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.
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.
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