IMPORTANT INFORMATION:
As Fritz will be away in Trieste and Dublin,
there will be no reading of FW on 25th June and 2nd July.
We shall continue with our reading of Finnegans Wake
on 9th July 2018.
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In our reading of this week, we stopped at "... sweat of night blues moist upon them." (475.1)
(i.e., we completed chapter 2 of book 3, and started chapter 3 (book 3) which ends on page 554.)
The 28 biddies and Issy send Shaun finally off at the end of chapter 2. Calling him now Haun, their goodbye is peppered with praise: '... you did your strong nine furlong mile* in slick and slapstick record time.' They compare him to the phoenix bird (phaynix, Bennu) that rises out of the ashes. Then they send him off, telling him, 'Walk while ye have the night for morn', echoing the words of Jesus to his followers: 'Walk whilst you have the light, that the darkness overtake you not.'
* A mile has 8, not 9 furlongs!
Chapter 3:
Joseph Campbell writes the following about Shaun and chapter 3/book 3:
(A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, P. 237)
"The figure of Shaun, titanic and extensive, brutal, empty, long-winded, and sentimental, repeats in grotesque parody the patterns established long ago by the father. Shaun is not creative. He is the end, not the beginning, of a mighty destiny.... Whereas HCE was always up again and around, Shaun will quickly fade....
In the present chapter we find him already exhausted, grandly spawning across a hillock in County Meath, which is the umbilical centre of the Green Isle** of the World. Known now as Yawn, he has carried into full decline the ageless dynastic line of his fathers."
** Green Isle = Ireland
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