29 August 2022

Mutt and Jute

 


Mutt and Jeff (RFW 013.13–014.37)

The next sixty-four lines of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake present us with a short dialogue between a mismatched pair of characters called Mutt and Jute. This is the first of four such dialogues of varying lengths that are dispersed throughout the novel:


On several occasions throughout this series of articles, I have had occasion to mention how most of the episodes in this opening chapter of Finnegans Wake foreshadow salient events from future chapters. The dialogue of Mutt and Jute is an excellent example of this phenomenon, as it anticipates not one but three important moments in the novel. Of particular significance is the Butt and Taff episode in II.3 (The Scene in the Public), which recounts How Buckley Shot the Russian General. That tall tale, one of the showpieces of Finnegans Wake, is an epic re-enactment of the Oedipal Event, in which a mature HCE is challenged and defeated by a younger man, who embodies his two sons Shem and Shaun.

En passant, one might also note important parallels between the encounter between Mutt and Jute and the confrontation in IV.1 between the Archdruid of Ireland and St Patrick, which occurs immediately after the dialogue of Muta and Juva (RFW 478.01-479.02).

Dramatis Personae

Before we can hope to understand what is going on in the brief dialogue between Mutt and Jute, we need to identify the two speakers. Who exactly are Mutt and Jute?

Joyce adapted the names from those of two characters in an American comic strip Mutt and Jeff, which was created by Bud Fisher in 1907 and was still popular in the 1920s:

Mutt and Jeff or Mutt and Jute—males in an American comic strip, published as lately as 1971. In FW their episode is based partly on the meeting of Caliban and Stephano-Trinculo in The Tempest, partly on the meeting of Polyphemus and Ulysses. Mutt is seemingly the Man Servant. (Glasheen 202)


Mutt and Jeff Original Comic Strip

In the previous paragraph, we were introduced to HCE’s Man Servant (S, commonly known as Sackerson or Ole Joe). There, he was explicitly identified as a Jute:

’Tis a Jute! Let us swop hats and excheck a few strong verbs weak oach eather yapyazzard abast the blooty creeks. (RFW 013.11-12)

I believe the swopping of hats implies that in the following dialogue, S, although identified as a Jute, is now playing the rôle of Mutt, as Glasheen correctly surmises. This swopping of hats reflects the fact that Finnegans Wake is cyclical—like Giambattista Vico’s history. The native Irishman is at first a free man—a rather primitive and uncivilized one from the point of view of the native Englishman. The latter invades Ireland and enslaves the former, who becomes the servant of this new master.

This game of musical chairs played with historical rôles recurs throughout Finnegans Wake. For example, Charles Stewart Parnell (the Oedipal figure) invades the Irish Parliamentary Party and overthrows its leader Isaac Butt (HCE). Parnell thereby becomes the new HCE and Butt is forced to serve him. But subsequently a new Oedipal figure, Tim Healy, invades, overthrows Parnell and becomes the next HCE. And so on ad infinitum et ad nauseam.

S was once an Irish Mutt but now he is a British Jute. He plays the rôle of Mutt in the dialogue as this dialogue is re-enacting the Oedipal Moment, when the Jute invaded and enslaved Mutt. Mutt, therefore, is the native Irishman, primitive but free. Jute is the foreign invader—the Angles, Saxons and Jutes were the three Germanic peoples who invaded Britain and became the English nation—who conquers and enslaves him. Mutt then adopts the English tongue and begins to ape his masters. He becomes a Jute—ie a West Brit.

One can also see S as the serpent in the Garden of Eden, who reigned supreme before the creation of Adam. But now he creeps in the dust and is trod upon by his new master. The latter, however, fears him, as the serpent still has his fangs and will always be dangerous. Masters do not sleep easy: they live in dread of the slave revolt.

Note that the common assumption that Mutt and Jute are Shem and Shaun may be misleading. It is probably true that there is something of Shem in Mutt (Man Servant) and something of Shaun in Jute (Oedipal Figure), but the converse is also probably true. Mutt has difficulty hearing Jute, while Jute has difficulty seeing Mutt : in Finnegans Wake, Shem has good hearing but poor eyesight, while the opposite is true for Shaun:

The first half of the [opening] chapter ends with a meeting between two characters, Mutt and Jute, and their mutual misunderstandings. These two characters exemplify not only the problematic communication after Babel but at the same time the rivalry between two suitors of the same woman, two inhabitants of the same city or land, and all the enemy brothers of the book. Mutt and Jute are the prehistorical prototypes of antagonistic Shem and Shaun ... but also the washerwomen at the end of I.8 [Anna Livia Plurabelle] who have trouble hearing each other. (Crispi & Slote 57 ... 59)

John Gordon notes that Mutt and Jute may mean simply Me and You (Gordon 117). But he also sees this episode as a foreshadowing of II.2 (School Nessans), in which Shem is hard pressed to explain things to his dimmer brother Shaun (Gordon 86).

Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo in The Tempest

The Tempest

Adaline Glasheen’s observation that the encounter of Mutt and Jute was inspired by a scene in William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest is worth investigating. In Act II Scene 2, the primitive brute Caliban encounters the King of Naples’ butler Stephano and his jester Trinculo. In the Dramatis Personae of the First Folio of 1623, Caliban is described as a savage and deformed slave. He is a monstrous uncivilized brute and indigenous to the island. This certainly sounds like Mutt, the primitive Irish aborigine enslaved by the foreign invader. But what of Stephano and Trinculo? The former is described as a drunken butler, the latter as a Jester.

Caliban swears to abandon his master Prospero and worship Stephano instead. Later in the play, this ill-matched trio will raise an unsuccessful coup against Prospero, after which Caliban returns to his old master. But speaking of Prospero, it is he who arrives on the island and enslaves Caliban. And it is against him that the slaves revolt. Surely Prospero would be the Jute to Caliban’s Mutt? Stephano and Trinculo do not invade the island: they are shipwrecked on it. Nevertheless, Caliban does become Stephano’s servant. On the other hand, HCE’s Manservant is certainly a drunken butler.


Ulysses and Polyphemus

The Odyssey

Adaline Glasheen also identified the encounter between Polyphemus the Cyclops and Ulysses (Odysseus) as another inspiration for the encounter between Mutt and Jute in Finnegans Wake. Joyce had already drawn on this memorable scene from Homer’s Odyssey for the Cyclops episode in Ulysses. Homer describes the Cyclopes as:

an overweening and lawless folk, who, trusting in the immortal gods, plant nothing with their hands nor plough; but all these things spring up for them without sowing or ploughing ... Neither assemblies for council have they, nor appointed laws, but they dwell on the peaks of lofty mountains in hollow caves, and each one is lawgiver to his children and his wives, and they reck nothing one of another. (Murray 311)

There are certainly parallels here with Caliban and Mutt. Ulysses’ rôle in the story is similar in some respects to Stephano’s and Trinculo’s. Like them, he is a shipwrecked mariner rather than a foreign invader. And he does not enslave Polyphemus. On the contrary, he is imprisoned by Polyphemus, who hopes to eat him. But Ulysses eventually tricks and blinds him, and makes good his escape—though some of his men are not so lucky.

On the whole, I am do not find Glasheen’s hypothesis particularly convincing.


The Murder of Laius by Oedipus

The Oedipal Event

The encounter between Mutt and Jute is better seen as a re-enactment of the Oedipal Event, which is central to the plot of Finnegans Wake. The replacement of the man in possession by a younger version of himself is a vicissitude that befalls many of us at one point or another in our lives. It is also a common trope in works of art and literature. The most important of these with respect to Finnegans Wake are:

  • The Original Greek Myth Oedipus unwittingly kills and replaces his father Laius.

  • Richard Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung Siegfried confronts his grandfather Wotan and shatters his spear with the sword Nothung.

  • The Oedipus Complex A psychoanalytic theory developed by Sigmund Freud and formally introduced in 1899 in The Interpretation of Dreams.

  • William Shakespeare’s Hamlet This play has been interpreted by some critics in the light of Freud’s theories. Freud himself applied the Oedipus Complex to Hamlet, originally believing that the death of Shakespeare’s father in 1601 was crucial to the writing of the play (Freud 743). Freud later came to question the authorship of the play, endorsing J Thomas Looney’s theory that the true author of the Shakespeare canon was Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford (Freud 1949:96).


Oedipus (The Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition)

The Battle of Clontarf

Earlier in this opening chapter—in one of the best known episodes in Finnegans Wake, The Museyroom—we were treated to, among other things, a re-enactment of the Battle of Waterloo. The following section, which featured the gnarlybird, took place on the deserted battlefield, which had become the burial mound of the war dead. Shortly after this, we had the famous quotation from Edgar Quinet concerning the flowers that continue to grow on battlefields long after the battles have taken place:

Aujourd’hui, comme aux jours de Pline et de Columelle, la jacinthe se plaît dans les Gaules, la pervenche en Illyrie, la marguerite sur les ruines de Numance ; et pendant qu’autour d’elles les villes ont changé de maîtres et de nom, que plusieurs sont rentrées dans le néant, que les civilisations se sont choquées et brisées, leurs paisibles générations ont traversé les âges, et se sont succédé l’une à l’autre jusqu’à nous, fraîches et riantes comme aux jours des batailles. (Quinet 367-368)

Today, as in the days of Pliny and Columella, the hyacinth disports itself in Gaul, the periwinkle in Illyria, the ox-eye daisy on the ruins of Numantia; and while the surrounding cities have acquired new masters and new names, while many others have ceased to exist, and while civilizations have clashed with one another and been destroyed, their peaceful generations have endured throughout the ages in an unbroken succession, as fresh and cheerful as on the days of the battles.

The dialogue between Mutt and Jute also takes place on a battlefield. In this case it is the Battle of Clontarf that has recently taken place. In The Gnarlybird, I suggested that the Battle of Clontarf also lay behind the Museyroom episode. Incidentally, this battlefield aspect of the dialogue foreshadows the Butt and Taff episode, which takes place during the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War.


The Battle of Clontarf

The Battle of Clontarf was a seminal event in Irish history, one which has often been misrepresented by unreliable narrators for political reasons. It took place just outside Dublin on Good Friday 1014. The battle was the culminating event in a civil war in which the sovereignty of the reigning High King of Ireland Brian Ború, a usurper, was challenged by a coalition of Irish and Hiberno-Norse leaders led by the King of Leinster Máel Mórdha and the King of Dublin Sitric Silkenbeard. The latter were aided by two contingents of foreign Norse mercenaries led by the Earl of Orkney, Sigurd the Stout, and Brodir, a warlord based in the Isle of Man. Of these five leaders, only Sitric survived the battle—mainly because he did not actually participate in it, preferring to remain safely ensconced within the wooden walls of Dublin.

Because of the presence of overseas Norsemen, the Battle of Clontarf has often been presented as the battle in which Brian Ború nobly gave his life to save Christian Ireland from the Pagan Vikings. I remember being taught this lie in school as late as the 1970s. This rewriting of history is based on a political tract of the 12th century known as Cogad Gáedel re Gallaib, or The War of the Irish with the Foreigners. This bombastic piece of propaganda has effectively mythologized the Battle and beatified Brian, who is martyred at the climax by Brodir—but whom he still manages to fatally wound.

The toponym Clontarf is Anglicized from the Irish: Cluain Tarbh, Bulls’ Meadow. This not only ties the battle to the Museyroom episode, which abounds in bulls, but also serves to remind us that much of recorded history is, ultimately, bullshit (Dungtarf).

First-Draft Version

Joyce’s first draft of the Mutt and Jute dialogue is considerably shorter than the final, published version, but the references to the Battle of Clontarf are clear from the outset:

Jute — Are you Jeff?

Mutt — Someward.

Jute — You are not a jeffmute?

Mutt — No, only an utterer.

Jute — What is the mutter with you?

Mutt — I became a stummer.

Jute — What turrurrurrurrible thing to because! How?

Mutt — Aput the buttle.

Jute — Whose Poddle? Wherein?

Mutt — The Inns of Dungtarf.

Jute — You are almost inedible to me. Become a little wiseable.

Mutt — Boohooros! I trumple in my mines when I rememmerem.

Jute — Let me cross your qualm with gilt. Here is coyne, a piece of oake.

Mutt — How I know it! It is him. He was poached on that eggtentical spot by the liveries. There where the missers mooney.

Jute — Simply because he dumptied the wholebarrow of rubbages on to soil?

Mutt — Just a puddingstone at a riverpool.

Jute — Lord a marshy! With what for a noise like?

Mutt — Somular to a bull in a Clompturf. I could snore with my owth by the neck I am sutton on O’FIynn.

Jute — Boiledoil for me if I can forestand you norse noise as you make out of it.

Mutt — Rest a while. Half a look onward you will see. Thousand & one livestories netherfellen here. They are tombed to the mound. This earth is not but brickdust. He who runes may read it. But speak siftly. (Hayman 55-56)

The principal change Joyce made when he revised this episode was to append about thirty lines of new material to the end, which almost doubled the length of the dialogue. The burden of this appendix is the Viconian philosophy that history endlessly repeats itself. This is simply an elaboration of Mutt’s closing speech in the first-draft version, in which he informs us that 1001 tales have retold the same old story as the Battle of Clontarf.


Mutt and Jute

Analysis

In their opening exchanges, Mutt and Jute have difficulty communicating with each other. Communication lies at the heart of Finnegans Wake, especially that between Joyce and his reader. Historically, the native Irishman would have spoken a Celtic language, and the invading Jute a Germanic one. In this context, however, the same idea is conveyed by Mutt’s stutter and his hearing difficulty. Stuttering is usually associated in Finnegans Wake with HCE’s guilt. I take this to mean that Mutt is the current HCE, who is about to be replaced by the new HCE. His partial deafness is another trait he shares with HCE, whose surname, Earwicker, suggests that his ear is weaker.

As the conversation turns—at random, it seems—to the Battle of Clontarf, Mutt becomes patriotic and belligerent. He strikes Jute, giving him a black eye (One eyegonblack—Odysseus putting out Polyphemus’s eye?), after which Jute offers Mutt some money (McHugh 109). Is this a bribe? Or is he paying his new servant his wages? The coins are stamped with the image of Sitric Silkenbeard (Cedric Silkyshag):


Coin Minted by Sitric Silkenbeard

The concluding section of Mutt and Jute’s dialogue looks forward to the building of the city of Dublin and its history. Mutt now seems to have regressed to a prehistoric time long before Clontarf—like the Neanderthal carl on the kopje of the preceding paragraph. This passage may be foreshadowing another of Finnegans Wake’s set pieces: Haveth Childers Everywhere, which occurs at the climax of III.3, The Third Watch of Shaun [RFW 413.34-431.13], and in which HCE, channelled through his son Shaun, boasts about Dublin’s history.

Loose Ends

  • coyne ... liveries Coyne and livery: there grew up by degrees that class of armed retainers—kerns and gallowglasses, they were called in later times—who surrounded every important chief, whether of English or Irish descent, and were by them quarantined forcibly in war time upon others, and so there grew up that system of “coyne and livery,” or forced entertainment for horse and men, which is to be met with again and again throughout Irish history (Lawless 29).

  • He was poached on in that eggtentical spot The fall of HCE dramatized as the fall of Humpty Dumpty.

  • missers moony Mrs Mooney, a character in The Boarding House, one of the short stories in Joyce’s collection Dubliners. She is also the subject of malicious gossip in the Cyclops episode of Ulysses. A butcher’s daughter, she runs a boarding house in Hardwicke Street. I don’t know what relevance she has here. In the story, Mrs Mooney tries to trap a husband for her daughter Polly by, essentially, pimping out her daughter among her lodgers. Glasheen notes that at one point in the story Polly waits upstairs while argument rages (Glasheen 199). Make of that what you will.

  • Taciturn Tacitus, the Roman historian and annalist. He mentions Ireland briefly in his Life of Agricola (Tacitus 1:24). He was known for his concise—but hardly taciturn—style. His brief account of Ireland includes two abiding themes in Irish history and mythology: (1) the dispossessed ruler who is driven into exile, only to return triumphantly at a later date to reclaim his patrimony : (2) domestic strife among the Irish, who were easily subjugated by a succession of foreign invaders because they were always fighting among themselves (fissiparous is the native historian’s favoured term to describe this national failing).

  • Minnikin Passe Manneken Pis, a well-known statue and fountain of a young boy urinating in Brussels (brookcells), Belgium. This links the Battle of Clontarf with the Battle of Waterloo, and the Mutt and Jute episode with the Museyroom episode. The earlier Louee, louee may also include an allusion to Louis XVIII who was restored to the throne after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo. There is also, of course, an allusion to the Louis d’or, a French coin.


Manneken Pis

  • Meldundleise! German: Mild und leise, Mildly and gently, the opening words of Isolde’s Liebestod (Swansong) in Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde. Tristan is one of the principal incarnations of the Oedipal figure in Finnegans Wake. The HCE he overthrows is King Mark of Cornwall, who is also alluded to in this episode (Monomark).

  • thing mud! Thingmote, the “Parliament” or Norse assembly in Scandinavian Dublin. It took place on a hill between the modern streets of St Andrew’s Street, Suffolk Street and Wicklow Street. The Norse Kings of Dublin were also buried here (viceking’s graab).

The Mutt and Jute episode is another of those set pieces in Finnegans Wake that one could spend a lifetime analysing and exploring. In these sixty-odd lines Joyce has piled layer upon layer of meaning, creating a stratigraphy of buried arcana for literary archaeologists to excavate at their leisure. But it’s time to press on. I leave the reader to pursue his own excavations at his own leisure.

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

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