NEW VENUE and Notes from the August Meeting

PLEASE NOTE: We'll be meeting upstairs at Starbucks on 4th and South, across the street from Jim's Steaks. (I posed the question "coffee or beer?" to the group to help choose a place...I didn't think to make steaks an option, but perhaps hereafter...)

Pages Covered: 56-59 (Book I, Chapter 3)

We began at the bottom of page 56 noting differences in voices: a philosophical voice v. a narrative voice. This might be seen at the beginning of the last paragraph on page 56: "But in the pragma what formal cause made a smile of that to-think? Who was he to whom? (O'Breen's not his name nor the brown one his maid)" (ll. 31-33). As we've noted elsewhere, the parenthetical often serve to highlight a change in voice. This becomes pretty clear on pages 58-59, when the parenthetical voice starts speaking French and makes commentary on the main text (often slightly lewd).

The fallenness of HCE (Humphry Chimpden Earwicker, Here Comes Everybody, etc.), "the forefarther," and of all men was a focus for these several pages. As HCE's fall is told and retold, ALP (Anna Livia Plurabelle, his wife) is brought in, too: "Before he fell hill he filled heaven: a stream, alplapping streamlet, coyly coiled um, cool of her curls" (57.10-12). This is the vision of ALP as flirty young girl, not as the older troubled wife she becomes. This bringing together of HCE and ALP at the top of page 57 also includes the four old men who judge HCE's fallenness and will spy on HCE and ALP later. Here they appear as Armagh, Clonakilty, Deansgrange, and Barna.

As long as we're bringing in some of the main characters, the next two paragraphs have Shaun and Shem, the sons of HCE and ALP. Shaun is the professorial voice and Shem is the joker. So Shaun says, "Thus the unfacts did we possess them, are too imprecisely few to warrant our certitude..." (57. 16-17), commenting on the story of his own father, and the book as a whole. The reference to Lewis Carroll immediately before and after lead us to see how the whole thing is a sort of riddle--"sol slithe dodgsomely" (l.26)--and the Wake is very much indebted to Carroll's version of play and joke-making. Art might be "unfacts," but it lasts.

Of course, Joyce might also be alluding to Carroll's/Dodgson's predilections, with references to "exposure" (sexual? photographic? both?), the "nethermore" (Poe, there too, with "quoth the raven nevermore), the "tata of a tiny victorienne, Alys, pressed by his limper looser" (57.28-29). The riddle and the sin here are part of HCE's story, and the joker (Shem) and the professor (Shaun) are brought together in the figure of Carroll/Dodgson.

Page 58 continues the motif of sin, judgment, and fallenness. The top of the page offers references to Parnell, who fell from power due to his adulterous affair with Katherine O'Shea: "His Thing Mod have undone him: and his madthing has done him man...ulvy came, envy saw, ivy conquered" (ll. 1-2, 5-6). The trajectory of Parnell's fall -- "his muertification and uxpiration and dumnation and annuhulation" (8-9) -- echoes HCE's. The "jostling judgments" of the crowd, those who follow the "evidencegivers," is heard here, too: "Oho, oho, Mester Begge, you're about to be bagged in the bog again. Bugge...But, lo! lo! by the threnning gods, human, erring, and condonable" (16-19). The final trio of words there makes HCE, indicating he is the subject of the paragraph.

The end of page 58 and beginning of page 59 brings back theatrical motifs, which we've seen elsewhere (pages 32-33, 48-50). It seems Joyce uses these motifs to point to social performance, the performative nature of social rituals like trials, to masking and disguising, and here even to highlight the ways beauty can be cheapened: "a goddinpotty for the reinworms and charlattinas" (59.12).

Fascinated? Join us for our next meeting on September 26, Sunday, from 4 to 6!