Notes from the January 2013 Meeting

Part I, Chapter 6, pp. 133-134 (quality, not quantity!)

Our discussion for this meeting focused on the nature of civic space, and the role politics and ideology play in constructing space and time.  Remembering that one of HCE's avatars is Mr. Porter, public house proprietor, we considered the importance of hospitality to the polity, the relationships among citizenship and community, and the oscillations among private/public and sacred/secular spaces.

The page begins with the echoes from last time of the relationship between Ireland and America, particularly in the context of diaspora ("though you rope Amrique your home ruler is Dan").  HCE as Adam ("ex-gardener") gives way to the man in the mackintosh ("the oil silk mack...micks his aquascutum") -- perhaps this is an echo of Ulysses, but it also conjures up a man who is up to no good with the "kay women" and giving employment to "gee men" (whores; G-Men, or detectives, according to McHugh here).  HCE comes off as something of a lurker, echoing his transgression in Phoenix Park (which may have been both/either sexual and/or political).

The next series of lines evoke the language of insurance, indemnification:  "against lightning, explosion, fire, earthquake, flood, whirlwind, burglary, third party, rot, loss of cash, loss of credit, impact of vehicles"; the sequence ends with references to Piggott and Parnell:  "unhesitent in his unionism and yet a pigotted nationalist."  What is the connection between insurance and empire?  According to Wikipedia, insurance came about more or less with human civilization; in modern terms, and perhaps relevant to our purposes, the Great Fire of London in the 17th century prompted the development of insurance as we know it.  Property becomes defined by risk, and risk is something to be managed.  Civilization, property, insurance are intertwined.

The indemnification, corporatization, and commodification of the public space and of political life continues through the next few lines:  the "sinews of peace" is in "his chest-o-wars," "fiefeofhome, ninehundred and thirtunine years of copyhold" -- here possibly connecting insurance and copyright, but maybe referring to the 30 Years War and the 39 Articles, and fiefdoms and home -- as well as "aldays open for polemypolity's sake" -- aldermen and the polity.  The kinds of religious, or sacred, conflict that shape the secular state emerge in the next series too:  "popeling runs down the Huguenots; Boomaport, Walleslee...Master Mudson, master gardiner [Adam again]" -- we have popes versus Huguenots, we have Napoleon -- and the French Revolution, its political ramifications and the ways it transformed the sacred (ie, Gregorian) calendar into a secular or pagan construction of time, as we shall see further along.  We also have Wellesley, Duke of Wellington -- although I hear Waldensians there, too, an early Protestant sect.  These conflicts echo domestic conflicts with "paunch and judex," judex = judge (I hear Jew and codex there, too).

History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake, says Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses, and that seems to be what is being evoked in the next series:  "hallucination, cauchman [cauchemar, nightmare, although also possibly a man of nightmare], ectoplasm [ghosts], baabaa blacksheep" and "white woo woo woolly" -- counting sheep.  Perhaps in his dreams or his nightmares HCE is the ruler, the ruler of his home, of his city, of his universe:  "all fitzpatricks in his emirate remember him, the boys of wetford [Wexford] hail him babu; indanified himself with boro tribute" -- here we have Brian Boru, Babu, a Hindu term of respect, and multiple references to tribute -- the early, tribal, primitive version of what insurance becomes in modern capitalist society?

At the bottom of page 133, the connection between these references to empire, civil society, government, and political structures and their history; and the public space of hospitality and civic life -- namely the pub -- is made explicit:  "lebriety, frothearnity, and quality" (liberty, fraternity, equality, sobriety, levity, froth).   This reference to the motto of the French Revolution is followed by references to kings:  basidens, ardree, kongsemma, rexregulorum.  In a Viconian fashion we cycle through monarchy and democracy.  HCE is a king figure and a man of the people.

But the concern spreads to empire and to quest, the taking over of lands for gold, God, and glory:  "eldorado or ultimate thole; a kraal of fou feud fires, a crawl of five pubs" [kraal being Afrikaaners for a village, Dutch origin coming originally from the Portuguese, fou being crazy in French, drunk in Scots, feud being surprisingly clear; connecting or echoing kraal and crawl, empire and pubs].  Signifiers of Irish civic/social life -- pubs, beer -- coupled with references to the diaspora serve to render "Irishness" as transnational.  Beer becomes what Graham in our discussion called a "social solvent":  even Gaudio Gambrinus, the Flemish king who brewed the first beer, makes an appearance.

The middle of page 134 brings together the theater as well as the French Revolution calendar issues already alluded to.  Empire, ideology -- these shape our very experience of time (contrast this way of thinking about time, calendar time, with the Viconian cycles moving through the Wake:  cosmic time, archaeological time, secular/sacred time, closing time).  Joyce refers to the controversy between the Irish and Roman churches over the date of Easter (of course the date of resurrection being significant for the Wake), as well as the controversy over the French Revolution calendar displacing the Gregorian:  "he can get on as early as the twentysecond of Mars [here literalizing Mars=March] but occasionally he doesn't come off before Virgintiquinque Germinal" (we took get on/come off as a dirty joke, too).  Rick, Dave, and Barry refers to Richard Burbage, David Garrick and Barry Sullivan, all of whom played "Crookback," or Richard III (timely!).  Richard III thus serves as a theatrical figure and as a thwarted king:  here we see him in all his avatars, much like we see HCE.

Speaking of avatars:  we were able to connect these conversations about calendars and the different perspectives of time to, what else, reading:  the way you talk about something alters the nature of the thing you are trying to talk about.  Geography and space become different depending on who is making the map; time becomes different depending on who is making the calendar.

This global/cosmic perspective comes back to HCE in Dublin, with bridges, connectors to different parts of the city over water (and the relationship of the city, its neighborhoods, and its waters is important because that is the man and his family themselves):  Portobello, Equadocta, Therecocta, Percorello (all referring to bridges and aqueducts, urban infrastructure and remnants of empire and history), as well as contemporary landmarks in Dublin and mythic figures and spaces in Irish culture and history:  shellborn (the Shelbourne Hotel), Watling Street (near the Guinness brewery), and the giant ivy (Parnell) from the land of younkers (young men=Tir-na-nOg).  It also comes back to his family and the family/life/sexual cycle:  "soft youthful bright matchless girls should bosom into fine silkclad joyous young women...not so pleased that heavy swearsome strongsmelling irregularshaped men should blottout active handsome wellformed frankeyed boys" (this reminded us of the men eating in "Lestrygonians," too).

Ultimately, as we move through question-and-answer #1, bearing in mind the Q & A is meant to draw out all of the versions of HCE -- Hapapoosiesobjibway [have papooses (children) everywhere], the Justesse of the Jaypees (Justice of the Peace), the something behind the Bug of the Deaf (earwig/Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker) -- we see the weaving of nation, history, and family, and the rising and falling of them all:  "husband your aunt and endow your nepos...time is, an archbishopric, time was, a tradesmen's entrance."