 |
Tristan und Isolde (RFW 010.17–036) |
As I mentioned in the preceding article in this series, pages 009-012 in The Restored Finnegans Wake, which we are currently studying, foreshadow Book I, Chapter 5 (RFW 083-099), The Mamafesta—an extended commentary on ALP’s Letter to HCE—as well as a section of the concluding chapter, in which we finally hear a version of the Letter in full (RFW 481.28-485.10).
I suggested too that the third paragraph of this section also anticipates III.4, The Fourth Watch of Shaun, in which the lovemaking of ALP and HCE is portrayed in operatic terms—or perhaps as a silent movie with incidental musical. In this article we are going to take a closer look at the musical theme that runs through these eighteen lines of text.
Second-Draft Version
Joyce’s very first draft of this section, which he wrote in October 1926, only comprises the opening and closing sentences. It was only when he redrafted this section in the subsequent weeks that he began to incorporate the musical allusions. For this second draft, Joyce heavily revised all of these passages (Crispi & Slote 55). In a letter to his patron Harriet Shaw Weaver, he wrote:
I set to work at once on your esteemed order and so hard indeed that I almost stupefied myself and stopped, reclining on a sofa and reading Gentlemen Prefer Blondes for three whole days. But this morning I started off afresh. I am putting the piece in the place of honour, namely the first pages of the book. (Letters I, 8 November 1926)
 |
| The Giant’s Grave, St Andrew’s Church (Penrith) |
Joyce completed the second draft of this section in December 1926 and had a typescript prepared from his fair copy, which he forwarded to Weaver with an accompanying letter on 21 December (Letters III). In this version, the current paragraph has swelled to about two dozen lines and is already quite close to the final version published in 1939:
Then as she is on her behaviourite job we may take our review of the two mounds, to see nothing of the himples here as at elsewhere by sixes and sevens, like so many hegills and collines sitting around, scentbreeched and somepotreek, in their swishaswish satins and their taffetaffe tights, at a treepurty in the purk. Stand up, mickies. Make leave for minnies. By order, Nicholas Proud. We can see & hear nothing if we choose of the shortlegged bergins off Corkhill or the bergamoors of Arbourhill or the bergagambols of Summerhill or the bergincellies of Miseryhill or the countrybossed bergons of Constitutionhill though every crowd has its 7 tones and every note has its 7 harmonials & each harmonial has a point of its own, Olaf on the right and Ivar on the left with Sitric’s place between them. But they are all there scraping away for a livelihood, hopping round his middle like kippers on a griddle, O, as he lies dormant from the macroberg of Holdhard to the microberg of Pied de Poudres. Behold this sound of Irish sense. Really? Here English might be seen. Royally? One sovereign punned to paltry pence. Regally? The silence speaks the scene. Fake!
So this is Dyoublong?
Hush! Caution! Echoland!
In April 1927, Maria Jolas, Eugene Jolas and Elliot Paul published an early draft of the opening chapter in the first issue of their new literary magazine transition. This version incorporates a few additions and emendations but is still not quite the final version of 1939 (Jolas & Paul).
 |
transition (Issue 1, April 1927, Pages 17-18) |
Band Music
In the previous article I suggested that this paragraph describes—among other things—a military review in the Phoenix Park, such as the one featured in Lady Morgan’s novel The O’Briens and the O’Flahertys. Military music was a regular feature of such reviews:
On the evening previous to this review (one of the last and the most splendid), the several corps were seen marching into the capital from various directions. They were met by the cordial inhabitants, who accepted their billets with cheerfulness, receiving them with boundless hospitality, and entertaining them with emulous profusion. In the morning (and it was a bright May morning) Dublin was all bustle and movement. Military music was heard in every direction. The carriages of the nobility and gentry, colonels and commandants of the various provincial corps, came rolling into town from the seats and villas of their distinguished owners. The different corps assembled to beat of drum, or sound of trumpet; forming themselves into brigades in the most spacious streets, or along the noble quays of the Liffey: and by eleven o’clock the army of Leinster, led on by the Dublin Volunteers, headed by the Duke of Leinster, were all marching to the scene of action. A multitude preceded, followed, and surrounded them; and all who did not, or could not accompany them to the field, hailed and cheered them as they passed, from the windows, balconies, and roofs of the houses. (Morgan 147-148)
This paragraph is replete with musical terms and allusions:
quainance bandy Queen Anne’s Band, the royal orchestra of Queen Anne, who ruled England from 1702-1714.
fruting fluting. The L/R Interchange is common throughout Finnegans Wake (O’Hehir 392).
taking her tithe taking her time, with a possible allusion to musical time.
here hear
by sixes and sevens A possible allusion to musical sextuplets and septuplets.
swishawish Onomatopoeic?
playing Wharton’s Folly playing Lillibullero. As we saw in the preceding article, Wharton’s Folly was a nickname for the elaborate Star Fort or Citadel that the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland Thomas Wharton began to construct in the Phoenix Park in 1710. But the Earl of Wharton has also been credited with writing the lyrics of the popular anti-Jacobite song Lillibullero.
hear nothing
shortlegged bergins ... bergamoors ... bergagambols ... bergincellies ... countrybossed bergones These allude to the stringed instruments that make up a chest of viols, such as might have been heard in Queen Anne’s Band, and their classical descendants. The treble viol gave way to the violin (bergins—note the L/R Interchange again). The viola d’amore (bergamoors) is also alluded to on the opening page of Finnegans Wake. The viola da gamba (bergagambols) was eventually replaced by the violoncello (usually known in English as the cello). The name violoncelli (bergincellies) originally referred to a small version of the violone (bergones) or bass viol. The latter in turn gave way to the double bass or contrabass (countrybossed). Why has Joyce replaced the viol part of these names with berg? And why does he associate these instruments with five of Dublin’s hills? The answers to these two questions may be related. German: Berg, mountain, French: berge, bank, embankment. In this paragraph there have already been several allusions to hills: the two mounds, himples, heegills, collines. Ultimately, these refer to the contours of HCE and ALP as they make love under the bedsheets. In the very first draft of this paragraph, Joyce was already conflating the two senses of sight and sound.
crowd The crowd or crwth is a traditional Welsh fiddle. There may also be an allusion to a musical chord.
several tones Originally Joyce wrote 7 tones and every note ... In Western music, most scales and modes have seven tones.
trade triad. The triad, the fundamental element of western harmony, is a chord comprised of three notes: a root, a third and a fifth.
clever clavier, a general name for a keyboard instrument or the keyboard itself.
harmonical harmonic. In music, a harmonic is an overtone, ie a tone whose frequency is an integral multiple of the fundamental frequency. There may also be an allusion to the harmonica, or mouth organ.
point A musical term with several meanings (Grove 5-6). Counterpoint or polyphony is the art and technique of combining two or more melodies in a musical composition.
Olaf’s on the rise and Ivor’s on the lift and Sitric’s place’s between them See below for a discussion of the possible meaning of this phrase.
scraping playing a bowed instrument poorly.
sneeze squeeze, to play an accordion, concertina or squeeze-box.
rebus rebec, the three-stringed forerunner of the viol and violin families that evolved from the Arabic rabab.
hopping round his middle like kippers on a griddle, O Hopping in the middle like a herring on a griddle, O, a quotation from Percy French’s song Phil the Fluther’s Ball. A kipper is a smoked herring.
silence
The Isolde Chord
The phrase Olaf’s on the rise and Ivor’s on the lift and Sitric’s place’s between them can also be understood in musical terms. The obvious meaning, Olaf is on the right, and Ivar is on the left, and Sitric’s place is between them, refers to the myth propagated by Gerald of Wales in his ludicrously prejudiced and largely fictional account of how the Ostmen or Norsemen first colonized Ireland:
These foreigners had for leaders three brothers, whose names were Amelaus [Olaf], Sytaracus [Sitric], and Yvorus [Ivar]. They built first the three cities of Dublin, Waterford, and Limerick, of which Dublin fell to the share and was under the government of Amelaus, Waterford of Sytaracus, and Limerick of Yvorus; and from them colonies were sent in process of time to found other cities in Ireland. (Gerald of Wales 153)
Olaf probably refers to Olaf the White, a shadowy warlord who made himself King of Dublin in 853, about a dozen years after the establishment of the first permanent Norse settlement. Ivar is probably Ímar, or Ivar the Boneless, Olaf’s co-regent in Dublin and, by repute, his brother. Ímar died in 873 and Olaf in 874. A third brother, Auisle or Hasli, is alleged to have also been co-regent of Dublin. There may, therefore, be some historical basis for Gerald’s story.
Sitric was a common title of later kings of Dublin. Waterford was founded by Ottir the Black in 914. The Norse Kingdom of Limerick is now dated to 922 and attributed to a Scandinavian warlord called Thórir Helgason. Gerald’s myth of three brothers founding these three cities has proved persistent. It is quite possible that Joyce accepted it as historical truth. It matches the triad of “brothers” in Finnegans Wake: Shem, Shaun and the Oedipal figure in whom Shem and Shaun are conflated.
From the point of view of an Ostman (ie an Eastman) looking west towards Ireland, Dublin is on the right, Waterford on the left, and Limerick in the middle—though Joyce’s description is at odds with Gerald’s allotment of the three cities.
So much for the myth and the history. But what has all this to do with music?
One interpretation is that the triad of brothers represents the three notes of a musical triad in root position (ie with the root of the chord in the bass). Ivor is the root of the chord, Sitric (whose name contains tri-) is the third, and Olaf is the fifth. On a keyboard (clavier = clever), the root is on the left, the third in the middle, and the fifth on the right. Intriguingly, when placed in that order, Ivor-Sitric-Olaf spell out the acronym ISO.
ISO may refer to Isolde. The myth of Tristan and Isolde is frequently referred to in Finnegans Wake. Probably the most famous chord in Western music, at least in Joyce’s time, was the so-called Tristan Chord, the first chord in Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde:
 |
| The Tristan Chord |
Joycean scholar John Gordon believes that the lovemaking of HCE and ALP represents the primal scene, the primordial act of creation in which Issy is conceived:
The Original Sin of Finnegans Wake is the act of intercourse which produced Lucia Joyce [Joyce’s only daughter]. I agree with Margot Norris that the central calamity of the book is what Freudians call the ‘primal scene’—the intercourse of the parents, as witnessed by the child or children. (Joyce seems to have been familiar with the term. See 263.19-21 [RFW 207.13-14].) Specifically, it is the marital copulation at which Issy was conceived, as witnessed by the boys. (Gordon 81-82)
The boys are HCE and ALP’s sons Shem and Shaun, who are often conflated into the Oedipal figure, whose principal embodiment in Finnegans Wake is Tristan. Gordon imagines them at the door of the master bedroom, spying on their parents’ lovemaking. Shaun has his good eye at the keyhole, while Shem has his good ear against the door—another conflation of sight and sound. What better way to set this primal scene to music than to conceive an Isolde Chord for the conception of Issy?
Gordon’s citation from Margot Norris refers to her structuralist analysis, The Decentered Universe of Finnegans Wake, which is available to read on the James Joyce Scholars’ Collection:
The primal scene is the phenomenon of the child watching his parents copulate. In the famous “Wolf Man” case, Freud reports the primal scene expressed in a dream by reversal: instead of watching the kinetic scene, the frozen wolves watch the child. (Norris 143, Note 5)
Significantly, Joyce is known to have studied the Wolf Man case closely when he was writing Chapter III.4, The Fourth Watch of Shaun (Crispi & Slote 413-428).
In Genesis, the first thing Adam and Eve do after they have sinned is hide their organs of procreation from the sight of God. The implication seems to be that their true sin was the sin of sexual procreation, which is merely symbolized by the eating of the forbidden fruit (fruting for firstlings). Moreover, the latter is traditionally identified as an apple:
First, in part because of her correspondence to Lewis Carroll’s Alice Pleasance Liddel (hence A.P.L.), Issy is identified with apples, especially the apple of the fall. (Gordon 80)
O, what a tangled web he weaves!
As usual, there is so much more going on in this paragraph and we have only begun to scratch the surface. But I think we have uncovered enough meaning for a first reading.
And that’s as good a place as any to beach the bark of our tale.
References
Luca Crispi & Sam Slote (editors), How Joyce Wrote Finnegans Wake: A Chapter-by-Chapter Genetic Guide, The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin (2007)
Richard Ellmann, James Joyce, New and Revised Edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford (1982)
Sigmund Freud, From the History of an Infantile Neurosis (1918), James Strachey (editor) The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume 17, Pages 1-122, The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, London (1955)
Giraldus Cambrensis, Thomas Forester & Richard Colt Hoare (translators), Thomas Wright (editor), The Historical Works of Giraldus Cambrensis, H G Bohn, London (1863)
John Gordon, Finnegans Wake: A Plot Summary, Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, New York (1986)
George Grove (editor), A Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Volume 3, Macmillan and Co Limited, London (1900)
David Hayman, A First-Draft Version of Finnegans Wake, University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas (1963)
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
Lady Morgan [Sydney Owenson], The O’Briens and the O’Flahertys: A National Tale, Volume 1, Henry Colburn, London (1827)
Margot Norris, The Decentered Universe of Finnegans Wake: A Structuralist Analysis, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland (1976)
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)
Eugene Jolas & Elliot Paul (editors), transition, Issue 1, Shakespeare and Co, Paris (1927)
Image Credits
Tristan und Isolde: Richard Wagner, Tristan und Isolde, Act 1, Measures 1-3, Breitkopf und Härtel, Leipzig (1860), Public Domain : Music Example Created with Lilypond, Public Domain
The Giant’s Grave, St Andrew’s Church (Penrith): © Paul Farmer, Creative Commons License
transition: Eugene Jolas & Elliot Paul (editors), transition, Number 1, Shakespeare and Co, Paris (1927), Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Public Domain
Useful Resources
No comments:
Post a Comment