) from root of some funner's stotter all the soundest sense to be found
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Brett Bourbon - 1996 - Constructing a Replacement for the Soul
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from the night we are and feel
and fade with to the yesterselves we tread to tumupon" (FW473. 06-11).
The Latin avis ( 'bird' and recall "Shem avic") and the Latin vicus ('street' or 'village') and the Latin vacuum ('empty space') collapse into "avicuum" (as if Keat's Nightingale is gone and the village on the urn empty). Without a bird-sign from heaven life is inauspicious; this augury o f a blank life indicates another movement, "from nomad knows" "to nomore cares". "Nomad knows" is both 'no man knows' and 'a nomad knows'. The opposition of nomad to man invokes an opposition between change (or at least movement) and identity. This tension and movement constitutes the blankness o f life
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? which is itself opposed to the possibility o f the future ("ere Molochy wars bring the devil era") that is itself"between a date and a ghostmark". This space "between a date and a ghostmark", "where to go is knowing remain? ", between vowel and consonant is only visible through the failure of the continuity of discourse or language. It is visible in our being creatures who are sometimes awake and sometimes asleep and in language bound by the limits or frames organizing it into sense or the world, and thus in language seen as fragments: "Terrorofthenoonstruckday,cryptogramofeachnightlybridable. But,to speak broken heaventalk, is he? " (FW261. 26-28 ). This "broken heaventalk" directed and figured between God and humans constitutes ianguage not as propositions, assertions, and claims, but as always questions: "But, to speak broken heaventalk, is he? Who is he? Whose is he? Why is he? Howmuch is he? How is he? " (FW261. 28-31). How can these questions be answered? "Who in the name o f thunder'd ever belevin you were that bolt? " (FW299. 11-12; Arch, levin: lightening). The thunder following lightening voices the name o f not only the thunderer but o f the 'belevin' (Arch, lightening), the 'being lightening-bolt' or as the source of the sound 'being thunder-bolt'. The god of thunder has 'the name of
thundered', of the past echoed, which is who this bolt claims to be: that thunder or that lightening voicing that thunder; and thus "who in your name would believe you were your name? "
(The instability o f name [here a model o f language's iterability] reflects an ontological instability o f self fragmented in the night: "[F]rom the night we are and feel and fade with to the yesterselves we tread to tumupon". 'To tread' seems synonymous
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? with 'to love', or rather the self-love on top of which I pivot all night or all life long. I am pursuing here this pivot as a 'between' words and people and sense. )
Another way of picturing the distance between mind and soul is as between the flash o f lightening and the sound o f thunder, the time when silence communicates not only ourdistancefromtheflash,butseemsapauseintheturningoftheearth: "Whereflash become word and silents selfloud. To brace congeners, trebly bounden and aservaged twainly"(FW267. 16-18). SelfloudpunstheGermanSelbstlaut(vowel),andtherefore identifies vowels as the expression of the self. The flash of lightening becoming the word, as the flesh became, "consinnantes": the consent ("consin) of God to be bom ('nantes') as humanandtobewithsin('consin'). Thelimitbetweenthedivineandthehumanlies thereforeintheflash(Godtoman)andinthesilence(mantoGod). Inhabitingthis between is to "brace congeners", to make or hold some group (or some mind) into an identity ('congener', in the same genus or resemblance); or this is the word of God forming the self into absence and silence except as the receiver (as Noah was) to gather two o f a kind (brace) into a unity (congener).
Stuttering ("broken heaventalk") crystallizes an 'I' out of Wakean language (betraying a stumbling human gait, as Keirkegaard calls it in the second volume of Either/Or [14]) by staying language into further nonsense: "which we do not doubt ha has a habitat ofdoing, but without those selfsownseedlings which are a species ofproofthat the largest individual can occur at or in an olivetion such as East Conna Hillock" (FW160. 09-13). This individual is manifested as a place, Old Conna Hill, and as the inverted HCE. Is finding ourselves not in the world, but as the world (at least at night) "a
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? speciesofproof'thatouroriginisours,thatwefoundtheworld? Self-ownershipand self-generation provides for an entrance into the world, and entrance as the world: "But the world, mind, is, was and will be writing its own wrunes for ever, man, on all matters that fall under the ban of our infrarational senses. . . " (FW19. 35-20. 1).
In what is called the ALP chapter, this "world, mind" as it "is, was and will be writing", a "lost histerve"(FW214. 01), that counters the story of the Bible with "In kingdome gone or power to come or gloria be to the farther? Allalivial, allaIuvial! "(FW213. 31-32). ThisnewstoryisofthemotherAnnaLiviaPlurabelle,the riverof"lethullian","[a]beingagaininbecomingsagain"(FW491. 23). ALPdescribesthe limit between language and time, "[bjetween our two southsates and the granite they 're warming, or herface has been lifted. . . /"(FW209. 08-09). I will analyze this limit between identity and change as a sexual ontology of language in Chapter 10. I want to suggest here that her "becomings again" are part o f a conversation, like that collapsed in the"abnihilisationoftheetym. . . withan. . . fragoroboassityamidwhiches. . . uttermosts confiission" (the roar ofthe voice ofgod and matter mixed with the prayer and confession o f human beings; FW353. 22-25), between "Is that a faith? That's a fact. " (FW199. 33).
The first question ('Is it a faith? ") is asked by the elm. The answer (that is no answer: "That's a fact") is by the stone. The elm and stone are the material forms of two washerwoman on the banks of the ALP, the Liffey, who at the end of the chapter return into the night as elm and stone. The dialogue between elm and stone (animate and inanimate) constitutes or envelopes or limits or is about (there is no way to determine which o f these verbs to use here) Anna Livia Plurabelle, herself the principle o f becoming
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? animating the structures o f identity invoiced by Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker in his dissolution and in his memory: "0 tell me all about Anna Livia! . . . Telmetale of stem or stone. Besidetheriveringwatersof. . . "[FW196. 01-03;216. 03-04]). Thisdialogueas what is ALP is also a tale about ALP, a collapse o f expression into being.
This confusion of expression and being or identity (these are also confused here) turns the call between family members into a confession. Justius, the moralizing Shaun's name in debates with his brother Shem disguised as Mercius (Justice and Mercy from English Mystery Plays), challenges his father HCE, calling out to him as "Nayman of Noland"(Nomanofnoland)to'standforth. . . inyourtruecoloursereyoubebackfor ever till I give you your talkingto! " (FW187. 32-35). He then taunts his brother, Shem Macadamson: "Where have you been in the uterim, enjoying yourself all the morning sincy you last wetbed confession? " (187. 36-188. 01). How do we distinguish a sign from an effect? A confession from an act? Can we imagine praying as 'to prize', to lever open (a prize), or as an inquisition into mystery? "Let us pry" (188. 08)-- "We thought, would and did. --Away with covered words, new Solemonites for old Bathsheetbaths! That inharmonious detail, did you name it? Cold caldor! Gee! Victory! (FW188. 25-27) A
confession is as inharmonious detail as he who confesses.
In the Wake a mysterious letter, purporting to reveal the guilt ofHCE, is a version
and one of the prime constituents of the Wake itself: the Wake a "NIGHTLETTER" (FW308. 16) and the mysterious "The letter! The Litter! . . . Borrowing a word and beggingthequestion"(FW93. 22-24). TheLetter(inandastheWake)ortheletters(of the alphabet, of the letter, of the Wake) is picked out of a midden heap by a hen, latter
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? transformed into the king of birds as Queen, "Jenny Wren: pick, peck" (Wren, the queen ofbirds; FW278. 12), letters fragmenting the world and then sent through or carried by "Johnny Post: pack, puck", one among many, able to move becomes only a fragment of the world. "All the world's in want and is writing a letters. A letters from a person to a place about a thing. And all the world's on which to be carrying a letters. . . When men want to write a letters. Ten men, ton men, pen men, pun men, wont to rise a ladder. And den men, dun men, fen men, fun men, hen men, hun men wend to raze a leader. Is then any lettersday from many peoples, Dagnasanvitch? (FW278. 16-25).
This list, beginning with "Ten men" is continued a few pages later: "Ten, twent, thirt, see, ex and three icky totchy ones. From solation to solution" [FW284. 16-18; from solitude (It. sola, alone)] to dispersion in a whole. This is how a solution is described: "Imagine the twelve deaferended dumbbawls o f the whowl above-beugled to be the contonuation through regeneration of urutteration of the word in pergross" (FW284. 18- 22).
Earlier the solution to "[t]he all-riddle o f it? " was "[t]hat that is allruddy with us, ahead o f schedule, which already is plan accomplished from and syne" (FW274. 02-05). A riddle o f the enveloping facts is always already known in the way that Dasein is always aheadofitselfthatis,itisdefinedasitslimit,asthoseenvelopingfacts. Thecontinual conception of beginnings (arche and genesis) in the Wake is an attempt to make visible what is already and always the case for us at the point when it became this; such beginnings are temporal moments of simultaneous change and repetition (thus the continual rebeginning). The solution to "solation" (being dispersed into aloneness) is
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? another return to this beginning built (the interpretation constituting the substance o f what this beginning is in the Wake) out of the twelve apostles reacting (from Judaism to Christianity) to the Death and resurrection o f Christ.
These letters and litters from the Hen, a bird or bard, can tell the tale o f idiots in sound and fury, a second best bed a patrimony of always borrowed language pointing forward, too late or too early, but "Toborrow and toburrow and tobarraw! " (FW455. 12-
13). Isthisadescriptionoranenactmentofourinheritanceofwords?
I have met with you, bird, too late, or if not, too worm and early: and with tag for ildiot repeated in his secondmouth language as many of the bigtimer's verbaten wordswhichhecouldbalbly calltomemorythatsamekveldeve,erethehourof the twattering bards in the twitterlitter between Druidia and the Deepsleep Sea . . (FW37. 13-18)
Any "secondmouth language" can offer, "saluting corpses, as a metter o f corse" (FW37. 09-10), measuring (meter) time (a matter o f course) as the loss o f ourselves into dead bodies, "not a little token abock all the same that that was owl the God's clock it was"(FW37. 06-07), "could balbly" (Babal and badly) call to memory that same beginning ofevening,sin,andwoman(Da. kveld,eveningandEve). Whatthismomentwasis always formed into interpretations. God's bigtimer verbatim words o f forbidding (G. verboten) are stammered (L balbus) in the twitterlitter, not yet poetry, between the devil andthedeepsea. Thenonsenseofthesewords"tag"thehumanstancetowardtheworld as idiotic awe, an expression oflight and thanks (Da takfor ilden, thanks for the light). Such thanks can be ironic. Such irony can allow us to speak second mouth words as ours.
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? This "ildiot" (maybe not yet an idiolect), that is our human stance toward god within our languageconstitutesusas"ildiots"(lesserbeingsspeakinganonsensicallanguage). Oris humanity divided here between 'ildiots' and 'kveldeve'? This stammering ("balby") orders the world and our language into permanence: "accompanied by his trusty snoler and his permanent reflection, verbigacious" (FW37. 12-13). "Verbigacious combines verbigeration, the meaningless repetition o f a word or phrase, and L verbi gratia, for instance. 'Verbigeration' creates the form of identity, a universal, a separation of content from form, from within language. This creates the illusion that meaning accompanies form as an extra component, an addition to sound, as perfume can come to stand for 'me': "My perfume o f the pampas, says she (meaning me)" (FW95. 22). This formal post hoc universal as a limit o f "soundsense" is also the particular o f an example, an example o f anyvoice and of being an "ildiot. . in the twitterlitter". What every instance is accompanied by, however, is the entire system of language, or rather the entire system of senseandthepossibilitiesofnonsensemediatedbyvariousinterpretativestances. Oneof
the possibilities o f being human is the continual possibility o f the need for interpretation. Which is not to say that every sentence requires interpretation.
But then again,
Well even should not the framing up of such figments in the evidential order bring the true truth to light as fortuitously as a dim seer's setting of a starchart might (heaven helping it) uncover the nakedness of an unknown body in the fields of blues as forehearingly as the sibspeeches of all manking have foliated (earth seizing them!
) from root of some funner's stotter all the soundest sense to be found
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? immense our special mentalists now holds (securus iudicat orbis terrarum) . . .
(FW96. 26-33)
A stutter can frame speech as a form of possession, the grating of Moses' recitative againstAron'ssinginginSchoenberg'sOpera, orthegratingatanylimitofanyframe that marks the possibility that the world is a figment by showing that we see it through and asfragments. Thisself-reflection,abetrayalofourlimitationsandoftheworld's instability as a world, is like a "dim seer's setting o f a starchart" that uncovers "the nakedness of an unknown body making a starchart to find the world's order. " Contained within parenthesis as if within a world itself (securus iudicat orbis terrarum), the verdict
o f the world is secure. Secured by what? What is the verdict? (Can anything be secured from within parenthesis? can the world be secured from within the world? )
A survey and overview of this world marks the world's purview, its enacting principle, it's limit, scope and purpose as something ordered as "my world". The algebra (binomial) and the geometry (axioms and postulates) o f these "factionables" is incomprehensible and as inexpressible as by gone days and the ways o f god for a "neuralgiabrown", a brain:
ForasurviewoverallthefactionablesseeIrisintheEvenine'sWorld. Binomeans tobecomprendered. Inexcessibleasthybygodways. Theaximones. Andtheir prostalutes. For his neuralgiabrown.
Equal to = aosch.
P. t. l. o. a. t. o. (FW285. 26-286. 03)
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? What does it mean to find Potato and not Plato in these letters? What letters are equal to what word? "Equal to=aosch" is a kind of self-referential paradox. "Equal to" is not equal to anything; if it is understood as '=' which defines a relation not a value; it marks equality it is not itselfa term except in relation to other symbols of relation. If 'equal to' is mentioned in quotation marks it can gain a categorical meaning (with all terms of relation) or generic meaning (with all symbols). The claim here, however, is that equal to is equivalent to an anagram ofchaos (to the anagram itselfor to the 'meaning' as chaos? ). And therefore Plato is a potato. Although this interpretation can seem reasonable(l), especially to a new world Aristotelian, what does it mean? How do we apply this identity?
The following is an identification of an identification of missing what had counted to'one'onceinageneralfailuretocountoneselfasoneselfexceptinthismistake: "the aphasia o f that heroic agony o f recalling a once loved number leading slip by slipper to a general amnesia o f misnomering one's own" (FW122. 04-05). This is called "the vocative lapse from which it begins and the accusative hole in which it ends itself'(FW122. 03-04) This lapse, the failure to address anyone (beginning the Wake in midsentence--"rivemm, past Eve and Adam's") is a loss of identity (in sleep or nonsense or forgetfulness or sin or sense or order) marked by the loss of any beloved (are we attached to the world through suchattachments? ): "theaphasiaofthatheroicagonyofrecallingaoncelovednumber leading slip by slipper to a general amnesia of misnomering one's own" (FW122. 04-06). The loss o f love (Eliot's hyacinth girl) and the agony o f recall, not only o f the beloved but
of loving, is a forgetfulness of who anyone is. Language, just as dreams, is a reminder of that agony, "the cruciform postscript" (FW122. 20) The revision of this script is both our
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? forgetting ourselves and the kisses of others into "the life he is to die into . . . lost himself or himselfsome somnione sciupiones" (FW293. 04-07). The possibility ofothers is the possibility of love. The failure to address oneselfas oneselfor one's language to others is what I have called the failed intentionality ofthe Wake. This kind oflanguage is marked on the other end by "the accusative hole which it ends itself', that is the objects which are the things themselves, the things that are never themselves words, and within the inverted cnat language' seem absences instead o f presences.
The analogies describing the relation between mind and world, between text and mind, text and world (wax, mirror, lamp, harp, container, etc. ) have been reduced here into a special kind of the self-reflexive nonsense language asking "It was life but was it fair? It was free but was it art? " (FW94. 09-10) and expecting continually failing
justifications for asking these questions that cannot be answered. This might seem (in many ways correctly) that the analogies o f mind and aesthetics have been replaced by an interpretive stance, but it is not clear that interpretation is always called for. If interpretation cannot claim any particular truth value and is not itself as Wittgenstein suggests, adequate for meaning, it's failure will not count as an adequate stance between mind and world and art.
Do we experience language such that we can experience this between "mind, world" and language as the between of night or nonsense? This following is some evidence for this: "Everyletter is a godsend, ardent Ares . . . To me or not to me. Satis thy quest on" (FW269. 17-20). The Wake is sent to god or from god or to me or not to me. The resistance to "mind, world" metaphors is what Joyce calls "holding tight to that
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? prestatuteinourcharter''(FW117. 34-35). Thisholdingtighttothe'discamate',"your disunited kingdom on the vacuum o f your own most intensely doubtful soul"(FW188. 16- 17) "may have our irremovable doubts as to the whole sense o f the lot, the interpretation
o f any phrase in the whole, the meaning o f every word o f a phrase so far deciphered out o f it. . . "(FW117. 35-118. 02). TheWakecontinuallydisplaysKierkegaard'sclaimthat"there is a difference between writing on a blank sheet o f paper and bringing to light by the application o f a caustic fluid a text which is hidden under another text", but with the difference that there is not any Christian truth underlying any surface of the world or mind {PointofView,40). Iholdoff,therefore,inofferinganytheoryofidentitythatwould explain how "Equal to=aosch" because this does not describe an identity, but a limit between a description ("equal to"), mathematical symbolism (=), a riddle ("aosch"), a self- expression ("aosch"=chaos). This is a limit because "Equal to=aosch" not only does not have a meaning, it cannot have any meaning outside o f an allegory that some reader will construct. Itis,however,notsenselessasadescriptionofalimit. Thuswecanreadthe Wake, to the degree that it is made up ofthis kind ofnonsense, as the self-description and enactment o f shifting limits. But what kind o f limits? limits o f what? As I suggested in the previous chapter one such limit is the vanishing intentionality that marks a limit between our inexistence as something meaningful within language and our ability to invest
ourselves as ourselves through and as language. But this is to say the words 'our', 'ourselves', 'though', 'as', 'within', and 'meaning' all function as limits, as meaningless except as transparent markers of an interpretive position within language games or under theological pressure: reading language as a descriptions of the limits that make our being
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? human being human. This is not another kind o f language, but a way reading language as a non-language, or again as Joyce calls it "nat language".
How do you figure language within language iflanguage is all on the same logical level? As nonsense (as dead signs or code), as animate; thus the questions what is language or sense become questions about nonsense and about how, what and why anything,leastofallourselves,isorcanbeanimate. Sentencesorphrasesorlinesbecome "[t]hese ruled barriers along which the traced words, run, march, halt, walk, stumble at doubtful points, stumble up again in comparative safety seem to have been drawn first of allinaprettycheckerwithlamp-blackandblackthorn"(114. 07-11). TheWake,likeThe Book ofKells, seems written with a black ink that "is lamp black, or possibly fish-bone black. "2 Joyce describes the Wake by describing a monkish monument o f Irish culture, and uses this description, with others, as the substance ofthe Wake. The substance of this theological language, however, is their movement emerging out o f domesticity, not read or written but "drawn," for any sensitive person, "first of all in a pretty checker with lamp- black and blackthorn. "
The movement o f words can be characterized in relation to the "comparative safety" of ordinary usage:
It is seriously believed by some that the intention may have been geodetic, or, in theviewofthecannier,domesticeconomical. Butbywritingthithawaysendto end and turning, turning and end to end hithaways writing and with lines of litters slittering up and louds of latters slettering down, the old semetomyplace and
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? jupetbackagain from tham Let Rise till Hum Lit. Sleep, where in the waste is the wisdom? (114. 13-20)
The "intention," one way ofofferingjustification (but ofwhat? ), could be geodetic, that is determinedby surveying(butofwhat? );oraneven"cannier"viewwouldbethat "intention may have been. . . domestic economical," L. domesticus or G. oikonomikos, pertaining to the household. These two possibilities (surveying and the domestic) describe the two aspects o f Wittgenstein's philosophy: surveying ourselves, the world and our language (what Kenny called providing "a clear view of the world" and Wittgenstein in his preface called "sketches of the landscape") and a return to ordinary language (the disappearanceoftheproblemsofphilosophyinordinarylanguage). Intherealmofthe ordinary, the translation between Latin and Greek is possible. The world o f sleep is also ordinary, but this thithaways and hithaways (losing control o f the tongue, the "latters slettering down", no one going up and no ladder to throw away since it has already dissolved) requires asking what would be an adequate survey or sketch o f what ordinary world? , limited how? seen as what? , threatened always by the interpretive distortions that allow for the blessing of one among any three brothers (Shem, Japhet, and Ham). The confusion o f interpretation for truth, the replacability o f people and words and commitments under this confusion, is the problem o f Hamlet ("tham Let" and "Hum Lit. )
written into the Wake. This is a tragedy accompanying our inheritance o f language, or maybeofpronounswhere"Semetomyplaceandjupetbackagain". Joyceisconstructing the place of my signs (Gr. <rr||ia), or the sign of me, or the place marked or having a mark set or affixed (Gr. crr|no08To<;) or a cemetery place. Wakean writing seems to place me
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? ("Semetomyplace") within the surveyable world and loop it back again into a history of origins and disinheritance, placing me with and as Japhet, the 'non-Semitic' son o f Noah, Jupiter from "tham Let", Hamlet, and Ham, the rejected son o f Noah.
If we read this again, the old Greek signs and the Latin imitations, from them that rise, or from Let Rise (a name, a description and a marker, like "ildiot") until Human Literature Sleeps, ask the question "where in the waste is wisdom? " This is a description of how to read: the unity of Greek and Latin in the text (as an example of the language of the Wake) does not communicate, but asks forjustification. And this request is understood as ordinary, as ordinary as waste is and is our desire for wisdom. If 'let rise' both can mean 'arise' and function as the name 'Let Rise', then the confusion o f verb for name (as in "In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was God") is the way in whichonecanenterorbenamedbylanguage. Consequently,"whereinthewasteis wisdom? " describes a stance toward ourselves, the world and our language that analogizes the relation between mind and world, by placing our humanity at risk by placing our constructions and our world as a world against us.
This is the effect ofJoyce's lists, to place the world enumerated against us and in this offer targets for sense and identification. But once an identification is made, as a result of an interpretation ('"alphybetty verbage' is a version of the Wake, or "am I a whirling dervish? " or "can the world be built outside of logic or as a list of predicates without any subject[s]? '), the meaning remains unclear. No interpretation is ever adequate because interpretation cannot determine meaning. Is the meaning ofFinnegans Wake the following list?
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? My wud! The warped flooring ofthe lair and soundconducting walls thereof. . . were persianly literatured with burst loveletters, telltale stories,. . . doubtful eggshells,. . . alphybettyformed verbage, vivlical viasses, ompiter dictas, visus umbique, ahems and ahahs, imeffible tries as speech unasyllabled, you owe mes, eyoldhyms, fluefoul smul, fallen lucifers,. . . counterfeit franks, best intentions,. . . gloss teeth for a tooth,. . . inversions of all this chambermade music one stands, given a grain of goodwill, a fair chance of actually seeing the whirling dervish, Tumult, son o f Thunder, self exiled in upon his ego, a nightlong a shaking betwixtween white or reddr hawrors, noondayterrorised to skin and bone by an I neluctable phantom . . . writing the mystery o f himself in furniture. (FW183. 08- 184. 10)
Furniture and language both constitute the world as limits to myself. This limit is enacted by or as matter, what Berkeley called "the furniture of earth". What is "the mystery of himself'? He writes while sitting in furniture as a piece of furniture determined and defined by materiality. This "mystery o f himself in furniture" becomes at the end o f the Wake, when the sleeper is awakening, the "fumit o f heupanepi world" (FW611. 18). c[F]umit' containsfait (L. as it was) andfarm s (L. oven, fireplace), and can be read as 'bum it'. "[F]umit' can be translated as 'as it as bums and is a furnace. " This burning is stabilized as a thing when "fumit" puns "the furniture of earth. " Consequently, the being andstabilityofthepastcondensedintofurniturecontainsHeracletianflux. "[H]eupanepi' consistsoftheGreekeu(good),pan(all),andepi(upon). Thus"fumitofheupanepi world" can be translated as 'the furniture o f the flux o f the good upon all the world bums
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? into a furnace. ' (So that's what it means to confuse the mind and the world! ) As the sleeper awakens into consciousness at the end of the Wake, under the sun and in rising color, "that part of it (fumit of heupanepi world) had shown itself.
and fade with to the yesterselves we tread to tumupon" (FW473. 06-11).
The Latin avis ( 'bird' and recall "Shem avic") and the Latin vicus ('street' or 'village') and the Latin vacuum ('empty space') collapse into "avicuum" (as if Keat's Nightingale is gone and the village on the urn empty). Without a bird-sign from heaven life is inauspicious; this augury o f a blank life indicates another movement, "from nomad knows" "to nomore cares". "Nomad knows" is both 'no man knows' and 'a nomad knows'. The opposition of nomad to man invokes an opposition between change (or at least movement) and identity. This tension and movement constitutes the blankness o f life
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? which is itself opposed to the possibility o f the future ("ere Molochy wars bring the devil era") that is itself"between a date and a ghostmark". This space "between a date and a ghostmark", "where to go is knowing remain? ", between vowel and consonant is only visible through the failure of the continuity of discourse or language. It is visible in our being creatures who are sometimes awake and sometimes asleep and in language bound by the limits or frames organizing it into sense or the world, and thus in language seen as fragments: "Terrorofthenoonstruckday,cryptogramofeachnightlybridable. But,to speak broken heaventalk, is he? " (FW261. 26-28 ). This "broken heaventalk" directed and figured between God and humans constitutes ianguage not as propositions, assertions, and claims, but as always questions: "But, to speak broken heaventalk, is he? Who is he? Whose is he? Why is he? Howmuch is he? How is he? " (FW261. 28-31). How can these questions be answered? "Who in the name o f thunder'd ever belevin you were that bolt? " (FW299. 11-12; Arch, levin: lightening). The thunder following lightening voices the name o f not only the thunderer but o f the 'belevin' (Arch, lightening), the 'being lightening-bolt' or as the source of the sound 'being thunder-bolt'. The god of thunder has 'the name of
thundered', of the past echoed, which is who this bolt claims to be: that thunder or that lightening voicing that thunder; and thus "who in your name would believe you were your name? "
(The instability o f name [here a model o f language's iterability] reflects an ontological instability o f self fragmented in the night: "[F]rom the night we are and feel and fade with to the yesterselves we tread to tumupon". 'To tread' seems synonymous
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? with 'to love', or rather the self-love on top of which I pivot all night or all life long. I am pursuing here this pivot as a 'between' words and people and sense. )
Another way of picturing the distance between mind and soul is as between the flash o f lightening and the sound o f thunder, the time when silence communicates not only ourdistancefromtheflash,butseemsapauseintheturningoftheearth: "Whereflash become word and silents selfloud. To brace congeners, trebly bounden and aservaged twainly"(FW267. 16-18). SelfloudpunstheGermanSelbstlaut(vowel),andtherefore identifies vowels as the expression of the self. The flash of lightening becoming the word, as the flesh became, "consinnantes": the consent ("consin) of God to be bom ('nantes') as humanandtobewithsin('consin'). Thelimitbetweenthedivineandthehumanlies thereforeintheflash(Godtoman)andinthesilence(mantoGod). Inhabitingthis between is to "brace congeners", to make or hold some group (or some mind) into an identity ('congener', in the same genus or resemblance); or this is the word of God forming the self into absence and silence except as the receiver (as Noah was) to gather two o f a kind (brace) into a unity (congener).
Stuttering ("broken heaventalk") crystallizes an 'I' out of Wakean language (betraying a stumbling human gait, as Keirkegaard calls it in the second volume of Either/Or [14]) by staying language into further nonsense: "which we do not doubt ha has a habitat ofdoing, but without those selfsownseedlings which are a species ofproofthat the largest individual can occur at or in an olivetion such as East Conna Hillock" (FW160. 09-13). This individual is manifested as a place, Old Conna Hill, and as the inverted HCE. Is finding ourselves not in the world, but as the world (at least at night) "a
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? speciesofproof'thatouroriginisours,thatwefoundtheworld? Self-ownershipand self-generation provides for an entrance into the world, and entrance as the world: "But the world, mind, is, was and will be writing its own wrunes for ever, man, on all matters that fall under the ban of our infrarational senses. . . " (FW19. 35-20. 1).
In what is called the ALP chapter, this "world, mind" as it "is, was and will be writing", a "lost histerve"(FW214. 01), that counters the story of the Bible with "In kingdome gone or power to come or gloria be to the farther? Allalivial, allaIuvial! "(FW213. 31-32). ThisnewstoryisofthemotherAnnaLiviaPlurabelle,the riverof"lethullian","[a]beingagaininbecomingsagain"(FW491. 23). ALPdescribesthe limit between language and time, "[bjetween our two southsates and the granite they 're warming, or herface has been lifted. . . /"(FW209. 08-09). I will analyze this limit between identity and change as a sexual ontology of language in Chapter 10. I want to suggest here that her "becomings again" are part o f a conversation, like that collapsed in the"abnihilisationoftheetym. . . withan. . . fragoroboassityamidwhiches. . . uttermosts confiission" (the roar ofthe voice ofgod and matter mixed with the prayer and confession o f human beings; FW353. 22-25), between "Is that a faith? That's a fact. " (FW199. 33).
The first question ('Is it a faith? ") is asked by the elm. The answer (that is no answer: "That's a fact") is by the stone. The elm and stone are the material forms of two washerwoman on the banks of the ALP, the Liffey, who at the end of the chapter return into the night as elm and stone. The dialogue between elm and stone (animate and inanimate) constitutes or envelopes or limits or is about (there is no way to determine which o f these verbs to use here) Anna Livia Plurabelle, herself the principle o f becoming
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? animating the structures o f identity invoiced by Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker in his dissolution and in his memory: "0 tell me all about Anna Livia! . . . Telmetale of stem or stone. Besidetheriveringwatersof. . . "[FW196. 01-03;216. 03-04]). Thisdialogueas what is ALP is also a tale about ALP, a collapse o f expression into being.
This confusion of expression and being or identity (these are also confused here) turns the call between family members into a confession. Justius, the moralizing Shaun's name in debates with his brother Shem disguised as Mercius (Justice and Mercy from English Mystery Plays), challenges his father HCE, calling out to him as "Nayman of Noland"(Nomanofnoland)to'standforth. . . inyourtruecoloursereyoubebackfor ever till I give you your talkingto! " (FW187. 32-35). He then taunts his brother, Shem Macadamson: "Where have you been in the uterim, enjoying yourself all the morning sincy you last wetbed confession? " (187. 36-188. 01). How do we distinguish a sign from an effect? A confession from an act? Can we imagine praying as 'to prize', to lever open (a prize), or as an inquisition into mystery? "Let us pry" (188. 08)-- "We thought, would and did. --Away with covered words, new Solemonites for old Bathsheetbaths! That inharmonious detail, did you name it? Cold caldor! Gee! Victory! (FW188. 25-27) A
confession is as inharmonious detail as he who confesses.
In the Wake a mysterious letter, purporting to reveal the guilt ofHCE, is a version
and one of the prime constituents of the Wake itself: the Wake a "NIGHTLETTER" (FW308. 16) and the mysterious "The letter! The Litter! . . . Borrowing a word and beggingthequestion"(FW93. 22-24). TheLetter(inandastheWake)ortheletters(of the alphabet, of the letter, of the Wake) is picked out of a midden heap by a hen, latter
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? transformed into the king of birds as Queen, "Jenny Wren: pick, peck" (Wren, the queen ofbirds; FW278. 12), letters fragmenting the world and then sent through or carried by "Johnny Post: pack, puck", one among many, able to move becomes only a fragment of the world. "All the world's in want and is writing a letters. A letters from a person to a place about a thing. And all the world's on which to be carrying a letters. . . When men want to write a letters. Ten men, ton men, pen men, pun men, wont to rise a ladder. And den men, dun men, fen men, fun men, hen men, hun men wend to raze a leader. Is then any lettersday from many peoples, Dagnasanvitch? (FW278. 16-25).
This list, beginning with "Ten men" is continued a few pages later: "Ten, twent, thirt, see, ex and three icky totchy ones. From solation to solution" [FW284. 16-18; from solitude (It. sola, alone)] to dispersion in a whole. This is how a solution is described: "Imagine the twelve deaferended dumbbawls o f the whowl above-beugled to be the contonuation through regeneration of urutteration of the word in pergross" (FW284. 18- 22).
Earlier the solution to "[t]he all-riddle o f it? " was "[t]hat that is allruddy with us, ahead o f schedule, which already is plan accomplished from and syne" (FW274. 02-05). A riddle o f the enveloping facts is always already known in the way that Dasein is always aheadofitselfthatis,itisdefinedasitslimit,asthoseenvelopingfacts. Thecontinual conception of beginnings (arche and genesis) in the Wake is an attempt to make visible what is already and always the case for us at the point when it became this; such beginnings are temporal moments of simultaneous change and repetition (thus the continual rebeginning). The solution to "solation" (being dispersed into aloneness) is
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? another return to this beginning built (the interpretation constituting the substance o f what this beginning is in the Wake) out of the twelve apostles reacting (from Judaism to Christianity) to the Death and resurrection o f Christ.
These letters and litters from the Hen, a bird or bard, can tell the tale o f idiots in sound and fury, a second best bed a patrimony of always borrowed language pointing forward, too late or too early, but "Toborrow and toburrow and tobarraw! " (FW455. 12-
13). Isthisadescriptionoranenactmentofourinheritanceofwords?
I have met with you, bird, too late, or if not, too worm and early: and with tag for ildiot repeated in his secondmouth language as many of the bigtimer's verbaten wordswhichhecouldbalbly calltomemorythatsamekveldeve,erethehourof the twattering bards in the twitterlitter between Druidia and the Deepsleep Sea . . (FW37. 13-18)
Any "secondmouth language" can offer, "saluting corpses, as a metter o f corse" (FW37. 09-10), measuring (meter) time (a matter o f course) as the loss o f ourselves into dead bodies, "not a little token abock all the same that that was owl the God's clock it was"(FW37. 06-07), "could balbly" (Babal and badly) call to memory that same beginning ofevening,sin,andwoman(Da. kveld,eveningandEve). Whatthismomentwasis always formed into interpretations. God's bigtimer verbatim words o f forbidding (G. verboten) are stammered (L balbus) in the twitterlitter, not yet poetry, between the devil andthedeepsea. Thenonsenseofthesewords"tag"thehumanstancetowardtheworld as idiotic awe, an expression oflight and thanks (Da takfor ilden, thanks for the light). Such thanks can be ironic. Such irony can allow us to speak second mouth words as ours.
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? This "ildiot" (maybe not yet an idiolect), that is our human stance toward god within our languageconstitutesusas"ildiots"(lesserbeingsspeakinganonsensicallanguage). Oris humanity divided here between 'ildiots' and 'kveldeve'? This stammering ("balby") orders the world and our language into permanence: "accompanied by his trusty snoler and his permanent reflection, verbigacious" (FW37. 12-13). "Verbigacious combines verbigeration, the meaningless repetition o f a word or phrase, and L verbi gratia, for instance. 'Verbigeration' creates the form of identity, a universal, a separation of content from form, from within language. This creates the illusion that meaning accompanies form as an extra component, an addition to sound, as perfume can come to stand for 'me': "My perfume o f the pampas, says she (meaning me)" (FW95. 22). This formal post hoc universal as a limit o f "soundsense" is also the particular o f an example, an example o f anyvoice and of being an "ildiot. . in the twitterlitter". What every instance is accompanied by, however, is the entire system of language, or rather the entire system of senseandthepossibilitiesofnonsensemediatedbyvariousinterpretativestances. Oneof
the possibilities o f being human is the continual possibility o f the need for interpretation. Which is not to say that every sentence requires interpretation.
But then again,
Well even should not the framing up of such figments in the evidential order bring the true truth to light as fortuitously as a dim seer's setting of a starchart might (heaven helping it) uncover the nakedness of an unknown body in the fields of blues as forehearingly as the sibspeeches of all manking have foliated (earth seizing them!
) from root of some funner's stotter all the soundest sense to be found
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? immense our special mentalists now holds (securus iudicat orbis terrarum) . . .
(FW96. 26-33)
A stutter can frame speech as a form of possession, the grating of Moses' recitative againstAron'ssinginginSchoenberg'sOpera, orthegratingatanylimitofanyframe that marks the possibility that the world is a figment by showing that we see it through and asfragments. Thisself-reflection,abetrayalofourlimitationsandoftheworld's instability as a world, is like a "dim seer's setting o f a starchart" that uncovers "the nakedness of an unknown body making a starchart to find the world's order. " Contained within parenthesis as if within a world itself (securus iudicat orbis terrarum), the verdict
o f the world is secure. Secured by what? What is the verdict? (Can anything be secured from within parenthesis? can the world be secured from within the world? )
A survey and overview of this world marks the world's purview, its enacting principle, it's limit, scope and purpose as something ordered as "my world". The algebra (binomial) and the geometry (axioms and postulates) o f these "factionables" is incomprehensible and as inexpressible as by gone days and the ways o f god for a "neuralgiabrown", a brain:
ForasurviewoverallthefactionablesseeIrisintheEvenine'sWorld. Binomeans tobecomprendered. Inexcessibleasthybygodways. Theaximones. Andtheir prostalutes. For his neuralgiabrown.
Equal to = aosch.
P. t. l. o. a. t. o. (FW285. 26-286. 03)
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? What does it mean to find Potato and not Plato in these letters? What letters are equal to what word? "Equal to=aosch" is a kind of self-referential paradox. "Equal to" is not equal to anything; if it is understood as '=' which defines a relation not a value; it marks equality it is not itselfa term except in relation to other symbols of relation. If 'equal to' is mentioned in quotation marks it can gain a categorical meaning (with all terms of relation) or generic meaning (with all symbols). The claim here, however, is that equal to is equivalent to an anagram ofchaos (to the anagram itselfor to the 'meaning' as chaos? ). And therefore Plato is a potato. Although this interpretation can seem reasonable(l), especially to a new world Aristotelian, what does it mean? How do we apply this identity?
The following is an identification of an identification of missing what had counted to'one'onceinageneralfailuretocountoneselfasoneselfexceptinthismistake: "the aphasia o f that heroic agony o f recalling a once loved number leading slip by slipper to a general amnesia o f misnomering one's own" (FW122. 04-05). This is called "the vocative lapse from which it begins and the accusative hole in which it ends itself'(FW122. 03-04) This lapse, the failure to address anyone (beginning the Wake in midsentence--"rivemm, past Eve and Adam's") is a loss of identity (in sleep or nonsense or forgetfulness or sin or sense or order) marked by the loss of any beloved (are we attached to the world through suchattachments? ): "theaphasiaofthatheroicagonyofrecallingaoncelovednumber leading slip by slipper to a general amnesia of misnomering one's own" (FW122. 04-06). The loss o f love (Eliot's hyacinth girl) and the agony o f recall, not only o f the beloved but
of loving, is a forgetfulness of who anyone is. Language, just as dreams, is a reminder of that agony, "the cruciform postscript" (FW122. 20) The revision of this script is both our
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? forgetting ourselves and the kisses of others into "the life he is to die into . . . lost himself or himselfsome somnione sciupiones" (FW293. 04-07). The possibility ofothers is the possibility of love. The failure to address oneselfas oneselfor one's language to others is what I have called the failed intentionality ofthe Wake. This kind oflanguage is marked on the other end by "the accusative hole which it ends itself', that is the objects which are the things themselves, the things that are never themselves words, and within the inverted cnat language' seem absences instead o f presences.
The analogies describing the relation between mind and world, between text and mind, text and world (wax, mirror, lamp, harp, container, etc. ) have been reduced here into a special kind of the self-reflexive nonsense language asking "It was life but was it fair? It was free but was it art? " (FW94. 09-10) and expecting continually failing
justifications for asking these questions that cannot be answered. This might seem (in many ways correctly) that the analogies o f mind and aesthetics have been replaced by an interpretive stance, but it is not clear that interpretation is always called for. If interpretation cannot claim any particular truth value and is not itself as Wittgenstein suggests, adequate for meaning, it's failure will not count as an adequate stance between mind and world and art.
Do we experience language such that we can experience this between "mind, world" and language as the between of night or nonsense? This following is some evidence for this: "Everyletter is a godsend, ardent Ares . . . To me or not to me. Satis thy quest on" (FW269. 17-20). The Wake is sent to god or from god or to me or not to me. The resistance to "mind, world" metaphors is what Joyce calls "holding tight to that
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? prestatuteinourcharter''(FW117. 34-35). Thisholdingtighttothe'discamate',"your disunited kingdom on the vacuum o f your own most intensely doubtful soul"(FW188. 16- 17) "may have our irremovable doubts as to the whole sense o f the lot, the interpretation
o f any phrase in the whole, the meaning o f every word o f a phrase so far deciphered out o f it. . . "(FW117. 35-118. 02). TheWakecontinuallydisplaysKierkegaard'sclaimthat"there is a difference between writing on a blank sheet o f paper and bringing to light by the application o f a caustic fluid a text which is hidden under another text", but with the difference that there is not any Christian truth underlying any surface of the world or mind {PointofView,40). Iholdoff,therefore,inofferinganytheoryofidentitythatwould explain how "Equal to=aosch" because this does not describe an identity, but a limit between a description ("equal to"), mathematical symbolism (=), a riddle ("aosch"), a self- expression ("aosch"=chaos). This is a limit because "Equal to=aosch" not only does not have a meaning, it cannot have any meaning outside o f an allegory that some reader will construct. Itis,however,notsenselessasadescriptionofalimit. Thuswecanreadthe Wake, to the degree that it is made up ofthis kind ofnonsense, as the self-description and enactment o f shifting limits. But what kind o f limits? limits o f what? As I suggested in the previous chapter one such limit is the vanishing intentionality that marks a limit between our inexistence as something meaningful within language and our ability to invest
ourselves as ourselves through and as language. But this is to say the words 'our', 'ourselves', 'though', 'as', 'within', and 'meaning' all function as limits, as meaningless except as transparent markers of an interpretive position within language games or under theological pressure: reading language as a descriptions of the limits that make our being
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? human being human. This is not another kind o f language, but a way reading language as a non-language, or again as Joyce calls it "nat language".
How do you figure language within language iflanguage is all on the same logical level? As nonsense (as dead signs or code), as animate; thus the questions what is language or sense become questions about nonsense and about how, what and why anything,leastofallourselves,isorcanbeanimate. Sentencesorphrasesorlinesbecome "[t]hese ruled barriers along which the traced words, run, march, halt, walk, stumble at doubtful points, stumble up again in comparative safety seem to have been drawn first of allinaprettycheckerwithlamp-blackandblackthorn"(114. 07-11). TheWake,likeThe Book ofKells, seems written with a black ink that "is lamp black, or possibly fish-bone black. "2 Joyce describes the Wake by describing a monkish monument o f Irish culture, and uses this description, with others, as the substance ofthe Wake. The substance of this theological language, however, is their movement emerging out o f domesticity, not read or written but "drawn," for any sensitive person, "first of all in a pretty checker with lamp- black and blackthorn. "
The movement o f words can be characterized in relation to the "comparative safety" of ordinary usage:
It is seriously believed by some that the intention may have been geodetic, or, in theviewofthecannier,domesticeconomical. Butbywritingthithawaysendto end and turning, turning and end to end hithaways writing and with lines of litters slittering up and louds of latters slettering down, the old semetomyplace and
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? jupetbackagain from tham Let Rise till Hum Lit. Sleep, where in the waste is the wisdom? (114. 13-20)
The "intention," one way ofofferingjustification (but ofwhat? ), could be geodetic, that is determinedby surveying(butofwhat? );oraneven"cannier"viewwouldbethat "intention may have been. . . domestic economical," L. domesticus or G. oikonomikos, pertaining to the household. These two possibilities (surveying and the domestic) describe the two aspects o f Wittgenstein's philosophy: surveying ourselves, the world and our language (what Kenny called providing "a clear view of the world" and Wittgenstein in his preface called "sketches of the landscape") and a return to ordinary language (the disappearanceoftheproblemsofphilosophyinordinarylanguage). Intherealmofthe ordinary, the translation between Latin and Greek is possible. The world o f sleep is also ordinary, but this thithaways and hithaways (losing control o f the tongue, the "latters slettering down", no one going up and no ladder to throw away since it has already dissolved) requires asking what would be an adequate survey or sketch o f what ordinary world? , limited how? seen as what? , threatened always by the interpretive distortions that allow for the blessing of one among any three brothers (Shem, Japhet, and Ham). The confusion o f interpretation for truth, the replacability o f people and words and commitments under this confusion, is the problem o f Hamlet ("tham Let" and "Hum Lit. )
written into the Wake. This is a tragedy accompanying our inheritance o f language, or maybeofpronounswhere"Semetomyplaceandjupetbackagain". Joyceisconstructing the place of my signs (Gr. <rr||ia), or the sign of me, or the place marked or having a mark set or affixed (Gr. crr|no08To<;) or a cemetery place. Wakean writing seems to place me
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? ("Semetomyplace") within the surveyable world and loop it back again into a history of origins and disinheritance, placing me with and as Japhet, the 'non-Semitic' son o f Noah, Jupiter from "tham Let", Hamlet, and Ham, the rejected son o f Noah.
If we read this again, the old Greek signs and the Latin imitations, from them that rise, or from Let Rise (a name, a description and a marker, like "ildiot") until Human Literature Sleeps, ask the question "where in the waste is wisdom? " This is a description of how to read: the unity of Greek and Latin in the text (as an example of the language of the Wake) does not communicate, but asks forjustification. And this request is understood as ordinary, as ordinary as waste is and is our desire for wisdom. If 'let rise' both can mean 'arise' and function as the name 'Let Rise', then the confusion o f verb for name (as in "In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was God") is the way in whichonecanenterorbenamedbylanguage. Consequently,"whereinthewasteis wisdom? " describes a stance toward ourselves, the world and our language that analogizes the relation between mind and world, by placing our humanity at risk by placing our constructions and our world as a world against us.
This is the effect ofJoyce's lists, to place the world enumerated against us and in this offer targets for sense and identification. But once an identification is made, as a result of an interpretation ('"alphybetty verbage' is a version of the Wake, or "am I a whirling dervish? " or "can the world be built outside of logic or as a list of predicates without any subject[s]? '), the meaning remains unclear. No interpretation is ever adequate because interpretation cannot determine meaning. Is the meaning ofFinnegans Wake the following list?
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? My wud! The warped flooring ofthe lair and soundconducting walls thereof. . . were persianly literatured with burst loveletters, telltale stories,. . . doubtful eggshells,. . . alphybettyformed verbage, vivlical viasses, ompiter dictas, visus umbique, ahems and ahahs, imeffible tries as speech unasyllabled, you owe mes, eyoldhyms, fluefoul smul, fallen lucifers,. . . counterfeit franks, best intentions,. . . gloss teeth for a tooth,. . . inversions of all this chambermade music one stands, given a grain of goodwill, a fair chance of actually seeing the whirling dervish, Tumult, son o f Thunder, self exiled in upon his ego, a nightlong a shaking betwixtween white or reddr hawrors, noondayterrorised to skin and bone by an I neluctable phantom . . . writing the mystery o f himself in furniture. (FW183. 08- 184. 10)
Furniture and language both constitute the world as limits to myself. This limit is enacted by or as matter, what Berkeley called "the furniture of earth". What is "the mystery of himself'? He writes while sitting in furniture as a piece of furniture determined and defined by materiality. This "mystery o f himself in furniture" becomes at the end o f the Wake, when the sleeper is awakening, the "fumit o f heupanepi world" (FW611. 18). c[F]umit' containsfait (L. as it was) andfarm s (L. oven, fireplace), and can be read as 'bum it'. "[F]umit' can be translated as 'as it as bums and is a furnace. " This burning is stabilized as a thing when "fumit" puns "the furniture of earth. " Consequently, the being andstabilityofthepastcondensedintofurniturecontainsHeracletianflux. "[H]eupanepi' consistsoftheGreekeu(good),pan(all),andepi(upon). Thus"fumitofheupanepi world" can be translated as 'the furniture o f the flux o f the good upon all the world bums
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? into a furnace. ' (So that's what it means to confuse the mind and the world! ) As the sleeper awakens into consciousness at the end of the Wake, under the sun and in rising color, "that part of it (fumit of heupanepi world) had shown itself.
