25 August 2024

To Proceed

 

To Proceed (RFW 053.37–054.15)

The last ten pages of Chapter 3 of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake comprise an episode known as The Battery at the Gate―a retelling of HCE’s Crime in the Park, Original Sin, and Oedipal Encounter with the Cad. This short paragraph, which follows the description of HCE’s coffin, concludes the first of the three subsections into which the Battery may be divided: Diversified Outrages (RFW 049.30–054.15). As Bill Cadbury explains in How Joyce Wrote Finnegans Wake, Joyce drafted Diversified Outrages after the second subsection, Camelback Excesses, as an alternative to the latter, but in the end he decided to use both (Slote & Crispi 71–76).

First-Draft Version

The first draft of Diversified Outrages comprised one long continuous paragraph. The present paragraph began life as the last half-dozen lines or so:

The conscientious guard in the other case swore that Laddy Cumine, the butcher in the blouse, after having delivered some carcasses went & kicked at the door and when challenged on his oath by the imputed, said simply: ― I am on my oath, you did, as I stressed before. ― You are deeply mistaken, sir, let me tell you, denied McPartland. ―Hayman 73

The final version, which runs to eighteen lines in The Restored Finnegans Wake―twenty in the first edition―is only vaguely reminiscent of this brief courtroom exchange. In the earlier draft a guard―ie an Irish policeman, or member of An Gárda Síochána―gives evidence against Laddy Cumine. But in the final version Long Lally Tobkids is a special (ie a special constable) who swears like a Norwegian tailor while giving evidence against a queer sort of a man. In Finnegans Wake, HCE’s curate and manservant Sackerson (S) is often depicted as a constable or policeman, and on his first appearance he is described as both Comestipple and a quhare soort of a mahan (RFW 013.04–06). The Norwegian Captain is HCE, but Kersse the Tailor is the Oedipal Figure.

Adaline Glasheen is also unsure who is involved―her uncertainty is flagged by the leading asterisk:

  • Lally or Long Lally Tobkids (or Tomkins … )―is associated with the Four, save on p. 67 [RFW 053–054] where he is a policeman (see Sacksoun) and is both male and female. Lally references in Scribbledehobble [Connolly 16, 56, 82] suggest a male and a priest, but 67.12–13 [RFW 054.02–03] suggests a dissenting preacher. The use of the ablaut [a change of vowel] … suggests he-she is not distinct from Lily, who as Susanna is associated with the Four Elders. There is probably a simple solution to this “… contradicting all about Lally” [RFW 302.27]. ―Glasheen 158

 

Adaline Glasheen & Cyril Connolly

Meanwhile, McPartland has become MackPartland (the meatmam’s family, and the oldest in the world except nick, name). Earlier, the Cad was described as Meathman or Meccan? (RFW 041.35). Does this mean that MackPartland is the Cad? But FWEET gives the following gloss:

  • Irish: Mac Parthaláin, son of Bartholomew.

HCE is called Bartholomew Porter in III.4 (RFW 436.18). So, is MackPartland one of his sons? In Irish mythology Partholón was the first invader of Ireland after the Flood. His name was derived from the Latin Bartholomaeus, which was thought to mean son of he who stays the waters (Isidore of Seville, Etymologies 7:9).

This confusing blend of characters is one of the most frustrating things about Finnegans Wake. S seems to be giving evidence against himself and against the sons of HCE. But the stuttering in the final version is a sign of HCE’s guilt, so HCE is also giving evidence against himself.

Cumine is a genuine surname of Breton origin―other sources trace it to Irish Gaelic or Scottish Gaelic. In Ireland it took the form Comyn. In the 12th century John Comyn succeeded Dublin’s Patron Saint Laurence O’Toole as Archbishop of Dublin. Is Laddy Cumine a conflation of Larry O’Toole and John Comyn? The interchange of the letters L and R is common throughout Finnegans Wake (O’Hehir 392–393). Later in Finnegans Wake Shem & Shaun will be represented by Laurence O’Toole and his contemporary Thomas à Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

 

Tom King & Samuel Phelps

In the final version we also have the names Phillyps Captain and Phelps, which Glasheen glosses thus:

  • Phelps (or Phillips), Captain―his opponent is Tomkins. Thus may be included two Dublin actors, Phelps and Tom King; but the Philip and Tom are larger themes. See Lally. ―Glasheen 232

Thomas King and Samuel Phelps were English actors who appeared on the stage in Dublin. Joseph Campbell & Henry Morton Robinson interpret Phillyps as fill lips, implying that the accused had been completely drunk (Campbell & Robinson 75). This is supported by his hiccup (hickicked), as John Gordon notes 67.19.

Continuity with the previous paragraph―a description of HCE’s coffin―is provided by the allusions to the delivery of meat and carcasses by the butcher. Eastman’s Limited was a firm of victuallers (ie butchers) on South Great George’s Street. Note, however, the echo of the Mutt & Jute Episode, which is glossed by Campbell & Robinson:

 

South Great George’s Street

After delivering some _mutt_on chops and meat jutes on behalf of Messrs. Otto Sands and Eastman, Limerick, Victualers … ―Campbell & Robinson 75

In a footnote they add:

The Mutt and Jute episode was a greatly distorted dream variant of the archetypal Park encounter between HCE (Jute) and the Native Antagonist (Mutt). This antagonist is, variously, the Cad, the masked assailant, the policeman, and the ballad gentry. ―Campbell & Robinson 75 fn *

Remember that HCE’s fall is precipitated by the Oedipal Invader, who then becomes the new HCE, while the old HCE becomes his servant. Thus Mutt began as HCE but ended up as S, while Jute began as the Oedipal Figure but ended up as HCE. This is why they swop hats (RFW 013.11). To further complicate matters, the Oedipal Figure embodies both of HCE’s sons, who are referenced―as Cain & Abel―by the Biblical quote in the last line of this paragraph:

And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. (Genesis 4:5)

And Glasheen’s detection of the Four Old Men in this passage seems to be confirmed by Messrs Otto Sands and Eastman, Limericked, which conceals the four cardinal points of North, South, East and West (Limerick is in the west of Ireland). The Four, who embody space, are associated with these directions. They are also the judges at HCE’s trial.

Chemistry in Finnegans Wake

One curious addition Joyce made to this paragraph when he revised it was the following piece of chemistry:

  • We might leave that nitrience of oxagiants to take its free of the air and just analectralyse that very chymirical combination, the gasbag where the warder works. And try to pour somour heiteroscene up the almostfere. In the bottled heliose case … [RFW 053.37–40]

Joyce was never particularly interested in science, but he wrote Finnegans Wake against the backdrop of one of the most remarkable revolutions in the history of physics. Einstein’s groundbreaking theories of relativity were still in their infancy, and thinkers like Schrödinger, Heisenberg and Dirac were only beginning to uncover the secrets of the quantum world. In 1932, when Joyce was working on Book II of Finnegans Wake, an Irishman, Ernest Walton―in collaboration with his English colleague John Cockcroft―became the first person to artificially split the atom, confirming Einstein’s E=mc2.

An avant-garde work like Finnegans Wake could hardly ignore these developments. Joyce’s ambivalent attitude to science could be no bar. And that his attitude was ambivalent is clear from the following, which his brother Stanislaus wrote in his diary on 13 August 1904:

 

Stanislaus Joyce

It will be obvious that whatever method there is in Jim’s life is highly unscientific, yet in theory he approves only of the scientific method. About science he knows ‛damn all’, and if he has the same blood in him as I have he should dislike it. I call it a lack of vigilant reticence in him that he is ever-ready to admit the legitimacy of the scientist’s raids outside his frontiers. The word ‛scientific’ is always a word of praise in his mouth … Jim boasts―for he often boasts now―of being modern. ―Healey 53–34

In 1996 the linguist Harry Burrell wrote the definitive article on the subject of Chemistry and Physics in Finnegans Wake. Noting the decided lack of scientific texts in Joyce’s libraries, he surmised that the principal sources for the scientific elements in Finnegans Wake were The Encyclopædia Britannica and Joyce’s own memories of things he had learnt at school or in college. According to FWEET, however, the present passage draws on Henry Roscoe’s 1872 textbook Chemistry, which Joyce used about fifty times in the course of Finnegans Wake. This is supported by a number of notes he made in two of the Finnegans Wake notebooks, VI.B.45 and VI.B.15 (James Joyce Digital Archive).

 

Henry Roscoe

Burrell’s glosses on the passage quoted above are as follows:

067.07–8 “that nitrience of oxagiants to take its free of the air and just analectralyse” In the nitrogen fixation process of fertilizer manufacturing, air is passed through an electric arc causing the chemical combination of nitrogen and oxygen. Nitrous oxide and nitric oxide are the gases produced which could be kept in a “gasbag.”

067.08–9 “analectrolyse that very chymerical combination” This includes: analyse the chemical combination. Some analytical procedures involve electrolysis.

067.09–10 “pour somour heiterscene up thealmostfere” This sounds like: pour some more hydrogen up the atmosphere. Hydrogen, being lighter than air, has to be poured upward from one container to another, the receiving container being held up side down. Also hydrogen is lost from the earth’s atmosphere because the earth’s gravity can not retain it.

067.10 “bottled heliose” Helium is sold in steel bottles. ―Burrell 198–199

I assume Joyce added these elements because the case against HCE is just a lot of hot air. As John Gordon notes, the gasbag may also be a blimp.

 

The Military Airship La République over Paris (1908–09)

67.9: “gasbag:” blimp or dirigible, taking its “free of the air” (67.8). Given that they were lifted by hydrogen or helium, and that the latter shows up at 67.10 as “heliose,” I agree with C. George Sandeluscu in hearing “heiterscene,” on the next line, as echoing “hydrogen.” ―Gordon 67.9

And that’s as good a place as any to beach the bark of our tale.

 

A History of the City of Dublin

References

  • Harry Burrell, Chemistry and Physics in Finnegans Wake, Thomas F Staley (editor), Joyce Studies Annual, Volume 7, Pages 192–218, University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas (1996)
  • Joseph Campbell, Henry Morton Robinson, A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York (1944)
  • Thomas Edmund Connolly (editor), James Joyce’s Scribbledehobble: The Ur-Workbook for Finnegans Wake, Edited with Notes and an Introduction, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Illinois (1961)
  • Michael Faraday, A Course of Six Lectures on the Various Forces of Matter, and Their Relations to Each Other, Richard Griffin and Company, London (1860)
  • Adaline Glasheen, Third Census of Finnegans Wake, University of California Press, Berkeley, California (1977)
  • David Hayman, A First-Draft Version of Finnegans Wake, University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas (1963)
  • George H Healey, The Complete Dublin Diary of Stanislaus Joyce, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York (1971)
  • James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, The Viking Press, New York (1958, 1966)
  • James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Works, Pynch (editor), Online (2013)
  • Brendan O’Hehir, A Gaelic Lexicon for Finnegans Wake, and Glossary for Joyce’s Other Works, University of California Press, Berkeley, California (1967)
  • Danis Rose, John O’Hanlon, The Restored Finnegans Wake, Penguin Classics, London (2012)
  • Henry Roscoe, Chemistry, Macmillan and Co, London (1872)
  • John Warburton, James Whitelaw, Robert Walsh, A History of the City of Dublin, Volume 1, Volume 2, T Cadell & W Davies, London (1818)

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24 August 2024

Oxmanswold

 

Chambered Cairns at Knowth, County Meath (RFW 059.05–059.16)

The last ten pages of Chapter 3 of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake comprise an episode known as The Battery at the Gate, in which HCE suffers a sustained assault at the hands of an outsider. The final three paragraphs can be read as a short coda to this episode. HCE’s attacker has departed, leaving his hapless victim cowering alone in his hideout. But throughout this chapter HCE has been identified with his own attacker:

A striking feature of this chapter is its tendency to let the figure of the hero and his antagonists become merged. ―Campbell & Robinson 78

From this perspective, the departure of the latter in the direction of the deaf-&-dumb institute can be interpreted as HCE’s own death. His place of refuge is now his tomb. The gist of this paragraph, as FWEET puts it, is:

he is gone―until he awakes again

First-Draft Version

As we have seen, the final four paragraphs of this chapter were additions to the first draft, which concluded with the bullocky proceeding in the direction of the deaf-&-dumb institute. When an early draft of the chapter was published in the third issue of transition in June 1927, only the second and fourth of these paragraphs had been added. The former read as follows:

Yet he made leave to many a door beside of Finglas wold for so witness his chambered cairns silent that are at browse up hill and down coombe and on eolithostroton, at Howth or at Coolock or even at Enniskerry. Oliver’s lambs we do call them and they shall be gathered unto him, their herd and paladin, in that day hwen he skall wake from earthsleep in his valle of briers and o’er dun and dale the Wulverulverlord (protect us!) his mighty horn skall roll, orland, roll. ―Jolas & Paul 49–50

For the final version, Joyce added several more allusions to this early draft, while leaving the basic gist of the paragraph unchanged. The published version differs slightly from that in Restored Finnegans Wake. For the most part, Rose & O’Hanlon have reordered some of the clauses. The only significant difference between their version and the first edition is the omission of the words a cloudletlitter after chambered cairns.

 

The Death of Roland

Charlemagne’s Paladins

This paragraph contains a few allusions to Charlemagne’s Paladins or Twelve Peers, the leading members of the Holy Roman Emperor’s court. These allusions all belong to the first draft. Joyce never added to them:

Charlemagne was endowed with the good and bad qualities of the epic king, and as in the case of Agamemnon and Arthur, his exploits paled beside those of his chief warriors. These were not originally known as the twelve peers famous in later Carolingian romance. The twelve peers were in the first instance the companions in arms of Roland in the Teutonic sense. The idea of the paladins forming an association corresponding to the Arthurian Round Table first appears in the romance of Fierabras. The lists of them are very various, but all include the names of Roland and Oliver. The chief heroes who fought Charlemagne’s battles were Roland; Ganelon, afterwards the traitor; Turpin, the fighting archbishop of Reims; Duke Naimes of Bavaria, the wise counsellor who is always on the side of justice; Ogier the Dane, the hero of a whole series of romances; and Guillaume of Toulouse, the defender of Narbonne. ―The Encyclopædia Britannica (Eleventh Edition) 5:895

  • Oliver’s lambs Oliver (French: Olivier) was Roland’s closest friend. According to Le Chanson de Roland, he died fighting alongside Roland at Roncevaux. Oliver’s lambs was an ironic nickname for Oliver Cromwell’s troops, who ravaged Ireland in the 1650s.

 

Oliver Cromwell at the Siege of Drogheda

  • their herd and paladin the Twelve Peers (French: douze pairs) of Charlemagne were also known as the Paladins, a term believed to derive from Rome’s Palatine Hill. Our word palace is of the same etymology, so paladin originally meant of the palace, implying that one so-called was a prominent member of the royal court. Although the word was originally applied specifically to Charlemagne’s Twelve Peers, in time it became a general synonym for knight errant. Here, the word herd means shepherd or herdsman, referring back to Oliver’s lambs.

  • the Wulverulverlord (protect us!) Here, it is the wolf who protects us from the lambs.

    • Danish: ulv, wolf.
    • overlord

  • his mighty horn skall roll, orland, roll In Le Chanson de Roland, Roland commands the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army, which is retreating from Spain over the Pyrenees. In the Pass of Roncevaux the Saracen ambush the rear guard. Although he and his troops are in dire staits, Roland is too proud to raise the alarm by sounding his great horn Oliphant. Only when all hope has fled does he finally relent and wind his horn. In Italy, Roland is called Orlando. This form of his name is better known from the comic epics Orlando Innamorato_ and Orlando Furioso by Matteo Boiardo and Ludovico Ariosto.

    • Danish skal, shall.

    • Roll, Jordan, Roll is a Negro spiritual from America’s deep south.

    • Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean―roll! Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage 4:179

    • Toll! Roland, toll! Theodore Tilton, The Great Bell Roland. This poem celebrates the famous bell in Ghent, Belgium, which was alluded to earlier in this chapter (RFW 045.23).

 

Arthur’s Tomb: The Last Meeting of Lancelot and Guinevere

These Carolingian elements are complemented by a few Arthurian allusions:

  • hven, same the lightning lancer of Azava Arthurhonoured Gwenhwyfar or Guinevere, Lancelot and Arthur, the primary love-triangle of Arthurian legend. Another Arthur―Wellesley, later Duke of Wellington―clashed with French troops on the banks of the Azava river in Salamanca, Spain, during the Peninsular War (25 September 1811).

  • same the save the, meaning except for, were it not for.

  • lost leaders live! the heroes return! … he skall wake from earthsleep Arthur was Rex Quondam Futurusque Rex: The Once and Future King. According to legend, he was not dead but merely sleeping, and he would one day awaken when his horn is sounded. Similar legends are recounted in relation to many other heroes, including Finn MacCumhail, who is also present in this paragraph:

    • as nubilettes to cumule Cumhall was Finn’s father. The cloudy associations are in keeping with a common thread that has been running through this chapter: poor weather, leading to limited visibility.

    • some Finn, some Finn avaunt! Irish: Sinn Féin, Sinn Féin Amháin, Ourselves, Ourselves Alone, the political slogan of Irish Nationalists from which the Republican party took its name.

Loose Ends

Finally, let us tie up some loose ends.

  • Yed Volapük yed, yet. The last word of the preceding page was also borrowed from Johann Martin Schleyer’s constructed language Volapük: adyoe, adieu, goodbye. Schleyer was Catholic priest, who believed that God had instructed him to create an international language for the benefit of mankind.

  • Danish med liv, with life.

 

Oxmantown

  • Oxmanswold Oxmantown was the settlement from which Dublin’s Northside grew. After the Anglo-Normans conquered Dublin in 1171, the native Scandinavians―Ostmen, or East Men―were expelled from the city and forced to settle on the other side of the Liffey.

  • chambered cairns ancient burial monuments, consisting of a cairn―a pile of stones―enclosing a chamber. Ireland’s passage graves―eg Newgrange, Knowth, Dowth, Loughcrew, Carrowmore―are chambered cairns.

  • a theory none too rectiline of the evoluation of human society An allusion to the Viconian Cycle of human history.

  • the testament of the rocks Hugh Miller, The Testimony of the Rocks. Miller was a Scottish geologist, who believed that that the earth sciences could be reconciled with the Biblical account of Creation―the testament of the rocks and the Old Testament.

  • skatterlings Danish skatter, treasure : Archaic scatterling, vagrant.

  • a stone … as nubilettes to cumule … Greenman Rise O In Finnegans Wake Shem & Shaun are often depicted as stem (green tree) and stone, while their sister Issy is a cloud overhead. Rose & O’Hanlon’s emendations have restored the close connection between these three elements. In the first edition, the reference to the children’s game Green Man Rise-O was displaced by several lines.

    • Latin nubila, clouds, mists
    • cumulus a large, white, puffy type of cloud
    • O The Viconian Cycle again

And that’s as good a place as any to beach the bark of our tale.

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21 August 2024

Bully Acre

 

Bully’s Acre (RFW 059.01–059.04)

This short paragraph brings to an end the episode known as The Battery at the Gate, which takes up the last ten pages of Chapter 3 of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. In the preceding paragraphs HCE suffered an assault at the hands of a travelling salesman―or was it a reporter for a German newspaper?―who pegged a few stones at his tavern before slouching off in the direction of the deaf-and-dumb institutes in Cabra and Glasnevin. Is it significant that Glasnevin is also the site of Dublin’s largest cemetery? In Hosty’s Rann the dead were described as deaf and dumb:

And we’ll bury him down in Oxmanstown Along with the devil and Danes

(Chorus) With the deaf and dumb Danes, And all their remains. RFW 038.14–17

By the end of this chapter, HCE, who has been consistently identified in this chapter with his own attacker, will be dead. His chambered cairns are briefly described in the next paragraph, though his real burial will take place in the following chapter.

The final four paragraphs of this chapter were additions to the first draft, which concluded with the bullocky proceeding in the direction of the deaf & dumb institute. When an early draft of the chapter was published in transition in June 1927, only the second and fourth of these paragraphs had been written. The third paragraph was added in the early 1930s, when Joyce was preparing copy of Book I for the printers at Faber and Faber. The first paragraph, however, was a very late addition to the second set of galley proofs―dated to May 1938 by Rose & O’Hanlon.

The only alteration Joyce made to his first draft of this paragraph was the inclusion of the parenthetical clause if old Nestor Alexis would wink the worth for us. The meaning is fairly transparent: with the exit of the Bullocky, the Battery at the Gate and the siege of HCE’s refuge finally came to an end.

Sieges

Joyce has packed several historical sieges into this brief paragraph. Throughout the Battery at the Gate, HCE was besieged in a succession of refuges.

  • rochelly Michael William Balfe’s opera The Siege of Rochelle. This siege in 1627–28 forms the backdrop to Dumas’ novel The Three Musketeers. Balfe’s opera is based on another novel by Madame de Genlis. As John Gordon notes, the French: roche, rock is also relevant. HCE’s attacker was a pegger of stones.

 

Michael William Balfe

  • exetur exit, and Latin: exitus, exit, departure. In both English (medical) and Latin (figurative) exitus can also mean death. There is probably also an allusion to Exeter in Devon, which was besieged several times in its history:

    • 630 (approximately) by Penda of Mercia
    • 893 by the Danes
    • 1068 by William the Conqueror
    • 1549 during the Prayer Book Rebellion
    • 1643 by the Royalists during the English Civil War
    • 1645–46 by the Parliamentarians during the English Civil War

  • Bully Acre Bully’s Acre in Kilmainham is one of Dublin’s oldest cemeteries, possibly dating back to the 7th century. It was finally closed in 1832, when thousands of victim’s of that year’s cholera epidemic were buried there. There is also an allusion to the Palestinian city of Acre, which was besieged by the Crusaders in 1104 and by Napoleon in 1799. And, of course, Clontarf, the site in 1014 of one of Ireland’s bloodiest and most notable battles, takes its name from the Irish: cluain tarbh, bulls’ meadow. Finally, Bully Acre recalls the bullocky of the preceding paragraph.

  • stage the theatrical (and operatic) meaning is relevant.

  • siegings besiegings. German: siegen, to triumph. FWEET also glosses this as German: sie ging, she went, though I fail to see how this is relevant. Who is she? FWEET’s proceedings, however, does make sense.

  • recall rename. We would like to rename Dublin Bar-le-Duc and Dog-an-Doras and Bangen-op-Zoom.

  • old Nestor Alexis In Homer’s Iliad, Nestor, the King of Pylos, is the eldest of the Achaian leaders. The phrase old Nestor, occurs a number of times in the epic poem (eg 11:637). Nestor is also the second episode of Ulysses, in which Stephen teaches history to the boys, before discussing history with his elderly employer Mr Deasy. Nestor’s relevance here can only be his association with the Siege of Troy. Adaline Glasheen questions the allusion (Glasheen 205). I have no idea who Alexis refers to. In A Classical Lexicon to Finnegans Wake, Brendan O’Hehir glosses it as name of a shepherd in Virgil’s 2nd Eclogue, though I fail to see the relevance (O’Hehir 47). In Ancient Greek, the name means helper or defender.

  • wink the worth for us Wynkyn de Worde was an Alsatian-born printer and publisher, who worked with William Caxton in London. In Ulysses, Deasy (old Nestor) gets Stephen to arrange for the printing of his letter on foot-and-mouth disease in the Irish newspapers, in the hopes of getting the word out.

 

Bar-le-Duc in 1916

  • Bar-le-Duc A town in northeastern France. During the siege of Verdun (Battle of Verdun in 1916), Bar-le-Duc served as the staging area or assembly point for the besieged city’s essential supplies.

  • Dog-an-Doras Irish: deoch an dorais, parting drink (literally: the drink of the door). The wolf is at the door generally means that one is afflicted with hunger or poverty, which may be relevant here.

  • Bangen-op-Zoom Bergen-op-Zoom, a town in the Netherlands. It was frequently besieged. HCE’s besieger is banging on the door.

 

The Marketplace in Bergen-op-Zoom

Concerning the last three elements, John Gordon comments:

73.24–-5: “Bar-le-Duc and Dog-an-Doras and Bangen-op-Zoom:” I suggest that these three proposed names all contain elements adding up to: bar the door that someone is banging on. McHugh notes that Bar-le-Duc was the “staging area for the Battle of Verdun,” and the famous line coming out of that battle was “Ils ne passeront pas” [They shall not pass]. Medals and posters celebrating the battle sometimes show a French man or woman (Joan of Arc) blocking a door, gate, passageway, etc. ―Gordon 73.24–5

And that’s as good a place as any to beach the bark of our tale.

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19 July 2024

That more than considerably unpleasant bullocky

 

Harry Bullocky & the Claremont Institution (RFW 058.10–058.39)

The last ten pages of Chapter 3 of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake comprise an episode known as The Battery at the Gate. This paragraph recounts the end of the actual battery, as HCE’s attacker final departs the scene. In the original edition of 1939 there was no paragraph break before That more than …. Danis Rose & John O’Hanlon restored it for their revised edition of 2010.

The first draft of this passage consisted of just a single transparent sentence:

The bullocky finally rang off & left the scene after exhorting him to come out so that he cd burst him up, proceeding in the direction of the deaf & dumb institute. ―Hayman 74

After completing this initial draft, Joyce immediately went on to write what would become the opening paragraph of the following chapter. Initially, he did not envisage a change of chapter at this point. As we saw in an earlier article, the division of The Humphriad into three chapters of Finnegans Wake was largely the result of happenstance. Joyce was required to split this expansion of his sketch Here Comes Everybody into three installments for publication.

  • rang off In the last paragraph HCE’s refuge took the form of a telephone booth, and it seemed to be implied that the conflict between him and his attacker was taking place over the phone. Ran off is probably also intended.

 

St Mary’s School for Deaf and Dumb Females, Cabra

  • the deaf & dumb institute As HCE’s attacker departs, silence falls. This is probably the reason for the detail about the deaf-and-dumb institute. In Joyce’s day there were two deaf-and-dumb institutes in Dublin, one Protestant and one Catholic. The latter, St Mary’s School for Deaf and Dumb Females in Cabra, was run by the Dominican Sisters. We have just been told that the Dominican Mission was taking place (058.07), so this may be the institution indicated. In 1816 Charles Orpen founded the National Institution for the Deaf and Dumb at Claremont in Glasnevin. This was the country’s first school for deaf children. In the final version, Joyce replaced the first draft’s institute with institutions, so perhaps he meant both schools. For the record, Cabra and Glasnevin lie in the same direction from Chapelizod: northeast.

  • bullocky HCE’s attacker is not just a bully. As a pegger of stones, he also resembles a bowler in cricket. Harry Bullocky was an Australian Aboriginal cricketer―a batsman and wicket-keeper rather than a bowler. During the 1868 tour of England, when an Aboriginal team played 39 matches against local teams, Bullocky was mysteriously absent ill for the second innings of the two-day match against the Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord’s. It was rumoured that he had got drunk the night before and was unfit to play―a stigma he never lived down. Hence, when Joyce revised this passage, he added the word drunkishly. The final draft of this paragraph has a cluster of terms taken from cricket, one of Joyce’s favourite sports.

 

Australian Aborigines versus MCC

Australia

Another motif that runs through this paragraph is Australia, the hellish underworld of Finnegans Wake. Shem is associated with Australia, and Shaun with America. The Oedipal Figure embodies both brothers.

  • bullocky We have already met Harry Bullocky. In Australian-English a bullocky is a driver of a bullock team―a team of oxen pulling a wagon. There may also be an allusion to Shane Bullock, the Irish novelist who called Joyce a monster (Glasheen 44).

  • Australian-English: backblocks, land in the remote and sparsely-populated interior.

  • he had left Hyland on the dissenting table On leaving Ireland for Australia in 1856, where he would carve out a political career for himself, the Young Irelander Charles Gavan Duffy said: A change might come, but unless the existing condition of things alters, there is no more hope for Ireland than for a corpse on the dissecting-table. Joyce’s alteration of deaf and dumb to duff and demb echoes Duffy’s presence. Charles Hyland was the manager of Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre in the 1920s. His son, another Charles Hyland, was killed during the 1916 Easter Rising while assisting wounded soldiers. Roland McHugh’s Annotations also notes Ireland upon the Dissecting Table, a 1914 political tract by the Irish rebel and Labour activist James Connolly. Connolly was arguing against the proposed partition of Ireland.

 

Charles Gavan Duffy & James Connolly

  • moonshiny gorge Moonshine Gorge is in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. This is only in the earlier editions of the book. In The Restored Finnegans Wake Danis Rose & John O’Hanlon have replaced the word moonshiny with cloudletlitten.

Stutter

Throughout the Battery at the Gate―indeed, throughout the whole of this chapter―the identities of HCE and his attacker have been difficult to separate. HCE and the Cad are two sides of the same coin. This is confirmed once again in this paragraph by the stuttering of the attacker. In Finnegans Wake stuttering is a common symptom of HCE’s guilt. With his poor hearing (Earweaker) and his stutter, HCE is sort of deaf and dumb:

  • … exhorting Earwicker … to cocoa come outside …

  • be Cacao Campbell

But why is the stuttering in this paragraph associated with cocoa? Dr Tibbles’ Vi-Cocoa pops up a few times in Finnegans Wake. Perhaps its alleged restorative properties place it on the same level in the Wake as whiskey―uisce beatha, or water of life. Both are mythical potions that can raise the dead to life?

 

Moonshine Gorge, Australia

Music

The final lines of this paragraph contain a cluster of musical allusions, which continue into the following paragraph. These hark back to Hosty’s Rann, which brought the preceding chapter to a close:

  • the rage of Malbruk Malbrough s’en va-t-en guerre (Marlborough Goes to War), a popular 18th-century French folk song about the supposed death and burial of the First Duke of Marlborough (referred to as Malbrouk in some versions of the song). The song is quoted in Beethoven’s Wellington’s Victory, or the Battle of Vitoria, Ruggero Leoncavallo’s comic operetta Malbruk, and numerous other works. The plot of Malbruk is similar to that of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. Malbruk is the King of Lower Navarre. His nephew Renaldo, Captain of his Guard of Honour, has an affair with his wife Alba.

  • his manjester’s voice His Master’s Voice, the name of a record label created in 1901 by The Gramophone Company, a British recording company. Their logo, which depicts a dog listening to an oldfashioned phonograph, was based on Francis Barraud’s oil painting of his brother’s dog Nipper listening to a phonograph recording. The painting was also used as the trademark and logo of the Victor Talking Machine Company, later known as RCA Victor.

 

His Master’s Voice

  • fuguall fugal, pertaining to a fugue.

  • tropical a trope is a newly-composed piece of music inserted into pre-existing plainchant.

  • Opus Elf, Thortytoe Opus 11, Number 32 (German: elf, eleven). In music, a composer’s published composition are listed in terms of their opus numbers.

  • his bandol eer his solgier … toff a falladelfian in the morning Off to Philadelphia in the Morning: “With my bundle on my shoulder, There’s no one could be bolder, And I’m off to Philadelphia in the morning.” This stage-Irish song was originally written around 1873 by John Lundy but only became popular when it was revised in 1889 by Stephen Temple. The music was adapted by Battison Hayes from a traditional Irish melody. Philadelphia means brotherly love, which always carries overtones of the sibling rivalry of Shem & Shaun.

  • Bach The German composer Johann Sebastian Bach was famous for his mastery of the fugue.

And that’s as good a place as any to beach the bark of our tale.

References

  • Adaline Glasheen, Third Census of Finnegans Wake, University of California Press, Berkeley, California (1977)
  • David Hayman, A First-Draft Version of Finnegans Wake, University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas (1963)
  • James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, The Viking Press, New York (1958, 1966)
  • James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Works, Pynch (editor), Online (2013)
  • Danis Rose, John O’Hanlon, The Restored Finnegans Wake, Penguin Classics, London (2012)

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05 May 2024

Earwicker, that Patternmind, that Paradigmatic Ear

 

Earwicker, that Patternmind (RFW 056.38–058.09)

The last ten pages of Chapter 3 of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake comprise an episode known as The Battery at the Gate. In the previous two paragraphs HCE suffered a verbal assault at the hands of a travelling salesman, who began life as an Austrian called Herr Betreffender before morphing into an American. In this paragraph HCE compiles a list of all the abusive names he was called during the Battery.

First Draft

The first-draft version of this paragraph consisted of a single sentence:

Earwicker, longsuffering, compiled a long list of all the abusive names he was called but did not other wise reply because, as he afterwards explained, the dominican mission was on at the time & he thought that might reform him. ―Hayman 74

The main difference between this early draft and the final published version is the inclusion of HCE’s long list―part of it, at any rate―of abusive names. Other than that, Joyce added little that is new, though he did elaborate everything in the first draft after his usual practice.

Danis Rose & John O’Hanlon have also restored a paragraph break after Gonn, which is not in the first edition. In the original edition this paragraph begins and ends in the middle of a long paragraph, so Rose & O’Hanlon have actually restored two paragraph breaks.

 

St Dominic de Guzmán

The Dominican Mission

What is the significance of the Dominican mission? Does HCE hope that the Dominicans will reform Herr Betreffender? The final version refers to the Romish devotion known as the Holy Rosary. St Dominic de Guzmán, the founder of the Dominican Order or Order of Preachers, is said to have introduced the Holy Rosary to the Catholic Church after being miraculously visited by the Virgin Mary in 1214. HCE is a Protestant―he is even called a fundamentalist―which is why he refers to the Rosary as Romish. Like papish or popish, this term is generally used by Protestants to refer to the Catholic Church in a derogatory sense.

Blackfriars was mentioned on the opening page of this chapter. In England the Dominicans are popularly known as the Black Friars.

Giordano Bruno―with Giambattista Vico and Dante Alighieri, one of the three Patron Saints of Finnegans Wake―was a Dominican friar. He later abandoned the order and embraced Calvinism. The Roman Inquisition, which subsequently condemned him of heresy and had him burnt at the stake in Rome, was recruited from the Dominican Order. (The Spanish Inquisition, which was also Dominican, is mentioned in the quotation taken from Edward Creasy below.)

Missionary work plays a prominent role in the affairs of the Order. St Dominic himself led a mission to convert the Manichaean Albigenses or Cathars of Languedoc. He took no part in the subsequent Crusade against them, though he supported the campaign. The Dominican Mission HCE refers to is being held for the Socialist Party. This is a curious combination, as socialism is often associated with atheism. Six lines above, there is even an allusion to anarchism, which is also often associated with atheism.

 

The Duke of Marlborough Signing the Despatch at Blenheim

Joyce’s source for the word Romish was Edward Creasy’s The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World (1915). Referring to the Battle of Blenheim, in which John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, led the Grand Alliance to victory over Louis XIV’s French and Bavarian forces. Creasy quotes from Archibald Alison’s biography of Churchill, The Military Life of John, Duke of Marlborough (1848):

‛The Protestants might have been driven, like the Pagan heathens of old by the son of Pepin, beyond the Elbe; the Stuart race, and with them Romish ascendancy, might have been reestablished in England; the fire lighted by Latimer and Ridley might have been extinguished in blood; and the energy breathed by religious freedom into the Anglo-Saxon race might have expired. The destinies of the world would have been changed. Europe, instead of a variety of independent states, whose mutual hostility kept alive courage, while their national rivalry stimulated talent, would have sunk into the slumber attendant on universal dominion. The colonial empire of England would have withered away and perished, as that of Spain has done in the grasp of the Inquisition. The Anglo-Saxon race would have been arrested in its mission to overspread the earth and subdue it. The centralized despotism of the Roman empire would have been renewed on continental Europe; the chains of Romish tyranny, and with them the general infidelity of France before the Revolution, would have extinguished or perverted thought in the British islands.’ ―Creasy 304 : Alison 367

The spellings rowmish and rowsary are probably due to the row between HCE and Herr Betreffender.

The List

The initial draft of this passage did not include HCE’s list of abusive names, and when the list made its first parenthetical appearance in the second draft, it had only a few items:

(informer, old fruit, yellow whigger, wheatears, goldygoat, bogside beauty, muddle the plan, mister fatmeat) ―James Joyce Digital Archive

Joyce’s drafts are notoriously difficult to decipher, which may explain why David Hayman’s initial draft of the list differs from that of Rose & O’Hanlon on the JJDA:

(informer, old fruit, funnyface, yellow whig, Bogsides, muddle, plander) ―Hayman 74

Or perhaps these are two different drafts. Whatever the truth, both are dwarfed by the final list, which has over one hundred items. In their Chicken Guide to Finnegans Wake Rose & O’Hanlon count 111 items:

A list of one hundred and eleven abusive names is cited on pages [RFW] 57–8. ―JJDA, Chicken Guide Note 84

William Tindall also counted 111 (Tindall 78). There are a few reasons why 111 is a significant number in Finnegans Wake:

  • HCE and ALP have three children. In Roman numerals three is III, which resembles 111.

  • In Greek numerals: A (alpha) = 1 : Λ (lambda) = 30 : Π (pi) = 80. Therefore ALP = 111.

 

transition (Jolas & Paul 48)

When an early draft of this chapter appeared in transition in 1927, there were only fifty-odd items in the list. Are there actually 111 names in the final list? The items are separated by commas, but some commas appear to be internal (ie intrinsic members of an item), so counting is not a trivial task. I count 114 items. Other Joyceans have come up with different numbers. Alfred G Engstrom, for example, counted 120 (Daniel 66). Joseph Campbell & Henry Morton Robinson counted 113 in their Skeleton Key (Campbell & Robinson 77).

Two items in the list are blank. One of these is represented by two em dashes, as though a two-word abusive title has been suppressed. The other is represented by a single em dash. There is also a three-word title with the first word He followed by two em dashes. If these three are omitted, the tally comes to 111.

To confuse matters, there are discrepancies between transition, the first edition of 1939 and Rose & O’Hanlon’s restored edition of 2010. In the 1939 edition the first of the two blanks items consists of a single em dash, and this is followed by an apostrophe, not a comma (but this is probably a typo). The second blank item is missing altogether.

Finally, there is Joyce’s poor eyesight to take into account. It is quite possible that he wanted there to be precisely 111 items in the list, even if in fact there aren’t.

The Museyroom Again

The Battery at the Gate is another retelling of the Wake’s Oedipal Event, in which HCE is confronted by a younger adversary. The Museyroom episode in the opening chapter was the first extended version of this important engagement. It is by design, then, that the present paragraph contains a few echoes that hark back to the Museyroom:

  • lacies in loo water, flee, celestials, one clean turv Not only do we have here an allusion to Waterloo, which was reenacted in the Museyroom episode, but also an echo of the Museyroom’s: Penetrators are permitted into the museomound free. Welsh and the Paddy Patkinses, one shelenk. Celestials is a slang term for the occupants of the gallery in a theatre or opera house. Another reenactment of Waterloo took place in the Gaiety Theatre on South King Street, where HCE attended a performance of W G Wills’ A Royal Divorce (RFW 026.01 ff).

 

The Battle of Inkerman

The Museyroom episode foreshadows the Wake’s most sustained reenactment of the Oedipal Event: How Buckley Shot the Russian General, which is set during the Crimean War and involves the strategic use of one clean turv. So here we also have an allusion to that military engagement:

  • the collision known as Contrastations with Inkermann The Battle of Inkerman was fought in the fog near Sevastopol on 5 November 1854. It was mentioned on the opening page of this chapter. There is also an obvious allusion here to Johann Peter Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe, though the relevance of this work escapes me.

  • clean turv also alludes to Clontarf, the scene of another famous battle that figures prominently in Finnegans Wake. In the Buckley anecdote the Russian General cleans his arse with a sod of turf―the final insult to the Ould Sod, which causes Buckley to shoot him.

Telephone Booth

In the previous chapter an account of HCE’s Oedipal Encounter in the Park with the Cad underwent a series of transformations as it was passed from gossip to gossip. This process has been compared to the children’s game of Chinese Whispers, or Telephone. In this chapter HCE’s refuge from his attacker also undergoes a bewildering series of metamorphoses:

  • the southeast bluffs of the stranger stepshore, a regifugium persecutorum ―RFW 041.40 f

  • The seventh city, Urovivla, his citadear of refuge, whither … the hejirite had fled ―RFW 049.37 ff

  • The coffin, a triumph of the illusionist’s art … had been removed from the hardware premises of Oetzmann and Nephew ―RFW 053.24 ff

  • A stonehinged gate there was for another thing while the suroptimist had bought and enlarged that shack … he put an applegate on the place … and just thenabouts the iron gape … was triplepatlockt on him on purpose by his faithful poorters to keep him inside probably ―RFW 055.28 ff

  • Humphrey’s unsolicited ad hock visitor … after having blew some quaker’s (for you, Oates!) in through the houseking’s keyhole ―RFW 056.19 ff. The King’s House was a stately edifice in Chapelizod, in which King William III stayed after the Battle of the Boyne.

  • Earwicker … longsuffering, although whitening under restraint in the sititout corner of his conservatory behind faminebuilt walls ―RFW 056.38 ff

  • it was as easy … in the booth he was in to reach for the hello gripes and ring up Kimmage Outer 17.67 ―RFW 058.03 ff

  • in the siegings round our archicitadel ―RFW 059.02

  • his chambered cairns ―RFW 059.06

 

1920’s Telephone Booth on Dawson Street

In this paragraph HCE’s refuge begins as the corner of a conservatory behind famine walls―useless walls built as work-relief schemes during the Great Famine, because the Victorians thought that even starving people should work for their food. By the end of the paragraph, however, HCE seems to be in a telephone booth. It is as though Herr Betreffender is insulting him over the line. And when HCE is shocked into speech we are presumably talking about an electric shock from the telephone.

Kimmage Outer 17.67 is generally glossed as the local telephone exchange followed by the phone number. Sherdan Le Fanu’s novel The House by the Churchyard begins with A.D. 1767. Like Finnegans Wake, The House by the Churchyard is set in Chapelizod, and is a key work for the proper understanding of Joyce’s novel. One of Joyce’s notes reads:

He called up Crumlin Exchange ―VI.B.11:144a

An early draft of this passage has call up Crumlin exchange (Hayman 74). Kimmage and Crumlin are neighbouring suburbs of Dublin. It is possible that this Crumlin Exchange refers to another Crumlin in County Antrim. I have no idea what Joyce’s source for this note was or what the significance is of either Kimmage or Crumlin.

 

Coffin Bell and Safety Coffin

In an earlier article―Chest Cee!―I suggested that the zimzim motif, which is usually associated with the Magazine Wall in the Phoenix Park, might be a reference to a safety coffin. This was a coffin fitted with some sort of bell or telephone to allow the occupant to communicate with the living in case they have been buried alive and have subsequently risen from the dead. Note that HCE’s list of abusive names includes one that seems to allude to vampires (immediately after one that calls him a Lycanthrope, or werewolf):

Flunkey Beadle Vamps the Tune Letting on He’s Loney ―RFW 057.25

Loose Ends

It would take too long to go through all the abusive names in HCE’s list, so I will conclude with just a few outstanding items:

  • that paradigmatic ear, receptoretentive as his of Dionysius The Ear of Dionysius was an artificial limestone cave near Syracuse, Sicily. The cave was given its name in 1608 by the painter Caravaggio. Dionysius I was a Greek tyrant who ruled Syracuse in the early 4th century BCE. According to legend, he had the cave constructed as a prison for political dissidents. The cave’s perfect acoustics allowed him to eavesdrop on his captives through an opening at the top. This legend is now widely discredited.

 

The Ear of Dionysius

  • the rejoicement of foinne ladies ind the humours of Milltown In this paragraph Joyce continues to mine Charles Villiers Stanford’s Complete Collection of Irish Music as Noted by George Petrie. FWEET lists a further eighteen traditional tunes to add to the twelve we have already had. Of these, all but the first two―The Rejoicement of the Fian Ladies and The Humours of Milltown―occur in HCE’s list of abusive titles. Milltown is a town in County Clare, but there is also an allusion to John Milton, whose Paradise Lost is hidden in the parenthesis above: now feared in part lost. In passing, I might mention that Joyce also dropped three final items from Downing’s Digger Dialects into this paragraph. There will be more of these before we reach the end of Finnegans Wake, but the next does not appear until I.6.11 (Question 11 in The Quiz).

  • Gonn In transition this was spelt Gunn. The manager of Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre Michael Gunn, puts in several appearances in Finnegans Wake:

Gunn, as producer of the pantomime that is human history, is a role of HCE’s. ―Glasheen 112

 

Michael Gunn & The Gaiety Theatre

And that’s as good a place as any to beach the bark of our tale.

References

  • Archibald Alison, The Military Life of John, Duke of Marlborough, Harper & Brothers, New York (1848)
  • Joseph Campbell, Henry Morton Robinson, A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York (1944)
  • Edward Creasy, The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World: From Marathon to Waterloo, Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, London (1915)
  • Alfred G Engstrom, A Few Comparisons and Contrasts in The Wordcraft of Rabelais and James Joyce, George Bernard Daniel (editor), Renaissance and Other Studies in Honor of William Leon Wiley, The University of North Carolina Press (2017)
  • Adaline Glasheen, Third Census of Finnegans Wake, University of California Press, Berkeley, California (1977)
  • David Hayman, A First-Draft Version of Finnegans Wake, University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas (1963)
  • James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, The Viking Press, New York (1958, 1966)
  • James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Works, Pynch (editor), Online (2013)
  • Danis Rose, John O’Hanlon, The Restored Finnegans Wake, Penguin Classics, London (2012)
  • William York Tindall, A Reader’s Guide to Finnegans Wake, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York (1969)

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25 April 2024

Humphrey's Unsolicited Ad Hock Visitor

 

O, By the By (RFW 056.19–056.37)

The last ten pages of Chapter 3 of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake comprise an episode known as The Battery at the Gate. The third and final section of the Battery, Herr Betreffender (RFW 055.01–059.28), is yet another account of the Oedipal Event. In the previous paragraph HCE suffered an assault at the hands of an Austrian salesman, who was spending his summer holidays as a guest in HCE’s inn. Believing that the landlord has relieved him of a sum of money and rifled the pockets of his overcoat, he proceeded to batter on HCE’s gate and demand retribution. In the present paragraph this individual has unexpectedly morphed into an American, but continues to press home his attack at the gate of HCE’s establishment.

In the first edition of Finnegans Wake (1939), this metamorphosis takes place abruptly in the middle of a paragraph, but in The Restored Finnegans Wake (2010) Danis Rose & John O’Hanlon have reinstated a paragraph break between the Austrian and American incarnations of HCE’s attacker. This paragraph break was introduced by Joyce at draft-level 8 but disappeared when the book was being typeset.

First-Draft Version

The first draft of this passage followed the previous section without a break and consisted of just two sentences:

Humphrey’s unsolicited visitor said through the gate first that he would break his head next that he would then break the gate over his head and finally give him his (Humphrey’s) blood to drink. He kept abusing him from ten thirty till one in the afternoon without a lunch interval. ―Hayman

Bock

In expanding this to half a page, Joyce not only Americanized HCE’s assailant but also elaborated the food-and-drink motif that was already present in the first draft. The second draft altered the second sentence to read:

He demanded drink and kept abusing him …

In the real world of Finnegans Wake―insofar as there is a real world in Finnegans Wake―it is possible that the whole incident of the Battery at the Gate is simply a dreamlike episode conjured up in the mind of the sleeping landlord of the Mullingar House by the noise of a late-night reveller, who has arrived at the pub after closing time and is battering on the door, demanding drink. This would account for the prominence given to food and drink in the final version of this paragraph.

  • bockstump German: Bock, a dark German lager : French: bock, glass of beer : a beer glass. Bock is the German for ram, which may account for bleated two lines below.

  • some quaker’s (for you! Oates!) Quaker Oats, an American company famous for its oatmeal or porridge. Titus Oates was an English Anglican priest who fabricated the Popish Plot in 1678, alleging that several prominent Catholics were conspiring to assassinate Charles II. Among those named was Peter Talbot, Archbishop of Dublin. Titus was also the nickname of Lawrence Oates, who accompanied Robert Scott to the South Pole in 1912. He famously walked out of the tent in a blizzard, saying: I am just going outside and may be some time. He was never seen again. The Irish Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton was a Quaker.

 

Titus Oates & Quaker Oats

  • heeltapper a heeltap is a small amount of drink (especially alcoholic) remaining at the bottom of a glass.

  • stirabouter In Ireland porridge was once popularly known as stirabout, though the term is rarely heard nowadays. Joyce used it in this sense in The Dead. The Oxford English Dictionary describes the word as Originally Anglo-Irish. The word also means a bustling person.

  • thickerthanwater (Proverbial) Blood is thicker than water, meaning that familial ties are stronger than other relationships, such as those between friends or colleagues. The Blood of Christ is drunk during the Catholic Mass, an example of the Mastication of the Host, an important leitmotif in Finnegans Wake.

  • steppebrodhar Danish: brød, bread. Coming immediately after the reference to blood, this bread is clearly the Body of Christ. For the other elements in this word see below.

  • wood alcohol Methanol or methyl alcohol. This is highly toxic (taxis) to humans, and even small amounts can cause permanent blindness, so it can hardly be described as a drink. But alcohol generally refers to the closely related chemical ethanol, which is the active ingredient in potable alcohol.

  • his isbar HCE’s stuttering attempt at his bar. Also Russian: izba, cottage : Polish (archaic): izba, room. In Finnegans Wake stuttering is a sign of guilt.

  • public a pub or public house. Joyce referred to Chapter II.3 as The Scene in the Public.

  • oven

  • sake Japanese: sake [酒], alcoholic beverage : rice wine. It is traditionally served in a rectangular wooden vessel called a masu.

  • irsk irskusky Irish whiskey : Irish: uisce, water. More stuttering.

  • luncheonette a small diner that serves lunch

 

Japanese Sake

Shem & Shaun

The Battery at the Gate is another telling of the Oedipal Event, in which HCE is confronted by a younger man embodying his two sons, Shem & Shaun. John Gordon is probably right, then, when he detects traces of HCE’s sons in Herr Betreffender. As I have pointed out before, Shem is often associated with Australia and Shaun with America. Australia is a hot and hellish underworld, an appropriate place for the diabolical Shem : America is the Promised Land, making it a suitable abode for the angelic Shaun. If we take Austria [Eastern] as a dream-distortion of Australia [Southern], then we can begin to see why Herr Betreffender’s nationality changes during this episode. He embodies both sons.

Gordon also believes that the door of the master bedroom in the Mullingar House is the focal point of Shem & Shaun’s Oedipal threat to their father. While HCE and ALP are locked in sexual congress―conceiving Issy?―the two brothers are at the door trying to spy on them and figure out just what it is that mummies and daddies do behind closed doors. Shaun, whose eyesight is good, is peering through the keyhole : Shem, whose hearing is good, is listening at the door.

Shem & Shaun are the quintessential sibling rivals. As such they are often played in Finnegans Wake by a mythical or historical pair of warring twins: Romulus & Remus, Cain & Abel, Jacob & Esau. Sometimes they appear as rivals who were not actually brothers, but closely related in some other fashion: Brutus & Cassius, for instance.

In this paragraph we have an example of each: Attila & Bleda : Brian Boru & Brodir:

his bleday steppebrodhar … his atillarery

 

The Death of Attila

Attila the Hun needs no introduction. In the 5th century this warlord from the steppes of Central Asia led the Huns into Europe and threatened to conquer Roman Gaul, before being halted at the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields in 451. The latter, you may recall, was alluded to on the opening page of Finnegans Wake (oystrygods gaggin fishygods, referring to the fact that in the battle the Ostrogoths sided with Attila and the Visigoths with Rome). Attila and his elder brother Bleda succeeded their uncle Rugila and ruled jointly over the Huns from 435 until the death of Bleda in 445. By all accounts there was no love lost between the two. It is alleged that Attila killed Bleda after Bleda tried to kill him. Attila, himself, is said to have died on his wedding night after a day of excessive drinking, so he is quite at home in the pages of Finnegans Wake.

Brodir was the name of a Norse warlord who took part in the Battle of Clontarf, outside Dublin, in 1014. This battle was the culmination of a revolt against Brian Boru, High King of Ireland, by Máel Mórda mac Murchada, King Leinster, and Sitric Silkenbeard, King of Dublin. According to tradition, Brodir and Brian met on the battlefield and died at each other’s hands. By a happy coincidence, Brodir had a brother, Ospak of Man, who fought on Brian’s side at Clontarf.

Note that the Oedipal Figure can also be recognized as HCE himself, who is, as usual, his own worst enemy. This is indicated explicitly by the description of the visitor as a hikely excellent crude man, which encodes the familiar HCE initialism. At the end of this paragraph we have further confirmation of this close relationship between offender and defender:

House, son of Clod, to come out, you jewbeggar, to be Executed.

Music Again

Like the preceding paragraph, this one contains a cluster of allusions to Irish songs taken from Charles Villiers Stanford’s Complete Collection of Irish Music as Noted by George Petrie. FWEET identifies seven titles:

  • clan march Ancient Clan March

  • a hikely excellent crude man about road The highly excellent good man of Tipperoughny

  • his Bullfoost Mountains The Belfast Mountain

  • a starling bierd Alas, that I’m not a little starling bird

  • a long dance Long Dance

  • Cloudy Green Adieu ye young men of Claudy green. Claudy or Clady is a village in County Derry.

  • the tairor of his clothes The taylor of the cloth

Finally, two honorary mentions:

  • the houseking’s … crack a nut E T A Hoffmann’s Christmas tale The Nutcracker and the Mouse King was famously set to music by Tchaikovsky as his ballet The Nutcracker.

  • his granfather’s My Grandfather’s Clock, a popular American song by Henry Clay Work.

 

Charles Villiers Stanford & George Petrie

Buckley & Kersse

In Chapter II.3, The Scene in the Public, two epic reenactments of the Oedipal Event will take place:

  • How Kersse the Tailor Made a Suit of Clothes for the Norwegian Captain

  • How Buckley Shot the Russian General

Both of these are very briefly foreshadowed in the present paragraph:

a burgley’s … the tairor of his clothes … the hirsuiter

Although the assassination of the Russian General during the Crimean War is not specifically mentioned here, we do have the following allusion to Russian politics:

… he would break his bulsheywigger’s head for him …

  • bulsheywigger’s Bolshevik’s

Davy or Titus

In this paragraph HCE’s visitor is identified as Davy or Titus. Who do these names refer to?

FWEET suggests that Davy is Humphry Davy, the English chemist who invented the Davy lamp. This Davy is mentioned immediately after Humphrey’s, so who knows? But Adaline Glasheen notes that David, by way of the Welsh St David, becomes Taff (Glasheen 44, 69). Butt & Taff are the two soldiers who reenact How Buckley Shot the Russian General in the Crimea. In the same line as Davy we have a clear allusion to Buckley (burgley’s), so this seems more likely than Humphry Davy.

 

Titus & Domitian

Glasheen also suggests that Titus refers to the eponymous hero of Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare’s melodramatic drama. This play features cannibalism, which could feed into the food-and-drink theme in this paragraph. Titus Oates also includes a foody element in his surname.

FWEET once again disagrees, suggesting that Titus refers to the Roman Emperor (the umperon’s) Titus Vespasianus. The latter had a younger brother, Domitian, who succeeded him. There is no evidence that the brothers ever quarrelled or threatened their father Vespasian. But Domitian was embarrassed enough by his baldness to wear a wig (busheywigger’s).

Closing Time

The original draft of this paragraph already included a timestamp:

He kept abusing him from ten thirty till one in the afternoon without a lunch interval.

This supports the hypothesis that someone is banging on the door of the Mullingar House after closing time. According to the Intoxicating Liquor (General) Act, 1924, the closing time on weekdays was 10 o’clock. In the final version, HCE’s attacker claims that the clock is fast―a common practice in Irish pubs―and that it is just gone 10 o’clock:

alleging that his grandfather’s was all taxis and that it was only after ten o’connell

  • grandfather’s My Grandfather’s Clock

  • taxis Ancient Greek: ταχύς (tachýs), fast. Compare this with the Cad Encounter, where the Cad complains that his watch is bradys: Ancient Greek: βραδύς (bradús), slow (RFW 028.16).

  • o’connell O’Connell’s Dublin Ale, brewed by The Phoenix Brewery in James’s Street, Dublin. The brewery was once owned by Daniel O’Connell, son of the Liberator. It is not to be confused with the Phoenix Park Distillery in Chapelizod, where Joyce’s father worked for a time.

 

The Phoenix Brewery, Dublin

In the final version Joyce has also altered the times between which HCE’s attacker berates him:

and went on at a wicked rate, weathering against him in mooxed metaphores from eleven thirty to two

Here we have the familiar 1132, which symbolizes the Fall and Resurrection of Man in Finnegans Wake.

  • mooxed metaphores Not only mixed metaphors (French: métaphores, metaphors) but also an allusion to yet another version of the Oedipal Event: Shaun’s parable of The Mookse and the Gripes in I.6, The Quiz. The matching gripes is at RFW 058.05.

And that’s as good a place as any to beach the bark of our tale.

References

Image Credits

  • Cave Hill, Belfast Mountains: © Donna (photographer), Creative Commons License
  • Attila the Hun: Louvre Museum, Paris, Public Domain
  • Bock: Calvert Lithographing Company, Detroit, Michigan : Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Washington, DC (1882), Public Domain
  • Titus Oates: Godfrey Kneller (artist), University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England, Public Domain
  • Quaker Oats: Miami University Library, Digital Collections, Public Domain
  • Japanese Sake: The Epopt (photographer), Public Domain
  • The Death of Attila: J. Villeclère (artist), Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nice, Nice, France, Public Domain
  • Charles Villiers Stanford: Alexander Bassano (photographer), National Portrait Gallery, London, Public Domain
  • George Petrie: The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Volume 46 (Consecutive Series), Plate V, Dublin (1917), Public Domain
  • Titus: Daderot (photographer), Galleria Borghese, Rome, Public Domain
  • Domitian: Castro Pretorio (photographer), National Archaeological Museum, Naples, Public Domain
  • The Phoenix Brewery, Dublin: Alfred Barnard, The Noted Breweries of Great Britain and Ireland, Volume 3, Page 68, Sir Joseph Causton & Sons, London (1890), Public Domain

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