Notes from the February 2013 Meeting

Part I, Chapter 6, pp. 135-136

We're about two pages away from the end of Q/A #1, focusing on HCE, and our discussion continued to revolve around issues of kingship, the question of nation-states, and the emergence of civilization.  HCE is cast as king and patriarch, the founder of a nation, a civilization, a family--but the foundations upon which his rule rests is always questionable.  

Wellington Monument, Phoenix Park

Page 135 has us walking around Dublin and encountering the Porter family:  "the king was in his cornerwall...out pimps the back guards."  This opening clause alludes to this nursery rhyme, "Sing a Song of Sixpence," but it also mentions Cornwall and King Mark (the former showing up with some regularity as part of the Tristan and Isolde story), and there is a whiff of the bawdy in the queen "feeling fain and furry," and the guards are up to some kind of dubious behavior with "pimps" and "pump gun":  certainly sexual, possibly also threatening with violence, and as the reference to "furry" could also be a section of Phoenix Park, we might be returning to the scene of HCE's crime.  The next clause conflates a number of ideas about origin stories:  "to all his foretellers he reared a stone and for his comethers he planted a tree":  for his fathers he reared a stone--raised a city--and for his mothers he planted a tree--made new life; forefathers are also foretellers, the past telling the future, the "foretellers" can also be the four old men, the Gospel writers; the "comethers" can also the "come hithers," the gesture towards flirting and courting that leads to sex and possibly procreation. We might see the planting of the tree as Genesis or possible the Crucifixion, the stone as Exodus (Moses) or Peter building the Church.  This would also add to the typological reading encouraged by the Wake--different versions of the same story happening cyclically, each version prefiguring even insisting on another.  

This might also be a reference to Plato's Phaedrus:  the tree was the first source of prophesy, living as opposed to the dead source of stones.  Phaedrus is notable, of course, for being about rhetoric as well as about eros.  

But with leading a people comes exploitation, colonization, and the failure to keep promises, as we see in the references to "forty acres" and the "white stripe, red stripe" (the flags of England and Ireland, St. George's cross and St. Patrick's cross).  The reference to "wash[ing] his feet in annacrwatter" and "whou missed a porter" are references to HCE's married life, as well as Eliot's The Waste Land; "annacrwatter" while sounding like a possible reference to Anna, ALP, also echoes "anachronism," things out of time; the feet washing also sounds like a Christ reference.

We move to Europe both past and present (annacrwatter: anachronism over the water) with "Dutchlord, Dutchlord, overawes us"; in the 17th century the Netherlands would have been a commercial and cultural center, holding a lot of influence over England, but this also echoes the increasing power of Germany as Joyce was writing in the 1930s.  The bloodless "Glorious Revolution" of 1688 becomes the terror of nascent Nazism. HCE is part of this, the "Headmound," his body actually the geography of Dublin and of Europe, "king and martyr" opening a catalogue of English churches.  Another reference to Dutch history, "Orange and Nassau," hearken again to the influence and the passing of power, again connected with the church:  "he has trinity left behind him."  (We spent a lot of time wondering over Billy-in-the-Bowl, infamous legless strangler.)

The references to prophesy (what is the relationship between prophesy and history, foretelling and telling the past?) continue with "the handwriting on his facewall, the cryptoconchoidsiphonostomata in his exprussians; his birthspot lies beyond the herospont and burialplot."  The handwriting is a reference to the Book of Daniel, and while, weirdly, the long crypto-word is a reference to an actual play performed at the Theatre Royal, it also holds within it a number of possible keywords:  crypto, phono, nosto, con.  "Exprussians" is also expressions, the hiding of meanings in one's expressions, but it also echoes the end of the Prussian empire.  Origin is beyond being a hero and being buried:  can we not transcend origin?  Does where we come from always mean more than where we wind up?  Perhaps this question is answered as our hero wanders the streets of Dublin accompanied by the ghost of Daniel O'Connell (the Book of Daniel):  "many hundreds and many score miles of streets...his great wide cloak lies on fifteen acres."

We noted here and elsewhere, by the way, that there are a number of references to acres:  once you can measure land, you can have civilization.  The rest of the page conjures an urban landscape, while flowers and vegetables are cultivated:  all marks of civilization.  As we see on the next page, HCE is the "hortifex magnus."

Page 136 combines a number of references to Sumerian, Dutch, and the theater.  We thought this continued the themes already outlined--civilization, writing, empires lost--while also bringing in a popular culture, even kind of artificiality, element.  We have references to both Homer and Moore, poets who create songs out of memory and story; and the two plays alluded to, My Awful Dad and Timour the Tartar, seem self-evidently relevant if you've been following along.

We focused on the first third, the middle, and the end of the page.  The first third of the page brings in the four old men/Gospel writers, Mamalujo:  a series of fours appear:  wind dries, rain eats, sun turns, water bounds, exalted and depressed, assembled and asundered.  These all also form a dialectic, the cycles of nature, rising and falling, coming together and breaking apart.  The next set of four all refer to water:  bored the Ostrov, leapt the Inferus, swam the Mabbul, and flure the Moyle.  In between "go away, we are deluded, come back, we are disghosted" -- the dialectic of religion and modernity.  

HCE is the founder of cities, giving the people what they want; he is like Leopold Bloom founding his New Bloomusalem.  He has to fall, no?  He offers "a coq in his pot pro homo" and "pancircensor" -- bread and circuses as well as being mindful of being kept from overstepping.  He "starts our hares yet gates our goat":  he's annoying but helps us keep everything in order.  The end of the page combines Latin references to managing the state effectively and to Dublin:  Baslebridge (Ballsbridge), bally clay (Baile Atha Cliath) -- but it is his feet that are off "bally clay":  he is the man of the people and the founder of the city, but he must fall.  And he does:  "he crashed in the hollow of the park, trees down" -- but then rises again -- "as he soared in the vaguum of the phoenix, stones up" -- and we end where we started, with trees and stones.