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riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s (Adam and Eve’s Church, Right of Centre with the Green Dome) |
James Joyce was not the first Dubliner to write a history of the world. In the 1650s James Ussher, Primate of All Ireland, published his Annals of the Old Testament, which established the chronology of the World from the Creation to the destruction of the Second Temple. Unlike Joyce, who adopted the Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico’s cyclical view of history as a framework for Finnegans Wake, Ussher arranged his Biblical chronology linearly into seven world ages.
Ussher’s first age begins with the Creation (Genesis 1) and ends with the Flood (Genesis 9), which ushers in—Sorry, I couldn’t resist it!—the second age. Light and the number seven are both featured at the beginning of these two ages:
Genesis 1: The Creation of the World spans seven days (six of labour and one of rest) and inaugurates the First Age of the World. Light is the first of God’s creations.
Genesis 9: After the Flood has subsided, the beginning of the Second Age of the World is symbolized by the rainbow and its seven colours. The white Light of Genesis 1 is now dispersed into its seven constituent colours.
The opening of Finnegans Wake takes place at the beginning of a new cycle of Viconian history. It evokes all beginnings: Genesis 1 as well as Genesis 9. The seven days of Creation and the seven colours of the rainbow are encoded in the opening two paragraphs. It is also worthy of note that the opening verse of the entire Bible, Genesis 1:1, has precisely seven words in the original Hebrew—something that is unlikely to have come about by chance. I don’t know if Joyce was aware of this—he was not a Hebrew scholar—but the first sentence of Finnegans Wake comprises a list of seven items:
riverrun
Eve
Adam’s
swerve of shore
bend of bay
commodious vicus of recirculation
Howth Castle & Environs
As we shall see, these items have not been dropped into this opening paragraph higgledy-piggledy.
The Master Bedroom
In an earlier article I outlined my own working model of Finnegans Wake, recognizing that the novel exists on several different narrative planes. The uppermost level, corresponding to what we might call the real world, is the Nocturnal Plane: this is a depiction of a single night in the life of an old man. He is the landlord of the Mullingar House, a pub in the village of Chapelizod, on the western outskirts of Dublin. The time is 11:32 pm on the night of Saturday 12 April 1924. The place is the master bedroom on the middle floor at the rear of the inn, which has three storeys (in Finnegans Wake, at least, if not in reality). This individual, a 70-year-old widower, is about to fall asleep.
The opening paragraph of Finnegans Wake locates us in Dublin—we saw this in the previous article—but it can also be read as a description of the master bedroom of the Mullingar House. John Gordon, Professor Emeritus of English at Connecticut College, first brought this to my attention in Finnegans Wake: A Plot Summary. I don’t agree with Gordon’s overarching thesis in this book (he regards Finnegans Wake as a novelistic depiction of one day, Monday 21 March 1938) but there are too many valuable nuggets of information in his book for me not to recommend it. Gordon’s recognition of the master bedroom in the opening three lines is just one of the many brilliant insights that enrich his work.
The master bedroom is a square-shaped room at the rear of the premises:
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| The Location of the Master Bedroom in Finnegans Wake |
The orientation of this room is such that its four corners point to the four cardinal directions: north, south, east and west. There is a wash-hand basin in the south corner of the room:
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| Wash-Hand Basin |
In the middle of the south-west wall is the fireplace, which is based on a popular design by the Scottish interior designer Robert Adam:
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| A Robert Adam Fireplace |
There is, in fact, a chimney on the roof of the Mullingar House at this point:
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| The Rear of the Mullingar House |
The door of the bedroom is in the north-west wall. The window in the north-east wall overlooks the back yard and, beyond it, the Phoenix Park. In the east corner there is a wicker commode (ie a chair with a chamber pot inserted beneath the seat):
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| A Wicker Commode |
Finally, in the middle of the south-east wall there is a four-poster bed, with its headboard against the wall:
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| A Four-Poster Bed |
The seven items listed in the opening paragraph of Finnegans Wake are the seven stations of the master bedroom:
riverrun = The faucet or tap above the wash-hand basin.
Eve = The sink or wash-hand basin. French: évier, sink, basin.
Adam’s = The Robert Adam fireplace.
swerve of shore = The bedroom door (Joyce’s own rhyming slang).
bend of bay = The bay window overlooking the backyard.
commodious vicus of recirculation = The commode.
Howth Castle & Environs = HCE, the sleeping landlord in bed.
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| A Plan of the Master Bedroom and its Furniture |
There are several other items of note in the bedroom (or there were in the past). John Gordon discusses them at some length, but they are not really relevant to the opening paragraph, so I will ignore them at this point.
Gordon also makes the point that Joyce has created a memory theatre out of the master bedroom. Remember that gloss of riverrun as the German word for memory, Erinnerung, and Sigmund Freud’s claim that memories are the principal source of the manifest content of dreams? It is also worthy of note that mnemonics was a subject much explored by Giordano Bruno. Leopold Bloom also took an interest in it. As we read this opening paragraph, we are circulating around the bedroom in a clockwise direction—deshil—taking note of its principal features.
The Porters’ Bedroom
I mentioned earlier that the opening chapter of Finnegans Wake is like the overture to an opera in which all the main themes of the opera are adumbrated. Every salient event in Finnegans Wake is somehow anticipated or rehearsed in I.1. One of those salient moments is the lovemaking scene of Mr and Mrs Porter in III.4 (The Fourth Watch of Shaun), RFW 432-459. In that chapter we are given a fairly detailed description of the Porters’ bedroom:
House of the circulation of mead. Garth of Fyon. Scene and property plot. Stagemanager’s prompt. Interior of dwelling on outskirts of city. Groove two. Chamber scene. Boxed. Ordinary bedroom set. Salmonpapered walls. Back centre, empty Irish grate, Adam’s mantel, with wilting elopement fan, soot and tinsel, condemned. North, wall with window, practicable. Argentine in casement. Vamp. Pelmit above. No curtains. Blind drawn. South, party wall. Bed for two with strawberry bedspread, wicker-worker clubsessel and caneseated millikinstool. Bookshrine without, facetowel upon. Chair for one. Woman’s garments on chair. Man’s trousers with crossbelt braces, collar, on bedknob. Man’s corduroy surcoat with seapen nacre buttons, tabrets and taces on nail, wall right. Woman’s gown on ditto, ditto left. Over mantelpiece picture of Michael, lance, slaying Satan, dragon with smoke. Small table near bed, front. Bed with bedding. Spare. Flagpatch quilt. Yverdown design. Limes. Lighted lamp without globe, scarf, gazette, tumbler, quantity of water, julepot, ticker, side props, eventuals, man’s gummy article, pink. (RFW 435.02-17)
I believe that the bedroom described here is the same bedroom as that of I.1, but in an earlier era. The love-making of Mr and Mrs Porter takes place several years before 1924, so we cannot expect all the details to match. Nevertheless, some of our inferences about the master bedroom of 1924 are confirmed by the description in III.4.
The mantelpiece is by Robert Adam. The commode is made of wicker (clubsessel echoes close-stool, as Gordon notes).
There are also a few things about the Porters’ bedroom that are difficult to square with the bedroom of I.1. After describing the Bed for two with strawberry bedspread, we get Bed with bedding. Spare. Flagpatch quilt. Yverdown design. Gordon interprets this as a spare blanket rolled up at the foot of the four-poster bed, but to my ears it sounds like a second bed. What’s that all about? Shakespeare’s second best bed?
The scene in the Porters’ bedroom is initially described from the point of view of someone looking through the door, or peeping through the keyhole: the three walls with the fireplace, the window and the bed are mentioned, but not the wall with the door. The directions, however—back, north and south—don’t really line up. If the fire is at the back, we must be looking in through the window, not the door. The south wall is called a party wall: the south-east wall is indeed a party wall, being shared by the Mullingar House and Rose Cottage next door. But the north wall, with window, could not possibly be opposite the party wall: if it was, it would be looking out onto the landing! So north must mean north-east, and south must mean south-east.
The Three Patron Saints of Finnegans Wake
Before moving on to the second paragraph, there is one last point I would like to make—or, rather, remake. As I mentioned in the last article, the opening paragraph contains allusions to the Three Patron Saints of Finnegans Wake: Dante Alighieri, Giordano Bruno and Giambattista Vico:
commodious: Dante’s Commedia, or the Divine Comedy.
commodious: A commode is a species of chamber pot, or jordan. Giordano Bruno means literally Brown Jordan.
vicus: Giambattista Vico.
The following three paragraphs elaborate on these identifications: the second paragraph draws on a passage in Dante’s Divine Comedy (Paradiso 15:97-111): the third paragraph gives us our first Viconian thunder-word : the fourth paragraph illustrates Bruno’s concept of the coincidentia oppositorum, or identity of opposites.
We could delve deeper into this pregnant passage and find further allusions to these three men:
riverrun: Giordano Bruno is named after a river. In Finnegans Wake the River Liffey, personified as ALP or Anna Livia Plurabelle, is Dublin’s sewer, carrying away the filth of the city. The Liffey is Dublin’s brown jordan.
Eve and Adam’s: In Dante’s Divine Comedy, Adam and Eve’s Earthly Paradise is at the top of Mount Purgatory, where souls are cleansed of their sinful filth. Two rivers flow around it, both of which are concerned with memory: the Lethe (River of Oblivion) and the Eunoë (River of Good Remembrance).
swerve of shore ... bend of bay: These two phrases, which refer to the same feature seen from two different perspectives, seem to encapsulate the Brunonian concept of the identity of opposites.
vicus of recirculation: Vico’s concept of the ricorso, when history flows back to its origins and a new cycle begins. History, the nightmare from which Stephen Dedalus was trying to awake, is a vicious circle.
And that’s as good a place as any to beach the bark of our tale.
References
John Gordon, Finnegans Wake: A Plot Summary, Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, New York (1986)
James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, Faber & Faber Limited, London (1939, 1949)
James Joyce, Stuart Gilbert (editor) & Richard Ellmann (editor), The Letters of James Joyce, Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3, Viking Press, New York
James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Works, Pynch (editor), Online (2013)
Danis Rose, John O’Hanlon, The Restored Finnegans Wake, Penguin Classics, London (2012)
James Ussher, Annales Veteris Testamenti, Charles Richard Elrington (editor), The Whole Works of the Most Rev James Ussher, DD, Volume 8, Hodges, Smith, and Co, Dublin (1864)
James Ussher, Larry & Marion Pierce (editors), The Annals of the World, Revised and Updated from the 1658 English Translation, Master Books, Green Forest, Arizona (2003)
Image Credits
riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s: Bing Maps, © 2017 Microsoft Corporation, Fair Use
The Location of the Master Bedroom in Finnegans Wake: Adapted from Ordnance Survey of Ireland, Twenty-Five Inch Series, Public Domain
Wash-Hand Basin: © The Bath Business, Fair Use
A Robert Adam Fireplace: © 2017 Ryan & Smith, Fair Use
Rear of the Mullingar House: Brendan Ward (photographer), Kopimi
A Wicker Commode: © 2017 South Perth Antiques & Collectables, Fair Use
A Four-Poster Bed: Copyright Unknown, Fair Use
A Plan of the Master Bedroom and its Furniture: Brendan Ward (designer), After John Gordon, Finnegans Wake: A Plot Summary, Page 34, Kopimi
Useful Resources
The James Joyce Scholars’ Collection
The James Joyce Digital Archive
From Swerve of Shore to Bend of Bay
John Gordon’s Finnegans Wake Blog
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