Monday, 18 December 2017, Pages 436 - 437

The last reading stopped at "... bad eggs." (437.21)

Please note that there will be no reading between Christmas and New Year. The group is picking up the Wake again on Monday, 8 January 2018.

Monday, 11 December 2017, Pages 434 - 436

We read as far as "... on the do." (436.14)

I apologise for not writing more about what we read. Please also note that my next blog post will be in the new year. Sabrina will update this blog next week.

I wish you all a great Christmas and a good beginning to 2018! May the world be more peaceful in 2018 than it has been in the past years!

Chandra

Monday, 3 December 2017, Pages 433 - 434

We stopped at "... old cupiosity shape." (434.30)

The last three sentences we read today contain references to the works of William Thackeray (1811 - 63) and Charles Dickens (1812 - 70). They are Vanity flee and Verity fear, popularly known as Vanity Fair by Thackeray, your meetual fan (aka Our Mutual Friend), Doveeyed Covetfilles (which of course is David Copperfield) and old cupiosity shape (i.e., The Old Curiosity Shop) - all three by Charles Dickens. Because of these connections, I first thought Ulikah, who is mentioned here to be Uriah Heep - one of Dicken's most malevolent creations -  from David Copperfield. But what Joyce mentions here as Ulikah's wine refers most probably to the biblical character, Uriah the Hittite, whose wife Bathsheba became pregnant by King David while her husband was away.

The theme of these pages are the (20+) commandments that Juan (Shaun) preaches the leap year girls. These commandments are given in the paragraph starting with 'Never miss your lostsomewhere mass....'

Juan has some really interesting instructions for the girls:

- Never play lady's game for the Lord's stake. 

- Never lose your heart away till you win his diamond back.

- ... never kick up your rumpus over the scroll end of the sofas ...

- Never park your brief stays in the men's convenience.

- Never slip the silver key through your gate of golden age.

- First thou shalt not smile.

- Twice thou shalt not love.

- Lust, thou shalt not commix idolatry.

And also

- Collide with man, collude with money.

Compare the above with the Catholic Ten Commandments here.

Monday, 27 November 2017, Pages 430 - 433

We stopped at "... howdydos." (433.2)

Issy and the 28 girls are splashing water with their 58 pedalettes when Shaun, now as Juan (Don Juan?) appears. These girls, all teenagers, are repelled by how the drunk constable Sigurdsen is snoring. He looks like a log stuck to the sod*.  When moved, this Dutch guy murmurs - in the translation McHugh supplies -  'this is the best, my beautiful flask' (Dotter dead bedstead mean diggy smuggy flaske.)

* Again according to McHugh, the mention of the log points to the Aesop's fable: King Log, King Frog. There are many versions of this fable, as given here. In its simplest version, a group of frogs get bored of the easy life they are leading and appeal to Zeus to send them a king. Zeus sends a log which splashes down in the river near which the frogs have been living. At first, the frogs get scared by the splashing noice made by the log, and keep their distance. Soon they discover that the log hardly moves, and approach it, at first carefully, and soon begin boldly to jump up and down the log. Then they again appeal to Zeus to send them this time a real king. Zeus sends them a stork which ends up eating the frogs.

Sod: Ground on which grass grows.

Gollywog!

Log or no log, our attention then turns to Juan and the leap year girls. Jaun puts on a reinforced crown** and the girls swarm around him like bees around a beehive. They buzz around him, make girlsfuss over him pellmale (in a confused way), ruffle his golliwog curls, ... For them he was the killingest ladykiller all by kindness... poor, good, true, Jaun!

The poor, good, true, Juan then starts addressing the group. First he talks to his sister and then he addresses the rest of the girls, telling them to adhere to as many as probable of the ten commandments.

What Juan's ten commandments are, we shall see in the next reading session!

** If 'reinforced crown' is interpreted as the crown of thorns, Juan becomes Christ.

Monday, 20 November 2017, Pages 427 - 430

We finished chapter 1 of book 3, and have started with chapter 2 of book 3, reading till
"... allo misto posto .... " (430.10)

Shaun, who was bouncing in a barrel down the river Liffey, talking about his brother Shem to the 29 girls assembled on the banks, simply disappaled and vanesshed (disappeared and vanished) at the end of chapter 1.

He was just gaogaogaone! (gone!) And the night fell. And the stellas were shinings. And the earthnight strewed aromatose. (The stars were shining. The night strewed fragrance.) According to McHugh (Annotations to Finnegans Wake), Joyce was inspired for this passage by the aria, 'E lucean le stelle e ollezzava la terra...' sung by the painter Cavaradossi just before his execution by the soldiers of Scarpia in Giacomo Puccini's opera, Tosca. Listen to Jonas Kaufmann singing the aria - an unforgettable experience - here, and read the lyrics in English translation and in original Italian here.

Though Shaun is supposed to have been gaogaogaone at the end of chapter 1, he is back as Jaunty Jaun as chapter 2 starts. He has started walking down the road, and has stopped at the weir by Lazar's Walk to loosen his heavy shoes. He is propped up against a warden of the peace, one comestabulish Sigurdsen (constable Sigurdsen), who looks like he has been buried upright like the Osbornes (don't know who these are!), a result of having finished on his own a bottle (monopolized bottle).  It is then he sees the 29 girls (hedge daughters) once again, who are keeping time with their 58 pedalettes.

Who are these 29 girls? One interpretation is that they are Shaun's sister Issy and her 28 classmates from St. Brigid's School. They also interpreted to represent one day each of the month February + 1 for the leap year. Why February? Because February 1st is the feast day of St. Brigid! Why St. Brigid? Because she is one of the patron saints of Ireland!

Monday, 13 November 2017, Pages 425 - 427

We read as far as "Ah, mean!" (427.8)

(It would be interesting to list all the ways Joyce uses to say 'Amen!')

Recalling what has been happening so far, we are in the dream world of Earwicker, who currently has been dreaming of his elder son, Shaun. Shaun is talking a lot, is giving almost a sermon to the girls assembled on the bank of the Liffey, down which he is rolling buoyantly backwards in a barrel, via Rattigan's corner ... in the direction of Mac Auliffe's, the crucet-house. (McHugh explains in his Annotations to Finnegans Wake that Sitric Mac Aulaf (Olaf?) gave the ground for the Christ College Cathedral in Dublin.)

Not only is Shaun's talk very negative about his brother Shem, he also praises himself quite a bit. (... it is an openear secret, ..., how I am extremely ingenuous at the clerking even with my badily left....). He considers himself the ormuzd (i.e, Ahuramazda, the Persian divinity of light) where as Shem is the hairyman (i.e, Ahirman, the Persian divinity of darkness and evil).

We are after all in the world of dreams!

Monday, 6 November 2017, Pages 423 - 425

We stopped at "How's that for Shemese?" (425.3)

Shaun is still full of vitriol. He is telling the girls about the scandal concerning his father. Nobody really knows what exactly HEC did in the Phoenix Park. All we know is that HEC, two girls and three soldiers were there. Shaun says that after HEC returned home, while his wife, kept squealing down..., Shem laid out his litterery bed and noted down all that was said.

(Joseph Campbell says that this paragraph (p. 422 - 424) is a parody of Joyce's life.)

When the girls ask Shaun to tell them why Shem is excommunicated, why does he talk about his brother so, the answer Shaun gives is 'root language.' (By the way the thunder word that Shaun then pronounces - on page 424 - is made up of 101 letters, and not 100!)

Joseph Campbell comes to our rescue once again with the following explanation of this paragraph:
"Shaun's reason for hating Shem seems peculiar, even mysterious, until we probe deeply into its implication. The 'root language' of Shem is filled with thunder echoes of the divine judgement. Shem's words are the hammer of Thor which could destroy the civilisation of which Shaun is the representative. Joyce is here following Vico's notion that all language has its origin in man's effort to formulate the meaning of the primal thunderclap. Shem's language threatens to make that meaning clear, and is thus fraught with judgment on Shaunian society. Shaun's fear of Shem's language shows that he, Shaun, very well knows the secret and power of his brother."

References:
1.  'A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake' by Joseph Campbell, 2005 edition, Footnotes on P. 266
2. Read here about Vico's work, The New Science.
- Of particular relevance regarding the thunderclap is the section, 4. f. The Three Principles of History: Religion, Marriage and Burial 
3. Here is an interesting blog article on the thunder words of Finnegans Wake.

Monday, 30 October 2017, Pages 422 - 423

We stopped at "... muddyasss ribalds." (422.18)

Shaun is being quite rude about his brother Shem, who has penned the letter that Shaun tried to deliver. The girls listening to all this, ask him, whether he has not used language ten times worse than the pen marks and with such hesitancy by your ... brother? This makes Shaun even more voluble about the deficiencies of his brother and announces, 'If he waits till I buy him a mosselman's present!' (Mussulman's present: ... The pig!)

The girls then request Shaun to unravel the letter in his own sweet words, with yet another fable from Aesop.

Shaun's answer hints at the rumours of Phoenix Park scandal that has been following his father, Earwicker.

(Note: Reading Joseph Campbell's rendering of these pages help a lot to unravel the sentences and get  at their meaning!)

Monday, 23 October 2017, Pages 420 - 422

Read as far as "Gach!" (422.3)

These pages are the funnest (oops, wrongly spilled!) ones in the parts we have so far read in the book. Shaun, the postman, is carrying a (the?) letter to deliver. It was written by Shem, the penman.  Shaun has problems delivering the letter though he tries different possible addresses.

He tries, for example, at 29 Hardware Saint, 13 Fitzgibbets, 12 Norse Richmound, 92 Windsewer. Ave., Fearview, 8 Royal Terrors, 3 Castlewoos, 2 Milchbroke, 7 Streetpetres, 60 Shellburn and ends up finding that either there is no such number (No such no.), or no such person (Noon sick parson), or no such street (none so strait) exists.

If these addresses were not wrongly spilled but correctly given, then they would correspond respectively to the following addresses in some of which James Joyce's parents lived over the years
29 Hardwicke St, 4 Fitzgibbon St, 17 North Richmond St, 29 Windsor Ave., Fairview, 8 Royal Terrace, 23 Castlewood Ave., 2 Millbourne Ave., 7 St Peter's Terrace, 60 Shellbourne Rd. In all James Joyce is said to have lived in 20 houses in Dublin. This article tells us more about it.

Do discover which other words are wrongly spilled on these pages!

Monday, 16 October 2017, Pages 418 - 420

Read as far as "An infant sailing eggshells on the floor of a wet day would have more sabby." (420.16)

Before that we read the poem of Ondt and the Gracehoper. It is available in regular English in Joseph Campbell's 'A Skeleton Key To Finnegans Wake'. (See pages 264-265 in the 2005 edition of the book.) You can also listen to the entire Joycean version of the fable here and read a critical analysis of the fable here. The original version of the fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper by Aesop is of course available here!

Regarding Ondt and the Gracehoper, Joseph Campbell writes the following on page 264:
"Underneath the sly insect play of this fable, the Gracehoper restates Shem's philosophy: there are advantages to Shaun's possessions and the thrift that begot them - all of which the Gracehoper appreciates - but he would not relinquish his own life style to enjoy them. He can see the Ondt's point of view, but why cannot the Ondt see his? - The fact that Shaun recites this fable would seem to indicate that he knows very well of the charm of Gracehoper existence, but realises that he is incapable of enjoying it, and therefore insists the more on imposing his own store-keeping pattern on the world."

Monday, 9 October 2017, Pages 416 - 418

We stopped at "Haru!" (418.8)

Next week we shall be starting with the poem on the Ondt and the Gracehoper (pardon, ant and the grasshopper) on page 418.

(My apologies that I have no time this week to write a bit more about the delightful pages we read this week.)

On another note, we are celebrating this month the completion of five years of reading of Finnegans Wake with Fritz Senn. It was in October 2012 that we came together to 'read' the book. Let us celebrate with a glass or two at the James Joyce Pub, Pelikanstrasse, after our reading on next Monday, 16th October. 

Monday, 2 October 2017, Pages 413 - 416

The reading group has reached: “chip so mitey” (416.26).

Monday, 18 September 2017, Pages 411 - 413

The last reading stopped at “all times a day.”  (413.10) 

Monday, 11 September 2017, Pages 403 - 411

We read as far as "Weak stop work stop walk stop whoak." (411.6)

Of course, we did not read all these 8 pages on one afternoon! But I want to include here all that we have read so far in Book 3 - and more - in order to extract some sense out of these 'fun' pages. I had to seek, naturally, Google's help to search for this 'sense'. I have reproduced what I found below and have listed the sources at the end. At the outset it helps to remember that we are still in the dreamland of Earwicker. He is dreaming of his son Shaun. (Shaun is referred to in FW as The Postman, and his twin brother Shem as The Penman.)

Joyce is said to have written in a letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver the following about this part: "the copying out of Shawn which is a description of a postman travelling backwards in the night through the events already narrated. It is written in the form of a via crucis of 14 stations but in reality it is only a barrel rolling down the river Liffey."*

Wikipedia's page on Finnegans Wake** has the following explanation on Book 3 / chapter 1:
"Part III concerns itself almost exclusively with Shaun, in his role as postman, having to deliver ALP's letter, which was referred to in Part I, but never seen.^[71]

III.1 opens with the Four Masters' ass narrating how he thought, as he was "dropping asleep",^[72] he had heard and seen an apparition of Shaun the Post.^[73] As a result, Shaun re-awakens, and, floating down the Liffey in a barrel, is posed fourteen questions concerning the significance and content of the letter he is carrying. Shaun, "apprehensive about being slighted, is on his guard, and the placating narrators never get a straight answer out of him."^[74] Shaun's answers focus on his own boastful personality and his admonishment of the letter's author – his artist brother Shem. After the inquisition Shaun loses his balance and the barrel in which he has been floating careens over and he rolls backwards out of the narrator's earshot, before disappearing completely from view.^[75]"

Anthony Burgess has this to say: "In the first chapter he (Shaun) presents himself to the people-sly, demagogic, totally un­trustworthy, obsessed with hatred for his brother and ready with another parable to figure forth the enmity-a charming tale called "The Ondt and the Gracehoper", in which he himself is the industrious insect, while Shem, the irresponsible artist, fritters the hours away in the sunshine. But Shaun is more ready to admit to himself now that his own extrovert philosophy is insufficient, that the life of the "gracehoper" has its points. Shaun can rule over space, but he cannot, like the artist, "beat time". Sooner or later, when Shaun's rule col­lapses, we shall be forced to move back to the father, in whom both dimensions meet and make a rounded world. Shaun rolls off in the form of a barrel: he has filled himself with the food that is his father, but it has not nourished him; he is becoming a big bloated emptiness."***


* Annotations to Finnegans Wake, Roland McHugh, p. 403
** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnegans_Wake#Part_III
Notes:
The numbers 71 to 75 refer to the links given in Wikipedia. 
There Book 3 is referred to as part III, and Book 3/chapter 1 as III.1
The first of the fourteen questions is on page 409: 'But have we until now ever besought you, dear Shaun, we remembered, who it was, good boy,.....'
*** http://www.metaportal.com.br/jjoyce/burgess1.htm

Please note that there will be no blog post next week.

Monday, 14 August 2017, Pages 397-399

Today we completed Book II of Finnegans Wake.

It was a fitting end with a song (or is it a poem?) that had 'Led it be!" as the last line. Were the Beatles inspired by Joyce just like he inspired the Caltech physicist Murray Gell - Mann to give the name quark (Three quarks to Muster Mark, p. 383) to elementary particles that are the fundamental building blocks of matter?

The song/poem is in four parts. Each part is 'recited' by one of the four old men/ four evangelists /mamalujo. These four parts refer to the four provinces of Ireland (Matthew, from the north, is Ulster; Mark, from the south, is Munster; Luke, from the east, is Leinster; and John, from the west, is Connaught*), to four days of the week (Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday respectively), and to four metals (gold, silver, copper and iron). As usual, one does not ask 'Why?'

What is clear is that these four old men are talking about Tristan and Isolde. (Hear, O hear, Iseult la belle! Tristan, sad hero, hear!). They also mention that Tristan and Isolde go off down the river in a boat leaving King Mark behind. (And still a light moves long the river.... The way is free.... Their lot is cast... Led it be!)

(Please note that there will be no blog posts in the next two weeks!) 
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnegans_Wake

Monday, 8 August 2017, Pages 396-397

We read as far as "... totam in tutu, ... " (397.32)

If you read carefully, you would be able to recognise that the event described deals with Tristan and Isolde. Or is it HCE - who is after all the guy whose dream world we have entered - and his daughter Issy, about whom he is supposed to have (had?) erotic fancies? Or do the paragraphs we read have to do with the event involving HCE, the two girls and three soldiers in the Phoenix park? Well, let the imagination run riot!

The four old men, rather the four evangelists, make an appearance again in the form of Mamalujo /Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. 

Monday, 24 July 2017, Pages 394-396

(First of all, apologies for not posting anything last two weeks.)

Today we stopped at "... tails plus toop!" (396.18)

Must admit that we all had great fun reading these pages. Our imagination ran simply riot for quite a while! Whether we were successful in coming close to what Joyce meant is immaterial. For example, I was very sure that the words, "... Itself is Itself Alone..." (394.33) were taken out of the Upanishads. This guess was cemented by the words that followed as they sounded a la Madame Blavatsky, famous for her doctrines of Theosophy. BUT these words are said to be playing with the slogan 'Sinn Féin, Sinn Féin Amhàin' that means 'Ourselves, Ourselves Alone'! There goes the idea of Upanishads out of the window!

We still had fun because we could identify that the passages we read today really relates to the story of Tristan and Isolde (rather, Narsty and Idoless (395.2)) and King Mark. Let us recall that four old men are recalling what they had seen of Tristan and Isolde on the boat. Here there is talk of 'honeymoon cabins' (395.9) and of 'dear mester John' (395.3). It is all about some hanky panky going on in the honeymoon cabin! Between Isolde and Tristan. The 'dear mester John' is said to refer to the oeuvre of Dear John Letters which is written to a man by his wife or romantic partner to inform him their relationship is over because she has found another lover. Isolde found Tristan, and it was time for her to write  'Dear John Letter' to King Mark.

There are quite a few essays written on the theme of Tristan and Isolde in Finnegans Wake. (Search in Google giving the last six words as key words! It is a pity that many of these are not available freely.) An interesting article can be found here. An essay by G. Lernout is published the James Joyce Quarterly, Vol. 38, No 1/2, Fall 2000 - Winter 2001.

Note: There is no reading next Monday, the 31st of July, due to the August Workshop at the Foundation. 

Monday, 26 June 2017, Pages 390-391

Note: There will be no reading of Finnegans Wake on Monday, the 3rd of July. 

We stopped at "... on stamped bronnanoleum, ..." (391.20)

We started today's reading with Marcus, and went on to read about the reminiscences of Lucas. Marcus starts with a nice sentence: "The good go and the wicked is left over." He also mentions in this connection (?) the holymaid of Kunut and the haryman of Koombe. 

Deciphering these turned out to be quite interesting, mainly thanks to the website www.finwake.org and the Wikipedia. The holymaid of Kunut was the 16th Century nun, Elizabeth Barton, who was also known among other things as The Holy Maid of Kent. She was popular for her prophecies, and had met Henry VIII (our haryman of Koombe). According to the above link, 'However, when the King began the process of obtaining an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon and seizing control of the Church in England from Rome, she turned against him. Barton strongly opposed the English Reformation and, in around 1532, began prophesying that if Henry remarried, he would die within a few months. She said that she had even seen the place in Hell to which he would go (Henry actually lived for a further 15 years).' She was executed finally because of this prophecy. 

Lucas, whose turn is next is concerned at first about a woman, Dowager Justice, who in or around about 1132 or 1169 or 1768, dressed as a man (in wig and beard) when she appeared at the (Auctioneer's) court.  He refers to the year(s) as the year of buy in disgrace. My search in the internet led me to the following explanation of 1132, the year of buy in disgrace: Saint Malachy (1094 - 1148) was an Irish saint, who was made the Archbishop of Armagh in 1132. 'Owing to intrigues, he was unable to take possession of his see for two years; even then he had to purchase the Bachal Isu (Staff of Jesus) from Niall, the usurping lay-primate.'

Note that we meet again in two weeks, on 10th July. 

Monday, 19 June 2017, Pages 389-390

The reading stopped with "That old fellow knows milk though he's not used to it latterly." (390.28)

Ah, dearo, dear, are these pages dense! There was mention of the Trinity college (catholic) and four others (protestant). The number 1132 appeared again, this time along with 1169.  Anthony Burgess has a good explanation of the significance of the number 1132 here. (Even Fritz Senn says that nobody else has come up till now with a better explanation!). The number 1169 could refer to the year of the Norman invasion of Ireland.

The four old men - divorced, widowed (??) -, are still around, still narrating their recollection of Tristam and Isolde. 

Monday, 12 June 2017, Pages 387-389

We stopped at "... round their twelve tables, ...." (389.3)

After Johnny's monologue that we read partly last week, it is the turn of Marcus. (These two belong to that group of four old men. Monologues by the other two will follow later.) Each one is supposedly talking about what he observed about Tristan and Isolde, when they escape/elope.  That these monologues have to do with the story of King Mark, Tristan and Isolde is not always easy to identify but when one does identify the characters, it is fun. One such fun place starts with the sentence, "Eseunc throw a darras Kram of Llawnroc, ye gink guy, kirked into yord" (388.1). It is interesting to decode this sentence and the two that follow. Tip: Read the words - not all of them, of course - backwards!

The above part is also fun because of two other reasons. First of all, we meet here again Martin Cunningham from Ulysses, in his new incarnation as Merkin Cornynghwham. Ulysses does not mention that Martin Cunningham is no more but here in Finnegans Wake we read that his widow is busy (widdy is giddy) by writing her memoirs (wreathing her murmoirs) for the Grocery Trader's Monthly, rather Manthly (387.33).

The second thing that is amusing is Joyce's mention of Mind mand gunfree (387.35). This refers to the book, My Man Godfrey by Eric Hatch, published in 1935, and made into a movie in 1936. (Finnegans Wake was published in 1939.) After decoding Mind mand gunfree, I could not help seeing parts of the movie in the sentences that followed!

Monday, 29 May 2017, Pages 385-387

IMPORTANT NOTICE:
There will be no reading on Monday, the 5th of June, as it is the Pentecost Monday. 

Today we stopped at "... no more of him." (387.32)

The four old men are lost in rambling reminiscence of their lost young days. Who are these four old men? Why four?

Anthony Burgess interprets the significance of the number 4 as follows: 
"There are four weeks in a lunar month, and these will give you the four old men who have so much to say, though what they have to say is rarely of much value - Matthew Gregory, Mark Lyons, Luke Tarpey, and Johnny MacDougal. They are the four gospellers, as well as the four provinces of Ireland, and they take off to impersonal regions where they represent the four points of the compass, the four elements, the four classical ages, and so on. They are always together, followed by their donkey, and it is in order to think of them as a single unit, their names truncated to Ma, Ma, Lu, and Jo and crushed together to make Mamalujo. They end up, in the fading of the dream, as four bedposts."
(Source: http://www.metaportal.com.br/jjoyce/burgess1.htm)

Plausible interpretation of what goes on on these pages is available here!

Remember though that this is all a dream, a nightmarish dream! Before the Fall of the Man.

We will continue with our reading of FW on 12th June.

Monday, 22 May 2017, Pages 384-385

Stopped at "... like a foremasters in the rolls, ..." (385.35)

Was this chapter not supposed to be about King Mark, Tristan and Isolde? Well, we did catch a whiff of their story. And we got confused, bewildered, puzzled, perplexed, muddled with how it all moved from "...  here now we are the four of us, ... there they were, ... all the four, ... when he was kidding and cuddling, .... onliest one of her choice, ... they all four remembored who made the world, .... " and so on.

In such a state of confusion, it is heartening to read what Anthony Burgess had to say about FW:
" Finnegans Wake is as close to a work of nature as any artist ever got - massive, baffling, serving nothing but itself, suggesting a meaning but never quite yielding anything but a fraction of it, and yet (like a tree) desperately simple. Poems are made by fools like Blake, but only Joyce can make a Wake."
(Here Comes Everybody by Anthony Burgess, Hamlyn Paperback, 1965, p.185)

If you want to know more of what Burgess wrote about Finnegans Wake, his essay, Finnegans Wake, What it's all about,  is a real pleasure to read and is an eye-opener about Joyce's work!

Monday, 15 May 2017, Pages 381-384

We read as far as "... now pass the fish for Christ sake, Amen: ..." (384.15)

That means we have started a new chapter - book 2, chapter 4. It is a short chapter of just 16 pages. The tavern scene is over. The drinks have been drunk, most of the customers have left.

Joseph Campbell says the following about this chapter in his 'A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake':

(By the way this is the only book I have found which lends lots - I mean real lots - of sense to Finnegans Wake.)

"(HCE's mind now sails forth, like a sea-wanderer returning to the bounding deep, on a ship of dream. What he is to dream will form the matter of the present chapter. It will be a dream of the honeymoon voyage of Tristram and Iseult. His body, helpless on the floor, will be the King Mark of the story; but his spirit, rejuvenated in the sonlike image of the successful lover, will know again the joys of youthful love. The honeymoon ship is surrounded by waves and gulls, and these become the presences of the Four* Old Men asleep. They had failed to quit the tavern with the departing company, and now bear witness to the dream of the broken master.)"

(A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, p. 245)

The chapter begins with a song, the first line of which - Three quarks for Muster Mark!' - is world famous because the Caltech physicist, Murray Gell-Mann, chose the word quark from the above line, to name the building blocks of protons and neutrons that he discovered. Discovery Magazine writes: "It sounds like "kwork" and got its spelling from a whimsical poem in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. This highly scientific term is clever and jokey and gruff all at once, much like the man who coined it." For his discovery, Murray Gell-Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1969.

* Today a question came up about the possible significance of the number 7 in Finnegans Wake. Trying to find plausible answers, I realised that Joyce used many numbers apart from 7 again and again. Some of these are 4, 28, 566, 1132, ... More about it another time. Meanwhile, if any of you have some insight into the use of these numbers in Finnegans Wake, would you please share it in the comments box below?

Monday, 8 May 2017, Pages 379-381

(First of all apologies for missing weeks of reading and posting on this blog about what was read. Now the blog goes on...)

Today we stopped at ",... that bothered he was from head to tail, ... (381.28)
(Note that the sentence is not yet complete.)

The paragraph we are currently at is said to be the first Joyce wrote when he started with Finnegans Wake. Perhaps because of that the language reads almost normal though it is still not easy to understand what it is all about. The section starts with mentioning King Roderick O'Conor the last king of Ireland.

We also read today these 'strange words': BENK, BUNK, BINK, BENK BANK BONK. Joseph Campbell explains them as follows:
"These capitalised syllables represents the fall of Finnegan, the rocking of a boat at the bottom of the sea of sleep, also a series of stiff punches that the prizefighters are throwing at each other, in sum, a combination suggesting the ultimate collapse and doom of HCE. (Mainly they represent the 'midnight Angelus' that announces the change of power in the family.)"
(A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson, New World Library, P. 242, 2005) 

Monday, 20 March 2017, Pages 370-372

Our reading proceeded till "And they all pour forth." (372.6)

Now here is a challenge for you all who did not come to the reading on Monday! 

Recognise what words/phrases Joyce was thinking of when he came up with the following on the pages we read:

1. polisignstunter
2. knootvindict
3. To pump the fire of the lewd into those soulths of bauchees
4. Porterfillyers and spirituous suncksters, oooom oooom!

Please note that no info will be available here for the next three weeks! 

Monday, 13 March 2017, Pages 368-370

Our reading stopped at "... Gilligan-Goll." (370.22)

Well, the setting is still the tavern. Four old men are mentioned again.  They represent, depending on who interprets them, as the four evangelists, the four ages Vico mentions, or simply four old men.

There is a 'poem' a la Omar Khayyam, and another that refers to the lyric on drug addiction by Willie the Weeper (whom Joyce refers to as Whooley the Whooper ) and the nursery rhyme, The house that Jack built.

The hen scratching the letter makes another appearance but the Russian General and Buckley are no where to be seen, though we can be dead sure that they will appear soon enough!

Monday, 27 February 2017, Pages 365-367

We stopped with "Punk." (367.7)

It was all "Pink, pleas pink, two pleas pink, how to pleas pink." Obviously whoever is speaking (most probably Earwicker alias HCE*) has come to the end of his defence or as he says, "Here endeth chinchinatibus with have speak finish." He admits that he is kind of attracted in dreams to his own daughter (... my deepseep daughter which was bourne up princely out of medsdreams unclouthed when I was pillowing  in my prime...). He thanks the soldier, and, I think, asks for the reaction of those assembled in the pub.

* There was another interpretation put forward today that the one who is defending is not Eatwicker but the great Parnell himself.

Monday, 20 February 2017, Pages 364-365

We read as far as "No mum has the rod to pud a stub to the lurch of amotion." (365.27)

Well, the above sentence is said to be the variation of a statement Parnell made at a speech at Cork on 21 January 1885.  Parnell said: "No man has the right to fix the boundary to the march of a nation."

We are still in the Tavern. Earwicker, the tavern-keeper, is defending himself. Joseph Campbell* offers the following English translation to some of the sections we read today:
".. Twenty-off females are hurrying to the post office with presents for my valued favour. The true Irish approve the raid. It is all clean fun and may the devil rape the handsomest. And if my legitimate went cackling it about, scattering all the riflings of her vacuum (giving to all her life presents), I am, nevertheless, I like to think, a gentleman to the manner born. I confess the worst, as love rescuer of these missies who acquiesced in it...."

* From 'A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake', P. 233

Monday, 13 February 2017, Pages: 363-364

We stopped with a nice phrase: "Ears to hears!"(364.14)

Whose ears, who hears? Taken along with the preceding word, 'Attonsure!', Hans says that this refers to the St. John tonsure. Read more about it here.

The following* is taken from Joseph Campbell's A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake (my current 'Bible' for Finnegans Wake!). It refers to the early part of the section starting with 'Guilty but fellows culpows!' on page 363.

"Now ensues one of the most moving moments of the book. HCE, his back to the wall, delivers with dignity and noble resignation an apologia for his life. Acknowledging his crimes, and even confessing to one hitherto unknown (apparently he drowned someone long ago, and the corpse has been discovered floating in the surf), this patriarchal sinner points out that the good he has done for his people heavily outweighs the evil......"


**New World Library edition, Pages 232-233, 1944, Reprinted 2005, ISBN 1-57731-405-0

Monday, 6 February 2017, Pages 361 - 363

We read as far as "Howlong!" ((363.11)

The sections we read today are quite puzzling, to put it mildly.

'A skeleton key to Finnegans Wake' by Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson* might be of some help in deciphering some of the preceding pages. An excerpt from the above book (pages 229-230) is given below.
(According to Campbell & Robinson, we are still in the tavern. ) The tavernkeeper, tries to defend the Russian General, and gives examples from his own life to show that the guilt of the High Personage is shared by mankind at large. This places him in direct opposition to the tavern company and leads swiftly to his humiliation and collapse. ... The radio has started again... The tavernkeeper, having betrayed his sympathy for the master-type individual, is now about to suffer the consequences of popular disapprobation. More specifically, he is about to be torn to pieces and flung to the winds. 

Here is more help in understanding the pages 361-363. (Source: The blog, One Year in the Wake)

*New World Library edition, 1944, Reprinted 2005, ISBN 1-57731-405-0

Monday, 30 January 2017, Pages 355 - 361

The reading stopped at: "a neats ung gels!"  (361.17)