An Overview of the First Four Paragraphs

The Mullingar House, Chapelizod

Let us take a closer look—not too close, mind you—at the first four paragraphs of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Here they are again, for those of you who are interested:

Riverrun: RFW 003.01–004.08

Thornton Wilder, one of the pioneers of Wakean research, once described these paragraphs as the most befarced in the book (Burns et al). There is so much information packed into these few lines that it is going to take me a few articles to get through it all. This may seem perverse after what I said earlier about squeezing every drop of meaning out of every word of Joyce’s text, but an exception is warranted in this case. You simply cannot be overfamiliar with these four paragraphs:

The fact is, however, that these opening paragraphs are choked with nutrient materials of sense and sustenance. The themes here darkly announced are developed later with such organic inevitability that the reader, having finished the book, gazes back with amazement at the prophetic content and germinal energy of the first page. (Campbell & Robinson 24)

Four things therefore

If you stand back and ignore the details for a moment, you will see that the first four paragraphs of Finnegans Wake answer four simple questions about the book as a whole:

Where are we? (Composition of Place—Ignatius Loyola, make haste to help me!)
When are we? (Composition of Time)
What is the subject of our story?
How does that story unfold?

Who? and Why? will have to wait their turn—but trust me, they’re coming.

Where are we at all?

Read the first paragraph again, and as you do so ask yourself: Where are we?

river ... Eve and Adam’s ... shore ... bay ... Howth Castle

Even before we start to delve any deeper, many readers—especially Joyce’s compatriots—will recognize some familiar landmarks.

The River Liffey, which flows past Adam and Eve’s Church in Dublin:

The River Liffey Runs Past Adam and Eve’s Church

The swerving shoreline of Dublin Bay:

From Swerve of Shore to Bend of Bay

And Howth Castle sitting on the other side of the bay:

Howth Castle

Question: Where are we?

Answer: We are in Dublin.

And whenabouts in the name of space?

Now read the second paragraph, and this time ask yourself: When are we?

had passencore ... nor had ... nor ... not yet ... not yet ... Rot a peck ... rory ...

This paragraph comprises seven statements. Four of them clearly tell us that certain things have not yet happened. If you know some French, you may also realize that passencore conceals a French translation of not yet: pas encore. It is also not too hard to see Rot a peck as a transformation of Not a peck. Tying rory into this temporal nexus is not so easy, but there is an English expression nary, which means not a or not any. (In fact, Joyce is shortly going to use this very expression in a sentence that seems to echo the one we are presently studying: RFW 010.08.) So we have seven statements each of which is of a temporal nature. Seven significant events in Finnegans Wake have not yet happened.

Question: Where are we?

Answer: We are back at the beginning again.

What?

Now reread the third paragraph, and this time ask yourself: What is Finnegans Wake about?

The fall ... is retaled ... of ... Finnegan

The fall of man: there is our story. But there are two sides to every story: there cannot be a fall where there was not previously a rise. Finnegans Wake will concern itself endlessly with the rise and fall of Everyman. This cyclic pattern has been repeating itself throughout history and can be discerned not only in the lives of individuals but also in the rise and fall of nations and empires. This is what Joyce meant when he said that he was going to write a history of the world and tell the story of a Chapelizod family (Ellmann 537, 554). To Joyce there was no real difference between the two: the history of the world is the story of the family writ large.

In 1666, when Isaac Newton was sitting in his mother’s orchard in Lincolnshire, he beheld the Moon in the sky and wondered what strange force was holding it up. At that moment an apple fell from a tree (RFW 100.14-15) and Newton had one of the greatest insights in the history of science:

—Nothing is holding the Moon up : the Moon is falling!

When something falls over and over again, the result is a endless cycle—an orbit (Stukeley 15r, Conduitt 5v-6r).

But how?

Our story is set in Dublin, it is about to begin again, and it is concerned with the fall and fall again of Everyman. But how does the story unfold? How does history unfold? Read the fourth paragraph again with these questions in mind.

... clashes ... of wills gen wonts

There are many perplexing details in these fourteen lines—some that after many years still perplex me—but the gist of the passage should be clear to you. History unfolds through conflict, and that conflict is between polar opposites.

A Pause

Our story is set in Dublin and is about to begin again. It is a history of mankind, and it is the story of a family—any family. Conflict between opposites will drive the plot along.

For some first-time readers, that might be enough to be getting on with. If you are one of them, by all means proceed to paragraph five and leave any deeper analysis to a second reading.

Dante Alighieri, Giambattista Vico and Giordano Bruno

But a more intimate acquaintance with these first four paragraphs will more than repay the diligent reader’s patience. So bear with me as we delve a little deeper into their primeval mud. We will learn how Joyce slipped into that first paragraph a few subtle allusions to the Three Patron Saints—or Holy Trinity—of Finnegans Wake:

Dante Alighieri, whose theory of the polysemous nature of literature underpins the multilayered structure of Finnegans Wake.
Giambattista Vico, whose cyclic philosophy of history provided Joyce with a framework around which he wrought the ever cycling wheel of Finnegans Wake.
Giordano Bruno, whose philosophy of the coincidence of opposites—coincidentia oppositorum—provided Joyce with an engine to keep that wheel turning.

Each of these Italian thinkers informs one of the following three paragraphs ... as we shall see.

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

References

Edward M Burns & Joshua A Gaylord (editors), Adaline Glasheen, Thornton Wilder, A Tour of the Darkling Plain, University College Dublin Press, Dublin (2001)
Joseph Campbell, Henry Morton Robinson, A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, Harcourt, brace and Company, New York (1944)
John Conduitt, Draft Account of Newton’s Life at Cambridge, Keynes Ms. 130.04, King’s College, Cambridge (1727-28)
Richard Ellmann, James Joyce, New and Revised Edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford (1982)
James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, Faber & Faber Limited, London (1939, 1949)
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 Stukeley, Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton’s Life, MS/142, Royal Society Library, London (1752)
Paget Toynbee (editor & translator), Dantis Alagherii Epistolae: The Letters of Dante, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, Oxford (1920)

Image Credits

The Mullingar House, Chapelizod: Brendan Ward (photographer), Public Domain
The River Liffey Running Past Adam and Eve’s Church: Brendan Ward (photographer), Public Domain
Dante Alighieri: Sandro Botticelli (artist), Public Domain
Giambattista Vico: Francesco Solimena (artist), Public Domain
Giordano Bruno: After Carl Mayer (lithographer), Sven & Suzanne Stelling-Michaud, Le Livre du Recteur de l’Académie de Genève (1559-1878), Librairie Droz, Geneva (1966), Public Domain

Finnegans Wake - A Prescriptive Guide

12 July 2022