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| Joyce’s Initial Sketch of the Opening Lines of Finnegans Wake |
As the case of Finnegans Wake shows, the first pages of a book do not always represent its genetic beginning. By the time Joyce was ready to write what would later become the first chapter, he had already written a substantial part of the book. (Crispi & Slote 49)
As I have expressed it elsewhere: If Finnegans Wake were an opera, the opening chapter would be the overture that the orchestra plays before the curtain goes up. And like an overture that is composed after the opera itself and is constructed from melodies and themes taken from it, Joyce has designed Riverrun as a “thematic directory” (Károlyi 113). Most of this chapter foreshadows salient events from later in the book. That is one of the reasons why it pays to become as familiar with this chapter as possible. Everything that you read and understand in Riverrun casts light on later, often more difficult, chapters of the book.
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| The Giant’s Grave, St Andrew’s Church (Penrith) |
The Giant’s Grave
As we saw in an earlier article—The Giant’s Grave—the immediate inspiration for this chapter was a pamphlet Joyce received from his patron Harriet Shaw Weaver, who was on holiday in Penrith, Cumbria. The pamphlet depicted a megalithic tomb known locally as The Giant’s Grave. Joyce had been suffering from writer’s block since April 1926, when he had finished revising The Four Watches of Shaun—the four chapters which now comprise Book III of Finnegans Wake (Norburn 124). In July 1926, he drafted The Triangle, an episode from what would become Chapter II.2 (Night Lessons), but his inspiration soon dried up again.
It was at this point that he wrote to Weaver suggesting that she “commission” a piece of writing from him for inclusion in Finnegans Wake (Letters I, 24 September 1926). It was in response to this bizarre plea that Weaver sent Joyce the pamphlet from Penrith:
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| The Giant’s Grave, Penrith (Postcard) |
Joyce was electrified: here exactly was what he needed to give spin to his work in progress: the notion of HCE as a (sleeping) giant interred in the landscape and, beyond that, of a man assumed dead but sleeping. Even better, he now had the notion of resurrection of the old by the new and cyclicity (Fin, again) ... Everything hung together on the fulcrum of one word: Finn. And with MacCool came the ballad-hall Tim Finnegan with his hod (who now makes his appearance for the first time) and with him, his half-erected wall (by extension the unfinished tower of Babel). With his fall off the wall came the first Fall, Adam and Eve and all their descendants down to Mr and Mrs Porter shagged out in their bed [in III.4]. In a word, Miss Weaver’s fortuitously brilliant idea gave Joyce the notion for a chapter, or prelude, that was destined to become the common picture of Finnegans Wake: a giant dreaming of falls and walls, a babble of tongues, a tale of howes and graves and burrows [barrows?] and biers. (Danis Rose 95-96—quoted by Peter Chrisp)
This concept of the legendary Irish giant Finn Mac Cool interred in the Irish landscape is the dominant image in this opening chapter of Finnegans Wake. Joyce conflates it with a number of similar images:
Tim Finnegan lying on his deathbed at his wake.
Lemuel Gulliver lying shackled and prostrate on the coast of Lilliput.
A stranded whale—turlehyde—on the shore of Dublin Bay.
The prostrate corpse of Osiris as it is being reconstructed by Isis.
The landlord of the Mullingar House asleep in bed.
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| Isis Reconstructing the Body of Osiris |
Finnegan’s Wake
Another important ingredient in this chapter is the Irish-American ballad Finnegan’s Wake, from which Joyce eventually borrowed the title of his novel. Tim Finnegan is an Irish immigrant to the New World. As a hod carrier, he is a builder of cities. He is also a drunkard, who starts every day with a drop of whiskey. One day, drunk on the job, he falls from a ladder and breaks his skull. His “corpse” is taken home and laid out on a bed to be waked. During the wake, the women argue over which of them loved Tim the most. The men join in and a riot ensues. In the midst of the commotion, some drops of whiskey—Irish, uisce beatha, water of life—are spilt on Tim’s lips, reviving him:
—Souls to the devil, he cries, do you think I’m dead?
The story of Tim Finnegan’s death and resurrection is woven into the fabric of Riverrun, which includes a partial dramatization of the ballad. Curiously, there are relatively few overt references to the song in the remaining chapters of Finnegans Wake. We now know that Joyce only settled upon this as the book’s title after he had drafted most of its chapters: as late as 27 September 1927, he was still privately calling it Finn’s Hotel. Nonetheless, the story of the ballad is never entirely absent. It might be said to form a backdrop to the novel’s drama.
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| Giambattista Vico |
The Book of Numbers
Joyce once claimed that the structure of Finnegans Wake was mathematical (Ellmann 614). I have my doubts about that, but one thing I do not doubt is that certain numbers are significant to the plot and structure of the book.
4 The overarching structure of Finnegans Wake is taken from the cyclical philosophy of history of the 18th-century Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico. Human civilization passes through three phases before collapsing into the chaos of uncivilization. But, inevitably, order flows out of this chaos, and the Viconian cycle begins anew:
Theocracy: The Age of Gods
Aristocracy: The Age of Heroes
Democracy: The Age of Men
Ricorso: Collapse into Chaos and Subsequent Resurgence
As Homer’s story, freely adapted, determines the three-part structure of Ulysses and the sequence of chapters, so Vico’s system, freely adapted, determines the four-part structure of the Wake and the sequence of its chapters. Part I is Vico’s divine age, Part II his heroic age, Part III his human age, and Part IV an enlarged ricorso [Italian for recurrence]. The seventeen chapters also follow this sequence. Chapter I of Part I is a divine age, Chapter II a heroic age, and so on—wheels within a wheel. The eight chapters of Part I represent two Viconian wheels within, and affected by, the general divinity of the part ... Part IV, the general ricorso, has one chapter, which, though a ricorso, is by position in the sequence another divine age or its herald. Each of the parts and chapters, whatever the age it celebrates, contains elements of the other ages. Chapter I of Part I, a divine age within a divine age, displays the city which arises in the human age. (Tindall 10)
The number 4 is also associated with The Four Old Men, the Wake’s historians, who symbolize space.
2 and 3 If Vico’s wheel provides the vehicle for Finnegans Wake, then Giordano Bruno’s concept of the identity of opposites (coincidentia oppositorum) provides the engine:
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| Samuel Taylor Coleridge |
In short, the groundwork of [Bruno’s] philosophy was ... the law of likeness, arising from what is called the polar principle, (ie in order to manifest itself every power must appear in two opposites, but these two opposites having a ground of identity were constantly striving to reunite, but not being permitted to pass back to their original state, which would amount to annihilation, they pressed forward and the two formed a third something) and in this manner [he] traced in [his] trichotomous philosophy the facts in nature and oftentimes with most wonderful and happy effects. (Coleridge 323, edited for clarity)
HCE and ALP’s twin sons Shem and Shaun are an obvious Brunonian pair of opposites, and they are regularly accompanied—or replaced—by their union, the Oedipal Figure. Their sister, Issy, who has a fractured personality, often splits into another pair of Brunonian opposites.
7 The number seven is encoded into the first two paragraphs of the book, though I am still unsure about its significance. The seven colours of the rainbow remind us of Genesis 9, when God sets the rainbow in the sky as a token of his covenant with mankind following the Flood. Finnegans Wake ends with a Flood, which cleanses the landscape of sin and corruption and prepares the way for a new Viconian cycle. The Flood precipitated the Second Fall of Man, and the rainbow symbolized his resurrection. So I suppose the number seven represents Death and Resurrection.
1132 The numbers 32 and 11—both individually and yoked together as 1132—also represent the twin concepts of Fall and Resurrection. As Bloom recalls in Ulysses:
What is weight really when you say the weight? Thirtytwo feet per second, per second. Law of falling bodies: per second, per second. They all fall to the ground. The earth. It’s the force of gravity of the earth is the weight. (Ulysses 69)
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| Anthony Burgess |
The only significant date in HCE’s version of history is 1132 A.D., and the significance is entirely symbolic: 11 stands for return or reinstatement or recovery or resumption (having counted up to ten on our fingers we have to start all over again for 11); 32 feet per second [per second] is the rate of acceleration of all falling bodies, and the number itself will remind us of the fall of Adam, Humpty Dumpty, Napoleon, Parnell, as also of HCE himself, who is all their reincarnations. (Burgess (ii))
1132 ÷ 4 = 283 In the Annals of the Four Masters, Finn MacCool is alleged to have died in the year 283 (O’Donovan 119). And Christianity is traditionally said to have been introduced to Ireland by St Patrick in the year 432 (O’Donovan 131). According to some sources, the Patron Saint of Dublin Laurence O’Toole was born in or about the year 1132 (Eblana 11, Webb 426).
12 This number is associated with The Twelve, the Wake’s Greek Chorus. As counterparts to the Four Old Men, the Twelve symbolize time. If The Four are judges, then The Twelve are jurymen.
28 and 29 Issy is the Wake’s Leap-Year Girl, born perhaps on 29 February. She is often accompanied by 28 Flower Maidens or Schoolmates, who represent her fractured personality. These are also associated with the rainbow and its 7 colours: 7 × 4 = 28.
ALP’s Letter
Another important ingredient in the opening chapter is ALP’s Letter, which is at once both a defence of—APoLogy for—and an attack on HCE. Joyce will later devote an entire chapter to an analysis of this important document (I.5, The Mamafesta) and an entire book to its mailing (Book III, The Four Watches of Shaun). In the final chapter, we will even get to hear a version of it. This piece of literature is connected with all five members of the book’s family:
ALP is its only begetter.
HCE is its subject, its direct object, and its indirect object.
Issy recites it.
Shem the Pen indites it
Shaun the Post delivers it.
The Letter embraces all of literature, including Finnegans Wake itself.
The Structure of Riverrun
Having briefly discussed the main ingredients of Riverrun, let us see how they fit into the structure of this opening chapter.
Prelude
The first four paragraphs are preludial. They set the stage for what is to follow. The first paragraph locates us in space: we are in Dublin, in the master bedroom of the Mullingar House, a public house in Chapelizod. The second paragraph locates us in time: we are back at the beginning of the Viconian cycle, before the book’s events have happened. The third paragraph announces the theme of the book: the fall and resurrection of man. The fourth paragraph reveals how the story will unfold: through conflict between opposites.
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| The Master Bedroom in the Mullingar House |
Finnegan’s Wake I
The next six paragraphs begin the dramatization of the ballad of Finnegan’s Wake. Finnegan takes his fall and is laid out on his bed to be waked.
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| A Traditional Irish Wake |
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| The Giant Finn MacCool Interred in the Dublin Landscape |
In the Museyroom
The Museyroom Episode is one of the best known passages in the whole of Finnegans Wake. This multilayered retelling of the Battle of Waterloo—among other things—foreshadows the story How Buckley Shot the Russian General, which will be one of the epic tales in Chapter II.3, The Scene in the Public.
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| Panorama de la Bataille de Waterloo |
The Letter I
The next four pages foreshadow the discovery of the Letter by a hen rooting among the contents of the kitchen midden behind the Mullingar House. The universal nature of the Letter allows it to be identified with the Book of Kells and the Annals of the Four Masters. But everything we are told about the Letter can also be applied to Finnegans Wake itself.
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| The Dung Heap |
Mutt and Jute
Although Finnegans Wake is a prose novel, Joyce has included in it a few dramatic episodes—just as he did in Ulysses. The first of these is another celebrated passage: the Dialogue of Mutt and Jute. This can be seen as a dramatization of the Oedipal Event, when the old HCE is confronted by the young man who will replace him. When this happens, the Oedipal Figure (the invading foreigner, Jute) will become the new HCE, while HCE will become his servant (the enslaved native, Mutt).
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| The Battle of Clontarf |
The Letter II
The next two pages return to a discussion of the Letter. The later history of Ireland is embraced by the Letter as well as the earlier. The Letter symbolizes modern printed literature as well as the literature of medieval manuscripts.
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| A Replica of Gutenberg’s Printing Press |
Jarl van Hoother and the Prankquean
Another celebrated passage in this opening chapter is the dreamlike interlude of Jarl van Hoother and the Prankquean. This episode foreshadows another epic tale from II.3: How Kersse the Tailor Made a Suit of Clothes for the Norwegian Captain.
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| The Prankquean and Jarl van Hoother |
Finnegan’s Wake II
The following four pages resume the dramatization of the ballad of Finnegan’s Wake, which was interrupted after the depiction of Finnegan as the Giant Interred. In the ballad, Finnegan awakes at his own wake. But in the book it is not yet time to get up, so Finnegan is persuaded to sleep on. Life in the old homestead will go on without him.
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| Lemuel Gulliver in Lilliput |
Postlude
The final paragraph provides the transition from Riverrun to I.2, the Humphriad I. Finnegan as the giant Finn MacCool is removed from the stage to make way for the much more homely and down-to-earth figure of Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker.
Note that the structure of this chapter is symmetric, with the Mutt and Jute Dialogue at its centre:
Whether this be happenstance or intelligent design I dare not say.
And that’s as good a place as any to beach the bark of our tale.
References
John Bishop, Joyce’s Book of the Dark: Finnegans Wake, The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin (1986)
Anthony Burgess, A Shorter Finnegans Wake, The Viking Press, New York (1967)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Philosophical Lectures of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Edited by Kathleen Coburn, The Pilot Press Limited, London (1949)
Luca Crispi & Sam Slote (editors), How Joyce Wrote Finnegans Wake: A Chapter-by-Chapter Genetic Guide, The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin (2007)
James Cropper, A Short Historical Sketch of S Andrew’s Parish Church, Penrith, H L Sweeten, Penrith (1905)
Eblana (Teresa J Rooney), St Laurence O’Toole and His Contemporaries, M H Gill & Son, Dublin (1881)
Richard Ellmann, James Joyce, New and Revised Edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford (1982)
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)
Ottó Károlyi, Introducing Music, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex (1965, 1979)
Alexandre Moret, Rois et Dieux d’Égypte, Librairie Armand Colin, Paris (1911)
Roger Norburn, A James Joyce Chronology, Palgrave Macmillan, London (2004)
John O’Donovan (translator, editor), Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland, Second Edition, Volume 1, The Four Masters, Hodges, Smith, and Co, Dublin (1856)
Danis Rose, The Textual Diaries of James Joyce, The Lilliput Press, Dublin (1995)
Danis Rose, John O’Hanlon, The Restored Finnegans Wake, Penguin Classics, London (2012)
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)
William York Tindall, A Reader’s Guide to Finnegans Wake, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York (1969)
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)
Alfred Webb, A Compendium of Irish Biography, M H Gill & Son, Dublin (1878)
Image Credits
Joyce’s Initial Sketch of the Opening Lines of Finnegans Wake: Michael Groden (general editor) et al, The James Joyce Archive, Volume 44, Garland Publishing, New York (1977-79), Fair Use
The Giant’s Grave, St Andrew’s Church (Penrith): © Paul Farmer, Creative Commons License
Giant’s Grave, Penrith (Postcard): Origin Unknown, Public Domain
Isis Reconstructing the Body of Osiris: Alexandre Moret, Rois et Dieux d’Égypte, Plate X, Public Domain
Giambattista Vico: Francesco Solimena (artist), Public Domain
Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Washington Allston (artist), National Portrait Gallery, London, Public Domain
Anthony Burgess: © Jerry Bauer (photographer), Fair Use
A Plan of the Master Bedroom and its Furniture: Brendan Ward (designer), After John Gordon, Finnegans Wake: A Plot Summary, Page 34, Kopimi
A Traditional Irish Wake: Irish Wake, M Woolf (artist), Harpers Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, Volume 17, Number 846, 15 March 1873, Harper & brothers, New York (1873), Public Domain
The Giant Finn MacCool Interred in the Dublin Landscape: After Relief Map B, John Bishop, Joyce’s Book of the Dark, Pages 34-35, The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin (1986), © John Bishop, Fair Use
Panorama de la Bataille de Waterloo: Louis Dumoulin (artist), © Au goût d’Emma [Emmanuelle Hubert] (photographer), Fair Use
The Dung Heap: Charles Gogin (artist), Ferens Art Gallery, Kingston upon Hull, Public Domain
The Battle of Clontarf: Hugh Frazer (artist), Isaacs Arts Center, Waimea, Hawaii, Public Domain
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
The Prankquean and Jarl van Hoother: © Stephen Crowe (artist), Fair Use
Gulliver in Lilliput: Thomas Morten (engraver), Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels into Several Remote Regions of the World, Edited by Thomas Minard Balliet, D C Heath & Co, Boston (1901), Public Domain
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