No More Learning

Here, though, there seems to be a great philosophical paradox.
Present and past may be brought together because of recurring
archeJ:ypes, but we cannot doubt that the individual forms ofone age are never an exact reproduction of corresponding forms in another age. We accept the notion of new species-'one world burrowing on another . . . Standfest, our tapiocal sagan hero, or any other macotther, signs is on the bellyguds bastille back'-and the fact that the older world lies underneath the new world: 'THE MONGREL UNDER THE DUNGMOUND. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE INFRALIMINAL INTELLIGENCE. ' It is in the darkness of the unconscious that the old hero Finnegan subsists:
Aught darks flou a duskness. Bats that? There peepeestrilling. At Bran- nan's on the moor. At Tam Fanagan's weak yat his still's going strang. And still here is noctules and Can tell things acommon on by that fluffy feeling.
'OFFRANDES' says the marginal note, and the text 'Dogs' vespers'. It may be that, as we propitiate the God of the heavens, so we must make offerings to our deeper, more primitive, natures. 'Keep the dog far hence', says T. S. Eliot-those animal forces inside us we fear so much. Perhaps we should bow down occasionally to that dog.
And now 'INCIPIT INTERMISSIO'. We rest from our studies a little, and the temptress Issy, who has already been thrusting her way into the footnotes ('Pipette. I can almost feed their sweetness at my lisplips'), fills three-quarters of a page with a footnote letter which seduces us to a mood of temporary languor. We have not yet learned much about sex. Issy turns herself into a love-goddess:
Wasn't it just divining that dog of a dag in Skokholme as I sat astrid uppon their Drewitt's altar, as cooledas as culcumbre, slapping my straights till the sloping ruins, postillion, postallion, a swinge a swank, with you offering me clouts of illscents and them homers stagstruck on the leasward!
226
Cities fall, broken in war, but still the flowers remain, fresh and
smiling as in the days of old battles (Joyce tells us this not in his own dream-words but in the undistorted French of Edgar Q! linet). Flowers of love beckon, but the boys 'totient quotients', 'Bruto and Cassio', are more concerned with the manlier matter of their eternal opposition. They get down then to doing their sums, inscribingnrst 'At maturing daily gloryaims' (the Jesuit Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam) at the head of their paper. Every theme of the book obscurely ap- pears as a mathematical problem, and we become aware of how large a part number has so far played in it. The boys' names are now given as Dolph (Shern) and Kev (Shaun)-'singlebarrelled names for doubleparalleled twixtytwins'-and it is Kev who comes to his brother for help. The problem they are going to work out is evidently important-'Concoct an equoangular trillitter' -for Joyce, in Latin, invites the spirits of the dead to come and watch: 'Venite,
preteriti. ' Apparently, though, young Dolph-Shern has some obscene purpose in mind, for - both the sets of marginal comments disa ppear- i n g - w e have a lengthy piece o f confused moralising, alluding much to the Tristram-Iseult legend and, addressing the two lovers by their Irish names- Diarmait and Grainne distorted to 'diarmuee and gran- you', saying: 'if that is what lamoor . . . seems circling toward out yondest heaven help his hindmost'. When the marginal comments are resumed, we see that Shaun has his grave pointers in italic, at the left, and Shem's irreverence, in the dignity of capitals, is on the right.
The letters ALP are now seen as the points of the isosceles triangle (the fertile delta) which is Anna Livia's own sign. In a diagram made up of two interlocking circles and two isosceles triangles with a common base (ALP and alpha lambda pi), Dolph- Shem finds his thesis, an obscurely obscene exposition of his own sexual curiosity, while Kev-Shaun makes learned but ingenuous comments in the margin:
Outer serpumstance. s being ekewilled, we carefully, if she pleats, lift by -her seam hem and jabote at the spidsiest of her trickkikant (like thou- sands done before since fillies calpered. Ocone! Ocone! ) the maidsapron of our A. L. P. , fearfully! till its nether nadir is vortically where (allow me aright to two cute winkles) its naval's napex will have to beandbe. You must proach near mear for at is dark. Lob. And light your mech. Jeldy!
The whole process of learning, of scientific investigation and the
hugging of secret knowledge, is revealed as mere curiosity about
what lies up our mothers' skirts. Kev-Shaun is slow in realising his 227
? ? ? The Man-made Mountain
brother's drift but when he does he turns on him, and the fraternal battle is resu:Ued- Michael versus Old Nick. The footnote says 'Picking on Nickagain, Pikey Mikey /' The archangel calls Satan 'the divver's own smart gossoon, aequal to yourseH and wamgel to anglyother, so you are, hoax! You know, you'll be dampned, so you will one of these invernal days . . . '
The real point is, I think, that Shem, with all his tenden~ to make game of learning, has more understandmg of ~he mystIcal significance of signs and letters (he is, after all, an artist) than has his twin, despite the earnestness of hiS a~phcatlOn. Both boys, bemg the father split into two, are incomplete m themselves, a~dthere are times when their recognition of this makes them turn m anger on each other. It is now a matter of 'Christ's Church varses Bellial! ' But the narrator (being himself an artist and hence on the Side of Dolph-Shem-Glugg-Nick) celebrates Irish literature as a sort of
divine body-organs listed in the margin, names garbled m the text: 'Steal, Barke, Starn, Swhipt, Wiles, Pshaw, Doubbhnbbayyates. ' This does not prevent Shaun from delivering a blow to Shem's mortalbody-'Wincewan'swon! Rip! '(footnote: 'Abyebyebmgbang boys I See you Nutcracker Sunday! '). . .
But, surprisingly when we conSIder that. Shem 1S the devil, not so
surprisingly when we remember that he IS also Stephen Dedalus, there is no retaliation. In his brain he must conquer. He says: 'Thanks eversore much, pointcarried! . . . I'm seeing rayingbogeys rings round me . . . By Saxon Chromaticus, you done that lovely for me! ' He calls on his little-cloud sister for confirmalion of the skill and strength of Shaun's blow. Before they go out mto the great
world, Shem is revealed as the monopohst of spmtual power, hiS brother as the extroverted politician-fighter. 'And that salubrated sickenagiaour of yaours have teaspilled all my hazeydency', says Shem to Shaun. '. . . I'm only out for celebridging over the gu~ltof the gap in your hiscitendency. You are a hundred thousand limes welcome, old wortsampler, hellbeit you're just about as ~ul~able as
my woolfell merger would be. ' We remember the double slgmfic~nce of 'hesitency/hesitancy'. The guilt of HCE, Parnell and P,ggot IS m both the sons, revealed equally in Shaun's jealous blow, Shern's failure to strike back. The Shem-margin is full of HCE stuttermg.
Peace then-the thrice-repeated Sanskrit word for it which con- cludes Eliot's The Waste Land: 'Shantih' distorted to 'slanty scanty shanty'. The end of learning and the beginning of the time for action. Shaun's margin sums up, in great names from Cato to
228
Brotherly Hate
Darius, the scope of their studies; the text, with a Rabelaisian
catalogue, indicates the subjects of their essays. 'Castor, Pollux' in the margin relates to 'Compare the Fistic Styles of Jimmy Wilde and Jack Sharkey' in the text; 'Julius Caesar' leads us to 'A Succees- ful Career in the Civil Service' (footnote: 'R. C. , disengaged, good character, would help, no salary'). Shem's margin says: 'MAW- MAW, LUK, YOUR BEEFTAY'S FIZZIN OVER! ' and we know that it is supper-time. The mystic numbers of the Cabbala- summary of all knowledge-are sp out from 'Aun Do Tri' to final 'Geg'. At the number five or 'Cush'- halfway down the ladder of numbers-the split of creation into its two opposing brother- elements takes place. The footnote says: 'Kish is for anticheirst, and the free of my hand to him! ' and a thumbed nose is shown in the margin. 'Anticheirst' combines 'Antichrist' and 'anti-cheiros'- 'counter-hand', 'back of my hand': both Shem and Shaun oppose the Christ-element, as manifested in each other. The other drawing- one of crossed bones-sums up everything: the kiss of love, the crucifixion, love-through-death, death-through-love, the whole of murderous history, the arrangement into a pattern of the dead and dry-knowledge itself. 'Their feed begins', says the text. They eat the substance of their father. Then they go off to the New World, sending a 'NIGHTLETTER':
With our best youlldied greedings to Pep and Memmy and the old fo~kers below and ,beyant, wishing them all very merry Incarnations in thls land o f the hvvey and plenty o f preposperousness through their coming new yonks
The day of the brothers has arrived; the day of their father-as we shall see in the remaining two chapters of this section of the book- is finished. .
229
? ? 6: Mactation of the Host
FROM SINBAD THE SAILOR TO TINBAD THE TAILOR WAS A STEP
of Leopold Bloom's descent into sleep. Earwicker's descent to misery and a sense of uselessness involves the same word-play, but the words of his dream are its very substance, not just its garment. HCE is at the most complex and tight-knit phase of his dream, a dream that we ourselves, along with Joyce, are dreaming. The matter of the dream is so dense and confused that HCE seems to require a mise en scene of great familiarity to hold the dream down (as a simple canto forma or even an unmoving pedal-point serves as a strong bass for highly involved counterpoint). HCE is dreaming that, before
going off to dream in bed, he is presiding over his tavern, and its noisy guest-patrons-the four, the twelve, and more-are reducing their host from hero to butt, as well as hero to villain, turning the provider of heart's sustenance into the very butcher's carcase which must be growlingly devoured, gaffing the sailor and turning him into a tailor and then into the garment itself which-the outward show of pride and dignity-will be rent to shreds and atoms. This must be done so that the world of the brothers can come into existence and Shaun, full-fed of his father, can exchange 'greedings' with the constituents of a mean democracy that was onCe a hero's kingdom. It is the eating of the host-God made man made bread-by which the life ofsmall creatures is sustained. Thus, as with every sad thing in this book, we are reminded of the nobiliry of sacrifice as well as the joy of resurrection. Pound HCE to atoms and those atoms prove to be adams: the great circle of creation will roll again.
This part of Finnegan, Wake is the very devil to summarise: it is like saying what Bach's Art ofFugue is about, bar by bar. But we must (and this should be said often) never expect anything approach- ing waking sense. The confused density of the narrative is caused partly by the shame of its hero and partly by his rending, the division of his substance. The sense of what is happening in the dream and
230
Maaation afthe Host
what is imagined as happening in the dream is clouded by the noise of drunkenness and vituperation, by many tongues brought back fr~m abroad by roving seamen, and the whole mixture is further thickened by the bark of television and radio. We start off with a tale about a. 'Norweeger's capstan', a SOrt of wild Flying Dutchman
figure. He IS HCE as he was, old Nordic rover-invader and he
repres~nts HeE's past sins re-enacted in the present. Th~ present HCE IS reduced to a mere 'ship's husband' a server of sailors the dupe of a ras. cally mariner, and the wrongs 'done to him are m~tter for a new kind ofh? miliation. The captain (let us use waking language) has the ship s husband arrange for the making of a suit of
clothes, and, when the clothes are ready, the captain will not pay for them. A young man called Kersse (kersey) underlines the tailoring motif. He offers to go after the captain when the latter, jeering, puts b~ck. to ~ea. ,He IS a kind of emanatIOn of Earwicker in his 'Persse OReilly. form (remember Hosty's scurrilous ballad), 'k' being the Erse eqmvalent of the Brythonic (Welsh or Breton) 'p' (e. g. Welsh
fa-what=Erse cal? Thus Kersse,. who works for a tailoring firm, IS th~Side of HCE that will undo him, unpick him, in both his forms -agemg husband (ship's or otherwise) and absconding rogue-sea- man. Mter thIS tale there are shared memories of a great fall and
the customers' talk turns to the ship's husband's daughter. Sh~fell for the captam: 't? ere were no peanats in her famalgia so no wumble she tu~bledfor hIS famas roalls davors' ('royal divorce' _ Earwicker's
favounte play). Double shame again for HCE.
The next appea~ance0;the rascal-rover is greeted by the ship's husband very nord1cally: he made the sign of the hammer', Thor's
sign:
rod's ~rought, he sayd, after a few daze, thinking of all those bliakings ow letf pauses! Here you are back on your hawkins, from Blasil th~
Brast to Our povotogesus portocalI, the furt on the turn of the hurdies slave to trade, vassal ofspices and a dragon-on-the-market and be turbot' lurch a stripe, as were you soused methought out of the mackerel' Eldsfells! sayd he. A kumpavin on iceslant! Here's open handlegs for on~ old faulker from the hame folk here in you's booth!
There is no rancour, since HCE and the captain are one and the
sam. e m~n: Moreover, these seaman's visits are pure ritual, like those earher VISitS of Grace O'Malley: they are fairy-tale stuff. This time the . captam orders food and drink but, as before, goes off without paymg. The prose IS thick with tailoring terms (for the food and the sul! are the same thmg), and we even hear the voices of three tailors
231
? ? The Man-made Mountain
who seem to represent the three Fates. When the captain comes into
the tavern for the third time, he is followed by Kersse, who greets all cheerily: 'Peiwei toptip, nankeen pO\ltdelounges. Gives fitir day. Cheroot. Cheevio! ' He has apparently been to the races, since he is asked, 'And, haikon or hurlin, who did you do at doyle today, my horsey dorksey gentryman. ' Pidgin English mingles with the tongues of the Norsemen, and, through a fug of noise and drink, we hear a
voice ofvituperation raised against 'the bugganeering wanderducken
. . . the coarsehair highsaydighsayman . . . the bloedaxe bloodooth baltxebec, that is crupping into our raw lenguage navel through the lumbsmall of his hawsehole'. The villain is evidently HCE, foreigner, invader, cheat, lecher.
And now, after a weather forecast on the radio, we hear a tale of the catching and taming of the rover. 'Birdflights', the radio assures us, 'confirm abbroaching nubtials. ' The mariner is to be made to marry the ship's husband's daughter, a confusion of Issy and ALP. 'Come Bastabasco and hippychip eggs' (HCEl 'she will make a suomease pair and singlette, jodhpur smalls and tailorless,. a copener's
cribful, leaf, bud and berry, the divlin's own little mimmykin puss (hip, hip, horatia! ) for myoid comrhade salrymar here . . . ' The 'suomease pair' is obviously the twins and the 'singlette' the daugh- ter. An Irish marriage will calm the wanderer down, stop his tricks. Soon he is 'Cawcaught. Coocaged'. There are great celebrations; somebody even sings a negro spiritual: 'He goat a berth. And she cot a manege. And wohl's gorse mundom ganna wedst. ' The mar-
riage is consummated ('if hec dont love alpy then lad you annoy
me') and, since there is an element of incestuous guilt in it all, we
hear the hundred-letter thunderclap, the fall-word in the form 'Pappappapparrassannuaragheallachnatullaghmonganmacmacmacw- hackfalltherdebblenonthedubblandaddydoodled'. The taming of the tempestuous rover is summed up in 'his loudship was converted to a landshop'.
But we cannot get away from that primal guilry act in the park,
and, as we have committed ourselves to a marine context, the park
quite naturally becomes the sea. We have gone back even further than the Garden of Eden and see man himself arising from a watery element. The theme of guilt is not developed, only mentioned, for we now have an 'enterruption'. That this is to have a strong Slav flavour is prefigured in 'Check or slowback. Dvershen. ' Kate the cleaning-woman is introduced with Czechoslovak prepositions (which, like those of Russian, are single ktters -v, s and so on). The
23 2
Mactalion ofthe Host
children are asleep, she says, and the mistress of the house is in bed.
If Earwicker is 'whishtful to licture her caudal' he can join her. The mentl? TI ofth~ b. e~roomb:ir;-gs in the. sound of the branch tapping at the wllldow- DIp. Kate IS III her gUIse as keeper of the Wellington Mus~um m Phoenix Park and tuis, far from sending HCE to join his
lady III repose, opens up the old world of imperialistic war again.
A ,PIcture on the wall of the bar shows the Charge of the Light Bngade, with hunting overtones (horses, HCE as John Peel, the sound of the horn or bugle) and Earwlcker is dream-drawn to tellinrr a story about 'Arthur Duke'. Inevitably, this is full of HCE's ow~ guilt-:it was. of him, my wife and I thinks, to feel to every of the
yo~nglllg frUlts, tenderosed like an atlantic's breastswells or . . . a bnght tauth bight shimmeryshaking for the welt of his low. And where the peckadillies at his wristsends meetings be loving so lightly dovessoIld the candIdacy, me wipin eye sinks, of his softboiled bosom should be apparient even to our illicterate of nullatinenties. ' Here we are again-the two creamy roses in the park, the lobsters or
redcoats, the stuttering guilt:
Imagine twee cweamy wosen. Suppwose you get a beautiful thought and cull them sylvi. as sub silence. T~e~ inmaggin a stotterer. Suppoutre him to been one btg! ? ermaster OmmbIl. Then lustily . . . immengine up to thre~ longly lu~kmg. lobstarts . . . How do, dainty daulimbs ? So peached to pIck on you m thIS way, -prue and simple, pritt and spry! Heyday too Malster Faunagon, and hopes your hahititahiti licks the mankey nuts! '
. The pushing. of . the guilt back to the beginning, to the giant Fmnegan reposmg m the unconSCIOUS, is not to be permitted. The customers call for a television show presented by Butt and Taff (Shern and Shaun disguised as cross-talk comedians) and they are anXIOUS that they should re-enact the old story of Buckley and the
Russian general ('How Burghley shuck the rackushant Germanon'). There IS, m fact, an apocryphal tale in existence about an Irish soldIer, Buckley, who, fighting for the British in the Crimean War was in a position to shoot a Russian general when this latter had le~ d? w~ his tro~sersto defecate. But humanity and a feeling for human dlgmty prevaIled; Buckley did not fire. So the story (it was, to make
due ackoowledgements, John Joyce's story) went. Now it is changed
to fit the dream and engmeer Earwlcker's ultimate humiliation.
The Butt and Taff episode is presented in dramatic form com- plete with stage directions. This makes the battle-sounding: guilt- echomg galhmaufrey seem more lucid than it really is. The three
redcoat witnesses of Earwicker's nameless crime (which seems now
233
? ? ? The Man-made Mountain
Mactation ofthe Host
to involve defecation and innumerable sexual perversions) form a
link between the park and the battlefield. Butt is one of the soldiers; he easily changes into Buckley, making the two stories into one. The cross-talk act is interrupted for the report of a race-meeting, but even this is thick with the HCE horror-tale:
Emancipator, the Creman hunter (M;jor Hermyn C. Entwhistle) with dramatic effect reproducing the form o f famous sires on the scene o f the formers triumphs, is showing the eagle's way to Mr Whaytehayte's three buy geldings Homo Made Ink, Bailey Beacon and Ratatuohy while Furstin II and The Other Girl (Mrs 'Boss' ~l'aters, Leavybrink) too early spring dabbles,
are showing a clean paira/hids to Immensipater.
It? is, of course, horses that link the themes of battle, hunt, and racing. When we resume the Buckley story, the wizards Browne and Nolan will (we must always expect this) confuse Butt and Taff to Tuff and Batt, but the general drift remains clear. HCE, prime brute, warmonger, imperialist, is identified with the Russian general, and, in this version of the Buckley story, he is shot, even though his pants are down. 'I gave one dobblenotch', says Butt-Buckley, 'and I ups with my crozzier. Mirrdo! With my how on armer and hits leg an arrow cockshock rockrogn. Sparro! '
To match the chaos of the soldier's blow in Ulysses, we must now have the annihilation of the atom, but Joyce puts the hope of resurrection even in that: 'the abnihilisation of the etym'. From nothing-ab nihilo- the etymon, root ofttuth, ofall language, will re- emerge. And now, the tale ended, Butt and Taff melt into one person, make a moral and prophetic conclusion (this shooting of the Russian general by Buckley will happen again, recurring in a cycle, so long as the 'samuraised twimbs' are a principle of life-Shem versus Shaun, the split personality ofHCE raging in inner war. 'So till butagain budly shoots thon rising germinal let bodley chow the fatt of his anger and badley bide the toil of his tubb').
But Earwicker makes the mistake of sympathising with the Rus- sian general, while the customers approve what Butt-Buckley did. HCE says that that story is the story of all great men who fall; indeed, it is everybody's story: 'And that is at most redoubtedly an overthrew of each and ilkermann of us, I persuade myself, before Gow, gentlemen, so true as this are my kopfinpot astrode on these
~is my boardsoldereds. ' A hero is ruined because nature leads him to the exposure of his baser part. HCE, that very hero, is seen for an instant in his noblest aspect, sea-warrior coming to land, 'flying the Perseoroyal'. And now comes the crushing of the hero, the
234
mactation of the host. This is so big an undertaking that we have to
prepare for it somewhat remotely, converting it into a ritual. The radio announces, after calling for order in the voices of the three soldiers ('Attention! Stand at! ! Ease! ! ! '), the twofold song of the nightingales (the two girls), and the very leaves of the trees sing of the destruction of 'the marrer of mirth and the jangtherapper of all jocolarinas'. The customers rehearse his sins (,Has they bane re- neemed? Soothinly low'). But the brave old Adam stands up for himself, admitting his guilt but drawing his accusers into it: 'Guilry but fellows culpows! ' He has been misunderstood or 'missaunder- staid', he says. His crime was a little one. His Swiftian little loves~ 'my dears, the estelles', merge into one, then become two again, and all he did was this: 'my palmspread was gav to a parsleysprig, the curliest weedeen old ocean coils around'. The witnesses have not played cricket: 'Wickedgapers, I appeal against the light! ' He is out with it now, in a full confession: 'the lilliths oft I feldt, and, when booboob brutals and cautiouses only aims at the oggog hogs in the humand', then let him, like Caesar, be assassinated: 'thit thides or marse makes a good dayle to be shattat. Fall stuff. ' Fall staff, fall soldier's pole, he has finished. 'Here endeth chinchinatibus. '
The four old men have their say now. They are the four gospel- lers, the four Irish provinces, the four Viconian phases. They are Russia (Gregorovitch), Greece (Leonocopolos), Italy (Tarpinacci) and Ireland (Duggelduggel). Th~ir words carry weight. They state what men may not do, and what men may not do consists of what HCE is already supposed to have done, including shooting Russian generals (hardly fair) and being a 'pedestaroly'. Then they are tucked away inside an 'Omar Khayyam' stanza: 'And thus within the tavern's secret booth The wisehight ones who sip the tested sooth Bestir them as the Just has bid to jab The punch of quaram on the mug of truth. ' Six of the twelve (Mr G. B. W. Ashburner, Mr Faixgood, Mr L L Chattaway, Mr Q P. Dieudonney, Mr T. T. Erchdeakin and Mr W. K. Ferris-Fender) add a word or so: 'They had heard or had heard said or had heard said written. ' But who is anyone to accuse or judge? 'You were in the same boat of your- selves too, Getobodoff or Treamplasurin. '
From afar we hear the sound of a ballad. Hosry is at it again ('Ostia, lift it! Lift at it, Ostia1'):
Dour douchy was a sieguldson.
He cooed that loud nor he was young.
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? ? ? ? ? The Man-made Mountain
Mactation ofthe Host
He cud bad caw nor he was gray Like wather parted from the say.
It is time to turn out the customers and lock the door. 'The hum- ming, -it's coming. Insway onsway. ' In good Norse English, HCE cries, 'Tids, genmen, plays. ' Outside the streets are filling, the mobs marching, bells are clashing out. The pub is cleared. The song comes nearer:
His bludgeon's bruk, his drum is tore. For spuds we'll keep the hat he wore And roll in clover on his clay
By wather parted from the say.
There is going to be a 'lyncheon partying'. Still, the doors are locked and only the 'for eolders' refuse to be turned out. But HCE cannot lock his ears to the voices without that proclaim his guilt to the world. His sins know no end. Some are fantasti~but one or two very privy: 'Begetting a wife which begame his niece by pouring her youngthings into skintighs'; 'You cannot make a limousine lady out of a hillman minx'; 'For a frecklesome freshcheeky sweetworded lupsqueezer. ' We hear dangerous noises: BENK and BINK and BUNK and BANK and BONK-falling noises, hitting noises. HCE's doom is nigh.
But all this is a story within a story within a dream. There will be no violence. All we have heard is part of the narrative recounted by the customers. Earwicker ends his evening not dead but de- pressed. He goes round the beery bar lapping up all the leavings- 'whatever surplus rotgut, sarra much, was left by the lazy lousers of maltknights and beerchurls'-and, in a pub that is also a ship, collapses. He is dead out. 'Farve! , farerne. Goodbark, goodbye! ' He sails into the next chapter.
ThenextchapteristhelastchapterofBookIIofFinnegans Wake, a sad little envoi. In his drunken dream, HCE says farewell to youth, but, in the imagined flesh of a son of his body, welcomes its coming. The four old men turn themselves to seagulls, 'overhoved, shrill- gleescreaming', wheeling above the ship that is the bridal-bed of Tristram and Iseult (Iseult-la-belle, Isobel, Earwicker's own daugh- ter). They mock old King Mark:
Andyou thinkyou're cock ofthe wark.
Fowls, up! Tristfs the spryyoung spark
That'll tread her and wed her and bed her and red her
Without ever winking the tail ofafeather
And that's how that chap's going to make his money and markl
Mark, whose destined bride Iseult is, lies there on the floor, a snoring sack, done, past the handling of the glory of young flesh. His son, Shaun, has taken over from him (not, of course, that the dream imputes incestuous desire to Shaun; lssy there plays any young girl who is all sex).
To see the young lovers brings back the lovely cuddling past to the watching four. Johnny MacDougal remembers first, and among the things he remembers, strangely, is 'poor Merkin Cornyngwham, the official out of the castle on pension, when he was completely drowned off Erin Isles'. This, of course, is Martin Cunningham of Ulysses, and we are surprised to See him turned into a type of the drowned man in The Waste Land. Marcus Lyons recalls the year 1'32, the beginning of history, the Flemish armada wrecked 'off the coast of Cominghome and Saint Patrick, the anabapttst, and Samt Kevin, the lacustrian . . . and Lapoleon, the equestrian, on his whuite hourse of Hunover'; Lucas Tarpey is vaguer about dates- was it II32 or II69 or 1768 'when Carpery of the Goold Fins was in the kingship of Poolland' ? But those were the fine old Eden days when love started and nobody had fallen yet. Finally Matt Gregory comes before us, very symbol of dead time~ that were to be 'de- voured by active parlourmen, laudabiliter' (that bull again, that gave Ireland to the English). In their impotence they look on the lovers, drooling, remembering:
So that was the end. And it can't be helped. Ah,
God be good to us! Poor Andrew Martin Cunningham! Take breath! Ay! Ay!
We see the act of consummation-'Amoricas Champius, with one
aragan throust, druve the massive of virilvigtoury flshpst the both lines of forwards (Eburnea's down, boys! ) nghtJlngbangshot mto the goal of her gullet'-and the myth is washed clean of its romantic incrustations. What is Iseult? She is only
a strapping modern old ancient Irish prisscess, so and so ha! lds high, such and such paddock weight, in her madapolam smock, J? othmg under her hat but red hair and solid ivory . . . and a firstc1ass parr of bedroom eyes, of most unhomy blue, (how weak we are, one and all! ) the charm of favour's fond consentl
237
23 6
-Three quarks for Muster Mark!
Sure he hasnt got much ofa bark
And sure any he has it's all beside the mark . . .
Hohohoho, moulty Mark!
You're the rummest old rooster ever flopped out ofa Noah's ark
? ? ? ? The Man-made Mountain
The love of the fabulous operatic pair is celebrated-'Rear, 0 hear, Iseult la belle! Tristan, sad hero, hear! '-in a delightful free-verse song which fuses the bardic and the backyard:
It was of a wet good Friday too she was ironing and, as I'm now to understand, she was always mad gone ~n me. . .
Grand goosegreasing we had entirely WIth an allmght eIderdown bed
picnic to follow. . . .
By the cross of Cong, says she, rising up Saturday In the t:V1hgh; from under me, Mick, Nick the Maggot or whatever your name IS, you re the mose likable lad that's come my ways yet from the barony ofBohermore.
And so the sea<mlls finally screeching away-'Mattheehew, Markee- hew, Lukeehe;, Johnheehwheehew! '-watch the boat sail into. the future ('The way is free. Their lot is cast'). Poor Martm Cu. nmng- ham, who was something in Dublin Castle, is drowned Wlththe good days gone. On the floor-deck the ruined hero s~ores. But It IS in his dream that the rule of Shaun WIll be made mamfest.
T Shaun to Jaun to Yawn
IN CLIMBING, AS WE DO NOW IN BOOK III OF Finnegans Wake, to the bedroom of RCE to dream about the future of his sons, we are not leaving the dream-world in order to re-enter it. There are moments when the thickness clears, when we approach the verge of waking, when we even sleepily get out of bed with Earwicker and his wife, but never once do we really find ourselves in the sunlit land where we can pinch ourselves to confirm that dreaming is over. The author's dream enfolds the sleep, half-sleep and morning yawn- ingofhis hero; the sheets ofthe dream are well tucked in. The author has dreamed that RCE has dreamed that he has awakened from his drunken stupor to go up to bed to start a new dream. This new dream is about the future, the rule of the ruling son, but all is con- trolled by the father. This is still the book of Earwicker.
In the first chapter of the three devoted chiefly to Shaun and his demagogy, we start with the sound of night-bells chiming an hour of some sort, a universal hour of mixed languages. Strange shapes from the historical past appear in the dreamed bedroom, and then a voice calls: 'Shaun! Shaun! Post the post! ' And Shaun himself ap- pears, 'dressed like an earl in just the correct wear', R.