New summary of FW
Jorn Barger
digests all my paraphrases with only a very few quotes.
Constructive comments are welcome. The goal is to make FW as accessible
as possible, online. (This page will soon be posted at:
<URL:http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/shortwake.html>.)
The online shorter Finnegans Wake (synoptic table of contents)
Jorn Barger Oct 1999
This annotated, shortened edition of Finnegans Wake is broken up
over four webpages of about 120k each:
Synoptic table of contents
Part one, FW I.1 thru I.4
Part two, FW I.5 thru I.8
Part three, FW II.1 thru II.4
Part four, FW III.1 thru IV
Synopsis of the full work:
# chapter one (I.1)
riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of
shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius
vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and
Environs.
The first chapter reviews the main themes. HCE is
Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, husband to Anna Livia
Plurabelle or ALP (the Liffey river). The stages of HCE's
lifecycle: peace, intoxication, sexual slip, overthrow, exile,
inspiration, return.
HCE suffers a fall that transforms him into the landscape
upon which Dublin is built. (Here we get the first
hundred-letter thunderclap.) At his peak he's a builder of
cities, which is strangely equated with masturbation. Like
Finnegan in the song "Finnegan's Wake" he falls from his
building while drunk. The funeral from the song is
re-enacted as well. "Tee the tootal of the fluid hang the
twoddle of the fuddled, O!"
HCE's corpse becomes a meal spread for the mourners...
but he vanishes like a conman before they can eat him, like
Jesus failing to return. "Whase on the joint of a desh?
Finfoefom the Fush. Whase be his baken head? A loaf of
Singpantry's Kennedy bread."
The first of three vignettes that dominate the chapter:
# The Museyroom: A museum commemorates HCE's ambush
by two pissing girls (the maggies) and three spying
soldiers. The older ALP (Kate) gives a guided tour of this
Wellington Monument in Phoenix Park, accompanied by a
flickering silent film, full of Freudian suggestiveness,
layered onto the battle of Waterloo. "This is the Willingdone
on his same white harse, the Cokenhape."
Acknowledging the dream as sexually harrowing, we're
offered relief in a view of ALP as a hen scratching up
battle-relics from a midden heap after the fall/Flood.
And even if Humpty shell fall frumpty times as
awkward again in the beardsboosoloom of all our
grand remonstrancers there'll be iggs for the
brekkers come to mournhim, sunny side up with
care.... But all they are all there scraping along to
sneeze out a likelihood that will solve and salve
life's robulous rebus, hopping round his middle like
kippers on a griddle, O...
We shift to a historical view of HCE and ALP with their
daughter Issy, and their warring sons Shem and Shaun.
"1132 A.D. Men like to ants or emmets wondern upon a
groot hwide Whallfisk which lay in a Runnel. Blubby wares
upat Ublanium." The mysterious 'Silent' phase in this
history is further discussed. A lovely sentence compares
older and newer penal codes, and a literary parody
contrasts wars with wildflowers and courtship.
# Mutt and Jute: A longer, brilliant prehistorical vignette,
an explorer encountering an indigene. "Let us swop hats and
excheck a few strong verbs weak oach eather yapyazzard
abast the blooty creeks." Jute offers a bribe to calm Mutt;
then as Jute goes into denial about what Mutt tells him,
Mutt regains his tongue.
Mutt.-- Ore you astoneaged, jute you?
Jute.-- Oye am thonthorstrok, thing mud.
The hen's rubbish is also an alphabet ("When a part so ptee
does duty for the holos we soon grow to use of an
allforabit") and a form of money. The alphabet leads us to
storytelling; storytelling leads to daughter Issy, and the
seductive sound of her urination. Which somehow leads to
the vignette of the prankquean.
# The Prankquean: This pirate queen is the historical Grace
(Granuaile) O'Malley and the vignette retells her
(legendary) spat with the Lord of Howth. She kidnaps a
twin because HCE gives her the wrong answer.
And the prankquean pulled a rosy one and made
her wit foreninst the dour. And she lit up and
fireland was ablaze. And spoke she to the dour in
her petty perusienne: Mark the Wans, why do I am
alook alike a poss of porterpease?
The story then repeats with the second son, and concludes
with another thunderword. Issy's urination is compared to
the hidden source of the Nile. Finnegan wakes ("Did ye drink
me doornail?") but the mourners urge him to stay dead.
He's offered instead a chatty progress report on Shaun and
Shem and Issy and ALP and her cat. HCE should stay dead
because his successor has arrived, the new HCE.
# chapter two
Chapter two is the start of the narrative proper. HCE's
plowing is interrupted by the king's hunting party, the king
asking him a question directly.
...honest blunt Haromphreyld answered in no
uncertain tones very similarly with a fearless
forehead: Naw, yer maggers, aw war jist a
cotchin on thon bluggy earwuggers.
Somehow the key here is that the King gives HCE a new
name-- Earwicker-- that brings the status of nobility,
symbolised by his seating at the theater. But the new
initials also have a secondary, dishonorable reading. ("A
baser meaning has been read into these characters the
literal sense of which decency can safely scarcely hint.")
And now we get the story, hinted thruout chapter one, of
HCE spying on two pissing nursemaids, spied upon by three
soldiers, followed immediately by a second, innocent,
apparently authoritative version, in which HCE meets only
a cad with a pipe.
# The Cad:
They tell the story... how one happygogusty
Ides-of-April morning... ages and ages after the
alleged misdemeanour when the tried friend of all
creation, tigerwood roadstaff to his stay, was
billowing across the wide expanse of our greatest
park... he met a cad with a pipe.
HCE is unsure if he's being propositioned, so he
simultaneously accepts and denies accepting, and adds a
stuttered self-defense. "I am woowoo willing to take my
stand, sir, upon the monument... that there is not one tittle
of truth, allow me to tell you, in that purest of fibfib
fabrications."
This is really the climax of the narrative, and the rest of
the book is more or less downhill, plot-wise. The strange
tale of HCE's speech circulates thruout Dublin, starting via
the cad's wife. It descends the social ladder, thru the
criminal Frisky Shorty ("he was, to be exquisitely
punctilious about them, both shorty and frisky") and the
suicidal musician Hosty. The lowlifes get drunk and write a
ballad about HCE.
# The Ballad:
It was during some fresh water garden pumping
Or, according to the Nursing Mirror, while
admiring the monkeys
That our heavyweight heathen Humpharey
Made bold a maid to woo...
# chapter three
Chapters three and four next 'deconstruct' the rumor,
calling into question every aspect of it, starting with the
fates of the balladeers (whose very names and genders
continue to mutate). We get a comparatively vivid scene
that depicts Joyce himself in July 1923, vacationing in
Bognor, England, telling yet another transformed version of
the cad's story, the tale taking on elements of a historical
1815 duel in which Daniel O'Connell killed a cad named
Destrelle, who'd libelled him.
...he tips un a topping swank cheroot... and...
says... he was to just pluggy well suck that brown
boyo, my son, and spend a whole half hour in
Havana...
HCE's stuttered defense is completely rejumbled, and this
version again gets retold, always mutating.
# The Plebiscite: People on the street are interviewed
("Have you evew thought, wepowtew, that sheew
gweatness was his twadgedy?"). HCE gets physically
assaulted... or initiates an assault.
It was after the show at Wednesbury that one tall
man, humping a suspicious parcel... had a barkiss
revolver placed to his faced with the words:
you're shot, major: by an unknowable assailant...
His 'parcel' is a fireplace guard (fender), probably the cad's
pipe deforming towards an anonymous lump. And then the
assault is diminished to a banging at HCE's gate, dealt with
by his butler, rationalised to the police as an innocent
attempt to open a bottle of beer.
# Peaches Browning: And suddenly by a charming 90
degree turn, the contested fender becomes a female (?).
...he would like to canoodle her too some part of
the time for he is downright fond of his number
one but O he's fair mashed on peaches number
two...
Then the fender becomes ALP's letter-- one of the core
images of FW-- and immediately a coffin. The assaulter
becomes a butcher. We return to the sad fate of the
maggie, and blackmail was somehow involved. The history
of the gate is recounted, built to keep HCE in ("unused as he
was yet to being freely clodded").
Yet another version involves a guest angry over being
robbed at HCE's hotel ("he would break the gage over his
lankyduckling head the same way he would crack a nut with
a monkeywrench "), or a patron refusing to leave a pub at
closing time. HCE compiles a long list of the cad's shouted
insults, but refrains from replying himself, and the
assaulter finally leaves.
# chapter four
Chapter four continues with the thoughts of HCE as he hides
from his assaulter. Whether he's dead or hibernating
("secretly and by suckage feeding on his own misplaced
fat") or imprisoned or hiding or disguised, HCE lookalikes
are still being attacked.
One assault took place on a midden-dump, leaving tracks in
ALP/Kate's excrement. And another comic version is
offered ("whom for plunder sake, he mistook in the heavy
rain to be Oglethorpe or some other ginkus, Parr
aparrently").
The combatants suddenly resolve things when the cad (or
HCE) offers to pay back the money stolen from the
hotel-guest's coat, and HCE (or the cad) responds even
more generously. ("There was a minute silence before
memory's fire's rekindling and then. Heart alive!") And HCE
limps to the police for first-aid.
# the Trial: Now the fender becomes a pig, and the gate its
sty, while HCE becomes a prisoner who rubbed dirt on his
face as a disguise, and tried to sell the pig for rentmoney
because it ate part of the gate "the pikey later selling the
gentleman ratepayer because she, Francie's sister, that is
to say, ate a whole side of his (the animal's) sty".
(Thunderwords for 'whore'.)
Shaun has beaten Shem in the court of public opinion-- he's
surrounded by female admirers (but singles out Issy).
Shem gets off without legal penalty anyway. A long rehash
of many different parts of the book follows. HCE/Shem is a
hunted fox, everyone has a different theory where he's
gone, but signs confirm he still exists. And finally, in
preparation for the next chapter, ALP herself steps back
in, plotting to use her feminine wiles to defend him, in spite
of all.
# chapter five
Chapter five is devoted to the physical letter in which ALP
defends (or accuses?) HCE (which on another level is
Joyce's Ulysses, or FW itself). "In the name of Annah the
Allmaziful, the Everliving, the Bringer of Plurabilities,
haloed be her eve, her singtime sung, her rill be run,
unhemmed as it is uneven!"
After a long list of the Letter's names, the handwriting is
analysed. ("Say, baroun lousadoor, who in hallhagal wrote
the durn thing anyhow?") The letter was found in a
middenheap by little Kevin/Shaun, with the help of
ALP-the-hen. ("The stain, and that a teastain... marked it
off on the spout of the moment as a genuine relique of
ancient Irish pleasant pottery of that lydialike languishing
class...") The hen embodies instinctual wisdom.
No, assuredly, they are not justified, those
gloompourers who grouse that letters have never
been quite their old selves again since that weird
weekday in bleak Janiveer... when to the shock of
both, Biddy Doran looked at literature...
A version of the letter forgives HCE (while sounding a bit
drunk). We go back to the handwriting, and the stain ("we
ought really to rest thankful that... we have even a written
on with dried ink scrap of paper at all to show for
ourselves"). # [Kells links]
Itemising the handwriting's characteristics-- illiterate
ALP's hand was guided by Shem's. Holes in the paper are
also seen as a clue ("These paper wounds, four in type,
were gradually and correctly understood to mean stop,
please stop, do please stop, and O do please stop
respectively...") And finally, somehow, the handwriting is
identified as Shem's.
# chapter six
Chapter six recaps the twelve main characters (and/or
elements) in a quiz show Q&A format. A late addition to
Book One, many of the themes had barely been hinted up to
this point. "So? Who do you no tonigh, lazy and gentleman?"
Q1 is ridiculously long, with the answer being HCE, Q2 is
ALP. Q3 is the letter/book, A3 is the mutated motto of
Dublin. Q4 is the four corners of Ireland (Belfast, Cork,
Dublin, Galway).
Q5 is HCE as the older butler Sackerson, and Q6 is ALP as
the old streetcleaner Kate. Q7 is the twelve citizen-jurors
(symbolised by words ending in '-ation'). Q8 is Issy's seven
(or 28) rainbow-classmates. Q9 is the Viconian cycle of
history (maybe).
Q10 is supposedly Issy speaking to her twin in a mirror, a
troubling image of Joyce's troubled schizophrenic daughter
Lucia. ("What exquisite hands you have, you angiol, if you
didn't gnaw your nails, isn't it a wonder you're not achamed
of me, you pig, you perfect little pigaleen!") But the early
notes also suggest that Issy, in her mirror, becomes
Tristan.
Q11 asks Shaun whether he'd extend a helping hand if Shem
begged him. Shaun offers a million technical reasons why
he wouldn't, even invoking HCE's self-defense as an
authority, and arguing that the poor will always be with us.
# The Mookse and the Gripes: Shaun attempts a parable for
his students, Aesop's Fox and Grapes as HCE and the Cad.
("Eins within a space and a wearywide space it wast ere
wohned a Mookse.") Shaun sits on a stone (his lifeless
symbol, to Shem's green treebranch), Shem asks for...
gossip? The Fox declares the Grapes to be sour, sounding
like Willingdone's cursing. Shaun would help if Shem were
more manly (if the grapes were not sour). Shaun again
defends himself hundreds of different ways.
This brotherly debate is eavesdropped by their adoring
sister (a streamlet and then a cloudlet). As dusk falls, the
brothers turn into laundry drying by the riverbank,
collected by two prankqueans. Issy, brokenhearted, jumps
in the river.
Then Nuvoletta reflected for the last time in her
little long life and she made up all her myriads of
drifting minds in one. She cancelled all her
engauzements. She climbed over the bannistars;
she gave a childy cloudy cry: Nuee! Nuee! A
lightdress fluttered. She was gone. And into the
river that had been a stream... there fell a tear, a
singult tear, the loveliest of all tears... for it was
a leaptear.
The parable over, Shaun addresses his audience again, with
more rationalisations for shunning Shem. He offers one
more short parable on the brother-dialectic as butter and
cheese-- Burrus was a cheerful youth, but Caseous is a
stinker. This dialectic may or may not imply that Shaun
should forgive Shem.
A feminine third party drives the dialectic. Shem and Shaun
both write lovesongs to her, Shem singing of his lust while
Shaun praises her chastity. This
Burrus-Caseous-Margareen triangle resembles the
canoodler with the two peaches.
A third brother Tristan synthesises Shem and Shaun, but
Shaun seems to dislike him as much as he dislikes Shem.
And Shaun damns Issy as well, for her disloyalty, and then
refuses Shem's request one last time. Q12 is Latin for 'let
him be accursed?', A12 approximately 'we are Shem'.
# chapter seven
Chapter seven is Shem's. ("Shem is as short for Shemus as
Jem is joky for Jacob.") Physical inferiority forces Shem
to exploit his wits, posing "the first riddle of the universe:
asking, when is a man not a man?"
All were wrong, so Shem himself, the doctator,
took the cake, the correct solution being -- all
give it up? -- ; when he is a -- yours till the
rending of the rocks, -- Sham.
Shem was a sham and a low sham and his lowness
creeped out first via foodstuffs. ...he would far
sooner muddle through the hash of lentils in
Europe than meddle with Irrland's split little pea...
Like Joyce, Shem favors a wine that resembles urine.
Hopeful predictions of his suicide are not fulfilled-- instead
he wires Shaun for more money. Visitors try but fail to
broach the subject of his ignoble path. A coward, he avoids
fights by agreeing with everyone (hoping they'll buy him
drinks). Combatants use him as a football, and are drawn
together by his lowness. He never played normal children's
games. Instead he flees home and locks the door. (Shem is
frequently seen as the blackskinned Cain.)
Shem thinks he's a better writer than Shakespeare. when
he peeks out to see if the battles are over, he finds a gun
pointing thru his keyhole. He claims to be writing a book.
He stinks. He could have been tutoring his hosts in
handwriting, but instead he's practicing to imitate their
styles ("study with stolen fruit how cutely to copy all
their various styles of signature so as one day to utter an
epical forged cheque on the public for his own private
profit").
Writing by the light of his nose, he portrays himself as a
ladies man. And he's not much of a housekeeper, either.
("The house O'Shea or O'Shame... known as the Haunted
Inkbottle... literatured with... once current puns, quashed
quotatoes, messes of mottage, unquestionable issue papers,
seedy ejaculations, limerick damns, crocodile tears, spilt
ink, blasphematory spits, stale shestnuts...") He keeps hens
in the WC, for their eggs.
# Shem makes ink: Boycotted by his stationers, he makes
his own paper and ink (there follows a passage in Latin
describing the messy process). Writing on his skin with
this ink makes his soul grow darker as well.
Then... with this double dye... this Esuan
Menschavik and the first till last alshemist wrote
over every square inch of the only foolscap
available, his own body, till by its corrosive
sublimation one continuous present tense
integument slowly unfolded all... cyclewheeling
history...
HCE as the older butler often has a name like Sigurdsen,
and a role like policeman. Next he catches Shem sneaking
home drunk. His greeting echoes the cad's greeting to HCE,
but it's a dark gentleman here instead of a fair one. Shem
locks himself in (again), leaving the cop wondering (like the
cad).
Now the chapter's narrator (Shaun) speaks to Shem, as a
personification of judgmental Justice (and as a priest in the
confessional). (But ALP's letter washes clean all sins.)
Joyce's notes explain that seven charges are itemised
here-- all distinctly autobiographical. The first is 'Hell'
(though it sounds like doubt). ("you have reared your
disunited kingdom on the vacuum of your own most
intensely doubtful soul").
The second is 'Property' (though it sounds like refusal to
marry). The third is 'Prophecy' (but sounds like
pessimism). ("it never stphruck your mudhead's obtundity...
that the more carrots you chop, the more turnips you slit,
the more murphies you peel, the more onions you cry over,
the more bullbeef you butch, the more mutton you
crackerhack, the more potherbs you pound, the fiercer the
fire and the longer your spoon and the harder you gruel
with more grease to your elbow the merrier fumes your
new Irish stew.")
The fourth is 'Shirking' (but includes exile). The fifth is 'Sin'
but seems to involve corrupting his brother. The sixth is
'Doles" (begging for charity).
In Joyce's notes, the seventh is 'Mother' and is not set off in
any way from the first six, but in the published version
Justice is balanced by Mercy, somehow Shem addressing
himself regarding his failures to honor his mother. But ALP
again forgives Shem.
He lifts the lifewand and the dumb speak.
-- Quoiquoiquoiquoiquoiquoiquoiq!
# chapter eight
Chapter eight is the last of book one. Joyce spent 1200
hours on it by his count, especially working in puns on
some 350 river names. It opens with the two
washerwomen from chapter six sharing gossip by the river
as dusk falls. "O tell me all about Anna Livia! I want to hear
all about Anna Livia. Well, you know Anna Livia?"
Like James and Nora, HCE and ALP are rumored never to
have formally wed. ALP is said to have solicited other
women for HCE's pleasure. She worked her fingers to the
bone to cheer him out of his depression, but he just abused
her. She even tries whistling and singing for him, and the
soliciting is discussed again. ALP's song is also her letter.
Her 111 children are mentioned. Her early sexual history
is detailed ("She was just a young thin pale soft shy slim
slip of a thing then, sauntering, by silvamoonlake and he
was a heavy trudging lurching lieabroad of a Curraghman,
making his hay for whose sun to shine on, as tough as the
oaktrees...") Returning to the washing, they discuss other
ALP-like identities (and their undies), Lily Kinsella and the
wife of the villain Magrath.
ALP decided she must defend HCE's sullied reputation. Her
plan involved Shaun's mailbag, and a lot of costuming. She
didn't tell HCE what she was plotting. When the shocked
citizens saw her they concluded she was 'doped'.
Her mailbag was full of presents for her children, who had
apparently grown estranged. The inventory of gifts
mentions many of the book's characters. Twentyfive of the
28 rainbow girls get the same gifts. "Her Pandora's box
contains the ills flesh is heir to." The river has widened,
the washerwomen on opposite sides. As night falls, the
washerwomen begin to change into a tree and a stone. #
[Joyce's reading]
The fates of ALP's children are discussed. One
washerwoman thinks she sees HCE, but the other accuses
her of drinking. Maybe it's the ass belonging to the four
Masters, Matthew Mark Luke and John (Mamalujo). Or
perhaps it's the light of a ship returning (Tristram
rearriving as in the opening paragraphs). HCE had seven
wives.
Can't hear with the waters of. The chittering
waters of. Flittering bats, fieldmice bawk talk. Ho!
Are you not gone ahome? What Thom Malone?
Can't hear with bawk of bats, all thim liffeying
waters of. Ho, talk save us! My foos won't moos. I
feel as old as yonder elm. A tale told of Shaun or
Shem? All Livia's daughtersons. Dark hawks hear
us. Night! Night! My ho head halls. I feel as heavy
as yonder stone. Tell me of John or Shaun? Who
were Shem and Shaun the living sons or daughters
of? Night now! Tell me, tell me, tell me, elm! Night
night! Telmetale of stem or stone. Beside the
rivering waters of, hitherandthithering waters of.
Night!
# chapter nine (II.1)
Chapter nine concerns a guessing game played at dusk by
Shem, Shaun, and the 29 Floras, assembled out of
fragments of hundreds of traditional children's games, and
framed as a play in a theater. We've gotten to know Shem
and Shaun and Issy in Book One, but now they're seen as
children with HCE and ALP looming parentally in the
background. Each is described ("a bewitching blonde who
dimples delightfully and is approached in loveliness only by
her grateful sister reflection in a mirror, the cloud of the
opal...") in the form of a theater program ("to be wound up
for an afterenactment by a Magnificent Transformation
Scene showing the Radium Wedding of Neid and Moorning
and the Dawn of Peace, Pure, Perfect and Perpetual,
Waking the Weary of the World").
Shem's philosophical unhappiness is allegorised as his
inability to win their game of guessing the color of Issy's
underwear. Shaun wants to save Issy from the wolf (Shem)
but Issy is more ambivalent. Shem wracks his brain,
scours the four corners of the world. He hallucinates
hearing his dead mother's last requests. He tries (?) to spy
on the Floras' undies, then asks them for a hint (?) but they
cut him cold. On another level, this is a game of courtship,
but Shem is shy. As in most guessing games, he gets three
tries, but fails.
-- Have you monbreamstone?
-- No.
-- Or Hellfeuersteyn?
-- No.
-- Or Van Diemen's coral pearl?
-- No.
Issy, though, feels she's lost a lover-- she'd fading. But out
of that loss will come a husband... Shaun ("Lord Chuffy's
sky sheraph and Glugg's got to swing"). The rainbow girls
do a double-rainbow dance, including a scientifically
accurate region of shadow-secrets that include theft,
uncleanliness, alcoholism, poverty, timidity, superstition,
triviality, stinginess, and spite.
Frustration drives Shem to violate the seven sacraments.
He threatens to go into exile, declare his own utopia, and
tell his parents' sexual secrets, ie, to write Ulysses ("his
farced epistol to the hibruws... a most moraculous
jeeremyhead sindbook"). He foresees that someday he'll be
reunited with Issy.
Remembering his comparatively comfortable childhood
turns him maudlin and he cites a verse Joyce wrote as a
child. This unguarded thought of home momentarily causes
self-doubt, and a horrible toothache ("His mouthfull of
ecstasy... herepong (maladventure!) shot pinging up through
the errorooth of his wisdom..."). But this dark teatime of
the soul passes quickly, and Shem is re-inspired,
perceiving (hallucinating?) Issy-Isolde to be sending him
(as her Tantris) a coded message of love, despite her
forced marriage to Mark/Shaun ("a butterfly from her
zipclasped handbag, a wounded dove astarted from,
escaping out her forecotes").
The Floras drive Shem off, and do a dance to Shaun. Like
Bloom at the end of Ulysses, they picture a future of
well-off domesticity. They become flowers yearning for
his pollen, wanting him to remain pure even as they beg him
to deflower them.
A confusing view of Shem (or HCE?) follows-- he'll tell the
whole story even if he has to go to jail for it. Shem says
Father HCE offered candy to little girls, but that the other
charges are all tommyrot-- he's an upstanding householder,
innocent as a baby. But it sounds finally like he's guilty of
sodomising Shem, while mother ALP was perpetually angry
(?) about her early deflowering (?) though divorce never
entered her mind.
[section unfinished by JB]
# chapter ten (II.2)
# chapter eleven (II.3)
# Roderick O'Connor
Joyce ends the chapter with the very first FW vignette
# chapter twelve (II.4)
Chapter twelve or II.4 was built by Joyce out of the sliced
and diced bits of two early vignettes, Tristan and Isolde,
and Mamalujo.
# chapter thirteen (III.1)
Chapter thirteen is the start of Book Three, aka 'the
watches of the night', which supposedly tells the story of
Shaun as a mirror reversal of Book One (Shem). JAJ: "a
description of a postman travelling backwards in the night
through the events already narrated. It is written in the
form of a via crucis of 14 stations but in reality it is only
a barrel rolling down the river Liffey"
As the clock strikes midnight, Shaun the postman appears
to Mamalujo's donkey, apparently the chapter's narrator.
("And low stole o'er the stillness the heartbeats of
sleep...") Shaun's hearty appetite parallels Christ's Last
Supper. (Shaun in Book Three is as often a priest as a
mailman.) "...with his motto through dear life embrothred
over it in peas, rice, and yeggyyolk..."
Shaun's voice is heard telepathically, like Morse code via
transatlantic radio. Trained in public speaking, he begins
with well-rehearsed gestures, but immediately collapses
from exhaustion, launching into a stream of excuses and
complaints, comparing himself to Shem. He describes
Shem's energetic early curiosity (?).
Mamalujo begin a series of questions about how he came to
deliver the letter, Shaun protesting what a burden it is. He
recalls being crucified with the two thieves; St Columkille's
(spurious) prophecies gave him the permit to deliver it.
He's desperate to avoid the job. A question angers Shaun,
who blames the previous postmistress and promises to
write a book explaining it all. Shaun's book will resemble a
bankbook, and another version of the Letter, and his will,
and an official government report.
"...what would be the autobiography of your softbodied
fumiform?" Shaun's postman's uniform is equated with the
letter's envelope, and Shaun shows he's delivered it because
he now wears only a barrel. (Thunderwords for 'cough'.)
# The Gracehoper and the Ondt: Yet another fable, the
Grasshopper (irresponsible Jacob/Shem) and the Ant
(humorless Esau/Shaun), is laden with entomological terms.
Shem flirts shamelessly. ("The Gracehoper was always
jigging ajog, hoppy on akkant of his joyicity...") He pursues
trivial entertainments (instead of scientific profundities),
while Shaun practices stern looks in the mirror. Shem's
unfinished summerhouse is called 'a thing which is no thing',
while Shaun's winterhouse is just 'nothing, nothing, and
nothing'... or 'deny, deny, and deny'.
Shem's food runs out. Winter drives him to seek out Shaun's
house. ("The gracehoper who knew the correct thing
promptly tossed himself ontop his head in the snow.") In
Shaun's version of the fable, his labors win him the very
wealth Shem squandered, allowing a degree of
role-reversal-- he's the opposite of a glutton, and Shem is
jealous of him. Shaun is delighted by Shem's plight, but
Shem forgives Shaun for laughing.
Your genus its worldwide, your spacest sublime!
But, Holy Saltmartin, why can't you beat time?
Mamalujo praise this fable too, and resume their
questioning-- could Shaun read Shem's writing aloud, to
HCE? He could but he won't. The jottings on the
much-forwarded envelope are described. Hasn't Shaun used
language as bad or worse than Shem's? Could Shaun equal
Shem's language if asked? Shaun summarizes the scandal,
then reverts to defaming Shem. "As often as I think of that
unbloody housewarmer, Shem Skrivenitch, always cutting
my prhose to please his phrase, bogorror, I declare I get
the jawache!"
Shem was born old. (Thunderwords for Norse gods.) "The
last word in stolentelling! ...that will open your
pucktricker's ops for you I will commission to the flames
any incendiarist... who would endeavour to set ever
annyma... moother of mine on fire."
Shaun leans back, looking up at the stars to get his
bearings, but loses his balance. A brilliant evocation of a
barrel racing down a river follows. But Shaun/Jesus's
example is quickly forgotten. "And the lamp went out as it
couldn't glow on burning, yep, the lmp wnt out for it
couldn't stay alight."
# chapter fourteen (III.2)
Chapter fourteen offers a sermon by Shaun (now called
Jaun, ie 'yellow' in French) for the 28 Floras and Issy. The
structure is mysterious-- Shaun was in the middle of a
Q&A with Mamalujo, but fell into the river. Suddenly he's
pausing on his rounds to give a speech to the Floras-- at
the end of which he'll fall into the river again (probably
echoing two of Jesus's three stumbles along the Stations of
the Cross). But then III.3 resumes the Q&A without any
reference to the earlier chapters-- so perhaps time is
running backwards, too, at some level. The narrator is
probably the donkey again
The Floras are dabbling their feet in a pond (or the river?),
with Issy among them... and drunken Sigurdsen murmurs in
his sleep in Danish: 'this is the best, my beautiful bottle.'
We get a very long parenthesis, with Jaun now a kindly
priest flirting with the Floras and Issy ("done in loveletters
like a trayful of cloudberry tartlets"). His speech is
framed as a farewell (Christ going off to Heaven again).
Issy was an older sister who helped make him what he is.
The chapter consists mostly of Jaun's ethical precepts, but
first he curses Shem's failure to assist him. His
enumeration of taboos grows increasingly lascivious.
'Beware the wiles of Shem.' Jaun expresses distaste for the
human body, then recapitulates the HCE-plot as The House
That Jack Built (?).
Jaun rationalises the lusts that are gripping him. He offers
his recommended reading. "Rather than part with that
jewel of yours let the entire universe perish a 1000 times
in a pitfall first."
He channels his lust into images of violence toward Shem
and Issy-- if Issy should get pregnant he'll beat her. He
pictures their marriage when he returns, and their
exemplary roles in the community. 'We will adopt all the
poorest children possible.' The role of schoolteacher
reasserts itself.
'Let this cup pass from me.' The scene from A Portrait is
echoed, when Stephen 'invests' his school prize money. He'd
stay chaste until he could offer her luxury. 'Jaun thinks
how cold it is out in the night under the stars. His cold is
getting worse and thus he snuffles.'
His destiny is to meet the Lord. 'I wish everyone was as
sure of anything in the real world as I am of everything in
the other. Tell mother that. Now cheer up all. We'll soon be
dead and happy.' He executes a rehearsed dramatic effect.
And he's been chowing down this whole time ("Give us
another cup of your scald. Santos Mozos! That was a damn
good cup of scald! You could trot a mouse on it...")
The journey Jaun is avoiding involves collecting a bad debt.
Issy speaks up, offering a parting letter-gift (her
maidenhead?), like Veronica of the Stations of the Cross.
("Meesh, meesh, yes, pet. We were too happy. I knew
something would happen.") She confesses an infidelity to
Jaun (or is she just telling her twin about Jaun?).
# Dave the Dancekerl: Jaun reaches an erotic climax (?) but
immediately introduces Shem as an alter ego he can hide
his feelings behind. This is James returning from the
continent, Patrick heeding the call of the Irish, Tristram
rearriving from North Armorica. Shem displays a monk's
tonsure (shaved crown). Jaun/Shaun greets him, then
presses Issy lewdly upon him.
Jaun/Shaun the emcee asks Shem the guest for a song. Jaun
'departs like Osiris the body of the young god being pelted
and incensed. He is seen already as a Yesterday... How
much have we held back? To change course and so goodbye.'
# chapter fifteen (III.3)
Chapter fifteen or III.3 offers a seance conducted by
Mamalujo using the now-infantile Shaun (aka Yawn) as the
medium. The dream-language grows particularly deep and
poetic.
Lowly, longly, a wail went forth. Pure Yawn lay
low. On the mead of the hillock lay, heartsoul
dormant... brief wallet to his side, and arm loose,
by his staff of citron briar... His dream monologue
was over, of cause, but his drama parapolylogic
had yet to be...
Most distressfully... to wail he did... those
lashbetasselled lids on the verge of closing time,
whiles ouze of his sidewiseopen mouth the breath
of him... languishing as the princeliest treble
treacle... Yawn in a semiswoon lay awailing and
(hooh!)... which earpiercing dulcitude! As were
you suppose to go and push with your bluntblank
pin in hand upinto his fleshasplush cushionettes of
some chubby boybold love of an angel. Hwoah!
Mamalujo are drawn by Yawn's crying. They are
Lilliputians climbing Gulliver. He's as wide as the zodiac.
The four gospellers, arguing the details of Jesus's life
story, bring an ass to the seance, for the sake of its big
ears. Matt Gregory is their foreman. Yawn lies atop the
hill, refracting the macrocosm of the night sky.
More than their good share of their five senses
ensorcelled you would say themselves were,
fuming censor, the way they could not rightly tell
their heels from their stools as they cooched
down a mamalujo by his cubical crib, as question
time drew nighing and the map of the souls'
groupography rose in relief within their
quarterings...
-- He's giving, the wee bairn. Yun has lived.
The four take turns speaking. They're preparing the nets
Stephen Dedalus had to fly by, to escape the entanglements
of Church and Country.
...the quivers of scaly silver and their clutches of
chromes of the highly lucid spanishing gold whilst,
as hour gave way to mazing hour, with Yawn
himself keeping time with his thripthongue, to ope
his blurbeous lips he would, a let out classy, the
way myrrh of the moor and molten moonmist
would be melding mellifond indo his mouth.
Yawn as Jesus is on the verge of ascending to Heaven, but
they hope to keep him on Earth. He stirs in his sleep and
they begin to question him, first trying to identifying the
unknown spirit who's speaking. It speaks from the rubbish
heap where the hen (and Kevin) found the Letter. The
speaker's native language has a rich poetic vocabulary but
no word for king.
I am told by our interpreter, Hanner Esellus, that
there are fully six hundred and six ragwords in
your malherbal Magis landeguage in which wald
wand rimes alpman... but yav hace not one
pronouncable teerm that blows in all the vallums
of tartallaght to signify majestate, even
provisionally...
The speaker is cold and lonely, recalling Parnell and Saint
Patrick at their lowest points. Mamalujo ask whether the
midden wasn't first HCE's burialboat ("Now I suggest to you
that ere there was this plagueburrow... there was a
burialbattell, the boat of millions of years. Would you bear
me out in that...?") Yawn implicates HCE:
-- Magnus Spadebeard... Signed to me with his
baling scoop. Laid bare his breastpaps to give
suck, to suckle me.
-- Oh, Jeyses, fluid!
The speaker confirms the name as an acrostic. Did HCE's
crime happen in BC or AD times? Walls have ears; silence
is golden; Midas has long donkey's ears. 'McDougal that is,
coughing. I identify you.' Kevin and the hen. A
you're-getting-colder guessing game (maybe). It seems
Mamalujo are arguing among themselves. Could Kevin have
been the one who hid the letter there? 'He found it there he
put it... That innocent did I alter him towards purefat?' Am
I my brother's keeper? 'I don't know but God knows I was
altered first.' The speaker considers himself a nobleman,
claiming Patrick's name 'Sucat'.
-- Suck at!
-- Suck it yourself, sugarstick! Misha, Yid think
whose was asking to luckat your sore toe or to
taste your gaspy, hot and sour!
The speaker switches to pidgin, addressing Luke. (Maybe: 'I
cried because she had a (phallic?) jack-in-the-box and all I
had was a sowbelly.') Mamalujo recognise the speaker has
changed-- 'Are you Roman road 432?'
-- Quadrigue my yoke.
Triple my tryst.
Tandem my sire.
-- Now I, the lord of Tuttu, am placing that inital T
square of burial jade upright to your temple a
moment. Do you see anything, templar?
-- I see a blackfrinch pliestrycook... who is
carrying on his brainpan... a cathedral of lovejelly
for his... Tiens, how he is like somebodies!
Joyce assigned 'T' as the siglum (sign) for Tristan, in the
notes for FW. Mamalujo sense the presence of Tristan and
produce an Egyptian wand in that shape, which induces the
speaker to see a vision of a person forming that shape. The
inverted 'T' symbolises Tristan's mirror-image anima,
Isolde. Joyce plays a game with see, hear, and feel.
-- What do you hear, breastplate?
-- I ahear of a hopper behidin the door slappin his
feet in a pool of bran.
Joyce's dagger definitions again:
When himupon Nola Bruno monopolises his
egobruno most unwillingly seses by the mortal
powers alionola equal and opposite brunoipso, id
est, eternally provoking alio opposite equally as
provoked as Bruno at being eternally opposed by
Nola...
[to be completed by JB]
# chapter sixteen (III.4)
# chapter seventeen (IV)
# Saint Kevin
# Berkeley and Patrick
# the Revered Letter
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