M: How can each — and every — page contain such opportunity for befuddlement and wonder? Seven pages in and one line makes total sense.10.24: “Phew!”
S: Open sez me. I’m going in (under cover).
We know certain things, having read them in Joycentric books. A bedroom above a pub. The owner, Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker dreams of the world and his family, his sleeping body the landscape. Without having read that elsewhere (Anthony Burgess’ ReJyoce, I would wager), I can’t imagine getting it but have fun picking out little bits of Earwicker’s dream, as on page 4, where he starts rattling off books of the Old Testament: “….before joshuan judges had given us numbers or Helviticus committed deuteronomy….and all the guenneses had met their exodus…” How about that Helviticus? An historical eddy of Leviticus and Helvetia, one form of the Latin name for Switzerland (thank you, type history…) that evokes the “commodius vicus” of the book’s first sentence — in the way that all Latinese can sound the same to post-Vatican II Catholics.
FW 2. 1, 2. Initially a minuscule running river. Step into it only once. Wade a minute. Ooops. It’s all over my head. Gone past Eden and Tristram asterne? Swirlpooled in a vicious commode. Coming up for Eire, weeping all the way to the bank. On sullied ground. Can’t get there from here. Start from somewhere else. I’ll come back to the beginning at the end.
It’s tempting to see if I am “right” on Helviticus. Sources and articles fill the internet, along with a series of youtube videos that teach one to pronounce the hundred-letter words and explain their meaning. We two could stop and count and note and dissect every thunder word. We could Google every occurrence of our dreamer’s initials, HCE, as the first letters in various three-word phrases throughout the book. Isn’t it more fun to drop them into a post such as this one? Go ahead; check out how this entry started.
Why not dive in, and enjoy the water, even if it drowns us. Read it — as instructed by the author — aloud and in a Dublin accent, singing along to a song whose words I don’t know. Pretend I’m Fionnula Flanagan at 1am. (That’s a Bloomsday reference; more on that in a couple of weeks.)
FW 4 -24. “The fall.” Making the damnedest original noise. Quake earth. Ashes to ashes. In Finnegan’s fall, we sinned all. We tread now on that sleeping/dead giant. Now hark to the tale of Finn’s demise and the subsequent obsequies, as Jazzman Joyce riffs on a not-so-ancient pop song, called, before Joyce knocked the apostrophe out of it, “Finnegan’s Wake.”
Professor Hugh Kenner tracked it back to an “American stage Irish” number, sung by Mr. Dan Bryant. in 1864. (A Colder Eye, 1983). Mr Bryant, (nee O”Neill) did indeed perform the song that year, on the stage of Mechanics Hall on Broadway in New York City, but comic vocalist Tony Pastor had already introduced “Tim Finigan’s Wake” at the American Music Hall, 444 Broadway, on December 7, 1863. The lyrics, set to an old melody, “The French Musician, were written for him by John F. Poole, a Dublin born immigrant to the United States They were published in Pastor’s “444” Combination Songster in 1864. (Among the other compositions by Mr. Poole for Mr. Pastor is the heart wrenching protest song, “No Irish Need Apply.”)
Sean told me that the Magazine wall is in Phoenix Park. If he hadn’t, I might have read the mention of ‘magazine’ several times in one sitting, looked it up and found this little jingle by Dean Swift (which I obviously did anyway), said to be the last lines he ever wrote:
“Now’s here’s a proof of Irish sense,
Here Irish wit is seen,
When nothing’s left that’s worth defence,
We build a Magazine.”
Joyce could spell everything out for us. Instead he offers hints and puzzles, allowing us to participate, stumble along until we hit our stride… we hope. Scholars more dedicated than I — whose diligence and work I truly appreciate — have sorted it out, but for now I want to stay as much as I can to what the author has given me.
It is somewhat the difference between textbook and fiction, between giving the reader a fish and pointing them to the water and wishing them, well…
Original lyrics here.
The song in the book here.
sum mer de le wake 