No More Learning

? An Egyptian mummy tomb of stone.
? The key theme of the Wake: in a communion feast the substance of All-Father is served
by All-Mother to the universal company.
? ? A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake ? ? Finnegan's Fall ? ?
? Belchum; poor the pay! This is Wellington, brandishing his telescope on the runaway jinnies. A (? ? ) triad of soldiers is observing him; one of them is a Hindu sepoy, Shimar Shin. Suddenly Wellington picks up the half of a hat from the filth and hangs it on the crupper of his big white horse. (The last joke of the Willingdone. ) The crupper wags with the hat to insult the sepoy, who, mad as a hatter, jumps up with a cry. Whereupon, Wellington, a born gentle- man, tenders a matchbox to the cursing Shimar Shin. The do-for-him sepoy blows the whole of the half of the hat off the top of the tail on the back of Wellington's big wide harse. (Bullseye! Game! ) This way out of the museum.
Phew, but that was warm.
[Dense with figures half lost in the dust of war, the turbulent Museum scene amplifies the private sin of HCE into an image of the hero through- out the course of history. Toward the middle of Finnegans Wake (? ? ? -? ? ) an even denser, dustier episode, namely, that of the Russian General at Sevastopol, will culminate the development of this blood-and-tears theme. In the wild heat of battle, life discloses its most shameful secret--i. e. , HCE's sin in the Park.
[We turn from the museum to the countryside, now a silent field after battle. Round about are twelve pilfering little birds, metamorphosed dupli- cates of the citizens at the Wake. The janitrix herself, in a bird transforma- tion, moves through the twilight, gathering relics (as widowed Isis gathered the scattered fragments of her dismembered husband, Osiris). ]
(? ? ) We know where she lives; it's a candle-little house of a month and one windies. * The vagrant wind's awaltz around the piltdowns and on every blasted knollyrock there's a gnarlybird ygathering. Old Lumproar is lying under his seven red shields;? our pigeon pair has flown; (? ? ) the three
? [This Museum should be regarded as a kind of reliquary containing var- ious mementoes symbolizing not only the eternal brother-conflict, but also the military and diplomatic encounters, exchanges and betrayals of recorded history. ] An old woman conducts a party through the museum, pointing out relics from the battle career of her hero Wellington, the Iron Duke. There are exhibits under glass and pictures on the walls. A flag, a bullet, a military hat; Duke Wellington on his big white horse; three soldiers crouch- ing in a ditch; a pair of Napoleon's jinnies,* making believe to read a book of strategy; and a sex-caliber telescope through which the Duke trains on the flanks of the jinnies. The reader begins to recognize through all the shooting-gallery noises and the smoke-confused scenes of battle the om- nipresent story of a great man, two temptresses, and three soldiers. ? Be- tween the Duke and the jinnies dispatches go back and forth. This (? ) is me, Belchum, bearer of the dispatches. ? First, a dispatch from the jinnies to annoy the Willingdone: "Behold thy tiny frau, hugacting. Signed: Nap. " This is me, Belchum, carrying the dispatch. And this is Wellington's an- swer, displayed on the regions rare of me, Belchum: "Figtreeyou! Damn fairy Ann--c? a ne fait rien. Vo^tre: Willingdone. " (That was the first joke of Wellington. Tit for tat. ) This is me, Belchum, in his twelve-league boots, footing it back to the jinnies. [Napoleon and Wellington are exchanging in- sults, Napoleon being represented through the jinnies. ]
Here now are some more exhibits: Balls, cannon fodder, other views of the jinnies, the soldiers, and the Willingdone. The Wellington cry is "Brum! Brum! Cumbrum! " The jinnies' cry is "Donnerwetter! Gott strafe England! " To the tune of "It's a long way to Tipperary," the jinnies run away. This is me,
? ? * This word refers both to a couple of young mares on the battlefield, and to a pair of Napoleonic filles du re? giment. These polymorphous beings correspond to the two temptresses of the Park episode.
? This is a reflex, of course, of the story of HCE, whose fall is to be but a variant of the fall of Finnegan. The fire water which intoxicated the ancient giant, and the two urinating girls who intoxicate HCE, are variant-aspects of the one eternal river-woman ALP.
? This entire passage is full of obscure references to England's many wars and must be re- garded as an adumbration of the Empire theme. The characters are fluid and only half emergent, but constantly suggest Wellington, Napoleon, Blu? cher, and other personages of the battle of Waterloo. "Belchum" carries overtones of "Belgium," the country in which Waterloo is situated.
? ? * A month and one windies: ? ? -plus-? windy windows. The ? is the leap-year girl Iseult, ? ? the number of her little girl companions. These represent the younger, Kate the older, manifestations of ALP. Where the one is apparent, the other is implicit. There would be no fragments lying about for old Kate to collect and cherish, had there been no seduction to precipitate a fall.
? In the text is a pun on the Rothschilds. Was it Byron who said that not Wellington but the House of Rothschild defeated Napoleon? The seven superimposed shields carry the suggestion, also, of the seven "sheaths" (physical, astral, mental, buddhic, nirva? ? ic, anupa? - dakic, and a? dic) which, according to the occultists, clothe the essence of the soul.
? ? A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake ? ? Finnegan's Fall ? ?
? crows have flapped away. She never comes out when the thunder is roar- ing, she is too moochy afreet; but tonight is armistice; here she comes: a peace-bird, picking here, picking there. All spoiled goods go into her nab- sack: with a kiss, a kiss cross, cross criss, unto life's end. Amen.
In this way she serves the future: stealing our historic presents from the postprophetical past, so as to will to make us all lordly heirs and lady mis- tresses of a pretty nice kettle of fruit. Greeks may rise and Trojans fall, (? ? ) young heroines come and go, but she remembers her nightly duty: she'll puff the blaziness on. Though Humpty Dumpty fall frumpty times, there'll be eggs for the croaking company that has come to wake him.
[This fragment-gathering crone is identical with old grinny who spreads the feast after the Fall (? ). The shell fragments of Humpty lie scat- tered about, but she gathers what she can of the old fellow's substance, which she will serve to the generations of the future, to sustain them and carry them forward. ]
Let us, meanwhile, regard the two mounds and all the little himples, these hillocks, which are like so many boys and girls of a smaller generation sit- ting around playing games, Bridget with Patrick, on his chest--his very presence urging them to love. They are hopping around his middle like kippers on a griddle as he lies dormant. And nearby is the Magazine Wall. [An echo is heard of Dean Jonathan Swift's verse on the futility of this mil- itary structure in a land picked bare by English masters:]
Behold a (? ? ) proof of Irish sense! Here Irish wit is seen!
Where nothing's left that's worth defence, They build a magazine.
So this is Dublin.
Hush! Caution! Echoland! [The initials, HCE. ]
How charmingly exquisite! It reminds you of the outwashed engravure
that we used to be drunkenly studying on the blotchwall of his innkempt house. * Look and you will see him. Listen and you will hear the music and
? laughter of the company, but the Magazine Wall--fimfim fimfim--with a grand funferall--fumfum fumfum. * The scene comes to us converted into sound by an optophone. ? List to the magic lyre. They of the Wake will be tussling forever to the discord of the ollave's harp. ?
Turn now to this ancient book, the Blue Book of our local Herodotus, Mammon Lujius. ** "Four things," it says, "f. t. in Dublin ne'er shall fail,? ? till heathersmoke and cloudweed Eire's isle shall pall. " And these four Dublin eternals are: (? ) a hump on an old man [HCE], (? ) a shoe on a poor old woman [ALP], (? ) a maid to be deserted [their daughter Iseult], (? ) a pen no mightier than a post [their twin sons, Shem the Penman, Shaun the Post].
The traits of the archetypal figures emerge through every page of the chronicle, as the winds idly turn the pages and we read the entries for var- ious years:
? ? ? ? a. d. Men like ants did wander upon the hump of an old whale stranded in a runnel. Blubber for Dublin.
? ? ? a. d. A crone (? ? ) discovered her basket to be full of little shoes. Blurry works at Dublin.
? ? * I. e. , regard this landscape and you will discern through it symptoms of the Wake, still in progress. "Fimfim," etc. , is the jollification motif. Through many transmutations it will recur. It is the sound of a dry leaf "sinsinning" in the winter wind.
? An optophone is an instrument that converts images into sounds.
? An ollave is an Irish bard.
** The Blue Book of our local Herodotus, Mammon Lujius, is finally the dream guidebook,
history book, Finnegans Wake itself. It is here regarded as any ancient tome that might be at hand. "Blue Book" suggests the well-known "Blue Guide" series of travel books. The name "Herodotus" is modified in the text to the "herodotary" ("doting on heroes"). Mammon Lujius is a name based on the initials M. M. L. J. of Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John, the four Evangelists whose gospels are the history book of the Living Word.
The four Evangelists coalesce with four Irish annalists, whose chronicle of ancient times is known as The Book of the Four Masters. These four again coalesce with four old men, fa- miliars to the tavern of HCE, who forever sit around fatuously rechewing tales of the good old days. These four guardians of ancient tradition are identical with the four "World Guardians" (Lokapa? las) of the Tibetan Buddhistic mandalas, who protect the four corners of the world--these being finally identical with the four caryatids, giants, dwarfs, or elephants, which hold up the four corners of the heavens.
? ? f. t. : four things. Abbreviation by initialing occurs frequently in the medieval Irish chronicles.
? ? * I. e. , the scene reminds us of a certain picture that used to hang in the tavern of HCE (used to hang, that is to say, in the long ago of a former cycle).
? ? A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake ? ? Finnegan's Fall ? ?
? (Silent)
? ? ? a. d. A damsel grieved because her doll was ravished of her by an
ogre. Bloody wars in Dublin.
? ? ? ? a. d. * Twin sons were born, Caddy and Primas, to a good-man and
his hag. Primas became a sentryman. Caddy got drunk and wrote a farce. Blotty words for Dublin.
[The actual historical events associated with the dates ? ? ? ? a. d. and ? ? ? a. d. are of minor moment. Clearly more important than any specific events are the relationships to each other of the numbers themselves.
[Every reader of Ulysses will recall the "thirty-two feet per second, per second. Law of falling bodies," which ran through Bloom's thoughts of the entire day. The number is now to run through the entire night of Finnegans Wake, usually in combination with eleven, the number of restart after finish. ? (The old decade having run out with ten, eleven initiates the new. See our discussion of the Kabbalistic decade for Bk. II, chap. ? . ) In the present instance the two numbers combine to form a date. This date halved yields another date, ? ? ? ; there follows a mysterious "Silent" (a world- destroying cataclysm) whereafter the dates appear again, but in inverted se- quence--the new world being a kind of Alice-through-the-looking-glass reflection of the old.
[If we add the four dates we arrive at the figure ? ? ? ? , a play on the number of the Trinity. (The reader will recall Dante's discussion of Beatrice in the first pages of the Vita Nuova: "Beatrice is a Nine, because the root of nine is three, and the root of Beatrice is the Trinity. " In the Divine Comedy the created universe is but a vast amplification of this nine, which is finally a numerical sign for the world-creative fertilization of God by Himself: ? x ? : Superfetation! ) The sense of Joyce's play stands forth sur- prisingly when we add the digits ? , ? , ? , ? and discover the total ? ? : the Kabbalistic number of the Fall. The Fall is the secret of all history.
[Man rooted in the Trinity yet falling ? ? feet per second, falling but ever self-renewing, is symbolized in the old brontoichthyan food-father
? stranded in the runnel. The rib of All-Father Adam (his "better half") be- came Eve, and so half of ? ? ? ? becomes ? ? ? , the Crone of the basket of little shoes. After the world-destroying and -renewing cataclysm (Silent), the female number reappears in a little rainbow daughter, and the male number in the polarized sons. ]
Somewhere, apparently, in the "ginnandgo gap"* between ? ? ? a. d. and ? ? ? a. d. , the copyist must have fled with his scroll; or the flood rose; or an elk charged him; or the heavens discharged their thunder at him. Killing a scribe in those days was punishable by a fine of six marks or nine pence, whereas only a few years ago, a lady's man was hanged for taking that sum covertly from the drawers of his neighbor's safe!
But now let us lift our eyes again from the tome to the idyllic land. The pastor is reposing under the stonepine; the young buck and doe are nib- bling at the grasses; the shamrocks are modestly growing among the blades; the sky is ever gray. Thus it has been for donkey's years, since the primeval bouts between he-bear and hairy-man. The cornflowers have been staying at Ballymun; (? ? ) the duskrose has chosen out Goatstown's hedges; twolips have pressed themselves together by sweet Rush; the whitethorn and redthorn have fairy-gayed the May valleys of Knockmaroon; warrior races have come and gone--Fomorians have fought against the Tuatha De Danaan, Firbolgs against Oxmen, pagans against Christians; Little-on-the- Green is childsfather to the City; yet, the blond has sought the brune and the dark dames have talked back to the lightish fellows, and they have fallen upon one another, and themselves have fallen; now-anights even as of yore, the bold pretty floras are inviting their shy lovers to pluck them.
[Thinking of these things, we become aware, guide and tourist, of a fire on yonder hill, and in the flickering light, a figure looms. ]
This carl in pelted thongs, like a stone age Parthalonian--who is he? Is he a Mousterian cave man? He is drinking from a kind of skull. (? ? ) What a queer sort of man! Let us cross the heaps of gnawed bones into his fire- light. He can, perhaps, post us the way to the Pillars of Hercules. "Comment
? ? * ? ? ? ? a. d. St. Malachy became Bishop of Dublin, and Lawrence O'Toole was born. O'Toole and Henry II being representatives of the brother pair, perhaps we are to think of them as the twins, respectively Caddy and Primas, born in ? ? ? ? . Henry II was born, ac- tually, in ? ? ? ? , only a few months before O'Toole.
? ? * Ginnunga-gap ("Yawning Gap") is the name given in the Icelandic Eddas to the interval of timeless formlessness between world aeons. An aeon endures ? ? ? ,? ? ? years. Joyce occasion- ally employs ? ? ? , the legendary date of Patrick's arrival in Ireland, as an alternate for ? ? ? ? .
? ? A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake ? ? Finnegan's Fall ? ?
? vous portez-vous aujourd'hui, mon blond monsieur? 'Scuse us, Charlie, you talk Danish? "
"N. "
"Norwegian? "
"N. N. "
"English? "
"N. N. N. "
"Saxish? "
"N. N. N. N. "
Well then, he must be a Jute. Let's have a chat.
[Guide and tourist, now merged into one, have entered the firelight in
the form of a dull, prying, somewhat timorous island-native, Mutt. The lumbering stranger from overseas, with thick and sometimes stuttering tongue, taps his chest and introduces himself, in Germanic accent, as a Jute:]
"Yutah! "
"Pleased to meet you," Mutt replies obscurely.
"Are you deaf? Deaf-mute? What is the matter with you anyhow? " "Not deaf," answers Mutt; "but I have suffered somewhat damage
from a bottle in a local tavern--or rather, from a battle at Clontarf. "
Jute stutters, "Hauhauhauhorrible! " Then he gives the blurry native a
shake. "Come on! Wise onto yourself! Wake up! "
Mutt, cringing and resentful at the unexpected show of force, discon-
nectedly belches something about usurpers and the Celtic champion, Brian Boru.
Jute attempts to calm him with a bit of wooden money, a tip. "Ein Augenblick! Let bygones be bygones!