Please note: Our next meeting will be Sunday, November 28, 4-6 at the Starbucks on South 4th Street!
Before we delve into the complexity of the first full paragraph on page 63, we must remember that we have entered “Errorland” (62) and have just heard a “transparingly nontrue” (63) story of a drunken and stumbling HCE arrested at a temperance gateway.
We begin, then, with the line “Fifthly, how parasoliloquisingly…” This introduction to the paragraph sets the reader up quite nicely for the events that will transpire. We begin with the troubling notion of opening a paragraph with “Fifthly” without a “first through fourthly.” We decided this refers not to the continuation of a linear progression of thoughts, but instead a fifth of alcohol, due to the high volume of pubs and drinking imagery in the paragraph. Also, parasoliloqusingly – [soliloquy + singing + the Greek root para - suggesting aiding or accompanying], suggests a passage about drinking, told by one narrator who interweaves song in a soliloquy. We follow this narrator, we presumed another lawyer figure, contending with the fabricated story mentioned in the previous passage. He does not believe the accused to have visited “the House of Blazes, the Parrot in Hell, the Orange Tree,” (63) et al (all being Pubs in Dublin). He rejects the story on grounds of HCE being a “process server…merely trying to open zozimus [open sesame, and also Zozimus, an Irish Bard] a bottlop stoub [a bottle of stout] by mortially hammering his magnum bonum…against the bludgey [bloody] gate for the boots about the swan” (63).
Interestingly enough, we here see an example of the performance mentioned in parasoliloquisingly, as “The Boots at the Swan” is a Charles Selby play featuring a deaf and drunk character, Jacob Earwig [relevant to Earwicker]. Earwig, the boot, gets locked in a closet after drinking too much and incessantly pounds on the door for help. It seems, to this speaker, that the fabricated story is too similar to this play. From here, the false story is deconstructed further. Maurice Behan, a witness to the events is said to have, “hastily…came down [from his dwelling] with homp [hop +Ham], shtemp [skip + Shem] and jumphet [jump + Taphet] to the tiltyard [a field of competition]” (63-4). The hammering of “a bottle of boose…would not [have] rouse[d] him out o’ slumber deep but [the sound] reminded him loads more of the martiallawsy [martial law] marses of foreign musikants’ instumongs or the overthrewer to the third last days of Pompery [Pompey]” (64). The sounds of gun shots, foreign music, or the exploding of a volcano are not to be confused with thumping open a bottle.
We discussed the possibility of a character’s vomit being similar to the ash coving Pompey in regards to Leopold Bloom’s thoughts in the Lestrygonians episode of Ulysses. Bloom thinks, “Drink till they puke again like christians” (U.8.49), and we believe, like Pompey is covered in volcanic ash, so too is the pavement covered in vomit by “an overthrewer [thrower-upper]” (64). “All are washed in the blood of the Lamb” (U.8.9-11) and the idea of through dirtiness we become clean. Interestingly enough, it is the meaning of the Greek prefix para, as in parasoliloqusingly, that Bloom struggles to remember in Lestrygonians. Continuing with cleanliness coming from dirtiness, a “young reine,” we believe to be ALP, in the form of the “liffopotamus” [Liffy + Potamus, Greek for river, or hippopotamus] (64) cleans the pavement, washing “as mud as she cud be, ruinating…” [as much as she could by urinating – a stream of urine cleaning the vomit, but also cleaning as mud and cud – as mud and regurgitation]. The paragraph ends with an allusion to the end of the Anna Livia Plurabelle (FW.I.VIII) chapter and close of Book 1: “they were all night wasching the walters of, the weltering walters off. Whyte” (64) is strikingly similar to “Beside the rivering waters of, hitherandthithering waters of. Night!” (216).
But as the next short paragraph informs us, we need to focus on the matters of the earth, not these larger universal meanings. We are told to live in the “time of the ideal” with honor among men, like “Alphos [Arthus], Burkos [Porthos], and Caramis [Aramis],” the three musketeers All for one and one for all, but also ABC, and to “leave Astrelea [constellation Virgo] for the astrollajerries [astrologers + Jerry] and for the love of the saunces and the honour of Keavens pike [Kevin + Heaven]…” return our focus to the “Pamintul” [the land]. This paragraph returns us to thoughts of the basic story outline: three soldiers [three musketeers] and two girls “Snowwhite and Rosered” [two girls in park] (64) but tells us now of another “strawberry frolic” (64), [“Joyce gives us a fruity tale”] we are about to hear!
A much more plausible story by a more insinuating lawyer, who delivers his speech with the childish song like rhythm, [a soliloquy + singing], that begins on the bottom of 64. He suggests that someone is getting their leg pulled (64) by the fabricated story in defense of HCE “that large big nonobli head…” (64). What we enter is a very entertaining section that interweaves advertising (in a similar way to the “Beautiful Girl” song/scene/advert in Singin' in the Rain) with scathing allegations by a prosecutor who believes he has cracked the case and tells all his logical (ABC) analysis. The story here suggests, like in nature, “Elders fall for green almonds” (64), old men fall for young women. In his scenario, the old man, HCE, is trying to get this young girl to be his “papa pals” (65). This pal will, by night, “[comb] the comet’s tail up right and [shoot] popguns at the stars” (65). This girl, however, is not innocent either. She milks the old man for money that she uses to buy the clothes to go out with other men. “She wants her wardrobe” from “Peter Robinson trousseau” so she can go out with “Arty, Bert or possibly Charley Chance (who knows?)” (65). Mr Hunker/old grumpapar, however is “too dada” [fatherly + infants language “Dad-da”] for the girl to socialize with so she says “tolloll [ta-ta]” (65). But this canoodling with one young girl isn’t enough, “old grum he’s not so clean dippy between sweet you and yum” (65). He wants to keep his situation with the first girl, but also wants to incorporate the second. He wants all three to feel “genuinely happy” (65) in a “dreamlifeboat, hugging two by two in his zoo-doo-you-doo, a tofftoff for thee, missymissy for me and howcameyou-e’enso” (65) at the bottom of the page. We imagined it like Noah’s ark, this dream-life boat, where two of every animal were spared, one male, one female. This scene ends almost like a movie. “Finny” [Finnegan / Finis – The End].
Another speaker, most likely the narrator, interjects in the next paragraph (the bottom of page 65) with an “Ack, ack, ack” (65). This narrator suggests that the prosecution seemingly places “the fender and the bottle” (65) in the same bateau [boat] as HCE, that is, in the park to solicit sex, but he asks whether or not it is truly in the states interests to carry out these sort of prosecutions as they seem to happen among all ages of “promisious [promises + promiscuous] (66) and in every area of the world “in private homes and reeboos-publikiss [republics + public + kisses] ” (66). It would be stupid, the narrator seems to suggest. But the trial is “Too be continued” (66) and, through an acronym, the narrator’s view is shown: “Federals’ Uniteds’ Transports’ Unions’ for Exultations’ of Triumphants’ Ecstasies” (66), Latin: Futuete – fuck.
“But resuming inquiries” (66), the narrator discusses ALP’s letter and alludes to the brother’s Shem and Shaun simultaneously. Beginning with ALPs letter, we remain unclear of its contents; it is said to be written in “seven divers [diverse or different] stages of ink…every pothook and pancrook bespaking the wisherwife, [signed] yours A Laughable Party” [ALP](66). “Will it ever be next morning” (66), the narrator asks, when we will find out whether or not Shaun, presumably referenced as “Fierceendgiddyex [Vercingetorix, the Gallic leader who rebelled against Julius Caesar], delivers the “huge chain envelop” [HCE] (66), or will it remain hidden in his “kibiris pouch” (66) with other lost letters, or lost to a “halpbrother” [half-brother + ALP], or a pillerbox (66)? Will it be written “in lappish language… black looking white and white guarding black, in that siamixed twoa- talk [Siamese Twin talk or double talk] used twist stern [Laurence Sterne] swift [Jonathan Swift] and jolly roger?” (66), that is to say, ambiguous, unclear. Or, “Will it bright upon us nightle, and we plunging to our plight?” (66). But this paragraphs penchant for doubling (“Hyde and Cheek,” “stern/swift,” black/white & white/black, “Cox’s wife, twice Mrs. Hahn” and the “siamixed twoa”) seems to relate to the two brothers, Shem the Penman and Shaun the Post.
The group meeting ended midway down page 66 with the line, “The coffin, a triumph of the illusionist’s art…” I say the line, and not the paragraph, because the group discovered a peculiarity between publications of Finnegans Wake. That is, in most editions there is a paragraph break here, yet there is no such break in the 1999 Penguin Classics edition. Who’s story is correct? Which publication is correct? Does this change the story of HCE’s fall? Does this affect our line counts? What more will we learn more about ALPs letter? Join us at our next meeting to find out--Sunday, November 28, 4-6 at Starbucks!
