'
Issy-Izzy-Iseult is the Church he leaves behind, to be comforted
by 'Dave the Dancekerl' who 'will arrive incessantly in the fraction of a crust'.
Issy-Izzy-Iseult is the Church he leaves behind, to be comforted
by 'Dave the Dancekerl' who 'will arrive incessantly in the fraction of a crust'.
re-joyce-a-burgess
Ad majorem i.
s.
d.
' The Grace-
. hoper forgives the Ondt his laughter at his own artist's poverty and
sickness and dejection:
Teach Floh and Luse polkas, show BielZie where's sweet
And be sure Vespatilla fines fat ones to heat.
As I ~lZceplayed . the piper I must now pay the count
So satda to Moyhammlet and marhaba to your Mount 1
. . . Your /eats end enormous, your volumes immense
(May the G~acesI hopedfor singyour Ondtship song senseI), Your genus ts worldwide, your spacest sublime I
But, Holy Saltmartin, why can't you beat time?
He is able to forgive, for he is not really able to envy. The Ondt is
welcome t~ hIS w~alth, for the Gracehoper's temperament rejects th~sort of hfe that IS needful for the attaining of it. What is the Ondt domg but fillmg up space with possessions 1 He cannot like the artist. , c~nq~ertime, the only thing worth doing. '
It IS slgmficant that Shaun sees the point of the Shem way of life (~fterall, he made up the fable). He is aware ofwhat is missing in hIS Own temperament, the nature of the split which makes each ~rother only half the man his father was. Now, being handed the
letter, earned of Shaun, son of Hek, written of Shem, brother of Shaun, uttered for Alp, mother of Shern, for Hek, father of Shaun' and asked if he can read it, he denounces it as filth and flummery a libel on his father ('How they wore two madges on the makewat~r. And why there were treefellers in the shrubrubs'-the sin in the
park). But, gently asks the audience, has not Shaun himself 'used
u. p sl~ngu~ge tun times as words as the penmarks used out in smscnpt With such hesitancy by your cerebrated brother' ? Shaun at once picks up that word 'hesitancy' and rnms it to 'HeCitEncy'- a reference to HeE's guilty stutter. 'Your words grates on my ares',
24'
All the meals in Finnegans Wake are curiously appetIsmg, and this long merging series -of menus is no exception, from the 'half o f a pint of becon with newled googs and a segment of riceplummy padding' to the 'pair of chops and thrown in from the silver grid . . . and gaulusch gravy and pumpernickel to wolp up and a gorger's bulby onion' and more, much more, with 'the best of wine avec', He is, of course, eating his father, ingesting his substance like a sacra,",: ment before taking over his office. Full, he is ready to address the people ('the voce of Shaun, vote of the Irish'), though yawning from
the sleepy feeding: 'Alo, alass, aladdin, amobus! '
He speaks humbly, admitting his unworthiness to bear 'these postoomany missive on his majesty's service', It should have been his brother, 'for he's the head and I'm an everdevoting fiend of his', but Shaun himself is 'the heart of it'. His audience interposes mild questions, calling him 'dear Shaun' and asking 'who out of sym- phony gave you the permit' to carry 'the letter or manifesto of rule. Shaun is always vague in his answers, but he has a number of plausible slogans which point his practical wisdom:
Never back a woman you defend, never get quit of a friend on whom you depend, never make face to a foe till he's rife and never get stuck to another man's pfife. Amen; ptahl His hungry will be donel On the con- tinent as in Eironesia. But believe me in my simplicity I am awfully good, I believe, so I am, at the root of me, praised be right cheek Discipline! . . . Down with the Saozon ruze! . . . Like the regular redshank I am. Im- pregnable as the mule himself.
'Bow mielodorous is thy bel chant, 0 songbird', say his listeners, and they even-after a passage about his money (where did he get it 1 What did he do with it I) and his love affairs (plenty of Swiftian or HCE guilt here)-ask him to sing them a song. He says he would rather 'spinooze' them a fable. But before he can start on the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper he coughs ('husstenhasstencaffincof- finrnssemtossemdamandamnacosaghcusaghhobixhatouxpeswchbech? oscashlcarcarcaract'-the word for 'cough' in many languages appears here) and we recognise the thundred-letter clap which recalls the fall. Some of his own sexual guilt has been passed from dreaming HCE to his favourite son, hinted at previously in references to Swift's father-lover love for his two Esthers (or 'two venusstas', as Shaun's audience calls them). Sexual guilt, which the artist can purge, has been the lot of so many leaders.
The fable that follows is delightful. The Gracehoper is always 'jigging ajog, hoppy on akkant of his joyicity', and always asking
240
? ? ? ? The Man-made Mountazn .
h And then he tears into absent Shem, angrily affirmmg tl~at . e says. t Shem who wrote the letter about the 'hhens of the veh t, It was no. . . d Folletta Laambe': he merely took down w at
Shaun to Jaun to Yawn
Till he returns, 'may the tussocks grow quickly under your tramp-
thickets and the daisies trip lightly Over your battercops'. But there
is something strange about this disappearing Shaun. Has he not
ceased to be a man and turned into a barrel? He has certainly eaten
enough.
But when we next meet him, in the chapter following, Shaun is
'amply altered for the brighter' and has even changed his name to Jaun, which has liverish overtones of a great lover. He is on his travels, delivering the word to the people, but he has stopped for a breather 'at the weir by Lazar's Walk'. Seated upon the 'brink- spondy' are the twenty-nine girls from 5t Bride's or 5t Bridget's or 'Benent Saint Berched's national nightschool', and Jaun gives them
greeting, turning at the same time into a priest whose hands are
speedily kissed by the maidens, 'kittering all about, rushing and
making a tremendous girIsfuss Over him pellmale, their jeune premier and his rosyposy smile, mussing his frizzy hair and the golliwog curls of him'. Among the girls he recognises (leap-year is still with us) his Own sister, called Izzy here, and it is evident that his attitude
to her is ambiguous, but honest Jaun is 'brotheroesides her benedict
godfather' and love to him is not quite what it was to his sinning father, stutterer in the park.
He addresses her fondly and then launches into a Sermon to all
the girls: 'Words taken in triumph, my sweet assistance, from the sufferant pen of OUf jacosus inkerman militant of the reed behind the ear. ' He has reviled Shem's writing but it is all he has in the way of Holy Writ. The sermon itself is shocking, full of the sly wisdom of the world masquerading as the distillation of sanctity: 'Never lose
your heart away till you win his diamond back . . . Lust, thou shalt not commix idolatry. Hip confiners help compunction. Never park your brief stays in the men's convenience . . . Collide with man, collude with money . . . Where ~rou truss be circumspiciollS and
look before you leak, dears . . . Where it is nobler in the main to Supper than the boys and errors of outrager's virtue. Give back those stolen kisses; restaure those allcotten glooves . . . Leg-before- Wicked lags-behind-Wall where here Mr Whicker whacked a great fall . . . Scenta Clauthes stiffstuffs your hose and heartsies full of temptiness . . . Slip your oval out of touch and let the paravis be
your goal. Up leather, Prunella, convert your try! . . . Dress the pussy for her nighty and follow her piggytails up their way to Winkyland . . . Love through the usual channels, cisternbrothelly . . . Deal with Nature the great greengrocer and pay regularly the
243
Nancy N! ckikes an l'
the '~ribiber' trving to make a Sw. ft of , .
hIS mother
ept squea mg,
like the decan's, fast aslo? ped I n t e mtranc~
himself-
. h '
to his polthrone-
ki his ~h;i:S! lth~issixth finger between h. s catseye:n! ~~~':~~h~~h:rdio-
hi
arne.
down to hIS vegeta o~S~~e';i~ecourse of marrimoney, under the and was warmed E t' But what is the true reason for
Helpless Corpses. nactmen ~heaudience wants to know. Shaun
Shaun's hate of h. s brother"f k me whys' And then sur-
replies: 'For
. rin
pillgrimace of Childe Hordnd'henkgro~s. ;! pt~~o~k! IcBck gav him that
1 ary he Invented un er Ie s y .
gossk 't torI And it was entirely theck latter to tooc ,. m. a .
d 'dd '1 Shem is terrible,~tforg:vableT~:;'~~h~~~IJ~sufo~~id~nt~:~~
h? 1 guage. you as . ,
IS root an d ' d a d e up out of ancient mytho-
. . 1
pnsmg y, we
loglcal. nam~s-. 'drrerinsurtkrinmgernrackinarockarl Thor's rirlukk:lokkIbaug. mand~ Vico taught that language was an attempt for yo! We re~embert a~od'sthllnder. Shem has the gift oflan-
hearathun er-wor m . c 'Ullhodturden weirmudgaardgringnirurdrmolmnen-
to. JIlake meamng o~~~~atthe thunder said. But the political leader guage: he can expla. the antithesis of truth and clarity. The thrIves on vague speec,h, e ' the truth made many a great artist is the demagogue s trueen mhY'thunder word' 'The hundred-
ITh di crecogn. seste
man fal . e au en e rd of lettered name agam, last wo
-.
erfect language. But you could
come near it, we do suptose, s~~:r:rword-ma~than his brother,
How? ' Shaun blu~ter~: e;s ~ t the whole thing is not worth the
and one day he wIllhs oW,'~ft~ingthat Shem writes is disgusting: r
trouble really, and t e sOh t1 s any . ? ncendiarist whosoever or '1 . . tote arne
'1 WI} C0mID1SS10n Id deavour to set annyma roner
ahriman hows? clever wh? HWo~ ~~of a sudden, slobbering with moother of mme on fire. e 18, a
p Shaun 0' we foresupposed.
Sh ' I tter has shamed her. .
em s el ut of the dream: 'he'spoorlessly d. sap-
mother-love:
And now Shaun me ts 0 0 0 down a papa from circular circu-
paled and vanesshed, hke a p p d his peopl; miss him, heaping
lario. Ah, mean! ' He IS gone an
blessings on his memory: ther ou rolling home! May
And may the mosse of prosperousness g~ Malthe fireplug of filiality
foggy dews bediamonfi~eJourth~ob~;i:~indbehind glow luck to your reinsure your bungho e. ay
bathershins!
242
? ? The Man-made Mountain
Shaun to Jaun to Yawn
monthlies. ' And so on and so on and so on till the final warning: 'If ever I catch you at it, mind, it's you that will cocottch it! I'll tackle you to feel if you have a few devils in you. Holy gun, I'll give it to you, hot, high and heavy before you can say sedro. ' All that the son has become, it seems, is a more articulate and far more. hypo- critical dirty-old-man copy of the father. It is the tragedy of msuffi- ciency-half an egg, not half of a double yolk. .
Under cover of a continuation of the sermon, Jaun addresses hiS
sister only, telling her what me~, and fo; that matter what books, . to avoid, ambiguously recommendmg t~e Weekly St~nd:rd, our vertIe organ that is ethelred by all pressdom , and works hke Through Hell with the Papes (mostly boys) by the divine comic Denti Alligator (exsponging your index) and fi~da qutp l~a qUI. re ansus ar~amfrom bastardtitle to fatherjohnson. Shaun will, With a certam greed, guard her virtue for her. If anybody makes scoundrelly advances to Izzy 'we'll dumb well soon show him what the Shaun way lS hke how we'll go a long way towards breaking his outsider's face for him'. He has to go away now, spreading the word, but he wlll be back to 'cover the two pure chicks of your comely plumpchake wlth
zuccherikissings, hong, kong, and so gong'. . . .
But, when he returns to his general sermomsmg, a certam con-
fidence has gone out of Shaun already:
Do ou know what, liddle giddIes? One of these day~ I am a1vised by ~he smi~n voteseeker who's now snoring elued t? poslt1y,ely strtke offhlkmg for o;d and all as I bldy well bldy ought untIl su~htemse as some moo~ is Jade under privy-sealed 0x:ders to get me an lTIcrease of automo~011 and footwear for these poor dIscalced and ~ ? our~e from bon SomewlTI. d for a cure at Badanuweir (though where It s gomg ~o come from thIS
. ) I sartunly think now honest to John, for an mcome plexus that tlme- as ' . '
that's about the sanguine boundary hmlt. Amean.
lechery, simpringly sritchless with admiracion, among the most
uxoriously furnished compartments'.
This odious young man is all wind, a loud mouth concealing inner
doubt. This Viconian phase will not do at alL Before he goes off on
a mission he represents as Christlike, he paints a tawdry after-life , 'when the Royal Revolver of t~ese real globoes lets regally fire of hIS mw colpo for the chnsman s pandemon to give over and the
Harlequinade to begin properly SPQ1eaRking Mark Time's Finist Joke. Putting Allspace in a NotshalL' Soon, to no surprise, he be- comes Chnst hImself, guzzling a vulgar last supper whose mastica- tion is all too clearly to be seen, steak and peas and bacon becoming 'kates and eaps and naboc' and (x=consonant; o=vowel) cabbalTe and boiled protestants (potatoes)l pounded and gnashed to a glu~y meat-extract-hke bolus: 'xoxxoxo and xooxox xxoxoxxoxxx'. He is ready for off: 'Me hunger's weighed. ' He asks Izzy to write to him and she responds in the fascinatingly horrible little language w~ h~ve come to know so well. : 'my sapphire chaplets of ringarosary I Will say for you to the Allmlchael and solve qui pu while the dove- do~es pick my mouthbuds . . . with nurse Madge, my linkingclass, she s a fnght, poor old dutch, m her sleeptalking when I paint the
measles on her and mudstuskers to make her a man'. (She must
always have her mirror to turn herself into the two temptresses in th~ park. ) The episode th~ckens with Swift-Stella allusions. Jaun raIses hls chalIce and says: Esterelles, be not On your weeping what though Shaunathaun is in his fail! ' The holy cup is also a 'bridle's cup' filled with champagne bubbling with concupiscent connotations. 'So gullaby, me poor Isley!
'
Issy-Izzy-Iseult is the Church he leaves behind, to be comforted
by 'Dave the Dancekerl' who 'will arrive incessantly in the fraction of a crust'. The Paraclete and the Eucharist appear in one image. Issy's name is changed to Julia Bride (Christ's bride, the Church) and Dave, the Holy Ghost, is introduced to her. But, if we are to prune away excess characters with Occam's razor, this Paraclete must be Shem, a~d, indeed, we hear: 'He's the mightiest penum- brella I ever flounshed on behond the shadow of a post! ' It is right that Shem, artlst, vessel of mSptratlOn, should play the descending dove. But Jaun-ChrlSt has to struggle with impulses of an old en-
mity-'We're as thick and thin now as two tubular jawballs. I hate him about his patent henesy, plasfh it, yet am I amorist. I love him.
1 In the year of the Irish potato famine Protestant evangelists made converts through the bnbe of potato soup. Hence potatoes have ever since been called 'protestants'.
A lot of them want him to retire on pension, but where is the money from ? He would be ready enough to turn back from glory
tocome . . . , ld ifhe could only find the girl of his heart, a teashop mppy, my a y
fL 't lookafterhim. Buthisdreamoftea-caddyhomehness,
oyons,a
t ted by the umbrella-saint James Hanway from the
b' Id 19 war ,
proec '1 ' . fV
. h t through with Swift-gm t- vafilty 0 anessy . . . peepe .
IS
sOH'
d'd k
tl tl' (Swift's little language: ppt). IS gran lOse reams ta eon
peepe ~ If he had money he would invest it in 'vestments of anewlorffi. . h 'd subdominal poteen at pri~ecost'; he IS, he says~the gogetter t at ,
make it pay like cash repsters as sure as there s a p~t on a pole. Rich, he would plant Izzy 'on the electnc ottoman m the lap of
2# 245
? ? ? The Man-made Mountain
Shaun to Jaun to Yawn
I love his old portugal's nose'-and we are not surprised to find later that Jaun starts a grumbling programme of disparagement. It begms with a discussion about church music and Shem's vocal gift: '. . . he could be near a colonel with a voice like that'. Shcm becomes Stephen Dedalus-Joyce and Jaun becomes Buck Mulligan-? ogarty: 'The misery billyboots I used to lend hIm before we spht (we are back in the Martello Tower). The latter identification is a pregnant one when we remember Mulligan's mockery of the Mass, his ballad
about Joking Jesus. AB for the real Joyce behind these dream-masks,
he is there in the 'beurlads scael' (his first job in exile was as a teacher in the Berlitz School), placing 'the ocean between his and ours't trying to be 'as homely gauche as swif~'. The sacred spirit (Holy Ghost) is reduced to ('homely gauche) a mockmg, rather mept satirical sneerer. But-'my positively last at any stagel'-Jaun has done talking: ' 'tis time to be up and ambling'.
He is becoming, though big, vague and pitiable. He is 'Jaun the Boast' but the twenty-nine girls of St Bride's are prepared to accord him a hero's farewell. More, they will hymn this grotesque barrel of wind like the god Osiris, like a fertile tree or a spring in the desert:
Oasis cedarous esaltarshoming Leafboughnoon! Oisis,' coolpressus onrnountof Sighing!
. . . Pipetto, Pipetta has misery unnotIced t
Issy-Izzy-Iseult is there, Swiftian little language and all, now turned into Isis wife-sister of the god. Off, mourned, he goes down the river, '';ith a posse of tossing hankerwaves to his windwar~ ~ike seraph's summonses on the air . . . along the highroad of the nation, Traitor's Track', poor stuff compared WIth hIS father: But does he not seem to take on, in the distance, the mirage qualities of a true
god, fertiliser not mere dirt? His name becomes Haun.
The silent cock shall crow at last. The west shall shake the east awake. Walk while ye have the night for morn,lightbreakfastbringer, morroweth
whereon every past shall full fast sleep. Amain.
Sleep, though, is Shaun's meed from now on. In the next chapter, his own last he has become Yawn, a great swollen hulk, a torpId giant lying ;n a hill, a wretched parody of Finnegan. To him there come the eternal four- 'Shanator Gregory . . . Shanator Lyons . . . his Recordership, Dr Shunadure Tarpey . . . old Shunny Mac- Shunny, MacDougal the hiker, in the rere of them on the run' (Johnny MacDougal, last gospeller, also represents lJlster, behmd
the other Irish provinces in finding freedom from Bntlsh rule), and 246
with them is their donkey, the 'skygrey globetrotter'. They question Yawn, being assured that he is not dead but sleeping, and a kind of ventriloquial voice booms out at them in answer from the prostrate giant-form. What the four wish to know is Yawn's 'historical grouns': after all, he has been set up as their ruler. The voice of Yawn refers them back to the 'prehistoric barrow . . . the orangery' -in other words, the heap of dirt and orange-peel where the hen scratched up the letter. The questioners say that they have heard from their donkey that in Yawn there is no way to the better life, despite his big boastful kingly vocabulary: 'no moorhens cry'or mooner's plankgang . . . to lead us to hopenhaven'. Yawn's reply is evasive and in French: 'Moy jay trouvay la clee dang les champs. ' He found, like St Patrick, the key in the fields, the shamrock that is a figure of the Holy Trinity. But his attempt to identify himself with the saint is confused by the tones of guilty love (Swift was Dean of St Patrick's, Dublin): 'Trinathan partnick dieudonnay. Have you seen her? Typette, my tactile 0 l' Given by God (,dieudonnay') he is nevertheless 'partnick' (part the devil, part his brother): he lacks the solidity, the confident unity (despite the guilt) ofHCE.
Succeeding questions strive to reach the old solidity that lies
somewhere beneath this soft, lumpish, decaying giant. What does Yawn know about the 'oxeyed man' who sailed from 'Daneland'? The initials we have missed for so many pages reappear, with most heroic associations: 'Ecce Hagios Chrismanl' (behold the saintly Christman); 'Hunkalus Childared Easterheld' (Easter hero); 'Hill- cloud encompass us. ' Yawn will not at first admit that HCE was his true father, since he wants no share in his guilt, but soon he utters a Nordic rune made out of the great initials:
- Hail him heathen, heal him holystone! Courser, Recourser, Changechild . . . . . . . . . ? Eld as endall, earth . . . . . . . . . '?
And then Yawn accepts that Original Sin that springs from his father: 'By him it was done bapka, by me it was gone into . . . ' And he states HCE's name as it appeared in Hasty's ballad: 'Me das has or oreils. Piercey, piercey, piercey, piercey! ' But there is something else there, too: 'Midas has (gold) ears-ass's ears': was not this another secret that soon, through the whispering of the reeds, spread abroad about another great ma~? HCE can transmute common things to gold, the all-father, but he is also part-animal (ass's ears). Yet the heroic wheel comes full circle when we remember that, in Finnegans Wake, Christ is identified with the ass he rode on.
247
/I? ? ? l
u
'I ,I
? ? ? The Man-made Mountain
Shu-un to Jaun to Yawn
Mter the father, the twins. The four suspect that Shaun, though he represented himself as the originatOr of the Word, as well as Its deliverer, is hiding the truth, the fact that It was ~he? , who found the letter when the hen scratched it up: 'The gIst IS the gIst of Shaum but the hand is the hand of Sameas' (ccho ofIsaac's words). Yawn is asked if he thinks Shem is a 'counterfeit Kevin' (it was St Kevin who was believed to be the wisest ofIreland's saints): 'have you reasonable hesitancy in your m! nd ~bouthim 1. ' Shaun-Yawn:s confusion affects his language, turnmg It to glbbensh, a macaromc mixture of tongues making it end as pidgin: 'Me no angly mo, me speakee Yellman's'lingas' and so on. 'Hell's Confuci~m and ~he Elements! ' cry the four. '. . . Thot's never the postal clerIC, checkmg chinchin chat with nipponnippers! ' And, pressed as to whether he is really St Patrick, Yawn will give no direct answer,. o,nly the riddling 'Quadrigue my yoke. Trtple my tryst. Tandem my SIre, whIch
hides the date of Patrick's coming to Ireland: 432 ('Quad . . . trtple . . . tandem'). Eventually it appears that th~reis no real ~uestionof establishing identity for Yawn at all, nor IS there for hIS brother. Shem and Shaun are 'alionola equal and OpposIte brUflOlpso, Id est, eternally provoking alio opposite equally as provoked as Br~no at being eternally opposed by Nola. Poor ommboose,smgalow smgle- arum . . . ' Bruno the Nolan has been once more mvoked to sho;; how opposites are reconciled under God. But the trouble here IS that there is no God: this is a phase of hIstory WIthout belIef. The brothers do not merge into their great positive father; they merely
cancel each other out. All they can do in their pathetic attempt to affirm identity is to borrow from their father, and all they can bor- row is the sin he committed in the park. Is the o~lyreal be~ng,then, HCE 1 No we must not forget the sexual polanty, a posItive thmg, unlike the' brother polarity, which is negative. We come now to ALP once more.
But ALP is not primarily concerned with talking about herself. Her voice comes from the depths, rehearsmg yet agam the tale of the scandal. HCE was wronged. He was blackmailed:
The said Sully, a barracker associated with tinkers. , t? e blackhan~,Shovel- lyvans, wreuter of annoyimgmost letters and sktrnless ball~:ts l! l. Par~ee Franch who is Magrath's thug and smells cheaply of Power s spmts, lIke a deepsea dibbler, and he is not fit enough to throw guts down to a
bear.
Magrath (the cad with the pipe 1) is the enemy. But while A L P as 'Your wife. Amn. Anm. Amm. Ann' is HCE's defender, she remams
248
an aspect. of the women he is said to have wronged, and we must not
be. surpnsed to hear tones of complaint from her. She is many
VOIces, the rIver of woman m many tributaries, but she ends up as
~he loyal ALP we know: nobody 'on allad the hold scurface of the Jorth would come next or nigh him, Mr Eelwhipper, seed and nursery man'.
We want further information about HCE. We hear the very title of that book about Work in Progress which was written by Joyce's twelve: 'Your exagmmatlOn round his factification far incaminatian of a warping process. Declaiml' We know that the eternal twelve are
here, bu: what is t~is. 'warping pr~cess'? It is an image of two op- posed thmgs-a bUlldmg-up (weavmg) and a breaking-down (twist- mg out of shape)-and we are not surprised to 'see the empire of HC. E honoured in a 'Dunker's durbar' and then, 'after his life over- lastmg . . . reduced to nothing'. And what is Work in Progress 1 It is anot~er. na~e f~r Fmnegans Wake. Here then he lies, the great man
on. hIs bIer. But, cry the voices, 'there's leps offlam in Funnycoon's WIck. The keyn has passed. Lung lift the keying . . . God save you king! Muster of the Hidden Life! ' It is only a vision, though. We have not yet reached the undying heart of HCE.
T o contact the master, hidden somewhere in the earth beneath the
vast slack body of Yawn, requires much preparation. First we have to hear strange voices out of the past, voices of war and love- 'Slog slagt and sluaghter! Rape the daughter! Choke the pope! . . . PIpette dear!
. hoper forgives the Ondt his laughter at his own artist's poverty and
sickness and dejection:
Teach Floh and Luse polkas, show BielZie where's sweet
And be sure Vespatilla fines fat ones to heat.
As I ~lZceplayed . the piper I must now pay the count
So satda to Moyhammlet and marhaba to your Mount 1
. . . Your /eats end enormous, your volumes immense
(May the G~acesI hopedfor singyour Ondtship song senseI), Your genus ts worldwide, your spacest sublime I
But, Holy Saltmartin, why can't you beat time?
He is able to forgive, for he is not really able to envy. The Ondt is
welcome t~ hIS w~alth, for the Gracehoper's temperament rejects th~sort of hfe that IS needful for the attaining of it. What is the Ondt domg but fillmg up space with possessions 1 He cannot like the artist. , c~nq~ertime, the only thing worth doing. '
It IS slgmficant that Shaun sees the point of the Shem way of life (~fterall, he made up the fable). He is aware ofwhat is missing in hIS Own temperament, the nature of the split which makes each ~rother only half the man his father was. Now, being handed the
letter, earned of Shaun, son of Hek, written of Shem, brother of Shaun, uttered for Alp, mother of Shern, for Hek, father of Shaun' and asked if he can read it, he denounces it as filth and flummery a libel on his father ('How they wore two madges on the makewat~r. And why there were treefellers in the shrubrubs'-the sin in the
park). But, gently asks the audience, has not Shaun himself 'used
u. p sl~ngu~ge tun times as words as the penmarks used out in smscnpt With such hesitancy by your cerebrated brother' ? Shaun at once picks up that word 'hesitancy' and rnms it to 'HeCitEncy'- a reference to HeE's guilty stutter. 'Your words grates on my ares',
24'
All the meals in Finnegans Wake are curiously appetIsmg, and this long merging series -of menus is no exception, from the 'half o f a pint of becon with newled googs and a segment of riceplummy padding' to the 'pair of chops and thrown in from the silver grid . . . and gaulusch gravy and pumpernickel to wolp up and a gorger's bulby onion' and more, much more, with 'the best of wine avec', He is, of course, eating his father, ingesting his substance like a sacra,",: ment before taking over his office. Full, he is ready to address the people ('the voce of Shaun, vote of the Irish'), though yawning from
the sleepy feeding: 'Alo, alass, aladdin, amobus! '
He speaks humbly, admitting his unworthiness to bear 'these postoomany missive on his majesty's service', It should have been his brother, 'for he's the head and I'm an everdevoting fiend of his', but Shaun himself is 'the heart of it'. His audience interposes mild questions, calling him 'dear Shaun' and asking 'who out of sym- phony gave you the permit' to carry 'the letter or manifesto of rule. Shaun is always vague in his answers, but he has a number of plausible slogans which point his practical wisdom:
Never back a woman you defend, never get quit of a friend on whom you depend, never make face to a foe till he's rife and never get stuck to another man's pfife. Amen; ptahl His hungry will be donel On the con- tinent as in Eironesia. But believe me in my simplicity I am awfully good, I believe, so I am, at the root of me, praised be right cheek Discipline! . . . Down with the Saozon ruze! . . . Like the regular redshank I am. Im- pregnable as the mule himself.
'Bow mielodorous is thy bel chant, 0 songbird', say his listeners, and they even-after a passage about his money (where did he get it 1 What did he do with it I) and his love affairs (plenty of Swiftian or HCE guilt here)-ask him to sing them a song. He says he would rather 'spinooze' them a fable. But before he can start on the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper he coughs ('husstenhasstencaffincof- finrnssemtossemdamandamnacosaghcusaghhobixhatouxpeswchbech? oscashlcarcarcaract'-the word for 'cough' in many languages appears here) and we recognise the thundred-letter clap which recalls the fall. Some of his own sexual guilt has been passed from dreaming HCE to his favourite son, hinted at previously in references to Swift's father-lover love for his two Esthers (or 'two venusstas', as Shaun's audience calls them). Sexual guilt, which the artist can purge, has been the lot of so many leaders.
The fable that follows is delightful. The Gracehoper is always 'jigging ajog, hoppy on akkant of his joyicity', and always asking
240
? ? ? ? The Man-made Mountazn .
h And then he tears into absent Shem, angrily affirmmg tl~at . e says. t Shem who wrote the letter about the 'hhens of the veh t, It was no. . . d Folletta Laambe': he merely took down w at
Shaun to Jaun to Yawn
Till he returns, 'may the tussocks grow quickly under your tramp-
thickets and the daisies trip lightly Over your battercops'. But there
is something strange about this disappearing Shaun. Has he not
ceased to be a man and turned into a barrel? He has certainly eaten
enough.
But when we next meet him, in the chapter following, Shaun is
'amply altered for the brighter' and has even changed his name to Jaun, which has liverish overtones of a great lover. He is on his travels, delivering the word to the people, but he has stopped for a breather 'at the weir by Lazar's Walk'. Seated upon the 'brink- spondy' are the twenty-nine girls from 5t Bride's or 5t Bridget's or 'Benent Saint Berched's national nightschool', and Jaun gives them
greeting, turning at the same time into a priest whose hands are
speedily kissed by the maidens, 'kittering all about, rushing and
making a tremendous girIsfuss Over him pellmale, their jeune premier and his rosyposy smile, mussing his frizzy hair and the golliwog curls of him'. Among the girls he recognises (leap-year is still with us) his Own sister, called Izzy here, and it is evident that his attitude
to her is ambiguous, but honest Jaun is 'brotheroesides her benedict
godfather' and love to him is not quite what it was to his sinning father, stutterer in the park.
He addresses her fondly and then launches into a Sermon to all
the girls: 'Words taken in triumph, my sweet assistance, from the sufferant pen of OUf jacosus inkerman militant of the reed behind the ear. ' He has reviled Shem's writing but it is all he has in the way of Holy Writ. The sermon itself is shocking, full of the sly wisdom of the world masquerading as the distillation of sanctity: 'Never lose
your heart away till you win his diamond back . . . Lust, thou shalt not commix idolatry. Hip confiners help compunction. Never park your brief stays in the men's convenience . . . Collide with man, collude with money . . . Where ~rou truss be circumspiciollS and
look before you leak, dears . . . Where it is nobler in the main to Supper than the boys and errors of outrager's virtue. Give back those stolen kisses; restaure those allcotten glooves . . . Leg-before- Wicked lags-behind-Wall where here Mr Whicker whacked a great fall . . . Scenta Clauthes stiffstuffs your hose and heartsies full of temptiness . . . Slip your oval out of touch and let the paravis be
your goal. Up leather, Prunella, convert your try! . . . Dress the pussy for her nighty and follow her piggytails up their way to Winkyland . . . Love through the usual channels, cisternbrothelly . . . Deal with Nature the great greengrocer and pay regularly the
243
Nancy N! ckikes an l'
the '~ribiber' trving to make a Sw. ft of , .
hIS mother
ept squea mg,
like the decan's, fast aslo? ped I n t e mtranc~
himself-
. h '
to his polthrone-
ki his ~h;i:S! lth~issixth finger between h. s catseye:n! ~~~':~~h~~h:rdio-
hi
arne.
down to hIS vegeta o~S~~e';i~ecourse of marrimoney, under the and was warmed E t' But what is the true reason for
Helpless Corpses. nactmen ~heaudience wants to know. Shaun
Shaun's hate of h. s brother"f k me whys' And then sur-
replies: 'For
. rin
pillgrimace of Childe Hordnd'henkgro~s. ;! pt~~o~k! IcBck gav him that
1 ary he Invented un er Ie s y .
gossk 't torI And it was entirely theck latter to tooc ,. m. a .
d 'dd '1 Shem is terrible,~tforg:vableT~:;'~~h~~~IJ~sufo~~id~nt~:~~
h? 1 guage. you as . ,
IS root an d ' d a d e up out of ancient mytho-
. . 1
pnsmg y, we
loglcal. nam~s-. 'drrerinsurtkrinmgernrackinarockarl Thor's rirlukk:lokkIbaug. mand~ Vico taught that language was an attempt for yo! We re~embert a~od'sthllnder. Shem has the gift oflan-
hearathun er-wor m . c 'Ullhodturden weirmudgaardgringnirurdrmolmnen-
to. JIlake meamng o~~~~atthe thunder said. But the political leader guage: he can expla. the antithesis of truth and clarity. The thrIves on vague speec,h, e ' the truth made many a great artist is the demagogue s trueen mhY'thunder word' 'The hundred-
ITh di crecogn. seste
man fal . e au en e rd of lettered name agam, last wo
-.
erfect language. But you could
come near it, we do suptose, s~~:r:rword-ma~than his brother,
How? ' Shaun blu~ter~: e;s ~ t the whole thing is not worth the
and one day he wIllhs oW,'~ft~ingthat Shem writes is disgusting: r
trouble really, and t e sOh t1 s any . ? ncendiarist whosoever or '1 . . tote arne
'1 WI} C0mID1SS10n Id deavour to set annyma roner
ahriman hows? clever wh? HWo~ ~~of a sudden, slobbering with moother of mme on fire. e 18, a
p Shaun 0' we foresupposed.
Sh ' I tter has shamed her. .
em s el ut of the dream: 'he'spoorlessly d. sap-
mother-love:
And now Shaun me ts 0 0 0 down a papa from circular circu-
paled and vanesshed, hke a p p d his peopl; miss him, heaping
lario. Ah, mean! ' He IS gone an
blessings on his memory: ther ou rolling home! May
And may the mosse of prosperousness g~ Malthe fireplug of filiality
foggy dews bediamonfi~eJourth~ob~;i:~indbehind glow luck to your reinsure your bungho e. ay
bathershins!
242
? ? The Man-made Mountain
Shaun to Jaun to Yawn
monthlies. ' And so on and so on and so on till the final warning: 'If ever I catch you at it, mind, it's you that will cocottch it! I'll tackle you to feel if you have a few devils in you. Holy gun, I'll give it to you, hot, high and heavy before you can say sedro. ' All that the son has become, it seems, is a more articulate and far more. hypo- critical dirty-old-man copy of the father. It is the tragedy of msuffi- ciency-half an egg, not half of a double yolk. .
Under cover of a continuation of the sermon, Jaun addresses hiS
sister only, telling her what me~, and fo; that matter what books, . to avoid, ambiguously recommendmg t~e Weekly St~nd:rd, our vertIe organ that is ethelred by all pressdom , and works hke Through Hell with the Papes (mostly boys) by the divine comic Denti Alligator (exsponging your index) and fi~da qutp l~a qUI. re ansus ar~amfrom bastardtitle to fatherjohnson. Shaun will, With a certam greed, guard her virtue for her. If anybody makes scoundrelly advances to Izzy 'we'll dumb well soon show him what the Shaun way lS hke how we'll go a long way towards breaking his outsider's face for him'. He has to go away now, spreading the word, but he wlll be back to 'cover the two pure chicks of your comely plumpchake wlth
zuccherikissings, hong, kong, and so gong'. . . .
But, when he returns to his general sermomsmg, a certam con-
fidence has gone out of Shaun already:
Do ou know what, liddle giddIes? One of these day~ I am a1vised by ~he smi~n voteseeker who's now snoring elued t? poslt1y,ely strtke offhlkmg for o;d and all as I bldy well bldy ought untIl su~htemse as some moo~ is Jade under privy-sealed 0x:ders to get me an lTIcrease of automo~011 and footwear for these poor dIscalced and ~ ? our~e from bon SomewlTI. d for a cure at Badanuweir (though where It s gomg ~o come from thIS
. ) I sartunly think now honest to John, for an mcome plexus that tlme- as ' . '
that's about the sanguine boundary hmlt. Amean.
lechery, simpringly sritchless with admiracion, among the most
uxoriously furnished compartments'.
This odious young man is all wind, a loud mouth concealing inner
doubt. This Viconian phase will not do at alL Before he goes off on
a mission he represents as Christlike, he paints a tawdry after-life , 'when the Royal Revolver of t~ese real globoes lets regally fire of hIS mw colpo for the chnsman s pandemon to give over and the
Harlequinade to begin properly SPQ1eaRking Mark Time's Finist Joke. Putting Allspace in a NotshalL' Soon, to no surprise, he be- comes Chnst hImself, guzzling a vulgar last supper whose mastica- tion is all too clearly to be seen, steak and peas and bacon becoming 'kates and eaps and naboc' and (x=consonant; o=vowel) cabbalTe and boiled protestants (potatoes)l pounded and gnashed to a glu~y meat-extract-hke bolus: 'xoxxoxo and xooxox xxoxoxxoxxx'. He is ready for off: 'Me hunger's weighed. ' He asks Izzy to write to him and she responds in the fascinatingly horrible little language w~ h~ve come to know so well. : 'my sapphire chaplets of ringarosary I Will say for you to the Allmlchael and solve qui pu while the dove- do~es pick my mouthbuds . . . with nurse Madge, my linkingclass, she s a fnght, poor old dutch, m her sleeptalking when I paint the
measles on her and mudstuskers to make her a man'. (She must
always have her mirror to turn herself into the two temptresses in th~ park. ) The episode th~ckens with Swift-Stella allusions. Jaun raIses hls chalIce and says: Esterelles, be not On your weeping what though Shaunathaun is in his fail! ' The holy cup is also a 'bridle's cup' filled with champagne bubbling with concupiscent connotations. 'So gullaby, me poor Isley!
'
Issy-Izzy-Iseult is the Church he leaves behind, to be comforted
by 'Dave the Dancekerl' who 'will arrive incessantly in the fraction of a crust'. The Paraclete and the Eucharist appear in one image. Issy's name is changed to Julia Bride (Christ's bride, the Church) and Dave, the Holy Ghost, is introduced to her. But, if we are to prune away excess characters with Occam's razor, this Paraclete must be Shem, a~d, indeed, we hear: 'He's the mightiest penum- brella I ever flounshed on behond the shadow of a post! ' It is right that Shem, artlst, vessel of mSptratlOn, should play the descending dove. But Jaun-ChrlSt has to struggle with impulses of an old en-
mity-'We're as thick and thin now as two tubular jawballs. I hate him about his patent henesy, plasfh it, yet am I amorist. I love him.
1 In the year of the Irish potato famine Protestant evangelists made converts through the bnbe of potato soup. Hence potatoes have ever since been called 'protestants'.
A lot of them want him to retire on pension, but where is the money from ? He would be ready enough to turn back from glory
tocome . . . , ld ifhe could only find the girl of his heart, a teashop mppy, my a y
fL 't lookafterhim. Buthisdreamoftea-caddyhomehness,
oyons,a
t ted by the umbrella-saint James Hanway from the
b' Id 19 war ,
proec '1 ' . fV
. h t through with Swift-gm t- vafilty 0 anessy . . . peepe .
IS
sOH'
d'd k
tl tl' (Swift's little language: ppt). IS gran lOse reams ta eon
peepe ~ If he had money he would invest it in 'vestments of anewlorffi. . h 'd subdominal poteen at pri~ecost'; he IS, he says~the gogetter t at ,
make it pay like cash repsters as sure as there s a p~t on a pole. Rich, he would plant Izzy 'on the electnc ottoman m the lap of
2# 245
? ? ? The Man-made Mountain
Shaun to Jaun to Yawn
I love his old portugal's nose'-and we are not surprised to find later that Jaun starts a grumbling programme of disparagement. It begms with a discussion about church music and Shem's vocal gift: '. . . he could be near a colonel with a voice like that'. Shcm becomes Stephen Dedalus-Joyce and Jaun becomes Buck Mulligan-? ogarty: 'The misery billyboots I used to lend hIm before we spht (we are back in the Martello Tower). The latter identification is a pregnant one when we remember Mulligan's mockery of the Mass, his ballad
about Joking Jesus. AB for the real Joyce behind these dream-masks,
he is there in the 'beurlads scael' (his first job in exile was as a teacher in the Berlitz School), placing 'the ocean between his and ours't trying to be 'as homely gauche as swif~'. The sacred spirit (Holy Ghost) is reduced to ('homely gauche) a mockmg, rather mept satirical sneerer. But-'my positively last at any stagel'-Jaun has done talking: ' 'tis time to be up and ambling'.
He is becoming, though big, vague and pitiable. He is 'Jaun the Boast' but the twenty-nine girls of St Bride's are prepared to accord him a hero's farewell. More, they will hymn this grotesque barrel of wind like the god Osiris, like a fertile tree or a spring in the desert:
Oasis cedarous esaltarshoming Leafboughnoon! Oisis,' coolpressus onrnountof Sighing!
. . . Pipetto, Pipetta has misery unnotIced t
Issy-Izzy-Iseult is there, Swiftian little language and all, now turned into Isis wife-sister of the god. Off, mourned, he goes down the river, '';ith a posse of tossing hankerwaves to his windwar~ ~ike seraph's summonses on the air . . . along the highroad of the nation, Traitor's Track', poor stuff compared WIth hIS father: But does he not seem to take on, in the distance, the mirage qualities of a true
god, fertiliser not mere dirt? His name becomes Haun.
The silent cock shall crow at last. The west shall shake the east awake. Walk while ye have the night for morn,lightbreakfastbringer, morroweth
whereon every past shall full fast sleep. Amain.
Sleep, though, is Shaun's meed from now on. In the next chapter, his own last he has become Yawn, a great swollen hulk, a torpId giant lying ;n a hill, a wretched parody of Finnegan. To him there come the eternal four- 'Shanator Gregory . . . Shanator Lyons . . . his Recordership, Dr Shunadure Tarpey . . . old Shunny Mac- Shunny, MacDougal the hiker, in the rere of them on the run' (Johnny MacDougal, last gospeller, also represents lJlster, behmd
the other Irish provinces in finding freedom from Bntlsh rule), and 246
with them is their donkey, the 'skygrey globetrotter'. They question Yawn, being assured that he is not dead but sleeping, and a kind of ventriloquial voice booms out at them in answer from the prostrate giant-form. What the four wish to know is Yawn's 'historical grouns': after all, he has been set up as their ruler. The voice of Yawn refers them back to the 'prehistoric barrow . . . the orangery' -in other words, the heap of dirt and orange-peel where the hen scratched up the letter. The questioners say that they have heard from their donkey that in Yawn there is no way to the better life, despite his big boastful kingly vocabulary: 'no moorhens cry'or mooner's plankgang . . . to lead us to hopenhaven'. Yawn's reply is evasive and in French: 'Moy jay trouvay la clee dang les champs. ' He found, like St Patrick, the key in the fields, the shamrock that is a figure of the Holy Trinity. But his attempt to identify himself with the saint is confused by the tones of guilty love (Swift was Dean of St Patrick's, Dublin): 'Trinathan partnick dieudonnay. Have you seen her? Typette, my tactile 0 l' Given by God (,dieudonnay') he is nevertheless 'partnick' (part the devil, part his brother): he lacks the solidity, the confident unity (despite the guilt) ofHCE.
Succeeding questions strive to reach the old solidity that lies
somewhere beneath this soft, lumpish, decaying giant. What does Yawn know about the 'oxeyed man' who sailed from 'Daneland'? The initials we have missed for so many pages reappear, with most heroic associations: 'Ecce Hagios Chrismanl' (behold the saintly Christman); 'Hunkalus Childared Easterheld' (Easter hero); 'Hill- cloud encompass us. ' Yawn will not at first admit that HCE was his true father, since he wants no share in his guilt, but soon he utters a Nordic rune made out of the great initials:
- Hail him heathen, heal him holystone! Courser, Recourser, Changechild . . . . . . . . . ? Eld as endall, earth . . . . . . . . . '?
And then Yawn accepts that Original Sin that springs from his father: 'By him it was done bapka, by me it was gone into . . . ' And he states HCE's name as it appeared in Hasty's ballad: 'Me das has or oreils. Piercey, piercey, piercey, piercey! ' But there is something else there, too: 'Midas has (gold) ears-ass's ears': was not this another secret that soon, through the whispering of the reeds, spread abroad about another great ma~? HCE can transmute common things to gold, the all-father, but he is also part-animal (ass's ears). Yet the heroic wheel comes full circle when we remember that, in Finnegans Wake, Christ is identified with the ass he rode on.
247
/I? ? ? l
u
'I ,I
? ? ? The Man-made Mountain
Shu-un to Jaun to Yawn
Mter the father, the twins. The four suspect that Shaun, though he represented himself as the originatOr of the Word, as well as Its deliverer, is hiding the truth, the fact that It was ~he? , who found the letter when the hen scratched it up: 'The gIst IS the gIst of Shaum but the hand is the hand of Sameas' (ccho ofIsaac's words). Yawn is asked if he thinks Shem is a 'counterfeit Kevin' (it was St Kevin who was believed to be the wisest ofIreland's saints): 'have you reasonable hesitancy in your m! nd ~bouthim 1. ' Shaun-Yawn:s confusion affects his language, turnmg It to glbbensh, a macaromc mixture of tongues making it end as pidgin: 'Me no angly mo, me speakee Yellman's'lingas' and so on. 'Hell's Confuci~m and ~he Elements! ' cry the four. '. . . Thot's never the postal clerIC, checkmg chinchin chat with nipponnippers! ' And, pressed as to whether he is really St Patrick, Yawn will give no direct answer,. o,nly the riddling 'Quadrigue my yoke. Trtple my tryst. Tandem my SIre, whIch
hides the date of Patrick's coming to Ireland: 432 ('Quad . . . trtple . . . tandem'). Eventually it appears that th~reis no real ~uestionof establishing identity for Yawn at all, nor IS there for hIS brother. Shem and Shaun are 'alionola equal and OpposIte brUflOlpso, Id est, eternally provoking alio opposite equally as provoked as Br~no at being eternally opposed by Nola. Poor ommboose,smgalow smgle- arum . . . ' Bruno the Nolan has been once more mvoked to sho;; how opposites are reconciled under God. But the trouble here IS that there is no God: this is a phase of hIstory WIthout belIef. The brothers do not merge into their great positive father; they merely
cancel each other out. All they can do in their pathetic attempt to affirm identity is to borrow from their father, and all they can bor- row is the sin he committed in the park. Is the o~lyreal be~ng,then, HCE 1 No we must not forget the sexual polanty, a posItive thmg, unlike the' brother polarity, which is negative. We come now to ALP once more.
But ALP is not primarily concerned with talking about herself. Her voice comes from the depths, rehearsmg yet agam the tale of the scandal. HCE was wronged. He was blackmailed:
The said Sully, a barracker associated with tinkers. , t? e blackhan~,Shovel- lyvans, wreuter of annoyimgmost letters and sktrnless ball~:ts l! l. Par~ee Franch who is Magrath's thug and smells cheaply of Power s spmts, lIke a deepsea dibbler, and he is not fit enough to throw guts down to a
bear.
Magrath (the cad with the pipe 1) is the enemy. But while A L P as 'Your wife. Amn. Anm. Amm. Ann' is HCE's defender, she remams
248
an aspect. of the women he is said to have wronged, and we must not
be. surpnsed to hear tones of complaint from her. She is many
VOIces, the rIver of woman m many tributaries, but she ends up as
~he loyal ALP we know: nobody 'on allad the hold scurface of the Jorth would come next or nigh him, Mr Eelwhipper, seed and nursery man'.
We want further information about HCE. We hear the very title of that book about Work in Progress which was written by Joyce's twelve: 'Your exagmmatlOn round his factification far incaminatian of a warping process. Declaiml' We know that the eternal twelve are
here, bu: what is t~is. 'warping pr~cess'? It is an image of two op- posed thmgs-a bUlldmg-up (weavmg) and a breaking-down (twist- mg out of shape)-and we are not surprised to 'see the empire of HC. E honoured in a 'Dunker's durbar' and then, 'after his life over- lastmg . . . reduced to nothing'. And what is Work in Progress 1 It is anot~er. na~e f~r Fmnegans Wake. Here then he lies, the great man
on. hIs bIer. But, cry the voices, 'there's leps offlam in Funnycoon's WIck. The keyn has passed. Lung lift the keying . . . God save you king! Muster of the Hidden Life! ' It is only a vision, though. We have not yet reached the undying heart of HCE.
T o contact the master, hidden somewhere in the earth beneath the
vast slack body of Yawn, requires much preparation. First we have to hear strange voices out of the past, voices of war and love- 'Slog slagt and sluaghter! Rape the daughter! Choke the pope! . . . PIpette dear!
