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

Two for the Price of One: Reports from January and February

Join us for our next meeting: Sunday, March 27th from 4-6. We're up to page 76!

Pages covered: 70-76 (Book I, Chapters 3 and 4)

So, the big news from our February meeting is we cracked Chapter 4. We paused to marvel at the beautiful rain language at the end of Chapter 3 (p. 74), looked ahead a bit to what we might expect in the new chapter, and reflected on what we'd just finished.

In that vein, we'll go back to January to catch us up. The closing pages of Chapter 3 (69-72) situate HCE in a long line of invaders, violators, and malefactors. He is part of this history, but he is also subject to some very creative insults. We get HCE's "long list (now feared in part lost) to be kept on file of all abusive names he was called" (71.5), an encyclopedia, a litany, a travesty of Pseudo-Dionysius's list of the names of God and Adam's imperative to name (70.36). The list also reveals HCE's--what? paranoia? persecution complex? legitimate concern that people are out to get him? The list shows that people think he is a drunk, a Protestant, a lunatic, an artist, a murderer, a bigamist. Yet he does not respond: "Anarchistically respectsful of the liberties of the noninvasive individual, did not respond a solitary wedgeword beyond such sedentarity, though it was as easy as kissanywhere for the passive resistant in the booth he was in to reach for the hello gripes" (72.16-20). The Mookse and the Gripes are referenced here (and will feature in Chapter 6), as well as bit further down: "That more than considerably unpleasant bullocky before he rang off drunkishly pegged a few glatt stones, all of a size, by way of final mocks for his grapes, at the wicket in support of his words that he was not guilphy but, after he had so slaunga vollayed, reconnoitering through his semisubconscious the seriousness of what he might have done had he really polished off his terrible intentions finally caused him to change the bawling" (72.26-32).

The shifts from insults to the threats of physical force back to mocking, words, slangish volleys--all point to the relationship between naming, cursing, and violence. Odysseus ("nobodyatall") and the Cyclops ("Wholyphamous"--note also the contrast between being a nobody and being wholly famous, or even infamous, a contrast that characterizes HCE's experience of fame and shame) make an appearance, as does HCE's stutter ("cocoa come outside to Mockerloo"--Mockerloo again bringing together mocking/insults/violence through language and actual violence/warfare in Waterloo). Cursing is visible in gesture, too: "bit goodbyte to their thumb" (73.5-16). Throughout this passage, cursing, voices, language, "duff and demb institutions" appear (73.20): "Gog's curse to thim," "manjester's voice" (we liked that one), "(Et Cur Heli!)".

From these curses, there is a shift in tone at the end of page 73, one that resonates with history and stories of kingship. We realized that underlying pages 72-73, which formed the bulk of our discussion at the February meeting, is Macbeth: sound and fury signifying nothing. With the end of a king comes the end of civilization and its institutions, and the voice becomes a means for cursing. (Speaking of Shakespeare, you'd be right to hear Caliban here, too, and Prospero with his own complicated kingly role.)

As HCE is buried at the end of Chapter 3, silence falls among stones, quiet except for the sound of the rain: "so witness his chambered cairns a cloudletlitter silent" (73.39). Perhaps too this scene echoes "The Dead," with rain instead of snow: "A testament of the rocks from all the dead unto some of the living" (73.43). There are also allusions to resurrection, kings that will return--Finn MacCool, Arthur, Parnell--and the covenant that is part of such a promise--Abraham ("Allprohome": the patriarch and a reference to Home Rule--a lot of this too has to do with a people betrayed by its rulers, alluding to English colonial rule over Ireland, something that will come back with the William of Orange references in Chapter 4).

The drops falling on HCE under the stones at the end of Chapter 3 become the "teargarten" and the Nile of the beginning of Chapter 4. HCE dreams of the girls: "tots wearsense full a naggin twentyg...those lililiths undeveiled which had undone him." William of Orange is the dominant figure on page 75: Joyce uses a lot of Dutch here to conjure the "noninvasive individual."

And that's where we sdopped. Join us on 3/27!

Back from Holiday Hiatus: Report from the November Meeting

Join us for our next meeting: Sunday, January 23, 4-6 p.m. at the Starbucks on 4th and South!

And now...here's your update.

Pages Covered: 66-69 (Book I, Chapter 3)

Two major threads emerged from this meeting's discussion: the relationship among the siblings Shem, Shaun, and Issy and their parents/progenitors; and male/female authorship. Focusing on these two elements give us insight into plot, character, and theme, but they are also connected; Issy's female voice competes with those of her brothers, providing an alternative and disruptive model for authorship. Parenthood and authorship offer complementary and competing ways of thinking about creation.

Each of the siblings appears in their multiple forms here: the brothers are Cain and Abel, Mick and Nick, Mutt and Jute, pen and post. Issy is revealed in all the shapes she takes: snow, rain and cloud ("the Nivynubies' finery ball"); the girl who will become a woman; the daughter who turns into her mother. Issy is a temptress, and language around prostitution, adultery, and masturbation is used to talk about her: "Finding one day while dodging chores that she stripped teasily for binocular man and that her jambs were jimpjoyed to see each other, the nautchy girly soon found her fruitful hat too small for her and rapidly taking time look she rapidly took to necking, partying, and selling her spare favours in the haymow" (68). We noticed echoes of "Nausicaa" here too.

Similarly to that chapter in Ulysses, we thought about this section has having something to say about female voice and authorship: "(there are certain intimacies in all ladies' lavastories we just lease to imagination)" (68). As elsewhere in the text, parentheses are important for what they hide and reveal. Ladies' lavatories (recall Swift's Celia) hide intimacies that are part of the male imagination, but so do their love stories. Here we shift into something that more resembles Molly's chapter in Ulysses: a love story that can only be imagined.

This section then makes a familiar move: it goes from the microcosm of the sibling relationship, to the larger world of the family romance, to the cosmic vision of the family unit within history. We are brought out into the "dearmud" of Irish history, which is connected to the crime of HCE: "poor pucker packing to perdition, again and again, ay, and again sfidare him, tease fido, eh tease fido..." (68). We see here again the cycles of family/national/universal history as the parents and children are single and all: "A reine of the shee, a shebeen quean, a queen of pranks. A kingly man, of royal mien, regally robed" (68). HCE and ALP are king and queen, even in their fall.

Speaking of falling, our discussion concluded with Milton and Paradise Lost. HCE and ALP are king and queen, but they are also the fallen couple. Animals make an appearance on page 69, goats, hogs, kids, donkeys, goats (gout!), cats--humans have the power to name, to author, in Eden, a power that is taken away and granted again, over and over. So the garden is "triplepatlockt on him on purpose by his faithful poorters to keep him inside probably and possibly enaunter he felt like sticking out his chest too far and tempting gracious providence by a stroll on the peoplade's eggday" (69). Versions of HCE and his family let him in and expel him, raise him up and make him fall, in an endless cycle of pre/postlapsarianism. Temptation, fall, and resurrection comprise key themes in these passages, as elsewhere.

Report from the October Meeting

Please note: Our next meeting will be Sunday, November 28, 4-6 at the Starbucks on South 4th Street!

Before we delve into the complexity of the first full paragraph on page 63, we must remember that we have entered “Errorland” (62) and have just heard a “transparingly nontrue” (63) story of a drunken and stumbling HCE arrested at a temperance gateway.

We begin, then, with the line “Fifthly, how parasoliloquisingly…” This introduction to the paragraph sets the reader up quite nicely for the events that will transpire. We begin with the troubling notion of opening a paragraph with “Fifthly” without a “first through fourthly.” We decided this refers not to the continuation of a linear progression of thoughts, but instead a fifth of alcohol, due to the high volume of pubs and drinking imagery in the paragraph. Also, parasoliloqusingly – [soliloquy + singing + the Greek root para - suggesting aiding or accompanying], suggests a passage about drinking, told by one narrator who interweaves song in a soliloquy. We follow this narrator, we presumed another lawyer figure, contending with the fabricated story mentioned in the previous passage. He does not believe the accused to have visited “the House of Blazes, the Parrot in Hell, the Orange Tree,” (63) et al (all being Pubs in Dublin). He rejects the story on grounds of HCE being a “process server…merely trying to open zozimus [open sesame, and also Zozimus, an Irish Bard] a bottlop stoub [a bottle of stout] by mortially hammering his magnum bonum…against the bludgey [bloody] gate for the boots about the swan” (63).

Interestingly enough, we here see an example of the performance mentioned in parasoliloquisingly, as “The Boots at the Swan” is a Charles Selby play featuring a deaf and drunk character, Jacob Earwig [relevant to Earwicker]. Earwig, the boot, gets locked in a closet after drinking too much and incessantly pounds on the door for help. It seems, to this speaker, that the fabricated story is too similar to this play. From here, the false story is deconstructed further. Maurice Behan, a witness to the events is said to have, “hastily…came down [from his dwelling] with homp [hop +Ham], shtemp [skip + Shem] and jumphet [jump + Taphet] to the tiltyard [a field of competition]” (63-4). The hammering of “a bottle of boose…would not [have] rouse[d] him out o’ slumber deep but [the sound] reminded him loads more of the martiallawsy [martial law] marses of foreign musikants’ instumongs or the overthrewer to the third last days of Pompery [Pompey]” (64). The sounds of gun shots, foreign music, or the exploding of a volcano are not to be confused with thumping open a bottle.

We discussed the possibility of a character’s vomit being similar to the ash coving Pompey in regards to Leopold Bloom’s thoughts in the Lestrygonians episode of Ulysses. Bloom thinks, “Drink till they puke again like christians” (U.8.49), and we believe, like Pompey is covered in volcanic ash, so too is the pavement covered in vomit by “an overthrewer [thrower-upper]” (64). “All are washed in the blood of the Lamb” (U.8.9-11) and the idea of through dirtiness we become clean. Interestingly enough, it is the meaning of the Greek prefix para, as in parasoliloqusingly, that Bloom struggles to remember in Lestrygonians. Continuing with cleanliness coming from dirtiness, a “young reine,” we believe to be ALP, in the form of the “liffopotamus” [Liffy + Potamus, Greek for river, or hippopotamus] (64) cleans the pavement, washing “as mud as she cud be, ruinating…” [as much as she could by urinating – a stream of urine cleaning the vomit, but also cleaning as mud and cud – as mud and regurgitation]. The paragraph ends with an allusion to the end of the Anna Livia Plurabelle (FW.I.VIII) chapter and close of Book 1: “they were all night wasching the walters of, the weltering walters off. Whyte” (64) is strikingly similar to “Beside the rivering waters of, hitherandthithering waters of. Night!” (216).

But as the next short paragraph informs us, we need to focus on the matters of the earth, not these larger universal meanings. We are told to live in the “time of the ideal” with honor among men, like “Alphos [Arthus], Burkos [Porthos], and Caramis [Aramis],” the three musketeers All for one and one for all, but also ABC, and to “leave Astrelea [constellation Virgo] for the astrollajerries [astrologers + Jerry] and for the love of the saunces and the honour of Keavens pike [Kevin + Heaven]…” return our focus to the “Pamintul” [the land]. This paragraph returns us to thoughts of the basic story outline: three soldiers [three musketeers] and two girls “Snowwhite and Rosered” [two girls in park] (64) but tells us now of another “strawberry frolic” (64), [“Joyce gives us a fruity tale”] we are about to hear!

A much more plausible story by a more insinuating lawyer, who delivers his speech with the childish song like rhythm, [a soliloquy + singing], that begins on the bottom of 64. He suggests that someone is getting their leg pulled (64) by the fabricated story in defense of HCE “that large big nonobli head…” (64). What we enter is a very entertaining section that interweaves advertising (in a similar way to the “Beautiful Girl” song/scene/advert in Singin' in the Rain) with scathing allegations by a prosecutor who believes he has cracked the case and tells all his logical (ABC) analysis. The story here suggests, like in nature, “Elders fall for green almonds” (64), old men fall for young women. In his scenario, the old man, HCE, is trying to get this young girl to be his “papa pals” (65). This pal will, by night, “[comb] the comet’s tail up right and [shoot] popguns at the stars” (65). This girl, however, is not innocent either. She milks the old man for money that she uses to buy the clothes to go out with other men. “She wants her wardrobe” from “Peter Robinson trousseau” so she can go out with “Arty, Bert or possibly Charley Chance (who knows?)” (65). Mr Hunker/old grumpapar, however is “too dada” [fatherly + infants language “Dad-da”] for the girl to socialize with so she says “tolloll [ta-ta]” (65). But this canoodling with one young girl isn’t enough, “old grum he’s not so clean dippy between sweet you and yum” (65). He wants to keep his situation with the first girl, but also wants to incorporate the second. He wants all three to feel “genuinely happy” (65) in a “dreamlifeboat, hugging two by two in his zoo-doo-you-doo, a tofftoff for thee, missymissy for me and howcameyou-e’enso” (65) at the bottom of the page. We imagined it like Noah’s ark, this dream-life boat, where two of every animal were spared, one male, one female. This scene ends almost like a movie. “Finny” [Finnegan / Finis – The End].

Another speaker, most likely the narrator, interjects in the next paragraph (the bottom of page 65) with an “Ack, ack, ack” (65). This narrator suggests that the prosecution seemingly places “the fender and the bottle” (65) in the same bateau [boat] as HCE, that is, in the park to solicit sex, but he asks whether or not it is truly in the states interests to carry out these sort of prosecutions as they seem to happen among all ages of “promisious [promises + promiscuous] (66) and in every area of the world “in private homes and reeboos-publikiss [republics + public + kisses] ” (66). It would be stupid, the narrator seems to suggest. But the trial is “Too be continued” (66) and, through an acronym, the narrator’s view is shown: “Federals’ Uniteds’ Transports’ Unions’ for Exultations’ of Triumphants’ Ecstasies” (66), Latin: Futuete – fuck.

“But resuming inquiries” (66), the narrator discusses ALP’s letter and alludes to the brother’s Shem and Shaun simultaneously. Beginning with ALPs letter, we remain unclear of its contents; it is said to be written in “seven divers [diverse or different] stages of ink…every pothook and pancrook bespaking the wisherwife, [signed] yours A Laughable Party” [ALP](66). “Will it ever be next morning” (66), the narrator asks, when we will find out whether or not Shaun, presumably referenced as “Fierceendgiddyex [Vercingetorix, the Gallic leader who rebelled against Julius Caesar], delivers the “huge chain envelop” [HCE] (66), or will it remain hidden in his “kibiris pouch” (66) with other lost letters, or lost to a “halpbrother” [half-brother + ALP], or a pillerbox (66)? Will it be written “in lappish language… black looking white and white guarding black, in that siamixed twoa- talk [Siamese Twin talk or double talk] used twist stern [Laurence Sterne] swift [Jonathan Swift] and jolly roger?” (66), that is to say, ambiguous, unclear. Or, “Will it bright upon us nightle, and we plunging to our plight?” (66). But this paragraphs penchant for doubling (“Hyde and Cheek,” “stern/swift,” black/white & white/black, “Cox’s wife, twice Mrs. Hahn” and the “siamixed twoa”) seems to relate to the two brothers, Shem the Penman and Shaun the Post.

The group meeting ended midway down page 66 with the line, “The coffin, a triumph of the illusionist’s art…” I say the line, and not the paragraph, because the group discovered a peculiarity between publications of Finnegans Wake. That is, in most editions there is a paragraph break here, yet there is no such break in the 1999 Penguin Classics edition. Who’s story is correct? Which publication is correct? Does this change the story of HCE’s fall? Does this affect our line counts? What more will we learn more about ALPs letter? Join us at our next meeting to find out--Sunday, November 28, 4-6 at Starbucks!

Report from the September Meeting

Thanks to Chris Murphy for contributing the post! Don't forget our next meeting: October 24th, 4 to 6, the Starbucks at 4th and South -- see you there!

Beginning at the bottom of page 59 “See I crack, so, he sit in the poele…”

Continuing with themes from the last few sessions, p.59 through the bottom of p.60, we share the sentiment of the “perspirer” who knows “ho har twa to clect infamatios” (how hard it was to collect information), as we receive more information from passer-by types being asked to testify their accounts of HCE’s reputation, ranging from: “the skalot shame” it would be to “jailahim in lockup…with ehim being [a n]orphan and enjoining such wicked illith(health)” to exoneration, placing blame on “Them two bitches [who] ought to be leashed.” To a 17-year-old revivalist, the coincident (coincidence-incident) of “interfizzing” [interacting] “with grenadines (grenadiers) and other respectable and disgusted peersons using the park” is bad enough. “That perpendicular person is a brut! [as she insinuates HCE, in a perpendicular, erect, form |_|_| as a peering + person = peerson]. But a magnificent brut!" Each passers-by's testimony is suspect; of course there is drinking: grenadine, fizzing, brut. An unnamed “wouldbe martyr” also chimes in, but only after being “grilled” on the subject. Possible associations to fraudulent testimonies under electro-shock torture, as his grilling comes while he is “taught/thought” to wear bracelets” and is in discussion of “shadowers torrified" (terrified or tortured-fried) by “potent bolts of indradiction (Indra the Zeus-like Indian God or – lightning talk)."

We discussed how the chaos of the streets creates a need for an authoritative regulation of morality. Without fear of lightning (indradiction) “there would be fighting all over Cuxhaven.” And with no clear law recorded to punish HCE, Sylvia Silence, the girl detective, suggests “he should pay the full penalty…as pew Subsec. 32, section 11, of the C.L.A. Act 1885,” the law that sent Oscar Wilde to prison. Wilde’s figure epitomizes this regulation in terms of human sexuality. Wilde’s shadow, as we discussed, is present throughout pp.60-61. “We have meat two hourly,” which reminded the group of De Profundis “I have met too late or too soon,” the “C.L.A act of 1885,” “that sheew gweatness was his twadgedy,” written with an influx of Wilde letters that stand in for R’s. It seems, as Meagher notes, there is something more at work, a “siege of his trousers.” Keeping with interchanging letters signifying errors and shadowy signifiers, p.61 also features repetitions of q-p and p-q, pints and quarts, “Questa and Puella, piquant and quoite.” The mirroring of the expressions reminded the group of Issy looking in the mirror. And interestingly enough, Puella is Latin for girl – but if the p were to take its q mirror image, completes the Italian phrase questa and quella: this and that.

The bottom of p. 61 creates a shift in the text, in subject matter and in style. The collection of information, for now, “is now all seen heard [and] forgotten.” The language of the text shifts as well. We noticed that while the previous section focused on the pronouns “I” and “you,” (58-61) the bottom of p. 61 creates a shift that carries over through p. 63 to “we” and “us.” Who are the we and us in the shift? Well, they are we ourselves, us, along with our self-reflective text/narrative that reminds us, that “We seem…to be reading our Amenti [Book of the Dead] in the sixth sealed chapter,” FW being a book of the dead itself, is reminding us that chapter six, the Quiz Show, is still sealed, in that we haven’t read it yet, and while we think we may have answers, we do not yet know the questions.

The narration warns us, on pp.61-62 about the flaws of the testimonies given, being “fables” of “la[y]men and their counts” that may “beyessed [or] denayed…given to us by some who use the truth but sparingly…” and with their “proper sins” they will rise up against HCE as if he “as were he made a curse for them…” Lots of imagery to the seafaring on the top of p. 62 “the outraved gales of Atreeatic” the Adriatic Sea, “shipalone, a raven of the wave” possibly remembering the quest that brought HCE to Ireland or a journey that takes him elsewhere now.

This warning introduces us to the “premier terror of Errorland,” which we will now enter. In Errorland starts with what we perceive as an intentionally fabricated “transparingly nontrue” account of HCE's crime in the park told through a Lionel Hutz like-lawyer. This speaker concocts scenarios he is unsure of, yet seems to make up as he moves forward. The story is introduced that HCE “one tall man, humping a suspicious parcel” while walking home may have been attacked with a “revolver placed to his [face] with the words: you’re shot, major, by an unknowable assailant (masked)” who may have been jealous of the girls in the park. This is, of course, followed by a question mark, as though the speaker is working out the story himself as he speaks it. On p. 63 the story continues. The tall man can either be shot or have his face bashed in by this assailant for non-compliance. The speaker stutters “that that that” as he tries to move the possible story forward, and HCE is arrested by a town guard for being out after dark with a bottle of alcohol at Haveyou-caught-emerod’s temperance gateway.

End: page 63 “Haveyou-caught-emerod’s temperance gateway was there in a gate’s way.

October Meeting 10/24

My calendar gadget isn't working, so here's your announcement for the next meeting:

Sunday, October 24, from 4:00-6:00.

Starbucks at 4th and South in Philly.

Be there.

Report from the September meeting coming soon!

NEW VENUE and Notes from the August Meeting

PLEASE NOTE: We'll be meeting upstairs at Starbucks on 4th and South, across the street from Jim's Steaks. (I posed the question "coffee or beer?" to the group to help choose a place...I didn't think to make steaks an option, but perhaps hereafter...)

Pages Covered: 56-59 (Book I, Chapter 3)

We began at the bottom of page 56 noting differences in voices: a philosophical voice v. a narrative voice. This might be seen at the beginning of the last paragraph on page 56: "But in the pragma what formal cause made a smile of that to-think? Who was he to whom? (O'Breen's not his name nor the brown one his maid)" (ll. 31-33). As we've noted elsewhere, the parenthetical often serve to highlight a change in voice. This becomes pretty clear on pages 58-59, when the parenthetical voice starts speaking French and makes commentary on the main text (often slightly lewd).

The fallenness of HCE (Humphry Chimpden Earwicker, Here Comes Everybody, etc.), "the forefarther," and of all men was a focus for these several pages. As HCE's fall is told and retold, ALP (Anna Livia Plurabelle, his wife) is brought in, too: "Before he fell hill he filled heaven: a stream, alplapping streamlet, coyly coiled um, cool of her curls" (57.10-12). This is the vision of ALP as flirty young girl, not as the older troubled wife she becomes. This bringing together of HCE and ALP at the top of page 57 also includes the four old men who judge HCE's fallenness and will spy on HCE and ALP later. Here they appear as Armagh, Clonakilty, Deansgrange, and Barna.

As long as we're bringing in some of the main characters, the next two paragraphs have Shaun and Shem, the sons of HCE and ALP. Shaun is the professorial voice and Shem is the joker. So Shaun says, "Thus the unfacts did we possess them, are too imprecisely few to warrant our certitude..." (57. 16-17), commenting on the story of his own father, and the book as a whole. The reference to Lewis Carroll immediately before and after lead us to see how the whole thing is a sort of riddle--"sol slithe dodgsomely" (l.26)--and the Wake is very much indebted to Carroll's version of play and joke-making. Art might be "unfacts," but it lasts.

Of course, Joyce might also be alluding to Carroll's/Dodgson's predilections, with references to "exposure" (sexual? photographic? both?), the "nethermore" (Poe, there too, with "quoth the raven nevermore), the "tata of a tiny victorienne, Alys, pressed by his limper looser" (57.28-29). The riddle and the sin here are part of HCE's story, and the joker (Shem) and the professor (Shaun) are brought together in the figure of Carroll/Dodgson.

Page 58 continues the motif of sin, judgment, and fallenness. The top of the page offers references to Parnell, who fell from power due to his adulterous affair with Katherine O'Shea: "His Thing Mod have undone him: and his madthing has done him man...ulvy came, envy saw, ivy conquered" (ll. 1-2, 5-6). The trajectory of Parnell's fall -- "his muertification and uxpiration and dumnation and annuhulation" (8-9) -- echoes HCE's. The "jostling judgments" of the crowd, those who follow the "evidencegivers," is heard here, too: "Oho, oho, Mester Begge, you're about to be bagged in the bog again. Bugge...But, lo! lo! by the threnning gods, human, erring, and condonable" (16-19). The final trio of words there makes HCE, indicating he is the subject of the paragraph.

The end of page 58 and beginning of page 59 brings back theatrical motifs, which we've seen elsewhere (pages 32-33, 48-50). It seems Joyce uses these motifs to point to social performance, the performative nature of social rituals like trials, to masking and disguising, and here even to highlight the ways beauty can be cheapened: "a goddinpotty for the reinworms and charlattinas" (59.12).

Fascinated? Join us for our next meeting on September 26, Sunday, from 4 to 6!