Comes the Question

Scheherazade und Sultan Schariar

After relating the Oedipal Event, in which our protagonist Humphrey Chimpden was confronted by the King on the highway outside his tavern, the narrator immediately begins to question everything. Are these, in fact, the facts? The possibility is raised—only to be dismissed as fallacious—that the entire account is nothing more than a story overheard by the innkeeper in his sleep:

>Heave we aside the fallacy, as punical as finikin, that it was not the king kingself but his inseparable sisters, uncontrollable nighttalkers, Skertsiraizde with Donyahzade.

Scheherazade and Dunyazad are the two sisters in the One Thousand and One Nights, also known as the Arabian Nights. In the frame story of this famous collection of folktales, Scheherazade relates the tales to Dunyazad, while her husband King Shahryar lies awake listening to her. The king, convinced of the faithlessness of all women, has vowed to execute each of his wives after only one night of pleasure. Scheherazade, however, thwarts his plans by breaking off each tale at dawn. The king repeatedly spares her life in order to hear the rest of the unfinished tale.

In Finnegans Wake, on one of the novel’s several planes of narrative, the landlord of the Mullingar House lies in bed at night, listening to his schizophrenic daughter as she talks to herself in her sleep. She occupies the room immediately above his and her voice is conveyed to him via the chimney flue, which connects the two rooms. On some level, he overhears—or, rather, underhears—her nocturnal babblings, which constitute the text of Finnegans Wake. It is not for nothing that the ten famous hundred-letter words in Finnegans Wake have precisely 1001 letters in all (the tenth word has 101 letters, making a grand total of a grand-plus-one).

Elsewhere I have called this the Second or Diurnal Plane of Narrative, as it occupies a full twenty-four hours. On this plane, Issy, like the nearby River Liffey, babbles to herself both day and night. If my analysis is correct, this plane of narrative begins at 11:32 am on the morning of Friday 21 March 1884 and ends the following morning at 11:32 am. Joyce’s wife Nora Barnacle was born on 21 March 1884. The First or Nocturnal Plane of Narrative is set forty years later and occupies a single night, beginning at 11:32 pm on Saturday 12 April 1924. On this plane, the landlord is a seventy-year-old widower. His daughter is no longer living in Mullingar House, but the River Liffey, which personifies her, is still babbling away to itself as it flows through Chapelizod.

In this Arabian interpretation of the Oedipal Event, the protagonist is identified with the king—Shahryar, the bloodthirsty ogre—and not with the tavern-keeper. This is another reminder that they are in fact one and the same. Today HCE is Oedipus, who kills his father Laius and takes his place—ie becomes the new Laius. Tomorrow he is Laius, who is killed and replaced by a new and younger Oedipus. And so the cycle continues ad infinitum et ad nauseam.

The Oedipal Anacyclesis

Bessie Sudlow

In a passage that was added after the first draft, the narrator informs us of the latter fate of the two sisters:

Skertsiraizde with Donyahzade, who afterwards, when the robbarees shot up the socialights, came down into the world as amusers and were staged by Madame Sudlow as Rosa and Lily Miskinguette in the pantalime that two pitts paythronosed, Meliodorus and Galathee.

Madame Sudlow alludes to Bessie Sudlow, the stage name of Barbara Elizabeth Johnstone. Born in Liverpool in 1849, she had a successful career as a burlesque performer on the stage in New York before returning to England, where she joined Richard D’Oyly Carte’s famous opera company. In 1875, when she appeared at the Gaiety Theatre on South King Street, Dublin, she attracted the notice of Michael Gunn, who was not only the manager of the theatre but also Carte’s silent partner. Gunn and Sudlow were married in London the following year. They had six children, and became one of the richest families in Dublin in the last quarter of the 19th century. Joyce’s father, John Stanislaus Joyce, was numbered among their intimate friends, and James himself was closely acquainted with the Gunns’ third son Selskar.

Bessie was an opera bouffe soprano with the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, but after her marriage to Gunn she retired from the stage. When he died in 1901, she was appointed manageress of the Gaiety, a position she held until 1909, when she turned sixty. She died in 1928.

Bessie Sudlow and Michael Gunn

Meliodorus and Galathee alludes to several popular works based on Greek mythology:

Acis et Galathée: A 1686 pastoral opera by Jean-Baptist Lully, about a love triangle between the nymph Galatée, the shepherd Acis, and the giant Polyphéme.
Die Schöne Galathée [The Fair Galatea] was an 1865 operetta by Franz von Suppé. It is based on the Greek myth of Pygmalion, which is best known from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
Pygmalion and Galatea was an 1871 comedy on the same subject by W S Gilbert. He and Arthur Sullivan created the Savoy Operas for D’Oyly Carte.
In 1872, a comic operetta entitled Ganymede and Galatea opened at London’s Gaiety Theatre. This was a one-act adaptation of von Suppé’s work.
Galatea, or Pygmalion Re-Versed was an 1883 musical burlesque of Gilbert’s play.
Gaetano Donizetti—Donyahzade—who was rumoured to be a distant relative of von Suppé’s, was also inspired by the popular myth. The first of his eighty-seven operas, Il Pigmalione, was a one-act treatment of the subject, composed when Donizetti was just nineteen.
Finally, George Bernard Shaw’s comedy Pygmalion was premiered in Vienna in 1913, in a German translation.

There is no evidence that Bessie Sudlow ever appeared in any of these works, though several of them were performed in Dublin at one time or another.

Pygmalion and Galatea

First-Draft Version

The earliest surviving draft of this paragraph is much shorter than the published version. It simply records the fact that the occupational agnomen of earwicker, which the King bestowed on Humphrey Coxon, was incorporated by the latter into his name, giving rise to the popular nickname Here Comes Everything:

True facts as this legend maybe, it is certain that from that date all documents initialled by Humphrey bear the sigla H.C.E. and whether he was always Coxon for his cronies and good duke Humphrey for the ragged tiny folk of Lucalizod it was certainly a pleasant turn of the populace which gave him as sense of these initials the nickname ‛Here Comes Everything’. (Hayman 62-63)

Note that the editors of The Restored Finnegans Wake, Danis Rose & John O’Hanlon, have placed this passage in a paragraph of its own. In the first published edition of Finnegans Wake, the opening paragraph of Chapter 2 ran on unbroken for more than three pages, ending with the words Habituels conspicuously emergent.

Humphrey’s original surname, Coxon, was replaced by Chimpden before Joyce prepared the second fair copy. In the first fair copy, however, it appears abbreviated to Cox, which possibly alludes to Cox and Box, a comic opera composed by Arthur Sullivan five years before he began his lucrative collaboration with W S Gilbert. Here Comes Everything was emended to Here Comes Everybody before the first fair copy.

Humphrey of Lancaster, Duke of Gloucester

Duke Humphrey

To “dine with Duke Humphrey” is to go hungry. Good Duke Humphrey was Humphrey of Lancaster, Duke of Gloucester (1390-1447), the fourth and youngest son of Henry IV, the brother of Henry V, and the uncle of Henry VI. He was one of the first patrons of the arts in England during the Renaissance, and appears in two of Shakespeare’s history plays (Henry IV, Part 2 and Henry V):

A promenade in St. Paul’s Cathedral, much frequented by insolvent debtors and beggars in the sixteenth century, was popularly styled “Duke Humphrey’s Walk,” from a totally erroneous notion that a monument overlooking it was Duke Humphrey’s tomb. “To dine with Duke Humphrey,” i.e. to loiter about St. Paul’s Cathedral dinnerless, or seeking an invitation to dinner, was long a popular proverb (cf. Shakespeare, Richard III, act iv. sc. iv. l. 176). (Lee 248)

Old St Paul’s Cathedral

After the publication of a satirical poem, The Legend of His Grace Humphrey, Duke of St. Pauls Cathedral Walk, by Samuel Speed in 1674, the phrase acquired a new meaning: to feed one’s guests on wit and culture in lieu of food. With the destruction of Old St Paul’s in the Great Fire of London (1666), Speed relocates Duke Humphrey’s dinner to Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey:

A dreadful Fire consumes the Kitchen down:

Which Fire began not in His Graces House,

But thither came, and burnt both Rat and Mouse.

On which the Duke, to shun a scorching doom,

Perambulated to Ben Johnson’s Tomb,

Where Shakespear, Spencer, Cambden, and the rest,

Once rising Suns, are now setting in the West:

But still their lustres do so brightly shine,

That they invite our Worthies there to Dine,

Where their moist Marbles seem for grief to weep,

That they, but Stone, should sacred Relicks keep:

And some have fancied that they’ve heard them sing,

Within this place is Aganippe’s Spring.

There our ingenious Train have thought it fit

To change their Diet, and to dine on Wit.

Lucan Village (1910)

Lucalizod

The toponym Lucalizod is Joyce’s own coinage. Presumably it is a conflation of the names of two villages that are situated on the River Liffey:

Chapelizod, A small village on the western outskirts of Dublin, where HCE’s tavern, the Mullingar House, stands.
Lucan, A small village about 7 km west of Mullingar House as the crow flies, or 9 km upstream.

Chapelizod stands on the left bank of the River Liffey, Lucan on the right bank. They are rivals, like the two washerwomen in I.8 (Anna Livia Plurabelle). It is possible, then, that the two villages represent Shem and Shaun, the rival siblings in Finnegans Wake. If this is correct, then Lucalizod must represent the Oedipal Figure, who embodies both of HCE’s sons.

Does the reference in the first draft to the tiny folk of Lucalizod suggest a connection with Jonathan Swift’s Lilliput? In the published version—the hungerlean spalpeens of Lucalizod—any such connection has been lost, but Joyce has added the words this man is mountain, which recalls how the Lilliputians referred to Gulliver as Quinbus Flestrin, or “the Great Man-Mountain” (Swift 33). In the opening chapter of Finnegans Wake, the Chinese character for mountain (shan) was used to depict HCE lying on his back, with his head at one end, his feet at the other end, and his erect penis in between (Letters I, 2 March 1927):

The Chinese Glyph for Mountain

There are five references to Lucalizod in Finnegans Wake. Five of them are in Book I, while the sixth and final is in the last chapter of Book III.

Sechselaüten

The phrase Pinck poncks that bail for seeks alicence refers to the Swiss festival of Sechselaüten, which Joyce witnessed during his sojourn in Zürich between 1915 and 1919. The name refers to the ringing of the church bells at six o’clock:

Sechselaüte is the Zurich Spring Festival. A cotton snowman called the Bögg is dragged about the streets by children to a pyre where it is stuck up for the night. At six-o’clock (Angelus-bell time) on the day following the fête the poor Bögg is ceremoniously set on fire to signify the triumph of light over darkness (Spring over Winter). (J ames J oyce D igital A rchive)

The following phrase, where cumsceptres with scentaurs stay, is taken from the Latin text of the Angelus, which includes the line Et concepit de Spiritu Sancto [And she conceived of the Holy Spirit]. This is not a perfect fit for Joyce’s text. The closing words scentaurs stay sound more like the Latin Sancta Dei. The Angelus, however, does also include the line: Ora pro nobis, Sancta Dei Genetrix [Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God]. Joyce, for some reason, has conflated these two lines. Perhaps his memory betrayed him. It had probably been a long time since he last recited the Angelus.

Richard Ellmann refers to the Zürich spring festival as a fertility rite:

In April [1917] Joyce saw for the first time the fertility rite, Sächselüte (the ringing of six o’clock), a Zurich ceremony which celebrates the burial of winter. After Sächselüte the church bells sound the angelus at six o’clock instead of seven. For two hours great equestrian processions wound through the city, the guilds trying to outdo each other in the splendor of their regalia. By exactly six o’clock in the evening they had congregated at the Belle-vue-Platz, in the middle of which was the Bögg or winter-demon. This was a huge man, about sixty feet high, all in white cotton with a great white hat and a white pipe, set on a wooden pyre with firecrackers on all his limbs. The fire was lighted promptly, and the Bögg exploded piece by piece, each firecracker carrying off one limb or another. Joyce often timed his arrival in Zurich in later years so that he might see this ceremony, and in Finnegans Wake, also a fertility rite, and probably also taking place in April, the washerwomen hear the bells announcing the Bögg’s death. (Ellmann 409-410)

These two elements—Sechselaüten and the Angelus—are always yoked together in Finnegans Wake. For example, in the washerwomen scene referred to by Ellmann, we read:

Pingpong! There’s the Belle for Sexaloiter! And Concepta de Send-us-pray! Pang! (RFW 167.21-22)

(Note that Ellmann was of the opinion that Finnegans Wake takes place in April. This agrees with my dating of the First Plane of Narrative to 12-13 April 1924.)

Sechselaütenfeuer (The Burning of the Bögg)

As usual, there are innumerable other details in this short paragraph that try the imagination. In the first half, we have clear allusions to the Sibylline Books of ancient Rome, the Old Testament (the Books of Nehemiah and Malachi), and the Jewish Kabbalah (Hokmah), but I have not identified the two collateral anthropomorphic narratives. The name Mulachy echoes the Hebrew for my king and the Anglicized names of two High Kings of Ireland. The phrase as punical as finikin refers to the Phoenicians (Punic = Phoenician), who are generally credited with the invention of the alphabet, though there is little difference between the Phoenician and Hebrew alphabets. In the first chapter, the Phoenix was associated with the fall (fallacy).

I don’t presume to understand any of these allusions.

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

References

Richard Ellmann, James Joyce, New and Revised Edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford (1982)
David Hayman, A First-Draft Version of Finnegans Wake, University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas (1963)
Poly Henrion (Leonhard Kohl von Kohlenegg) & Franz von Suppé, Ganymede and Galatea, Gaiety Theatre, London (1872)
James Joyce, Stuart Gilbert (editor) & Richard Ellmann (editor), The Letters of James Joyce, Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3, Viking Press, New York (1957, 1966)
James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, Faber & Faber Limited, London (1939, 1949)
James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Works, Pynch (editor), Online (2013)
Sidney Lee (editor), Dictionary of National Biography, Volume 28, Macmillan and Co, New York (1891)
Henry George Liddell & Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, Eighth Edition, American Book Company, New York (1897)
Danis Rose, John O’Hanlon, The Restored Finnegans Wake, Penguin Classics, London (2012)
Samuel Speed, The Legend of His Grace Humphrey, Duke of St. Pauls Cathedral Walk, London (1674)
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D D, Volume 8, Edited by G Ravenscroft Dennis, George Bell & Sons, London (1905)
Giambattista Vico, Goddard Bergin (translator), Max Harold Fisch (translator), The New Science of Giambattista Vico, Third Edition (1744), Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York (1948)

Image Credits

Scheherazade und Sultan Schariar: Ferdinand Keller (artist), Private Collection, Public Domain
Bessie Sudlow: Jeremiah Gurney (photographer), Collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Public Domain
Michael Gunn: Anonymous Photograph (1890), Public Domain
Pygmalion and Galatea: Giulio Bargellini (artist), Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome, Sailko (photographer), Public Domain
Humphrey of Lancaster , Duke of Gloucester: Jacques Le Boucq (artist), Recueil d’Arras, Folio 37, La Bibliothèque Municipale d’Arras, Arras, Public Domain
Old St Paul’s Cathedral: Walter Thornbury, Old and New London: A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its Places, Volume 1, Page 259, Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co, London (1887), British Library, London, Public Domain
Lucan Village (1910): Joe Williams Postcard Collection, Valentine Series, Public Domain
Sechselaütenfeuer (The Burning of the Bögg): Postcard, Photochrom Zürich, Zentralbibliothek Zürich, Public Domain

Finnegans Wake - A Prescriptive Guide

17 September 2022