The confused density of the
narrative
is caused partly by the shame of its hero and partly by his rending, the division of his substance.
re-joyce-a-burgess
If old Herod with the Cormwell's ec;ema was to go for me like he does Snuffler whatever about his blue canaries I'd do nine months for his beaver beard.
2 Mater Mary Mercerycordial of the Dripping Nipples, milk's a queer arrangement.
3 Real life behind the floodlights as shown hy the hest exponents of a
royal divorce.
Of course our first this-is-nonsense reaction to both footnotes and
Shem-m';ginal-comments tends to be modified after many readings. 2z3
? ? The Man-made Mountain
Brotherly Hate
These three footnotes, for instance, make a kind of pattern of father- hood and motherhood, revealed first in its divine aspects and then brought down to HCE and ALP (A Royal Divorce is Earwicker's favourite dramatic entertainment). As for Shaun's marginal poin- ters, these always, alas, make too much sense: they are the very voice of the student who plans great things for himself in the world. The right-hand ant toils away, the left-hand grasshopper chirps like a mad thing.
The text with its three-sided frame is very difficult to follow, but this is chiefly because it hides under its surface of dream Dublin chatter the strict doctrines of the ancient Cabbala. This makes much of the mystical significance of numbers. Thus, the Creator- 'Ainsoph' in the Cabbala-is represented by the number I. His heavenly consort is a (Joyce calls her 'Zeroine'). As he moves to- wards her, the numbers 2 to 9 are produced, and, when they achieve union, the great 10 comes about. The first thing the twins have to learn is the immanence of this divine creative force in the innumerable forms of the universe. Behind all the kinds of know- ledge, from history to music, lies the ultimate knowledge of the One. Joyce's achievement in setting forth all this lies, as it does throughout Finnegans Wake, in making the abstract not merely concrete but local, not merely local but comic. Unde ? -whence have we come?
Ubi ? -where are we? OUf 'imaginable itinerary through the particu- lar universal' is the path we take in order to find out:
Quick lunch by our left, wheel, to where. Long Livius Lane, mid Mezzo-
fanti Mall, diagnosing Lavatery Square, up Tycho Brache Crescent,
shouldering Berkeley Alley, querfixing Gainsborough Carfax, under <;Juido d'Arezzo's Gadeway, by New Livius Lane till where we whiled whIle we whithered. Old Vico Roundpoint.
These great names represent the seven main branches of knowledge,
beginning with Livy the ristorian and ending with him, old Vico
there too to remind us of the cyclical nature of our progress: history
does not, as Mr Deasy thought, lead to God's manifestation; God
is behind everything, unseen, unknowable:
Ainsoph, this upright one, with th~t naughty besighed him zeroine. To see in his horrorscup he is mehrkunos than saltz of sulphur. Terror of the noonstruck by day, cryptogam of each nightly bridable. B~t, to speak broken heaventalk, is he? Who is he? Whose is he? Why IS he? Howmuch is he? Which is he? When is he? Where is he? How is he?
Shem's marginal comments on God are very much those of
Stephen Dodalus: 'Swiney Tod, ye Daimon Barbar! Dig him in the 22~
rubsh! Ungodly old Ardrey, Cronwall beeswaxing the convulsion box. '
But it is not the God of the Irish Catholics, the butcher who kills
u~ like 'pigs (Swiney Tod~Schweinstod~pigsdeath), who is under
dIScussion. We are concerned with the cabbalistic One and Zero
the creation of the world of multiplicity which we can see as well
. ,
as anywhere, m HCE's pub and household (those famous initials are
never long out of the text-'Haud certo ergo', for instance; ALP is triply celebrated in 'Apis amat aram. Luna legit librum. Pulla petit pascua'). The Earwicker home is a tiny figure of the cosmos. Once, however, we examine this figure, we leave questions of theology and become preoccupied with the building of human societies. We enter HCE's house, climb 'from the murk of the mythelated' to civilisa-
tion. ' represented by 'Harington's invention', the we, and visit 'the clanence of the child light in the studiorium upsturts'. The twins in their nursery will enact the 'urges and widerurges' of primitive man. They will fight over a girl, even, while she 'with her tootpetty- pout of jemenfichue will sit and knit on solfa sofa'. (The footnote says: 'Let me blush to think of all those halfwayhoist pullovers. ') In the nursery, as in the greater world, the two great driving forces of cupidity and concupiscence will be at work-'early notions of acquired rights' and the 'pursuit o f panhysteric woman'. A t the same
time, the process of transmitting knowledge from one age to the
next proceeds: old granny teaches little Issy about man the winner and woman the loser, asking her to 'Note the Respectable Irish Distressed Ladies and the Merry Mustard Frothblowers of Hum- phreystown Associations. '
The right-hand margin now presents the nine principles of that bigger human history adumbrated in the nursery: 'CONCOMI- TANCE OF COURAGE, COUNSEL AND CONSTANCY. ORDINATION OF OMEN, ONUS AND OBIT. DISTRIBU- TION OF DANGER, DUTY AND DESTINY. POLAR PRIN- CIPLES. ' It seems to add up to C. O. D. -cash on delivery, a typi-
cally Shaunian summation: we expect the goods of life and we will
pay with the stoic virtues when we get them. When we Come to
Number lo-marriage of King One and QIeen Zero-we see that all life is based on the polar principle of sex. Can we really learn much from past history, then? (The notes BC and AD are played in the left- hand margin. ) 'Please stop if you're a B. C. minding missy, please do. But should you prefer A. D. stepplease. ' The completed Viconian
eras-the theocratic and aristocratic-have nothing to teach the
coming democratic age. Heroes like Humpty are done for ('By old 225
? ? ? The Man-made Mountain
Brotherly Hate
Grumbledum's walls'); the rainbow of the future spreads ('Heil, heptarched span of peace! '-the footnote says: 'I'm blest if I can see') and now we are to have 'Impovernment of the booble by the bauble for the bubble'. Or look at it another way: the special things we were taught to look for in the past are not in the past at all; they are here, in the present: 'Number Thirty two West Eleventh streak looks on to that (may all in the tocoming of the sempereternal speel spry with it! ) datetree doloriferous' of past time: II32 is here and now.
Here, though, there seems to be a great philosophical paradox.
Present and past may be brought together because of recurring
archeJ:ypes, but we cannot doubt that the individual forms ofone age are never an exact reproduction of corresponding forms in another age. We accept the notion of new species-'one world burrowing on another . . . Standfest, our tapiocal sagan hero, or any other macotther, signs is on the bellyguds bastille back'-and the fact that the older world lies underneath the new world: 'THE MONGREL UNDER THE DUNGMOUND. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE INFRALIMINAL INTELLIGENCE. ' It is in the darkness of the unconscious that the old hero Finnegan subsists:
Aught darks flou a duskness. Bats that? There peepeestrilling. At Bran- nan's on the moor. At Tam Fanagan's weak yat his still's going strang. And still here is noctules and Can tell things acommon on by that fluffy feeling.
'OFFRANDES' says the marginal note, and the text 'Dogs' vespers'. It may be that, as we propitiate the God of the heavens, so we must make offerings to our deeper, more primitive, natures. 'Keep the dog far hence', says T. S. Eliot-those animal forces inside us we fear so much. Perhaps we should bow down occasionally to that dog.
And now 'INCIPIT INTERMISSIO'. We rest from our studies a little, and the temptress Issy, who has already been thrusting her way into the footnotes ('Pipette. I can almost feed their sweetness at my lisplips'), fills three-quarters of a page with a footnote letter which seduces us to a mood of temporary languor. We have not yet learned much about sex. Issy turns herself into a love-goddess:
Wasn't it just divining that dog of a dag in Skokholme as I sat astrid uppon their Drewitt's altar, as cooledas as culcumbre, slapping my straights till the sloping ruins, postillion, postallion, a swinge a swank, with you offering me clouts of illscents and them homers stagstruck on the leasward!
226
Cities fall, broken in war, but still the flowers remain, fresh and
smiling as in the days of old battles (Joyce tells us this not in his own dream-words but in the undistorted French of Edgar Q! linet). Flowers of love beckon, but the boys 'totient quotients', 'Bruto and Cassio', are more concerned with the manlier matter of their eternal opposition. They get down then to doing their sums, inscribingnrst 'At maturing daily gloryaims' (the Jesuit Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam) at the head of their paper. Every theme of the book obscurely ap- pears as a mathematical problem, and we become aware of how large a part number has so far played in it. The boys' names are now given as Dolph (Shern) and Kev (Shaun)-'singlebarrelled names for doubleparalleled twixtytwins'-and it is Kev who comes to his brother for help. The problem they are going to work out is evidently important-'Concoct an equoangular trillitter' -for Joyce, in Latin, invites the spirits of the dead to come and watch: 'Venite,
preteriti. ' Apparently, though, young Dolph-Shern has some obscene purpose in mind, for - both the sets of marginal comments disa ppear- i n g - w e have a lengthy piece o f confused moralising, alluding much to the Tristram-Iseult legend and, addressing the two lovers by their Irish names- Diarmait and Grainne distorted to 'diarmuee and gran- you', saying: 'if that is what lamoor . . . seems circling toward out yondest heaven help his hindmost'. When the marginal comments are resumed, we see that Shaun has his grave pointers in italic, at the left, and Shem's irreverence, in the dignity of capitals, is on the right.
The letters ALP are now seen as the points of the isosceles triangle (the fertile delta) which is Anna Livia's own sign. In a diagram made up of two interlocking circles and two isosceles triangles with a common base (ALP and alpha lambda pi), Dolph- Shem finds his thesis, an obscurely obscene exposition of his own sexual curiosity, while Kev-Shaun makes learned but ingenuous comments in the margin:
Outer serpumstance. s being ekewilled, we carefully, if she pleats, lift by -her seam hem and jabote at the spidsiest of her trickkikant (like thou- sands done before since fillies calpered. Ocone! Ocone! ) the maidsapron of our A. L. P. , fearfully! till its nether nadir is vortically where (allow me aright to two cute winkles) its naval's napex will have to beandbe. You must proach near mear for at is dark. Lob. And light your mech. Jeldy!
The whole process of learning, of scientific investigation and the
hugging of secret knowledge, is revealed as mere curiosity about
what lies up our mothers' skirts. Kev-Shaun is slow in realising his 227
? ? ? The Man-made Mountain
brother's drift but when he does he turns on him, and the fraternal battle is resu:Ued- Michael versus Old Nick. The footnote says 'Picking on Nickagain, Pikey Mikey /' The archangel calls Satan 'the divver's own smart gossoon, aequal to yourseH and wamgel to anglyother, so you are, hoax! You know, you'll be dampned, so you will one of these invernal days . . . '
The real point is, I think, that Shem, with all his tenden~ to make game of learning, has more understandmg of ~he mystIcal significance of signs and letters (he is, after all, an artist) than has his twin, despite the earnestness of hiS a~phcatlOn. Both boys, bemg the father split into two, are incomplete m themselves, a~dthere are times when their recognition of this makes them turn m anger on each other. It is now a matter of 'Christ's Church varses Bellial! ' But the narrator (being himself an artist and hence on the Side of Dolph-Shem-Glugg-Nick) celebrates Irish literature as a sort of
divine body-organs listed in the margin, names garbled m the text: 'Steal, Barke, Starn, Swhipt, Wiles, Pshaw, Doubbhnbbayyates. ' This does not prevent Shaun from delivering a blow to Shem's mortalbody-'Wincewan'swon! Rip! '(footnote: 'Abyebyebmgbang boys I See you Nutcracker Sunday! '). . .
But, surprisingly when we conSIder that. Shem 1S the devil, not so
surprisingly when we remember that he IS also Stephen Dedalus, there is no retaliation. In his brain he must conquer. He says: 'Thanks eversore much, pointcarried! . . . I'm seeing rayingbogeys rings round me . . . By Saxon Chromaticus, you done that lovely for me! ' He calls on his little-cloud sister for confirmalion of the skill and strength of Shaun's blow. Before they go out mto the great
world, Shem is revealed as the monopohst of spmtual power, hiS brother as the extroverted politician-fighter. 'And that salubrated sickenagiaour of yaours have teaspilled all my hazeydency', says Shem to Shaun. '. . . I'm only out for celebridging over the gu~ltof the gap in your hiscitendency. You are a hundred thousand limes welcome, old wortsampler, hellbeit you're just about as ~ul~able as
my woolfell merger would be. ' We remember the double slgmfic~nce of 'hesitency/hesitancy'. The guilt of HCE, Parnell and P,ggot IS m both the sons, revealed equally in Shaun's jealous blow, Shern's failure to strike back. The Shem-margin is full of HCE stuttermg.
Peace then-the thrice-repeated Sanskrit word for it which con- cludes Eliot's The Waste Land: 'Shantih' distorted to 'slanty scanty shanty'. The end of learning and the beginning of the time for action. Shaun's margin sums up, in great names from Cato to
228
Brotherly Hate
Darius, the scope of their studies; the text, with a Rabelaisian
catalogue, indicates the subjects of their essays. 'Castor, Pollux' in the margin relates to 'Compare the Fistic Styles of Jimmy Wilde and Jack Sharkey' in the text; 'Julius Caesar' leads us to 'A Succees- ful Career in the Civil Service' (footnote: 'R. C. , disengaged, good character, would help, no salary'). Shem's margin says: 'MAW- MAW, LUK, YOUR BEEFTAY'S FIZZIN OVER! ' and we know that it is supper-time. The mystic numbers of the Cabbala- summary of all knowledge-are sp out from 'Aun Do Tri' to final 'Geg'. At the number five or 'Cush'- halfway down the ladder of numbers-the split of creation into its two opposing brother- elements takes place. The footnote says: 'Kish is for anticheirst, and the free of my hand to him! ' and a thumbed nose is shown in the margin. 'Anticheirst' combines 'Antichrist' and 'anti-cheiros'- 'counter-hand', 'back of my hand': both Shem and Shaun oppose the Christ-element, as manifested in each other. The other drawing- one of crossed bones-sums up everything: the kiss of love, the crucifixion, love-through-death, death-through-love, the whole of murderous history, the arrangement into a pattern of the dead and dry-knowledge itself. 'Their feed begins', says the text. They eat the substance of their father. Then they go off to the New World, sending a 'NIGHTLETTER':
With our best youlldied greedings to Pep and Memmy and the old fo~kers below and ,beyant, wishing them all very merry Incarnations in thls land o f the hvvey and plenty o f preposperousness through their coming new yonks
The day of the brothers has arrived; the day of their father-as we shall see in the remaining two chapters of this section of the book- is finished. .
229
? ? 6: Mactation of the Host
FROM SINBAD THE SAILOR TO TINBAD THE TAILOR WAS A STEP
of Leopold Bloom's descent into sleep. Earwicker's descent to misery and a sense of uselessness involves the same word-play, but the words of his dream are its very substance, not just its garment. HCE is at the most complex and tight-knit phase of his dream, a dream that we ourselves, along with Joyce, are dreaming. The matter of the dream is so dense and confused that HCE seems to require a mise en scene of great familiarity to hold the dream down (as a simple canto forma or even an unmoving pedal-point serves as a strong bass for highly involved counterpoint). HCE is dreaming that, before
going off to dream in bed, he is presiding over his tavern, and its noisy guest-patrons-the four, the twelve, and more-are reducing their host from hero to butt, as well as hero to villain, turning the provider of heart's sustenance into the very butcher's carcase which must be growlingly devoured, gaffing the sailor and turning him into a tailor and then into the garment itself which-the outward show of pride and dignity-will be rent to shreds and atoms. This must be done so that the world of the brothers can come into existence and Shaun, full-fed of his father, can exchange 'greedings' with the constituents of a mean democracy that was onCe a hero's kingdom. It is the eating of the host-God made man made bread-by which the life ofsmall creatures is sustained. Thus, as with every sad thing in this book, we are reminded of the nobiliry of sacrifice as well as the joy of resurrection. Pound HCE to atoms and those atoms prove to be adams: the great circle of creation will roll again.
This part of Finnegan, Wake is the very devil to summarise: it is like saying what Bach's Art ofFugue is about, bar by bar. But we must (and this should be said often) never expect anything approach- ing waking sense.
The confused density of the narrative is caused partly by the shame of its hero and partly by his rending, the division of his substance. The sense of what is happening in the dream and
230
Maaation afthe Host
what is imagined as happening in the dream is clouded by the noise of drunkenness and vituperation, by many tongues brought back fr~m abroad by roving seamen, and the whole mixture is further thickened by the bark of television and radio. We start off with a tale about a. 'Norweeger's capstan', a SOrt of wild Flying Dutchman
figure. He IS HCE as he was, old Nordic rover-invader and he
repres~nts HeE's past sins re-enacted in the present. Th~ present HCE IS reduced to a mere 'ship's husband' a server of sailors the dupe of a ras. cally mariner, and the wrongs 'done to him are m~tter for a new kind ofh? miliation. The captain (let us use waking language) has the ship s husband arrange for the making of a suit of
clothes, and, when the clothes are ready, the captain will not pay for them. A young man called Kersse (kersey) underlines the tailoring motif. He offers to go after the captain when the latter, jeering, puts b~ck. to ~ea. ,He IS a kind of emanatIOn of Earwicker in his 'Persse OReilly. form (remember Hosty's scurrilous ballad), 'k' being the Erse eqmvalent of the Brythonic (Welsh or Breton) 'p' (e. g. Welsh
fa-what=Erse cal? Thus Kersse,. who works for a tailoring firm, IS th~Side of HCE that will undo him, unpick him, in both his forms -agemg husband (ship's or otherwise) and absconding rogue-sea- man. Mter thIS tale there are shared memories of a great fall and
the customers' talk turns to the ship's husband's daughter. Sh~fell for the captam: 't? ere were no peanats in her famalgia so no wumble she tu~bledfor hIS famas roalls davors' ('royal divorce' _ Earwicker's
favounte play). Double shame again for HCE.
The next appea~ance0;the rascal-rover is greeted by the ship's husband very nord1cally: he made the sign of the hammer', Thor's
sign:
rod's ~rought, he sayd, after a few daze, thinking of all those bliakings ow letf pauses! Here you are back on your hawkins, from Blasil th~
Brast to Our povotogesus portocalI, the furt on the turn of the hurdies slave to trade, vassal ofspices and a dragon-on-the-market and be turbot' lurch a stripe, as were you soused methought out of the mackerel' Eldsfells! sayd he. A kumpavin on iceslant! Here's open handlegs for on~ old faulker from the hame folk here in you's booth!
There is no rancour, since HCE and the captain are one and the
sam. e m~n: Moreover, these seaman's visits are pure ritual, like those earher VISitS of Grace O'Malley: they are fairy-tale stuff. This time the . captam orders food and drink but, as before, goes off without paymg. The prose IS thick with tailoring terms (for the food and the sul! are the same thmg), and we even hear the voices of three tailors
231
? ? The Man-made Mountain
who seem to represent the three Fates. When the captain comes into
the tavern for the third time, he is followed by Kersse, who greets all cheerily: 'Peiwei toptip, nankeen pO\ltdelounges. Gives fitir day. Cheroot. Cheevio! ' He has apparently been to the races, since he is asked, 'And, haikon or hurlin, who did you do at doyle today, my horsey dorksey gentryman. ' Pidgin English mingles with the tongues of the Norsemen, and, through a fug of noise and drink, we hear a
voice ofvituperation raised against 'the bugganeering wanderducken
. . . the coarsehair highsaydighsayman . . . the bloedaxe bloodooth baltxebec, that is crupping into our raw lenguage navel through the lumbsmall of his hawsehole'. The villain is evidently HCE, foreigner, invader, cheat, lecher.
And now, after a weather forecast on the radio, we hear a tale of the catching and taming of the rover. 'Birdflights', the radio assures us, 'confirm abbroaching nubtials. ' The mariner is to be made to marry the ship's husband's daughter, a confusion of Issy and ALP. 'Come Bastabasco and hippychip eggs' (HCEl 'she will make a suomease pair and singlette, jodhpur smalls and tailorless,. a copener's
cribful, leaf, bud and berry, the divlin's own little mimmykin puss (hip, hip, horatia! ) for myoid comrhade salrymar here . . . ' The 'suomease pair' is obviously the twins and the 'singlette' the daugh- ter. An Irish marriage will calm the wanderer down, stop his tricks. Soon he is 'Cawcaught. Coocaged'. There are great celebrations; somebody even sings a negro spiritual: 'He goat a berth. And she cot a manege. And wohl's gorse mundom ganna wedst. ' The mar-
riage is consummated ('if hec dont love alpy then lad you annoy
me') and, since there is an element of incestuous guilt in it all, we
hear the hundred-letter thunderclap, the fall-word in the form 'Pappappapparrassannuaragheallachnatullaghmonganmacmacmacw- hackfalltherdebblenonthedubblandaddydoodled'. The taming of the tempestuous rover is summed up in 'his loudship was converted to a landshop'.
But we cannot get away from that primal guilry act in the park,
and, as we have committed ourselves to a marine context, the park
quite naturally becomes the sea. We have gone back even further than the Garden of Eden and see man himself arising from a watery element. The theme of guilt is not developed, only mentioned, for we now have an 'enterruption'. That this is to have a strong Slav flavour is prefigured in 'Check or slowback. Dvershen. ' Kate the cleaning-woman is introduced with Czechoslovak prepositions (which, like those of Russian, are single ktters -v, s and so on). The
23 2
Mactalion ofthe Host
children are asleep, she says, and the mistress of the house is in bed.
If Earwicker is 'whishtful to licture her caudal' he can join her. The mentl? TI ofth~ b. e~roomb:ir;-gs in the. sound of the branch tapping at the wllldow- DIp. Kate IS III her gUIse as keeper of the Wellington Mus~um m Phoenix Park and tuis, far from sending HCE to join his
lady III repose, opens up the old world of imperialistic war again. A ,PIcture on the wall of the bar shows the Charge of the Light Bngade, with hunting overtones (horses, HCE as John Peel, the sound of the horn or bugle) and Earwlcker is dream-drawn to tellinrr a story about 'Arthur Duke'. Inevitably, this is full of HCE's ow~ guilt-:it was. of him, my wife and I thinks, to feel to every of the
yo~nglllg frUlts, tenderosed like an atlantic's breastswells or . . . a bnght tauth bight shimmeryshaking for the welt of his low. And where the peckadillies at his wristsends meetings be loving so lightly dovessoIld the candIdacy, me wipin eye sinks, of his softboiled bosom should be apparient even to our illicterate of nullatinenties. ' Here we are again-the two creamy roses in the park, the lobsters or
redcoats, the stuttering guilt:
Imagine twee cweamy wosen. Suppwose you get a beautiful thought and cull them sylvi. as sub silence. T~e~ inmaggin a stotterer. Suppoutre him to been one btg! ? ermaster OmmbIl. Then lustily . . . immengine up to thre~ longly lu~kmg. lobstarts . . . How do, dainty daulimbs ? So peached to pIck on you m thIS way, -prue and simple, pritt and spry! Heyday too Malster Faunagon, and hopes your hahititahiti licks the mankey nuts! '
. The pushing. of . the guilt back to the beginning, to the giant Fmnegan reposmg m the unconSCIOUS, is not to be permitted. The customers call for a television show presented by Butt and Taff (Shern and Shaun disguised as cross-talk comedians) and they are anXIOUS that they should re-enact the old story of Buckley and the
Russian general ('How Burghley shuck the rackushant Germanon'). There IS, m fact, an apocryphal tale in existence about an Irish soldIer, Buckley, who, fighting for the British in the Crimean War was in a position to shoot a Russian general when this latter had le~ d? w~ his tro~sersto defecate. But humanity and a feeling for human dlgmty prevaIled; Buckley did not fire. So the story (it was, to make
due ackoowledgements, John Joyce's story) went. Now it is changed
to fit the dream and engmeer Earwlcker's ultimate humiliation.
The Butt and Taff episode is presented in dramatic form com- plete with stage directions. This makes the battle-sounding: guilt- echomg galhmaufrey seem more lucid than it really is. The three
redcoat witnesses of Earwicker's nameless crime (which seems now
233
? ? ? The Man-made Mountain
Mactation ofthe Host
to involve defecation and innumerable sexual perversions) form a
link between the park and the battlefield. Butt is one of the soldiers; he easily changes into Buckley, making the two stories into one. The cross-talk act is interrupted for the report of a race-meeting, but even this is thick with the HCE horror-tale:
Emancipator, the Creman hunter (M;jor Hermyn C. Entwhistle) with dramatic effect reproducing the form o f famous sires on the scene o f the formers triumphs, is showing the eagle's way to Mr Whaytehayte's three buy geldings Homo Made Ink, Bailey Beacon and Ratatuohy while Furstin II and The Other Girl (Mrs 'Boss' ~l'aters, Leavybrink) too early spring dabbles,
are showing a clean paira/hids to Immensipater.
It? is, of course, horses that link the themes of battle, hunt, and racing. When we resume the Buckley story, the wizards Browne and Nolan will (we must always expect this) confuse Butt and Taff to Tuff and Batt, but the general drift remains clear. HCE, prime brute, warmonger, imperialist, is identified with the Russian general, and, in this version of the Buckley story, he is shot, even though his pants are down. 'I gave one dobblenotch', says Butt-Buckley, 'and I ups with my crozzier. Mirrdo! With my how on armer and hits leg an arrow cockshock rockrogn. Sparro! '
To match the chaos of the soldier's blow in Ulysses, we must now have the annihilation of the atom, but Joyce puts the hope of resurrection even in that: 'the abnihilisation of the etym'. From nothing-ab nihilo- the etymon, root ofttuth, ofall language, will re- emerge. And now, the tale ended, Butt and Taff melt into one person, make a moral and prophetic conclusion (this shooting of the Russian general by Buckley will happen again, recurring in a cycle, so long as the 'samuraised twimbs' are a principle of life-Shem versus Shaun, the split personality ofHCE raging in inner war. 'So till butagain budly shoots thon rising germinal let bodley chow the fatt of his anger and badley bide the toil of his tubb').
But Earwicker makes the mistake of sympathising with the Rus- sian general, while the customers approve what Butt-Buckley did. HCE says that that story is the story of all great men who fall; indeed, it is everybody's story: 'And that is at most redoubtedly an overthrew of each and ilkermann of us, I persuade myself, before Gow, gentlemen, so true as this are my kopfinpot astrode on these
~is my boardsoldereds. ' A hero is ruined because nature leads him to the exposure of his baser part. HCE, that very hero, is seen for an instant in his noblest aspect, sea-warrior coming to land, 'flying the Perseoroyal'. And now comes the crushing of the hero, the
234
mactation of the host. This is so big an undertaking that we have to
prepare for it somewhat remotely, converting it into a ritual. The radio announces, after calling for order in the voices of the three soldiers ('Attention! Stand at! ! Ease! ! ! '), the twofold song of the nightingales (the two girls), and the very leaves of the trees sing of the destruction of 'the marrer of mirth and the jangtherapper of all jocolarinas'. The customers rehearse his sins (,Has they bane re- neemed? Soothinly low'). But the brave old Adam stands up for himself, admitting his guilt but drawing his accusers into it: 'Guilry but fellows culpows! ' He has been misunderstood or 'missaunder- staid', he says. His crime was a little one. His Swiftian little loves~ 'my dears, the estelles', merge into one, then become two again, and all he did was this: 'my palmspread was gav to a parsleysprig, the curliest weedeen old ocean coils around'. The witnesses have not played cricket: 'Wickedgapers, I appeal against the light! ' He is out with it now, in a full confession: 'the lilliths oft I feldt, and, when booboob brutals and cautiouses only aims at the oggog hogs in the humand', then let him, like Caesar, be assassinated: 'thit thides or marse makes a good dayle to be shattat. Fall stuff. ' Fall staff, fall soldier's pole, he has finished. 'Here endeth chinchinatibus. '
The four old men have their say now. They are the four gospel- lers, the four Irish provinces, the four Viconian phases. They are Russia (Gregorovitch), Greece (Leonocopolos), Italy (Tarpinacci) and Ireland (Duggelduggel). Th~ir words carry weight. They state what men may not do, and what men may not do consists of what HCE is already supposed to have done, including shooting Russian generals (hardly fair) and being a 'pedestaroly'. Then they are tucked away inside an 'Omar Khayyam' stanza: 'And thus within the tavern's secret booth The wisehight ones who sip the tested sooth Bestir them as the Just has bid to jab The punch of quaram on the mug of truth. ' Six of the twelve (Mr G. B. W. Ashburner, Mr Faixgood, Mr L L Chattaway, Mr Q P. Dieudonney, Mr T. T. Erchdeakin and Mr W. K. Ferris-Fender) add a word or so: 'They had heard or had heard said or had heard said written. ' But who is anyone to accuse or judge? 'You were in the same boat of your- selves too, Getobodoff or Treamplasurin. '
From afar we hear the sound of a ballad. Hosry is at it again ('Ostia, lift it! Lift at it, Ostia1'):
Dour douchy was a sieguldson.
He cooed that loud nor he was young.
235
? ? ? ? ? The Man-made Mountain
Mactation ofthe Host
He cud bad caw nor he was gray Like wather parted from the say.
It is time to turn out the customers and lock the door. 'The hum- ming, -it's coming. Insway onsway. ' In good Norse English, HCE cries, 'Tids, genmen, plays. ' Outside the streets are filling, the mobs marching, bells are clashing out. The pub is cleared. The song comes nearer:
His bludgeon's bruk, his drum is tore. For spuds we'll keep the hat he wore And roll in clover on his clay
By wather parted from the say.
There is going to be a 'lyncheon partying'. Still, the doors are locked and only the 'for eolders' refuse to be turned out. But HCE cannot lock his ears to the voices without that proclaim his guilt to the world. His sins know no end. Some are fantasti~but one or two very privy: 'Begetting a wife which begame his niece by pouring her youngthings into skintighs'; 'You cannot make a limousine lady out of a hillman minx'; 'For a frecklesome freshcheeky sweetworded lupsqueezer. ' We hear dangerous noises: BENK and BINK and BUNK and BANK and BONK-falling noises, hitting noises. HCE's doom is nigh.
But all this is a story within a story within a dream. There will be no violence.
2 Mater Mary Mercerycordial of the Dripping Nipples, milk's a queer arrangement.
3 Real life behind the floodlights as shown hy the hest exponents of a
royal divorce.
Of course our first this-is-nonsense reaction to both footnotes and
Shem-m';ginal-comments tends to be modified after many readings. 2z3
? ? The Man-made Mountain
Brotherly Hate
These three footnotes, for instance, make a kind of pattern of father- hood and motherhood, revealed first in its divine aspects and then brought down to HCE and ALP (A Royal Divorce is Earwicker's favourite dramatic entertainment). As for Shaun's marginal poin- ters, these always, alas, make too much sense: they are the very voice of the student who plans great things for himself in the world. The right-hand ant toils away, the left-hand grasshopper chirps like a mad thing.
The text with its three-sided frame is very difficult to follow, but this is chiefly because it hides under its surface of dream Dublin chatter the strict doctrines of the ancient Cabbala. This makes much of the mystical significance of numbers. Thus, the Creator- 'Ainsoph' in the Cabbala-is represented by the number I. His heavenly consort is a (Joyce calls her 'Zeroine'). As he moves to- wards her, the numbers 2 to 9 are produced, and, when they achieve union, the great 10 comes about. The first thing the twins have to learn is the immanence of this divine creative force in the innumerable forms of the universe. Behind all the kinds of know- ledge, from history to music, lies the ultimate knowledge of the One. Joyce's achievement in setting forth all this lies, as it does throughout Finnegans Wake, in making the abstract not merely concrete but local, not merely local but comic. Unde ? -whence have we come?
Ubi ? -where are we? OUf 'imaginable itinerary through the particu- lar universal' is the path we take in order to find out:
Quick lunch by our left, wheel, to where. Long Livius Lane, mid Mezzo-
fanti Mall, diagnosing Lavatery Square, up Tycho Brache Crescent,
shouldering Berkeley Alley, querfixing Gainsborough Carfax, under <;Juido d'Arezzo's Gadeway, by New Livius Lane till where we whiled whIle we whithered. Old Vico Roundpoint.
These great names represent the seven main branches of knowledge,
beginning with Livy the ristorian and ending with him, old Vico
there too to remind us of the cyclical nature of our progress: history
does not, as Mr Deasy thought, lead to God's manifestation; God
is behind everything, unseen, unknowable:
Ainsoph, this upright one, with th~t naughty besighed him zeroine. To see in his horrorscup he is mehrkunos than saltz of sulphur. Terror of the noonstruck by day, cryptogam of each nightly bridable. B~t, to speak broken heaventalk, is he? Who is he? Whose is he? Why IS he? Howmuch is he? Which is he? When is he? Where is he? How is he?
Shem's marginal comments on God are very much those of
Stephen Dodalus: 'Swiney Tod, ye Daimon Barbar! Dig him in the 22~
rubsh! Ungodly old Ardrey, Cronwall beeswaxing the convulsion box. '
But it is not the God of the Irish Catholics, the butcher who kills
u~ like 'pigs (Swiney Tod~Schweinstod~pigsdeath), who is under
dIScussion. We are concerned with the cabbalistic One and Zero
the creation of the world of multiplicity which we can see as well
. ,
as anywhere, m HCE's pub and household (those famous initials are
never long out of the text-'Haud certo ergo', for instance; ALP is triply celebrated in 'Apis amat aram. Luna legit librum. Pulla petit pascua'). The Earwicker home is a tiny figure of the cosmos. Once, however, we examine this figure, we leave questions of theology and become preoccupied with the building of human societies. We enter HCE's house, climb 'from the murk of the mythelated' to civilisa-
tion. ' represented by 'Harington's invention', the we, and visit 'the clanence of the child light in the studiorium upsturts'. The twins in their nursery will enact the 'urges and widerurges' of primitive man. They will fight over a girl, even, while she 'with her tootpetty- pout of jemenfichue will sit and knit on solfa sofa'. (The footnote says: 'Let me blush to think of all those halfwayhoist pullovers. ') In the nursery, as in the greater world, the two great driving forces of cupidity and concupiscence will be at work-'early notions of acquired rights' and the 'pursuit o f panhysteric woman'. A t the same
time, the process of transmitting knowledge from one age to the
next proceeds: old granny teaches little Issy about man the winner and woman the loser, asking her to 'Note the Respectable Irish Distressed Ladies and the Merry Mustard Frothblowers of Hum- phreystown Associations. '
The right-hand margin now presents the nine principles of that bigger human history adumbrated in the nursery: 'CONCOMI- TANCE OF COURAGE, COUNSEL AND CONSTANCY. ORDINATION OF OMEN, ONUS AND OBIT. DISTRIBU- TION OF DANGER, DUTY AND DESTINY. POLAR PRIN- CIPLES. ' It seems to add up to C. O. D. -cash on delivery, a typi-
cally Shaunian summation: we expect the goods of life and we will
pay with the stoic virtues when we get them. When we Come to
Number lo-marriage of King One and QIeen Zero-we see that all life is based on the polar principle of sex. Can we really learn much from past history, then? (The notes BC and AD are played in the left- hand margin. ) 'Please stop if you're a B. C. minding missy, please do. But should you prefer A. D. stepplease. ' The completed Viconian
eras-the theocratic and aristocratic-have nothing to teach the
coming democratic age. Heroes like Humpty are done for ('By old 225
? ? ? The Man-made Mountain
Brotherly Hate
Grumbledum's walls'); the rainbow of the future spreads ('Heil, heptarched span of peace! '-the footnote says: 'I'm blest if I can see') and now we are to have 'Impovernment of the booble by the bauble for the bubble'. Or look at it another way: the special things we were taught to look for in the past are not in the past at all; they are here, in the present: 'Number Thirty two West Eleventh streak looks on to that (may all in the tocoming of the sempereternal speel spry with it! ) datetree doloriferous' of past time: II32 is here and now.
Here, though, there seems to be a great philosophical paradox.
Present and past may be brought together because of recurring
archeJ:ypes, but we cannot doubt that the individual forms ofone age are never an exact reproduction of corresponding forms in another age. We accept the notion of new species-'one world burrowing on another . . . Standfest, our tapiocal sagan hero, or any other macotther, signs is on the bellyguds bastille back'-and the fact that the older world lies underneath the new world: 'THE MONGREL UNDER THE DUNGMOUND. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE INFRALIMINAL INTELLIGENCE. ' It is in the darkness of the unconscious that the old hero Finnegan subsists:
Aught darks flou a duskness. Bats that? There peepeestrilling. At Bran- nan's on the moor. At Tam Fanagan's weak yat his still's going strang. And still here is noctules and Can tell things acommon on by that fluffy feeling.
'OFFRANDES' says the marginal note, and the text 'Dogs' vespers'. It may be that, as we propitiate the God of the heavens, so we must make offerings to our deeper, more primitive, natures. 'Keep the dog far hence', says T. S. Eliot-those animal forces inside us we fear so much. Perhaps we should bow down occasionally to that dog.
And now 'INCIPIT INTERMISSIO'. We rest from our studies a little, and the temptress Issy, who has already been thrusting her way into the footnotes ('Pipette. I can almost feed their sweetness at my lisplips'), fills three-quarters of a page with a footnote letter which seduces us to a mood of temporary languor. We have not yet learned much about sex. Issy turns herself into a love-goddess:
Wasn't it just divining that dog of a dag in Skokholme as I sat astrid uppon their Drewitt's altar, as cooledas as culcumbre, slapping my straights till the sloping ruins, postillion, postallion, a swinge a swank, with you offering me clouts of illscents and them homers stagstruck on the leasward!
226
Cities fall, broken in war, but still the flowers remain, fresh and
smiling as in the days of old battles (Joyce tells us this not in his own dream-words but in the undistorted French of Edgar Q! linet). Flowers of love beckon, but the boys 'totient quotients', 'Bruto and Cassio', are more concerned with the manlier matter of their eternal opposition. They get down then to doing their sums, inscribingnrst 'At maturing daily gloryaims' (the Jesuit Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam) at the head of their paper. Every theme of the book obscurely ap- pears as a mathematical problem, and we become aware of how large a part number has so far played in it. The boys' names are now given as Dolph (Shern) and Kev (Shaun)-'singlebarrelled names for doubleparalleled twixtytwins'-and it is Kev who comes to his brother for help. The problem they are going to work out is evidently important-'Concoct an equoangular trillitter' -for Joyce, in Latin, invites the spirits of the dead to come and watch: 'Venite,
preteriti. ' Apparently, though, young Dolph-Shern has some obscene purpose in mind, for - both the sets of marginal comments disa ppear- i n g - w e have a lengthy piece o f confused moralising, alluding much to the Tristram-Iseult legend and, addressing the two lovers by their Irish names- Diarmait and Grainne distorted to 'diarmuee and gran- you', saying: 'if that is what lamoor . . . seems circling toward out yondest heaven help his hindmost'. When the marginal comments are resumed, we see that Shaun has his grave pointers in italic, at the left, and Shem's irreverence, in the dignity of capitals, is on the right.
The letters ALP are now seen as the points of the isosceles triangle (the fertile delta) which is Anna Livia's own sign. In a diagram made up of two interlocking circles and two isosceles triangles with a common base (ALP and alpha lambda pi), Dolph- Shem finds his thesis, an obscurely obscene exposition of his own sexual curiosity, while Kev-Shaun makes learned but ingenuous comments in the margin:
Outer serpumstance. s being ekewilled, we carefully, if she pleats, lift by -her seam hem and jabote at the spidsiest of her trickkikant (like thou- sands done before since fillies calpered. Ocone! Ocone! ) the maidsapron of our A. L. P. , fearfully! till its nether nadir is vortically where (allow me aright to two cute winkles) its naval's napex will have to beandbe. You must proach near mear for at is dark. Lob. And light your mech. Jeldy!
The whole process of learning, of scientific investigation and the
hugging of secret knowledge, is revealed as mere curiosity about
what lies up our mothers' skirts. Kev-Shaun is slow in realising his 227
? ? ? The Man-made Mountain
brother's drift but when he does he turns on him, and the fraternal battle is resu:Ued- Michael versus Old Nick. The footnote says 'Picking on Nickagain, Pikey Mikey /' The archangel calls Satan 'the divver's own smart gossoon, aequal to yourseH and wamgel to anglyother, so you are, hoax! You know, you'll be dampned, so you will one of these invernal days . . . '
The real point is, I think, that Shem, with all his tenden~ to make game of learning, has more understandmg of ~he mystIcal significance of signs and letters (he is, after all, an artist) than has his twin, despite the earnestness of hiS a~phcatlOn. Both boys, bemg the father split into two, are incomplete m themselves, a~dthere are times when their recognition of this makes them turn m anger on each other. It is now a matter of 'Christ's Church varses Bellial! ' But the narrator (being himself an artist and hence on the Side of Dolph-Shem-Glugg-Nick) celebrates Irish literature as a sort of
divine body-organs listed in the margin, names garbled m the text: 'Steal, Barke, Starn, Swhipt, Wiles, Pshaw, Doubbhnbbayyates. ' This does not prevent Shaun from delivering a blow to Shem's mortalbody-'Wincewan'swon! Rip! '(footnote: 'Abyebyebmgbang boys I See you Nutcracker Sunday! '). . .
But, surprisingly when we conSIder that. Shem 1S the devil, not so
surprisingly when we remember that he IS also Stephen Dedalus, there is no retaliation. In his brain he must conquer. He says: 'Thanks eversore much, pointcarried! . . . I'm seeing rayingbogeys rings round me . . . By Saxon Chromaticus, you done that lovely for me! ' He calls on his little-cloud sister for confirmalion of the skill and strength of Shaun's blow. Before they go out mto the great
world, Shem is revealed as the monopohst of spmtual power, hiS brother as the extroverted politician-fighter. 'And that salubrated sickenagiaour of yaours have teaspilled all my hazeydency', says Shem to Shaun. '. . . I'm only out for celebridging over the gu~ltof the gap in your hiscitendency. You are a hundred thousand limes welcome, old wortsampler, hellbeit you're just about as ~ul~able as
my woolfell merger would be. ' We remember the double slgmfic~nce of 'hesitency/hesitancy'. The guilt of HCE, Parnell and P,ggot IS m both the sons, revealed equally in Shaun's jealous blow, Shern's failure to strike back. The Shem-margin is full of HCE stuttermg.
Peace then-the thrice-repeated Sanskrit word for it which con- cludes Eliot's The Waste Land: 'Shantih' distorted to 'slanty scanty shanty'. The end of learning and the beginning of the time for action. Shaun's margin sums up, in great names from Cato to
228
Brotherly Hate
Darius, the scope of their studies; the text, with a Rabelaisian
catalogue, indicates the subjects of their essays. 'Castor, Pollux' in the margin relates to 'Compare the Fistic Styles of Jimmy Wilde and Jack Sharkey' in the text; 'Julius Caesar' leads us to 'A Succees- ful Career in the Civil Service' (footnote: 'R. C. , disengaged, good character, would help, no salary'). Shem's margin says: 'MAW- MAW, LUK, YOUR BEEFTAY'S FIZZIN OVER! ' and we know that it is supper-time. The mystic numbers of the Cabbala- summary of all knowledge-are sp out from 'Aun Do Tri' to final 'Geg'. At the number five or 'Cush'- halfway down the ladder of numbers-the split of creation into its two opposing brother- elements takes place. The footnote says: 'Kish is for anticheirst, and the free of my hand to him! ' and a thumbed nose is shown in the margin. 'Anticheirst' combines 'Antichrist' and 'anti-cheiros'- 'counter-hand', 'back of my hand': both Shem and Shaun oppose the Christ-element, as manifested in each other. The other drawing- one of crossed bones-sums up everything: the kiss of love, the crucifixion, love-through-death, death-through-love, the whole of murderous history, the arrangement into a pattern of the dead and dry-knowledge itself. 'Their feed begins', says the text. They eat the substance of their father. Then they go off to the New World, sending a 'NIGHTLETTER':
With our best youlldied greedings to Pep and Memmy and the old fo~kers below and ,beyant, wishing them all very merry Incarnations in thls land o f the hvvey and plenty o f preposperousness through their coming new yonks
The day of the brothers has arrived; the day of their father-as we shall see in the remaining two chapters of this section of the book- is finished. .
229
? ? 6: Mactation of the Host
FROM SINBAD THE SAILOR TO TINBAD THE TAILOR WAS A STEP
of Leopold Bloom's descent into sleep. Earwicker's descent to misery and a sense of uselessness involves the same word-play, but the words of his dream are its very substance, not just its garment. HCE is at the most complex and tight-knit phase of his dream, a dream that we ourselves, along with Joyce, are dreaming. The matter of the dream is so dense and confused that HCE seems to require a mise en scene of great familiarity to hold the dream down (as a simple canto forma or even an unmoving pedal-point serves as a strong bass for highly involved counterpoint). HCE is dreaming that, before
going off to dream in bed, he is presiding over his tavern, and its noisy guest-patrons-the four, the twelve, and more-are reducing their host from hero to butt, as well as hero to villain, turning the provider of heart's sustenance into the very butcher's carcase which must be growlingly devoured, gaffing the sailor and turning him into a tailor and then into the garment itself which-the outward show of pride and dignity-will be rent to shreds and atoms. This must be done so that the world of the brothers can come into existence and Shaun, full-fed of his father, can exchange 'greedings' with the constituents of a mean democracy that was onCe a hero's kingdom. It is the eating of the host-God made man made bread-by which the life ofsmall creatures is sustained. Thus, as with every sad thing in this book, we are reminded of the nobiliry of sacrifice as well as the joy of resurrection. Pound HCE to atoms and those atoms prove to be adams: the great circle of creation will roll again.
This part of Finnegan, Wake is the very devil to summarise: it is like saying what Bach's Art ofFugue is about, bar by bar. But we must (and this should be said often) never expect anything approach- ing waking sense.
The confused density of the narrative is caused partly by the shame of its hero and partly by his rending, the division of his substance. The sense of what is happening in the dream and
230
Maaation afthe Host
what is imagined as happening in the dream is clouded by the noise of drunkenness and vituperation, by many tongues brought back fr~m abroad by roving seamen, and the whole mixture is further thickened by the bark of television and radio. We start off with a tale about a. 'Norweeger's capstan', a SOrt of wild Flying Dutchman
figure. He IS HCE as he was, old Nordic rover-invader and he
repres~nts HeE's past sins re-enacted in the present. Th~ present HCE IS reduced to a mere 'ship's husband' a server of sailors the dupe of a ras. cally mariner, and the wrongs 'done to him are m~tter for a new kind ofh? miliation. The captain (let us use waking language) has the ship s husband arrange for the making of a suit of
clothes, and, when the clothes are ready, the captain will not pay for them. A young man called Kersse (kersey) underlines the tailoring motif. He offers to go after the captain when the latter, jeering, puts b~ck. to ~ea. ,He IS a kind of emanatIOn of Earwicker in his 'Persse OReilly. form (remember Hosty's scurrilous ballad), 'k' being the Erse eqmvalent of the Brythonic (Welsh or Breton) 'p' (e. g. Welsh
fa-what=Erse cal? Thus Kersse,. who works for a tailoring firm, IS th~Side of HCE that will undo him, unpick him, in both his forms -agemg husband (ship's or otherwise) and absconding rogue-sea- man. Mter thIS tale there are shared memories of a great fall and
the customers' talk turns to the ship's husband's daughter. Sh~fell for the captam: 't? ere were no peanats in her famalgia so no wumble she tu~bledfor hIS famas roalls davors' ('royal divorce' _ Earwicker's
favounte play). Double shame again for HCE.
The next appea~ance0;the rascal-rover is greeted by the ship's husband very nord1cally: he made the sign of the hammer', Thor's
sign:
rod's ~rought, he sayd, after a few daze, thinking of all those bliakings ow letf pauses! Here you are back on your hawkins, from Blasil th~
Brast to Our povotogesus portocalI, the furt on the turn of the hurdies slave to trade, vassal ofspices and a dragon-on-the-market and be turbot' lurch a stripe, as were you soused methought out of the mackerel' Eldsfells! sayd he. A kumpavin on iceslant! Here's open handlegs for on~ old faulker from the hame folk here in you's booth!
There is no rancour, since HCE and the captain are one and the
sam. e m~n: Moreover, these seaman's visits are pure ritual, like those earher VISitS of Grace O'Malley: they are fairy-tale stuff. This time the . captam orders food and drink but, as before, goes off without paymg. The prose IS thick with tailoring terms (for the food and the sul! are the same thmg), and we even hear the voices of three tailors
231
? ? The Man-made Mountain
who seem to represent the three Fates. When the captain comes into
the tavern for the third time, he is followed by Kersse, who greets all cheerily: 'Peiwei toptip, nankeen pO\ltdelounges. Gives fitir day. Cheroot. Cheevio! ' He has apparently been to the races, since he is asked, 'And, haikon or hurlin, who did you do at doyle today, my horsey dorksey gentryman. ' Pidgin English mingles with the tongues of the Norsemen, and, through a fug of noise and drink, we hear a
voice ofvituperation raised against 'the bugganeering wanderducken
. . . the coarsehair highsaydighsayman . . . the bloedaxe bloodooth baltxebec, that is crupping into our raw lenguage navel through the lumbsmall of his hawsehole'. The villain is evidently HCE, foreigner, invader, cheat, lecher.
And now, after a weather forecast on the radio, we hear a tale of the catching and taming of the rover. 'Birdflights', the radio assures us, 'confirm abbroaching nubtials. ' The mariner is to be made to marry the ship's husband's daughter, a confusion of Issy and ALP. 'Come Bastabasco and hippychip eggs' (HCEl 'she will make a suomease pair and singlette, jodhpur smalls and tailorless,. a copener's
cribful, leaf, bud and berry, the divlin's own little mimmykin puss (hip, hip, horatia! ) for myoid comrhade salrymar here . . . ' The 'suomease pair' is obviously the twins and the 'singlette' the daugh- ter. An Irish marriage will calm the wanderer down, stop his tricks. Soon he is 'Cawcaught. Coocaged'. There are great celebrations; somebody even sings a negro spiritual: 'He goat a berth. And she cot a manege. And wohl's gorse mundom ganna wedst. ' The mar-
riage is consummated ('if hec dont love alpy then lad you annoy
me') and, since there is an element of incestuous guilt in it all, we
hear the hundred-letter thunderclap, the fall-word in the form 'Pappappapparrassannuaragheallachnatullaghmonganmacmacmacw- hackfalltherdebblenonthedubblandaddydoodled'. The taming of the tempestuous rover is summed up in 'his loudship was converted to a landshop'.
But we cannot get away from that primal guilry act in the park,
and, as we have committed ourselves to a marine context, the park
quite naturally becomes the sea. We have gone back even further than the Garden of Eden and see man himself arising from a watery element. The theme of guilt is not developed, only mentioned, for we now have an 'enterruption'. That this is to have a strong Slav flavour is prefigured in 'Check or slowback. Dvershen. ' Kate the cleaning-woman is introduced with Czechoslovak prepositions (which, like those of Russian, are single ktters -v, s and so on). The
23 2
Mactalion ofthe Host
children are asleep, she says, and the mistress of the house is in bed.
If Earwicker is 'whishtful to licture her caudal' he can join her. The mentl? TI ofth~ b. e~roomb:ir;-gs in the. sound of the branch tapping at the wllldow- DIp. Kate IS III her gUIse as keeper of the Wellington Mus~um m Phoenix Park and tuis, far from sending HCE to join his
lady III repose, opens up the old world of imperialistic war again. A ,PIcture on the wall of the bar shows the Charge of the Light Bngade, with hunting overtones (horses, HCE as John Peel, the sound of the horn or bugle) and Earwlcker is dream-drawn to tellinrr a story about 'Arthur Duke'. Inevitably, this is full of HCE's ow~ guilt-:it was. of him, my wife and I thinks, to feel to every of the
yo~nglllg frUlts, tenderosed like an atlantic's breastswells or . . . a bnght tauth bight shimmeryshaking for the welt of his low. And where the peckadillies at his wristsends meetings be loving so lightly dovessoIld the candIdacy, me wipin eye sinks, of his softboiled bosom should be apparient even to our illicterate of nullatinenties. ' Here we are again-the two creamy roses in the park, the lobsters or
redcoats, the stuttering guilt:
Imagine twee cweamy wosen. Suppwose you get a beautiful thought and cull them sylvi. as sub silence. T~e~ inmaggin a stotterer. Suppoutre him to been one btg! ? ermaster OmmbIl. Then lustily . . . immengine up to thre~ longly lu~kmg. lobstarts . . . How do, dainty daulimbs ? So peached to pIck on you m thIS way, -prue and simple, pritt and spry! Heyday too Malster Faunagon, and hopes your hahititahiti licks the mankey nuts! '
. The pushing. of . the guilt back to the beginning, to the giant Fmnegan reposmg m the unconSCIOUS, is not to be permitted. The customers call for a television show presented by Butt and Taff (Shern and Shaun disguised as cross-talk comedians) and they are anXIOUS that they should re-enact the old story of Buckley and the
Russian general ('How Burghley shuck the rackushant Germanon'). There IS, m fact, an apocryphal tale in existence about an Irish soldIer, Buckley, who, fighting for the British in the Crimean War was in a position to shoot a Russian general when this latter had le~ d? w~ his tro~sersto defecate. But humanity and a feeling for human dlgmty prevaIled; Buckley did not fire. So the story (it was, to make
due ackoowledgements, John Joyce's story) went. Now it is changed
to fit the dream and engmeer Earwlcker's ultimate humiliation.
The Butt and Taff episode is presented in dramatic form com- plete with stage directions. This makes the battle-sounding: guilt- echomg galhmaufrey seem more lucid than it really is. The three
redcoat witnesses of Earwicker's nameless crime (which seems now
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to involve defecation and innumerable sexual perversions) form a
link between the park and the battlefield. Butt is one of the soldiers; he easily changes into Buckley, making the two stories into one. The cross-talk act is interrupted for the report of a race-meeting, but even this is thick with the HCE horror-tale:
Emancipator, the Creman hunter (M;jor Hermyn C. Entwhistle) with dramatic effect reproducing the form o f famous sires on the scene o f the formers triumphs, is showing the eagle's way to Mr Whaytehayte's three buy geldings Homo Made Ink, Bailey Beacon and Ratatuohy while Furstin II and The Other Girl (Mrs 'Boss' ~l'aters, Leavybrink) too early spring dabbles,
are showing a clean paira/hids to Immensipater.
It? is, of course, horses that link the themes of battle, hunt, and racing. When we resume the Buckley story, the wizards Browne and Nolan will (we must always expect this) confuse Butt and Taff to Tuff and Batt, but the general drift remains clear. HCE, prime brute, warmonger, imperialist, is identified with the Russian general, and, in this version of the Buckley story, he is shot, even though his pants are down. 'I gave one dobblenotch', says Butt-Buckley, 'and I ups with my crozzier. Mirrdo! With my how on armer and hits leg an arrow cockshock rockrogn. Sparro! '
To match the chaos of the soldier's blow in Ulysses, we must now have the annihilation of the atom, but Joyce puts the hope of resurrection even in that: 'the abnihilisation of the etym'. From nothing-ab nihilo- the etymon, root ofttuth, ofall language, will re- emerge. And now, the tale ended, Butt and Taff melt into one person, make a moral and prophetic conclusion (this shooting of the Russian general by Buckley will happen again, recurring in a cycle, so long as the 'samuraised twimbs' are a principle of life-Shem versus Shaun, the split personality ofHCE raging in inner war. 'So till butagain budly shoots thon rising germinal let bodley chow the fatt of his anger and badley bide the toil of his tubb').
But Earwicker makes the mistake of sympathising with the Rus- sian general, while the customers approve what Butt-Buckley did. HCE says that that story is the story of all great men who fall; indeed, it is everybody's story: 'And that is at most redoubtedly an overthrew of each and ilkermann of us, I persuade myself, before Gow, gentlemen, so true as this are my kopfinpot astrode on these
~is my boardsoldereds. ' A hero is ruined because nature leads him to the exposure of his baser part. HCE, that very hero, is seen for an instant in his noblest aspect, sea-warrior coming to land, 'flying the Perseoroyal'. And now comes the crushing of the hero, the
234
mactation of the host. This is so big an undertaking that we have to
prepare for it somewhat remotely, converting it into a ritual. The radio announces, after calling for order in the voices of the three soldiers ('Attention! Stand at! ! Ease! ! ! '), the twofold song of the nightingales (the two girls), and the very leaves of the trees sing of the destruction of 'the marrer of mirth and the jangtherapper of all jocolarinas'. The customers rehearse his sins (,Has they bane re- neemed? Soothinly low'). But the brave old Adam stands up for himself, admitting his guilt but drawing his accusers into it: 'Guilry but fellows culpows! ' He has been misunderstood or 'missaunder- staid', he says. His crime was a little one. His Swiftian little loves~ 'my dears, the estelles', merge into one, then become two again, and all he did was this: 'my palmspread was gav to a parsleysprig, the curliest weedeen old ocean coils around'. The witnesses have not played cricket: 'Wickedgapers, I appeal against the light! ' He is out with it now, in a full confession: 'the lilliths oft I feldt, and, when booboob brutals and cautiouses only aims at the oggog hogs in the humand', then let him, like Caesar, be assassinated: 'thit thides or marse makes a good dayle to be shattat. Fall stuff. ' Fall staff, fall soldier's pole, he has finished. 'Here endeth chinchinatibus. '
The four old men have their say now. They are the four gospel- lers, the four Irish provinces, the four Viconian phases. They are Russia (Gregorovitch), Greece (Leonocopolos), Italy (Tarpinacci) and Ireland (Duggelduggel). Th~ir words carry weight. They state what men may not do, and what men may not do consists of what HCE is already supposed to have done, including shooting Russian generals (hardly fair) and being a 'pedestaroly'. Then they are tucked away inside an 'Omar Khayyam' stanza: 'And thus within the tavern's secret booth The wisehight ones who sip the tested sooth Bestir them as the Just has bid to jab The punch of quaram on the mug of truth. ' Six of the twelve (Mr G. B. W. Ashburner, Mr Faixgood, Mr L L Chattaway, Mr Q P. Dieudonney, Mr T. T. Erchdeakin and Mr W. K. Ferris-Fender) add a word or so: 'They had heard or had heard said or had heard said written. ' But who is anyone to accuse or judge? 'You were in the same boat of your- selves too, Getobodoff or Treamplasurin. '
From afar we hear the sound of a ballad. Hosry is at it again ('Ostia, lift it! Lift at it, Ostia1'):
Dour douchy was a sieguldson.
He cooed that loud nor he was young.
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Mactation ofthe Host
He cud bad caw nor he was gray Like wather parted from the say.
It is time to turn out the customers and lock the door. 'The hum- ming, -it's coming. Insway onsway. ' In good Norse English, HCE cries, 'Tids, genmen, plays. ' Outside the streets are filling, the mobs marching, bells are clashing out. The pub is cleared. The song comes nearer:
His bludgeon's bruk, his drum is tore. For spuds we'll keep the hat he wore And roll in clover on his clay
By wather parted from the say.
There is going to be a 'lyncheon partying'. Still, the doors are locked and only the 'for eolders' refuse to be turned out. But HCE cannot lock his ears to the voices without that proclaim his guilt to the world. His sins know no end. Some are fantasti~but one or two very privy: 'Begetting a wife which begame his niece by pouring her youngthings into skintighs'; 'You cannot make a limousine lady out of a hillman minx'; 'For a frecklesome freshcheeky sweetworded lupsqueezer. ' We hear dangerous noises: BENK and BINK and BUNK and BANK and BONK-falling noises, hitting noises. HCE's doom is nigh.
But all this is a story within a story within a dream. There will be no violence.
