For, Be That Samesake Sibsubstitute

The Salmon of Knowledge (RFW 023.03–023.33)

In this the 75th article in this series on James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, we have finally reached the last paragraph of the opening chapter. Like the preceding paragraph, this one is quite revealing. We learn some important biographical details concerning the novel’s protagonist, Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, as Joyce transitions smoothly into the following chapter, which was actually written about three years before this chapter.

Hayman 60:32-61:13

First-Draft Version

The first draft of this paragraph was written in November 1926:

And be the hooky salmon there’s a big lad now I am told, like a lord mayor (on show) the height of a brewer’s chimpney, humphing his showlders like he’s such a grandfallar with a pockedwife and three sly little clinkers, two twin bugs and one pucell, and either he did what you know or he did not what you know and that’ll do now but however that may be ’tis sure for one thing that he came to this place some time on another in a hull of a wherry and has been repeating himself like fish ever since an that he was of humile commune & ensectuous nature, as you may guess from his byname, & that he is he & no other he who is primarily responsible for the high cost of everything. (Hayman 60-61)

HCE is no longer depicted as the sleeping giant Finn Mac Cool, interred in the Irish landscape—an image that has informed much of the opening chapter. Instead, he is portrayed as a family man of the modern bourgeois world. He has a wife and three children—two twin boys and a girl. His reputation, however, lies under a cloud—like the Hill of Howth, which is often enveloped by clouds. Although this HCE is said to be as tall as a brewer’s chimney, he is explicitly compared to low forms of life such as fish and insects—comparisons which Joyce would elaborate when he came to expand this section. The significance of his byname is only revealed in the following chapter. As Geert Lernout has commented:

Clearly, this section was needed to make the link with the beginning of chapter 2, which tells us about the origin of HCE’s name. (Crispi & Slote 58)

St Patrick’s Tower, Guinness Brewery

Francis Brewster was the Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1674. When Joyce enlarged this paragraph, he added allusions to a couple of other Lord Mayors: Abel Ram (1684) and Benjamin Lee Guinness (1851). The Lord Mayor’s Show is an annual pageant that takes place in London on the occasion of the inauguration of a new Lord Mayor. In Dublin, mayoral inaugurations are not marked by any special celebrations.

In Irish mythology, the Salmon of Knowledge was caught in the River Boyne by the elderly poet Finnegas but eaten by the young Finn MacCool, who thereby acquired the wisdom of the Salmon. Similarly, at this point in Finnegans Wake, the giant Finn MacCool is being replaced by the young man about town Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker. A smolt is a young salmon that has migrated to the ocean within the past year. By association, smolt suggests Smollett, the name of a Scottish novelist of the 18th century. Hence, we have a cluster of allusions to Smollett’s novels in this paragraph:

The Adventures of Roderick Random
The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker
The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle

Tobias Smollett

Second Plane of Narrative: Diurnal

In the last article, we saw that Finnegans Wake must be read on several different planes of narrative—as Joyce himself made clear. I suggested that the first plane, the Nocturnal, depicts a single night in Chapelizod, Dublin. I hypothesized that the night in question was Saturday April 12 and Sunday April 13 1924.

The second plane of narrative I call the Diurnal, for I believe this plane depicts a single day in Chapelizod. Let us review what I had to say about this level in the 13th article in this series, A Working Hypothesis.

In my working hypothesis, the second plane of narrative is diurnal, lasting a full twenty-four hours. It begins at 11:32 am on the morning of Friday 21 March 1884 and it ends at 11:32 am on Saturday 22 March 1884. Some of you may recognize the former as the birthdate of Joyce’s wife Nora Barnacle (Ellmann 156).

February-March 1884

Several interpreters of Finnegans Wake have approached the work from a point of view that Roland McHugh once called naive realism (McHugh 50). According to this approach Finnegans Wake is a novel with a plot, just like Ulysses—only the style is unorthodox. To these interpreters the diurnal plane of narrative is the most important one, and possibly the only one. At least one of these interpreters, John Gordon of Connecticut College, has hazarded a guess as to the exact day on which this novel is set:

The date of Finnegans Wake is Monday, the twenty-first of March, 1938, and the early morning of Tuesday the twenty-second. (Gordon 39)

I and John Gordon are agreed on the date and the month—Nora’s birthday—but he is convinced that the novel is set in 1938. I find it hard to believe that Joyce spent sixteen years writing a book that was set in the future. It makes Finnegans Wake sound like a work of science fiction. Joyce was interested in the past, not the future.

In Ulysses Bloom tries to distract himself from the depressing events of Bloomsday—the funeral of a dear friend, his cuckolding by Boylan, his altercation with the Citizen—by escaping into a happier past, when he was young and in love. The calendar may say June 1904, but for Bloom it is May 1887, when he first met Molly at Mat Dillon’s garden party in Roundtown (Terenure), or May 1888, when he proposed to her and they consummated their relationship on Ben Howth. I believe that the landlord of the Mullingar House does something similar when he falls asleep. In March 1884, he was a thirty-year-old, happily married and respected businessman, with three young children. In 1924, he was old, widowed, and alone.

Leopold Bloom and Molly Tweedy on Ben Howth

Clive Hart also recognized a diurnal plane of narrative. He did not settle on a specific date or year, but he does agree with me as to the day of the week:

The naturalistic plot, such as it is, is concerned with events at a public house near Dublin on one day fairly early in this century, while at the second level the individual incidents of this single day are divided up by Joyce and distributed in order throughout an entire week, thus expanding a daily into a weekly cycle. A morning event, for example, takes place on a Wednesday, an evening event on a Friday, and so on. Confusion resulting from the failure of the critics to appreciate this technique of time-expansion and compression has led to a misunderstanding about the day of the week on which the whole twenty-four hour cycle takes place. This is a Friday ... (Hart 70)

Until I read Hart’s thesis on how Joyce took the events of a Friday and redistributed them throughout the days of an entire week, I was not confident that my date of 21 March 1884 was correct. John Gordon cited passages from the book that seemed to prove conclusively that the book was set on a Monday-Tuesday. Then I noticed that the tombstone on Nora Barnacle’s grave in Zürich gives her date of birth as 25 March 1884. Now, 24 March 1884 was a Monday, so perhaps the diurnal plane of Finnegans Wake begins on 24 March. Unfortunately, the tombstone in Zürich is simply wrong. I can’t find any other evidence that Nora Barnacle was born on 25 March or was ever thought to have been born on 25 March. Apparently the tombstone engraver blundered.

The Joyce Tombstone, Zürich

But Clive Hart has restored my confidence. If he thinks that on the diurnal plane of narrative Finnegans Wake is set on a Friday, then that’s good enough for me: 21 March 1884 was a Friday. As for the redistribution of the book’s events across a seven-day week, that belongs to the next narrative plane, the Hebdomadal—but that’s another story.

The fact of the matter is that a certain amount of cherry-picking is required to support whatever day or date one cares to choose. I assumed, for instance, that 21 March 1884 was the vernal equinox, but in 1884 the spring equinox fell on 20 March! On the other hand, 20 March is the last day of the astrological sign of Pisces, while 21 March is the first day of Aries. Now, in the present paragraph, Joyce equates Finn Mac Cool with a fish (be the hooky salmon) and his successor HCE with a ram (big rody ram lad), so the era of HCE does indeed begin on 21 March.

There is also the possibility that Nora Barnacle was actually born on 22 March 1884 (Norburn 206). The last word has probably not been written on this subject.

Nora Barnacle (1928)

Biographical Details

In the final version of this paragraph, Joyce provides us with several details concerning the life and circumstances of Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, both as a young man in 1884 and as an old man in 1924:

on the premises of his haunt of the hungred bordles ... Shop Illicit He is the landlord of a public house (House of the Hundred Bottles) in Chapelizod.
the height of Brewster’s chimpney and as broad below as Phineas Barnum, humphing his share of the showthers is senken on him He is tall, but plump, and he has a hunchback.
with a pocked wife ... three lice nittle clinkers, two twilling bugs and one midgit pucelle He has (in 1884) a diminutive wife and three children, two twin boys and a young daughter.
And aither he cursed and recursed and was everseen doing what your fourfootlers saw or he was neverdone seeing what you coolpigeons know He is possibly guilty of a crime of a sexual or incestuous nature, though this may be all in his head.
White monothoist? Red theatrocrat? And all the pinkprophets cohalething? Very much so! His political and religious leanings are uncertain, and possibly eclectic.
the man ... came at this timecoloured place where we live in our paroqial fermament one tide on another with a bumrush in a hull of a wherry, the twin turbane dhow The Bey for Dybbling He is of foreign extraction. This probably means that while he was born and bred in Dublin, he has—like most Dubliners—Scandinavian, Norman and|or English ancestry.
and has been repreaching himself like a fishmummer these sixtyten years ever since He is now (1924) seventy years old.
growing hoarish under his turban His hair is turning white with age.
when innebbiated He is often drunk.

Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker

The Jewish Kabbalah

Kabbalah is an esoteric system of theology in Jewish mysticism, an attempt to explain the relationship between God and his creation. It crops up several times in Finnegans Wake, especially in Chapter II.2, Night Lessons.

Joyce’s principal source for the Jewish Kabbalah was probably Helena Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled, though some scholars believe that Joyce was well read on the subject (Brivic 7). Blavatsky herself is not free from misrepresentation. For example, she refers to the ninth emanation (sephirah) of the Infinite (Ein Soph) as Shekinah (Blavatsky 224), but this is incorrect. The ninth emanation is Yesod : Shekhinah represents the Female Divine Presence.

In the paragraph we are now studying, the Kabbalah is alluded to in the following passage:

Though Eseb fibble it to the zephiroth and Artsa zoom it round her heavens for ever. Creator, he has created for his creatured ones a creation.

Traditionally, the ten sephiroth are depicted as nodes on a stylized diagram of the Tree of Life:

The Tree of Life (Kabbalah)

Blavatsky introduces the Jewish Kabbalah with the following description:

Helena Blavatsky

In the oldest Oriental Kabala, the Deity is represented as three circles in one, shrouded in a certain smoke or chaotic exhalation. In the preface to the Sohar, which transforms the three primordial circles into Three Heads, over these is described an exhalation or smoke, neither black nor white, but colorless, and circumscribed within a circle. This is the unknown Essence ... In the Sohar the highest God is ... a pure abstraction ... It is Hakama, the “Supreme Wisdom, that cannot be understood by reflection,” and that lies within and without the Cranium of Long Face (Sephira), the uppermost of the three “Heads.” It is the “ boundless and the infinite En-Soph,” the No-Thing ...

En-Soph is non-existent ... for it is incomprehensible to our finite intellects, and therefore, cannot exist to our minds. Its first emanation was Sephira, the crown כתר [Keter]. When the time for an active period had come, then was produced a natural expansion of this Divine essence from within outwardly, obedient to eternal and immutable law; and from this eternal and infinite light (which to us is darkness) was emitted a spiritual substance. This was the First [of the ten] Sephiroth, containing in herself the other nine ... Sephiroth, or intelligences. In their totality and unity they represent the archetypal man, Adam Kadmon, the προτόγονος [Greek: first created], who in his individuality or unity is yet dual, or bisexual, the Greek Didumos [Greek: διδυμος, twin, twofold], for he is the prototype of all humanity. (Blavatsky 212-213)

There’s much more to this passage, however, than the Kabbalah. There appears to be an allusion to Stella and Vanessa, Jonathan Swift’s lovers who represent the two sides to Issy—immediately following the mention of coolpigeons, the victims of HCE’s crime in the park, who also represent Issy.

The scene of HCE’s crime—the Phoenix Park—corresponds to the Garden of Eden, the scene of Adam Kadmon’s crime and fall from grace and the location of the original Tree of Life. There are many allusions to the story of the Fall in this paragraph—which you can discover for yourself (see the Useful Resources below).

The Phoenix Park, Dublin

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

References

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Technology, Volume 2, Theology, Fourth Edition, J W Bouton, New York (1878)
Sheldon Brivic, The Mind Factory: Kabbalah in Finnegans Wake, James Joyce Quarterly, Volume 21, Number 1, The University of Tulsa, Tulsa, Oklahoma (1983)
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)
John Gordon, Finnegans Wake: A Plot Summary, Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, New York (1986)
Clive Hart, S tructure and Motif in Finnegans Wake, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Illinois (1962)
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)
Roland McHugh, The Finnegans Wake Experience, University of California Press, Berkeley, California (1981)
Roger Norburn, A James Joyce Chronology, Palgrave Macmillan, London (2004)
Danis Rose, John O’Hanlon, The Restored Finnegans Wake, Penguin Classics, London (2012)
Arthur Edward Waite, The Doctrine and Literature of the Kabalah, The Theosophical Publishing Society, London (1902)
Arthur Edward Waite, The Secret Doctrine in Israel: A Study of the Zohar and Its Connections, Occult Research Press, New York (1913)

Image Credits

St Patrick’s Tower, Guinness Brewery: Smock Windmill, Roe’s Distillery, © William Murphy (photographer), Creative Commons License
Tobias Smollett: Nathaniel Dance-Holland (artist), Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, Public Domain
February-March 1884: Kate Greenaway (artist), Almanack for 1884, George Routledge & Sons, London, Public Domain
The Joyce Tombstone, Zürich: Fluntern Cemetery, Zürich, Copyright Unknown, Fair Use
Helena Blavatsky: Blavatsky Archives, Blavatsky Study Center, Public Domain

Finnegans Wake - A Prescriptive Guide

09 September 2022