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The Duke of Wellington and the Most Distinguished Officers at the Battle of Waterloo (RFW 010.37–011.08) |
In our study of the preceding paragraphs, we saw how Joyce conflated the two senses of sight and sound. The dominant image of this opening chapter of Finnegans Wake is The Sleeping Giant: the depiction of HCE as a dormant giant interred in the Dublin landscape, not unlike Lemuel Gulliver asleep on the coast of Lilliput. The ultimate source of this image is the rolling outline of the portly landlord of the Mullingar House beneath a puzzle-quilt in the master bedroom above his pub. That square puzzle-quilt “contains” HCE, and is therefore an embodiment of the siglum or sign that Joyce used in his notebooks to represent any container of HCE:
This siglum encompasses written texts about HCE as well as literal containers of his body, such as his bed, his coffin, or his burial mound. Hence, this siglum is also embodied by ALP’s Letter, which figures prominently in Finnegans Wake. And it is embodied by the very text of Finnegans Wake itself. Joyce himself said that this siglum stood for the title of the book, when that was still a closely guarded secret (McHugh 113 : Letters I, 24 March 1924).
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| Joyce’s Sigla for HCE and Containers of HCE |
Joyce chose the square for this siglum partly because a square resembles a sheet of paper, a quilt, a kingsize bed, or a square bedroom. Significantly, a square also has four parts—just like Finnegans Wake. And because Finnegans Wake is an ouroboros, its end circling back to its beginning, Joyce has succeeded in doing what Bloom dreamt of doing: he has squared the circle. Or, rather, as mathematicians have proved that squaring the circle is impossible, he has instead circled the square.
A written text is something that can be both seen and heard. Each of the two senses of sight and sound can comprehend a written text independent of the other. A blind man can understand a text if it is read aloud to him : A deaf man can understand the same text if it is shown to him.
In the short paragraph we are now studying, Joyce continues to conflate sight and sound. In these twelve lines, he once again presents us with ALP’s Letter—and the text of Finnegans Wake—as both a visible image and an audible narration. One of the salient moments in the book that is foreshadowed in this paragraph is the elaborate description of the radio in HCE’s tavern in II.3 The Scene in the Public (RFW 238.10-239.10). In that chapter, there is a similar confusion of sight and sound. It is never entirely clear whether we are listening to the radio or watching television.
First-Draft Version
As usual, let us take a quick look at the first draft of this paragraph:
How charmingly exquisite! It reminds you of the fading engraving that used to be blurring on the blotchwall of his innkempt house. Used they? I say, the remains of the famous gravemures where used to be blurried the Tollmens of the Incabus. Used he? It is well known. Look for himself. See? By the mausoleme wall. Finnfinn Fannfann . With with a grand funferall. Fumfum fumfum!
They will be tuggling forever.
They will be listling forever.
They will be pretumbling forever.
The harpsichord will be theirs forever. (Hayman 52-53)
The passages in parentheses were added later, as were the explicit references to the prolific scientist and inventor Charles Wheatstone. Nevertheless, the conflation of sight and sound is there from the beginning. Note how the image of HCE interred in the landscape is described as a fading engraving. Earlier in this chapter, the same image was described as a fadograph of a yestern scene. I don’t understand the significance of the two questions: Used they? and Used he? Perhaps John Gordon’s analysis is the correct one:
Recalling such landmarks [such as the fading engraving], [HCE] is here very much the traveller returning after long absence, nostalgically revisiting the spots where he ‘Used’ to do all kinds of things. (Gordon 115)
HCE
The opening words of this paragraph, How charmingly exquisite!, comprise the familiar initialism HCE, an allusion to the book’s protagonist Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker. Note how they also echo the closing words of the previous section: Hush! Caution! Echoland! As if there was ever any doubt that the subject and object of ALP’s Letter and of Finnegans Wake itself was, is, and always shall be Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker.
So it is the image of HCE interred in the landscape that reminds one of the outwashed engravure that we used to be blurring on the blotchwall of his innkempt house. This paragraph contains many references to the interment of the dead:
engravure grave
blurring burying
chabelshoveller grave digger? Cain burying the slain Abel?
gravemure grave
blurried buried
Ptollmens Greek: πτωμα [ptōma], corpse
Ptollmens dolmens (ancient Irish graves)
mausolime mausoleum
funferall funeral
lichening lich (corpse)
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| Mine Host |
Engraving
The image of HCE interred in the landscape is compared to a blurry engraving **on the blotchwall of his innkempt house**. This refers, apparently, to a picture hanging on a wall inside HCE’s pub. Does this mean that the scene, which for several paragraphs has been outside in the yard behind the inn, has now switched indoors? Or are we still outdoors and simply recalling the picture inside?
John Gordon, Professor Emeritus of English at Connecticut University, has identified two images that may be relevant here. The first is indoors in the bar:
The bar-room itself ... features one item which surfaces often in the dreamer’s memory: the illustrated calendar sent last Christmas by Alexander Findlater and Company, supplier’s to HCE’s pub ... It is a standard racing print tableau ... Called something like ‘The Parting Cup’ or ‘The Stirrup Cup’, it routinely features a huntsman in regalia ... surrounded by hunting dogs ... and usually flanked by fellow riders ... sitting on horseback in the front yard of a tavern, in or before the door of which stands a pleased-looking innkeeper in leather apron. The picture’s centre of focus is a cup, which is being lifted the rider by a comely lass, clearly the taverner’s daughter. In some versions he has the cup already to his lips, but in this one he has yet to taste it. (Gordon 13)
The other emblematic image is in the outhouse, or privy, behind HCE’s tavern:
[The privy] has, or had within recent memory, a picture hung up inside, an ‘outwashed engravure that we used to be blurring on the blotchwall of his innkempt house ... which used to be blurried the Ptollmens of the Incabus ... by the mausolime wall’ ... The overtone of ‘Ptolemy’ indicates that the picture had a regal or lordly subject, of ‘tall man’ and ‘incubus’ that it features a formidable father- figure in an aspect of sexual menace. It is in fact a battle scene from Waterloo, with Wellington, on horseback, in the foreground ... (Gordon 16)
Clearly, Gordon believes that the engraving referred to in this paragraph is the picture of Waterloo on display in the privy. And that makes perfect sense. We have just left the outhouse—the Museyroom—where Waterloo was re-enacted, and the kitchen midden in the back yard has just been compared to the Waterloo Battlefield. But later, when Gordon returns to this paragraph, he comments:
13.06-13.19 [RFW 010.37-011.08]: Seeing the white horse in the fanlight above his front door, our observer is reminded of two things—of the recent scene in the privy with its ‘outwashed engravure’; and the calendar picture in the bar within, in the ‘innkempt’ house, with its own white horse. (Gordon 115)
Now he believes that both emblematic images are at play. Finnegans Wake: A Plot Summary, from which these quotations are taken, was published in 1986. In Gordon’s much more recent online blog, he does not even mention the Waterloo image in connection with this passage:
“outwashed ... house:” first appearance of the calendar picture—a.k.a. almanac picture—on the pub’s wall. I haven’t been able to ascertain any one candidate, but Edwin Douglas’ “Mine Host,” available on Google Images, is a good example of the type: hunter on horseback, surrounded by hunting dogs, at the door of an inn, being served a “stirrup cup,” Irish deoċ an dorais, by a young woman, presumably the daughter of the innkeeper looking contentedly on. “Stirrup cup” scenes were routinely the first in a series of “hunting prints,” of the kind that Leopold Bloom’s father displays on the wall of his hotel, depicting the stages of a fox hunt from start to the kill.
Note: as far as I can tell, FW uses the terms “almanac picture” and “calendar picture” interchangeably, although the former occurs more frequently. Almanac pictures were included in yearly “Christmas almanacs” and meant to be framed and displayed—in places like pubs, for instance. Calendar pictures, one for each month, were the kinds of pictures still seen on wall calendars, and, of course, were also displayed. Both were proverbially pretty, but almanac pictures were especially known for their sentimentality. In Ulysses, the maudlin “Halcyon Days” hanging in Gerty McDowell’s outhouse is an almanac picture, and when the narrator of “Cyclops” says that Bloom belongs in an almanac picture, he means that Bloom is being mawkish. (John Gordon’s Finnegans Wake Blog)
Another possible candidate for Gordon’s calendar picture is The Stirrup Cup by Heywood Hardy:
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| The Stirrup Cup |
In The Books at the Wake, James Atherton also leads us to suspect that Joyce had the Battle of Waterloo in mind, and a quite specific image similar to the one identified by Gordon in the outhouse:
It is unlikely that Joyce ever read W. G. Wills’s once popular play A Royal Divorce ... which seems to have been presented all over the British Isles, and frequently in Dublin until just after the end of the First World War. The company concerned was owned by W. W. Kelly who played the leading part of Napoleon to his wife’s Josephine ... The other thing which Joyce remembered and used was a scene without words. A backcloth showing the scene of Waterloo was pierced with holes which were intermittently lit up to represent the firing of cannon. In front of this models of cavalrymen were wound forward on glass runners while ‘Pepper ghosts’ [RFW 168.10] of cuirassiers, produced by a sort of magic lantern, fell dramatically to their death in the clouds of white smoke that filled the stage. In the foreground on a big white horse, rode Napoleon, or sometimes—apparently when Mr. Kelly wanted a rest—Wellington. It made no difference to the play who was on the horse as nothing was said, but Joyce makes great play with this interchangeability of the opposed generals. (Atherton 161-162)
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Napoleon on the Field of Waterloo |
In Parentheses
But those passages in parentheses must give us pause. Miry Mitchel and Fiery Farrelly may not mean much to us on our first reading of Finnegans Wake, but on a second or subsequent reading they should remind us of something we meet in III.4, The Fourth Watch of Shaun. In that chapter, we are given an fairly detailed description of the Porters’ bedroom—apparently the master bedroom of the Mullingar House, the very room where Finnegans Wake is set. That description includes the following item:
Over mantelpiece picture of Michael, lance, slaying Satan, dragon with smoke. (RFW 435.14-15)
The picture depicts an event from the Book of Revelation:
And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. (Revelation 12:7-9)
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| Michael the Archangel and the Dragon |
The evidence suggests this answer: that the picture is of St George and the dragon, that for a number of reasons the most important of which is probably that Joyce’s son was named ‘Giorgio’ it becomes in the sleeper’s imagination a paradigm for the triumph of the new over old, light over our reptilian heritage, Shaun over Shem, that during the night, when these two forces are in seemingly equal combat, the typologically similar struggle of Michael and Satan (Mick and Nick) takes over (Gordon 24)
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St George Defeating the Dragon |
Neither of the two pictures we have been discussing—The Battle of Waterloo and The Stirrup Cup—tallies with Revelation’s image of Michael the Archangel battling Satan the Dragon in the master bedroom. However, HCE’s burial mound has already been used as the Waterloo Battlefield, so it makes sense that it should also represent the Field of Armageddon, where the final battle between Good and Evil will be fought. Perhaps the picture over the mantelpiece depicts both Michael and St George. Napoleon was depicted in British propaganda as the dragon being slain by King George III.
It makes sense, therefore, to include both images: the engraving of Wellington|Napoleon at Waterloo in the outhouse, as well as the picture of Michael|George and the Dragon above the mantelpiece in the bedroom. The first represents the Oedipal struggle between HCE and his sons, while the second represents both the sibling rivalry between the two sons (Mick and Nick) and the Oedipal struggle (George and the dragon). The calendar image of The Stirrup Cup in the lounge is not relevant in this context.
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| 1924 Radiola Super VIII Floor Console Radio |
The Radio
Having exhausted the visual elements of this paragraph, let us now examine the auditory elements. There are plenty of them:
charmingly etymologically, charm means incantation, song, lamentation, from the Latin: carmen, song, verse, enchantment, religious formula.
mujikal chocolat box music box
listening
I say
jubalee harp Jew’s harp. Jubal was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ (Genesis 4.21). Jubilee: a year of celebration and forgiveness originally held every 50 years in both Judaism and Christianity. The name comes from the Hebrew word for the ram’s horn, a traditional trumpet or cornet that was blown to celebrate the jubilee.
lishener listener
W.K.O.O Since 1923, call signs for American radio stations east of the Mississippi generally consist of four letters beginning with W. Those west of the Mississippi begin with K.
Hear?
Fimfim fimfim These and similar onomatopoeic sounds that echo throughout Finnegans Wake may be the sound of the servants’ bells ringing downstairs, or even the ticking of HCE’s watch on the bedside table (Gordon 12, 17). Campbell & Robinson call it the jollification motif and identify it as the sound of a dry leaf “sinsinning” in the winter wind (Campbell & Robinson 44 fn). In this context, however—mausoleum, fimfim ... funeral fumfum—I wonder whether these sounds represent the bell of a so-called safety coffin, which was equipped with an alarm that the occupant could ring should he revive after his interment. Death and resurrection are central to Finnegans Wake. What better way to “sound” this theme than with an interred corpse signalling his own resurrection from the grave?
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Coffin Bell and Safety Coffin |
funferall A funerall was a slow sad pavane danced at wakes. There is probably also an allusion to a fanfare.
Fumfum fumfum
optophone A device that transforms light into sound, enabling the blind to read printed text.
List! List, list, O list! Shakespeare, Hamlet 1.5.22, spoken by the ghost of Hamlet’s father to the Prince. There is probably also an allusion to the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt. When Liszt visited Ireland in 1840-41, he was referred to in the press as M. List. On that tour he gave a recital in the Globe Hotel, Clonmel. Hamlet was first performed in the Globe Theatre, Southwark. On his first night in Dublin, Liszt saw Charles Kean play Macbeth at the Theatre Royal.
Wheatstone’s magic lyer Charles Wheatstone’s Enchanted Lyre, or Acoucryptophone. It comprised a lyre suspended from the ceiling by a cord, which emitted the strains of several instruments: piano, harp, and dulcimer. In reality, it was just a resonating sounding box. The cord was a steel rod that conveyed the vibrations of the music from various instruments which were played in another room out of ear-shot. Like Miry Mitchel, the magic lyre was only pretending to play music. It was a liar.
lichening listening.
harpsdischord Harpsichord, discord, chord—all musical terms.
As I mentioned above, I believe that these allusions, taken together, refer to the radio in HCE’s bar, which will take centre stage in II.3 The Scene in the Public (RFW 238.10-239.10). The call sign WKOO and the reference to Wheatstone’s magic lyre—a perfect metaphor for a radio, which also resonates auditorially to frequencies originating from afar—put the matter beyond doubt.
In II.3, the radio (possibly transformed into a television) will recount the mock-heroic tale How Buckley Shot the Russian General, another version of the Oedipal struggle in which HCE is overthrown by his sons. The radio, therefore, is yet another embodiment of The Letter siglum (□).
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| Charles Wheatstone |
Charles Wheatstone
Charles Wheatstone was a Victorian scientist, inventor and polymath. In her Third Census of Finnegans Wake, Adaline Glasheen mentions only his magic lyre:
Wheatstone, Sir Charles (1802–75)— English physicist, inventor of the “acoucryptophone,” which was a light box, shaped like an ancient lyre and suspended by a metallic wire from a piano in the room above. When the piano was played, its vibrations were transmitted silently and became audible in the lyre, which appeared to play itself. I hope everybody has got that straight. (Glasheen 304-305)
But Wheatstone made contributions to many other branches of science and technology, such as telegraphy, optics and chronometry. He was also interested in ciphers. The well-known Playfair Cipher, named for his friend Lord Playfair, was of his devising. It was sufficiently robust to be used in various theatres of war up to and including World War II, where it was employed in the South Pacific by the Royal New Zealand Navy.
It is hardly a coincidence that this paragraph of Finnegans Wake also employs a cipher, albeit a must less robust one than the Playfair Cipher. The Letter-Number Cipher, or A1Z26 Cipher:
A = 1, B = 2, C = 3 ... Z = 26
Dbln = 4 + 2 + 12 + 14 = 32
W.K.O.O = 23 + 11 + 15 + 15 = 64
As Bloom almost recalled in Ulysses, 32 feet per second per second is the acceleration due to gravity at the surface of the Earth. It is the numerical embodiment of the Law of Falling Bodies. In Finnegans Wake, 32 is the number of the Fall of Man.
64 is 32 doubled. Dbln = Doubling.
W.K. = 2311, which is the reverse of 1132, another significant number in Finnegans Wake:
The only significant date in HCE’s version of history is 1132 A.D., and the significance is entirely symbolic: 11 stands for return or reinstatement or recovery or resumption (having counted up to ten on our fingers we have to start all over again for 11); 32 feet per second [per second] is the rate of acceleration of all falling bodies, and the number itself will remind us of the fall of Adam, Humpty Dumpty, Napoleon, Parnell, as also of HCE himself, who is all their reincarnations. (Burgess (ii))
According to some sources, Laurence O’Toole, the Patron Saint of Dublin, was born in 1132 (Webb 426, Eblana 11). And according to the Annals of the Four Masters, Finn MacCool died in 283 CE, which is one quarter of 1132 (O’Donovan 119).
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| Hazel Lavery as Cathleen ni Houlihan |
Four Things
In the first-draft of this paragraph, the concluding four sentences were each placed in their own paragraphs—as though they were statements being made by four different people. In Finnegans Wake, whenever something like this happens, it is impossible not to assume that we are listening to the opinions of the Four Old Men, the Wake’s quartet of elderly historians, who seem to carry much of the book’s narrative. They are based on the Four Masters, a quartet of Irish scholars who compiled the Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland in the 17th century. They were also inspired by the Four Evangelists. That they are the speakers of these four remarks is, perhaps, confirmed by the opening words of the following paragraph:
Four things therefore, saith our herodotary Mammon Lujius ...
Mamalujo, formed from the first two letters of the Four Evangelists, is a composite character representing the Four Old Men. It makes sense that a paragraph focusing on a siglum with four sides (□) should conclude with a list of four things.
The four lines in question echo Cathleen ni Houlihan, a short play by William Butler Yeats and Lady Gregory. Cathleen is the Poor Old Woman, a metaphorical representation of Ireland conquered and oppressed by the Foreigner. She encourages the young men of Ireland to sacrifice their lives for her, declaring that those who martyr themselves in her cause will never truly die:
They shall be remembered forever,
They shall be alive forever,
They shall be speaking forever,
The people shall hear them forever.
(Yeats & Gregory 56)
Both versions, Cathleen ni Houlihan and Finnegans Wake, embody the two central conflicts in the novel: the sibling rivalry between Shem and Shaun, and the Oedipal struggle between HCE and his sons. Note that the words rival and river are closely related:
rival (n.) 1570s, from Latin rivalis “a rival, adversary in love; neighbor,” originally, “of the same brook,” from rivus “brook” (from PIE root *rei- “to run, flow”). “One who is in pursuit of the same object as another.” The sense evolution seems to be based on the competitiveness of neighbors: “one who uses the same stream,” or “one on the opposite side of the stream.” A secondary sense in Latin and sometimes in English was “associate, companion in duty,” from the notion of “one having a common right or privilege with another.” As an adjective 1580s from the noun. (Online Etymology Dictionary)
The sibling rivalry between Shem and Shaun (tuggling foriver) is captured by the primary sense, while the Oedipal struggle, in which Shem and Shaun make common cause against their father, is covered by the secondary sense.
In I.8, Anna Livia Plurabelle, this riverine rivalry will be dramatized literally by two washerwoman on either bank of the River Liffey, in which they are washing HCE’s dirty linen. At the end of that chapter, the washerwomen are transformed into a tree and a stone. Separately, Stem and Stone represent Shem and Shaun. Together, Tree and stone become Tristan, the Oedipal figure.
There are also clear allusions to two Scandinavian Kings of Dublin: Ivar the Boneless and Olaf the White. On the previous page of Finnegans Wake, these were identified with Shem and Shaun (another king, Sitric, being identified with the Oedipal Shem-Shaun figure).
The last word of this paragraph, ollaves, is derived from the Irish: ollamh, scholar, sage, man of learning. In Finnegans Wake, the Four Old Men are the ollaves.
And that’s as good a place as any to beach the bark of our tale.
References
James S Atherton, The Books at the Wake: A Study of the Literary Allusions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, The Viking Press, New York (1960)
Anthony Burgess, A Shorter Finnegans Wake, The Viking Press, New York (1967)
Joseph Campbell, Henry Morton Robinson, A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York (1944)
Patrick S Dinneen, An Irish-English Dictionary, M H Gill & Son Ltd, Dublin (1904)
Eblana (Teresa J Rooney), St Laurence O’Toole and His Contemporaries, M H Gill & Son, Dublin (1881)
Adaline Glasheen, Third Census of Finnegans Wake, University of California Press, Berkeley, California (1977)
John Gordon, Finnegans Wake: A Plot Summary, Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, New York (1986)
Jill Hamilton, Marengo: The Myth of Napoleon’s Horse, Fourth Estate, London (2001)
David Hayman, A First-Draft Version of Finnegans Wake, University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas (1963)
James Joyce, Ulysses, Shakespeare and Company, Paris (1922)
James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, Faber & Faber Limited, London (1939, 1949)
James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Works, Pynch (editor), Online (2013)
James Joyce, Stuart Gilbert (editor) & Richard Ellmann (editor), The Letters of James Joyce, Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3, Viking Press, New York
Roland McHugh, The Sigla of Finnegans Wake, University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas (1976)
John O’Donovan (translator, editor), Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland, Volume 1, The Four Masters, Hodges, Smith, and Co, Dublin (1856)
Danis Rose, John O’Hanlon, The Restored Finnegans Wake, Penguin Classics, London (2012)
William Shakespeare, Horace Howard Furness (editor), A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: Hamlet, Volume 1, J B Lippincott Company, Philadelphia & London (1918)
Alfred Webb, A Compendium of Irish Biography, M H Gill & Son, Dublin (1878)
William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, The Hour-Glass; Cathleen ni Houlihan; The Pot of Broth, A H Bullen, London (1904)
Image Credits
The Duke of Wellington and the Most Distinguished Officers at the Battle of Waterloo: W T Fry & T Sutherland (artists), after William Heath (artist), J Jenkins, London (1817), The National Army Museum, Mary Evans Picture Library, Public Domain
Mine Host: Edwin Douglas (artist), A C Alais (engraver), Henry Graves & Co, London (1883), Public Domain
The Stirrup Cup: Heywood Hardy (artist), Private Collection, Public Domain
Napoleon on the Field of Waterloo: Lionel Royer (artist), Berlin Photographic Company, London, Public Domain
Michael the Archangel and the Dragon: Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (artist), Die Bibel in Bildern, Georg Wigand, Leipzig (1860) Public Domain
St George Defeating the Dragon: Johann König (artist), Private Collection, Public Domain
1924 Radiola Super VIII Floor Console Radio: © Invaluable, LLC, Fair Use
Coffin Bell: Halloween Prop, The Haunted Borough, Marlborough, MA, © Dave & Nancy Adams, Fair Use
Safety Coffin: Life-Preserving Coffin in Doubtful Cases of Actual Death, Christian Henry Eisenbrandt (designer), Baltimore, Maryland, Public Domain
Charles Wheatstone: Samuel Lawrence (artist), National Portrait Gallery, London, Public Domain
Hazel Lavery as Cathleen ni Houlihan: John Lavery (artist), National Gallery of Ireland (on loan from the Central Bank of Ireland), Public Domain
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