Report from the July 2011 Meeting

Pages Covered: 87-89

We did not get very far, but this was a raucous and productive meeting.

As Chris noted last month, Shem and Shaun are here in the shape of the Festy King and the W. P., respectively, with the latter as the accuser. Picking up with the trial of the Festy King, we talked about how the event devolves into spectacle: "The litigants...local congsmen and donalds, kings of the arans and the dalkeys, kings of mud and tory...were egged on by their supporters" (87.24-27). We have traditional authority figures of the Irish past, as well as areas of Ireland represented, but we also have groundlings yelling "Exhibit his relics!" (87.32).

The past of Irish kings is also joined with Roman and Christian history, and the reference to relics and the possible scapegoat/transgressive figure of the Festy King might allude to Christ, too: "crossexanimation of the casehardened testis that when and where that knife of knifes the treepartied ambush was laid" (87.34-36). This is another figure associated with resurrection -- "animation" -- and there a number of reference to the trinity here. And also phalluses. Phallii?

On pages 88-89 we noted a lot of references to Middle Europe, especially to Hungary, and we spent rather a lot of time trying to figure that one out. Hungary, as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was obviously important in the years leading up to World War One, and Finnegans Wake bears many traces of that conflagration in its concern with the cycles of European history and its violence. We've talked before about this from a Viconian perspective, but we also connected it to the movements over East and West that Joyce makes throughout the book: Hungary is a crossroads. Hungary is also important for Bloom in Ulysses: it is the birthplace of Rudolph Virag (here's a great article from the Irish Times on that one).

As Chris noted last month, W. P. is an "eye, ear, nose, and throat witness." This shows up again in how for him "the audible-visible-gnosible-edible world existed," and he is "cognitively conatively cogitabundantly sure...because living, loving, breathing and sleeping morphomelosophopancreates" (88.6-9). The W. P. is certain, in all the ways one can be certain, through dreams and knowledge and forms and creation and four of the five senses -- but interestingly touch is missing. He has secret knowledge, yes, but the sense experience of touch seems to be absent. Can this witness be trusted? How much of what he claims is his creation, his imagination?

Over the course of the trial we come to doubt W. P.: "Whether he was practically sure...? Pediculously so. Certified? As cad could be. Be lying!...But, of course, he could call himself Tem, too, if he had time to? You butt he could anytom" (88). "Any Tom" -- any Tom, Dick, or Harry -- could call himself creator (Tem being the creator in the Book of the Dead), and Tom would also be Thomas the doubting apostle, who established certainty for himself by touching...something the W. P. cannot do.

A number of characters appear at the trial: Shem and Shaun, "the two childspies," "two dreamyums in one dromium," "a duel of lentils? Peacisely" are here, also in the form of Jacob and Esau the warring brothers. The Four Old Men are here to judge too: "Lindendelly, coke, or skillies spell me gart" (Londonderry/Ulster, Cork/Munster, Skerries/Leinster, Gort/Connacht). We have "Rooskayman kamerade? Sooner Gallwegian" -- the Russian General and the Norwegian Captain. Even Vico shows up: "It was corso in cursu on coarser again." All of these point to HCE and those judging him. We ask "Quare hircum?" -- "Why the goat?" -- again pointing to HCE/Festy King as scapegoat...and there is no answer. We ended on another question at the bottom of page 89: "Which was meant in a shirt of two shifts macoghamade or up Finn, threehatted ladder? That a head in thighs under a bush at the sunface would bait a serpent to a millrace through the heather." McHugh notes that these are Ogham ciphers listed in The Secret Languages of Ireland -- a text of the past, but also reminding us that the Wake is a cipher. We have the two shifts -- Shem and Shaun -- Finn MacCool/Tim Finnegan up the ladder, which is also a trinity, as is the "head in thighs under a bush" -- another phallus, rising, and tempting in a lapsarian fashion.

For homework: here's some stuff about Ogham.