(237.10-239.15) In discussing the single long paragraph that makes up today's reading, Tindall writes in his Reader's Guide, "Nothing much happens in the interlude of several pages that follows 'And they said to him' (237.10). What the girls say to Shaun (238-39) is mostly about 'drawpairs' or drawers." This is true to some extent. Nothing here really advances the narrative. It's simply the Floras continuing to celebrate Chuff/Shaun. And, yes, there is more talk about undergarments. But I'm going to disagree with Tindall on this one. A lot is happening in this paragraph, and I think this masterful passage presents a key to understanding a significant portion of the Wake.
On the surface level, this is the Floras expanding upon their admiration for Chuff. On a deeper level, it's clear that the Floras are seeking some kind of enlightenment or knowledge from him. He is the "pageantmaster, deliverer of softmissives" -- teacher, judge, and postman -- who travels "round the world in forty mails" to gain ultimate experience "sightseeing and soundhearing and smellsniffing and tastytasting and tenderumstouching." The Floras ask him to "send us, your adorables, thou overblaseed, a wise and letters play of all you can ceive . . . from your holy post now you has ascertained ceremonially our names." They punctuate their request with a summary of Chuff's innocence and goodness:
Unclean you are not. Outcaste thou are not. Leperstower, the karman's loki, has not blanched at our pollution and your intercourse at ninety legsplits does not defile. Untouchable is not the scarecrown is on you. You are pure. You are pure. You are in your puerity.
But what kind of enlightenment or knowledge do the Floras seek from Chuff? The answer seems to be varied. References (identified by McHugh, as are the other references I'll discuss here) to the Buddha in this paragraph indicate that they seek a spiritual enlightenment ("Return, sainted youngling, and walk once more among us!"). References to the Indian caste system indicate that they seek social advancement ("Our breed and better class is in brood and bitter pass."). Most prominently, though (and this is where the panties come in), it seems these young women seek sexual maturity ("so pleasekindly communicake with the original sinse we are only yearning as yet how to burgeon.").
And it is in this exploration of the Floras' desire to fully unlock their burgeoning sexuality that we get a perspective that has mostly been missing up to this point in the Wake. We've heard a lot about the two young women and three soldiers in the park (in today's passage, "How their duel makes their triel!" along with references to Wellington and Napoleon that go back to the book's first chapter), but until now those two young women have served more as foils to HCE than as fully realized actors in the Wake's play. Today's passage describes, in Wakeian terms, how these girls become women, or how Eve became Eve. In language that perverts Mary's fiat, "Behold the handmaiden of the Lord," the Floras say, "Behose our handmades for the lured!" Rather than becoming instruments of salvation, they're turning into lures toward the fall. At the present, they are immature amateurs, but "yet well come that day we shall ope to be ores." In one sense, they welcome the day that their potential shall be unearthed and they will be revealed to be the precious metals that they are. In another sense, there will come the day that they will hope (or, if we're being more crass, "open up") to be whores. "No more hoaxites!" they say, indicating their desire to be undeceived, but also foreshadowing the effects of their new knowledge: Hamlet's no more marraige ("Hochzeit" is German for "marriage").
So yeah, if you can't tell, I find this passage totally fascinating. In one sense, it can be argued that it's a throwaway bit of transition. But on closer inspection, it contributes valuable and indispensable depth to Joyce's book.
(235.6-237.9) Today's passage begins with the Floras' orison rising to the sky. They then present a vision of an idyllic, suburban future in which "we and I" -- seemingly both one and all of the Floras -- will live the good life with Chuff. I get the impression that this is Joyce parodying the sort of middle class dream of the time (one which was crushed by his father's financial troubles) and also mocking some literary style with which I'm not familiar. There's also some mocking of T.S. Eliot here: the Chuff in this vision is in the same line of work as Eliot as "a bank midland mansioner," among other things, and both "The Waste Land" ("Xanthos! Xanthos! Xanthos!") and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" ("wibfrufrocksfull of fun!") are referenced in the paragraph.
On the literal level, the vision has the couple settling down in an upper-class suburb of Dublin on a lot teeming with trees of all varieties. Their house is outfitted luxuriously "to make Envyeyes mouth water and wonder when they binocular us from their embrassured windows in our garden rare." They have servants, a car, a chauffeur, a dog, and a cat. They welcome distinguished guests like Lady Marmela Shortbred and Prince Le Monade and sing songs. (The songs here are parodies of popular tunes, such as the previously-alluded to "So come on, ye wealthy gentrymen wibfrufrocksfull of fun!" for "God rest ye merry, gentlemen, let nothing you dismay.") In short, they've got it made.
The narrator says that since the days of "Roamaloose and Rehmoose" (Romulus and Remus, again), there's been continuous dancing (reminiscent of the dance of the Floras around Chuff). While ostensible progress has been made, the dancing has continued (and will continue), with the "danceadeils and cancanzanies . . . as lithe and limbfree limber as when momie mummed at ma."
The reading concludes today with a brief passage that can best be described as "The Flower Dance of the Floras." The young women are compared to flowers, and they look toward Chuff as the life-sustaining sun. Their reaction to Chuff is thus the complete opposite from their reaction to Glugg, and it's significant that unlike Glugg, who is unable to see the colors of the Floras, Chuff "can eyespy through them, to their selfcolours."
(233.11-235.5) Standing before Izod once again, Glugg lets "punplays pass to ernest" and tries to answer the riddle three more times. As before, he gives three incorrect answers: "jaoneofergs" (which McHugh roughly translates as "yellow anger"), "mayjaunties" (which McHugh roughly translates as "May jaundice"), and "per causes nunsibellies" (which McHugh roughly translates as "by chance nuns' bellies," which Joyce apparently believed were yellow). McHugh notes that the first three answers proposed by Glugg focus on the color red, while these three focus on the color yellow. (Does that mean the next three will focus on the color blue?) Gluggs second round of incorrect responses once again draws the ire of the Floras, who yell, "Asky, asky asky! Gau on! Micaco! Get!"
Glugg can understand English, so "he did a get . . . and slink his hook away." Once again, he "was bedizzled and debuzzled." Chuff, on the other hand, is victorious. Of all of Ireland's heroes, the narrator says, Chuff was "the whitemost, the goldenest!" The Floras shower him with love and adoration, offering him "neuchoristic congressulations, quite purringly excited" and "allauding to him by all the licknames in the litany with the terms in which no little dulsy nayer ever thinks about implying except to her future's year."
The Floras now begin to sing "Hymnumber twentynine" (representing the 28 young women, plus Izod). They chant their "madiens' prayer" as they're "prostitating their selfs eachwise and combinedly" (they are thus maidens and Arabic holy men ("mahdi") who prostitute and prostrate themselves to Chuff -- this is Joyce in his classic sacrilegious mode). Today's passage ends with the Floras concluding their hymn with a parody of the familiar Father/Son/Holy Ghost blessing: "For the sake of the farbung [dye] and of the scent and of the holiodrops [heliotrope]. Amems."
(231.9-233.10) After Glugg's wistful poem, we see him nurturing new delusions of grandeur (for instance, he sees himself as "feastking of shellies by googling Lovvey") as he was struck with a painful toothache, which felt like one of his wisdom teeth "had been zawhen intwo." His face convulsed in pain, and he swore up and down. "Though he shall live for millions of years a life of billions of years," the narrator says, "from their roseaced glows to their violast lustres, he shall not forget that pucking Pugases."
But the narrator says that even after all of this -- his exile and his pain -- Gulgg soon "rehad himself." This renewal came not through prayer or "contrite attrition," but through "esercizism" (both exorcism and asceticism). The somewhat lengthy paragraph beginning near the bottom of page 231 and ending near the bottom of page 232 details how Glugg "resumed his soul." In short, he went into further convulsions because of his pain, which burned like hellfire. This pain was on display for all to see: "Lookery looks, how he's knots in his entrails! Mookery mooks, it's a grippe of his gripes. Seekeryseeks, why his biting he's head off?" (Note the Mookse and Gripes reference in that quotation.)
Suddenly, "The worst is over." Just as he was preparing for "the major operation," he receives (here the narrative switches back to the present tense) a message from Izod via radio waves ("herzian waves"). The message says, "Isle wail for yews, O doherlynt!" This once again compares Glugg/Shem to a tree (the yew) while Izod says, "I wail for you, oh darling!" or "I'll wait for you, oh darling!" or "I wail for you, oh Dublin!" He also receives a telegram from her, which says that she has ended her affair with Chuff and that Glugg should stop sobbing and come back to her.
With this, Glugg makes haste to return and finds himself once again before the Floras. The narrator says that if he hadn't gotten a toothache, he would have told them a tall tale of how he won fame on the continent. The Floras -- Angelinas, here -- are told to hide their colors (their panties) from Glugg because a man ought not to lodge his eyes there. With a sing-song rhythm, an instruction is given to the Floras ordering them to confuse Glugg ("Find the frenge for frocks and translace it into shocks of such as touch with show and show."). Tomorrow, we will find out if Glugg is able to redeem himself from his previous disaster.
(229.17-231.8) After reciting the Ulysses-like chapters Glugg planned to write after his exile, the narrator tells how Glugg decided that he would "bare to the untired world" (both the world that isn't tired and the entire world) the story of HCE ("wholefallows, his guffer") and ALP ("her Lettyshape, his gummer"). This story -- the Finnegans Wake that would follow Glugg's Ulysses -- would be written on Glugg's "fleshskin" with his "quillbone," recalling the Wake-like tale Shem wrote on his own skin using ink made from his own waste. This "most moraculous jeeremyhead sindbook for all the peoples" would be "thoroughly enjoyed by many so meny on block," perhaps envisioning the success that Joyce wished for his Wake. The story written by Glugg would tell of his own lost innocence; his suffering at the hands of his family, the angels, and the devils; his exile from his home (relayed in Wakeian Humpty Dumpty language: "why they provencials drollo eggspilled him out of his homety dometry narrowedknee domum"); his sufferings; and finally his tryst in paradise after torments of a thousand years.
With his work completed, Glugg would sit through several centuries, during which time he would receive payment in music and personal company. Glugg would let Izod have all the music, while he would have "recourse of course to poetry." He wouldn't be satisfied, though. Instead, he would have "tears for his coronaichon, such as engines weep." With his reverie concluded, Glugg asks the critical question: "Was liffe worth leaving?" This asks both whether the Liffey (his homeland) is worth leaving, as well as whether life is worth living (and, presumably, whether life is also worth leaving). Glugg's answer? "Nej!" (McHugh notes that this is Danish for "No!")
Glugg then briefly looks back over his own life and his family's history. He concludes his thoughts on the family's downfall by remarking, "Ones propsperups treed, now stohong baroque," in one sense echoing the tree/stone dichotomy by saying, "Once prosperous tree, now stone broke." He then asks his own riddle: "where was a hovel not a havel?" No one answers, so he says, "while itch ish shome." So, a hovel is not a hovel (or a "havel," which McHugh notes is a term of reproach) when it is home. This echoes the riddle young Shem asked his playmates in chapter seven: "When is a man not a man? When he is a Sham."
The passage ends with a four-line poem that looks forlornly on Glugg's "dear olt tumtum home." Does this mean Glugg's going to return to his tormentors? Maybe we'll see tomorrow . . .
(227.19-229.16) Maybe I spoke too soon about finding my groove for this chapter. Today's reading was another tough one. But, as I've learned to do, I persisted in working my way through and made it to a point where I was able to find enjoyment and (at least some) sense in the passage.
The narration shifts away from yesterday's focus on the Floras and moves back to Glugg. (Interestingly, it also shifts from the present tense to the past tense.) After failing to solve the riddle, Glugg was filled with woe and rage, and he "displaid all the oathword science of his visible disgrace" (a sort of anti-sacrament, for a sacrament is defined as an outward sign of inward grace). No gesture made by Izod or the Floras revealed anything to Glugg. Reeling, he turns to the seven sacraments of the Catholic church. This is one point that I missed on my first reading and found much clearer after consulting my three secondary sources. The paragraph beginning on page 227 and ending on 228 shows Shem engaging in the seven sacraments, but also turning them on their heads. For instance, for the sacrament of communion he "wrestled a hurry-come-union with the Gillie Beg," and for the sacrament of marriage he "had a belting bout, chaste to chaste, with McAdoo about nothing."
The disappointment before his peers and his turning toward -- and upturning of -- religion parallel Joyce's own life. This biographical turn is reinforced when we see that Glugg swore off his homeland and faith ("Macnoon maggoty mag! Cross of a coppersmith bishop!"). He also swore to a resolution, forming a plan for what he would do during his exile. First, he would "split" for the European continent. Glugg would catch a boat and follow "the bruce, the coriolano and the ignacio." The secondary sources explain how this is Glugg making use of the tools of Joyce's literary alter ego, Stephen Dedalus: silence (Robert Bruce hid in silence), exile (Coriolanus became an exile), and cunning (St. Ignatius of Loyola and the Jesuit order he founded are known for their intelligence). Silence, exile, and cunning are further explored a few lines later: "Mum's for's maxim, ban's for's book and Dodgesome Dora for hedgehung sheolmastress. And Unkel Silanse coach in diligence. Disconnection of the succeeding."
Now "Gelchasser no more!" (girl chaser no more), Glugg would further follow Joyce's path by pursuing his vocation as a writer after his exile while still keeping his attention turned toward his homeland. He would fire off "his farced epistol to the hibruws," in which he would proclaim free love and tea leaves for everybody, all the tinned salmon in the world, and harm and aches -- and/or ham and eggs -- until further orders. In this role, Gulgg would became "General Jinglesome."
But his woe and rage would not be fully abated. He wanted to inform the "old sniggering publicking press and its nation of sheepcopers" about the "whole plighty troth" between ALP ("the lalage of lyonesses") and HCE ("her knave arrant"). And at the end of today's reading, we learn that Glugg planned to pen chapters recalling those of Ulysses: for instance, "Had Days" (referencing the Hades chapter of Ulysses) and "A Wondering Wreck" (referencing the Wandering Rocks chapter).
(225.15-227.18) Well, it's possible I am getting the hang of this chapter, because today's reading did, in fact, go more smoothly than the past few days' passages. And what an entertaining and masterful passage it is.
We begin with a lamenting of Glugg's sorry state. "What she meaned he could not can," the narrator says. Switching to the present tense, the narrator goes on to suggest that things would turn out better for Glugg if only he would talk instead of gawk and stop worrying so much (recalling the sins of HCE, the nervous, stuttering, voyeuristic father). Glugg finally gives three guesses -- "monbreamstone," "Hellfeuersteyn," and "Van Diemen's coral pearl" -- but none of them are the correct answer to the riddle. Unfortunately for Glugg, "He has lost."
The Floras celebrate Glugg's defeat by sending him away and forming a ring around Chuff. Izod is in tears, though, for "[s]he's promised he'd eye her." She "sits a glooming so gleaming in the gloaming," and the narrator asks us to "[b]e good enough to symperise." Izod would go anywhere to join Glugg. "If it's to nowhere she's going to too," the narrator adds. But, this being the Wake, Izod won't stay in tears forever, for "we know how Day the Dyer works." Once this day has passed, "among the shades that Eve's now wearing she'll meet anew fiancy, tryst and trow." Chuff will replace Glugg as the object of Izod's fancy, and become her fiancé.
As Izod sits weeping, the Floras dance around Chuff. This begins a fascinating passage. The Floras are identified by color in words that represent the seven colors of the rainbow and spell out "R-A-Y-N-B-O-W." They are now "all but merely a schoolgirl," but as they perform their dance through oodles of years and endless eons, we see the seven types of women they eventually become. Some are rich, some are widowed, and some are actresses. With this momentary scene of foreshadowing completed, we go back in time to the present as they are identified by name in a pattern that spells "rainbow" in reverse: "And these ways wend they. And those ways went they. Winnie, Olive and Beatrice, Nelly and Ida, Amy and Rue." "Here they come back, all the gay pack, for they are the florals," the narrator explains. One imagines the Floras dancing around Chuff in one direction, moving time forward, then dancing in the other direction -- coming back -- moving time back to the present.
