Shaun is revealed as the Gargantuan
representative
of the last and uttermost implications of HCE.
A-Skeleton-Key-to-Finnegans-Wake
) The Battle Polarity of his Sons, (?
?
) That Cursed Shem.
Question ? ? is answered by a ponderous Professor Jones, who discusses at great length the history and metaphysics of the brother conflict and demonstrates the relationship of the Shem-Shaun-Iseult triangle to HCE- ALP. To aid those unable to follow his complex thesis he supplies the par- able of "The Mookse and The Gripes" (pp. ? ? ? -? ? ), wherein the conquest of Ireland by Henry II with the encouragement of Pope Adrian IV is presented as an Alice-in-Wonderland fable translated from the Javanese. ? Professor Jones is of the Shaun type and his speech is an apologia pro vita sua.
Chapter ? : Shem the Penman (pp. ? ? ? -? ? )
The low character, self-exile, filthy dwelling, vicissitudes, and corrosive writings of the other son of HCE comprise the subject matter of this chap- ter. This is a thinly veiled burlesque of Joyce's own life as an artist. It is a short chapter, highly amusing and comparatively easy to read.
Chapter ? : The Washers at the Ford (pp. ? ? ? -? ? ? )
Two washerwomen rinsing clothes on opposite banks of River Liffey gos- sip about the lives of HCE and ALP. Every garment reminds them of a story, which they recount with pity, tenderness, and ironic brutality. The principal tale is of ALP at her children's ball, where she diverts attention from the scandal of the father by distributing to each a token of his own destiny. The mind is thus led forward from recollections of the parents to
? the rising generation of sons and daughters. As the stream widens and twi- light descends, the washerwomen lose touch with each other; they wish to hear of the children, Shem and Shaun; night falls and they metamorphose gradually into an elmtree and a stone; the river babbles on.
Book II: The Book of the Sons
Chapter ? : The Children's Hour (pp. ? ? ? -? ? )
The children of the taverner play in the evening before the tavern. Shem and Shaun, under the names of Glugg and Chuff, battle for the approval of the girls. Glugg (Shem) loses out, and retreats with a rancorous threat to write a revenging Jeremiad. The children are summoned home to supper and to bed. Again playing before sleep, they are finally silenced by the thunderous noise of their father slamming a door.
Chapter ? : The Study Period--Triv and Quad (pp. ? ? ? -? ? ? )
Dolph (Shem), Kev (Shaun), and their sister are at their lessons. Their little tasks open out upon the whole world of human learning: Kabbalistic Theology, Viconian Philosophy, the seven liberal arts of the Trivium and Quadrivium, with a brief recess for letter-writing and belle-lettristics. The mind is guided by gradual stages from the dim mysteries of cosmogony down to Chapelizod and the tavern of HCE (pp. ? ? ? -? ? ).
While the little girl broods on love, Dolph assists Kev with a geometry problem, revealing to him through circles and triangles the mother secrets of ALP. Kev indignantly strikes him down; Dolph recovers and forgives (pp. ? ? ? -? ? ? ).
The chapter concludes with a final examination and commencement. The children are ready to create their New World, which will feed upon the Old (pp. ? ? ? -? ).
Chapter ? : Tavernry in Feast (pp. ? ? ? -? ? )
This chapter, nearly one-sixth of Finnegans Wake in bulk, is ostensibly a great feast held in the tavern of HCE. Yarns go round and the radio and television break in constantly. We overhear the tavern customers telling the fabulous histories of a Flying Dutchman sea-rover whom we come to
? ? * [[Question (? ) may also be about the complex Universe itself. --ELE]]
? [[Or from Greek; "Javan" was the ancestor of the Ionic Greeks in the Bible (Genesis ? ? :? ,
? ). --ELE]]
? ? A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake ? ? Synopsis and Demonstration ? ?
? suspect is HCE in an earlier phase. The whole story of HCE's presence in the town, and of his misadventure in the Park, is being rehearsed under cover of the Flying Dutchman yarn (pp. ? ? ? -? ? ).
As the drinks and stories go round, we reach the midpoint of Finnegans Wake with an installment of the television skit of "Butt and Taff. " These vaudeville characters rehearse the story of how one Buckley shot a Russian General at the Battle of Sevastopol in the Crimean War. Amidst echoes of "The Charge of the Light Brigade" the figure of the Russian General ap- pears on the television screen; he is the living image of HCE (pp. ? ? ? -? ? ).
When the radio and television are shut off the entire company sides with Buckley. But the tavernkeeper arises to the support of the Russian General. The company agrees in a powerful condemnation of their host who, it appears, is running for public office. It is nearly closing time. From afar come sounds of an approaching mob, singing a ballad celebrating the guilt and overthrow of HCE. Feeling that he has been rejected by his people whom he came to rule, the tavernkeeper clears his place and is at last alone. In desperation he laps up the dregs of all the glasses and bottles, and collapses drunkenly on the floor. He now beholds, as a dream, the vi- sion of the next chapter (pp. ? ? ? -? ? ).
Chapter ? : Bride-Ship and Gulls (pp. ? ? ? -? ? )
HCE, dreaming on the floor, sees himself as King Mark, cuckolded by young Tristram, who sails away with Iseult. The honeymoon boat is cir- cled by gulls, i. e. , the Four Old Men, who regard the vivid event from their four directions. HCE, broken and exhausted, is no better now than they.
Book III: The Book of the People
Chapter ? : Shaun before the People (pp. ? ? ? -? ? )
HCE has gathered himself up to bed with his wife. His dream vision of the future unfolds. Shaun the Post is seen to stand before the people recom- mending himself to their votes, and abusing his rival, Shem. To illustrate the brother contrast Shaun recounts the Aesopian fable of "The Ondt and the Gracehoper" (pp. ? ? ? -? ? ). His principal point against Shem is that his language is beyond the pale of human propriety. The vision fades and a keen is lifted for the departed hero.
? Chapter ? : Jaun before St. Bride's (pp. ? ? ? -? ? )
Shaun, now called Jaun (Don Juan), appears before the little girls of St. Bride's Academy, Iseult and her twenty-eight playmates. To them he de- livers a long farewell sermon, shrewdly prudential and practical, cynical and sentimental, and prurient. He is about to depart on a great mission.
Jaun is an imperial-salesman parodist of the Christ of the Last Supper, leaving advice to the little people of his Church. He introduces Shem, his brother, the Paraclete who will serve his bride while he is gone. Sped with pretty litanies, he departs--celebrated Misdeliverer of the Word.
Chapter ? : Yawn under Inquest (pp. ? ? ? -? ? ? )
Shaun (now Yawn) lies sprawled atop a ridge in the center of Ireland. The Four Old Men and their Ass arrive to hold an inquest. Ruthlessly they question the prostrate hulk, and it gradually disintegrates. Voices break from it, out of deeper and deeper stratifications.
Shaun is revealed as the Gargantuan representative of the last and uttermost implications of HCE.
As the examination proceeds, it becomes more than the four old in- vestigators can handle. The complaints of raped India and Ireland, the garbled reports of self-contradictory witnesses and juries, wild, fragmentary outcries of subliminal voices long forgotten, the primeval scene of Finnegans Wake itself, come forth from the expiring titan. A group of young Brain Trusters takes over, to press the inquest to conclusion. Their sheafs of questionnaires quickly co-ordinate the evidence. They summon Kate, the widow of earliest times, and finally evoke the father presence himself. The voice of HCE pours forth in a vastly welling, all-subsuming tide, and the entire scene is dissolved in the primordial substance of HCE.
Chapter ? : HCE and ALP--Their Bed of Trial (pp. ? ? ? -? ? )
The Four Old Inquisitors now are sitting around the parental bed. They are the posts of the four-poster. The long night is yielding to dawn; the dream figments are dissolving back into the furnishings of the room. Everybody is asleep. A little cry is heard from Jerry (Shem) who has been having a nasty dream (pp. ? ? ? -? ? ).
The anxious mother leaps from bed, seizes the lamp, and, followed by her husband, hastens upstairs to the child's room. Child comforted,
? ? A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake ? ? Synopsis and Demonstration ? ?
? mother and father return downstairs to bed (pp. ? ? ? -? ? ). Their shadows on the windowblind flash far and wide the copulation of HCE and ALP. The cock crows; it is dawn (pp. ? ? ? -? ? ). The male and female relax for an early-morning nap.
Book IV: RICORSO
Angelic voices herald the day. The sleeper has rolled over; a beam of light troubles the back of his neck. The world awaits the shining hero of the new days (pp. ? ? ? -? ? ? ).
Issuant from the lake of night and celebrated by girly voices, arises the form of innocent St. Kevin. The idyllic moment is suggestive of Ireland's lovely Christian dawn of the fifth century (pp. ? ? ? -? ).
Day is gaining. The sleepers are passing from sleep. The ambiguities of night will soon be dispelled (pp. ? ? ? -? ).
The moment of the triumph of wakefulness over deep mythological dream is represented as the arrival of St. Patrick (ca. a. d. ? ? ? ) and his refu- tation of mystical Druidism. All thereafter moves toward enlightenment. Yet things are not essentially changed, only refreshed (pp. ? ? ? -? ? ).
The morning paper and ALP's letter in the mail will tell you all the news of the night just past (pp. ? ? ? -? ? ).
The woman, during the morning sleep, has felt her husband turn away from her. Time has passed them both; their hopes are now in their chil- dren. HCE is the broken shell of Humpty Dumpty, ALP the life-soiled last race of the river as it passes back to sea. The mighty sweep of her longing for release from the pressing shores and for reunion with the boundless ocean swells into a magnificent monologue (pp. ? ? ? -? ? ). Anna Liffey re- turns to the vast triton-father; at which moment the eyes open, the dream breaks, and the cycle is ready to start anew.
Demonstration
The First Four Paragraphs of Finnegans Wake
The first page and a half of Finnegans Wake hold in suspension the seed energies of all the characters and plot motifs of the book. Here the Joycean volcano in full eruption vomits forth raw lumps of energy-containing lava, a mythogenetic river still aflame as it floods across the page. The first
? impression is one of chaos, unrelieved by any landmark of meaning or recognition. Unless James Joyce could be trusted as a wielder of the most disciplined logic known to modern letters, there would be little hope that these hurtling igneous blocks would eventually respond to the solvent of analysis. The fact is, however, that these opening paragraphs are choked with nutrient materials of sense and sustenance. The themes here darkly announced are developed later with such organic inevitability that the reader, having finished the book, gazes back with amazement at the prophetic con- tent and germinal energy of the first page.
The first four paragraphs of Finnegans Wake remotely suggest the first verses of the Book of Genesis. On a darkened stage, and against a cosmic backdrop, terrestrial scenes and characters begin to emerge in a drama of creation. The landscape itself gropes its way into action, and in the primeval dawn we dimly descry a river and a mountain.
riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.
Appropriately, the first word of Finnegans Wake is "riverrun. " Opening with a small letter, it starts the book in the middle of a sentence. "Riverrun," however, is not a beginning, but a continuation--a continua- tion among other things of the ecstatic, swiftly slipping, and abruptly in- terrupted sentence with which the volume ends. For the book is composed in a circle; the last word flows into the first, Omega merges into Alpha, and the rosary of history begins all over again.
"Riverrun" is more than a clue to the circling plan of Finnegans Wake; it characterizes the essence of the book itself. For in this work, both space and time are fluid; meanings, characters, and vocabulary deliquesce in con- stant fluxion. The hero is everywhere: in the elm that shades the salmon pool, in the shadow that falls upon the stream, in the salmon beneath the ripples, in the sunlight on the ripples, in the sun itself. Three men looking at you through one pair of eyes are not men at all, but a clump of shrubs; not shrubs either, but your own conscience; and finally, not your private conscience, but an incubus of the universal nightmare from which the sub- lime dreamer of cosmic history will awaken, only to dream once more.
Alive to the depthless metaphor in which we are moving, let us begin
? ? A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake ? ? Synopsis and Demonstration ? ?
? by bringing into focus the composition of place indicated in the first sen- tence of Finnegans Wake. Specifically, "riverrun" refers to Dublin's River Liffey, flowing past a Franciscan church called by Dubliners "Adam and Eve's," which is situated on its banks. As Adam and Eve stand at the be- ginning of human history, so they stand at the beginning of our book, sug- gesting Eden, sexual polarity, the fall of man, and the promise of redemption. "Riverrun" suggests, too, the river of time, on which these world events are borne.
from swerve of shore to bend of bay . . .
We follow the topography of the Irish shoreline from the mouth of River Liffey northward to a deep bend where the waters of Dublin Bay pound the Hill of Howth. The swerve of shore is the coy gesture of the pretty isle herself which invites the assault of the bay waters, thus hinting at a Seduction theme which will later emerge full of import. Again, the waters of Dublin Bay continually pounding the Head of Howth represent, on an elemental level, the perennial invaders of Ireland continually pum- meling the head of the defender.
brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation. . .
Joyce here announces in the word "recirculation" the Viconian ricorso theme, the metaphysical pivot on which the Finnegan cycle turns. The cunning key word, "vicus," means street or highway, but is at the same time the Latin form of the Italian Vico. "Commodius" sweeps the mind back to the Rome which showed its first severe symptoms of decay in the time of the emperor Commodus. It also suggests the broad and easy path that leads our present civilization to destruction. [[It may also suggest Dante's Commedia. --ELE]]
back to Howth Castle and Environs . . .
The Dublin landmark (note the initials HCE peeping through the name) is a high headland crowned by a castle and guarding Dublin Bay. It is popularly regarded as the cranium of a recumbent giant whose belly is the city of Dublin and whose feet turn up amidst the hillocks of Phoenix Park. If the River Liffey is the heroine, this sleeping landscape giant is the hero. Historical associations crowd around his recumbent form. On this headland the sentinels of Finn MacCool stood guard against invaders
? from the sea. Centuries later, when the Anglo-Norman king Henry II sub- jugated the island, the present castle was founded by one of the invading company, Sir Almeric Tristram. That was in the century of the flowering of the Arthurian romances, with which are inseparably woven the names of Tristram and Iseult.
So now we read:
Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passencore re- arrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war . . .
The basic sense is this: Sir Tristram, musician of love, from across Saint George's Channel,* had not yet rearrived? from North Brittany, which is on Ireland's side of rugged Europe,? to wage again his war. The war is des- ignated "penisolate," which suggests "late, or recent war of the penis," a designation not inappropriate to the gest of a Tristram. But the word may also be read "pen-isolate," whereupon it suggests a war waged with the pen, not by a robust extrovert, but by an isolated, introverted man of letters. The Tristram figure will later split into such antipodal characters, giving battle to each other. Finally, if we read "Peninsular War," we shall be re- minded of the Anglo-Irish Dubliner, Arthur Wellesley, first duke of Wellington, who in the Peninsular War waged his first great battles against Napoleon.
With this sounding of the Tristram motif of guilty love, Joyce boldly strikes some of the major chords of Finnegans Wake. The legend of Tristram and the two Iseults is well known; its mold fits perfectly over HCE. He has a bewitching daughter whom he compares to the second Iseult, her of Brittany, whereas his wife in some of her transformations is identical with Iseult of Ireland. Torn between the two, the man is tempted and destroyed by the representatives of the younger, but he is gathered up
? ? * Tristram first arrived in Ireland by coracle from Cornwall, over the same sea crossed by the historical Sir Almeric Tristram, founder of Howth Castle.
? Note the curious implication of "rearrived. " Joyce intends to indicate that in the courses of the Viconian cycle all has happened before and is on the point of happening again.
? North Armorica is North Brittany, the scene of the love-death of Tristram and Iseult of Ireland. It was the scene also of Tristram's morbid, unconsummated marriage with the second and younger Iseult, Iseult of Brittany.
? ? A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake ? ? Synopsis and Demonstration ? ?
? and his wounds are healed by the older, whom he never ceases to cherish. This conflict which drives a wedge into HCE's heart is a manifestation of the ambiguous guilt-neurosis that has troubled men of the western world since the medieval innovation of romantic love.
The double note of love and war is to become the pervasive theme of Finnegans Wake: key changes and modulations will break the simple state- ments into baffling congeries of dissonance and harmony. Ambiguous the love--ambiguous too will be the war, continually outcropping in the struggles between Shem and Shaun and their shadow extensions Butt and Taff, Mutt and Jute, the historical figures of Wellington and Napoleon, Caesar and Brutus, Sigtrygg and Brian Boru, and those curiously inchoate personages, Buckley and the Russian General. Under many appearances, love and war are the constant life expressions of that polarized energy which propels the universal round.
"North Armorica" suggests North America. The phrase following de- velops this evocation of the New World Beyond the Sea, to which those Irish fled who took refuge from the English plunderer, and where many a canny Irishman has won money and prestige:
nor had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated them- selse to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time . .
Question ? ? is answered by a ponderous Professor Jones, who discusses at great length the history and metaphysics of the brother conflict and demonstrates the relationship of the Shem-Shaun-Iseult triangle to HCE- ALP. To aid those unable to follow his complex thesis he supplies the par- able of "The Mookse and The Gripes" (pp. ? ? ? -? ? ), wherein the conquest of Ireland by Henry II with the encouragement of Pope Adrian IV is presented as an Alice-in-Wonderland fable translated from the Javanese. ? Professor Jones is of the Shaun type and his speech is an apologia pro vita sua.
Chapter ? : Shem the Penman (pp. ? ? ? -? ? )
The low character, self-exile, filthy dwelling, vicissitudes, and corrosive writings of the other son of HCE comprise the subject matter of this chap- ter. This is a thinly veiled burlesque of Joyce's own life as an artist. It is a short chapter, highly amusing and comparatively easy to read.
Chapter ? : The Washers at the Ford (pp. ? ? ? -? ? ? )
Two washerwomen rinsing clothes on opposite banks of River Liffey gos- sip about the lives of HCE and ALP. Every garment reminds them of a story, which they recount with pity, tenderness, and ironic brutality. The principal tale is of ALP at her children's ball, where she diverts attention from the scandal of the father by distributing to each a token of his own destiny. The mind is thus led forward from recollections of the parents to
? the rising generation of sons and daughters. As the stream widens and twi- light descends, the washerwomen lose touch with each other; they wish to hear of the children, Shem and Shaun; night falls and they metamorphose gradually into an elmtree and a stone; the river babbles on.
Book II: The Book of the Sons
Chapter ? : The Children's Hour (pp. ? ? ? -? ? )
The children of the taverner play in the evening before the tavern. Shem and Shaun, under the names of Glugg and Chuff, battle for the approval of the girls. Glugg (Shem) loses out, and retreats with a rancorous threat to write a revenging Jeremiad. The children are summoned home to supper and to bed. Again playing before sleep, they are finally silenced by the thunderous noise of their father slamming a door.
Chapter ? : The Study Period--Triv and Quad (pp. ? ? ? -? ? ? )
Dolph (Shem), Kev (Shaun), and their sister are at their lessons. Their little tasks open out upon the whole world of human learning: Kabbalistic Theology, Viconian Philosophy, the seven liberal arts of the Trivium and Quadrivium, with a brief recess for letter-writing and belle-lettristics. The mind is guided by gradual stages from the dim mysteries of cosmogony down to Chapelizod and the tavern of HCE (pp. ? ? ? -? ? ).
While the little girl broods on love, Dolph assists Kev with a geometry problem, revealing to him through circles and triangles the mother secrets of ALP. Kev indignantly strikes him down; Dolph recovers and forgives (pp. ? ? ? -? ? ? ).
The chapter concludes with a final examination and commencement. The children are ready to create their New World, which will feed upon the Old (pp. ? ? ? -? ).
Chapter ? : Tavernry in Feast (pp. ? ? ? -? ? )
This chapter, nearly one-sixth of Finnegans Wake in bulk, is ostensibly a great feast held in the tavern of HCE. Yarns go round and the radio and television break in constantly. We overhear the tavern customers telling the fabulous histories of a Flying Dutchman sea-rover whom we come to
? ? * [[Question (? ) may also be about the complex Universe itself. --ELE]]
? [[Or from Greek; "Javan" was the ancestor of the Ionic Greeks in the Bible (Genesis ? ? :? ,
? ). --ELE]]
? ? A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake ? ? Synopsis and Demonstration ? ?
? suspect is HCE in an earlier phase. The whole story of HCE's presence in the town, and of his misadventure in the Park, is being rehearsed under cover of the Flying Dutchman yarn (pp. ? ? ? -? ? ).
As the drinks and stories go round, we reach the midpoint of Finnegans Wake with an installment of the television skit of "Butt and Taff. " These vaudeville characters rehearse the story of how one Buckley shot a Russian General at the Battle of Sevastopol in the Crimean War. Amidst echoes of "The Charge of the Light Brigade" the figure of the Russian General ap- pears on the television screen; he is the living image of HCE (pp. ? ? ? -? ? ).
When the radio and television are shut off the entire company sides with Buckley. But the tavernkeeper arises to the support of the Russian General. The company agrees in a powerful condemnation of their host who, it appears, is running for public office. It is nearly closing time. From afar come sounds of an approaching mob, singing a ballad celebrating the guilt and overthrow of HCE. Feeling that he has been rejected by his people whom he came to rule, the tavernkeeper clears his place and is at last alone. In desperation he laps up the dregs of all the glasses and bottles, and collapses drunkenly on the floor. He now beholds, as a dream, the vi- sion of the next chapter (pp. ? ? ? -? ? ).
Chapter ? : Bride-Ship and Gulls (pp. ? ? ? -? ? )
HCE, dreaming on the floor, sees himself as King Mark, cuckolded by young Tristram, who sails away with Iseult. The honeymoon boat is cir- cled by gulls, i. e. , the Four Old Men, who regard the vivid event from their four directions. HCE, broken and exhausted, is no better now than they.
Book III: The Book of the People
Chapter ? : Shaun before the People (pp. ? ? ? -? ? )
HCE has gathered himself up to bed with his wife. His dream vision of the future unfolds. Shaun the Post is seen to stand before the people recom- mending himself to their votes, and abusing his rival, Shem. To illustrate the brother contrast Shaun recounts the Aesopian fable of "The Ondt and the Gracehoper" (pp. ? ? ? -? ? ). His principal point against Shem is that his language is beyond the pale of human propriety. The vision fades and a keen is lifted for the departed hero.
? Chapter ? : Jaun before St. Bride's (pp. ? ? ? -? ? )
Shaun, now called Jaun (Don Juan), appears before the little girls of St. Bride's Academy, Iseult and her twenty-eight playmates. To them he de- livers a long farewell sermon, shrewdly prudential and practical, cynical and sentimental, and prurient. He is about to depart on a great mission.
Jaun is an imperial-salesman parodist of the Christ of the Last Supper, leaving advice to the little people of his Church. He introduces Shem, his brother, the Paraclete who will serve his bride while he is gone. Sped with pretty litanies, he departs--celebrated Misdeliverer of the Word.
Chapter ? : Yawn under Inquest (pp. ? ? ? -? ? ? )
Shaun (now Yawn) lies sprawled atop a ridge in the center of Ireland. The Four Old Men and their Ass arrive to hold an inquest. Ruthlessly they question the prostrate hulk, and it gradually disintegrates. Voices break from it, out of deeper and deeper stratifications.
Shaun is revealed as the Gargantuan representative of the last and uttermost implications of HCE.
As the examination proceeds, it becomes more than the four old in- vestigators can handle. The complaints of raped India and Ireland, the garbled reports of self-contradictory witnesses and juries, wild, fragmentary outcries of subliminal voices long forgotten, the primeval scene of Finnegans Wake itself, come forth from the expiring titan. A group of young Brain Trusters takes over, to press the inquest to conclusion. Their sheafs of questionnaires quickly co-ordinate the evidence. They summon Kate, the widow of earliest times, and finally evoke the father presence himself. The voice of HCE pours forth in a vastly welling, all-subsuming tide, and the entire scene is dissolved in the primordial substance of HCE.
Chapter ? : HCE and ALP--Their Bed of Trial (pp. ? ? ? -? ? )
The Four Old Inquisitors now are sitting around the parental bed. They are the posts of the four-poster. The long night is yielding to dawn; the dream figments are dissolving back into the furnishings of the room. Everybody is asleep. A little cry is heard from Jerry (Shem) who has been having a nasty dream (pp. ? ? ? -? ? ).
The anxious mother leaps from bed, seizes the lamp, and, followed by her husband, hastens upstairs to the child's room. Child comforted,
? ? A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake ? ? Synopsis and Demonstration ? ?
? mother and father return downstairs to bed (pp. ? ? ? -? ? ). Their shadows on the windowblind flash far and wide the copulation of HCE and ALP. The cock crows; it is dawn (pp. ? ? ? -? ? ). The male and female relax for an early-morning nap.
Book IV: RICORSO
Angelic voices herald the day. The sleeper has rolled over; a beam of light troubles the back of his neck. The world awaits the shining hero of the new days (pp. ? ? ? -? ? ? ).
Issuant from the lake of night and celebrated by girly voices, arises the form of innocent St. Kevin. The idyllic moment is suggestive of Ireland's lovely Christian dawn of the fifth century (pp. ? ? ? -? ).
Day is gaining. The sleepers are passing from sleep. The ambiguities of night will soon be dispelled (pp. ? ? ? -? ).
The moment of the triumph of wakefulness over deep mythological dream is represented as the arrival of St. Patrick (ca. a. d. ? ? ? ) and his refu- tation of mystical Druidism. All thereafter moves toward enlightenment. Yet things are not essentially changed, only refreshed (pp. ? ? ? -? ? ).
The morning paper and ALP's letter in the mail will tell you all the news of the night just past (pp. ? ? ? -? ? ).
The woman, during the morning sleep, has felt her husband turn away from her. Time has passed them both; their hopes are now in their chil- dren. HCE is the broken shell of Humpty Dumpty, ALP the life-soiled last race of the river as it passes back to sea. The mighty sweep of her longing for release from the pressing shores and for reunion with the boundless ocean swells into a magnificent monologue (pp. ? ? ? -? ? ). Anna Liffey re- turns to the vast triton-father; at which moment the eyes open, the dream breaks, and the cycle is ready to start anew.
Demonstration
The First Four Paragraphs of Finnegans Wake
The first page and a half of Finnegans Wake hold in suspension the seed energies of all the characters and plot motifs of the book. Here the Joycean volcano in full eruption vomits forth raw lumps of energy-containing lava, a mythogenetic river still aflame as it floods across the page. The first
? impression is one of chaos, unrelieved by any landmark of meaning or recognition. Unless James Joyce could be trusted as a wielder of the most disciplined logic known to modern letters, there would be little hope that these hurtling igneous blocks would eventually respond to the solvent of analysis. The fact is, however, that these opening paragraphs are choked with nutrient materials of sense and sustenance. The themes here darkly announced are developed later with such organic inevitability that the reader, having finished the book, gazes back with amazement at the prophetic con- tent and germinal energy of the first page.
The first four paragraphs of Finnegans Wake remotely suggest the first verses of the Book of Genesis. On a darkened stage, and against a cosmic backdrop, terrestrial scenes and characters begin to emerge in a drama of creation. The landscape itself gropes its way into action, and in the primeval dawn we dimly descry a river and a mountain.
riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.
Appropriately, the first word of Finnegans Wake is "riverrun. " Opening with a small letter, it starts the book in the middle of a sentence. "Riverrun," however, is not a beginning, but a continuation--a continua- tion among other things of the ecstatic, swiftly slipping, and abruptly in- terrupted sentence with which the volume ends. For the book is composed in a circle; the last word flows into the first, Omega merges into Alpha, and the rosary of history begins all over again.
"Riverrun" is more than a clue to the circling plan of Finnegans Wake; it characterizes the essence of the book itself. For in this work, both space and time are fluid; meanings, characters, and vocabulary deliquesce in con- stant fluxion. The hero is everywhere: in the elm that shades the salmon pool, in the shadow that falls upon the stream, in the salmon beneath the ripples, in the sunlight on the ripples, in the sun itself. Three men looking at you through one pair of eyes are not men at all, but a clump of shrubs; not shrubs either, but your own conscience; and finally, not your private conscience, but an incubus of the universal nightmare from which the sub- lime dreamer of cosmic history will awaken, only to dream once more.
Alive to the depthless metaphor in which we are moving, let us begin
? ? A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake ? ? Synopsis and Demonstration ? ?
? by bringing into focus the composition of place indicated in the first sen- tence of Finnegans Wake. Specifically, "riverrun" refers to Dublin's River Liffey, flowing past a Franciscan church called by Dubliners "Adam and Eve's," which is situated on its banks. As Adam and Eve stand at the be- ginning of human history, so they stand at the beginning of our book, sug- gesting Eden, sexual polarity, the fall of man, and the promise of redemption. "Riverrun" suggests, too, the river of time, on which these world events are borne.
from swerve of shore to bend of bay . . .
We follow the topography of the Irish shoreline from the mouth of River Liffey northward to a deep bend where the waters of Dublin Bay pound the Hill of Howth. The swerve of shore is the coy gesture of the pretty isle herself which invites the assault of the bay waters, thus hinting at a Seduction theme which will later emerge full of import. Again, the waters of Dublin Bay continually pounding the Head of Howth represent, on an elemental level, the perennial invaders of Ireland continually pum- meling the head of the defender.
brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation. . .
Joyce here announces in the word "recirculation" the Viconian ricorso theme, the metaphysical pivot on which the Finnegan cycle turns. The cunning key word, "vicus," means street or highway, but is at the same time the Latin form of the Italian Vico. "Commodius" sweeps the mind back to the Rome which showed its first severe symptoms of decay in the time of the emperor Commodus. It also suggests the broad and easy path that leads our present civilization to destruction. [[It may also suggest Dante's Commedia. --ELE]]
back to Howth Castle and Environs . . .
The Dublin landmark (note the initials HCE peeping through the name) is a high headland crowned by a castle and guarding Dublin Bay. It is popularly regarded as the cranium of a recumbent giant whose belly is the city of Dublin and whose feet turn up amidst the hillocks of Phoenix Park. If the River Liffey is the heroine, this sleeping landscape giant is the hero. Historical associations crowd around his recumbent form. On this headland the sentinels of Finn MacCool stood guard against invaders
? from the sea. Centuries later, when the Anglo-Norman king Henry II sub- jugated the island, the present castle was founded by one of the invading company, Sir Almeric Tristram. That was in the century of the flowering of the Arthurian romances, with which are inseparably woven the names of Tristram and Iseult.
So now we read:
Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passencore re- arrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war . . .
The basic sense is this: Sir Tristram, musician of love, from across Saint George's Channel,* had not yet rearrived? from North Brittany, which is on Ireland's side of rugged Europe,? to wage again his war. The war is des- ignated "penisolate," which suggests "late, or recent war of the penis," a designation not inappropriate to the gest of a Tristram. But the word may also be read "pen-isolate," whereupon it suggests a war waged with the pen, not by a robust extrovert, but by an isolated, introverted man of letters. The Tristram figure will later split into such antipodal characters, giving battle to each other. Finally, if we read "Peninsular War," we shall be re- minded of the Anglo-Irish Dubliner, Arthur Wellesley, first duke of Wellington, who in the Peninsular War waged his first great battles against Napoleon.
With this sounding of the Tristram motif of guilty love, Joyce boldly strikes some of the major chords of Finnegans Wake. The legend of Tristram and the two Iseults is well known; its mold fits perfectly over HCE. He has a bewitching daughter whom he compares to the second Iseult, her of Brittany, whereas his wife in some of her transformations is identical with Iseult of Ireland. Torn between the two, the man is tempted and destroyed by the representatives of the younger, but he is gathered up
? ? * Tristram first arrived in Ireland by coracle from Cornwall, over the same sea crossed by the historical Sir Almeric Tristram, founder of Howth Castle.
? Note the curious implication of "rearrived. " Joyce intends to indicate that in the courses of the Viconian cycle all has happened before and is on the point of happening again.
? North Armorica is North Brittany, the scene of the love-death of Tristram and Iseult of Ireland. It was the scene also of Tristram's morbid, unconsummated marriage with the second and younger Iseult, Iseult of Brittany.
? ? A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake ? ? Synopsis and Demonstration ? ?
? and his wounds are healed by the older, whom he never ceases to cherish. This conflict which drives a wedge into HCE's heart is a manifestation of the ambiguous guilt-neurosis that has troubled men of the western world since the medieval innovation of romantic love.
The double note of love and war is to become the pervasive theme of Finnegans Wake: key changes and modulations will break the simple state- ments into baffling congeries of dissonance and harmony. Ambiguous the love--ambiguous too will be the war, continually outcropping in the struggles between Shem and Shaun and their shadow extensions Butt and Taff, Mutt and Jute, the historical figures of Wellington and Napoleon, Caesar and Brutus, Sigtrygg and Brian Boru, and those curiously inchoate personages, Buckley and the Russian General. Under many appearances, love and war are the constant life expressions of that polarized energy which propels the universal round.
"North Armorica" suggests North America. The phrase following de- velops this evocation of the New World Beyond the Sea, to which those Irish fled who took refuge from the English plunderer, and where many a canny Irishman has won money and prestige:
nor had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated them- selse to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time . .
