(471.35-473.25) The final pages of the second chapter of Book III of Finnegans Wake consist of a kind of salute to Shaun, coming from a general narrator, or perhaps Isabel (if we're thinking that Isabel delivered the final lines in yesterday's reading). "[M]ay the good people speed you, rural Haun, export stout fellow that you are," the narrator says. His time has passed, and the baby talk of the infants has turned into the wise language of the preachers: "The googoos of the suckabolly in the rockabeddy are become the copiosity of wiseableness of the friarylayman in the pulpitbarrel."
The narrator bids Shaun to return to Ireland, but recognizes that he may be gone for good. "My long farewell I send to you, fair dream of sport and game and always something new," the narrator says. "Gone is Haun! My grief, my ruin!" While Shaun's "paling light lucerne we ne'er may see again," dozens of people long for the day when Shaun might return again. The narrator tells Shaun that "life will be a blank without you because avicuum's not there at all," and adds that we're all fated to fade into "the yesterselves we tread to turnupon."
The final paragraph further (and explicitly) ties this chapter detailing Shaun's departure into the overall structure of the book. The narrator marvels at how Shaun did his "nine furlong mile in slick and slapstick record time" and emphasizes that "your feat of passage will be contested with you and through you, for centuries to come." In other words, Shaun's journey will be replicated throughout the course of human history. Just as the phoenix once rose from the ashes, "so too will our own sphoenix spark spirit his spyre and sunward stride the rampante flambe." In fact, the narrator can in fact see a brighter moment in history approaching: "Ay, already the sombrer opacities of the gloom are sphanished!" With that in mind, the narrator offers Shaun words of encouragement: "Brave footsore Haun! Work your progress! Hold to! Now! Win out, ye divil ye!" Now is the time to act, for soon the day will come, the dream will end, Finnegan will wake, and the present will become the past:
Walk while ye have the night for morn, lightbreakfastbringer, morroweth whereon every past shall full fost sleep. Amain.
(469.29-471.34) Having delivered his "last fireless words," Shaun sets off, with the "twentyaid add one" girls "pouring to his bysistance." A "hermetic prod or kick" causes Shaun "to sit up and take notice" as the girls "voiced approval in their customary manner by dropping kneedeep in tears over their concelebrated meednight sunflower, piopadey boy, their solase in dorckaness." The girls wail and deliver a prayer, which McHugh notes (relying upon a letter Joyce wrote to Harriet Shaw Weaver) mirrors the Maronite liturgy and consists of 29 words. This prayer likens Shaun to various trees (reemphasizing the tree/stone dichotomy that features throughout the book) and alternately addresses him as "oasis" (a source of refuge) and "Oisis" (an incarnation of Osiris or the offspring of Isis). At the prayer's conclusion, the girls say, "Pipetto, Pipetta has misery unnoticed!" This indicates the unique misery suffered by Isabel ("Pipetta") for her beloved Shaun.
Now the narrative begins to advance much quicker (we have reached the chapter's final four pages, after all). Shaun is just about to tumble into the river, but first he takes a "familiar yellow label" from Isabel, lets fall a drop, smothers a curse, chokes a guffaw, spits, and blows his own trumpet. The postman Shaun licks an "oval badge of belief" and affixes it to his brow and causes the girls to turn topsy turvy "with half a glance of Irish frisky . . . from under the shag of his parallel brows." He waves goodbye, and the girls return the gesture as they call out to him and each other, shouting their 29 names, which all translate to the word "peace." Shaun moves to embrace Isabel a final time, then moves to resume his journey, blessing the girls "with the sign of the southern cross." His hat blows off his head just before he moves "away with him at the double . . . , let off like a wind hound." The girls wave their handkerchiefs, and as Shaun fades from sight someone (Isabel, I think?) recites a prayer based upon the "Hail Mary" and says, "Where maggot Harvey kneeled till bags? Ate Andrew coos hogdam farvel!" (which McHugh translates from Danish as, "How much have we held back? To change course and so goodbye!").
Tomorrow, we reach the conclusion of this second chapter of the Wake's third book.
(467.30-469.28) Shaun seems to have some good words for his brother as he wraps up his appearance before the 29 girls. "He'll prisckly soon hand tune your Erin's ear for you," Shaun says of Dave, returning to the subject of music for a brief moment. He adds that there's "numan bitter" than Dave "to read the road roman with false steps." Shaun does say, though, that Dave gets "tootoological" when Dave says, "In the beginning was the gest . . . , for the end is with woman, flesh-without word, while the man to be is in a worse case after than before since she on the supine satisfies the verg to him!" (seemingly implying that women, not men, get the most out of sex). Shaun instructs Isabel to "pull up your furbelovs as farabove as you're farthingales" in order to hint to Dave "how to click the trigger" (or, in other words, have sex with her). "Show you shall and won't he will!" Shaun continues. "His hearing is indoubting just as my seeing is onbelieving."
As a kind of interlude, the narrator tells us that from the stress of the thunder and lightning (which, in the Wake, is always right around the corner) will come a "nikrokosmikon," or a successor who will unite both Nick (Shem) and Mike (Shaun).
The brief interlude completed, we hear what look to be Shaun's final words of the chapter. His watch tells him it's time to go, and his middle toe's itching, so it's time for him to start out. "This shack's not big enough for me now," he says. All four of the elements are ready for his journey: "The earth's atrot! The sun's a scream! The air's a jig! The water's great!" He recognizes that it's fitting for him to take the river and head out for the ocean, for, as he says, "Was not my olty mutther, Sereth Maritza, a Runningwater?" After giving a blessing with his "panromain apological," Shaun says that it's time to break ranks. "Fik yew!" he says, delivering a final insult to the girls who have endured his ramblings. "I'm through. Won. Toe. Adry. You watch my smoke." With that, Shaun is off.
(465.31-467.30) Today's passage begins with Shaun assuming the role of Polonius and offering advice to Dave/Shem and Isabel. "Be ownkind," he says. "Be kithkinish. Be bloodysibby. Be irish. Be inish. Be offalia. Be hamlet. Be the property plot. Be Yorick and Lankystare." After offering some more general advice, he returns to the idea of Isabel and Dave becoming a couple, saying, "Give us a pin for her and we'll call it a tossup." He adds, "Lets have a fuchu all round, courting cousins!" Perhaps he's persuasive, for he tells Dave that he "can feel you being corrupted" and "can see you sprouting scruples." Ultimately, he almost commands the two to fornicate: "Shuck her! Let him! What he's good for. Shuck her more! Let him again! All she wants!"
Turning away from this "romantic" topic, Shaun begins to speak of music, asking Dave whether he would play some music on his "imitationer's jubalharp." While Dave sings out of tune, Shaun says that "he could be near a colonel with a voice like that." Dave still has his bark, but has lost his bite, much like the boots that Shaun had loaned him. Shaun says that Dave needs to be more assertive: "But I told him make your will be done and go to a general and I'd pray confessions for him." This "national umbloom" won't do that, though, because he's "shoy." Members of the older generation used to keep Dave in line, but that's "all deafman's duff" to Shaun. Perhaps Dave is just fated to be, as Shaun calls him, "[i]llstarred punster, lipstering cowknucks."
(463.27-465.31) In addition to Dave/Shem's vices, Shaun is worried about his health, for Dave is "looking aged with his pebbled eyes, and johnnythin too." "Hope he hasn't the cholera," Shaun notes. Still, no one can "hold a chef's cankle" to Dave, the "joyllytan fine demented brick and the prince of goodfilips!" Shaun says that he has the "highest of respect" for him, even though he hints that he's a plagiarist (in a sequence, he calls Dave "cog," "crib," and "coppy"). While he was away, this "most omportent man" has shaved his head, and he now sports a "blackguarded eye" and "goatsbeard" (as McHugh notes, Dave looks much like Joyce, who wore a black eye patch and goatee), which are quite visible to everyone since Dave has taken off his hat. "Ah, he's very thoughtful and sympatrico that way is Brother Intelligentius, when he's not absintheminded, with his Paris addresse!" Shaun says.
Upon his return, Dave receives a warm greeting from this brother. "Give us the dyed dextremity here, frother, the Claddagh clasp!" says Shaun, asking for a handshake. He goes on to ask Dave about his travels, wondering among other things how Austria and Hungary were and whether Dave met "with Peadhar the Grab at all." "You rejoice me!" Shaun says. "Faith, I'm proud of you, french davit! You've surpassed yourself!" Shaun seems to be genuine in his praise, but I wonder if there isn't something sinister lurking here.
"Be introduced to yes!" Shaun says, reacquainting Dave with his sister Isabel. "This is me aunt Julia Bride, your honour, dying to have you languish to scandal in her bosky old delltangle" (remember, the delta and triangle are symbols of their mother, ALP). Neither Dave nor Isabel recognizes the other, but Shaun is quick to point out that he's willing to share her with Dave: "She has plenty of woom in the smallclothes for the bothsforus, nephews push! Hatch yourself well! Enjombyourselves thurily!" As Shaun goes on, it's almost as if he's a pimp trying to push Isabel on Dave. "Have a hug!" he says. "Take her out of poor tuppeny luck before she goes off in pure treple licquidance. I'd give three shillings a pullet to the canon for the conjugation to shadow you kissing her from me leberally all over as if she was a cricifix." We'll see how things progress tomorrow . . . .
(461.33-463.27) Shaun punctuates the closing of Isabel's reply (which ended with "ah ah ah ah. . . .") with a resounding "MEN!" -- thus effectively closing her prayer. "Ever gloriously kind!" he tells her. "And I truly am eucherised to yours." With "his chalished drink now well in hand," he toasts the girls, saying, "[W]oo and win womenlong with health to rich vineyards, Erin go Dry!" He offers the girls some champagne and (perhaps drunkenly) swears to them that "I ne'er will prove I'm untrue to your liking . . . so long as my hole looks. Down."
"So gullaby, me poor Isley!" says Shaun, both telling her goodbye and saying she's gullible. "But I'm not for forgetting me innerman monophone for I'm leaving my darling proxy behind for your consolering, lost Dave the Dancekerl, a squamous runaway and a dear old man pal of mine too." Like the departing Christ, Shaun is leaving the girls with a substitute, here the previously departed (he ran away, after all) Dave the Dancekerl. If he could only give up sex and alcohol, Shaun says, Dave would be "the unicorn of his kind." Still, Shaun says that Dave is "the mightiest penumbrella I ever flourished on behond the shadow of a post!"
Shaun greets Dave's arrival with glee: "But soft! Can't be? Do mailstanes mumble? Lumtum lumtum! Now! The froubadour! I fremble!" When Dave arrives he looks like "he fell out of space, all draped in mufti, coming home to mourn mountains from his old continence." Arrived from a stay on the European continent and having completed "his French evolution," Dave is the returning Shem, and also the returning Joyce. "He's the sneaking likeness of us, faith, me altar's ego in miniature and every Auxonian aimer's ace as nasal a Romeo as I am, for ever cracking quips on himself, that merry, the jeenjakes," Shaun says. He's strange, Shaun adds, but loveable: "He has novel ideas I know and he's a jarry queer fish betimes, I grant you, and cantanberous, the poisoner of his word, but lice and all and semicoloured stainedglasses, I'm enormously full of that foreigner, I'll say I am!" Cementing the idea that the two are twins, Shaun says, "Got by the one goat, suckled by the same nanna, one twitch, one nature makes us oldworld kin."
Shaun does offer criticisms of Dave-Shem, of course. He's a turncoat: "To camiflag he turned his shirt." And he is notorious for borrowing money: "Isn't he after borrowing all before him, making friends with everybody red in Rossya, white in Alba and touching every distinguished Ourishman he could ever distinguish before or behind from a Yourishman for the customary halp of a crown and peace?"
(459.30-461.32) Although Isabel is in love with another boy, she says that will never forget Shaun, "not for tons of donkeys." With that in mind, she instructs Shaun to not try to compel her faithfulness by "peppering with fear," lest she murder him. Instead, she tells him, "meet me after by next appointment near you know Ships just there beside the Ship." So, she won't give up her other love for Shaun, but she'll still remain faithful to him, in her own way. "Trust us," she says. "Our game. (For fun!) The Dargle shall run dry the sooner I you deny. Whoevery heard of such a think? Till the ulmost of all elmoes shall stele our harts asthone!"
While Shaun is away, she will keep a kind of dream diary, writing in "gold pen and ink" in her "Jungfraud's Messongebook." She'll wait for him until eternity with sweets to give him upon his return, but in the meantime she'll buy herself an expensive raincoat "of pinked elephant's breath grey of the loveliest sheerest dearest widowshood over airforce blue I am so wild for." For now, though, it's time for her daily appointment with "Pinchapoppapoff, who is going to be a jennyroll" (the Russian General), apparently another lover.
Near the end of Isabel's reply, she describes the night of her "golden violents wetting," when her and her new husband will consummate the marriage. Campbell and Robinson read this passage as a kind of allegory for the Christian Church, with Shaun representing the departed Christ and Isabel representing the faith left behind by Christ, which gives itself freely to all denominations (Catholic, protestant, Russian, etc.). Following this wedding night description, she reverts back to the present, in which she talks childish ("thalk thildish") and says that before she goes to bed, she will say one little prayer.
(457.25-459.30) Up to this point, this chapter has consisted primarily of Shaun delivering a sermon to the 29 girls assembled before him. Now, however, we get to hear a new voice, that of Isabel, who in today's reading begins her reply to Shaun. "Meesh, meeshy, yes, pet," she begins. "We were too happy. I knew something would happen." Recognizing that he's about to depart, she offers him a gift of "memento nosepaper," which she tells him to use when he writes her from abroad. Her speech is loaded with language that can be interpreted in contradictory ways, indicating her sincerity and her cynicism toward her brother. For instance, regarding the notepaper, she asks Shaun "when never you make usage of it, listen, please kindly think galways again or again, never forget." That "never" could be read literally, or it could be read as "ever."
Isabel says that she will be well taken care of financially because "I am getting his pay and wants for nothing so I can live simply and solely for my wonderful kinkless and its loops of loveliness." This might indicate that she's living off of HCE's inheritance or life insurance, and so she's able to devote time to more frivolous things, like her hair. Also playing into this theme of Isabel's superficiality is the part where she discusses "nurse Madge, my linkingclass girl," with whom she'll be praying for Shaun. Nurse Madge could be the household servant Kate, but perhaps this "linkingclass girl" is the personification of Isabel's image in the mirror. Isabel likes to draw marks and mustaches on Madge's face when Madge sleepwalks, but, she tells Shaun, "[Y]ou'll love her for her hessians and sickly black stockies."
At the end of today's passage, Isabel makes a confession to Shaun. "O bother, I must tell the trouth!" she says. "My lad's loveliletter I am sore I done something with. I like him lots coss he never cusses. Pity bonhom. Pip pet. I shouldn't say he's pretty but I'm cocksure he's shy. Why I love taking him out when I unletched his cordon gate." She says that her young lover "fell for my lips, for my lisp, for my lewd speaker." She "fell for his strength, his manhood, his do you mind?" How will her relationship with this boy effect her devotion to Shaun? We'll see tomorrow . . . .
(455.30-457.24) With his time nearing an end, Shaun has grown hungry once again. "But I fill twice as stewhard what I felt before when I'm after eating a few natives," he says. The girls accordingly set before him a "hissing hot luncheon." Shaun, with his tremendous appetite, eats a lot again (consistent with what was reported in the last chapter). As the description goes on, he ends the mass which he began at the beginning of the chapter, saying, "Eat a missal lest" (paraphrasing, as McHugh notes, the Latin ending of the Catholic Mass, "Ite, missa est."). Of particular note in this passage is the way that the language signifying the food Shaun eats breaks apart as Shaun chews that food, reducing it to a "clingleclangle": "fudgem [fudge], kates [steak] and eaps [peas] and naboc [bacon] and erics [rices] and oinnos [onions] on kingclud [duckling] and xoxxoxo [cabbage -- the x's stand for consonants and the o's stand for vowels] and xooxox xxoxoxxoxxx [boiled protestants -- potatoes, as Tindall notes]."
Feeling "fustfed like fungstif" (stuffed like Falstaff), it's time for Shaun to set off and make his mail rounds. He also has to collect "extraprofessional postages" owed to him by Thaddeus Kelly, Esq., who mailed "nondesirable printed matter." Shaun is determined to get what Kelly owes him. "I'll knock it out of him!" he says. "I'll stump it out of him! I'll rattattatter it out of him before I'll quit the doorstep of old Con Connolly's residence! By the horn of twenty of both of the two Saint Collopys, blackmail him I will in arrears or my name's not pentitent Ferdinand!"
Now Shaun really has to be going, for if he doesn't leave, he says, he'd be tempted to become a priest. With his hunger "weighed" and his anger "suaged," he tells the girls not to wait for him and boasts that he'll deliver a swift heel to the face of any "Clod Dewvale" who tries to get in his way. "And you'll miss me more as the narrowing weeks wing by," he tells the girls. "Someday duly, oneday truly, twosday newly, till whensday." Before they all know it, he concludes, they'll be lining the welcoming route for "his Diligence Majesty, our longdistance laird that likes creation."
(453.29-455.29) "Lo, improving ages wait ye!" says Shaun at the beginning of today's reading, letting them know that better times are on the way. He adds that "when yon clouds are dissipated after their forty years shower, the odds are, we shall all be hooked and happy, communionistically, among the fieldnights eliceam, élite of the elect, in the land of lost time." The Lenten season is over, and it's time to live. With these optimistic words, Shaun begins to take his leave. "So for e'er fare the welt!" he says. "Parting's fun. Take though, the wringle's thine, love. This dime doth trost thee from mine alms. Goodbye, swisstart, goodbye!"
But Shaun isn't quite finished with the girls yet. As he walks away, the narrator says that something "of a sidesplitting nature must have occurred to westminstrel Jaunathaun," for he began to laugh as he was walking away. Hearing Shaun laugh, the girls begin to laugh as well. Hearing this, Shaun turns around to see what's happening. "So they stood still and wondered," the narrator says. "Till first he sighed (and how ill soufered!) and they nearly cried (the salt of the earth!) after which he pondered and finally he replied[.]"
"There is some thing more," Shaun says in that reply. "A word apparting and shall the heart's tone be silent." Once again, he says, "Fare thee well, fairy well!" But he does add that it will be necessary for them to pray while he's gone: "It's prayers in layers all the thumping time." This sets Shaun down a path of thought concerning heaven and earth. "No petty family squabbles Up There nor homemade hurricanes in our Cohortyard, no cupahurling nor apuckalips nor no puncheon jodelling nor no nothing," he says. "Postmartem is the goods," he goes on to explain, noting that heaven is much better than "our crass, hairy and evergrim life." We can't live forever, he explains, but part of us must surely do that: "We may come, touch and go, from atoms and ifs but we're presurely destined to be odd's without ends." Shaun ends today's passage with a rather lyrical flourish, noting that the miseries of our earthly life pale in comparison to "the Hereweareagain Gaieties of the Afterpiece" that we will encounter when "the Royal Revolver of these real globoes lets regally fire of his mio colpo for the chrisman's pandemon to give over." After the Judgment Day, Shaun says finally, we will experience "Mark Time's Finist Joke": "Allspace in a Notshall" (putting all of space into a nutshell, or nothing).
(451.27-453.29) Today's reading begins with Shaun wrapping up his description of his imagined future life with Isabel. He pictures himself planting her "on the electric ottoman in the lap of lechery," in "the most uxuriously furnished compartments, with sybarate chambers." He would also continue to rake in wealth: "I'd run my shoestring into near a million or so of them as a firstclass dealer and everything." He does worry, though, that his "alltoolyrical health" might suffer while he's "woabling around with the hedrolics in the coold amstophere till the borting that would perish the Dane and his chapter of accidents." He says that he's telling the truth -- "I earnst." -- just as he punctuates this paragraph with a sneeze: "Schue!" (I myself am getting over a cold and, appropriately enough, sneezed as I read this part while going through McHugh's annotations. Chalk this up as another great example of Joyce's mastery of onomatopoeia.)
With this daydream completed, Shaun returns to the task at hand. He says that he recently had been thinking about "how long I'd like myself to be continued at Hothelizod. His impending trip is making him a bit sentimental. "'[T]is transported with grief I am this night sublime . . . to go forth, frank and hoppy . . . from our nostorey house, upon this benedictine errand," he says. But, he recognizes, his task is "historically the most glorious mission, secret or profund, through all the annals of our -- as you so often term her -- efferfreshpainted livy." He is going to meet "the overking of Hither-on-Thither Erin himself." Recognizing that "[t]he Vico road goes round and round to meet where terms begin," he knows that someone suitable will come to take his place at home while he is gone: "We only wish everyone was as sure of anything in this watery world as we are of everything in the newlywet fellow that's bound to follow" (that newlywet fellow may even be Shaun himself).
Having come to terms with this inevitable departure (and return), Shaun says, "Well, to the figends of Annanmeses with the wholebuelish business!" He declares that he's "beginning to get sunsick," for he's "not half Norawain for nothing," so it might be time for him to get moving. While he's gone, he asks that the girls avoid creating a scene while mourning him (like the mourners do in "Finnegan's Wake"), saying, "I don't want yous to be billowfighting your biddy moriarty duels, gobble gabble, over me till you spit stout, you understand." His leaving is not really anything to mourn, and he instead suggests that his absence will serve as "my gala bene fit."
(449.26-451.27) Today's reading is another in a series of readings in which I've found myself ending mid-paragraph. Perhaps as a testament to Shaun's penchant for being long-winded, much of this chapter seems to consist of multi-page paragraphs, so it's become increasingly difficult for me to break the readings into two-page segments. I broke off today's reading, for instance, three-quarters of the way down page 451. The paragraph I'm in the middle of ends seven lines into page 452, but I've decided to cut it off rather than go the extra half-page or so tonight. It might be dumb, but for the time being I'm trying to keep it as close to two pages per day as possible, or else I risk getting confused with where I'm supposed to read to or burned out.
Anyway, although Shaun said at the end of yesterday's reading that it was too late to stay since it was two o'clock in the morning, today's reading begins with him picking back up with the idea of him remaining home and living as a bird in a bush. Shaun imagines that he could sit there safely, "laughing lazy at the sheep's lightning and turn a widamost ear dreamily to the drumming of snipers" until he watched the moon roll itself to sleep amid the clouds. He then imagines himself as a fish, eager to "melt my belt for a dace feast of grannom with the finny ones," and "flashing down the swansway, leaps ahead of the swift MacEels, the big Gillaroo redfellows and the pursewinded carpers." When seeking time alone, he'd recline by the river and alternately play a pipe, smoke a pipe, fish, and teach the "twittynice Dorian blackbudds" (the 29 girls) how to sing.
"But enough of greenwood's gossip," says Shaun, collecting himself. "Birdsnests is birdsnests." He now pictures himself amassing great wealth, sinking "every dolly farting" into investments and asserting that "I'm the gogetter that'd make it pay like cash registers as sure as there's a pot on a pole." After all, he says that "mony makes multimony like the brogues and the kishes." This great wealth would help Shaun to fully win over Isabel: "And before you knew where you weren't, I stake my ignitial's divy, cash-and-cash-can-again, I'd be staggering humanity and loyally rolling you over, my sow-white sponse." He would spoil Isabel altogether, he says, and he concludes today's reading by adding, "There'd be no standing me, I tell you."
(447.21-449.26) We pick up today with Shaun offering more subjects for the girls to research. "Explain why there is such a number of orders of religion in Asea!" he says, for instance. "Why such an order number in preference to any other number? Why any number in any order at all?" Referencing the legend (noted by McHugh) that on a particular day of the year Ireland is visible from Spain, Shaun asks, "Where is the greenest island off the black coats of Spaign?"
Soon, Shaun returns to the topic of dear dirty Dublin's problems, and he suggests an experiment to the girls. He asks them to head to Aston Quay in central Dublin and "take a good onging gaze into any nearby shopswindow you may select at." After looking in the window for 32 minutes, he tells them to "proceed to turn aroundabout on your heehills toward the previous causeway." If they do, he says, "I shall be very cruelly mistaken indeed if you will not be jushed astunshed to see how you will be meanwhile durn weel topcoated with kakes of slush occasioned by the mush jam of the cross and blackwalls traffic in transit." Fixed on this subject and looking at a complaint book, he asks, "Where's Cowtends Kateclean, the woman with the muckrake?" He also wonders when "the W.D. face of our sow muckloved d'lin" will get "its wellbelavered white like l'pool and m'chester." When will the city get hospitals, he asks, and who will advocate on its behalf? "The royal commissioners!" he suggests mockingly. "'Tis an ill weed blows no poppy good." The job should fall to Shaun: "If I hope not charity what profiteers me? Nothing!" But, he tells the "liddle giddles" (the little girls, who are like Alice Liddell, Lewis Carroll's model for the title heroine in Alice in Wonderland), he has been advised by "the smiling voteseeker who's now snoring elued" (HCE) to leave the country until he can get a government order granting him a car, new shoes, and time to recover at a spa.
With this thought concluded for the moment, Shaun once again addresses Isabel, "Sis dearest." "O, the vanity of Vanissy!" Shaun says. "All ends vanishing! Pursonally, Grog help me, I am in no violent hurry." He doesn't want to leave Ireland, and he says he would turn back on his journey "if I could only spoonfind the nippy girl of my heart's appointment, Mona Vera Toutou Ipostila, my lady of Lyons, to guide me by gastronomy under her safe conduct" (McHugh notes that Joyce collaborated with Stuart Gilbert on his essay, Prolegomena to Work in Progress, in which Gilbert explains this passage by saying that it means that Shaun would like to find a girl who has a job to support him). He'd like to stay where he is, like a bird happily living in a bush, but it's too late, for the "owledclock . . . has just gone twoohoo the hour."
(445.26-447.21) As his sermon continues, Shaun shifts away from his offensive against Isabel's imagined lover and turns toward a kind of daydream. He says that he will return from overseas a "nuncio." While he's away, he'll think of Isabel "with deepest of love and recollection by rintrospection," for, as he says, "a big corner fill you do in this unadulterated seat of our affections." Upon his return, he intends to take her as his lover: "Aerwenger's my breed so may we uncreepingly multipede like the sands on Amberhann!" If he's proved to Isabel's "sallysfashion" that he's "a man of Armor" (both a tough man of war and a tender man of amour, or love), he'd like to see her "isabellis" (the body of Isabel, including her belly . . . McHugh notes this word coincides with the French "déshabillé," which translates to "undressed," further cementing the fact that Shaun wants to see Isabel naked). If he survives his trip, Shaun continues, he'll take her hand in his and cover her checks with "zuccherikissings." With the two thus united, he says, "you will be there and then, in those happy moments of ouryour soft accord, rainkiss on me back, for full marks with shouldered arms."
"Slim ye, come clum with me and rally rats' roundup!" says Shaun, as he begins to explain how his union with Isabel will revolutionize Ireland. "'Tis post purification we will, sales of work and social service, missus, completing our Abelite union by the adoptation of fosterlings." The two will "pull of our working programme" and "circumcivicise all Dublin country." Shaun is apparently already eager to memorialize his unrealized deeds, for he tells the girls, "Write me your essayes, my vocational scholars, but corsorily, dipping your nose in it, for Henrietta's sake, on mortinatality in the life of jewries and the sludge of King Haarington's at its height, running boulevards over the whole of it." I like the word "mortinatality," for in mingling "mortality" and "natality," it encompasses death and birth and, by implication, all of human experience. (McHugh also notes that Sir John Harington came up with the idea for a toilet, which also incorporates a universal human experience of sorts.)
The remainder of today's passage (and it looks like at least the very beginning of tomorrow's) consists of subjects Shaun would like the girls/vocational scholars to cover. "I'd write it all by mownself if I only had here of my jolly young watermen," Shaun notes (for those like me who were in the dark, McHugh points out that a Waterman is a type of pen). Initial subjects of interest to Shaun include cleaning the streets and the exploits of various religious orders ("the Mirist fathers' brothers," "White Friars," and "them caponchin trowlers"). More to come tomorrow.
(443.16-445.25) Shaun continues with his offensive against the imagined lover of Isabel by saying, "I'll not be complete in fighting lust until I contrive to half kill your Charley you're my darling for you." He goes on to describe this man, whom he compares to "Rollo the Gunger" (or Rolf Ganger, who, McHugh notes, was the first Duke of Normandy and thus theoretically an ancestor of the Anglo-Normans who invaded Ireland). McHugh suggests that the description could double as one of Joyce's father, while Tindall wonders whether it's describing Joyce himself. It could be both, I suppose, and maybe also HCE: "a man in brown around town," "well over or about fiftysix or so," "perhops five foot eight," "with a toothbrush moustache and jawcrockeries," "of course no beard," and "with tar's baggy slacks, obviously too roomy for him," among other colorful descriptors. This man, with his "good job and pension in Buinness's" will engage Isabel in sophisticated talk about "our trip to Normandy" and the "filmacoulored featured at the Mothrapurl skrene about Michan and his lost angeleens." He's not perfect, though, as he goes about "seeking relief in alcohol and so on" and has "a dash of railwaybrain, stale cough and an occasional twinge of claudication."
"So let it be a knuckle or an elbow, I hereby admonish you!" Shaun continues. And if "there be no misconception," he adds, Isabel will have to deal with the baby while "the dirty old bigger'll be squealing through his coughin." Shifting back to didactic mode for a moment, Shaun says, "The pleasures of love lasts but a fleeting but the pledges of life outlusts a lieftime."
The remainder of today's passage sees Shaun switching back and forth between threatening to punish Isabel for any misdeeds and threatening to seduce her. "I'll have it in for you," he says. "I'll teach you bed minners, tip for tap, to be playing your oddaugghter tangotricks with micky dazzlers if I find corseharis on your river-frock and the squirmside of your burberry lupitally covered with chiffchaff and shavings." He can see through her anticipated excuses: "Cutting chapel, were you? and had dates with slickers in particular hotels, had we? Lonely went to play your mother, isod? You was wiffriends? Hay, dot's a doll yarn! Mark mean then!" If she and her lover go walking upon the railway, Shaun says, "I'll goad to beat behind the bush!" If Isabel will give her self to Shaun and satisfy his lusty urges, though, he'll overlook her indiscretions: "I'll have plenary sadisfaction, plays the bishop, for your parital's indulgences if your my rodeo gell." Otherwise, he'll "just draw my prancer and give you one splitpuck in the crupper." At the end of today's reading, he says by way of a momentary conclusion that he'll be the one to greedily bottle up her beauty because he's the one with the pair of arms that "carry a wallop."
(441.24-443.16) The paragraph that comprises today and part of tomorrow's readings begins with Shaun feeling the effects of his fantasy at the end of yesterday's reading. He shouts, kicks, and brays "as his voixehumanar swelled to great, clenching his manlies, so highly strong was he, man, and gradually quite warming to her" (McHugh notes that "vox humana" is Latin for "organ stop," indicating that the highly strung Shaun is grabbing his manly parts as his male organ swells).
Perhaps to deflect his attention, he goes on the offensive against an imagined paramour of Isabel, and he remains on this offensive for the duration of today's reading (and, I'm guessing, into tomorrow's). "Divulge," shouts Shaun at the beginning of today's passage. After the bit above, he resumes by telling Isabel to "divorce into me and say the curname in undress . . . of any lapwhelp or sleevemongrel who talks to you upon the road where he tuck you to be a roller." The jealous Shaun needs to know who might be after Isabel, and he "don't care a tongser's tammany hang who the muck is nor twoo hoots in the corner nor three shouts on a hill." He goes on to ensure that "as we value the very name in sister that as soon as we do possibly it will be a poor lookout for that insister."
Shaun asks Isabel (and perhaps the other girls) why the "insister" will "be a markt man from that hour." When he doesn't get a reply, he somewhat uncharacteristically insults her, saying, "You are an ignoratis!" He answers his own question, anyway, saying, "Because then probably we'll dumb well soon show him what the Shaun way is like how we'll go a long way towards breaking his outsider's face for him for making up to you with his bringthee balm of Gaylad and his singthee songs of Arupee." And once Shaun's finished with his attack, he might "think strongly about giving the brotherkeeper into custody to the first police bubby cunstabless of Dora's Diehards in the field I might chance to follopon," or he may even bring him up for proceedings "before a bunch of magisrafes and twelve good and gleeful men." This, Shaun said, would "prove more or less of an event and show the widest federal in my cup."
As a side note to today's reading, there's a famous story, perhaps most prominently noted in Richard Ellman's biography of Joyce, that as Joyce dictated parts of the Wake to Samuel Beckett, there was once a knock on the door. Beckett didn't hear the knock, so when Joyce said, "Come in," Beckett wrote those words down, figuring that they were part of the text. When later asked if he'd like to remove the unintended phrase, Joyce said, "Let it stand." The story, if true, sheds light on the way Joyce sometimes relied upon luck or happenstance when composing the Wake. I haven't yet come across the words "come in" in the text, but today's reading does include something close in this passage:
We'll he'll burst our his mouth like Leary to the Leinsterface and reduce he'll we'll ournhisn liniments to a poolp. Open the door softly, somebody wants you, dear! You'll hear him calling you, bump like a blizz, in the muezzin of the turkest night. Come on now, pillarbox! I'll stiffen your scribeall, broken reed!
At first, I thought that I'd found the sentence Ellman had mentioned. Rather than "come in," though, it's, "Open the door softly, somebody wants you." One could argue that it is out of place with the text around it, but, then again, it does flow into the following sentence, which begins, "You'll hear him calling you." McHugh notes that in Arrah-na-Pogue, the character Sean the Post sings, "Open the dure softly, Somebody wants ye, dear," so this probably puts to rest my theory that this was the line Joyce unintentionally tossed in to his book.
Hugh B. Staples suggests that the "come in" line might be found on pages 222-223, where during the children's play we find the sentence, "Sammy, call on." This would be Joyce telling Beckett to call on whoever's at the door. This might be a better suspect than mine, but McHugh does note that the phrase could stand for "semicolon," and thus be "mere" verbal punctuation. (In either case, maybe Joyce left in the unintended part, then later revised it to fit better within the text, both in terms of narrative and word play.)
(439.15-441.23) Shaun resumes his sermon today. He begins this new paragraph slowly, almost as if he's catching his breath, and takes a moment to admire the sound of his own voice (e.g., "And the topnoted delivery you'd expected be me invoice!"). He does acknowledge his own sinfulness, and hints that he may have inherited some of his father's lusty nature: "I feel spirits of itchery outching out from all over me and only for the sludgehummer's force in my hand to hold them the darkens alone knows what'll who'll be saying of next." Moving away from his "upperotic rogister," he goes back to dispensing his "brokerly advice . . . free of price."
After a couple bits of random advice (such as "Be vacillant over those vigilant who would leave you belave black on white."), Shaun turns his attention toward literature. First, he says, "I'd burn the books that grieve you." Then, he suggests reading material suitable for the girls: the "Weekly Standerd"; classics like "Through Hell with the Papes . . . by the divine comic Denti Alligator"; "pious fiction" that has been "licensed and censered by our most picturesque prelates, Their Graces of Linzen and Petitbois, bishops of Hibernites"; and "Sifted science" such as "Egg laid by Former Cock and With Flageolettes in Send Fanciesland."
Shaun goes on to dispense more random advice (including "The lad who brooks no breaches lifts the lass that toffs a tailor.") before urging the girls (and Isabel in particular) to prize their virginity above all else: "Sooner than part with that vestalite emerald of the first importance, descended to me by far from our family, which you treasure up so closely where extremes meet . . . , rather let the whole ekumene universe belong to merry Hal and do whatever his Mary well likes." He then takes a detour while discussing marriage and overeating. Ultimately, though, he comes back to that virginity thing. This time, he gives in to that lust that's a part of his nature. "Guard that gem, Sissy, rich and rare, ses he," Shaun states. "In this cold old worold who'll feel it? Hum!" Few will get to have sex with Isabel, Shaun suggests, but he imagines himself being one of those few: "Sing him a ring. Touch me low. And I'll lech ye so, my soandso. Show and show. Show on show. She. Shoe. Shone."
Tomorrow, we'll see if Shone/Shaun continues to go in this incestuous direction.
(437.16-439.14) As Shaun's sermon continues, he spends less time offering seemingly random bits of advice and focuses more on developing certain themes. Today's passage begins with Shaun saying, "Be a sportive." Soon after he adds, "Stamp out bad eggs." But then he strikes upon a particular pet subject for him when he brings up the "too friendly friend sort, Mazourikawitch or some other sukinsin of a vitch" after having cautioned the girls to avoid "furnished lodgers paying for their feed on tally with company and piano tunes."
Mazourikawitch is a Shem-type figure who Shaun fears may try to seduce the girls while Shaun is gone. He paints a picture of the girl having gotten "used to basking in his loverslowlap, inordinately clad, moustacheteasing." The man will seduce her, precipitating her downfall. She'll move on to another fling and become a favorite subject of peeping toms and the local gossip. Then, she'll find herself in "a whorable state of affairs altogether" when "the redcolumnists of presswritten epics, Peter Paragraph and Paulus Puff" snap scandalous photos of her, causing her to be no longer marriageable and ending with her bottoming out as a prostitute.
With all this in mind, Shaun says, "I'll have no college swankies . . . trespassing on your danger zone in the dancer years." If he does catch any of the girls deviating from the prescribed course, he says, "I'll tackle you to feel if you have a few devils in you."
We've now reached the conclusion of what looks to be the opening salvo of Shaun's sermon. More to come tomorrow . . . .
(435.12-437.16) Shaun's sermon continues in today's pages (and tomorrow's). As I noted yesterday, this passage is largely straightforward (and entertaining!), so I don't have any real summary or analysis to add at this point. With that in mind, I'll just memorialize today's reading with a couple of my favorite bits from Shaun's monologue:
- "Put off the old man at the very font and get right on with the nutty sparker round the back." (Perverting, as McHugh notes, the words of the Anglican baptism rite and tossing a little more dirt on HCE's grave.)
- "Stick wicks in your earshells when you hear the prompter's voice." (Urging the girls to resist temptation, but also urging them to succumb to temptation, as McHugh notes that "wick" is a slang term for penis.)
- "Keep airly hores and the worm is yores."
- "While there's men-a'war on the say there'll be loves-o'women on the do."
- "When parties get tight for each other they lose all respect together."
- "You'll pay for each bally sorraday night every billing sumday morning." (Pertinent wisdom for me, as I've just had an action-packed weekend.)
- "Mades of ashens when you flirt spoil the lad but spare his shirt!"
(433.10-435.12) With his text for the mass in hand, Shaun (for convenience's sake, I'm probably going to all him by his actual name, and not Jaun, for most of this chapter) begins what might be called his sermon or homily. For the first two pages, at least, this sermon consists primarily of instructions or admonishments for the girls to follow in their quest to lead good and virtuous lives. (One amusing and notable digression occurs when Shaun inquires about the disappearance of some biscuits: "And, by the bun, is it you goes bisbuiting His Esaus and Cos and then throws them bag in the box? Why the tin's nearly empty.") The advice is pedantic (would we expect anything less from the blustery Shaun?), and seems to flow out of Shaun's mouth with little concern for pace or order.
The sermon is straightforward (for Finnegans Wake) and its rambling length is part of the point (Shaun's trying to bludgeon as much as persuade), so I'll just point out a few of my favorite bits here:
- "Never park your brief stays in the men's convenience."
- "Where you truss be circumspicious and look before you leak, dears." (Here, Shaun urges the girls to avoid the mistake of the two young women in the park, which occasioned HCE's downfall.)
- "Give back those stolen kisses; restaure those all-cotten glooves."
- "Scenta Clauthes stiffstuffs your hose and heartsies full of temptiness."
- "For if the shorth of your skorth falls down to his knees pray how wrong will he look till he rises? Not before Gravesend is commuted."
The passage for today ends with a man named Autist Algy (whom Shaun says "reappears" on the scene at this moment). Algy seems to be keen to tempt the girls toward the proverbial flood, as he's "stated by the vice crusaders to be well known to all the dallytaunties" and will take his target to the "playguehouse," where he will slyly ask her to "be an artist's moral and pose in your nudies" before the four old men (here four "voluble old masters," Bottisilly, Titteretto, Vergognese, and Coraggio) and the dozen jurors/pub patrons ("the usual bilker's dozen of dowdycameramen"). "O the frecklessness of the giddies nouveautays!" Shem exclaims.
