S: No sooner have we made the acquaintance of the “big cleanminded giant H. C. Earwicker,” FW 33.59 than his good name is called into question. We read reports and retorts expressed in unadored legallies and journalease concerning maybe the genitals of that gentileman, HCE. Something of a sextarian nature may not or may have occurred in the parkdark, but false witless is libel to spread like wilde fear. There will be hordes and roamers of whores. List, o list, a soft lisping whisper, the sound of pair of maidens caught short, micturating in the underbush.
M: Greetings from the future — which may very well be the past or present in HCE’s dream of life and death. To-day and yester-morrow at once. Over in Chapter 3 I just finished what appears to be a trial scene, utterly reminiscent of the Circe chapter of Ulysses. Bellows at the bar and blooms on the nightstand once more. HCE is not just McCool, he’s also Poldy. Joyce’s point, I suppose? And match. One man. Every man. Imperfect man? I’m perfect, man! We’re all just a splotch of punctuational acne — or a brutal erasure — from being someone else. And every ‘woman’ contains a ‘man,’ just as every man was at one point contained by a womb-man.
By chance some years after something may or may not have occurred, our HCE on a stroll through the park was accosted by a pipe sucking, scurfy cad, and intimidated by morality admitted something or denied everything. His goodwife misterinterupts her cad hubby’s nocturnal admissions. A holey priest no less breaks the Easter seal of the confusional to a tipster tout at the track. My dear slur. This overhead gossip in turn is bruted about by a trio of malodorous corner boys bunking in heaps at the very shame time, among them one Hosty, a malingering malinger. (The Hosty clan, erstwhile Mac Oiste, is native to both Mayo and Bohemia) He’s the juvenal delinquent who publishes by air the Patrick Calumny ear piecing Ballad of Persse O’Reilly.
A rann is an ancient Irish verse form – a rhyming quatrain, frequently of a witty or satirical nature (compare the Spanish copla).
In The Irish Comic Tradition, (London, Souvenir Press, 1991) Vivian Mercier observes, “Perhaps the most striking single fact about Irish literature in either Gaelic or English is the high proportion of satire which it contains.”
Back to the passed, where — apropos of the calendar — Ulysses is in the air. Moving through Dubliners to Portrait to Ulysses, each bears a healthy touch of what preceded it; some characters, styles, techniques. Appreciating Ulysses as we do, it’s comforting in the tempest of the Wake to find even the wandering rocks of the earlier effort to which we might cling.
In the Old Irish period (8th & 9th centuries) satire (áer) had a strong public and social function within what was essentially a shame culture, that is, a culture preoccupied with reputation, honor and respect. The term meth-n-enech, literally “loss of face,” had the same connotations in early Ireland that we associate with the Chinese term, a loss of dignity or damage to the reputation.
File, the modern Irish & Scottish Gaelic word for poet, is derived from the Old Irish fili (plural filid, filidh). Each fili was attached to the household of a chief, in whose honor he composed flattering eulogies (molad) and against whose enemies he composed satires. He (*) had trained for at least 12 years in the craft of filedecht, in memorization and the study of traditional styles, meters, and rhymes.
There were three categories of satire. Hosty’s rann in FW is an example of aircetal, an incantation in verse – of which there were ten varieties. This one is of the dallbach (blindness) class, in which the victim remains anonymous, but the deeds done or not done are described in some detail.
Just prior to the recital, we are treated to a paragraph (FW 44.7-21) that now has notes of Ulysses’ Ithaca chapter. Compare “Some vote him Vike, some mote him Mike” (FW 44.10-11; references perhaps to HCE’s viking/mick nature?) “Some apt him Arth, some bapt him Barth” (12-13) with the traveling companions of Bloom listed at the end of that chapter, just before he falls asleep:
Sinbad the Sailor and Tinbad the Tailor and Jinbad the Jailer and Whinbad the Whaler and Ninbad the Nailer and Finbad the Failer and Binbad the Bailer and Pinbad the Pailer and Minbad the Mailer and Hinbad the Hailer and Rinbad the Railer and Dinbad the Kailer and Vinbad the Quailer and Linbad the Yailer and Xinbad the Phthailer.
Few complete Old Irish satires have survived. Of those that have, many belong to the poet Aonghus na n-aor (Angus of the Satires). Here is an example:
None but gentlewomen do I satirize,
the children of kings or great noblemen;
so she is exempt;
I would never satirize your mother.
(*) Or she. Interestingly, while female poets were uncommon, female satirists seem to have been relatively familiar & accepted.
If there’s one thing we know, it’s that Joyce likes his own work. And he loves a good catechism (the scaffold around which Ithaca is built), slipping as he does — for good measure and not for the last time — a brief Q and A before the thunderword and music cue that announce the Ballad. (17-18) “Have you here? (Some ha) Have we where? (Some hant)…”
James Stephens Day Joyce is the Kinch of all bards.
sum mer de le wake 