16 November 2022

Any Dog’s Life You List

 


Halley’s Comet & Westmoreland Street, Dublin (RFW 043.34-044.04)

We resume our analysis of the Cad’s Side of the Story, a retelling of HCE’s Oedipal Encounter in the Phoenix Park with the Cad. That encounter was itself a Viconian repetition of HCE’s earlier encounter with the King outside his tavern in Chapelizod (RFW 024.10 ff). That original encounter was concluded with the following passage in parenthesis:

(One still hears that pebblecrusted laughter, japijap cheerycherrily, among the roadside tree the lady Holmpatrick planted and still one feels the amossive silence of the cladstone allegibelling: Ive mies outs ide Bourn.) (RFW 025.18-21)

It can hardly be a coincidence, then, to learn in the present paragraph that you may still hear them. What we hear turns out to be a multilingual babble of voices engaged in small talk. Directions to the toilets, polite inquiries about the cost of using them, and some comments on their suitability bring to mind not only the Original Sin in the Park, which featured micturating maidens, but also the Museyroom Episode, in which HCE’s defecates.

  • Ive mies outs ide Bourn Five miles outside Bourn. This is the sort of thing one might read on a milestone. In the encounter in the park, HCE points towards his duc de Fer’s overgrown milestone—ie the Wellington Memorial. And in the Cad’s Side of the Story, we had the augustan peacebetothem oaks and the monolith rising stark.

The Wellington Monument in the Phoenix Park

First-Draft Version

As we saw in the last article, Joyce’s first draft of this episode did not contain this paragraph or anything resembling it. Instead, the paragraph that ends with the sentence about spending a whole half hour in Havana was followed by a short passage that eventually became the paragraph on RFW 044 beginning And, Cod, says he. But when an early draft of this chapter appeared in the literary journal transition in June 1927, this paragraph was present, and in a form very close to the version that would be published in 1939:

Any dog’s life you list you may still hear them at it, ulemamen, sobranjewomen, storthingboys and dumagirls, as they pass its bleak and bronze portal of your Casaconcordia: Huru more Nee, minny frickans? Hwoorledes har Dee det? Losdoor onleft mladies, cue. Millecientotrigintadue scudi. Tippoty,kyrie, tippoty. Cha kai rotty kai makkar, sahib? Despenseme Usted, senhor, en son succo, sabez. O thaw bron orm, A’Cothraige, thinkinthou gaily? Lick-Pa-flai-hai-pa-Pa-li-si-lang-lang. Epi alo, ecou, Batiste, tuvavnr dans lptit boing coing. Ismeme de bumbac e meias de portocallie. O. O. Os pipos mios es demasiada gruarso por O piccolo pocchino. Wee fee? Ung duro. Kocshis, szabad? Mercy, and you? Gomagh, thak.) (Jolas & Paul 35-36)

The closing parenthesis is a relic of an interim version, in which this whole paragraph was parenthetical. The opening parenthesis before was subsequently erased, but its partner survived for several more drafts.

transition 3:35-36 (1 June 1927)

The transition version is already a marked advance on the actual first draft, which included several more multilingual remarks. The earliest drafts are preserved in a typescript dated by Rose & O’Hanlon December 1923‒early 1927. The following transcription conflates at least four different draft levels:

And any dog’s day you may hear them, ulemamen and sobranjewomen and stortingboys and [blank] as they pass the bleak bronze portal of our house of parliament. Et pia alors. Millecentotrentadue scudi. Semeron den didomen pisterin, aorion eukaristos. Tipote, Kyrie! Cha ke rotty ke makkar, sahib? Desculpe me, senhor, en son succo. O, thaw bron urm, Cothraige! Lick-Pa flaid-hai-pa-Palisi liang-liang! Et pia alors, écoute, batiste, vous allez venir dans le ptit coin! Ismene de bumbac! see meias ciorapi de portocalliu! O! O! Os pipos mios es por O piccolo pocchino! Accidempoli! Huru mor nee, minny frickens! Hvorledes har De det, Opvarter? Last door on left, medear, cue Eine läusige Gesellschaft. Bin so frei! Es def[??]gesmanado gruarso por la boquillas. Hvormegel? Un duro! Kocsis, szabad? Merci, and you? Alb, alb! Wie einst in Mai. Eine ganz gemeg Hurenpartie! Gomagh, thak.) (James Joyce Digital Archive)

According to Joseph Campbell & Henry Morton Robinson, the meaning of this paragraph is as follows:

Hear, for instance, this babel of tongues, these people of the world who legislate and converse in the very shadow of his tomb. Any day you list you may hear them all, as they pass the bleak and bronze portal of his Palace of Peace; men, boys, and girls, of the Moslem, Bulgarian, Norwegian, and Russian parliaments—chattering in their sundry tongues. You will recognize his accents in all they say. [Footnote: The pot au feu language of the text is difficult but finally decipherable. Ulema was the name of a Moslem theological body in the pre-War Turkish government. Storthing is the parliament of Norway; Duma, of Czarist Russia; Sobranje, of Bulgaria. The ten lines of conversation snatches are caught from the lips of a cosmopolitan passing crowd. (Campbell & Robinson 67 and fn)

The Irish House of Commons on 19 April 1780

In one version of HCE’s Original Sin in the Park, he was caught peeping at two girls relieving themselves amongst the foliage:

the charmful waterloose country and they two quitewhite villagettes who hear show of themselves so gigglesome minxt the follyages ... (RFW 006.40-007.01)

  • Latin: minxit she urinated.

Listening to their chamber music aroused HCE. In Ulysses, Bloom imagines the sound of Molly pissing into the chamber pot to be a type of chamber music:

Chamber music. Could make a kind of pun on that. It is a kind of music I often thought when she. Acoustics that is. Tinkling. Empty vessels make most noise. Because the acoustics, the resonance changes according as the weight of the water is equal to the law of falling water. Like those rhapsodies of Liszt’s, Hungarian, gipsyeyed. Pearls. Drops. Rain. Diddle iddle addle addle oodle oodle. Hiss. (Ulysses 271)

In this paragraph we hear another species of chamber music: the wind music of blustering politicians in the lower chamber of the Houses of Parliament. The Houses of Parliament is an old euphemism for the toilets (as are The House of Lords and The House of Commons).

The Tower of Babel

Parliament

The word Parliament comes from the French: parler, to talk. A parliament is a talking shop. The original parliament was the Tower of Babel. Joyce’s parliamentarians are only identified by the general terms -men, -women, -boys, and -girls. I presume these embrace the usual dramatis personae of Finnegans Wake, particularly the Earwicker household.

Any dog’s life you list you may still hear them at it, like sixes and seventies, as eversure as Halley’s comet, ulemamen, sobranjewomen, storthingboys and dumagirls, as they pass its bleak and bronze portal of your Casaconcordia: (RFW 043.34-37)

  • dog’s life a miserable or wretched existence. Joyce originally wrote dog’s day. The dog days are the hot, sultry days of summer, which followed the heliacal rising of Sirius, the Dog Star—or when the Sun was in Canis (Aristotle, Metaphysics). But Joyce may have had in mind the proverb Every dog has its day.

  • list (1) like (2) listen. The latter harks back to two earlier passages. One in the opening chapter, and the other just a few pages before the present passage:

Hear? By the mausolime wall. Fimfim fimfim. With a grand funferall. Fumfum fumfum. ’Tis optophone which ontophanes. List! Wheatstone’s magic lyer! They will be tuggling foriver. They will be lichening for allof. They will be pretumbling forover. The harps-dischord shall be theirs for ollaves. (RFW 011.04-08)

Whence it is a slipperish matter, given the wet and low visibility ... to idendifine the individuone in scratch wig, squarecuts, stock, lavaleer, regattable oxeter, baggy pants and shufflers ... with already an incipience (lust!) in the direction of area baldness ... who was asked by free boardschool shirkers ... to tell them ... that fishabed ghoatstory ... (RFW 041.16-25)

In both cases, the allusion is to the Ghost in Hamlet, who enjoins his son to List, list, O, list! Hamlet meeting the ghost of his own father is one of the literary antecedents of the Oedipal Encounter in Finnegans Wake. Franz Liszt is also relevant in the passage with Wheatstone’s magic lyre. He is probably not relevant in the present passage, but it is interesting that Bloom invoked Liszt in his pun on chamber music.

Hamlet and the Ghost

  • like sixes and seventies at sixes and sevens, an expression that means at loggerheads, in a state of dispute or disagreement. Joyce’s alteration alludes to the 76-year period of Halley’s Comet.

  • as eversure as Halley’s comet EHC, the initials of HCE. Halley’s Comet has a period of about 76 years, as Joyce noted in VI.B.8.3b: Halley 76 yr. of BV. But what does BV mean? B Visibility? Rose & O’Hanlon include the following note on the astronomer for whom the comet is named. It is clearly based on the article in The Encyclopædia Britannica (Eleventh Edition), of which Joyce possessed a set:

Note: Edmund Halley, English astronomer, son of a distinguished and wealthy soapboiler of London. His mind was long concerned with the momentous problem of gravity, despite his achievements in the field of astronomy, and by August 1684 he had perceived that the central force of the solar system must decrease inversely as the square of the distance. He applied vainly to Wren and Hooke for further elucidation, and in August 1684 made a journey to Cambridge for the purpose of consulting Newton, which resulted in the publication of the Principia. The labour and expense of passing this great work through the press devolved upon Halley, who also wrote the prefixed hexameters. Among his many services to the British Navy, the provision of maps and suchlike, was the selection and fortifying the port of Trieste. Halley’s most notable scientific achievements were: his detection of the long inequality of Jupiter and Saturn, and of the acceleration of the moon’s mean motion (1693); his discovery of the proper motions of the fixed stars (1718); his theory of variation (1683), including the hypothesis of four magnetic poles and his suggestion of the magnetic origin of the aurora borealis; his calculation of the orbit of the 1682 comet (the first ever attempted), coupled with a prediction of its return, striking verified in 1759; and his indication (in 1679, and again in 1716) of a method extensively used in the 18th and 19th centuries for determining the solar parallax by means of the transit of Venus. (James Joyce Digital Archive)

Edmond Halley

  • ulemamen In Islam, the ulama or ulema are the guardians of legal and religious tradition. Joyce noted in VI.B.10.35m: Ulema (Pers. parl), though the Ulema was not the Persian Parliament. His source was an article in The Irish Times:

The Ulema, the Council of holy men that directs the religious and educational activities of the Persian people, has demanded legislation to prohibit the sale of liquor and to close all places of public amusement. (The Irish Times 11 November 1922)

  • sobranjewomen The Sobranje is the Bulgarian Parliament. Bulgarian: събрание [səbranie], assembly.

  • storthingboys The Storthing is the Norwegian Parliament. Norwegian Nynorsk: Storting, Great Assembly. Also, stuttering boys. In Finnegans Wake, HCE’s stutter is a sign of his guilt.

  • dumagirls The Duma is the Russian Parliament. The Imperial State Duma sat from 1905 until it was finally dissolved in 1917. The current State Duma only dates from 1993. Also, perhaps, dumb girls—though Issy rarely shuts up.

  • bleak and bronze The Black & Tans were an irregular force of British men (mostly unemployed World War I veterans) recruited by the Royal Irish Constabulary during the Irish War of Independence (1920-1). They were notorious for their lawlessness, violence and brutality.

  • portal A portal is a gateway or entrance. Latin: porta, gate, entrance, door. Later, in III.4 (The Fourth Watch of Shaun), HCE and ALP will appear as Mr and Mrs Bartholomew Porter.

  • Casaconcordia Italian: casa di concordia, house of peace, house of concord.

Did Joyce have a particular building in mind, one with black and bronze portals? Louis Mink suggests the Palace of Peace in the Hague, Netherlands, which has housed the Permanent Court of Arbitration since 1913. A house of peace, certainly, but where are the black and bronze portals?

The Peace Palace (The Hague, Netherlands)

Parliament House in Dublin has a couple of large portals. One of them, on Westmoreland Street, is brown and wooden. The other, on Foster Place, is black and metallic:

Bleak and Bronze Portals (Parliament House, Dublin)

Babble of Voices

The remainder of this paragraph consists of seventeen questions or statements in a variety of different languages. As we have seen, Joyce drafted several more, but edited the passage for publication in 1927. Some of these would be appropriate if spoken by a waiter or a concierge in a hotel or restaurant. Some are concerned with the toilets and what one does there, which connects this passage with both HCE’s Original Sin in the Park and the Museyroom Episode. Finally, several references to the cost of spending a penny add a meretricious element to the proceedings.

Huru more Nee, minny frickans?

  • Swedish: Huru mår ni, mina fröken? How are you, my young ladies? Huru is now archaic, the modern form being hur. Fröken is actually a singular form, but mina is plural.

John Gordon adds:

Hooray, more knee, my sweet young ladies? (Audience request at leg show: please lift the skirt higher above the knee.) (Gordon 54:10-11)

But would not this request make more sense coming from HCE as he spies on the two girls in the foliage?

The Can-Can

Hwoorledes har Dee det?

  • Danish, Norwegian Bokmål: Hvorledes har De det? How do You do? This is now a rather archaic expression.

Losdoor onleft, mladies, cue!

  • English: Last door on the left, m’ladies. Thank you. Directions to the Ladies—female toilets—outside of which there is a queue.

  • Serbo-Croatian: mlad, young.

Millecientotrigintadue scudi!

  • Italian: millecentotrentadue, 1132, a symbolic number in Finnegans Wake.

  • Spanish: ciento, hundred.

  • Latin: triginta, thirty.

  • Italian: scudi, shields, five-lira coins (discontinued in 1918).

  • Italian: scusi, excuse me.

An Italian Scudo

Tippoty, kyrie, tippoty!

  • Modern Greek: τίποτε, κύριε, τίποτε [tipote, kyrie, tipote], nothing, sir, nothing, you’re welcome, don’t mention it.

  • Ancient Greek: τί, κύριε, τί [ti, kyrie, ti?], Why, O Lord, why?

  • Ancient Greek: πότε, κύριε, πότε [pote, kyrie, pote?], When, O Lord, when?

  • tippoty teapot : potty (chamber pot).

Cha kai rotty kai makkar, sahib?

See Sudarshan Ramani’s “Tea, with Roti and Butter, Mister?” An Examination of a Single Phrase in a Sentence from Finnegans Wake for an Indian perspective on this phrase.

  • Hindi: चाय की पत्ती [chāy kī pattī], tea leaf.

  • Greek: και [kai], and.

  • Hindi: रोटी [roṭī], bread : roti, chapati (an Indian unleavened flatbread).

  • Hindi: मक्खन [makkhan], butter.

  • Hindi: मक्कार [makkār], deceitful, two-faced.

  • Hebrew: מכר [makār], acquaintance, friend.

  • Hindi: साहिब [sāhib], sir, mister, lord. Also an Anglo-Indian term of respect for a white European or other person of rank in colonial India.

Buttered Roti

Despenseme Usted, senhor, en son succo, sabez!

  • Spanish: dispénseme, excuse me.

  • Spanish: usted, you.

  • Portuguese: senhor, sir, mister.

  • French: en son, in his, in its, in her, in their.

  • Spanish: en son de, in, as (= in a certain manner, in the guise of)

  • Italian: succo, juice : gist, pith, essence.

  • Spanish, Portuguese: sabes, you know.

  • French: savez, [you] know.

O thaw bron orm, A’Cothraige, thinkinthou gaily?

  • Irish: Ó, tá brón orm, a Chothraige, an dtuigeann tú Gaedhealg? Oh, I’m sorry, St Patrick, do you understand Irish? St Patrick was a Briton, but if he did spend much of his youth as a slave in Ireland, he could probably speak Irish.

St Patrick

Lick-Pa-flai-hai-pa-Pa-li-si-lang-lang!

  • Lick-Pa Like Pa, with a salacious element added.

  • flai afraid (imitating Chinese Pidgin pronunciation).

  • flai-hai fly high?

  • Chinese: 害怕 [hàipà], to be afraid.

  • pa-Pa Papa = HCE.

  • Pa-li ALP.

  • li-si Issy.

  • si-lang so long.

  • Chinese: 狼 [láng], wolf : pervert.

  • Chinese: 郎 [láng], man, husband, father.

  • Chinese: 浪 [làng], dissolute, dissipated, lascivious.

  • Chinese: 两 [liǎng], two, some, few.

Chinese Glyph for Wolf

Epi alo, écou, Batiste, tuvavnr dans lptit boing coing!

  • French: Et puis alors, écoute, Batiste, tu vas venir dans le petit bon coin! So, listen, Baptiste, you are going to come into this fine little place. Vico’s first name was Giambattista, or John the Baptist.

  • Ancient Greek: ἐπί ἄλλο [epi allo], upon another thing. Strictly speaking, when ἐπί means on or upon, it takes the genitive case. As ἄλλο is in the accusative case, ἐπί ought to mean onto, to, against, or over. Joyce, however, was not a Greek scholar, so it is probably pointless to try and parse this expression.

  • French: écu, écu (a gold or silver coin formerly used in France, with varying values), shield. Compare scudi above.

  • Romanian: ecou, echo.

  • French: batiste, cambric, a finely-woven fabric made from linen or cotton.

  • Romanian: batiste, handkerchiefs.

  • French: le petit coin, toilets, lavatory, water closet (literally little corner or little place). This continues the micturition motif, carried over from HCE’s Original Sin in the Park.

  • French: bon coin, good corner, a common expression for a nice out-of-the-way restaurant.

A Silver Écu

Ismene de bumbac e meias de portocalliu!

  • Romanian: izmene de bumbac, cotton drawers, cotton underpants. As worn, perhaps, by the two girls urinating in the foliage.

  • Ismene The daughter and half-sister of Oedipus—clearly relevant, given the Oedipal associations of the Earwicker household.

  • Portuguese: e meias de, and socks of.

  • Romanian: portocaliu, orange (colour). Portocalii is the plural form. The fruit is called portocală. The colour was named after the fruit, the -ă with the adjectival suffix -iu. In the opening sentence of the previous chapter, the two urinating girls were names Iris Frees (or Trees) and Lily O’Rangans. The latter refers to the orange lily.

  • Portugal.

O! O! Os pipos mios es demasiada gruarso por O piccolo pocchino!

A Sign for a Water Closet in Germany

  • French: eau (pronounced [o]), water.

  • Portuguese: os pipos, the pipes, the barrels.

  • Spanish: míos, my (masculine plural).

  • Spanish: es, is.

  • Spanish, Portuguese: demasiada, too much, superfluous, excessive (feminine singular).

  • Spanish: grueso, wide, fat, corpulent, bulky.

  • gruarso arse—HCE’s big wide arse that featured prominently in the Museyroom Episode.

  • Portuguese: por, for.

  • Portuguese: o, the.

  • Italian: piccolo, small.

  • Italian: pochino, a little bit.

A Spanish Duro

Wee fee? Ung duro!

  • Hypocorism: wee-wee, to urinate : an act of urination, micturition : penis.

  • German: Wieviel, Wie viel? How much?. The former was the standard form in Joyce’s day.

  • French: un, a, one. The form ung can actually be found in Middle French, but that is probably only a coincidence.

  • Ung dung, continuing the water-closet motif.

  • Ung duro One dollar—the L/R Interchange.

  • Spanish (colloquial): duro, five pesetas, a five-peseta coin.

  • Italian, Portuguese, Spanish: duro, hard (like an erect penis).

Kocshis, szabad?

  • Hungarian: kocsis, szabad? coachman, are you free?

Mercy, and you?

  • French: Merci, et vous? Thank you, and you? (in reply to someone asking you how you are).

Gomagh, thak!

  • Irish: Go maith, fine, well (in reply to someone asking you how you are).

  • Danish: tak, thanks.

Earwicker’s Guilt

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

References

  • Eugene Jolas & Elliot Paul (editors), transition, Number 3, Shakespeare & Co, Paris (1927)

  • Danis Rose, John O’Hanlon, The Restored Finnegans Wake, Penguin Classics, London (2012)

  • William Shakespeare, Horace Howard Furness (editor), A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: Hamlet, Volume 1, J B Lippincott Company, Philadelphia & London (1918)

  • 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

Useful Resources

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