In the present chapter of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake—I.3, Humphriad II—the Cad and HCE repeat the story of their memorable encounter in the Phoenix Park. In this article we will be looking at the paragraph that concludes the Cad’s Side of the Story.
The last paragraph but one concluded by rehearsing once again the crucial moment during HCE’s Oedipal Encounter with the Cad in the Phoenix Park when HCE pointed towards the Wellington Monument and swore that he was innocent of the crimes that were being laid at his door. As he did so, the ghost of a smile disfigured his face, similar to a beam of sunshine upon a coffinplate. In the last paragraph this smile was compared to that which appears on the face of a benighted traveller—a wandering poet—as he looks up at the signs of the zodiac outside a tavern, and anticipates the pleasures that await him within: wine, women and song. The poet smiles and begins to think.
The present paragraph once again contemplates that curious smile and asks a number of pertinent questions: How did that thought give rise to that smile? Who was the smiler? To whom was he smiling? Time has transformed all, but the Four Old Men & their Donkey may point us in the right direction.
First-Draft Version
This paragraph, like its predecessor, was not part of Joyce’s first draft of this chapter, which was written in November 1923. But unlike its predecessor an early version of this paragraph had made its appearance by the time Joyce prepared the first typescript of this chapter in December 1923 (revised in early 1927 for publication in transition):
What formal cause made a smile of to think? Who was he to whom? Where are the placewheres? They answer from all zoas. Hear the four of them! Hark, the roar of them! Boreas and Brisias and Lasias and Lysias. Atssattarass. I, says Armagh, and am proud of it! I, says Clonakilty, God help me! I, says Deansgrange, and say nothing! I, says Barna, what about it! Hee haw! Before he fell hill he filled heaven; a sdream, a lapping streamlet, coyly coiled him, cool of her curls. We were thermites then, wee wee. Our antheap we felt as a Hill of Allen, the Barrow of a People, a Jotnur’s Fjell. And it was a grumbling among the porkbrutes that we terrorstruck as thunder. Now, (James Joyce Digital Archive)
Curiously, the opening question—formal cause ... smile ... tothink—flows naturally from the preceding paragraph, which in its final form included the words:
and informally quasibegin to presquesm’ile to queasithin’… (RFW 045.33-34)
Also, zoas echoes the signs of the zodiac in the preceding paragraph, and ye great bow of ’s heaven—added later—invokes the rainbow, which lay behind that paragraph’s insistence on the number seven. Note how ’s heaven itself evokes the number seven.
I say Curiously because according to the JJDA the earliest draft of the preceding paragraph was scribbled by Joyce into notebook VI.B.18, which was compiled between March and July 1927. Was it, then, when Joyce revised the typescript in early 1927 that he added these details? By 1 June 1927, when an early version of this chapter was published in the literary journal transition, this paragraph had begun to take on its final form:
But in the pragma what formal cause made a smile of that tothink? Who was he to whom? Whose are the placewheres? They answer from their Zoans; Hear the four of them! Hark torroar of them! I, says Armagh, and a’m proud o’it. I, says Clonakilty, God help us! I, says Deansgrange, and say nothing. I, says Barna, and whatabout it? Hee haw! Before he fell hill he filled heaven : a stream, alplapping streamlet, coyly coiled um, cool of her curls : We were but thermites then, wee, wee. Our antheap we sensed as a Hill of Allen, the Barrow for an People, one Jotnursfjaell : and it was a grummelung amung the porktroop that wonderstruck us a thunder, yunder. (Jolas & Paul 37-38)
When Joyce reworked this paragraph, he not only added many more details—as was his wont—but also removed a few, which was an all too rarer practice:
Boreas and Brisias and Lasias and Lysias. Atssattarass.
- Boreas In Greek mythology, Boreas was the god of the north wind. Here he is associated with Matthew Gregory, who hails from Ireland’s northern province of Ulster.
- Brisias An argument between Agamemnon and Achilles over the slave-girl Briseis was the cause of the events recounted in Homer’s Iliad. She came from Lyrnessus, which lay to the south of Troy. Here she is associated with Marcus Lyons, who comes from Ireland’s southern province of Munster.
- Lasias I have no idea where Joyce found this name or how it signifies east. Perhaps it conceals Asia, which lies in the east from a Dubliner’s point of view.
- Lysias This orator of ancient Greece emigrated to the city of Thurii in southern Italy, in the west from a Greek’s point of view. Here he is associated with Johnny MacDougall, who comes from Ireland’s western province of Connacht.
- Atssattarass Et cetera, and obviously an allusion to Johnny MacDougall’s Ass or Donkey, who always accompanies the Four Old Men. Perhaps Johnny has sat his own ass* upon the ass. Irish: ar**, on, upon.
The four names bestowed here upon the Old Men also echo the names of the four cities built by the Tuatha Dé Danann when they dwelt in the northern islands of the world: Falias, Gorias, Findias and Murias.
In addition to Joyce’s own deletions, several phrases that were dropped when this paragraph was finally printed in 1939 have been restored by Danis Rose & John O’Hanlon, editors of The Restored Finnegans Wake (2010):
Skeleton Key
In A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, Joseph Campbell & Henry Morton Robinson’s comments on this paragraph are still relevant and well worth reading:
What about that smile? we ask. In pragmatic terms, what formal cause drew a smile from that train of thought? Who was that man? To whom smiling? On whose land was he standing?—No matter where he may have been standing time and tide will have transformed all the landmarks. Yet we can discover pointers enough to gauge the compass of the composition: the forefather, the two peaches, the three Chinamen lying low. We’ll just sit down here on the hope for a ghost. Hark! The voice of the Four Old Men and their Donkey! [Footnote 7: This is the first outright appearance of the four old chroniclers. Their voices come to us as we sit musing on the richly historical landscape. Through the present pages, as we try to review the great masses of evidence fragments of every kind, the images race in a swift and confusing sequence before our eyes. These pages demand strict attention and very slow reading. The Four Old Men are counterparts of the Four Zoas of the later visions of William Blake.] They answer from their respective Zoa zones: “I,” says the one from Ulster, “and a’m proud o’it.” “I,” says the one from Munster, “God help us!” “I,” says the one from Leinster, “and say nothing.” “I,” says the one from Connaught, “and what about it?” “Hee haw!” brays the Donkey. Then, all together, the four old ghost voices proclaim: “Before he fell he filled the heaven; a streamlet coyly coiled him; we were then but Thermidorian termites. We sensed our ant-heap as a great mountain: and it was a rumbling among the pork troop that thunderstruck us as a wonder, yonder.” (Campbell & Robinson 69 & fn 7)
Miscellaneous Details
Before looking at the two major sources for this paragraph, let’s deal with some miscellaneous details.
- O’Breen’s not his name nor the brown one his maid This alludes to one of Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies: O! Breathe Not His Name, which is sung to a traditional air known as The Brown Maid. The subject of this song is the Irish patriot Robert Emmet, who led an unsuccessful rising against the English Crown in 1803, following the failure of the United Irishmen’s Rebellion in 1798 and the passage of the Act of Union in 1800. The location of his grave is unknown to this day, though several apocryphal stories place it variously in Bully’s Acre, St Peter’s Church, St Michan’s Church, St Anne’s Church, and Glasnevin Churchyard. In Book III of Finnegans Wake, Shaun the Post will search for his father’s tomb in order to deliver ALP’s love letter to him.
- emmet ant, anticipating the thermites and antheap at RFW 046.12-13.
- thunder and weddin and soddin and order In Giambattista Vico’s cyclical model of human history, there are three recurring ages. The opening of the First Age, the Theocratic Age of Gods, is marked by the voice of God: thunder. Each of the three Ages is characterized by a ritual institution: birth, marriage, and burial respectively. Here weddin and soddin refer to marriage (wedding) and burial (under the sod). In Finnegans Wake, Joyce elevated the short interval of uncivilization that occurs when one cycle ends and the next is about to begin into a Fourth Age (perhaps with a nod to Hegel, whose cyclical model of history had four stages). The Third Age, the Democratic Age of People, ends with the collapse of civilization into disorder. Why, then, does Joyce represent this Age with the word order?
- Kiswasti, kisker, kither, kitnabudja? Here we have a few more borrowings from Walter Hubert Downing’s Digger Dialects, which was first used by Joyce at RFW 042.23. These entries ask various questions, which is what this chapter of Finnegans Wake is all about. Downing identifies them as Hindustani terms used by Australian troops serving in Mesopotamia:
KISWASTI — Why; what for.
KISKER — Which.
KITHER — Where. ‘‘Kither jahta hai’’— Where are you going?”
KITNA — How much. “Kitna budja” — What’s the time?
(Downing 59)
- Tal the tem of the tumulum Tell the time of the tumult. There is an echo of the earlier Tilling a teel of a tum, telling a toll of a teary turty Taubling, which alludes to Jonathan Swift’s A Tale of a Tub, and the phrase generally associated with Lady Morgan, Dear Dirty Dublin.
- Welsh: tal, tall.
- tem In Egyptian mythology, Tem was the primordial god who created the ancient gods Shu and Tefnut by masturbating.
- Romani: tem country.
- tumulus barrow, burial mound, tomb.
- Giv the gav of the grube The fundamental meaning seems to be: give the village of the pit (ie name the place where his grave lies). This is the spatial counterpart to the temporal Tal the tem of the tumulum:
- Danish: Giv Give!.
- Romani: gav village.
- German: Grube: pit, mine.
- grave
- cudgelplayers’ country or fishfellows’ town or leeklickers’ land or paubpanungopovengreskey Among those who helped to spread Hosty’s Rann in the last chapter was a bout of cudgel players (RFW 034.11). That phrase was taken from Samuel Carlyle Hughes’ The Pre-Victorian Drama in Dublin:
The impression left by Shirley’s prologues is that bear-baiting and cudgel-playing were more to the taste of our ancestors than plays. (Hughes 2)
The English dramatist James Shirley managed Dublin’s Werburgh Street Theatre between 1636 and 1640.
- Romani: Cosht-killimengreskey tem, Cudgel players’ country = Cornwall.
- Romani: Match-eneskey gav, Fishy town = Yarmouth.
- Romani: Porrum-engreskey tem Leek-eaters’ country = Wales.
- Romani: Paub-pawnugo tem, Apple-water country = Herefordshire.
- Romani: Pov-engreskey tem, Potato country = Norfolk.
The foliation of Romani or Gipsy words in this paragraph were taken from George Borrow’s Romano Lavo-Lil, a dictionary of the native speech of the Roma in 19th-century England. Borrow visited Ireland in 1815-16, when he was twelve, and briefly studied Latin, Greek and Irish.
Carl Crow
The following passage introduces the Four Old Men:
What regnans raised the rains have levelled but we hear the pointers and can gauge their compass for the melos yields the mode and the mode the manners, plicyman, plausiman, plousiman, plab. Tsin tsin tsin tsin! The forefarther folkers for a prize of two peaches with Ming, Ching and Shunny on the lie low lea. We’ll sit down on the hope of the ghouly ghost for the titheman troubleth but his hantitat hies not here.
The sense is not too difficult to discern: The burial mound raised by past rulers has been washed away by the rain, but we can still find our bearings, so not all hope has been lost. The pointers are the two stars in Ursa Major that point the way to the Pole star, but hearing them rather than seeing them evokes the Music of the Spheres.
The identification of the Four Old Men with the four points of the compass is crucial to a proper understanding of this passage, but to fully comprehend what these lines are saying one must turn to Carl Crow’s biography of Confucius, or Master Kung.
Young Kung’s position was the humble, rather difficult and certainly unpopular one of estate supervisor and tithe-collector. (Crow 63)
It was not then the custom to erect mounds over graves and [Confucius] in the burial of his parents originated this practice, or at any rate has been given credit for it by all Chinese historians. After placing the coffins in the proper position, they were covered with a mound of earth about four feet high. The marking of the graves with a mound was not a mere whim of fancy or vanity. It appears that even then he was dreaming of larger fields of activity, did not expect to spend a lifetime in the restricted vicinity of his birthplace, and was making his plans accordingly. ‛In olden times,’ he said to his disciples and friends, ‛they raised no mounds over their graves. But I am a man who belongs equally to the north and the south, the east and the west. I must have something by which I can remember this place.’ After the two coffins had been properly placed side by side and the earth had been partly heaped up, he left the disciples to complete the work of erecting the mound while he returned to his home. The disciples were late in rejoining him and explained that after the mound over the grave had been completed a heavy rainstorm had suddenly broken and washed it away, so it had been necessary to remain and rebuild it. (Crow 77)
As the scholars were leaving the border of Lu for the state of Tsi, the Master and his followers passed near the edge of the great sacred mountain of Tai Shan which on a clear day could be seen from any point in Lu. Master Kung was attracted by the heartbroken wails of a woman who was crying by the roadside and sent one of his disciples to inquire the reason. ‛My mother’s brother, and my husband were killed here by a ferocious tiger,’ she said, ‛and now my son has met the same fate.’ ‛Why do you not move away from such a dangerous neighbourhood?’ inquired the disciple. ‛But the officials here are not oppressive,’ the woman explained. Master Kung was told of the incident and said to his disciples: ‛You hear that, my children! An oppressive official is more to be feared than a dangerous tiger!’ (Crow 123)
It was said that this music could not be credited to the creative talents of the musicians of Tsi, but was the genuine music of the ancient King Shun, which had somehow been forgotten in the other states but was preserved in this. Each of the little principalities had its own court musicians, some of whom developed themes of their own, while others perpetuated the ancient compositions and by constant and careful repetition of the ancient tunes kept them free from change. (Crow 128)
One incident they record tells of Master Kung’s ability to interpret themes. He was attempting to learn to play the zither and after ten days had made no progress. ‛We will try something else,’ said the teacher, but Master Kung replied: ‛I have practised the melody, but have not yet acquired the rhythm. They continued studying and practising the same tune and again the teacher tried to urge his pupil to greater progress by saying: ‛Now that you have practised the rhythm, we will proceed.’ The pupil was still not satisfied and said: ‛I have not caught the mood.’ After a while the teacher spoke again: ‛Now that you have practised the mood, we will proceed.’ ‛I have not yet ascertained the kind of men who composed the music,’ said the pupil and the teacher observing him said: ‛You must think deeply and seriously. You must look into the subject with a cheerful mood, high hopes and an open mind.’ ‛Now I know who he was,’ cried Master Kung. ‛His complexion was so dark as to be almost black. He was tall and stout and his eyes when they looked into the distance had the calm gaze of a sheep. His mind was that of a king who could rule the four quarters of the earth. No one but King Wen could have composed this song! If it was not King Wen, who else could have composed anything like this?’ The music master rose from the mat on which he was seated bowed twice and said: ‛You are my master. According to the traditions of the ancient musicians it is actually reputed to be a melody composed by King Wen.’ (Crow 128-131)
In his youth [ie Yen Ying’s, the hunchback philosopher and minister of the state of Tsi] there had been three older ministers who stood in the way of his advancement and he concocted a clever scheme to get rid of one of them. He persuaded the marquis to propose a prize of two peaches to the two ministers who offered him the best advice on certain problems of state. With only two prizes, and three contestants, it was a foregone conclusion that one would fail to win and might reasonably be expected to feel so humiliated that he would resign, thus leaving only two rivals to contend with. The scheme was far more successful than he could possibly have anticipated, skilful as he was in all kinds of political artifices. Two contestants appeared, and, as there were no other contenders, they were awarded the peaches. After they had eaten the prizes with considerable relish and satisfaction, the third contestant arrived. When he presented his plan the marquis was compelled to admit that it was so far the best, that he really deserved both the peaches but could not be awarded either of them as they had been consumed by his competitors. In their chagrin and humiliation over this development the two who had eaten the peaches committed suicide. The third contestant was so grieved at having been the indirect cause of the death of two men whom he held in the highest esteem that he also committed suicide. The scheming hunchback had by one sly trick eliminated all three of his rivals and after that he was careful to see that no other rival got a foothold. (Crow 133-134)
the three great families of Lu ... the Chi and Shuh-sun families ... the weak Meng family ... (Crow 147 ... 149)
In the context of Finnegans Wake, three males contesting for two peaches, leading to the death of all three, can only refer to Shem, Shaun & the Oedipal Figure vying for the hand of schizophrenic Issy.
- plicyman, plausiman, plousiman, plab policeman, ?, rich man (Ancient Greek: πλούσιος [ploúsios], rich), plebeian.
- Tsin, tsin, tsin, tsin! Combining the Chinese state of Tsi (Qi) with the familiar zinzin zinzin motif, which is usually associated with the Magazine Wall, scene of HCE’s fall, and the tinkling of bells. I have suggested that these may be the alarm bells on HCE’s safety coffin, tinkling to indicate that he has risen from the dead. Greek: μέλος [melos], melody, tune, song : limb, body part. A mode is a musical scale and the melodic and harmonic behaviours characteristic of it.
- the hope of the ghouly ghost Romans 15:13: Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost (Gordon 57.6).
- ghost Crow does not mention any ghosts. In the Humphriad, ghosts always evoke the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father, who confronts the son on the battlements at Elsinore—another sort of Oedipal Encounter. Ibsen’s Ghosts, in which children, repeating the sins of their parents, become the revenant ghosts of their own parents, is also relevant.
William Blake
In this paragraph, the Four Old Men are explicitly linked to the Four Zoas of William Blake:
They answer from their zoans. Hear the four of them! Hark, torroar of them! I, says Armagh, and a’m proud o’ it. I, says Clonakilty, God help us! I, says Deansgrange, and say nothing. I, says Barna, and what about it? Hee haw!
The English poet William Blake was one of Joyce’s favourite writers, and his figure looms large over the text of Finnegans Wake. Of all his writings it is his last work, Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion, which contributed the most to Joyce’s last work. In The Finnegans Wake Experience, Roland McHugh recounts his discovery of the close connection between these two long and difficult texts:
My progress through FW was characterized by paroxysms of enthusiasm for some element in the text which seemed of paramount urgency when discovered, but which gave way to some totally different enthusiasm a few months later. In December I read Blake’s Jerusalem, knowing from the account in Critical Writings that Joyce approved of Blake. Suddenly I perceived the analogy between the sleep of Albion and that of Finnegan. Both were giants and both were emotionally involved with two women. That type of relationship could also be found in Swift, in Ibsen’s heroes such as the Master Builder, and even in Jesus with Martha and Mary, which Bloom recalls occasionally in the context of his own dual relationship with Martha Clifford and Molly. It seemed for a time that FW was all about Blake, but then my enthusiasm shifted, first to Le Fanu’s The House by the Churchyard and then to Madame Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled. (McHugh 36)
In 1958 Karl Kiralis penned a short paper on the relationship between Blake and Finnegans Wake. Kiralis, a renowned expert on the writings of William Blake, died in 1982, the year of Joyce’s centenary. He was possibly the first to note the important influence Jerusalem had on the composition of Finnegans Wake:
Thematically and structurally, Jerusalem and Finnegans Wake are quite similar. Both are concerned with man’s fall and awakening. Early in Jerusalem Blake explicitly states his theme: “Of the Sleep of Ulro” and of the passage through Eternal Death! and of the awaking to eternal Life. this theme calls me” (4:1-3) ...
“The Sleep of Ulro” is usually explained as the living death of man in mechanistic materialism, but since Jerusalem contains at least the rudiments of a psychology of sleep, Joyce may have interpreted the phrase as a clue to a dream structure ...
Structurally more basic to Jerusalem than the dream is the growth cycle. As Blake says on Plates 14 and 98, he is concerned with man’s childhood, manhood, and old age. This normal physical progression is expressed as a philosophical or spiritual history of man’s errors in Judaism (childhood), deism (manhood), and Christianity (old age) ... (Kiralis 33)
Kiralis’s description of the opening chapter of Jerusalem doubles as an accurate description of the opening chapter of Finnegans Wake:
The first chapter, like an overture, contains in brief all the major and minor themes as well as the leading characters of the whole. Having passed through the stages of eternal death, man is finally awakened to eternal life (Plates 95-98), but, as described on Plate 99, he must fall again into the cycle from mundane to eternal existence. The renewal of the cycle is pictured on the final plate. (Kiralis 331-332)
I have suggested that where Joyce’s cyclical depiction of human existence diverges from that of Giambattista Vico, we should look to Hegel for his inspiration. But Kiralis argues that Blake is Vico’s true rival:
It seems significant that in some of his many deviations from Vico Joyce is close to Blake. Edmund Wilson contends that Vico’s cycles are not progressive; certainly those of Joyce [The Dream of H. C. Earwicker, Givens, pp. 319-342, p. 326)] and Blake are except that the cycle from darkness to light, from man’s fall to his awaking, is renewed at the end of both Jerusalem and Finnegans Wake. Harry Levin notes that whereas the second stage of Vico’s cycle is the family, Joyce’s second section is dedicated to childhood. Blake’s second chapter is primarily concerned with man’s spiritual childhood, Judaism. (Kiralis 332-333)
In the context of the present paragraph, it is the Four Zoas that concern us. In Blake’s personal mythology Albion is the primeval man whose fall and division results in the Four Zoas: Urizen, Tharmas, Luvah-Orc and Urthona-Los. Albion’s name derives from an ancient and mythological personification of Britain. In the mythical history of Britain, Albion was a giant, the son of Poseidon. He settled in Britain, where his giant descendants dwelt until the coming of Brutus from Troy around 1136 BC. Blake expounded his vision of Albion and the Four Zoas in two of his prophetic poems
- Vala, or The Four Zoas
- Jerusalem
Vala was begun around 1796 but abandoned while still incomplete around 1807. It exists in two versions:
- Vala, or The Death and Judgement of the Eternal Man: A Dream of Nine Nights (1796-1802)
- The Four Zoas: The Torments of Love & Jealousy in the Death and Judgment of Albion the Ancient Man (1800-1807)
In Jerusalem the Four Zoas are associated with the four points of the compass and with four cities—just like the Four Old Men in Finnegans Wake:
And the Four Zoas clouded rage, East & West & North & South:
They change their situations, in the Universal Man ...
For Four Universes round the Mundane Egg remain Chaotic:
One to the North, Urthona: One to the South, Urizen:
One to the East, Luvah: One to the West, Tharmas:
They are the Four Zoas that stood around the Throne Divine:
Verulam, London, York & Edinburgh, their English names ... (Blake 41 ... 68)
Here, Joyce represents the Four with Armagh (Ulster), Clonakilty (Munster), Deansgrange (Leinster), and Barna (Connacht). Why these four towns?
The Four Zoas each possess their own unique character:
THEY saw their Wheels rising up poisonous against Albion.
Urizen, cold & scientific; Luvah, pitying & weeping;
Tharmas, indolent & sullen; Urthona, doubting & despairing;
Victims to one another & dreadfully plotting against each other
To prevent Albion walking about in the Four Complexions. (Blake 68)
One curious passage of Jerusalem connects Ireland with the Four Zoas:
I see a Feminine Form arise from the Four terrible Zoas,
Beautiful but terrible, struggling to take a form of beauty,
Rooted in Shechem: this is Dinah, the youthful form of Erin. (Blake 91)
I am reminded of Yeats’ description of the Ireland that emerged from the crucible of the Easter Rising in his poem Easter, 1916, which was first published in 1920:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born (Yeats 9)
Kiralis notes other parallelisms between Jerusalem and Finnegans Wake:
Most obviously akin are the sleeping giants, the prototypes of their races, Albion and Finn (or his embodiment, H. C. Earwicker), who represent mankind ... Shem, the creative man, and often Joyce himself. may be equated with Blake’s Los, the imaginative man who at times also represents his creator. The recurrence of the Great Letter in Finnegans Wake, penned by Shem, seems to be a less direct insistence by Joyce upon Blake’s oft-claimed divinity for the poet’s words. Shaun, the popular poetaster, is reminiscent of Jerusalem’s Hyle (or William Hayley, a popular poet of Blake’s time), both figures representing false art as compared with the true art of Shem and Los. Earwicker’s twelve customers and accusers may be compared to either the twelve sons or the twelve daughters of Albion, both sons and daughters being accusers and judges if not executioners of their father. The four judges ... call to mind the four Zoas of Blake, though of course there is a long list of archetypal correspondences ... The twenty-eight cities which question yet comfort Albion may be related to the twenty-eight rainbow girls who bring hope as well as ask a basic question. There is a magic in numbers ... Noah’s rainbow is utilized as an important symbol of hope in both works. (Kiralis 333)
John Gordon notes that this paragraph’s allusion to four (the forefarther folkers), three (Ming, Ching and Shunny), and two (two peaches) encodes the year 432, the traditional date of St Patrick’s arrival in Ireland (Gordon 57.5).
Kiralis concludes his paper with the following peroration:
... it seems fair to conclude that Joyce was influenced by Jerusalem in his writing of Finnegans Wake. If there was no direct influence, Joyce at least seems to have been more familiar with Jerusalem than were most Blake scholars of his time. But most important is the appreciation of the fact that since Blake and Joyce often thought and wrote in much the same way, a study of either of their “textbooks” helps to understand both. (Kiralis 334)
Closing Lines
The final lines of this paragraph are largely unchanged from the first draft:
Before he fell hill he filled heaven: a sdream, alplapping streamlet, coyly coiled um, cool of her curls. We were but thermites then, wee, wee. Our antheap we sensed as an Hill of Allen, the Barrow for an People, one Jotnursfjaell: and it was a grummelung amung the porktroop that wonderstruck us as thunder yunder.
The allusions are fairly transparent and not too difficult to tease out. As we have seen, the termites and ants pick up the earlier allusion to Robert Emmet. HCE is often depicted as an insect (earwig), which always carries the overtone of incest.
- Ancient Greek: θερμός [thermos], heat, contrasted with the preceding cool. As we saw above, Campbell & Robinson discerned an allusion to the Thermidorian Reaction, when Maximilien Robespierre’s Reign of Terror was brought to an end. This is supported by the following wee, wee*, which combines the French: oui, oui**, yes, yes, with the hypocorism for micturition and the common adjective meaning small.
- Hill of Allen This hill in County Kildare was the traditional seat of Finn MacCool.
- Jotnursfjaell Icelandic: jötnar, giants : fjall mountain _. In Jonathan Swift’s _Gulliver’s Travels, the Lilliputians referred to Gulliver as Quinbus Flestrin, “the Great Man-Mountain” (Swift 33).
- Jotunfjell A mountain range in Norway. Early Norse sagas mention the Jotunheim Mountains, but they were not fully explored until the early 19th century. Jotunheimen (“The Giant’s Home”) were named Jotunfjell (“Giant’s Mountains”) in 1822, but since the 1860s they have been known as Jotunheimen (“Giant’s Home”) (SabinoCanyon).
- a grummelung amung the porktroop a grumbling among the people (Gordon 57.14-15). How did Joyce come up with porktroop? Is there an allusion here to Patrick? According to tradition, Patrick tended swine for his master Miliucc on Mount Slemish, County Antrim, when he was a boy. But Joyce’s first-draft had porkbrutes. In the Odyssey, Odysseus’s men are transformed into swine by the witch Circe. Might there also be an allusion here to the Gadarene Swine?
And that’s as good a place as any to beach the bark of our tale.
---
References
- William Blake, The Prophetic Books of William Blake: Jerusalem, Edited by E R D Maclagan & A G B Russell, A H Bullen, London (1904)
- George Borrow, Romano Lavo-Lil: Word-Book of the Romany, or, English Gypsy Language, John Murray, London (1907)
- Joseph Campbell, Henry Morton Robinson, A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York (1944)
- Carl Crow, Master Kung: The Story of Confucius, Tudor Publishing Company, New York (1937)
- Walter Hubert Downing, Digger Dialects: A Collection of Slang Phrases Used by the Australian Soldiers on Active Service, Lothian Book Publishing Co, Melbourne and Sydney (1919)
- David Hayman, A First-Draft Version of Finnegans Wake, University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas (1963)
- Samuel Carlyle Hughes, The Pre-Victorian Drama in Dublin, Hodges, Figgis, & Co, Ltd, Dublin (1904)
- Eugene Jolas & Elliot Paul (editors), transition, Number 3, Shakespeare & Co, Paris (1927)
- James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, The Viking Press, New York (1958, 1966)
- James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Works, Pynch (editor), Online (2013)
- Karl Kiralis, Joyce and Blake: A Basic Source for “Finnegans Wake”, Modern Fiction Studies, Volume 1, Number 4, Pages 329-334, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland (1958)
- Roland McHugh, The Finnegans Wake Experience, University of California Press, Berkeley, California (1981)
- 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 Butler Yeats, Michael Robartes and the Dancer, The Cuala Press, Churchtown, Dundrum (1920)
Image Credits
- The Four Zoas: William Blake (artist & engraver), Milton: A Poem, Copy C, Object 34, New York Public Library, Public Domain
- Three Peaches Kill Two Knights, Wu Liang (artist), Rubbing from the Wu Family Shrines, Jiaxiang, Shandong, 1st Year of Jianhe, Eastern Han Dynasty (147 CE), Fine Arts Library, Special Collections, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Public Domain
- Aristotle’s Four Causes: © Ian Alexander (designer), Creative Commons License
- Birseis: John William Godward (artist), Private Collection, Public Domain
- Classic and Restored Finnegans Wake (RFW 045.36-046.15): © Raphael Slepon, Fair Use
- Oh! Breathe Not His Name: Thomas Moore (lyricist), Charles Villiers Stanford (arranger), The Irish Melodies, Page 7, Boosey & Co, London (1895), Public Domain
- Walter Hubert Downing: The Scotch College, Public Domain
- George Borrow: Henry Wyndham Phillips (artist), National Portrait Gallery, London, Public Domain
- Carl Crow: Carl Crow Papers, 1913-1945, Western Historical Manuscript Collection, Columbia, Missouri, Public Domain
- Tai Shan: Charlie fong (photographer), Public Domain
- King Wen of Zhou: Anonymous Painting, Ming Dynasty, Public Domain
- Yan Ying: Anonymous Painting, Probably Qin or Han Dynasty, Public Domain
- William Blake: Thomas Phillips (artist), National Portrait Gallery, London, Public Domain
- Jerusalem (Plate 2): William Blake (artist & engraver), Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion, Copy E, Plate 2, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, Public Domain
- Jerusalem (Plates 14 & 98): William Blake (artist & engraver), Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion, Copy E, Plates 14 & 98, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, Public Domain
- Jerusalem (Plate 99): William Blake (artist & engraver), Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion, Copy E, Plate 99, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, Public Domain
- Jerusalem (Plate 59): William Blake (artist & engraver), Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion, Copy E, Plate 59, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, Public Domain
- Easter, 1916 (Yeats ): Alice Boughton (photographer), Public Domain
- St Patrick in 432 CE: St Patrick’s Silver Medal, © The Franklin Mint, Fair Use
- The Hill of Allen: © Michael J Anderton (photographer), Fair Use
- Slemish Mountain: © Mervyn Campbell (photographer), Fair Use
Useful Resources
- The Grave of Robert Emmet
- Jorn Barger: Robotwisdom
- Joyce Tools
- FWEET
- The James Joyce Scholars’ Collection
- FinnegansWiki
- James Joyce Digital Archive
- From Swerve of Shore to Bend of Bay
- John Gordon’s Finnegans Wake Blog
- James Joyce: Online Notes
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