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| How Many Miles to Babylon? (RFW 016.22–016.39) |
This paragraph from the opening chapter of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake rounds off a short self-contained section which follows the Mutt & Jute Dialogue and leads into the celebrated Prankquean Episode. This section is concerned with written and printed texts, particularly sacred texts. This paragraph can best be read as a description of Finnegans Wake itself, the ‘sacred” text which the reader is holding in his or her hand:
But look what you have in your handself!
First-Draft Version
The first draft of this paragraph was only about one third as long as the final version published in 1939:
The movables are in motion march, all of them again in pitpat & zingzang to every little earywig tells a little bit of a torytale. Of a man and of a wife and of a pomme and a famme or of the youths that wanted gilding or of the maid that made a man. It was of a night. Lissom! lissom! I am doing it. Hark, the corne entreats! and the larpnotes prittle. (Hayman 57-58)
This is patently a description of Finnegans Wake in a nutshell, the story of a single family—husband, wife, and three children—told in the course of a single night. It is the story of HCE and ALP, whose initials are encoded in the closing words. It is also the story of Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit (French: pomme, apple). It is also history: the story of the Whigs and the Tories.
Significantly, this story is told in print—movables refers to the movable type of Gutenberg’s printing press.
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| A Replica of A Gutenberg Printing Press |
Not Yet
The previous paragraph ended with a reference to the closing word of Finnegans Wake—the—and the way in which the last sentence of the book leads the reader back to the very beginning. Immediately after the book’s first sentence, there is a paragraph of seven clauses in which the phrase not yet is prominent. It can hardly be a coincidence, then, that the present paragraph begins with the phrase Cry not yet!
Furthermore, Nondum is Latin for not yet. So the phrase, There’s many a smile to Nondum means: “We have a long way to go before we finish Finnegans Wake and start over again.”
Fly Not Yet is one of Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies. It recounts the pleasures of midnight trysts—an appropriate theme for a book of the night, like Finnegans Wake. Usually when Joyce alludes to one of Moore’s Irish Melodies, he also includes an allusion to the traditional air to which it is sung. In this case, however, there does not seem to be any allusion to Planxty Kelly, the air to which Fly Not Yet is set. Perhaps this is because Planxty Kelly is not a traditional air, but was composed by the blind Irish harpist Turlough O’Carolan in the early 18th century. Joyce will parody this song again in II.3 (The Scene in the Public, RFW 257.25-26), but this time there is a possible allusion to O’Carolan’s air: Panny Kostello (Hodgart & Worthington 131).
La Langue de Rabelais
Scattered here and there throughout the text of Finnegans Wake are numerous little foliations—to use Stuart Gilbert’s coinage (Beckett et al 72)—of words and phrases which Joyce culled from Lazare Sainéan’s La Langue de Rabelais [The Language of Rabelais]. The first such foliation can be found on the opening page of the book, where Joyce draws on Sainéan for a list of medieval weapons (badelaire, partisane, malchus, verdun, baliste, catapulte, aze gaye). The complete list of allusions to this book can be perused on Raphael Slepon’s extraordinary site FWEET.
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| François Rabelais |
In a letter to his patron Harriet Shaw Weaver, Joyce confessed that he had never actually read Rabelais and only knew him at second hand through the few chapters of Sainéan’s text that he had read:
Another (or rather many) says [I am] imitating Lewis Carroll. I never read him till Mrs Nutting gave me a book, not Alice, a few weeks ago—though, of course, I heard bits and scraps. But then I never read Rabelais either though nobody will believe this. I will read them both when I get back [from the Netherlands]. I read a few chapters of a book called La langue de Rabelais. (Letters I, 31 May 1927)
In the present paragraph, Sainéan has provided Joyce with a list of old dances and a handful of expressions used by Rabelais to denote various historical or mythical eras, though none of these were in the first draft:
I.216: (common modern folktale opening formula) Il y a de cela bien longtemps, Quand les poules avoient des dents (A long time ago, When hens had teeth)
I.215: (common 16th-century folktale opening formula) Au temps que les bestes parloyent (In the days when animals could speak)
I.216: (common 16th century folktale ending formula) Car si ne le croiez, non foys je (For if you do not believe it, neither do I)
I.166: Les hauts bonnets du XVe siècle, coiffure très élevée au dessus du front, étaient passés en proverbe au siècle suivant, et l’expression “du temps des hauts bonnets” revient souvent sous la plume de Rabelais (The tall bonnets of the fifteenth century, a hair-style raised high above the forehead, had passed into proverb by the next century, and the expression “from the time of the tall bonnets” reappears often under the quill of Rabelais)
I.207: Mal maridade, le mal mariée, danse provençale (Mal maridade, the poorly-married, a dance from Provence)
I.207: Revergasse (en Languedoc, revergado), ancienne danse dans laquelle les jeunes filles troussaient leurs jupes jusqu'à la cuisse (de reverga, retrousser) (Revergasse (in Langedoc, revergado), an ancient dance in which the young girls tucked their skirts up to the thighs (from reverga, to tuck up))
I.207: appellations de danses ... la Frisque (names of dances ... la Frisque)
I.207: danses grecques ... la pirrichie (Greek dances ... la pirrichie)
I.207: appellations de danses ... la Gaye (names of dances ... la Gaye)
I.220: la fameuse Mélusine ... fée sous forme de femme-serpent (the famous Melusine ... a fairy in the form of a snake-woman)
I.207: appellations de danses ... la Trippiere (names of dances ... la Trippiere)
I.207: Expect un pauc, attends un peu ... danse gasconne (Expect un pauc, wait a bit ... a dance of Gascony)
I.207: appellations de danses ... La Valentinoise (names of dances ... La Valentinoise)
I.108: Besch, vent du sud-ouest (Besch, south-west wind)
I.94: Jal voyait à tort, dans l’exclamation “nau!” (c’est-à-dire “noël!” ) le même mot que nau, navire ([Auguste] Jal saw mistakenly, in the exclamation “nau!” (ie “Noël!”), the same word as nau, ship)
I.106: Flouin ... “une manière de vaisseau de mer, approchant la rauberge, peu plus petit” (Flouin ... “a type of sea-vessel, resembling the rauberge, a little smaller”)
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| Lazare Sainéan |
Why does Joyce use Sainéan here? Are these foliations scattered randomly throughout Finnegans Wake or is there some method to Joyce’s madness?
Issy’s Voice
Finnegans Wake takes place in the master bedroom of The Mullingar House, a public house in the village of Chapelizod, on the western outskirts of Dublin. In the dreamworld of the novel, HCE and ALP’s daughter Issy sleeps in the room directly above the master bedroom. As she sleeps, she continually chatters to herself—or, rather, the two sides of her split personality converse with each other—and the sound of her babbling voice is conveyed down the chimney flue [Flou inn] to the parents’ bedroom, where her seductive words are overheard [underheard?] by her father—her Valentine.
There are several hints that this paragraph has been constructed from overheard snatches of Issy’s babblings. In Finnegans Wake, nursery rhymes (How Many Miles to Babylon) and fairytales (Once upon a time) are associated with Issy. She is also fascinated by the latest fashions and finery (hoops, bonnets). Dancing, too, is one of her passions—eight Rabelaisian dances are alluded to in this one paragraph. And there are other hints that we are listening to Issy:
Maye faye, she’s la gaye, this snaky woman The mythical characters Morgana le Fay and Mélusine are obvious avatars of both Issy and her mother ALP.
we are in nearing of a norewhig We are within earshot of a Norwegian (HCE as the Norwegian Captain). The next section of Finnegans Wake is the famous Prankquean Episode, which foreshadows the mock-epic tale How Kersse the Tailor Made a Suit of Clothes for the Norwegian Captain.
So weenybeenyveenyteeny ... Hypocorisms (baby-talk) are characteristic of Issy’s speech patterns.
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| A Robert Adam Fireplace |
John Gordon also recognizes Issy’s voice in this paragraph, and he believes that she is the narrator of the following Prankquean Episode:
The female promised at the end of the dark journey has also been the daughter-as-houri/Scheherazade—all set to tell the father a story when he settles down. That story, the prankquean fable, begins with the usual Issy-sounds of plink-plunking water, here as ‘larpnotes’, and windy whispering. That Issy’s voice is coming or imagined coming from the room above via the chimney near the bed explains why in the opening sentence the Jarl should have ‘his burnt head high up in his lamphouse’. (Gordon 118)
The paragraph ends, however, by invoking the initials of HCE and ALP. Issy is the future ALP, just as ALP is the future Kate, who narrated the Museyroom Episode.
And that’s as good a place as any to beach the bark of our tale.
References
Samuel Beckett et al, Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress, New Directions, Norfolk, Connecticut (1974)
David Hayman, A First-Draft Version of Finnegans Wake, University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas (1963)
Matthew J C Hodgart & Mabel Worthington, Song in the Works of James Joyce, Temple University Publications, Columbia University Press, New York (1959)
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 (1957, 1966)
Danis Rose, John O’Hanlon, The Restored Finnegans Wake, Penguin Classics, London (2012)
Lazare Sainéan, La Langue de Rabelais, Tome Premier, E de Boccard, Paris (1922)
Image Credits
How Many Miles to Babylon? © Lisa Ross (artist), Red Spread, Fair Use
A Replica of Gutenberg’s Printing Press: Replica Gutenberg Printing Press, The Featherbed Alley Printshop Museum, Mitchell House, St George’s, Bermuda, © Aodhdubh (photographer), Creative Commons License
François Rabelais: Anonymous Portrait, 16th Century, Château de Versailles, Public Domain
Lazare Sainéan, Anonymous Photograph, Public Domain
A Robert Adam Fireplace: © 2017 Ryan & Smith, Fair Use
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