Notes from the May 2013 Meeting

Part I, Chapter 6, pp. 141-143 (We began at Q #5 and stopped at Q #10)

Both questions 5 and 6 have to do with servants in the HCE/Porter establishment; their presence is marked in both cases by the use of song, specifically the American folk and spiritual tradition.  There are somewhat complex racial politics embedded in Joyce's use of the servant figures for these two questions.  The answer to question 5, "Pore ole Joe," is the British title of the Stephen Foster song "Old Black Joe," and question 6, "What means the saloon slogan Summon In The Housesweep Dinah," goes along with the lines "someone's in the kitchen with Dinah," from the American song "I've Been Working on the Railroad," while also highlighting the ways the servant, Kate -- the subject of question 6 -- is a drudge who gets ordered around ("summoned").  Note the return of the Tok, Tik, Tuk, Tek, Tak -- Kate's stepping through the house -- and her "midden name," referring to the midden heap, the heap of trash and household detritus she's forced to tend, and where the letter was discovered.

"Pore ole Joe" is revealed later to have the full name "Joe Sackerson," named after a famous performing bear during the time of Shakespeare.  Edmund Epstein suggests the name might also evoke Dr. George Sigerson, a descendant of Vikings (which would explain all the Danish in this answer, as we'll see) and a critic of the writers of the Celtic Twilight.  (It would be just like Joyce to suggest that a critic is on the same level as a servant.)  The beginning of question 5 features, as McHugh notes, quite a bit of Danish:  "Whad slags of a loughladd would retten smuttyflesks, emptout old mans, melk vitious geit" -- What sort of man serves dirty flasks, empties all [tout, Fr] the old men [dregs of beer, but also, as Epstein notes, Joe functions as a sort of bouncer], scares off the vicious patrons, including "jackinjills," etc.  The image of the servant conjured is one of an overworked, run off his feet sort of person, sprinkling sawdust on the floor, washing dirty glasses with slightly less dirty water ("sprink dirted water around vilage, newses, tobaggon, and sweeds" -- so possibly spreading gossip too, dirty water = dirty laundry, functioning as a sort of traitorous newsstand [news, tobacco, sweets]).  Joe also has to deal with Shem, Shaun, and Issy ("might underhold three barnets") in addition to the pub clientele.  More news:  "Perchance he nieows [meows, nieuws, Du] and thans sits in the spoorwaggen [takes the train]" -- it seems Joe might be a source of unfortunate gossip, perhaps as revenge for being overworked and underappreciated?  In addition to his other crimes, is HCE a bad boss?

And is there a possibility that Joe has been let go?  The latter part of question 5 sounds like a classified ad; incidentally, for an excellent book on advertising in Ireland 1890-1922, check out Strachan and Nally's Advertising, Literature, and Print Culture, and the website that goes with it, which offers excellent context on what might have been appearing in newspaper ads and classifieds during the period immediately preceding the founding of the Free State in 1922.  One of the features of many classified ads at the time, echoed here, is calling for either Catholic or Protestant background, insisting on a person of good character, and the assertion that the candidate "must understand all his/her duties."  We see this language very much here:  "to not skreve [don't bother writing/applying, ie, if you're not of the right background], will on advices, be bacon [rustic, ie, a person from the country looking for work] or stable hand, must begripe fullstandingly irers langurge [must fully understand the Irish [ours] language, jublander or northquain bigger prefurred [a Norwegian or a Dubliner, ie, North Wall Quay] preferred; also a bigger = bugger, or Biggar = Parnellite], all duties, kine rights [all duties, no rights]...profusional drinklords to please abstain [no drunkards please]."

It's worth lingering for a moment on the suggestion that "rustics" might be preferable, innocent country types who haven't been corrupted by city life, and who were arriving in urban areas in greater numbers post-Famine looking for work (although nowhere near as many as in other parts of Europe; urban dwellers did not outnumber rural in Ireland until 1966).  We might linger, as well, more broadly, on the question of the stranger.  The role of the pub is to offer hospitality to the stranger, but given its role as civic space, it is also a place where strangers must pass through in order to be deemed unthreatening to the community; they must be vetted, they must be held to account.  Think of Westerns, where the first place a stranger goes is the saloon, and is often asked by the bartender just what might be his business in town.  A Norwegian is a stranger, an invader, but yet is also connected to Irish history; a Dubliner is a local, part of the community, but it is these very people who also come to judge HCE.

Skipping ahead to question 7, the answer to which is "The Morphios," or The Murphies, the 12 citizens, we see this precise impulse for the community, the citizens, to hold one of their own to account:  "Who are those component partners of our societate?"  Their occupations are listed as are the places they hail from, giving us a cross-section of the community (as well as references to the months of the year at the start and the twelve Apostles at the end).  Their action is to interrogate, debate, and judge; note the repetition of "-tion" which serves to create abstract nouns expressing action or state:  anticipation, retroratiocination, differentiation, vaticination, justification, consternation, recreation (re-creation), and, of course, intoxication.  These men are jurors, sophists, pubcrawlers, and judges.

The feminine element follows the Murphies in the form of the Maggies, the monthly girls:  "They war loving, they love laughing, they laugh weeping, they weep smelling, they smell smiling, they smile hating, they hate thinking, they think feeling, they feel tempting, they tempt daring, they dare waiting, they wait taking, they take thanking, they thank seeking" -- 28 linked phrases, for the 28 girls.  Issy makes 29, and a leap year -- an upside-down time when it is acceptable for women to propose to men.  Female desire will show up shortly in question 10, as well as the references to ALP's early years with HCE.

The letter makes its return in question 9, in the form of the answer:  "A collideorscape!" -- a kaleidoscope, but also someplace where everything collides, and is maybe also the means of escape for HCE.  Question 9 is FW itself:  "to be on anew and basking again in the panaroma of all flores of speech" -- the panorama of speech and smells (we do have someone who writes with dung, after all).  Our main character, HCE, has "plenty off time on his gouty hands and vacants of space at his sleepish feet and as hapless behind the dreams of accuracy as any camelot prince of dinmurk [Arthur + Hamlet, but also noise and murkiness]" -- this line echoes what John Bishop has called FW, "the book of the dark," a dream book comprised of HCE's dream life as he sleeps below Dublin.  The recursive quality of the narrative is mentioned as well:  "whights and ways to which in the curse of his persistence the course of his tory will had been having recourses."  An "earsighted view":  Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, but also we need ears and eyes for reading FW.  Reading is characterized by "knotcracking awes," "nodebinding ayes," and "the redissolusingness of mindmouldered ease": awes and ayes and ease::eyes and ears, but also awe, affirmation, and the leisure to spend with this monumental "exagimination."

The second half of the answer to question 9 focuses particularly on the family:  "led comesilencers to comeliewithhers."  The union of HCE and ALP and its products is alluded to:  "the sap rising...wrestless in the womb [Shem and Shaun], all the rivals to allsea [all the rivers to all the sea::ALP]."  And finally, all the colors of the rainbow girls and of the kaleidoscope:  "roserude and oragious grows gelb and greem, blue out of the ind of it!  Violet's dyed!  then what would that fargazer seem to seemself to seem seeming of, dimm it all?" -- we see clearly, things are and are not what they seem.