Notes from the March 2011 Meeting

March Notes: 75-79

We had a larger group this meeting, so we felt it best to return to the closing lines of Book I Chapter III and the first few lines of Chapter IV. HCE is buried. The slow, sentimental prose of falling rain “Sdrops” that concludes chapter three has created a “teargarten” grave for HCE as we move into chapter four (74-5). Chapter four opens “As the lion in our teargarten remembers the nenuphars of his Nile…” We presumed the lion here refers to HCE, who sleeps inside of his grave. His grave is a tear garden, but also a tiergarten [German for zoo], a place of captivity. As a lion thinks of the days outside the zoo walls – “remembers the nenuphars [flower – lotus/water lily] of his Nile” (75), HCE remembers the days before his imprisonment. He “bedreamt” [dreams/remembers] those “lililiths [1. note HCE’s stutter, 2. Lilith – first wife of Adam: threat to patriarchal order and male sexuality, and 3. lily resonating with the nenuphars] undeveiled which had undone him” [dreams of those girls unveiled which caused his fall] while he pays no attention to “the watchful treachers at his wake” (79).

The opening page is characterized by the excessive use of Dutch and also paired words. JP consulted a JJQ article by Geert Lernout, “Dutch in Finnegans Wake.” He suggests the language in 1.4 is to “Dutchify” HCE, render him foreign in another way. Many of Joyce’s references to Holland are negative, it being (like England) a Protestant imperialist country. Much of Joyce’s use of Dutch is Afrikaans-Dutch, a language spoken by colonizers in South Africa. Lenout notes that many Irish found the political situations of Ireland and South Africa to be similar. As for the language doubles, 28 [possibly 29] appear on page 75 alone [Issy’s 28 classmates?].* The pairings seem to go well with the reading of HCE obsessively replaying the events with the two girls in the park in his rest. The selection of the Nile for this passage’s stream, further plays with this idea of doubles, it having two tributaries, White and Blue. “Marmarazalles from Marmeniere” [Mademoseille from Armentieres] was a popular WWI song among British troops, noted for its saucy lyrics relating to a tavern-keeper’s daughter.

We noticed an odd poetic meter that introduces the HCE’s children as well as the Tristam and Iseult legend: “the fields of heat and yields of wheat where corngold Ysit? shamed and shone.” Corn [wheat], is a key characteristic of Iseult, but the presence of shamed and shone [Shem and Shaun] suggest that Ysit could read Issy. (75). It is with this rhyming line that the paragraph changes in focus. Whereas the narrator makes the initial claim that HCE “knew not the watchful treachers at his wake” this claim is recanted. “It may be, [we have to look up a bit in] our good township’s [newspapers]” if he was “conscious of enemies” particularly that of his “wordwounder” a man similar to William the Orange “kingbilly whitehorsed” was spreading evil throughout the country with a “distinguished dynasty of…posteriors [children], blackfaced connemaras not of the fold but elder children of his household…”(75-6). We noticed the precence of William the Orange within the latter half of p. 75, “kingbilly whitehorsed” [white horses being those of English rulers and royalty]. The release of terror into this society creates the need to submit to authority over time for the benefit of the whole: the rise to the motto of Dublin “the obedience of the citizens help the health of the whole” (76).

The first paragraph open ubiquitously: “Now gode” [it can be read as follows wholly changing the context of the paragraph: Now good, Now go, or Nou goed meaning All right in Dutch, No good, No god, Now god, etc. The narrator instructs us to “leave theories there and return to here’s here. Now hear [Listen] ‘Tis gode again [It’s good again, It’s God again]. There is talk of the teak coffin “removed from the hardware premises of Oetzmann and Nephew” (66) reenters the text. It appears as though “a number of conservative bodies” having gone through all the regulations of laws and channels of bureaucracy [committees, voting, proper resolution, koorts (court’s) order, groundwet (constitution)] are attempting to use this coffin to transport HCE from his “protem grave in Moyelta” [temporary grave] “while his body still persisted.” He is to be taken “once and for all out of plotty existence” (76). But just like the second half of the paragraph, something “fairly fishy” has happened with “erst curst Hun.” (76).

In the next paragraph spanning 76-77 the grave site is introduced as an “underground heaven or mole’s paradise.” We discussed two aspects that seem to operate hand in hand in this section. 1. issues of destruction and war and 2. the presence of harvest and festivals. In regard to the former, the group discussed whether or not underground bunkers or tunnels were present in Joyce’s time. We are brought into the destruction of war as we move to page 77 – hydromine, T.N.T. bombingpost, aerial thorpeto, minefield, sheildplated gunwale, tripupcables, etc. indicate the outbreak of war and violence (77). What is most interesting in this regard is the reminder that the “masterbilder” is the one that “openly damned and blased by means of a hydromine” (77). The masterbuilder creates but also creates objects that destroy like the weapons of war catalogued in this paragraph. In another regard, however, we noted that in a continuation of “Donawhu” legend (75) [O’Donoghue from Irish folklore linked to good harvests]. We have a phallopharos [penis god?] who’s “inversion” intends to “foster wheat crops and to ginger up tourist trade” (76). And in the midst of the war imagery, the two harvest festivals of pagan Ireland are represented in “Sowan and Belting” [Samhain – close of harvest – November 1; Bealtaine – Spring Festival – May 1]. Regardless, at the end of the section, a stone slab is placed over HCE’s grave and he is given “a very fair-worded instance of falsemeaning adamelegy: We have done ours gohellt with you, Heer Herewhippit, overgiven it, skidoo!” [We are done with you – Go to Hell – Mr. Herewhippit/Earwicker, get lost!].

My notes consist of household objects, things that could be given as gifts, and Dutch names of various meats. Maybe he is quarantined in “t’house” where he remains “safeathomely” (77, 78) in his “presenile days.” (78). As HCE falls into a thousand year sleep (hypnos chilia eonion) “explosions and reexplosions” of thunder [Donnaurwatteur = Thunderweather; Hunderthunder = Hundred Thunders] strike the Earth. The Grand age ends and lots of deaths are anticipated? [78]. These paragraphs seem to signify HCE, after his death and burial, passing into myth and “culture,” an object of study. The voice(s) become reminiscent of tour guides, historians, summarizers, village explainers. “Look at all the things he had, all the junk that now becomes artifacts, that he used to live his totally ordinary life.” The reference to “Boughtenland” is another link to the Netherlands, a commercial empire, land of traders and hoarders.

The last section of this months notes contained lots of death, burial, decomposition, and putrefication / petrification of dry rotting bodies. The war continues with “The other spring offensive” (78). It seems as though this is a civil war between “New South Ireland and Vetera Uladh [Ancient Ulster]. “Foughtarundser” presumably HCE [Vater Unser – Our Father] has been buried seven times mirroring that of Cian in Finntown, a mythical Irish chief whose body was rejected by the Earth seven times. But HCE has been buried in a “watery grave” now for “three monads” [months, but also Monads; Giordano Bruno’s 3 Monads: 1. God 2. Souls 3. Atoms] (78). Both sides seem represent factions of the same “Celtiberian camps” and view their respective sides as having the favor the “eternals [who were] owlways on their side” (78). Imagery includes terminology and references to the American Civil War. One “grant ideas” [Ulysses S. Grant’s ideas?] grunted is “With the Pope or On the Pope” a reference to the Second Battle of Bull Run, where General John Pope told his soldiers to “Come back with their shields or on their shields.” Man’s violence continues. But as we move to page 79, it may be that during these times “involved in darkness” [enveloped in darkness] “falsesight[ings] of HCE, the “first old wugger of himself in the flesh” [sightings of HCE in the flesh] “circulated freely” – yet others suggest his is “hibernating” and with a lot of fish references [rainbow trout, roach/carp, minnow, salmon], “secretly and by suckage feeing on his own misplaced fat” (79).

This is where we broke for March. HCE is buried, but sightings and rumors complicate his death or hibernation. Our hero is gone. The world is at war. We do not speak Dutch. We can’t go on. We’ll go on.

*1. Nenuphars/Nile 2. Ariuz/Arioun 3. Boghas/baregams 4. Marmarazalles/Marmeniere
5. Brievingbust 6. Besieged/bedreamt 7. Stil/solely 8. Undeveiled/undone 9. Watchful/wake
10. Fooi/fooi. 11. Zeepyzoepy 12. Larcenlads 13. Zijnzijn/Zijnzijn 14. May/moest
15. Wheat/where 16. shamed/shone 17. want/we 18. wasted/within 19. broadsteyne/’bove
20. Twillby/Twillby 21. hellof/hours 22. Wordwounder 23. nomened/Nash
24. weeping/world 25a. kreepons-kneed (not sure if this counts due to different “k” sounds - would still fit though creating 28 + Issy = 29). 25b. milk/music 26. married/missusses 27. might/mercy 28. distinguished/dynasty