Literary Disco discussion
Finnegan's Wake-Up
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Jennifer, I've actually decided to read it again as I feel I've missed a huge amount, so if you want to continue discussions after the official challenge is over, I'd be game.
I'm thinking of re-reading at least the first chapter as well, if only because the book is meant to be a cycle, isn't it, and it doesn't feel right to end at the end.Still clueless as to what is going on, so i'll just fall back on what i used to do mostly, and point out just a few things i found interesting.
Pg 518
Dunsink, rugby, ballast and ball - dancing + Danzig (today the Polish city of Gdańsk)
Hostages and Co, Engineers - HCE
It was an ersatz lottheringcan - watering can? + Lothringen (German name for Lorraine, en France)
the expeltsion of the Danos - the expulsion of the Danes
Ab chaos lex, neat wehr? - "Ab chaos lex" = "From chaos, law?".......... "wehr" is an obsolete term for "defense". German for "fire brigade" is "Feuerwehr", and the German armed forces during WWII were called the "Wehrmacht". Today they are called the "Bundeswehr". "Neat wehr" could thus be something like "neat defence", or even "neat war"(?), which fits maybe with the idea of law emerging from chaos. But also, it sounds like "nicht wahr?", which is the German equivalent of "non?", or "no?" at the end of a sentence. That was a neat analysis, nicht wahr?
Pg 520
"Quatsch!" near the bottom of the page is just how Germans swear. A bit like how we might say, "Bullshit!" I don't know how rude it's considered or how common it is now. I imagine there is a profusion of English swear words that make native ones less fashionable amongst the young and the cosmopolitan.
Pg 521
trousertree - A continuation of that whole "tree" thing from earlier on. Also...
Bushmillah - bush + Bis-mi-Allah ("in the name of Allah")
Pg 522
sylvan family tree - sylvan = woody, wooded
homosexual catheis of empathy - HCE
psoakoonaloose - psychoanalyse
I'm not quite ready to commit to an immediate full re-read, but I'm definitely in for cycling back through the first chapter for exactly the reason Kevin mentioned.Jennifer, I for one would love to see your posts, regardless of where in the book you are. So many of these themes repeat in different places in the book...having interpretations of different parts of the book right near each other in this thread might give us all a whole new angle of connection/analysis.
I've been in mild catch-up mode the last couple days, but am caught up now (well, for my date, anyway--still 5 pages behind you, Kevin!)...here are some highlights from my margin scribbles that haven't already come up:
on p. 508: "the subligate sisters, P. and Q."
Some time ago now, I marked something that read to me as a reference to "mind your p's and q's", and this felt related to that saying as well, maybe particularly because of the defiant use of those letters in the two or three paragraphs following this bit.
p. 510: "They came from all lands beyond the wave for songs of Inishfeel..." I think this is a reference to Innisfree, mythical Irish isle, but there is also a Yeat's poem about this island, so possibly a dual reference here.
p. 511: "So this was the dope that woolied the cad that kinked the ruck that noised the rape..." that lived in the house that Jack built? Funny how many times the rhythm and pattern of this one have come up in FW
p. 512: explorers!! We get "Megalomagellan" (megalomaniac and Magellan?) and "Crestofer Carambas" (and then "Crashedafar Corumbas" on p. 513)
"the park is gracer than the hole" (line 28 on 512) sums up how I feel abou tFW (the parts are greater than the whole...)
"Howth" on p. 514! and a river shortly following it...
"Sangnifying nothing" (p. 515)-- signifying nothing, speech from MacBeth. Also possibly interesting to note is that "sang" = blood in French.
"plantagonist" (p. 516) = Plantaganet and antagonist?
And, finally, we have a murdered author on p. 517...
At times, I get the feel that this is an interrogation, but other times it's a conversation in some kind of close-friends code... unsure what the action or plot is right now (not that this differs from my usual, mind you).
Okay, that's all I have for tonight. Happy reading, everyone!
I agree that there seems to be an interrogation of some description going on. The language is suggestive of an officiated interview, such as a courtroom or police interview eg "Were you or were you not..." (P515). And as for the "mardred" author (p517), is Shawn accused of killing (or 'marring' the name of) his twin brother?
Sorry for the double-post. On a train, using my little phone, having read the pages for day 103. There's a lot to say but I'll keep it brief. First of all, I'm certain that we are in a courtroom (references to jury and 'your honour' etc).
I get the sense once again that the crime might be voyeuristic, maybe dually so. "They were watching the watched watching" (P509) and sexual on the side of the Earwicker accused "earwanker" (p520).
Once again, three seems to be an important number.
The ability to question religious faith also comes up
Two things jump out at me: Shaun's claim that the truth is worth nothing on page 521, and his comment that he has "something inside [him] talking to [himself] on page 522.
I think that these are interesting to think about.
Nicole wrote: "I haven't asked this before, but I'm tossing it out there now--there have been several places in this book where I've wondered how familiar with/influenced by T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" Joyce was when writing this. I looked it up yesterday, and "The Wasteland" was published in 1922, definitely predating FW by enough that it could have been an influence"Hi Nicole, I am woefully behind in my reading...almost 100 pages. However, when I do read FW, I am reading along with William Tindall's Reader's Guide and he also notes the comparisons to The Wasteland. So you are obviously not alone in making that connection.
Jenna wrote: "There's a lot to say but I'll keep it brief. First of all, I'm certain that we are in a courtroom (references to jury and 'your honour' etc). I get the sense once again that the crime might be voyeuristic, maybe dually so. "They were watching the watched watching" (P509) and sexual on the side of the Earwicker accused "earwanker" (p520)."
Nothing specific to add today. But just wondering aloud. So yes, there's some kind of inquest going on here, or a trial. HCE is the accused, and the crime is sexual and voyeuristic. This has happened before, hasn't it? Somewhere in Book 1? And i mentioned before that at certain points in the chapter there are repeated references to earlier parts of Finnegans Wake: Magellan, Christopher Columbus, Ernest Shackleton, Scandiknavery, etc. Are we revisiting HCE's trial? And if so, how is this time different? How is Shaun involved? Has he inherited is father's crime?
Yes you are right! Even the female police officer with the speech impediment makes an appearance again. I admit, I missed the shift onto HCE (despite numerous encrypted HCEs) and thought Shaun was still the focus. Given that we are now getting close to the 'end', maybe we are to take from this that the courtroom scene is the pivotal centrepiece to the story. Or we should consider what revisiting a scene serves as a plot device. Reliving seems to be a running theme. I like the idea that Shaun has inherited HCE's crime ('sins of the father' so on and so forth).
Jenna wrote: "I like the idea that Shaun has inherited HCE's crime ('sins of the father' so on and so forth). "And i vaguely remember we got some hints before about how Shaun and Shem, as HCE's sons (or were they Finnegan's sons? Or both?), not only inherited his properties, but stood in for him? There's actually an example of this from today's 5 pages. Right at the bottom of page 533, it says "Shaun Shemsen", which literally means "Shaun, son of Shem". It could be that Joyce is simply using the patronymic naming convention arbitrarily, to bring the brothers' names together. Or, it could be that Shem actually is Shaun's father and his brother, and Shaun is also actually Shem's father and his brother, at the same time. This is not so ridiculous, given how often we've seen references to the Holy Trinity, the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, God three-in-one. Maybe HCE is God the Father, Shaun and Shem God the Son(s).
Other stuff i noticed today:
Pg 533
clairaudience - clairvoyance
Pg 534
Godnotch, vryboily. End a muddy crushmess! - God nacht (German, "good night"), everybody! And a Merry Christmas!
Shame upon Private M! Shames on his fulsomeness! Shamus on his atkinscum's lulul lying suulen for an outcast mastiff littered in blood currish! - Shame, Shamus = Shem?
Pg 535
... whenby Gate of Hal, before his hostel of the Wodin Man... - "Hel" is the Norse underworld, from which we get the English word "hell". "Woden" is another name for Odin, and is the name which gives us "Wednesday".
Noreway - Norway. Obvious, this one.
handshakey congrandyoulikethems, ecclesency. - HCE
Haveth Childers Everywhere - HCE.
Pg 536
Rivera in Januero - Rio de Janeiro
Jonah Whalley - Jonah. Whale.
Haar Faagher, wild heart in Homelan; Harrod's be the naun. Mine kinder come, mine wohl be won. - There are two levels to this. On the one hand, we have the opening lines of the Lord's Prayer, "Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy Kingdom come, thy Will be done..." On the other, we have "mine kinder", which in German "mein Kinder" means "my children", and "mine wohl", where "wohl" is a modern German adverb derived from an Old German word meaning "good" or "well", so "my good". "My children come, my good be done".
Pg 537
Frick's Flame, Uden Sulfer - Frigg and Odin, who are wife and husband. Probably we're reading about Frigg and Odin's wrath here, which may "enquick" the narrator if so be that he commits some (sexual) sin against "cophetuise milady's maid", who, "in spect of her beavers", is "womanly and sacret".
Fanagan's Weck - Finnegan's Wake
Hodder's and Cocker's erithmatic - HCE.
Thank you so much for letting me know that, Ruthiella! I haven't been reading any of the guides, so it's strangely reassuring to feel like I'm not completely inventing these connections to familiar things out of misguided desperation. :)The last couple days' reading...here goes.
I'm intrigued by this bit on p. 526:
"-- Three in one, one and three.
Shem and Shaun and the shame that sunders em.
Wisdom's son, folly's brother."
I also don't know what to make of it, though. There seems, more and more, to be some conflating of Shem, Shaun, and HCE, and I suspect these three men are the three mentioned in the first line. The shame seems likely to be something sexual based on everything we've read. The whole bit has a "three witches from MacBeth" feel to me, a little otherworldly and prescient.
More composers: "Mindelsinn" = Mendelssohn (p. 528)
Also on p. 528: "Kyrielle elation! Crystal elation! Kyrielle elation! Elation immense! Sing to us, sing to us, sung to us! Amam!" references Kyrie, eleison ("Lord, have mercy") and seems to end with an "Amen"
Speaking of T.S. Eliot, in the middle of p. 528, this struck me: "How is this at all?" as reminiscent of a repeated line from Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"--"That is not what I meant at all"
I might be stretching for that one, but it grabbed my attention.
Lots of eggs and Finns throughout. We get "shamshemshowman" on 530. So many of the characters seem to be returned and colliding in this late-book courtroom scene. It feels a bit like we're building to a crescendo/final act.
p. 530: "A farternoiser for his tuckish armenities. Ouhr Former who erred in having..." Paternoster = The Lord's Prayer, and the latter half reads as "Our Father, who art in Heaven..." This comes up again, even more elaborately, a few pages later, as you noted, Kevin, in your previous post.
p. 531: "That's enough, genral, of finicking about Finnegan and fiddling with his faddles." Struck me as humorous and I love the idea that characters in the storyline are seeking to put Finnegan truly to rest (although their luck with this seems short-lived)
Weird wife stuff: "halfwife" and "verawife" on p. 532; "wholewife" on 533; "wipehalf" on 534; and possibly "wholeswiping" on 537. Considering there seems to be a sexual element to the accusations at this trial and some question about consent, the continuum of "wife levels" seemed interesting (maybe also a continuum of "rape levels" in this character's worldview? If that's even what's gone on here... this section has been some dense reading for me!)
Although, possibly related to that last one is this series of words back on pp. 523-24: "Ladiegent," "middlesex" (this one has come up before, I think), "neuter," "bisectualism"... somewhere just before that, I think, there had been mention of a gender-related crime, although now I can't find it. This seems to consider gender as a broader-than-usual spectrum might be the connection I was making with it.
I don't have a clear sense for who is on trial right now--HCE has come up several times, but so have Shaun and Shem in the same context. In some ways, they seem to be on trial as a unit, or at least the lines between them are blurrier than usual in this section. Interesting.
Happy reading!
After what has been a rough haul for me, I've been finding Chapter 1 of Part III much more interesting and readable.I keep seeing references to philosophers and literature:
"I have if coerce nothing in view to look forward at unless it is Swann" (pg 401) makes me think of Proust's Swann's Way, perhaps only because of the spelling.
"I would rather spinooze you one" (pg 414) the philosopher Baruch Spinoza.
"The earthbest schoppinhour" (pg 414) the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer.
Kevin mentioned the refence to Oscar Wilde a while ago.
I've also been enjoying Joyces the retelling of Aesop's fable The Ant and the Grasshopper starting on page 414: "From the grimm gest of Jacko and Esaup, fable one, feeble too. Let us here consider the casuss... of the Ondt and the Gracehopper." I enjoyed the reference to the Grimm brothers here. Especially with the earlier reference to "greenridinghued" on pg 411 that Jenna noted.
Quick one today. Pages 543 to 547. Just a few things i noticed:Pg 543
William Ingris - William English?
that man de Loundres - "that man of London", "Londres" being French for London.
redmaids and bluecotts - blue coats?
Pg 546
Hery Crass Evohodie - HCE. Here Comes Everybody?
Feejeean grafted ape on merfish - The Feejee mermaid/Fiji mermaid. Famous mermaid hoax. Torso and head of a juvenile monkey sewn to the back half of a fish. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiji_mer...
Pg 547
Moabit - The Moabites were the people of Moab. Mentioned in the Bible as being related to the Israelites, amongst other things. Meanwhile, Moabit is the name of a locality in the inner city of Berlin.
ringstresse - Ringstraße is a circular road surrounding the Innere Stadt district of Vienna, Austria.
iday, igone, imorgan - idag, igår, imorgon. Today, yesterday, tomorrow respectively in Swedish.
Pages 548 to 552 today. Again, just some quick notes.Pg 548
skall vives! - "Skål!" is how Scandinavians toast each other over a drink. The equivalent of "cheers!"
herbrides - her brides + Hebrides
Appia Lippia Pluviabilla - Anna Livia Plurabelle
her hochsized, her cleavunto, her everest - HCE
my annie, my lauralad, my pisoved - ALP
constantonoble's - Constantinople
cupandnaggin - Copenhagen
Pg 549
Danabrog - Dannebrog. Danish national flag
Cunning's great! - König. German for "King".
sankt piotersbarq - Saint Petersberg. "Sankt" is "saint" in Danish.
Conn and Owel - Cain and Abel?
Pg 551
skalded her mermeries on my Snorryson's Sagos - During the Viking Era, a Skáld was a court poet. Snorri Sturluson was an Icelandic historian, poet, and politician, who authored the Prose Edda and various other old, Norse Sagas.
minne elskede - "min elskede" is Norwegian for "my love".
Pg 552
Hagiosofia - Hagia Sophia
Sweatenburgs Welhell - Swedenborg's Valhalla? Wikipedia: "Emanuel Swedenborg was a Swedish scientist, philosopher, theologian, revelator, and, in the eyes of some, Christian mystic." Valhalla is the great hall in Asgard where fallen warriors go to prepare for Ragnarök.
snaeffell - Snaefell. Tallest mountain on the Isle of Man.
Days 101 - 109Sorry for lack of posts this week - I’ve been away. I know I managed a couple of brief comments, but they weren’t very thorough due to the tiny keypad on my phone and my guitar-string-scarred fingertips!
Some lingering thoughts:
1. Relevance of Gospels.
We have been mentioning Matthew, Mark, Luke and John since their first appearance in the pub, way back when. The question in my mind now is ‘WHY?’. What is their significance? I don’t know the answer, but I feel the question warrants some consideration. I will ponder...
A few mentions to highlight:
“I matt them... milreys (mark!) on-fell, and (Luc!)” (p541) - What? No mention of John?
“I considered the lilies..” (p543) - passage from Luke’s Gospel, instructing, ‘Consider the lilies’.
“I to pass through twelve Threadneedles and Newgade and Vicus Veneris to cooinsight?: my camels’ walk” (p551) - Matthew’s Gospel - camel through the eye of a needle passage, mentioned a few times already throughout FW. Incidentally, Threadneedle Street is a street in London, (and a London-based investment house), and Newgate Street is also in London (and a London-based prison).
2. HCE and ALP.
Kevin already listed most of the HCE and ALP references that I’ve underlined. There are a LOT of them in this chapter. What I do seem to be noticing though is that the language associated with both HCE and ALP has become negative. Some of them also appear to be incomplete, and I am interested in the impression that this is creating, like fragments of character are being lost / loss of self / blurring of identity. A few examples:
“haunted. condemned and execrated” (p544)
“against dilapidating” (p544)
“amblyopia” - [disorder of the eye] (p545)
“honnibel crudelty” (p538)
“Champaign Chollyman and Hungry” (p539)
“famous river, called of Ptolemy the Libnia Labia” (p 540) - (ALP has been associated with rivers / water since her first appearance).
3. Mirror reflections v living reflections.
Some interesting ‘mirror’ references in relation to... I think, Izzy.
“Alicious, twinstreams twinestraines, through alluring glass” (p528) - possibly a reference to Lewis Carol’s Alice Through the Looking Glass?
“Double her” (p528)
“ambidual act herself in apparition with herself” (p528) - ambi = Latin for ‘both’ (as in ambidextrous) / dual = two parts.
This is not the first time we have seen Izzy as a reflection. In the theatre chapter, she was described as “approached in loveliness only by her grateful sister reflection in a mirror” (p220). This concept is fascinating to me. So far I have quite happily accepted that Shaun and Shem are the twins and there is a literary elegance to mirroring / splitting / contrasting themes. However, as far as we know, Izzy is a single person, yet a relationship with a twin / other self exists, this time in the glass. I wonder what parallels with the twin theme this could offer.
Some other notes:
Page 512
“Toot and Come-Inn” - Tutankhamun
Page 518
“‘tis the will of Whose B. Dunn.” - The Lord’s Prayer ‘thy will be done...’
Page 523
“may have been (one is reluctant to use the passive voiced) may be been as much sinned against as sinning, for if we look at it verbally perhaps there is no true noun in active nature...” - There are such open comments on quality of language / choice of language in this book. I read a challenge into the science of language, but also a criticism of liberal misuse language.
Page 526
Nicole, I totally agree with you that the “three in one passage” feels significant. As well as the numerous trinity themes mentioned over the last three and a half months, three is EVERYWHERE in this chapter.
Page 529
“three tailors” - Again, three seems to be a significant number throughout. I think one of the characters must be a tailor - tailors have been mentioned a lot, too.
Page 531
“Fullucan’s sake” - Finnegans Wake?
Page 537
“The elephant’s house is his castle.” - Elephant & Castle = area of South London and the name of a tube station.
Page 539
“wordworth” - Wordsworth?
“Have I said ogso how I abhor myself vastly (truth to tell) and do repent to my netherheart of suntry clothing?” - Whose words? There are too many implied narrators in this chapter, although I do still get the impression that Shaun / Yawn is pivotal.
Page 540
“in her hide park” (p540) - London’s Hyde Park
Page 542
“Wailingtone’s Wall” - The Wailing Wall?
“over raped lutetias in the lock” - Goes back to Nicole’s comment on degrees of rape, and also to ‘The Rape of the Lock’
“jacobeaters” - twins fighting?
Page 548
“I was her hochsized, her cleaunto, her everest, she was my annie, my lauralad, my pisoved” - I’m not sure if this is Shaun likening his own sexual conquest to the relations of this parents, or if these words belong to HCE as he brags about his sex life.
Page 550
“Saint Pancreas” = St Pancras station in London
“lumpty thumpty” - Humpty Dumpty?
Page 551
“interloopings” - the infinite loop gets a tad more complex
“I foredreamed” - interesting intertwining of the theme of foreshadowing and dreaming
Okay, that’s me caught up with my posts. Good night!
Jenna wrote: "Days 101 - 1091. Relevance of Gospels.
We have been mentioning Matthew, Mark, Luke and John since their first appearance in the pub, way back when. The question in my mind now is ‘WHY?’. What is their significance? I don’t know the answer, but I feel the question warrants some consideration. I will ponder..."
Yeah, good point. The entire chapter ends with them as well: "Mattahah! Marahah! Luahah! Joaanahanahana!" The disciples Matthew, Mark, Luke and John give us an account of the ministry of Christ through the four gospels. HCE is a kind of god-like, mythical figure, associated with Odin, the Allfather, who rose, who fell, etc. FW is, in a sense, an account of him. Maybe Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, in interrogating Yawn, are trying to understand HCE in order to provide us with that account. Or maybe they represent a human desire or longing or need for an account, for a mythology? I'm speculating.
I've also noticed that the four cardinal directions have also been mentioned in this chapter, at least a couple of times, once on page 494, which you (Jenna) noted, and once on page 553, "my nordsoud circulums, my eastmoreland and westlandmore." They also appear at the beginning of the next chapter, on page 557, together with the four horsemen of the apocalypse: "or them four hoarsemen on their apolkaloops, Norreys, Soothbys, Yates and Welks". Are the four gospels and the four cardinal directions related somehow?
Numbers everywhere. I'm a day behind, but have about a million notes from the last few days, so am typing up what I've noted that hasn't already been mentioned.Page 539:
Yes to the Wordsworth reference, Jenna! I have that one with a question mark next to it, but then it's followed by, "...that primed favourite continental poet, Daunty, Gouty, and Shopkeeper..." which I'm reading as Dante, Goethe, and Shakespeare.
Page 541:
hugheknots = Huguenots?
also the parenthetical mark! and Luc!, although I don't see a Matthew or John to round them out
Page 542: "over raped lutetias in the lock”--I think this one conflates "The Rape of the Lock" (as you noted, Jenna) and "The Rape of Lucrece"
"Brimgem young, bringem young, bringem young!" There is a lot of religious stuff happening in here, and I think this is referencing Brigham Young, one of the early presidents of the Mormon Church... it comes right before the raped lutetias bit. Reference to polygamy? Or just another religious structure in the mix?
"jacobeaters" and "esausted" = Jacob and Esau, more Biblical embattled twins
Page 543:
This line is amazing to me: "This missy, my taughters, and these man, my son" because it plays with the singular and plural just the way we've been noticing in the characters. Are there one or two daughters? One or two sons?
P543-45:
What is up with all the respectability in here? We get... respectable, more than respectable, particularly respectable, partly respectable, once respectable, most respectable, dubious respectability, thoroughly respectable, outwardly respectable, eminently respectable, respectable in every way, the pink of respectability, more respectable than some, respectability unsuccessfully aimed at, and "respected and respectable, as respectable as respectable can respectably be"
These all seem to be value judgments of the brief descriptions of people separating the respectability statements, and most of those people don't seem to differ much in actual respectability levels, so the varying values seem rather random, which might be the point...
Also, buried in there was this bit: "floor dangerous for unaccompanied old clergymen, thoroughly respectable, many uncut pious books in evidence"... the "for" I'm reading as "because of" or "due to" as the surrounding passage seems to indicate the danger is to the student in this library, not the clergymen. But the point of sharing that was that I loved the reference to uncut books, and the fact that we are in what appears to be the library of a religious institution and the pious books are the uncut/unread ones gives it an additional air of foreboding.
Page 546:
"three surtouts wripped up in itchother's, two twin pritticoaxes lived as one, troubled in trine or dubildin too, for abram nude be I..." the passage continues on to the Fijian mermaid you mentioned, Kevin, which I never would have caught, but this earlier bit did snag me.
Back to numbers: three wrapped up in each other ("surtouts" could be a type of coat or in French surtout = especially. Joyce probably means both. I should just learn to assume this) strikes me as HCE and the twins, as their lines have been blurred a bit recently.
Two twin pretty soemthings? or petticoats live as one...Izzy and her mirror double? Izzy and ALP?
Abram = Abraham. Interesting tidbit on him thanks to Wikipedia: "Abraham plays a role in three world religions: in Judaism, as the founder of the special covenant relationship between the Jewish people and God; for Christians, his faith made him the prototype of all believers; and for Mohammad, the prophet of Islam, Abraham's belief separated "Islam", submission to God, from the Jewish Torah.[4]"
Is the mention of Abraham another trinity in itself? I'm not sure if the nude comment is to a specific Abraham-related story or not, but I suspect this whole sentence is a layered beast worth some wrestling I don't quite have in me tonight!
That's where it ends for me for now. Happy reading!
Okay. Another quick one today. It's rather unfortunate that our reading of the final chapters of FW should coincide with the final weeks of semester for me. I don't know if i'm only imagining things. It's possible i am. But i'm beginning to see even more things that call to mind earlier chapters of the book.
Line 35 of page 565, "the pickts are hacking the saxums", possibly describes some kind of conflict between the Celtic Picts and the Germanic Saxons. Reminds me of references to the Saxons, the Jutes, the Danes and the Norwegians in the very first chapter.
On page 566, "duedesmally" and "magnum chartarums". The word "duodecimal" and the Magna Carta have both been mentioned before, i vaguely remember.
On page 567 we have not only "umptydum dumptydum", but also "all the king's aussies and all the king's men". Humpty Dumpty has been mentioned more than a few times before, but the line "all the king's horses and all the king's men" also appeared at least once before, on page 219: "all the King's Hoarsers with all the Queen's Mum".
Then there's the Wellington Memorial, and Pontifex Maximus, both also on page 567. The former was in the first chapter, wasn't it? And the latter at least once on page 345: "pontifex miximhost".
567 to 572 today.Pg 567
The annamation of evabusies, the livlianess of her laughings, such as a plurity of bells! - Anna Livia Plurabelle
boorgomaister - Burgomeister. Master of a burg. A mayor. Mentioned before, on page 393.
Caubeenhauben - Copenhagen. I was wondering when another one of these would show up. It's been a while.
kaptor lomdom noo - capture London now?
Pg 568
Juin jully we may! - June, July, May?
Cantaberra and Neweryork - Canberra + Canterbury, New(er) York
Call halton eatwords! - CHE
two genitalmen of Veruno - Two Gentlemen of Verona
Pg 571
Horsehem coughs enough. Annshee lispes privily. - HCE. ALP.
Pg 572
Beginning at the bottom half of this page we have a story of Honuphrius. Since this guy's name begins with an H and since his wife's begins with an A (Anita), i'm going to guess they're HCE and ALP. Apparently, HCE is having sex with Felicia, as well as Eugenius and Jeremias. All four are described as being deeply depraved, "consanguineous to the lowest degree". "Sanguine" here not the English word meaning "happy" or "optimistic", but the Latinate word from which the English is derived, "sanguis", which means "blood". Lots of mingling of fluids going on. Also, there is a slave Mauritius, a lawyer Barnabas and a businessman Magravius. And some others i can't figure out, Fortissa, Gillia, Poppea, Arancita, Clara...
Mod
You. Guys.
You're amazing.
Today I finally caught up.
Couldn't have been worse timing for this challenge for me. Wrote/directed my first pilot and got married. I wish I could've been posting and reading along with you on time. But thank you for your incredible insights and questions. And for sticking with it.
I have been horrible at this challenge for the same reason I have always remained physically out of shape: I'm a binger. I read books in one sitting. If I run 5 miles, I think I've "exercised" and take the week off. I can't do anything on a regular, moderate basis. I'm glad some of you have been able to.
Chapter II.2 (page 260) was the killer. I couldn't do more than 5 pages a day and as a consequence stayed behind forever.
I went to bed last night having finished III.2 (page 554) and I was incredibly fed up. Just over the whole book. Here's what I jotted down:
I can't pretend to have any clue what's going on. Which is frustrating, and makes me ponder the entire Finnegans Wake project. What is Joyce doing with all this? What am I getting out of it? I know those are macro questions with no real answers. But I keep getting hung up on the fact that he spent 17 years on this. It'd be one thing if he wrote something in this mode for a little while. For its own sake. To advance the English language. To stretch literature a bit. But 17 years? Shouldn't we faithful readers get something more substantial than the ability to point out some references?
Then I woke up this morning and flew through 20 pages of II.3 (p 555-577) and, especially the first 10 pages, really felt something akin to clarity. This section contains more traditional words and sentences.
It's a night scene. Someone waking up (ALP?) and hearing noises downstairs (bottom of p556) -- not Shaun or Shem, not the fours horsemen of the "apolkaloops" but HCE…
...then I feel like we're back in a trial setting, which has recurred throughout the book…
And then, I love this moment on bottom of page 558:
"Where are we at all? and whenabouts in the name of space?
I don't understand. I fail to say. I dearsee you too."
Which I've asked about -- oh, I don't know -- 558 times in the last three months.
And then we get this very clear description of the setting, as if it's a play (once again). Whole words. Short sentences.
But it's not a play, it's a movie: "Closeup."
Maybe I'm simply prompted by Prof. Seidel's comments, but incest weighs heavily on my mind. Well, sex in general. Perhaps because finding dirty moments in this book is a lazy way to reach a sense of understanding.
In fact, my first reading of this chapter was that the father-figure is actually caught by his wife having some sort of sexual encounter (with his daughter?): "Discovered. Side point of view. First position of harmony. Say! Eh? Ha! Check action. Matt. Male partly masking female. Man looking round, beastly expression, fishy eyes, paralleliped homoplatts, ghazometron pondus, exhibits rage. Business."
But then the next sentence is "Ruddy blond, Armenian bole, black patch…" and I lose all sense of who-and-where as it becomes a kind of everywoman description. And I think maybe this is just an older married couple (HCE and ALP) in bed together.
In any case, it strikes me as a sex scene. A not great one.
She leaves (bottom 559)? He follows to the corridor.
And then we get the Porter family. Huh. They seem to be another version of our characters. A nicer version? A more "traditional" family? We go room to room, talking over the children (and pets?). The daughter. The twins again: Shaun/Jerry Jehu(?) who is a villainous character.
Then…we start spiraling away from clarity for me. Elephant in the park?
But anyway, p572, back to HCE: "Honuphrius is a concupiscent exservicemajor who makes dishonest propositions to all." And a lot of sex, sinning, debauching, etc. as Kevin has already pointed out.
Sex and witness swirl a lot in this book. Who did what awful thing and who witnessed it. How to prove. Whether to punish.
It's still all murky for me, but this is a middle of the night wake-up, mid-nightmare, mid-sex, drunken...something or other.
Joys is strained by a field full of referees: the godspell (of mad, lewd, john appalled), Vicorious cyclopsing, and a Head that Champions Ever nonscest.
-Rider
My goal today was to post something! I'm still behind so I skipped a little ahead to around where I've marked we should be, but I might have lost a day because it looks like I'm a day behind maybe? Anyway, I'm making notes on 562-567. I was also reading a little on pgs 307-308 and it says, "If you do it do it now. Delay is dangerous" It made me laugh as I was behind and skipping around a bit. Rider, I'm a binger too and I related to your post. I was talking to my mom about reading Finnegan's Wake and we were laughing because I'd read so many pages, labored over my reading and she'd ask, "so, what's it about? And how are you making sense of this?" And I'd say "well nothing's really making sense and I don't know." Although I'm quick to defend too . It's really about a lot, everything, circles, layers, the fall of man, human nature, history, Ireland and I guess incest. So I go from being frustrated and apathetic to being wildly enthusiastic. (I actually had a chance to have Jim James sign something at a music festival and my friend and I thought it'd be funny if he'd sign my book-that I brought) I know he's not James Joyce just in case you were wondering....
Anyway, 561-567:
"I adore the profeen music!... He is too audorable really eunique" thought audorable could be like audio and adorable
I like to highlight math, science and numbers in general which I actually see a lot of particularly the numbers. I like "seventip toe"
"Twobirds"
I liked "foundingpen" for fountain pen or founding father.. I thought of someone signing a declaration
There is talk of a map here and directions.
I liked "one snaked's eyes" and "you were dreamend, my dear"
"Godown followay tomollow"- go down fall away.
I also had" to stand by duedesmally with their folded arms"
"Joy bells to ring sadly ring less hands."
I also noticed Humpty Dumpty on pg. 567 imagery of eggs again "umpty dum Dumptydum....all king's Aussies and all their king's men..."
I felt there was traveling and writing in this passage. I wondered if they were back on trial with the 12 barons, but there seem to be maids around too. I always get a better sense if what's going on if I read a supplemental book.
As I've been reading, I've been thinking that if you ever need to name something like a painting or a band, you can just skip through FW for some names. : )
Hi! Had an idea. It might be nothing, but I wanted to post it in case there is anything in it. Not from today's reading: just something that randomly popped into my head. Signs of the Zodiac......
HCE = king = Leo
ALP = water = Aquarius
Shem and Shaun = twins = Gemini
Izzy = virginal = Virgo
Is this worth exploring, or am I clutching at straws?
Jenna :)
PS Sorry for going quiet again. Travelling again. No Internet except very sluggish 3G.
PPS Sorry if I've accidentally posted twice - blimmin' phone / 3G seemed to fail on first attempt, but one never knows!
PPPS Congratulations, Rider. Hope your wedding day was lovely.
573 to 582 today, because i was busy and had to miss yesterday. Also, 10 days left, guys!!!HCE appears quite a few times in these 10 pages, very often with ALP. Also lots of man-and-woman pairs.
Pg 574
heathen church emergency - HCE
Seems to be some kind of corporate, legal case going on.
Pg 575
jim, jock and jarry - Tom, Dick and Harry + Jury
Pg 577
solomn one - solemn one + Solomon
hodinstag on fryggabet - Odin and Frigg, who are god and wife.
baron and feme - baron and femme. man and woman
Pg 578
Hecklar's champion ethnicist - HCE
Pg 579
Hot and cold and electrickery with attendance and lounge and promenade free - HCE with ALP
Love my label like myself - love thy neighbour as thyself. Second of the great commandments issued by Jesus in the gospels.
No cods before Me - thou shalt have no other gods before me. First of the ten commandments.
Gomorrha. Salong. - Gomorrah and Sodom?
earwigger's wivable - Earwicker's wife.
Pg 580
to Finnegan, to sin again and to make grim grandma grunt and grin again - Nothing. Just fun to read aloud.
hydrocomic establishment and his ambling limfy peepingpartner - HCE and his ALP
Pg 581
Eyrewaker's family - Earwicker's family
betwixt wifely rule and mens conscia recti - wife and man
Pg 582
huskiest coaxing experimenter - HCE
Humpfrey, champhion emir - HCE. Also, Humphry + Frey, one of the principle Norse gods.
Female imperfectly masking male - female and male again.
I'm both relieved and saddened to see that 10-day countdown, Kevin. I've enjoyed this community-style reading immensely, but I'm also barely keeping up with the reading at this point (two weeks away from finals here, and the papers to grade feel endless). This whole trial has been densely packed and fascinating, although I'm only catching bits and pieces of actual narrative thread. There is a section from p. 576 to the "I'm sorry to say I saw!" on p. 581 that reads as one witness's testimony to me. I also find it interesting that the judge's last name is Doyler and earlier we've been told that all the jury members' names are Doyle... nepotism? Seems to possibly point to some unfairness in the courtroom at least.
Only a few specific notes from the last 5 pages:
p. 578: "Dik Gill, Tum Lung, Macfinnan's cool Harryng?" Dick, Tom, Harry, and Finn MacCool? We've gotten an abundance of all four of these characters recently.
On p. 579, starting I think with "Mind the Monks and their Grasps," most of the remainder of that paragraph reads as a series of maxims, some of which line up with familiar sayings (No gods before me, as Kevin mentioned, or "Share the wealth and spoil the weal," which sounds rather like Spare the rod and spoil the child...), and some of which aren't familiar at all but seem to carry the same weight of authority in their structure.
p. 580-- (O Sheem! O Shaam!) = our twins again, although "Shaam" might double as "shame"...
Also, we end p. 580 with a long "house that Jack built" segment, starting with "the slave of the ring that worries the hand..." and ending at the bottom of the page.
p. 581: "...from his find me cool's moist opulent vinery..." find me cool = Finn MacCool?
On p. 582, I also marked the "female imperfectly masking male" line, but I didn't think of it as related to all the m/f couples. Instead, I connected it to the theme of confused/interchangeable sexuality we've encountered a few times in here.
Jenna, I'm intrigued by your connections to astrological signs. They make sense, and the first place I went mentally after reading your theory on this was to Castor and Pollux, the primary stars in the constellation of Gemini (and, of course, originally a set of twins in their own right). It wouldn't surprise me at all if the astrological connections were intentional on Joyce's part, but I also suspect he wouldn't have left the signs incomplete. If this was an intent of his, I wonder where the other signs might come in?
Rider, I am totally with you on the at times shocking bawdiness here. Incest has happened from just about every imaginable angle, and it seems some of the most uncomfortable manifestations of this have been where Joyce's often maddeningly vague and twisty language shifts to stark clarity. I'm not sure seeing much of the book through this lens is lazy, though, as questions of sexuality and accountability for sexual actions seem to be one of the things at the core of...whatever it is Joyce is getting at here. The dirtier bits, as well as all the discomfort, desire, innocence, accusations, disruption, and guilt surrounding them seem to be part of the point. If there is a point, anyway.
Also, I'm not sure what page you pulled this from, but you quoted this bit: "Male partly masking female" which seems directly connected to p. 582's "Female imperfectly masking male". I wouldn't have caught the flipped repeat without seeing it in your post.
Finally, yes, so close to the end I'm also definitely struggling with some "But why?" and "What's the point?" questions. It's fun to spot references, but I am also craving a sense of these puzzle pieces coming together to create a more complete image than we're likely to get. I've started to think of this book as Impressionist writing. There is the sense of actions happening and lives being lived, but as soon as we try to focus in on one specific element of character or plot, the shape of that element becomes indistinct. I'm not explaining this very well--it makes more sense in my head, I swear!
Okay, that's it from me for today. Happy reading, everyone!
I’ve fallen a few days behind, but will catch up tomorrow and Tuesday and will then post some more detailed notes. However.... in short....
This chapter feels like a bit of a revelation to me, in that there is a significant shift in narrative. The Earwickers are now the Porters and the age of the children, who up until now have seemed to have variable ages, have become defined as young children, sleeping and dreaming in their beds - and in the case of one of the twins, “pipettishly bespill[ing] himself from his foundingpen” (p563).
I was very struck by the passage about Isobel on page 556, a premonition or foreshadowing from childhood into adulthood. I was interested in the ‘taking the veil’ concept, which could be marriage or, her First Holy Communion. The ‘sister’ reference could also imply nursing as well as becoming a nun. Both are mentioned. I found the way the paragraph travels from childhood through to adult life, to the “weeper’s veil” of grief poignant.
Favourite word: “crazedledazed” (p562)
Line that got me thinking: “the one loved, the other left” (p563)
Following on from my last comment, yes, Nicole, I agree that if there is an intended Zodiac link, Joyce would not have left it incomplete. I recall mentions of fish (Pisces), rams (Aeries), but not others off the top of my head. I did Google ‘Finnegans Wake Zodiac’ and was interested to see that some comments online imply that Joyce based Finnegans Wake on the structure of the Zodiac, “derived from the nature of numbers and a corresponding geometric sequence” which further piqued my interest. I have no idea of the validity of this theory or where it came from.
The 10 day news is sad for me. I’ve really enjoyed this whole process. And so, as the challenge comes to an end, I think it is appropriate to begin to reflect back on the past 116 days and the journey we’ve undertaken together.
First and foremost, my pristine copy of Finnegans Wake is now ratty, covered in biro and very, very loved. It has travelled all over England with me and earned me many curious glances on public transport.
Second, in order to fully appreciate this book, I think you need to have a detailed knowledge of classic literature and language. Reflecting back, I think I should have utilised a support text in order to understand the meaning of many references that I simply haven’t ‘got’, due to ignorance. Were it not for you guys and your amazing knowledge and analysis, I would currently be none the wiser.
Third, themes and tropes are so much easier to grasp if you know what you are looking for. Once you notice certain motifs, you see that they recur over and over. The problem is that if you don’t know what you are looking for in the first place, they are very easily missed.
Fourth, I remain incredibly uncertain about the plot and the purpose of the text. I feel like there is a solid plot buried within all this decorative language, but at the moment, only fragments of it are visible to me.
Fifth, - and importantly for me - I have spent the last two years conducting research for a book. Reading Finnegans Wake has transformed the topic for me. The fact that I picked up this book at all, whilst in the thick of unknowingly researching something linked to FW, is an unbelievable coincidence. Frustratingly, I now need to throw away 100,000 words, but this has opened up a whole new world of possibilities.... and questions which need investigating. So while I undertake a rewrite, I will be redirecting my research. In truth, I really don’t know what to do with the information of what I think I’ve found.... All I can say at this time is that if I hadn’t picked up Finnegans Wake, my book would have told an unfinished story.
Lastly, and most significantly, I would never have read past page two were it not for the group nature of this challenge. Reading the hugely insightful comments of everyone who has participated has given me drive and enthusiasm. So thank you, all. Until this summer, I never thought I would ever have the courage to even attempt to read this book. I am really going to miss these online discussions and sharing of ideas / analyses. It’s been an awesome process.
PS - Travelling again this week so I will probably be 'quiet' until Thursday, save for a few minor comments I can tap on my phone. It's not my intention to let the side down by contributing less, especially as we enter the last leg. I just have a job that involves a lot of travel.
X
Jenna wrote: "Following on from my last comment, yes, Nicole, I agree that if there is an intended Zodiac link, Joyce would not have left it incomplete. "UNLESS..... It's not the Zodiac itself that is significant, but the significance of the numbers behind this.
12 signs of the Zodiac, 4 of which are relevant.
12 apostles, but just the 4 gospel writers highlighted.
Page 566 "four seneschals" and "twelve chief barons".
Page 513 "four wise elephants inandouting under a twelve podestalled table".
12 and 4?
And so on and so forth....
So many notes! So much astronomy in the last 10 pages.p. 583--"And the twillingsons, ganymede, garrymore..."
Twillingsons = twin sons?
Ganymede is a moon of Jupiter, but I don't have a similar reference point (or any reference point, really) for garrymore, so this may be a dead end for now
More planet/astronomy references on 583: "fairy setalite" (satellite); Urania; planets
p. 585: "The chamber stands abjourned." End of trial? Adjourned + abjured?
p. 587: "three jolly postboys" = posting letters, or at least another reference to this
Starting on p. 589, quite a few Finns... "Finner!" and "('twas in fenland)" on 589.
"Foyn MacHooligan" on 593 (Finn McCool/Finn McCool again?)
"kithagain" and "kinagain" on 594 = Finnegan/Finn again
Numbers:
on p. 590: "integer integerrimost" reminds me of the sentence about the most perfect word that Jenna quoted some time ago now
"Fourth position of solution." Not sure what the positions of solution are, but the fourth seems important, yet again.
Also, on p. 594 we get a mention (I think) of Arcturus, which I knew was a star, but did not know is the 4th brightest star in the sky...we've also gotten at least one previous mention of this one in another astronomy-heavy paragraph on p. 494 (Hey! Exactly 100 pages prior...interesting).
Jenna, speaking of these numbers, your discussion of fours and twelves got me looking for a margin note I made and skimming back through my notes also got me looking at the number-related ones in a new way:
4 riders of the apocalypse
4 cardinal directions
on p. 555, we get "therenow they-stood, the sycomores, all four of them, in their quartan agues" four sycamores with...four illnesses?
also, on p. 573, "(and leader of a band of twelve mercenaries, the Sullivani), who desires to procure Felicia for Gregorius, Leo, Vitellius, and Macdugalius, four excavators..." 12/4, although I don't have a clear sense for the relevance (if any) of these names.
Finally, the last bit of book III: "Tiers, tiers and tiers. Rounds." brought me back to cycles and the cyclical nature of this whole book again (and, by extension, the circular and multi-tiered process of trying to derive meaning from it).
That's what I've got for this round. Happy next 5, everyone!
So i've been incredibly busy the past week, which explains my inactivity. Still pretty busy, but slightly less so. We should be finishing page 612 today, if my calculations are correct, but i'm reading from the start of chapter IV.1, so stopped at 607, and will read 10 pages tomorrow to catch up.Not really sure what's going on, so instead i'll just put down some of the references/allusions/word-games i've noticed.
Pg 593
Sandhyas - Conveniently enough, the first Google search result is for FinnegansWiki, which says that a Sandhya is a "Hindu ritual done at the "junctions" (sandhyas) of the day — dawn, noon, and sunset — during which the Savitri Gayatri is repeated."
Sonne feine - Sunshine? + Sinn Fein
Thane yaars agon - Ten years ago
Foyn MacHooligan - Finn MacCool
hand from the cloud emerges, holding a chart expanded - HCE, HCE
Nuahs... Mehs - Shaun and Shem backwards
Pg 594
Durbalanars - Dubliners
Heliotropolis, the castellated, the enchanting - HCE
Morkret Miry - "mörkret", Swedish for "the darkness"
horned cairns erge - HCE
Overwhere - eveywhere + uberalls (German, "everywhere")
Edar's chuckal humuristic - ECH
Sassqueehenna - Susquehanna river. Mentioned previously on page 212
Henge Ceolleges Exmooth - HCE
Pg 595
We have a kind of Swedish buffet here:
korps - korv = sausage
streamfish - strömming = herring
confects - konfekt = sweets
bullyoungs - buljong = broth/stock
smearsassage - smörsås = butter sause
steaked pig - stekt = roasted
alpsulumply - absolutely + ALP
Conk a dook he'll doo - Conk a duke he'll do? + cock a doodle doo
Pg 596
fincarnate - finn + incarnate
hailed chimers' ersekind - HCE
hygiennic contrivance socalled from the editor - HCE?
hullow chyst excavement - HCE
Pg 597
unthowsent and wonst nice - One Thousand and One Nights
eddas - the Norse Eddas
Djinpalast - Djin palace
allahallahallah - Allah, three times.
heat, contest and enmity - HCE
Shavarsanjivana - Hindi or Sanskrit?
mahamayability - Hindi or Sanskrit?
torporature is returning to mornal - temperature is returning to normal
eaden fruit - eaten fruit + Eden fruit
snakked mid a fish - snack + snakket med (Danish, "chatted with")
Pg 598
Forswundled - forsvundet, Danish for "disappeared"
Nuctumbulumbumus - Noctambulous? Sleepwalking.
ghastern, hie to morgning - gestern (German, "yesterday"), hier (French, "yesterday"), morgen (German, "tomorrow") + morning. Incidentally, Morgen is also German for "morning". In fact "tomorrow" comes from the word "morning", which is why the words for "morning" and "tomorrow" are the same in so many Germanic languages.
Padma - Sanskrit for "lotus"
till herenext - till härnäst, Swedish for "until next time"
Take thanks - takk, tak, tack are all "thanks" in Scandinavian/Nordic languages.
supernoctural - supernatural + nocturnal
Allay for allay, a threat for a throat - eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth
maaned of the yere - månad, Swedish for "month"
childer - "children". I've said this before but it's really Quite Interesting®, so worth mentioning again. The -er in "childer" is a plural marker in Middle English. We see this in German as well: Kind ("child"), Kinder ("children"). The -en suffix is also a plural marker from Middle English. We see this with ox and oxen. So the word "children" is plural twice over. This is what happens with language. Once upon a time, "childer" was plural for "child", but over time, the plural-ness of this was deemed insufficient, somehow, and so they attached another plural suffix to it. So when George Bush says "childrens do learn", forgive him. He's only doing what language is destined to do, and adding a third plural marker.
Pg 599
oura vatars that arred in Hummal, harruad bathar namas - Unser Vater im Himmel + Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Pg 600
Innalavia - Anna Liva
Piscum and Sagittariastrion - Pisces and Sagittarius
kongdomain - kongdømme, Danish for "kingdom"
Vitalba - Vltava? aka die Moldau. River in the Czech Republic. Runs through Prague.
Saxenslyke... our anscessers... Anglesens... free of juties - Saxons... ancestors... Angles... Jutes + free od duties
immermemorial - immer (German, "always") + memorial
Homos Circas Elochlannensis - HCE
Pg 601
Keavn! Keavn! - Kevin = Shem?
Newer Aland - Newer Ireland + Åland
Pg 603
backoning over his egglips - bacon and eggs. At some point in Book I this was mentioned over and over again. E.g. on page 199
latterman - letter man = Shuan?
Shoen! Shoan! Shoon! - Shaun?
wherethen the lag allows - lag, Swedish for "law"
fullvixen - fullvüxen, Swedish for "fully grown"
Pg 604
cubic hatches endnot - CHE
Higgins, Cairns and Egen - HCE
Malthus - As in, Malthusian Catastrophe
hastencraft - hästkraft, Swedish for "horsepower"
fartykket - fartyget, Swedish for "vessel"
Hagiographice canat Ecclesia - HCE
Pg 604-6
Some kind of story is being told concerning Kevin. What i get from it is that he procreates on Ireland (???), then goes on a journey on the water, to an island on a lake, where does some kind of religious ritual involving water, like baptism. Other than that, no clue.
Pg 606
flickars - flickor, Swedish for "girls"
He may be humpy, nay, he may be dumpy - Humpty Dumpty
Pg 607
skrimmhandsker - handsker is Danish for "gloves". I'm pretty sure "skrimm" is something Norse or Scandinavian as well, but Google won't let me find out because it insists i'm misspelling "Skyrim".
Sveasmeas - Mother Svea is the feminine personification of Sweden, like Marianne is for La France.
Dayagreening - daggryning, Swedish for "daybreak"
schlimninging - skymningen, Swedish for "twilight", or "dusk" + schlimm, German for "evil" or "bad"
summerwint springfalls - summer, winter, spring, fall
Hail, regn of durknass, snowly receassing, thund lightening thund... - regn, German for "rain". Hail, rain, snow, thunder, lightning... it's all there.
Solsking - solskin, Danish for "sunshine".
Frist (attempted by...) - This is quite clever, because "friste" is Danish for "tempt".
Isoles, now Eisold - Isolde
There's so much Swedish/Danish in these pages! Seriously! The ones i listed above are just the ones i happen to know, or the ones i was able to guess well enough to Google. I imagine there are many, many more i'm missing. Did Joyce know Swedish himself? Or Danish? I can't imagine he'd have been able to squeeze so much in if he didn't.
Kevin wrote: "childer - "children". I've said this before but it's really Quite Interesting®, so worth mentioning again. The -er in "childer" is a plural marker in Middle English. We see this in German as well: Kind ("child"), Kinder ("children"). The -en suffix is also a plural marker from Middle English. We see this with ox and oxen. So the word "children" is plural twice over. This is what happens with language. Once upon a time, "childer" was plural for "child", but over time, the plural-ness of this was deemed insufficient, somehow, and so they attached another plural suffix to it. So when George Bush says "childrens do learn", forgive him. He's only doing what language is destined to do, and adding a third plural marker."Didn't someone post early on that 'Finnegans' in the title is missing an apostrophe because plurality is more important than possession.... or something along those lines? What you say about double plurality seems especially relevant.
Soooo....
Is anyone else getting the distinct impression that this chapter is starting to sum things up? Maybe I’m just seeing what I want to see, or feeling what I want to feel....
OK, so notes over the last few days:
How many HCEs are there????. These are the ones that jumped out at me, but I’m certain that there are more, implicitly embedded in the text.
“horse elder yet cherchant” (p568)
“How chimant in effect!” (p569)
“Call halton eatwords” (p569)
“exceedingly herculeneous” (p570)
“heathen church emergency” (p574)
“Hecklar’s champion ethnicist” (p578)
“Herenow chuck english” (p579) - incidentally, there ‘here’ and ‘now’ reference interests me for its anchoring into reality
“huskiest coaxing experimenter” (p582)
“Humpfrey, champion emir” (p582)
“Echolo choree choroh choree chorico” (p585)
“A hand from the cloud emerges, holding a chart expanded.” (p593) - HCE, HCE
“Even unto the Heliotropolis, the castellated, the enchanting” (p594)
“horned cairns erge” (p594)
“Edar’s chuckal humuristic” (p594)
“Henge Ceolleges, Exmooth” (p594)
“hoseshoes, cheriotiers and etceterogenious” (p595)
“hailed chimers’ ersekind” (p596)
“crane in Elgar is heard” (p596)
“hullow chyst excavement” (p596)
“heat, contest and enmity” (p597)
“Cumulonubulocirrhonimbant heaven electing” (p599)
“ex-Colonel House” (p600)
“Homos Circas Elochlannensis!” (p600)
“Asthoreths, assay! Earthsign to is heavened.” (p601)
“cublic hatches endnot” (p604)
“Higgins, Cairns and Egen.” (p604)
“Hagiographice canat Ecclesia.” (p604)
There are a few ALPs, too, but I don’t think as many. Also, they seem to be part of wider descriptions, characters, comments: eg “The annamation of evabusies, the livlianess of her laughings, such as a plurity of bells!” - (p568)
King imagery continues throughout, specifically on page 568:
“Dom King” - Dom=king / reversal of ‘kingdom’
“my Sire, great, big King.... by Rex Ingram” - Rex = king
“Old Finncoole, he’s a mellow old saoul when he swills with his fuddlers free!” (p569) - Old King Cole was a merry old soul and a merry old soul was he...
There are several references to London:
“covent garden” (p577) - Covent Garden is a GREAT PLACE to visit if you are ever in the UK, market, history and restaurants.
“Norwood’s Southwalk or Euston Waste” (p578) - Norwood, Southwark and Euston are all areas of London
“seven sisters” (p579) - Seven Sisters is an area of London
Also my home town of Cambridge gets another mention:
“Cambridge Arms” (p587) - The Cambridge Arms pub used to be my local actually. It was famous for its ales, which is why I’m certain that the reference in FW relates to it: “Teddy Ales” (p587). It’s now changed ownership and is a restaurant.
“Woodenhenge” (p596) (Stonehenge) and “cadbully’s choculars” (p587) (Cadbury’s Chocolate) are also English references.
Page 588 is rather Christmassy:
“Hollymerry”
“Was truce of snow, moonmounded snow”
“misled” and “listleto” = mistletoe
“Noel”
“Four witty missywives” (12 days of Christmas?)
The Genesis stories get a few more mentions:
“Cain” (p583) is followed by “abbels” (p584). I find it so interesting that the Cain and Abel references all seem masked. I know I’ve said that before. I wish I could understand why Joyce hid the Cain and Abel references, when the Adam and Eve references are so bold.
“You have eaden fruit” (p597) - Garden of Eden, forbidden fruit, eaten by Eve and then by Adam.
In addition, there is another reference to the first verse of St John’s Gospel (‘In the beginning was the word...’) on page 597: “in whose words were the beginnings”. I read this as a challenge. Beginning=Genesis? The first words= ‘Let there be light’?
As Nicole has pointed out, cycles are everywhere again, sometimes openly and sometimes described in a temporal setting:
“Look before behind before you” (p586)
“Ring down” (p590)
“Tiers, tiers and tiers. Rounds.” (p590)
“Past now pulls” (p594)
“The has goning at gone the is coming to come.” (p598)
“Who having has he shall have had.” (p598)
“is be will was” (p599)
“it may again how it may again” (p604)
Astronomy and astrology are definitely significant:
Page 583 mentions “io” and “ganymede” (Jupiter’s moons) and “titan” (Saturn’s moon) and “Urania”, which according to Wikipedia was the ‘muse of astronomy’. “Neptune” appears on page 585 and page 596 mentions the word “astronomically”. I'm frustrating myself now, as it’s all very well pointing these out, but I want to push it further than that and ask the question: WHY? At the moment, I don’t know, but I will continue to think hard about it. Does anyone have any thoughts?
Coming back to my earlier comment regarding astrology and the importance of the numbers twelve and four, there is much to support this in this week’s reading.
“twelve mercenaries” and “four excavators” (p573)
“twelve as upright judaces” (p575) - Which reminds me of another significant ‘twelve’ in this book: Twelve jurors!
“fourscore” (p580)
“carryfour” (p581)
“four hurrigan gales” (p589)
“austrologer” (p601)
“four wethers” (p604)
And most significantly:
“atween Deltas Piscium and Sagittariastrion” (p600) - Delta is the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet. There are four astrological signs between Pisces and Sagittarius (Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces). Of the twelve signs, I really don’t know what the relevance of these are. Perhaps the transition from The Age of Pisces to The Age of Aquarius?
I do feel that four and twelve are important. Also important are the numbers three and seven. They crop up a lot. Three might be linked to four and twelve (12÷4=3). We’ve talked quite a lot about the different forms that the number three takes. Page 573 mentions “thirtynine”, which is three and nine (3x3=9 and √9=3). Three is a fascinating concept. Yes, it associated with trinities etc, but it has importance in binarisms too - eg you have two polar extremes, say, male and female. But there is a THIRD force. The third energy that binds them together. Male is meaningless without female. The same could be said of good and evil. The two are useless without the other, and as such are united by a third energy. This interests me in relation to Finnegans Wake, because binarisms seems to be a theme, as do pairings - ALP+HCE, Shaun+Shem, Izzy+her mirror reflection.
Seven also recurs throughout the text. I have only been highlighting it though for the past few days.
“seven sisters” (p579) - area of London, yes, but also reference to seven
“seven several times” (p605)
“sevenfold” (p605)
“severally seven” (p605)
A thought occurred to me about the idea of Izzy and the other Izzy - the Izzy in the mirror. A mirror reflects only the superficial, the visual. It doesn’t reflect what lies beneath, emotion, hatred, history, hopes, dreams etc. Izzy is clearly the object of some... distorted family dynamics (“damse wed her father” (p595)?). Maybe the mirrored Izzy is the ideal - the perfect Izzy.
I sort of think that maybe Izzy is in love with her brother, Shaun (aka Kevin) (“a dweam of dose innocent dirly dirls. Keavn! Keavn!” (p601) - Keavn = Kevin + Heaven). I say 'sort of', 'think' and 'maybe' because there also seems to be evidence to contradict this. One minute I feel one thing very strongly and the next, something else entirely.
And ‘Kevin’ is described on page 604 as a “filial fearer”. Does he fear his brother?
A couple of favourite lines:
“Conk a dook he’ll doo.” (p595)
“...such as it is to be, follows, just mentioning however that the old man of the sea and the old woman in the sky if they don’t say nothings about it they don’t tell a lie” (p599/600)
“as we have seen, so we have heard, what we have received, that we have transmitted” (p604)
“the miracles, death and life are these.” (p605)
Page 595 refers to the “gist of the pantomime from cannibal king to the property horse”, which takes me back to my first comment. This final chapter feels like a reflection of the rest of the book - a summing up process, perhaps. Cannibalism appeared very early on (first chapter?), the King was established as HCE in his exiled journey section and the pantomime was performed by the family in... was it book two? Either way, the feeling that the book is coming to an end is very much in my mind. Which brings this post full circle and I will now read today’s five pages!
EDIT: OK - I missed something obvious. Was just telling my hubby about the numbers in FW and said I wasn't sure about what 7 was all about... He is an Irish Catholic and instantly pointed out that 7 is hugely important in the Bible. God created the earth in 7 days; 7 deadly sins; the sabbath is the 7th day; apparently 7 in the Bible signifies completion; 7 feasts of the Lord etc.
Day 120Numbers are still prevalent. "ninthly" appears in the first paragraph of page 606. "three" appears on pages 606 and 608; "39" appears again on page 607.
There's also a counting paragraph on page 608:
"Passing. One. We are passing. Two. From sleep we are passing. Three. Into the wikeawades warld from sleep we are passing. Four. Come, hours, be ours." I love that this covers the numbers, making a point of 'four' as it only goes that far, describes the process of waking up as if emerging from hypnosis, and plays on the concept of 'hours' and 'ours'.
And of course, now I'm looking for twelves and fours they are everywhere. Today, specifically on page 607 "before the fourth of the twelfth" and "four horolodgeries..... cymbaloosing the apostles [of which there were twelve] at every hours of changeover" [maybe also something about twelve hours in a day?].
Geometry is also in today's pages.
"concentric centre" (p606)
"acutebacked quadrangle" (p608). I think geometry here is being used to describe the shape of a woman, which was also done with the chapter with the Vesica Piscis and multiple references to "triangles".
"He may be humpy, nay, he may be dumpy" (p606) - The more I think about it, the more I'm inclined to think that the relevance of Humpty Dumpty is the significance of the fall. Finnegan fell. Humpty Dumpty fell. The fall itself was described with one of the hundred letter words on the first page of the book. HCE has undergone some sort of symbolic fall. Shem was described as a fallen angel ("luciferous" if memory serves - Lucifer also famously fell). I'm also pretty sure that Shaun has fallen in the same way as his father at some point. I now feel that the frequency of Humpty Dumpty references serve to emphasise the severity of a fall and its pivotal position within this text.
Speaking of fallen lucifers... "Hail, regn of durknass, snowly receasing, thund lightening thund..." gives way to "a clout capped sunbubble... Up." (p607) - I've found FW so dark in places that it has been easy to see the entire plot as some sort of descent. But where there is falling, there is also rising. What comes down, will eventually come up again.
"With Mata and after please with Matamaru and after please stop with Matamaruluka and after stop do please with Matamarulukajoni." (p609) - Gospellers again. Interesting that as the length of the word and as such its meaning protracts, the instruction given is 'to stop'.
"Fing Fing! King King!" (p610) - Finnegan / King?
Something to do with horse racing seems to be transpiring. "there is always something racey about, say, a sailor on a horse" (p606) [sailors again, too]; and today's pages end with reference to the "Grand Natural", (p610), which I'm pretty sure is the Grand National. A sneaky glimpse at the first line of tomorrow's pages reveals jockeys, paddocks and bookies.
Good night. 4 days to go. :(
608-612 today. Caught back up.Pg 608
ching chang chap sugay kaow laow milkee muchee - Some kind of stereotypical Chinee gobbledygook? "Chop suey" is in there, anyway. An American invention by the way.
foochoor - Fuzhou? City in the Fujian province of China. Important port city. Origin of many a Chinese diasporic community, although the ones in the North America and Europe tend to come from Canton instead.
Nattenden Sorte - Natten den sorte? These are Scandinavian words, but the combination doesn't really make sense, semantically or grammatically. "Natten" is "the night". "Sorte" is "sort". But you don't generally say "den sorte" for "the sort". You'd say "sorten". I think so anyway.
Phoenican wakes - Finnegans wake.
Pg 609
Wallhall - Valhalla
thingaviking - thing (Scandinavian parliament) + Viking
Obning shotly - Opening shortly. Also, öppning is Swedish for the noun "opening".
thorly - thoroughly + Thor
Pg 610
Skulkasloot - This looks suspiciously Scandinavian. Can't figure out what "skulka" refers to, but if the -a is actually part of the word then it might be a verb, and "slut" means an "end" or a "stop".
Ad Piabelle et Plurabelle - Plurabella
Pg 611
Jockey the Ropper - Jack the Ripper
Same Patholic - Saint Patrick
Ding hvad - thing? what?
pidginfella - In the Tok Pisin ("talk pidgin") pidgin of Papua New Guinea, "pela", derived from "fellow", marks a pronoun as being plural. So "mipela" (me + fellow) is "we", and "yutupela" (you + two + fellow) is plural "you".
Pg 612
sowlofabishospastored - son of a bitch bastard?
Hump cumps ebblybally - HCE. Also "here comes everybody" spoken by somebody with some kind of speech impediment, presumably.
Pg 613
doominoom noonstroom - dominum nostrum? Part of a Latin prayer.
trancefixureashone - transfiguration. Religious themes going on here.
Gudstruce - God's truce. "Gud" is "god" in Swedish.
Health, chalce, endnessnessessity! Arrive, likkypuggers - HCE! ALP
lovleg day for mirrages - lovely day for marriages. Also, "lovlig" is Swedish for "lawful". May just be a coincidence.
Aveling - Avling, Swedish for "propogate"
Pg 614
Have we cherished expectations? - HCE
Elbania's conglomerate horde - ECH
Matty, Marky, Lukey or John-a-Donk - Matthew, Mark, Luke and John again.
for the farmer, his son and their homely codes - Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost
heroticisms, catastrophes and eccentricities - HCE
Pg 615
mutter nation - motherland?
adomic structure - Adamic + atomic structure
uhrweckers - Earwicker + Uhr (German, "hour") + Wecker (German, "alarm clock")
Pg 616
hugglebeddy fann - Huckleberry Finn
ever complete hairy of chest, hamps and eyebags - ECH CHE
skulksman - Here's the "skulk" again! From page 610! Still don't know what it means. Scotsman?
Pg 617
epoostles - apostles + epistles?
Foon MacCrawl - Finn MacCool
fury gutmurdherers - fairy godmothers + fury + gut (German, "good") + murderers
Kingen will commen - kingdom come + kungen (Swedish, "the king"), willkommen (German, "welcome")
earnestly conceived hopes - ECH
fooneral x 2 - funeral
Ending on p. 612 today, and trying not to duplicate bits already mentioned...I love what you say about the significance of falling here, Jenna. It certainly fits a major theme, and as a minor sidenote...speaking of falling, is "Peredos Last" on p. 610 a Paradise Lost reference? It would sure fit thematically.
Also, "King Leary" on page 612 references a different kind of fall, but a distinct fall nonetheless.
P. 607: "Isoles, now Eisold" = another Tristan and Isolde reference
Regarding this bit on page 608: "Passing. One. We are passing. Two. From sleep we are passing. Three. Into the wikeawades warld from sleep we are passing. Four. Come, hours, be ours."
The four is likely significant (have we already noted that there are also four books in this book?), and it seems to simultaneously reference death and awakening, which intrigues me although I'm not sure what else to say about it or how to connect it more significantly to the rest of the text.
P. 609: "inplayn unglish" = in plain English (struck me as funny because it's in anything but plain English here)
On page 611, we get some sevens. "heptachromatic sevenhued septicolored" (which is doubly cool because these are completely redundant) and "seventh degree of wisdom"
And a lonely "sextuple"
Also on this page, I marked the Saint Patrick you mentioned Kevin, as well as "Rumnant Patholic" further down the page, which I read as "Roman Catholic"
Some general notes:
Quite a few mentions of heliotropes in the last 10 pages. I'm assuming this is the flower because it's paired with hyacinths in one mention, but I'm not sure what to make of it. Brief research led me to a breakdown of the name, which I saw as both "shunned by the sun" and "turning away from the sun"...which might be fall-related?
Also, lots of concentric and epicentric and centrifugal/centripetal mentions, or at least enough that they've caught my attention. I want to connect these to cycles, but mostly they leave me with the sense of approaching the bulls eye of a target.
It seems in this last section we're being reminded of all the main themes/ideas we've encountered while reading this beast. I suspect it's too much to hope that they'll come together in the last twenty-some pages to create some cohesive whole, but there's some comfort in their familiarity nonetheless.
Happy next 5, all.
Day 121Oh dear. It seems my counting skills let me down again as I have been a couple of pages behind. I've now hopefully aligned with you, Nicole and Kevin as I finished today (Friday) on page 617. Is that right?
Page 611
"heptachromatic", "sevenhued", "septicoloured" - all meaning 'seven colours' - seven colours in a rainbow? Wasn't the word 'rainbow' spelled out in code in an earlier chapter in the book? Also... seven again.
"fallen man" - Finnegan, Humpty Dumpty etc
"all that preachybook" - The Bible? Following on from Nicole's comment on "Rumnant Patholic". I think there is quite a harsh view being taken on Catholicism here.
Page 612
"petty padre" - priest?
"four three two" and "seven" - numbers, numbers, numbers
Page 614
"known as eggburst, eggblend, eggburial and hatch-as-hatch can" - an expansion on Humpty Dumpty imagery?
Page 617
"good in even" - God in Heaven?
"Fing him aging" - Finnegan?
"twentyeight to twelve"
Just a brief one today. Didn't want to repeat anything already mentioned.
Happy Thanksgiving, to those of you in the US. :)
Also, quick question, Nicole, are you based in LA?
Day 122Page 618
"That's handsel for gertles!" - Hansel and Gretel
"ninepace" - 9
"Shame! Thrice shame!" - Shame / Shem - 3
"kissing and looking in the mirror" - more reflection imagery
"oxbelled out of crispianity" - expelled from Christianity? Ex-communicated?
Page 619
"Adam our former first Finnlatter" - Adam = Finnegan? former, first, latter - previous, original, most recent... infinite?
"as bothered that he pausably could by the fallth of hampty damp" - be as bothered as he possibly could by the fall of Humpty Dumpty. This reaffirms my current feeling that the significance of Humpty Dumpty and eggs is the falling / breaking theme.
"We've lived in two worlds" - Which two worlds? Consciousness and Unconsciousness, perhaps? Waking and dreams? Reality and the mirror reflection? Reality and the created world of a poet? Reality and pantomime? Ireland and London?
"herewaker" - Earwicker / the waker here
"erect, confident and heroic" - HCE?
"robins in crews so" - Robinson Crusoe
"I was so sharm. But there's a great poet in you too." - Shem
Page 620
"Fftyseven and three" - 5, 7, 3
"Or somebalt thet sailder" - Sinbad the Sailor?
"travel. Galliver" - Gulliver's Travels
"Time after time." - infinite cycles / temporal
"The sehm asnuh. Tho bredder as doffered as nors in soun. When one of him sighs or one of him cries 'tis you all over." - "sehm" = anagram of 'Shem'; "asnuh" = anagram of 'Shaun'. "two bredder" = 'two brothers'? "nors and soun" = 'north and south'? ie opposite? I get the impression that the third sentence signifies the singularity of the twins (ie "one of him"), which could take us back to the 'two sides of the same reversible jacket' idea.
"googling" - !!
"What will be is. Is is." - Temporal eternity again. Future / present.
Page 621
"the book of the depth is" - Which book? FW?
"four old windbags" - which four, I wonder? And... 4!
"Of fell design" - play on evil / falling
"earthly bells. In the church by the hearseyard" - HCE
"mile or seven" - 7
"Four Knocks" - 4
I'm not entirely sure, but I get the feeling that we are now looking at the death of Finnegan and the events that lead up to the wake in the opening chapter.
By my count (likely to be wrong) there are six pages left. Are we doing five tomorrow (Sunday) and then one on Monday, or are we finishing with six pages on the last day?
:)
Mod
It also makes me think there really is something to the "it's all a dream" interpretations of the book. I've been resistant to that idea because it feels like a cliche attribution to rationalize misunderstandings…but we're definitely waking in Book IV, definitely a new day. And the nightmare quality to so much of the book, it's dream-logic: collapsing identities, shifting time. And now it's a new day.
I agree with Nicole that there is a sense that this last section is indexing so many elements of the book.
For reasons I still haven't quite fully explicated, I keep returning to this moment, p613:
"Yet is no body present here which was not there before. Only is order othered. Nought is nulled. Fuitfiat!"
(I googled: Fuitfiat = Latin, "it was, let it be done.")
And this, beginning p614:
…receives through a portal vein the dialytically sepererated elements of precedent decomposition for the verypetpurpose of subsequent recombination so that the heroticisms, catratrophes and eccentricities transmitted by the ancient legacy of the past, type by tope, letter from litter, word at ward, with sendence of sundance, since the days of Phooney and Columcellas when Giancinta, Pervenche and Margaret swayed over the all-too-ghoulish and illyrical and innumantic in our mutter nation, all, anastomosically assimilated and preteridentified paraidiotically, in fact, the same old gamebold adomic structure of our Finnius the old One, as highly charged with electrons as hophazards can effective it, may be there for you, Cockalooralooraloomenos, when cup, platter and pot come piping hot, as sure as herself pits hen to paper and there's scribings scrawled on eggs.
Which I won't pretend to understand fully but both sections feel like reaching towards a position that nature mirrors the process of this book.
Cycles of language, the science of eggs, the re-ordering of existing materials into new-yet-enitrely-anicent-and-familiar forms. Maybe I'm projecting, but this feels like a stronger, clearer philosophical position than the book has forwarded until now. And I like it. A lot. It's the kind of positive death-bed thoughts I've had, and I imagine ALP is having.
No body present which was not here before. Only is order othered.
I mean, that's Whitman-esque.
I don't know, maybe I'm way off, but I almost don't care, since Finnegans Wake finally feels happier to me.
-Rider
Haven't read today's pages yet. When i do, i'll probably just finish the 6 pages, and start on chapter 1 again tomorrow. Then i might do a bit more than 5 pages a day. We'll see.Just wanted to say that it's true the dream interpretation might be a bit cliché, but i think it works, and it's what i've been assuming up to now. It just makes a lot of intuitive sense to me. If you'll let me ramble a bit...
Back when i was an undergraduate i did a course on cognitive linguistics. We learnt about how concepts in the brain exist in a network, related to each other by semantic and formal associations. So the concept for "white", for example, might be related to,
- Other colours: orange, green, blue
- Things that white might stand for, culturally: purity, wedding, light, European ethnicity
- Things that are white in colour: ghosts, snow, swans, funeral shrouds
- Words that contain "white": Whitehouse, whitewash, flat white, E. B. White
- Words that rhyme with "white": fight, might, kite, wipe
- "White" in other languages we know: weiß, vit, blanc, 白
And all these related concepts get activated every time we produce or interpret the utterance "white", to different degrees depending on factors in our immediate environment, our state of mind, our cultural upbringing, etc. It's why when people are talking to us, things they say sometimes bring to mind related topics. Or why when we see a psychoanalyst he/she might get us to do a word association exercise, to explore the things that are bothering us.
When we're conscious we're able to exercise some executive control, and focus our thoughts on the few concepts and the few meanings that we intend to consider, but i imagine when we're sleeping we don't have this control. When i'm reading Finnegans Wake, what i imagine is happening is that the narrator is dreaming, and that as he's dreaming, the narrative of that dream is being constructed out of all the disparate elements of his waking narrative. And we get to watch it as it's being constructed. We get to think about these disaparate elements, and the picture that they paint of the narrator's subjectivity.
I've been asking myself who the dreamer is. Probably we all have been. I very early on discarded the notion that he was a man, because the narrative of his dream isn't the narrative of a man. It's the narrative of somebody whose subjectivity encompasses all of human history. And yet the fact that it does that, that it encompasses human history... The fact that we catch glimpses of all these epic human stories... The fact that he has a family... There's something very human about him.
The cycles come very nicely into that, by the way. The book itself is a cycle. Waking and sleeping is a cycle. We keep coming back to the image of Ragnarøk: the world being destroyed at Ragnarøk and renewed again afterwards is a cycle. Things fall, and things rise again after falling, again a cycle. And cycles are such a human thing. We think of human history as a cycle. We experience time as a cycle: the four seasons, agricultural cycles, day and night. Our lives are a cycle: we live, we die, and our children live after us. This last point. The family is the means by which the cycle of our lives is complete, and the means by which it is perpetuated. HCE (who is not the dreamer, but is maybe a manifestation of the dreamer in the dream) has a family. I still don't get what's going on with the boys Shaun and Shem, but i keep thinking that they must be more than his sons, that they must be him, just like the Christian god has a son who is god himself made flesh.
If i were to jump to a hasty conclusion i'd say dreamer was Odin. I don't think he is, actually, but i think Joyce wants us to see a connection. Odin the Allfather. And for a god, Odin is very human. The whole Norse pantheon is. They're not so much gods as a race, the Æsir. I imagine Odin could be wandering the streets of Reykjavík right now, an old man in grey rags, forever standing in corners, watching.
Day 123 - The Final Day“When the moon of mourning is set and gone. Over Glinaduna. Lonu nula. Ourselves, oursouls alone.” (p623)
So, we end with Anna Livia’s soliloquy. And how moving it is.
I closed the book today focusing not on how many HCEs appear in the text or what intent each line might be concealing, but on the book as a whole and what it might mean.
In short... I have no clue. The plot is foggy, the characters representational, the themes opaque. I feel though, that this might almost be the point. Joyce has exploited the subjectivity of reading with a deliberately impossible narrative. Did he write it to be a dream? Maybe. But what is interesting me is how he has involved the reader in discerning the plot. It is a plot to be ‘interpreted’, rather than simply ‘accepted’.
The dream theory has been on my mind, too. At times I am inclined to agree with the theory; at others, I find it a little neat. Perhaps if Finnegans Wake was ever to be communicated via a visual medium, say, film, positioning it within a dream-setting would give it a strong narrative context.
But maybe I am looking for context when there is none. Like the limitlessness of consciousness, I think that Finnegans Wake transcends the confines of a dream state. It is a journey through consciousness, exploratory and progressive. As well as unravelling many primitive issues that are best left to the subconscious / unconscious mind, such as sexual desire for a parent or sibling, there is a conscious voice to be heard, as well. This plot is not without reason and logic.
One thought I had as part of my personal, very subjective interpretation is that rather than a dream, we are offered a representation of the psychoanalytical structure of the psyche:
Id - Base, primitive instincts, the seeking of gratification on impulse, driven principally by the libido. For example in Finnegans Wake, the sexual impulses of Shaun towards ALP and his competition with HCE, which mirrors Freud’s Oedipal Complex
Superego - Rules! Cultural, religious, parental etc, which counteracts and fears retribution for the impulses of the id. In Finnegans Wake, this role is notably embodied by - among other things - a court room and a staunch church.
Ego - The mediation between the id and the superego. Reality. Rationalisation. The element which seeks to gratify the id’s impulses where possible in a way that is within the rules. Finnegans Wake addresses this with characters who calculate and make decisions. Where the impulses of the id have been followed (HCE’s crime, Shem’s choice of writing materials etc) the superego punishes with shame and guilt.
The psyche as a structure for Finnegnas Wake embodies consciousness, unconsciousness and everything between it, and as such includes, but is not exclusive to, dreams. Perhaps this is an over simplification.
The fall is also important. Anna Livia’s closing soliloquy articulates beautifully that we are all destined to “humbly dumbly” fall: “First we feel. Then we fall.” (p627).
There is, quite simply, so much to take from this book. Too much to document in a single post online.
None of these points addresses the question of the chaotic language style, and I very much like Kevin’s theory above, concerning cognitive linguistics. It is interesting though that a writer would make such a deliberate statement of language that would inevitably prompt questions as to the purpose. From the moment you read the first line and acknowledge its incompleteness, you get the sense that you are tasked with breaking a code. The code may concern language, symbology, numerology. I believe that there is a code built into the book. However, I don’t believe that it is a conventional code, like a message or an answer.
Kevin, Nicole, Rider and Jennifer, you have all been incredible. You are all amazing, talented and insightful. I have so much respect and admiration for each of you. In all truth, I don’t think that I’ve even understood a scratch in the surface of this book. I have leaned a lot on you, your knowledge and expertise to garner meaning from what I read.
So, I am going to adopt the principle outlined on page 481:
“it recurs in three times the same differently (there is such a fui fui story which obtains of him)”
I don’t know if reading this book three times will shed any light, but I intend to do it with a support guide, a Joyce biography, and take it at a slower pace.
I must admit, I am one of those people who take a while to arrive at conclusions. These are my immediate thoughts, but as the experience settles and sinks in, I’m sure further thoughts will arrive. I will post any. I hope you will, too.
Also, I commented a few times that I found something in this text which links to an area I’ve been researching. I want very much to share this with you. However, a public forum is not the right place for reasons which will become apparent. I will ‘Private Message’ you when I can find the right way to communicate it.
Jenna XX
The End.To everyone who has commented as we've been reading along, especially Jenna, Nicole, Kevin and Jennifer, I want to say thank you. Your enthusiasm and insight made reading this book a pleasure. I doubt I would have been able to do it without you and, in any case, I certainly wouldn't have gotten as much out of the book as I did. Although I desperately wanted to participate, I found I had nothing to say that might have made any sense or added to the conversation. My grasp of the contents of the Finnegans Wake was nebulous at best, but reading it along with you all was more of an enlightening experience than anything else. And Jenna, I'd love to hear what you have to say with regard to the text and your research. Please keep me posted!
Thanks again, everyone! It was great hanging out with you here every day for the past several months. I'll miss you.
Greta
I would also like to thank Jenna, Nicole, Kevin and Jennifer for all your illuminating commentary. You are amazing. I think you all could write your own commentary/ reader's guide. Alas, for me, it is not over. I still have about 200 pages to go. I will persevere, however!
Mod
While I was bragging to my family at Thanksgiving about being almost done, I opened a page at random to read them a bit. To show them how crazy this thing is.
They laughed. They shook their heads. My mom asked how Joyce was "mentally." And we all agreed that it is a confounding mess of words.
But my point -- isn't this book nutty? -- kind of backfired for me, because there were plenty of things, even on this random page, that I DID get now.
Humpty dumpty. Rivers. Hens. Brothers. Mail. Bible. HCE. Finn Mccool.
The techniques, the puns, the names, the layering of language didn't seem THAT insane to me anymore. It was a reference-loop that I felt I was on the inside of.
Maybe from simply having read so many pages of the book.
But probably from having shared this madness with others (you) and slowly, over the course of three months, having gained confidence and familiarity.
I've never had a reading experience like this before.
So even if, at its worst, all we've done is stumble blindly down the verbal alleyways and obsessions of a mildly schizophrenic Irishman from a hundred years ago…it has been a pleasure sharing it with you.
And I don't regret it at all.
Thanks again for your wonderful posts.
-Rider
I finished reading as scheduled and then got buried beneath an avalanche of papers awaiting return in today's classes. Finally sitting down to type up final-ish notes about this crazy endeavor.Reading bits from the densely packed last few pages:
page 619:
"Adam our former first Finnlatter" = Finlander and Finn reference...Adam our former first Finn? Back to cycles regardless (wouldn't "former first" indicate a cycle?)
"And she's about fetted up with nonsery reams." = And she's about fed up with nursery rhymes. Also, fed/fêted (she's about fêted up with nursery rhymes?) Also-also, I find this spelling of nursery interesting--"nonsery" gets us pretty close to "nonsense"
page 620:
In the upper third or so of this page, I made a margin note that reads, "signal breaking up?" because the snippets of moments/realities become shorter and more disjointed. It reminds me of scanning through radio stations on the FM band in an unfamiliar city. Lots coming through, but only in fragments.
"I seen the likes in the twinngling of an aye" = the twinkling of an eye, or the twin gleam of an eye? Or is "aye" to be taken more at face value as "yes"?
"Two bredder as doffereed as nors is soun" = Two brothers as different as north and south... but how different are north and south? Both cardinal directions, yet pointing opposing ways.
Page 621: "And people thinks you missed the scaffold. Of fell design." This one intrigues me and might actually be plot-based. A scaffold is a beast with two very different meanings. First, it's the temporary platform erected to get workers and materials up to the places that need work on various structures. So, if we run with that definition, I read this as being about Finn climbing up to work on that wall in the first place and mis-stepping on a poorly attached (or poorly designed) scaffold platform OR that he intentionally (by design?) missed the scaffold. Interesting. But wait!
A scaffold is also a platform used for executions. If we read it through this meaning, it 1) brings us back to the courtroom scenes, and 2) makes it appear (potentially, anyway), that Finn's death was a way for him to avoid (by his own design) public execution.
Maybe?
Page 622:
Penisole's--this is presented as a proper noun here, but I couldn't help linking it to "penisolate" from the first page or two of the book
Fours, apocalypses, Finn, Finn, Finn MacCool, Finn, ALP, Finn, humpty dumpty, and Finn, again!
One more specific bit, from page 627:
"I am passing out. O bitter ending! I'll slip away before they're up..." This is a deathbed scene, but also feels as much like an awakening as it does an ending, which resonated for me with the mirrors and cycles throughout the book.
Rider, I actually tried to find some super-crazy section of this book to read to my in-laws this weekend and found that I couldn't find one, although I know many of them seemed completely off the wall coming into them blindly. So, yes. Similar experience.
Jenna, I'm not in LA. I'm further north in Portland. Why do you ask? Also, I would love to hear about your research when you've determined the best way to present it.
I'm still resistant to the idea that this is all a dream sequence. It's too easy an out. But I also concede that there are parts in the last dozen pages that seem quite dream-like. It's probably more a "yes, and" than an either/or situation, really.
It feels like the first read-through has just given me a sense for the shape of the puzzle, not any concrete solutions to it. I won't be able to resist reading this a second time, I think, a little more slowly and deeply, although I still don't want to use a guide. I guess I'm stubborn that way. I'm assuming this message board will still exist, so I might post new thoughts or rambles if I encounter any. It would be pretty thrilling, always, to see any other thoughts anyone else has who is re-reading or still reading from the first time.
Getting to read this wild book with this smart and thoughtful collection of folks has been such an enjoyable experience for me. Thank you all for being part of the ride. Certainly no regrets here.
I finished a little bit behind schedule (yesterday), but also wanted to extend my thanks to the group. I was much more lost than our most regular contributors, and would never have made it through without you all. Personally, I am wondering whether Joyce really cared whether ANY reader "got" this work. Most writing seems to me to be some attempt at communication, but this has been a MUCH higher level of cryptic complicated confusing prose than I've ever run across or even imagined. Still, strangely, I am not annoyed, and very glad for the experience. So maybe something got through to me after all. FWU participants, you're the best!
It is awesome to see everyone crossing the finish line. I wish I could say I was close to passing it myself, but I'm still quite a distance away (lets just say the grading students' papers and reading Finnegans Wake is an interesting experience). However, I'm still reading and I will get there. Rider, I've been reading the text out loud, so my husband has been present for quite a bit of it. The interesting thing is after awhile he started to catch references and innuendo from the text as well. When, I read the book by myself, I tend to find the more serious reference. But if my husband is in the room, I'm suddenly finding a ton of jokes and innuendo. I can't help but feel that this book is best enjoyed in groups.
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At this point, I don't think I'm going to catch up (I'm on page 390), but I'm going to finish it. I'm imagining it like a marathon-- where I'm in the back but I'm still going to complete the damn thing and that is an achievement in an of itself.
Also, I was going to wait until I catch up to start posting on the book. However, I think I'll start posting again. I apologize that I'm behind, but posting here really did help me.
Kevin, Jenna and Nicole, I'm in awe for your dedication and your posts have been really helpful.