny says that the "arzurian deeps" have covered Cornyngwham's bones, and he adds that his widow is preparing her memoirs in tribute to him.  As we've seen throughout the Wake, this is another example of the father being displaced by the son:  "Where the old conk crusied now croons the yunk."  In this sense, Cornyngwham is another example of King Mark and HCE, and Johnny elaborates on this at the conclusion of his address.  Stating the names and some other words backward (for instance, "Kram of Llawnroc" is Mark of Cornwall), Johnny says that Mark exited through a door and Tristan entered the room, where he proceeded to cause Iseult to tumble into an embrace.  Johnny's address ends with him sobbing ("Sobbos.") and asking for salvation ("Sabbus.").

Immediately following Johnny's address comes the address of Marcus, who takes up the theme of death on the sea.  He reminds his peers of the "Flemish armada, all scattered, and all officially drowned" off the coast of Ireland after having converted "our first marents" and "Lapoleon."  Next, he brings up "the Frankish floot of Noahsdobahs," which disembarked "from under Motham General Bonaboche."  After the Frankish fleet appeared, a man (Napoleon?  HCE?  Mark?  Tristan?) arrived and conquered, "poghuing her scandalous and very wrong, the maid, in single combat, under the sycamores, amid the bludderings from the boom and all the gallowsbirds in Arrah-na-Poghue."  This seduction/invasion occurred near the Queen's Colleges, which, as Marcus recalls, served as the site for "grandest gloriaspanquost universal howldmoutherhibber lectures on anarxaquy out of doxarchology."  These lectures were received by the collegians, the saints, the sages, and the religious dissenters.  

After going off on a long tangent related to those lectures (a tangent I'm not having the easiest time following on this read through), Marcus returns to the seducer/invader near the Colleges and/or Tristan in the boat, who the four old men (and perhaps those in attendance at the lectures) hear "kiddling and cuddling her, after the gouty old galahat, with his peer of quinnyfears and his troad of thirstuns, so nefarious."

In a sense, the address Marcus gives is just as much a recycling as it is a continuation of Johnny's address.  Both have as their major themes the scandal of Tristan and Iseult's affair and the almost sentimental yearning for the days of old.  More to come tomorrow . . . .

"they were four dear old heladies"

(385.18-387.32)  After having turned their thoughts toward "the dear prehistoric scenes" of their young lives, the four old men return their attentions to the present time and resume their peeping observation of Tristan, "that mouth of mandibles, vowed to pure beauty," and Iseult, "his Arrah-na-poghue."  Iseult coughs and orders Tristan to sing "a dozen of the best favourite lyrical national blooms in Luvillicit, though not too much."  The four old men view the scene as "a seatuition so shocking and scandalous" and accordingly "thank God, there were no more of them."  

In a nice piece of Wakeian ambiguity, we read:  "and there they were, like a foremasters in the rolls, listening, to Rolando's deepen darblun Ossian roll."  Is the "they" here the four old men, or is it Tristan and Iseult?  The "foremasters" could mean the four old men, but it could also mean the two lovers on a four-post bed on a four-masted ship.  Of course, it could be both the old men and the couple.  Regardless, the four old men again find themselves "wishening for anything at all of the bygone times, the wald times and the fald times and the hempty times and the dempty times," including "four farback tumblerfuls of woman sqaush," as they watch the scene on the ship, "listening and spraining their ears for the millennium and all their mouths making water."

The rest of the day's passage comes from the perspective of one of the four old men, Johnny.  He agrees that what's been recounted so far of their young days is accurate, and he dives back into the reminiscence.  His thoughts turn to a Dublin auctioneer prominent in their youth, James H. Tickell.  This lofty figure "made the centuries" and has seen and encountered a world of things.  He dressed in a manner fit "to find out all the improper colleges," where he would presumably peddle his wares.

Abruptly, Johnny shifts his monologue back toward "long long ago in the old times Momonian" and remembers all the great events that have happened during his lifetime, going all the way back to "the drowning of Pharoah and all his pedestrians and they were all completely drowned into the sea, the red sea" before returning to the more contemporary "poor Merkin Cornyngwham, the official out of the castle on pension, when he was completely drowned off Erin Isles."  This could be a reference to King Mark, but it also recalls Martin Cunningham, a character from Ulysses who McHugh notes was based on a man named Matthew Kane, an Irish official who drowned in 1904 (and who additionally served as a model for the man drowned at sea referenced in Ulysses).

We'll get to the conclusion of Johnny's thoughts tomorrow.

"They were the big four, the four maaster waves of Erin"

(383.1-385.18)  Today I begin the fourth (and final) chapter of Book II of Finnegans Wake.  This chapter is a short one (a mere 17 pages -- compare that with the 74 pages of the previous chapter and the 49 pages of the chapter before that), but perhaps that's to be expected, since it's the fourth stage in the Viconian cycle of this Book, a stage of chaos that returns us to the primitive, natural order of things.  

Judging by the first two pages of text in the chapter, it also looks like it will be a comparatively "easy" chapter to read through, but still a typically rewarding one.  The chapter begins with a poem, the first line of which reads, "Three quarks for Muster Mark!"  (Tindall notes in his Reader's Guide that this line provided at least part of the inspiration for the naming of the subatomic particle, quark.)  The rest of the poem, which is heavy on references to various types of birds (indicating that those three quarks are three cheers, three quarts (probably of beer), and three bird's squawks), tells the tale of the legendary King Mark of the Tristan and Iseult story, references to which have appeared throughout the Wake.  Mark -- like HCE -- has been made a fool of ("wouldn't un be a sky of a lark / To see that old buzzard whooping around for uns shirt in the dark / And he hunting round for uns speckled trousers around by Palmerstown Park?"), as his nephew, Tristan, is in the process of seducing Mark's intended bride.

The first paragraph following the opening poem indicates that the poem was a song sung by "seaswans" that witnessed Tristan and Iseult kissing.  Seeing as we left off with the "stout ship Nansy Hans" sailing away at the end of the last chapter, this indicates that the scene we're beginning to see unfold is the sea voyage of Tristan and Iseult, who are departing Ireland (in the passed-out HCE's dream).

In addition to the sea birds, the four old men also witness this sea voyage.  These men -- "the big four, the four maaster waves of Erin, all listening, four" -- are Matt Gregory, Marcus Lyons, Luke Tarpey, and Johny MacDougall, or Irish versions of the four authors of the Gospels.  The four spy on Tristan and Iseult, "with their palms in their hands" as they are "spraining their ears, luistening and listening to the oceans of kissening, with their eyes glistening."  In a reversal of the prominent event underlying the Wake, the four old men are guilty of the sin of peeping, which HCE so infamously committed in Phoenix Park.  They watch Tristan and Iseult as the couple sits "on the fifteen inch loveseat, behind the chieftaness stewardesses cubin."  Tristan is "the hero, of Gaelic champion, the onliest one of her choice."  He's not altogether gentle, as he's "palpably wrong and bulbubly improper, and cuddling her and kissing her" as the two become one:  "Trisolanisans."

Watching the two lovers, the four old men grow nostalgic.  They remember their younger days, when they themselves "used to be at that time in the vulgar ear cuddling and kiddling her, after an oyster supper in Cullen's barn, from under her mistlethrush kissing and listening."  They were four collegians then, "peep of tim boys and piping tom boys, raising hell while the sin was shining."

As seen in the quoted excerpts here, there's already a lot of repetition in this chapter's language, indicating the even more dream-like nature of the text that will unfold over the next week or so.  Tomorrow, we'll return to the four old men as they watch and reminisce.