05 October 2022

The Sodality Director


The Sodality Director (RFW 040.38-041.10)

In the previous chapter of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (I.2, the Humphriad I), the Cad with a Pipe told his wife about his encounter with HCE in the Phoenix Park. She passed on her version of the story to her confessor—her particular reverend, the director—who relayed yet another version to a lay teacher Philly Thurnston at Baldoyle Racecourse. This conversation was overheard by a local bum, Treacle Tom, who passed it on in his sleep to the street busker Hosty. And Hosty was inspired by what he heard to compose The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly.

The opening paragraph of this chapter (I.3, the Humphriad II) comprises the obituaries of Hosty and five of the people involved in this chain of Chinese whispers. The final obituary is the death notice of the Sodality Director—ie the clergyman with whom the Cad’s wife gossipped.

First-Draft Version

As usual, Joyce’s first draft is much shorter than the final, published version:

Then was the reverend, the sodality director that fashionable vice preacher to whom society ladies often became so enthusiasticaly attached and was a nondescript who sometimes wore a raffle ticket in his hat & was openly guilty of malpractice with his tableknife the cad with a pipe encountered by HCE? (Hayman 69)

In short: Were the Sodality Director and the Cad with a Pipe one and the same person?

Joyce Emending Joyce

The grammatical structure of this first draft is already muddled in a very un-Joycean way:

  • Should there be a comma after the sodality director?

  • Should there be another comma after tableknife?

  • Is the misspelling of enthusiasticaly intentional? This was corrected in later drafts.

  • What is the subject of and was a nondescript?

I would like to amend this draft thus:

Then, was the reverend (the sodality director)—that fashionable vice preacher to whom society ladies often became so enthusiastically attached and who was a nondescript who sometimes wore a raffle ticket in his hat & who was openly guilty of malpractice with his tableknife—the cad with a pipe encountered by HCE?

In expanding this brief passage to a dozen or so lines, Joyce has separated the two ends of the query by several more lines, making it even more difficult to parse. The poor beleaguered reader also has to juggle four interpolated passages in parentheses. Nevertheless, despite all these elaborate incrustations, this obituary still asks the same simple question: Was the Sodality Director the same person as the Cad with a Pipe?

Gabriele D’Annunzio

Browne & Nolan

In the previous chapter, the Sodality Director was described as an overspoiled priest, Mr Browne, who visits Baldoyle Racecourse disguised as a lay member of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul: his secondary personality as a Nolan. In Finnegans Wake, the pairing of Browne & Nolan—Browne & Nolan was a prominent Dublin bookseller—represents the sibling rivalry between Shem and Shaun. This pairing is revisited in the Sodality Director’s obituary.

Again, if Father Dan Browne, tea and toaster to that quaintestest of yarnspinners, is Padre Don Bruno, treu and troster to the queen of Iar-Spain ... (RFW 040.38-40)

  • Father Dan Browne The published version has San Browne. Italian: san, saint. San is also an honorific in Japanese, but it is always used as a suffix. In English, Dan is an archaic title of honour or respect. In Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus refers to the 14th-century Franciscan philosopher William of Ockham as Dan Occam (Ulysses 40).

  • Henry Martyn Browne The English Jesuit priest who advised the editor Hugh Kennedy not to publish the 19-year-old Joyce’s pamphlet The Day of the Rabblement in University College Dublin’s undergraduate magazine St Stephen’s. This broadside in favour of artistic freedom opens with the words: “No man, said the Nolan, can be a lover of the true or the good unless he abhors the multitude; and the artist, though he may employ the crowd, is very careful to isolate himself.” Joyce had the work published privately in a pamphlet entitled Two Essays, alongside fellow student Francis Skeffington’s A Forgotten Aspect of the University Question. Ironically, an essay about censorship was censored because it contained a reference to Gabriele D’Annunzio’s novel Il fuoco, which had been placed on the Vatican’s Index of prohibited books.

The Day of the Rabblement

  • tea and toaster Tea and toast are both brown. In the previous chapter, the Cad’s wife met the Sodality Director over a hup a’ chee ... teatoastally. A tea-and-toaster is an elderly person with poor dietary habits.

  • quaintestest of yarnspinners The Cad’s Wife, who spins a yarn about HCE. The literal spinning of yarn was traditionally a wife’s duty—whence one speaks of the distaff side, meaning the female side of a family. Quaint formerly meant cunning, crafty, or artfully contrived. The published version has quaintesttest. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, quaint was used as a euphemism for cunt in the 14th-16th centuries.

  • Padre Don Bruno A Spanish translation of Father Dan Browne. Dan and Don both derive from the Latin: Dominus, Lord. The switch from Dan to Don is an example of the Wake’s A/O Motif. Alpha and Omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. Like Browne & Nolan, therefore, they represent the two opposites, Shem & Shaun.

  • Spanish and Italian: bruno, dark brown. Giordano Bruno—“Brown Jordan”—was also known as the Nolan after his place of birth, Nola.

56 Dawson Street, Original Home of Browne & Nolan

  • treu and troster An echo of tea and toaster.

  • German: treu, loyal.

  • German: Tröster, comforter.

  • the queen of Iar-Spain There have been a number of allusions to Spain in the first five obituaries. A’Hara’s obituary referred to Joseph Blanco White, a Spanish priest of Irish extraction. He was born in Seville, in the southwest of Spain. And Langley’s obituary mentioned Cape Finisterre, which is in the northwest of Spain. Irish: Iar-Spáinn, West Spain. However, I don’t understand why the Cad’s wife is called the queen of Iar-Spain. Obviously, this is a variation of quaintestest of yarnspinners, and perhaps that is all there is to it. Or perhaps Iar-Spain is a pun on ear’s pain. In the previous chapter, we were told that her gossiple (gossip + gospel) was delivered in his epistolear (epistle + ear), though there is no indication that it caused the Director any pain. On the contrary, the passage is full of hints that the Cad’s wife was sexually pleasuring him.

Eupeptic Viceflayer

The next section, which is interrupted twice, begins to ask the question:

was the reverend, the sodality director, that eupeptic viceflayer, a barefaced carmelite, to whose palpitating pulpit ... sinning society sirens ... fortunately became so enthusiastically attached (RFW 040.40-041.04)

  • the reverend, the sodality director This phrase echoes a similar phrase describing the same individual in the previous chapter: her particular reverend, the director (RFW 030.28). A sodality is a religious confraternity. Although the members of such confraternities are generally lay people, sodality directors are clergymen. On 7 December 1895, James Joyce joined the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Belvedere College. The following year he was appointed its Prefect, or head (Norburn 4). The director of the sodality was a Jesuit priest from the college. Fr Browne is also a Jesuit (RFW 030.33).

A Sodality Certificate Signed by James Joyce, Prefect

  • eupeptic viceflayer The first draft has that fashionable vice preacher. The term eupeptic refers to good digestion. Is it the tea and toast he has to digest? Or the yarn spun by the Cad’s wife? And what exactly does viceflayer mean? Does the Sodality Director flay vices, or people who commit vices? Or is flagellation one of his sexual vices? He does gamble on horse races, after all. Perhaps he is also a diceplayer. An obsolete meaning of raffle refers to a game of dice. John Gordon suggests an allusion to vice-mayor, though I don’t see the relevance (Gordon 50.21).

  • a barefaced Carmelite The Discalced Carmelites, or Order of the Discalced Carmelites of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel, was founded in the 16th century by Saint Teresa of Ávila and Saint John of the Cross: Latin discalceātus, barefoot, unshod. In Dublin, Saint Teresa’s Church on Clarendon Street is run by the Discalced Carmelites, who first came to Ireland around 1622, forty years after the death of St Teresa. The Carmelites are also known as the White Friars after their characteristic white cloaks. Whitefriar Street Church is associated with the original Order of the Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel, which was founded in the 12th century. These Carmelites first settled in Dublin in 1274.

Saint Teresa’s Church, Clarendon Street

  • barefaced liar Lying is another of the Sodality Director’s vices.

  • to whose palpitating pulpit ... sinning society sirens ... fortunately became so enthusiastically attached Joycean scholar Chrissie Van Mierlo has correctly identified an allusion in this passage to the Anglo-Welsh Jesuit preacher Bernard Vaughan. In 1906 Vaughan delivered a series of fiery sermons in Mayfair, London, which attracted large audiences. They were subsequently published as The Sins of Society. Joyce was familiar with Vaughan. In a letter to his brother Stanislaus, dated 18 October 1906, he wrote:

As you may have seen a Russian general has been following his wife and wife’s lover all over the world with intent to shoot them. Many eminent persons were consulted as to whether this was right of the said general. Among them was Father Bernard Vaughan. He said, ‘If it were my case I would simply “chuck” the woman’. I suppose he was mis-reported by a reporter with a sense for verse. Fr. B.V. is the most diverting public figure in England at present. I never see his name but I expect some enormity. (Letters II, 18 October 1906)

A Russian general, shooting, a love triangle? An interesting combination.

Bernard Vaughan

Vaughan is mentioned twice in Ulysses, once by Bloom and once by Fr Conmee:

Father Bernard Vaughan’s sermon first. Christ or Pilate? Christ, but don’t keep us all night over it ...

Yes, it was very probable that Father Bernard Vaughan would come again to preach. O, yes: a very great success. A wonderful man really ...

Father Conmee walked and, walking, smiled for he thought on Father Bernard Vaughan’s droll eyes and cockney voice.

— Pilate! Wy don’t you old back that owlin mob.

A zealous man, however. Really he was. And really did great good in his way. Beyond a doubt. He loved Ireland, he said, and he loved the Irish. Of good family too would one think it? Welsh, were they not? (Ulysses 79 and Ulysses 210-211)

In Greek mythology, the sirens used their birdsong voices to draw men to their doom, like the two sirens in Ulysses who use their sexual attractions to lure men into the bar. But here it is the fire and brimstone of the preacher’s sermons which prove irresistible to the sirens of Mayfair’s fashionable society.

Ancient Greek: ἐνθουσιασμός [enthousiasmos], inspired by a god’s essence, divine possession.

Gerald Ames as Raffles in Mr Justice Raffles (1921)

Raffles

The following description of the Sodality Director draws several literary associations into the mix:

and was an objectionable ass who very occasionally cockaded a raffles ticket on his hat which he wore all to one side like the hangle of his pan (RFW 041.04-06)

  • objectionable ass A cad is an objectionable ass. If the Sodality Director is the Cad, then he is an objectionable ass. In the first draft, he is simply called a nondescript. This expression may have been lifted by Joyce from Margaret Piper Chalmers’ 1921 novel Wild Wings: A Romance of Youth:

He fell asleep again and presently re-awoke in a kind of shivering panic. What if Carlotta would not marry Philip after all? What if it was too late already? What if his grandson turned out to be a second Herbert Lathrop, an unobjectionable, possibly even an objectionable ass. Perspiration beaded on the millionaire's brow. (Chalmers 239)

Another possible source is Beatrice May Butt’s 1901 novel An Episode on a Desert Island:

‘He,’ exclaimed Don fiercely, ‘is an objectionable ass. But, whatever he may be—and she says he’s only silly—he has behaved to her in a beastly way. (Butt 78)

The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party

  • raffles ticket In Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the Mad Hatter’s top hat has a price tag on it, labelled: In this Style 10/6 (ie ten shillings and sixpence). The Sodality Director did hear of HCE’s Encounter in the Park at a tea party, so this allusion is probably relevant, even though a price tag is not a raffle ticket.

  • Raffles In the final draft, raffle becomes raffles and the hat is worn all to one side. A J Raffles was a gentleman thief created in 1898 by E W Hornung, the brother-in-law of Arthur Conan Doyle.

  • which he wore all to one side Raffles was partly inspired by Hornung’s friend Oscar Wilde. One of Napoleon Sarony’s celebrated photographs of Oscar Wilde depict him wearing a fedora all to one side. The photograph was taken in Sarony’s studio in New York in 1882, the year of Joyce’s birth.

Oscar Wilde in 1882

  • like the hangle of his pan An entry in one of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake notebooks reads:

all to 1 side / like the handle / of the pan (N42 (VI.B.31): 134(b))

  • pen Like the angle of his pen? As pen literally means feather (like a quill used for writing), there may also be an allusion to the song Yankee Doodle, whose hero “stuck a feather in his cap and called it Macaroni.” Yankee Doodle also reminds me of a cockcrow: cock-a-doodle-doo. Sordid Sam’s obituary included a reference to cockfighting. A macaroni is a dandy.

  • pan As John Gordon points out, pan is also slang for face, so this might mean that the Sodality Director’s face is lopsided (Gordon 50.26-7). But why?

  • hangle As it happens, the word hangle is in the dictionary: a hangle is a hook in a chimney place for hanging a pot. Then pan must mean saucepan. In rural Ireland, the commonest form of hangle is the iron pothook, from which a pot can be hung over an open fire. But I still don’t understand why wearing a hat all to one side should bring a hangle to mind, or even the handle of a pan:

Irish Hearth with Pothooks

  • cockaded a raffles ticket on his hat which he wore all to one side like the hangle John Gordon suggests: “he wore his hat cocked at a raffish angle” (Gordon 50-26-7).

Malpractices

As in the first draft, the Sodality Director is found guilty of malpractice with a tableknife:

and was semiprivately convicted of malpractices with his hotwashed tableknife (RFW 041.07-08)

  • semiprivately convicted In the first draft, he was simply guilty. Why is he now semiprivately convicted? Does this refer to a semi-private ward in a hospital?

  • malpractices with a hotwashed tableknife What are these malpractices? One theory is that this phrase refers to the performance of illegal abortions, though I don’t see the connection. The current meaning of hotwash—an evaluation of an agency’s performance following an exercise, training session, or emergency—is probably post-Joycean. I presume hotwashed refers to the use of boiling water to sterilize surgical implements in emergency situations. This and the fact that the scalpel is a tableknife suggest that Joyce is referring to an irregular medical operation. The term malpractice refers specifically to the improper treatment of a patient by a physician, and more generally to improper or unethical conduct by a professional in the course of his professional duties—in other words, professional negligence.

Semi-Private Room in a Hospital

The Cad with a Pipe

The final section of this lengthy question finally identifies the person who is thought to be the same as the Sodality Director:

that same snob of the dunhill, fully several yearschaums riper, encountered by the General on that redletter morning or maynoon jovesday? (RFW 041.08-10)

This is clearly the Cad with a Pipe, who accosted HCE in the Phoenix Park in the previous chapter.

  • snob Someone who considers himself a member of the upper class and looks down on those of lower status. In the previous chapter, the Cad supped on a dish of potage which he snobbishly dabbed Peach Bombay (RFW 030.08-09).

  • snob of the dunhill Alfred Dunhill was an English tobacconist and pipe manufacturer. In 1904, he designed a special hands-free pipe for motorists that could be attached to the dashboard of an automobile. In the previous chapter, when the Sodality Director, Fr Browne, visited Baldoyle Racecourse disguised as a lay Vincentian called Nolan, he was dressed in motor clobber (clobber is slang for clothes).

An Alfred Dunhill Dashboard Pipe

  • Irish: snab an choinnle, the stub of the candle, the snuff of the candle. Sordid Sam’s obituary alluded to Giordano Bruno’s play Candelaio (The Candlemaker or The Candlebearer).

  • Dun Hill One of the hilltops on Howth Head.

  • dunghill The kitchen midden, or rubbish tip, behind HCE’s tavern in Chapelizod. Its proximity to cockaded leads John Gordon to comment: “Probably tracing to the saying that even the most negligible of persons is cock of his own dunghill” (Gordon 50.30).

  • fully several yearschaums riper In FW VI.B.3.051c, Joyce wrote fully 10 yrs older.

  • German: Meerschaum, meerschaum, sepiolite, a soft white mineral from which tobacco pipes are sometimes made.

  • meerschaum pipe A smoking pipe made from Meerschaum.

  • encountered by the General HCE, who encountered the Cad in the Phoenix Park. One of HCE’s most important roles in Finnegans Wake is the Russian General. The meeting of HCE and the Cad in the Park foreshadows the military encounter between Buckley and the Russian General in the Crimea.

Dun Hill, Howth

  • on that redletter morning A red-letter day is a religious festival, traditionally marked on ecclesiastical calendars in red letters: hence, any significant or special day worthy of celebration. According to the account given in the previous chapter, HCE’s encounter with the Cad fell on his birthday: the anniversary, as it fell out, of his first assumption of his mirthday suit (RFW 028-01-02). It was also the Ides of April, a feast day in the ancient Roman calendar. 13 April was the anniversary of the dedication of the Temple of Jupiter Victor on the Palatine Hill. Another important festival, the Cerealia, took place around the same time.

  • maynoon jovesday HCE encountered the Cad on the Ides of April (13 April), more than two weeks before the beginning of May. However, noon did strike when he and the Cad were still talking: on the same stroke, hearing above the skirling of harsh Mother East old Fox Goodman, the bellmaster, over the wastes to south, at work upon the ten ton tonuant thunderous tenor toller in the speckled church (Couhounin’s call!), told the inquiring kidder, by Johova, it was twelve of em sidereal and tankard time (RFW 028.24-28).

  • Maynooth College St Patrick’s College in Maynooth, County Kildare, is the National Seminary for Catholic priests in Ireland. The Sodality Director probably attended Maynooth.

St Patrick’s College, Maynooth

  • Latin: Dies Iovis, Jove’s Day, Thursday. In Roman mythology, Jove (Jupiter) was The Thunderer. In Norse mythology, the corresponding deity was Thor, for whom Thursday is named. The bell in the speckled church, which struck midday during HCE’s encounter with the Cad, was described as thunderous, and in the opening chapter the municipal sin business (ie HCE’s Original Sin in the Park) took place on a tragoady thuddersday (tragic Thursday) (RFW 004.36-37).

The First Parenthesis

This long question has been made even longer by the interpolation of four passages in parentheses. The first of these follows the mention of the Sodality Director’s palpitating pulpit:

(which of us but remembers the rarevalent and hornerable Fratomistor Nawlanmore and Brawne?) (RFW 041.01-02)

  • rarevalent reverend, relevant : rarely of value

  • Latin: rare valens, rarely strong, rarely healthy, rarely vigorous.

  • hornerable Honourable. Also an allusion to E W Hornung, the creator of Raffles.

  • Colloquial: ornery, ordinary : coarse, unpleasant

Ernest William Hornung

  • Irish: mór, big, great. In personal names it can also mean Senior.

  • The Reverend and Honourable Fra (or Mr) Nolan Senior & Browne In FW VI.B.44.128b, Joyce wrote: Rev M Nolanmore / & Brown

  • Italian: Fra, Brother, the traditional term used when addressing or referring to a friar or monk.

  • Italian: frate, friar. Giordano Bruno, the Nolan, was a Dominican friar.

  • Latin: frater, brother.

  • Latin: mistor, mixer. O’Hehir includes this in A Classical Lexicon for Finnegans Wake. I suppose the Sodality Director is a mixture of Browne & Nolan.

  • brawn Physical strength, muscularity. If Nolan Senior is rarely strong, his alter ego Browne makes up for it by being full of brawn.

Farm Street Church, Mayfair

The Second Parenthesis

The next interpolation is in apposition to the phrase sinning society sirens:

(see—Roman Catholic—presspassim) (RFW 041.03)

  • see press passim In other words, refer to the society pages of the newspapers to find out who these sirens are. Presumably, the Cad’s wife is among them. But why does Joyce join the two words together? Does presspassim allude to another word? Or does it simply reflect the way in which the society sirens became attached to the Director’s palpitating pulpit?

  • — Roman Catholic — The published version had [Roman Catholic], and another early draft had (Roman Catholic).

  • Latin: passim, here and there. In English, the term is used to indicate that a reference can be found at many places throughout the work cited—too many to be listed individually.

The Third Parenthesis

The third interpolation follows the description of the Cad’s hat being worn all to one side like the hangle of his pan:

(if Her Elegance saw him she’d have the canary!) (RFW 041.06-07)

The Atlantic Canary (Serinus canaria)

  • His Eminence The traditional title for a Roman Catholic Cardinal. The Sodality Director is a clergyman, though not a Cardinal. Dose Her Elegance refer to the Cad’s wife?

  • HEC A common permutation of HCE.

  • to have a canary to be worried, angry or anxious about something.

  • canary fit A highly emotional state of distress, anger, anxiety, etc. This, I presume, is the source of the expression to have a canary. It probably originated in Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor (2:2:61), where Mistress Quickly uses the word as a malapropism for quandary: “You have brought her into such a Canaries, as ’tis wonderfull : the best Courtier of them all could never have brought her to such a Canarie.”

  • Canary Islands Spanish islands off the northwest coast of Africa. Possibly relevant following the earlier allusion to Iar-Spain and Cape Finisterre. The bird is named for the islands, while the islands are named for the large dogs (Latin: canis, dog) that were once common on Gran Canaria.

The Fourth Parenthesis

The final interpolation follows the mention of the Cad’s hotwashed tableknife:

(glossing over the cark in his pocket) (RFW 041.08)

Moore & Burgess Minstrels

  • FW VI.B.6.41e woke with cork in pocket. The first word is hard to read. FWEET gives it as work, but I think Rose & O’Hanlon’s reading in correct (James Joyce Digital Archive).

  • cark (archaic) trouble, worry, anxiety, mental distress : care, heed, pains : a load : a weight of 3-4 hundredweight (150-200 kg). The first acceptation is the most relevant, as it is more or less the same as that of canary in the preceding line.

  • Irish: cearc, cock. Possibly relevant following cockaded three lines above, and the reference to cock fighting in Sordid Sam’s obituary.

What is the meaning of this parenthesis? What is Joyce’s source for the note in VI.B.6? I don’t know. I did come across the following extract from Andrew Lang’s The Lilac Fairy Book (New York 1910), but it is a long shot. The story in question is called How Brave Walter Hunted Wolves:

He did not forget to arm himself quite to the teeth with his pop-gun, his bow, and his air-pistol. He had a burnt cork in his pocket to blacken his moustache, and a red cock's feather to put in his cap to make himself look fierce. He had besides in his trouser pocket a clasp-knife with a bone handle, to cut off the ears of the wolves as soon as he had killed them, for he thought it would be cruel to do that while they were still living. (Lang 68-69)

Mark Twain (1895)

Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson, a much more likely source, also refers to the use of a burnt cork to blacken one’s face:

He pulled down his window-blinds and lit his candle. He laid off his coat and hat and began his preparations. He unlocked his trunk and got his suit of girl’s clothes out from under the male attire in it and laid it by. Then he blacked his face with burnt cork and put the cork in his pocket. (Twain 200)

Each of these extracts has elements that recur in this section of Finnegans Wake (the cock’s feather to put in his cap, the knife, the candle, the change of sex from male to female), but neither explains why Joyce wrote “woke [work] with cork in pocket”. Christy’s Minstrels and their successors the Moore and Burgess Minstrels, who are occasionally mentioned in Finnegans Wake, used burnt cork to blacken their faces.

Whatever the source, the implication seems to be that the presence of a cork in the Cad’s pocket can only mean that he is up to no good and possibly intends to pass himself off as someone else (such as the Sodality Director).

Were they?

In The Restored Finnegans Wake, the long question we have just analysed is followed by a much shorter one:

Were they? (RFW 040.10)

In the original edition of 1939, these words were part of the long question:

... encountered by the General on that redletter morning or maynoon jovesday and were they?

This shorter question means, I think: Were they—the Sodality Director and the Cad—the same person? Reversing the order of these two words gives us They were, which echoes the epitaphs that follow each of the obituaries in this long paragraph.

Genesis 1:3 (Latin Vulgate)

He Was

Each of the six death notices in this passage ends with the epitaph He was in one of six different languages:

  • Italian: Ei fù Hosty, as Osti-Fosti, is a tenor singer of Italian opera.

  • Russian: Byl A’Hara fights in the Crimean War in Russia, where, as Buckley, he shoots the Russian General.

  • English: He was Paul Horan is associated with the northern counties (ie Northern Ireland), so he is commemorated with the King’s English. James Horan was the Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1784-85. In the Humphriad I, Paul Horan is called Peter Cloran. Peter Paul MacSwiney was another Lord Mayor of Dublin (1864).

  • Danish (Norwegian Bokmål or Dano-Norwegian): Han var Sordid Sam (ie Treacle Tom) is called a Northwegian. Does this mean he represents the Norwegian Captain, who will feature in Chapter II.3 (The Scene in the Public) in the mock-epic tale How Kersse the Tailor Made a Suit of Clothes for the Norwegian Captain?

  • Irish: Bhí sé Langley (ie Frisky Shorty) plays Kersse the Tailor to Sordid Sam’s Norwegian Captain—native Irishman to foreign invader.

  • Latin: Fuit Father Dan Browne is a clergyman in the Roman Catholic Church, the traditional language of which is Latin. I presume this epitaph is geminated because this is the obituary of two people—the Sodality Director and the Cad—who may, however, be one and the same person. The doubling also echoes Mutt’s interjection Fiatfuit! in the opening chapter (RFW 014.20), and two parenthetical interjections in the preceding chapter: (pfuit! pfuit!) and (pfiat! pfiat!) (RFW 027.05 and 027.13). The origin of this motif is probably Genesis 1:3: Let there be light, and there was light. The Latin Vulgate translates this as: Fiat lux et facta est lux, but Fiat lux et lux fuit is also a valid translation.

According to Rose & O’Hanlon, this motif was inspired by a passage in Edward Sullivan’s The Book of Kells:

The “Qui fuit” pages Five pages are then occupied with the Genealogy of Christ, each line beginning with “Qui fuit” [Who was] as illustrated in Plates XV., XVI. and / XVII. (Sullivan 20)

Fiatfuit, therefore, alludes to both the origin of the World at the beginning of the Old Testament and the origin of Jesus Christ at the beginning of the New Testament.

The Book of Kells 200r (Sullivan Plate XV)

Omissions

Why does Joyce give us only six obituaries? The Cad’s wife is missing. So is the lay teacher, Philly Thurnston. Are they still alive? Frisky Shorty is included, even though he was not part of the chain of transmission.

Questions Questions

By questioning the very identity of the deceased, this obituary is significantly different from the five that preceded it. This is no accident. The rest of this chapter is essentially a journalistic inquiry into the HCE affair: Just what happened in the Phoenix Park that happy-go-gusty Ides-of-April morning when HCE encountered a cad with a pipe? By ending this paragraph with a question, the narrator sets us off on a hunt for the truth—beginning with the Cad’s side of the story, as we shall see in the next article in this series.

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

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