"End here."

(627.4-628.16)  After noticing HCE's change, ALP knows that her time is up.  Just as he is being replaced by the sons, she is being replaced by her daughter.  "Be happy, dear ones!" she says.  "May I be wrong!  For she'll be sweet for you as I was sweet when I came down out of me mother."  ALP, the great river-mother, could have stayed in her childhood bedroom in the sky, yet she dropped down to earth for us.  "First we feel," she says.  "Then we fall."  

"And let her rain now if she likes," ALP goes on, granting her royal crown to Isabel, who will now reign.  "Gently or strongly as she likes.  Anyway let her rain for my time is come.  I done me best when I was let."  ALP has grown weary of the world and her planet of children, who she says are "becoming lothed to me."  HCE, she says, is not the regal man she once thought she was, but rather a bumpkin.  "I thought you the great in all things, in guilt and in glory," she tells him.  "You're but a puny."  Worn out from bearing her burden, she is "[l]oonely in me loneness."  She'll slip away before the children wake up.  "They'll never see," she says.  "Nor know.  Nor miss me."

As we turn to the final page of Finnegans Wake, it is time for ALP to return to her "cold mad feary father," the great sea.  She only has one leaf left from those that fell on her from the trees (the last leaf, or page, of the Wake, McHugh notes).  She'll carry that leaf to remind her of everything that we've seen pass.  Perhaps she'll see HCE, the great father, appear "under whitespread wings like he'd come from Arkangels."  If he did, she says, "I sink I'd die down over his feet, humbly dumbly, only to washup" on the shore.

"End here," says ALP in the book's final lines.  "Us then.  Finn, again!"  As she dissolves into the sea, she is given the "keys," both to her heart and to heaven, and sings a song of her (and our) travels:  "A way a lone a last a loved a long the"

And with those words, the journey has ended.  I can now say that I've read Finnegans Wake.

"How glad you'll be I waked you!"

(625.8-627.4)  And so I've reached the penultimate passage of this project.  ALP's monologue becomes clearer as the day grows brighter.  Outside, she can see "the muchrooms, come up during the night."  Dublin ("Eblanamagna") can be seen "loomening up out of the dumblynass," although it's "still sama sitta" (the same city, and, as Tindall points out, the same shit).  McHugh notes that the Liffey went completely dry for a minute or two in 1452, a fact that gives added dimension to ALP's instruction to HCE:  "If I lose my breath for a minute or two don't speak, remember!  Once it happened, so it may again."  

Looking back on her life, ALP has had her share of suffering and sadness, and she mourns the dead.  "Why I'm all these years within years in soffran, allbeleaved," she says.  "To hide away the tear, the parted.  It's thinking of all.  The brave that gave their.  The fair that wore.  All them that's gunne."  But, she says, "I'll begin again in a jiffey."  And when her life and her river begin to flow again, HCE will be rejuvenated as well:  "My!  How well you'll feel!  For ever after."

As the wind blows outside ("Wrhps, that wind as if out of norewere!"), ALP once again thinks about the past, when she met HCE as a child and they began their courtship.  "How you said how you'd give me the keys of me heart," she remembers.  "And we'd be married till delth to uspart.  And though dev do espart.  O mine!"  She senses, that HCE is changing now, though.  For a moment, she thinks it might be her that's changing ("I'm getting mixed," she says), but then it becomes clear:  "Yes, you're changing, sonhusband, and you're turning, I can feel you, for a daughterwife from the hills again."  HCE, whose position is being replaced by his sons, is undergoing another metamorphosis, and it's just in time for the Wake to conclude (and begin again).

"Ourselves, oursouls alone."

(623.3-625.8)  A quick note on the title of this post:  Throughout the Wake, Joyce makes frequent reference to (and parody of) the slogan of Sinn Féin (and the movement), which is popularly translated as "Ourselves Alone" (but perhaps is more accurately translated as just "Ourselves").  It's used in a variety of contexts, but I particularly like this one, which applies it in a way that illustrates the depth and us-against-the-world nature of the marriage of HCE and ALP:  "Ourselves, oursouls alone."

Today's reading continues in the same tone and manner as the previous two.  Thinking about what she and HCE could do today, ALP imagines that they could go to Howth Castle (where the book begins!) to see the king, or "the Old Lord."  He has been well-received by the Earwickers before, so he's likely to greet them warmly.  She tells the still-sleeping HCE that if he behaves himself and if ALP is successful in her role as a polite Prankquean, the king might "knight you an Armor elsor daub you the first cheap magyerstrape."  But she recognizes that these are "[p]lain fancies" from a brain "full of sillymottocraft."  "Aloof is anoof," she says.  "We can take or leave."

Instead, the two can go to the coast and wait for ALP's letter (now stuffed in a bottle and cast into the water) to arrive ashore.  This thought prompts her to remember her youthful days, before she met HCE, when she wrote this version of the letter and dreamed of meeting the man of her dreams (the "mains of me draims").  She wrote about these hopes in the letter, but "buried the page" when she met HCE.  Now, she is merely content as they "cohabit respectable."  She kind of gives HCE a hard time, telling him to complete the Tower of Babel that this master-builder has always said he'd complete.  "Tilltop, bigmaster!" she teases.  "Scale the summit!  You're not so giddy any more.  All your graundplotting and the little it brought!"  She's made a home on this "limpidy marge" in Chapelizod.  "Park and a pub for me," she says, summing up her life.

She then goes back to the days of their courtship.  "You will always call me Leafiest, won't you, dowling?" she remembers telling HCE, her "Wordherfhull Ohldhbhoy!"  He may come from dubious origins (she herself doesn't seem entirely sure of his past), but she tells him that "you done me fine!"  After all, he's "[t]he only man was ever known could eat the crushts of lobsters."

"I could lead you there and I still by you in bed."

(621.8-623.3)  "It is the softest morning that ever I can ever remember me," says ALP as her final monologue resumes in today's reading.  Her speech proceeds in the same relaxed, meandering tone that it began with in the previous two pages.  This is beautiful prose, and it's shaping up to be a fitting ending for the Wake (a book for which I had been thinking it might be impossible to write a good ending).

The rain for the day will not begin, ALP says, until the proper time has come.  She looks forward to breakfast ("The trout will be so fine at brookfisht.") just as she imagines how well the fish will be doing at a certain point in the river.  She has a list of things for HCE to take care of in this new day (for instance, he has to buy her a new girdle when he goes to the market).  For now, though, she's content to let him sleep beside her in bed (where she notably reaches down for a moment to grab his penis).  "One time you told you'd been burnt in ice," she remembers as she thinks about the trials HCE has endured, including a Tim Finnegan-esque fall from a ladder.  "And one time it was chemicalled after you taking a lifeness.  Maybe that's why you hold your hodd as if.  And people thinks you missed the scaffold.  Of fell design."  Despite his scars, ALP still remembers HCE as a young man, and she treasures the youth that remains in him, or at least exists in the past.  "I'll close me eyes," she says.  "So not to see.  Or see only a youth in his florizel, a boy in innocence, peeling a twig, a child beside a weenywhite steed.  The child we all love to place our hope in forever."  She chooses to focus on these good moments of HCE's life, rather than the bad, for, as she says, "All men has done something."

As she imagines taking a morning walk with her husband, ALP can see the birds wishing HCE "sweet good luck."  She believes that in the next election, HCE will be redeemed ("elicted") and that his enemies will "never reduce me."  Going back to the thought of the walk ("A gentle motion all around.  As leisure paces."), she recalls previous times of happiness from before the previous dark night/era of their lives.  "It seems so long since, ages since," she says.  "As if you had been long far away.  Afartodays, afeartonights, and me as with you in thadark."  But even as they rest in bed, she will return him to those good times, at least until the enemies come attacking again, pursuing HCE, as they did once before, like a fox in a fox hunt with "his three poach dogs" (the three soldiers) "aleashing him."  But ALP concludes today's reading by noting that HCE "came safe through" that attack, and she implies that he will do the same again today.

"I am leafy speafing."

(619.20-621.8)  I've now officially hit the home stretch in this project.  The final paragraph of Finnegans Wake begins on page 619 and stretches almost nine full pages to the book's end.  I've got a busy week coming up here, so I may not be able to meet my goal of finishing by the end of the month.  If I don't, though, I'll finish for sure on Sunday, which is November 1.  I think Joyce would be pleased with me finishing the Wake either on Halloween or All Saints' Day.

On to the text.  The final paragraph begins with light finally shining down on Dublin:  "Soft morning, city!"  Our narrator for the rest of the book is ALP, who tells us, "I am leafy speafing" (she's both Anna Livia and the River Liffey).  It is silent around the house and city.  "Not a sound, falling," she says.  "Lispn!  No wind no word.  Only a leaf, just a leaf and then leaves."

She tells HCE, who is on the bed beside her, to wake up:  "Rise up, man of the hooths, you have slept so long!  Or is it only so mesleems?  On your pondered palm.  Reclined from cape to pede."  ALP says that there's "a great poet" in HCE, but lately he has "bored me to slump."  Still, they're both "good and rested."  She gathers his clothes, which have freshly arrived from the laundry and once again urges him to wake up:  "And stand up tall!  Straight.  I want to see you looking fine for me."  She says that HCE reminds her "of a wonderdecker I once," a man who was perhaps one of her old lovers or someone who featured prominently in her dream of the previous evening (she calls back to figures featured throughout the Wake, like Wellington, "the Iren duke's").  The children are still sleeping, for there's "no school today."  The boys are "so contrairy," and take too much after HCE, it seems:  "When one of him sighs or one of him cries 'tis you all over.  No peace at all."  We learn that HCE desperately wanted a daughter:  "[W]hat you wouldn't give to have a girl!  Your wish was mewill.  And, lo, out of a sky!"  ALP says that her and HCE won't "disturb their sleeping duties," but it's time for them to journey into the day.  "Come!" she says.  "Step out of your shell!"

"erect, confident and heroic"

(617.30-619.19)  Much of the last half of ALP's letter is devoted to bringing us up to speed on what's happening in her part of Dublin and to correcting misconceptions.  A woman named Lily Kinsella has married a man named Mr. Sneakers.  She bought a bottle of medicine, which may or may not have been used to poison HCE.  "We are advised the waxy is at present in the Sweeps hospital and that he may never come out!" ALP notes.  If we look through our "leatherbox," we will one day see a postcard depicting the scene, with Lily on a sofa as HCE would "begin to jump a little bit to find out what goes on when love walks in besides the solicitous bussness by kissing and looking into a mirror."

ALP asserts that she was not treated poorly by the police when they investigated HCE's death.  The family was never "chained to a chair," and she says that "no widower whother soever followed us about with a fork on Yankskilling Day."  She would, however, like to lodge a complaint against a seargeant Laraseny that would cause his health to be "constably broken into potter's pance."  

After crediting "Adam, our former first Finnlatter" for "his beautiful crossmess parzel," which contained cakes, ALP concludes her letter on a hopeful note.  "Hence we've lived in two worlds," she says.  In one world, a version of HCE is buried under the Hill of Howth:  "He is another he what stays under the himp of holth."  In the other world, the legitimate (and perhaps new) HCE will wake:  "The herewaker of our hameframe is his real namesame who will get himself up and erect, confident and heroic when but, young as of old, for my daily comfreshenall, a wee one of woos."

ALP signs her letter "Alma Luvia, Pollabella."  In a postscript, she notes that she's "about fetted up now" and "[w]orns out."  Apparently the night in the Wake has not fully refreshed her.  I, however, am fairly well refreshed, and excited to tackle the final ten pages of the Wake beginning tomorrow.

"Kingen will commen. Allso brewbeer."

(615.11-617.29)  Consistent with what we've seen before, this version of ALP's letter can be rambling, and shifts direction many times throughout the course of today's passage.  Campbell and Robinson do a nice job of listing out the various subjects covered in the letter, so I won't try to replicate their work here.  

The letter, which is addressed to "Reverend," finds ALP at "Dirtdump" (both the dump near Phoenix Park and "Dear Dirty Dublin") and often seems to be about the Wake itself.  She says that "we have frankly enjoyed more than anything these secret workings of natures" and "was really so denighted of this lights time."  Like the night, the Wake is soon to be over:  "Yon clouds will soon disappear looking forwards at a fine day."  She remembers her time with HCE, such as when they rode "on the top of the longcar, as merrily we rolled along," and she pictures him now "looking at us yet as if to pass away in a cloud."

She warns off HCE's detractors and attackers multiple times, like when she says, "Sneakers in the grass, keep off!"  Past moments from the book are hinted at, and HCE's demise is doubly traced to the pipe-smoking Cad's attack and Buckley's shot:  "For a pipe of twist or a slug of Hibernia metal we could let out and, by jings, someone would make a carpus of somebody with the greatest of pleasure by private shootings."  Now that HCE is dead, he is invulnerable to both physical and lyrical attacks:  "Once you are balladproof you are unperceable to haily, icy and missilethroes."

Over the course of the evening, ALP explains, the sons have changed roles.  "Tomothy and Lorcan, the bucket Toolers, both are Timsons now they've changed their characticuls during their blackout."  As they ascend to their new roles in the family and world, music is prepared for HCE's "fooneral," which "will sneak pleace by creeps o'clock toosday."  It will be a grand affair:  "Kingen will commen.  Allso brewbeer."  Among the attendees will be Isabel's 28 classmates and the 12 patrons of HCE's pub ("from twentyeight to twelve," a phrase which doubles as the time the ceremonies will commence).  "Don't forget!" emphasizes ALP.  "The grand fooneral will now shortly occur.  Remember.  The remains must be removed before eaght hours shorp.  With earnestly conceived hopes.  So help us to witness to this day to hand in sleep."

"What has gone? How it ends?"

(613.8-615.10)  The reading for today is another particularly challenging one, but it's equally rewarding to try to unpack.  Tindall writes that this is a kind of transition passage, clearing the way from St. Patrick's victory in yesterday's reading to a final look at ALP's letter in the coming pages.

Day ("dayleash") is upon us now.  With this new beginning, it is time for transformations to occur.  "And let every crisscouple be so crosscomplimentary, little eggons, youlk and meelk, in a farbiger pancosmos," the narrator says.  The couples we've seen -- husbands and wives, warring brothers -- will take on a greater significance after they've eaten their breakfast, or "brarkfarsts."

Today "there is bound to be a loveleg day for mirrages in the open."  As the Wake prepares to repeat itself, we will see new marriages, just as we will see new mirages, in the open world of a new dream-within-a-dream.  New clothes are a necessity for this rearrival in a new world:  "You got to make good that breachsuit, seamer.  You going to haulm port houlm, toilermaster."  Meanwhile, old clothes -- just like old stories and gossip -- will return from the washers at the Liffey:  "Delivered as.  Caffirs and culls and onceagain overalls, the fittest surviva lives that blued, iorn and storridge can make them.  Whichus all claims.  Clean.  Whenastcleeps.  Close."

In this transition state, we're left to wonder where we are.  "What has gone?" the narrator asks.  "How it ends?"  We maintain our focus on the present, but in doing so also feel simultaneously drawn toward and repelled from the past and the future:  "It will remember itself from every sides, with all gestures, in each our word.  Today's truth, tomorrow's trend."  To cope with this jarring moment, the narrator instructs us:  "Forget, remember!"

The final paragraph of the reading is a great one.  It strikes me in one sense as being Joyce's commentary on the construction and purpose of the Wake.  The book is a "wholemole millwheeling vicociclometer, a tetradomational gazebocroticon."  It is known to every "Matty Marky, Lukey or John-a-Donk" and follows "a clappercoupling smeltingworks exprogressive process."  To "the farmer, his son and their homely codes" (the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost), this process is "known as eggburst, eggblend, eggburial, and hatch-as-hatch can" (Vico's four ages represented in the breakfast ritual).  Like a digestive system, Joyce takes "separated elements of precedent decomposition for the verypetpurpose of subsequent recombination."  In doing so, he details the "sameold gamebold adomic structure of our Finnius the old One" (HCE and his various forms) and prepares it so that it's ready for our breakfast nourishment, "piping hot, as sure as herself pits hen to paper and there's scribings scrawled on eggs."  Pretty great, huh?

"And here are the details."

(611.3-613.7)  I agree with Tindall when he notes that today's passage is one of the more obscure parts of the Wake.  The debate between Balkelly/Bilkilly/Belkelly/Balkally (whatever you want to call him) and Patrick is a nuanced one exploring the nature of human perception and knowledge.  I'll keep my discussion of it brief, as the daily nature of the blog doesn't give me much time to ponder the nuances here (i.e., I need a lot of time to think about this part).

Berkeley (let's call him that today, since McHugh notes that a significant portion of this passage is based upon the philosopher's Theory of Vision) represents the ancient Irish druid tradition (he's the "archdruid of islish chinchinjoss").  To put it in a crude summary, his theory is that fallen humanity can only see an object by the one of the seven "gradationes of solar light" that the object is unable to absorb.  This seems inadequate, to say the least, since we identify things (in particular, their colors) by what they are not.  The enlightened being, the "seer in seventh degree of wisdom," however, is knowledgeable of the "true inwardness of reality" and can see things as they truly are, particularly the six colors/"gloria of light" that they actually retain.  Like the reader, for whom much of this is obscure, Patrick is not able to "catch all that preachybook."  By means of explanation, Berkeley uses the king, who is standing nearby, as an example.  Berkeley points to six features of the king's appearance that Patrick perceives, respectively, as the colors red, orange, yellow, blue, indigo, and violet.  Each of these, Berkeley explains, retains the color green.  Berkeley, being the enlightened Irish native, sees that color green in everything.

When it's Patrick's turn to respond, his company of monks is unsure of who will win the debate, given the "possible viriditude" of Berkeley's argument and the "probable eruberuption" of Patrick's.  His argument is less intricate.  He wipes his nose with a handkerchief and (according to my understanding) says that we know an object simply by what it is, "the sound sense sympolin a weedwayedwold of the firethere the sun in his halo cast.  Onmen."  The sun, like God's light, shines upon everything and illuminates it as it is, and we know it as such.

Patrick's argument wins the day, as the helots shout, "Good safe firelamp!" (both "God save Ireland!" and "the good, safe sun!").   

"we are waiting"

(609.9-611.2)  Also witnessing the journey with us has been the four old men's ass, which will be roaming about the city.  All will occupy Wynn's Hotel, which will open shortly, when the sun has risen and given "to every seeable a hue and to every hearable a cry and to each spectacle his spot and to each happening her houram."  In the mean time, we are waiting for "Hymn."

Most of the remainder of today's reading consists of a dialogue between two figures, Muta and Juva (who link back to Mutt and Jute from near the Wake's beginning).  These two see smoke rising in the distance, smoke that both indicates the awakening at HCE's home and the arrival of another outsider, St. Patrick (here both "the Chrystanthemlander" and "the Eurasian Generalissimo").  Patrick stands in opposition to Bulkily (the Buckley to Patrick's Russian General), who is "fundementially theosophagusted over the whorse proceedings."  Also present is the resurrected king (who comes from "undernearth the memorialorum").  A contest between St. Patrick and Bulkily is about to begin, and the king is betting on both sides:  "He has help his crewn on the burkely buy but he has holf his crown on the Eurasian Generalissimo," Juva says.

As Tindall notes, Muta and Juva reach an understanding through their dialogue (as opposed to Mutt and Jute, who are unable to communicate with each other).  Muta suggests that the impending contest illustrates that

when we shall have acquired unification we shall pass on to diversity and when we shall have passed on to diversity we shall have acquired the instinct of combat and when we shall have acquired the instinct of combat we shall pass back to the spirit of appeasement.

Juva agrees, adding, "By the light of the bright reason which daysends to us from the high."  What Muta argues is that when we are unified, we'll find differences between ourselves, which will cause us to battle each other, but in battling, we will eventually reach peace.  This is the constant dialectic between both the brothers throughout the Wake and throughout history:  peace leads to war, which leads back to peace.  By means of emphasizing this idea, the peaceful end of this dialogue is jarred with a single-word paragraph:  "Shoot."

The reading ends with a description of another horse race.  As the racing happens, the narrator tells us that "Paddrock and bookley chat."  The substance of that debate will appear in tomorrow's passage.

"Into the wikeawades warld from sleep we are passing."

(607.17-609.8)  And, I'm back.  After that brief absence, I am ready for the home stretch and renewed in my determination (which I mentioned last week) to finish Finnegans Wake by the end of the month.

We pick up with the "lovesoftfun" of the wake in which the new generation celebrates the passing of the old.  As expected, the revelers have gotten a bit drunk and end up stumbling over one another.  "A polog, my engl!" offers one reveler, who apologizes to his angel for his actions.  "Excutes.  Om still so sovvy."

Meanwhile, the day is drawing nearer, and the "regn of durknass" is "snowly receassing."  The sun -- "Solsking the First" -- will soon "processingly show up above Tumplen Bar" and will be cheered by the new HCE, "Boergemester 'Dyk' ffogg of Isoles."

The narrator goes on to tell us that what we've been reading in "this vague of visibilities" has been a story of "just the draeper, the two drawpers assisters and the three droopers assessors confraternitisers."  Obviously, this is HCE, the two young women who dropped their drawers in the park, and the three soldiers, or as the narrator puts it again, "Uncle Arth, your two cozes from Niece and (kunject a bit now!) our own familiars, Billyhealy, Ballyhooly and Bullyhowley."

It seems that ALP is awake, and that the sound of her voice gladdens the sleeping HCE ("the cocklyhearted dreamerish") as she makes the morning tea.  We've reached the point where "the week of wakes is out and over" and a weak wick will turn into a fierce flame as "the Phoenican wakes."  As we pass into the "wikeawades warld" from sleep, the narrator calls, "Come, hours, be ours!"  It's not yet time to wake, though.  "But still," says the narrator.  "Ah diar, ah diar!  And stay."

The conclusion of today's reading looks back upon the book, which was "allso agreenable."  We toured "the no placelike no timelike absolent" and got everyone all mixed up, "like so many unprobables in their poor suit of the improssable."  On this journey, the narrator notes, we were joined by the four old men/gospel authors, "Matamarulukajoni."

"lovesoftfun at Finnegan's Wake"

(605.4-607.16)  It's not an exaggeration to say that a book could be written about either of the two paragraphs in today's reading.  They're loaded, plain and simple.  My secondary sources do fairly well in breaking down these complex passages, so, for today, I'll just try to do a brief synopsis to keep these pages fresh in my mind when I return to them.

To put it most simply, the first paragraph tells the story of Saint Kevin, an Irish monk who contemplates "the primal sacrament of baptism or the regeneration of all man by affusion of water" from a bathtub inside a "honeybeehivehut" on an island in a lake.  This basic narrative can be explored through any number of depths, however.  Within this single paragraph, McHugh notes that Joyce sets forth and explores the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the celestial hierarchy (looking into the levels of religious and transcendent being), the liturgical colors and canonical hours (looking into the daily and seasonal cycles of human beings), and the gifts of the Holy Spirit and sacraments (looking into the way that human beings align themselves with the eternal).  Also contained in this paragraph are the practices of monks and the official path to canonized sainthood.  At the moment, it's tough for me to think about anything to say about this paragraph in this space, except to note that this is Joyce at his absolute best.

The second paragraph in the reading takes a step back from the direct focus on Kevin and looks at him in relation to his father and at the family unit in general.  HCE, as the original form of Kevin, was the "first exploder to make his ablations in these parks" and "was indeed that lucky mortal which the monster trial showed on its first day out."  Together, HCE and ALP formed the "fairypair" that formed Kevin.  The motto of this "MacCowell family" (the family of Finn MacCool) is, "Great sinner, good sonner."  Somehow, the father-son relationship becomes a great sort of cuckoo clock, in which the Biblical brothers Jacob and Esau appear at the quarter hours and lead into "the apostles at every hours of changeover."  And this hourly changeover serves as a signal for the father ("old Champelysied") to move on/pass away (or, "seek the shades of his retirement") and for the new generation ("young Chappielassies") to joyously take the old generation's place ("to tear a round and tease their partners lovesoftfun at Finnegan's Wake"). 

"Oyes! Oyess! Oyesesyeses!"

(603.34-605.3)  I've read a shorter passage today (really, just over a page).  This is mostly to try and stop at the end of a paragraph (and avoid ending in mid-paragraph), but it also serves nicely to set up what looks to be an important (and slightly longer) reading tomorrow.  The readings have gone slightly over the past few days (or at least it seems so), so I'm still good to go on my daily pace.  (Given my frequent starts and stops through most of this project, you'll forgive me for mentioning now that I've posted 67 days in a row, a fact in which I take a slight bit of pride.  Don't worry, though:  I'm in the midst of a couple of busy weeks, so I'll inevitably miss a day or two soon.  Still, I'm determined to finish the Wake by the end of the month.  So close . . . .)

"But what does Coemghem, the fostard?" the narrator once again asks on our behalf.  The question wasn't completely answered when it was first asked in yesterday's reading (are any questions in the Wake ever answered?), so a second shot is taken here.  We first look to a depiction of Kevin in a stained glass window (a "novened iconostase of his blueygreyned vitroils"), which is just barely being lit by the morning sun's first rays.  Kevin comes from the "vinebranch of Heremonheber," which, as McHugh explains, means he's a descendant of the legendary progenitors of the Irish race (Heremon and Heber).  His homeland is "leaved invert and fructed proper," connecting him (as McHugh notes) to the ancient crest of the Finnegan family.  We must remember that it's still morning, though, and "the cublic hatches endnot open yet for hourly rincers' mess," which means that it's not yet time for early morning mass, for the pub to be open, and for Kevin to wake.  The "[b]esoakers loiter on" (the drunks wait for their drink) and the night traffic has not given way to the early morning "milk train" and commuter transportation.

We are jolted by an ecstatic calling to order:  "Oyes!  Oyeses!  Oyesesyeses!"  The "primace of the Gaulls, protonotorious, I yam as I yam" (yes, McHugh agrees with me that is a Popeye reference in the Wake) is about to give "a Gael warning."  We are to learn about "the miracles, death and life" of Kevin, a servant and "filial fearer" of God, the Lord Creator.  And it looks like that lesson will truly appear in tomorrow's reading.

"may he live for river!"

(601.30-603.33)  Having sung their song, the 29 girls now call for Kevin/Shaun to come forth:  "Ascend out of your bed, cavern of a trunk, and shrine!"  Kate is in the kitchen cooking breakfast, and it is time for Kevin to found his own country, "Newer Aland" (a new New Z-land).  "Be smark," the girls instruct Kevin, who has "the curling, perfect-portioned, flowerfleckled, shapley highhued, delicate features swaying."

Now that we know that Kevin is the one to come, the narrator asks a pertinent question on our behalf:  "What does Coemghen?"  Kevin/Coemghen has been viewed as an upright man, a "woodtoogooder," and the narrator wonders, "Is his moraltack still his best of weapons?"  He is a young version of HCE, so it is natural that "[h]is face is the face of a son."  

These brief descriptions of Kevin are cut off somewhat abruptly by the arrival of the four old men's ass -- here the "ass of the O'Dwyer of Greyglens" -- which gives information to "an indepondant reporter, 'Mike' Portlund" of "the Durban Gazette."  Portlund records what the ass says and sets it forth here in the form of brief headlines that detail the events surrounding HCE's wake.  "Deemsday," the reporter writes.  "Bosse of Upper and Lower Byggotstrade, Ciwareke, may he live for river!  The Games funeral at Valleytemple."  Pub History is uncovered at the wake, which devolves into outrage.  

Amid the mob at the funeral is Kevin, "Mr Hurr Hansen," who is most concerned at the moment with the "merryfoule of maidens happynghome from the dance."  The ladies seem taken with "Shoon the Puzt" (Shaun the Post, or Kevin) and call to him, saying, "Bring us this days our maily bag!"  Others seem to offer him a warning, though, and he is given the tragic example of Parnell, whose extramarital affair helped in part to cause his downfall.  Parnell's fall is also a form of HCE's fall.  "Haves you the time," Kevin is asked, recalling the troubling question the Cad asked HCE.  "Heard you the crime, senny boy?"  Kevin must beware the "[h]yacinssies with heliotrollops," who are "[n]ot once fullvixen freakings and but dubbledecoys."

"He. Only he. Ittle he."

(599.25-601.29)  Today's passage opens up with a one-word sentence:  "Where."  It proceeds to situate us under clouds ("Cumulonublocirrhonimbant") in an area of newly-grown "poplarest wood" that's "eminently adapted for the requirements of pacnincstriken humanity."  It's a place where we're reminded that "Father Times and Mother Spacies boil their kettle with their crutch."

We're brought to "the pool of Innalavia," (the home waters of ALP).  This "river of lives" brings about "the regenerations of the incarnations of the emanations of the apprentations of Funn and Nin," our common father and mother.  Here, "an alomdree begins to green," and "a slab slobs."  In other words, the new father of nations is preparing to step forth while the old one (HCE) sleeps.  (After all, we learn that we're "whereinn once we lave 'tis alve and vale," or HCE's pub, the Inn where we live until we say, "Hail and Farewell!")  On the opposite banks of the river, we see "this shame rock" and "that whispy planter," the stone and tree that are always appearing and always opposed, like Shaun and Shem.  Under the water of "that greyt lack" (the lake is "Erie," which is especially cool for me, since Lake Erie is the Great Lake that forms the northern border of my home state of Ohio), we can see a new city beginning to seep forth.

Along the "samphire coast" the 29 girls, "the daughters of the cliffs," begin to sing a song about the one whose arrival is imminent.  He is the "dweam of dose innocent dirly dirls":  "Keavn!  Keavn!"  So, as it's been hinted at in the previous pages, the one coming to replace HCE is his son, Shaun/Kevin.  The girls' song grows louder as they take the form of churches throughout Dublin whose bells clang in honor of Kevin, making a holy sound:  "Prayfulness!  Prayfulness!"

"Ere we are!"

(597.24-599.24)  A beam of light (a "shaft of shivery in the act") appears at the beginning of today's reading, ready to light the new day for HCE, the "sleeper awakening."  The day finds humanity refreshed ("Humid nature is feeling itself freely at ease with the all fresco.") and newly enlightened ("You have eaden fruit.").  As "day, slow day" arrives, the narrator bids yesterday farewell and welcomes the morning.

"There is something supernoctural about whatever you called him it," the narrator says, and we learn that the HCE of today may not necessarily be the HCE of yesterday:  "This-utter followis that odder fellow.  Himkim kimkim."  (As my secondary sources explain, Shaun, in one sense, is this new HCE that is rising as the young generation replaces the old at the end of the cycle.)  The hours of the era of "Grossguy and Littlelady," or HCE and ALP, are passing away.  

The new generation will follow the "pfath they pfunded," and at the end of today's reading the narrator explains in clearer (for the Wake), if overly formal, language that this is how things go in the cycle of humanity, and although "solid and fluid" (the permanent forms of the archetypal family) have "to a great extent persisted," we have passed through Vico's stages.  

At least one of the narrator's listeners is unimpressed, though.  "Gam on, Gearge!" the bumpkin says.  "Nomomorphemy for me!"  He thinks the narrator is just suffering from some indigestion (perhaps intellectual constipation), and reminds us all that "[t]here's a tavarn in the tarn" (taking us back, appropriately, to HCE's pub).

"Conk a dook he'll doo."

(595.30-597.23)  It's time for HCE to wake ("Conk a dook he'll doo," the rooster says), but he's still asleep.  "So let him slap, the sap!" taunts the rooster, which is here also called "the friarbird."  "Till they take down his shatter from his shap."

A number of names are given for HCE, the "child, a natural child."  Here's some of the ones I particularly like:

• "behold, he returns"
• "fincarnate"
• "sire of leery subs of dub"
• "without links, without impediments, with gygantogyres, with freeflawforms"
• "sure, straight, slim, sturdy, serene, synthetical, swift"

Like HCE, we've also been dozing as we read Joyce's dream book:  "You mean to see we have been hadding a sound night's sleep?  You may so."  But the book, like the sleeping HCE, is "just about to rolywholyover" (when the final sentence of the book leads directly into its opening sentence).  There are two sides to everything, the narrator says.  These include "the yest and the ist" (the west and the east, yesterday and today), "the wright side and the wronged side," and "feeling aslip and wauking up."  We all embrace these dichotomies, and everyone, from HCE to us, has to "doze."

Today's passage, which is still very close to the beginning of the chapter, seems to be setting things up.  Perhaps we'll begin to see what exactly is being set up when we tackle tomorrow's reading.

"A hand from the cloud emerges, holding a chart expanded."

(593.1-595.29)  Book IV begins with a bang (or, maybe more appropriately, an invocation:  "Sandhyas!  Sandhyas!  Sandhyas!").  It makes sense that, as the closing chapter of the Wake, this one will mirror the opening chapter and provide a sort of general postscript to go with the general introduction of the book's opening.  That means that we may be in for some densely packed pages.  And densely-packed could be a way to describe these first few pages.

A new day is dawning, and HCE is alerting everyone with the news:  "Calling all downs to dayne.  Array!  Surrection!  Eireweeker to the wohld bludyn world.  O rally, O rally, O rally!"  The light comes to all from "the reneweller of the sky" to illuminate the continuation of the human cycle of birth and death.  As the narrator explains, "Kilt by kelt shell kithagain with kinagain."  References to soap and washing emphasize that the dirty and old is being remade into the fresh and new.

We soon go on a quick tour of the landscape to see those places that will be renewed by the light.  "We may plesently heal Geoglyphy's twentynine ways to say goodbett an wassing seoosoon liv," the narrator says.  We get a long list of things that we'll find throughout the new day, many of which McHugh notes double as Irish counties (for example, "for limericks, for waterfowls, for wagsfools, for louts, for cold airs, for late trams").  And at the conclusion of today's reading, we get a reminder that while HCE and ALP rest, "a successive generation has been in the deep deep deeps of Deepereras," ready to unseat them.