Bloomsday Ephemera

Not exactly about Finnegan's Wake, but it is Bloomsday and Joyce did also write Ulysses, so I thought it was worth a quick post.

1. A little article about the connections that Ulysses (and reading in general) create
2. The events in Dublin
3. If you're in New York and looking for something to do today

Hope you have a lovely day!

I should start off by admitting that I'm pretty far behind in Finnegans Wake, mainly because I've been finishing off The Dubliners for a seminar by Karen Lawrence I attended tonight, but a few comments were made about Finnegans Wake that I thought were worth mentioning, and which will, no doubt, affect my reading.

Lawrence discussed the book's movement past language, which can at times make the book seem "unreadable." She noted that other modernists were breaking down the form of the short story or the novel or even the sentence, Joyce is literally breaking down the form of English, taking apart and building new words at will, and using 21 other languages to form his meaning. What has been most important to me as I've read the little that I've read so far is the musicality of the book (Sal, this speaks in some way to your turning to opera to understand chapter one, I think). Even though a fair amount of the words are made up, they read beautifully and speak to us in a way that moves beyond language, into a primal realm of music and sound. In some way, Joyce's meaning is beyond language, though I don't believe this means it is beyond comprehension. I suppose Joyce's meaning lives in the liminal space between language and feeling.

On a completely different note, Lawrence also mentioned Joyce's fascination with immortality and his competition with all other writers, including Shakespeare. She brought up his (famous) quote, "I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality," and also his argument to Sylvia Beach that Ulysses "may be outside literature now, but its future is inside literature." It certainly seems that this is the case now, for Ulysses, but I wonder if this could ever be true for Finnegans Wake, which was ranked as the 26th greatest novel of all time by Daniel S. Burt in The Novel 100. Do you think Finnegans Wake will ever be considered "inside literature" or accessible in the same way that Ulysses now is? Would an understanding of this work (or any work) diminish the immortality of the author?

You're such a Cassandra

Being that the narrative is supposed to take place at night, perhaps in a dreamworld, which explains the portmanteaus and garbled words - and perhaps even the colloquialisms - the narrator is ridiculously humorous and, more importantly, untrustworthy. This is no major epiphany, as it's not a foreign idea to Joyce narratives - Ulysses and even Dubliners have their fair share of unreliable narrators.

Why am I not trusting the narrator(s) to this novel? For some reason I'm finding that his/her/its trusting in HCE a bit disquieting. As if whilst he's trying to convince us (the readers) of HCE's innocence, he's trying to convince himself. His pressing of the issue, which appears in chapters 2 and 3, have made me very suspicious.

One of the first 'descriptions', a very loose term for what actually is 'described', of HCE reads as follows:

it was equally certainly a pleasant turn of the populace which gave him as sense of those normative letters the nickname Here Comes Everybody. An imposing everybody he always indeed looked, constantly the same as and equal to himself and magnificently well worthy of any and all such universalisation, every time he continually surveyed, amid vociferatings from in from of Accept few nutties! and Take off that white hat!, relieved with Stop his Grog and Put It in the Log and Loots in his (bassvoco) Boots, from good start to happy finish the truly catholic assemblage above floats and footlights from their assbawlveldts and oxgangs unanimously to clapplaud . . . (32:16-28)

The first bit of chapter 2 is devoted to the 'naming' of HCE, and here we get to one of the more famous versions: 'Here Comes Everybody'. Again Joyce is playing with the Everyman - as this one man is representative of 'everybody'. Or perhaps this is a more ironic nomenclature, as this character seems much more seedy than Leopold Bloom, Stephen Dedalus, or Molly Bloom.

But there is something within this description that is a bit awkward. First, he is described as 'imposing'. This word has its connotations to being princely, regal, and of stately appearance. But in my mind, this is a more threatening word. To be 'imposing' is to make things a bit uncomfortable - at least in modern usage. The word obviously brings me to the pilot of 'Arrested Development', where the Bluth family mistakes an intervention for an imposition:

Terribly unfriendly. Imaging 'imposition' I think of someone leaning over and above the person, threatening. A step away from 'usurping', the keyword of Hamlet and Ulysses. Although HCE is being portrayed as stately, as 'magnificently well worthy of any and all such universalisation' (the narrator is really fawning here), that a 'catholic assemblage' (suggestion diversity to the nth degree) 'gathered together in that king's treat house of satin . . .' - all of this revelry reminds me of chapter 12 aka 'Cyclops' in Ulysses, as the narrators gawk over the citizen, the major 'villain' of Leopold Bloom's day. By mimicking Biblical aggrandisements to a common man, there is something offputting.

Later the narrator states that 'To anyone who knew and love the christlikeness of the big cleanminded giants H. C. Earwicker throughout his excellency long vicefreegal existence the mere suggestion of him as a lustsleuth nosing around for trouble in a boobytrap rings particularly preposterous' (33:28-32). This seems to be dripping in guilt. I feel like most narrators, especially when they want to give of the idea that their protagonist is Christlike, would refuse to bring up Jesus in the narrative. They may have the protagonist spread his arms, as if he were being nailed to the cross; they may make the protagonist's initials JC; they may have the protagonist speak in parables and in phrases that eerily sound like Jesus. But they don't come out and say it straightforwardly. 'Vicefreegal' brings forth 'vice' and 'free', that vice could be running rampant; 'lustsleuth' suggests a Sherlock Holmes-esque character that, instead of looking for clues to solve a crime, is actually looking to start a crime - of lust; 'boobytrap', when taken literally with 'lustsleuth', elicits the concept of a woman's breast as a trap.

The narrator then says: 'Truth, beard on prophet, compels one to add that there is said to have been quondam (pfuit! pfuit!) some case of the kind implicating, it is interdum believed, a quidam (if he did not exist it would be necessary quoniam to invent him) . . .' (33:32-36). The 'pfuit!' sounds make me think of a booing and hissing crowd; the choice of 'implicating' makes me think of the need for a trial. (It's also interesting to note that the narrator believes that if HCE didn't exist, someone would have had to invent him, meaning that this would have had to happen one way or another, with HCE or with someone else. That history perhaps has a story that it needs to tell and will choose its heroes or villains, even if they don't step up to the challenge or choose to sidestep the issue.)

There are a couple more great instances of this in chapter 2, but bringing it to chapter 3, I'd just  like to bring forth the following:

The house of Atreox is fallen indeedust (Ilyam, Ilyum, Maeromor Mournomates!) averging on blight like the mundibanks of Fennyana, but deeds bound going arise again. Life, he himself said once, (his biografiend, in fact, kills him verysoon, if not yet, after) is a wake, livit or krikit, an on the 'bunk of our breadwinning lies the cropse of our seedfather, a phrase which the establisher of the world by law might pretinately write across the chestfront of all manorwomanborn' (55:3-10).

The house of Atreos is that of Atreus, the doomed Greek family cursed from the beginning that is basically dismembered when Agamemnon, son of Atreus, returns from Troy (Ilium) after sacrificing his daughter and taking a sexslave out of the unlistened to Cassandra, only to be killed by his wife Clytemnestra. The story doesn't end well for any of the survivors, as all Greek tragedy works. I'd take a look at Aeschylus' plays.

'Cassandra' from Woody Allen's Mighty Aphrodite

The narrator and HCE don't have a good relationship with this 'biografiend'. And there is a phrase that the establisher of the world, a father, a god or perhaps even HCE would like to stamp on to all of his creations/children 'pretinately' or prenatally: 'on the 'bunk of our breadwinning lies the cropse of our seedfather'. The father sows his seeds, in all senses of the phrase. Good or bad. Everyone, Everybody has to follow blindly - perhaps follow this terrible fate that the Fates have laid out for us; and perhaps, like Cassandra, even if we know our doom, everyone else is deaf to our plight, refuses to listen to reason. And therefore that's why I refuse to think of HCE in a kind light. Whatever his crime is at the moment, he is able to use and abuse his power to justify his existence, to justify his actions, regardless of whom he's taking down in the process.

Fidelio

Concluding the first chapter to the book, the thought that has been resounding in the annals of my mind is: How does one intelligently discuss a book that resists all readings, and yet is open to all? Anything that I say technically can be refuted; for even I could unthread any argument I create. As difficult and as problematic as this sounds, I really have found the first chapter quite liberating. Reading about 5-10 pages a day at most, re-reading them usually as well, has been a pleasant experience; even reading them aloud - with an imitation Irish brogue - has proven amusing.

But the question remains: What can I say?

Well why not turn to an artform that also uses gesture and gesticulation rather than words and action? Opera.

I wish I could talk about Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde as if you look at 3:4 (page:line), the first 'true' sentence states: 'Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passencore rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war' (3:4-6). A humorous and playful way of saying that Tristam has sailed across the English Channel/Celtic Sea to Ireland to get to Iseult and to play out his love affair (violer/violent d'amores/of love). I'm sure Sir Thomas Malory here is alluded to: the apostophes in 'd'amores', suggesting perhaps the lack of apostrophe in Malory's magnum opus Le Morte darthur; and in 'fr'over', suggesting an early modern English/late Middle English conjunction that you definitely come across in Shakespeare and Malory. Tennyson, in his reworking of the Arthurian myth probably has something to say, but as most of you know I'm not a 19th century guy, so if anyone can enlighten us here about Tristan in Tennyson, that would be fantastic.

Joyce rather enjoyed Wagner, perhaps not as much as he enjoyed Henrik Ibsen (could the Norwegian playwright be one of the reasons why the letters HCE reappear - Henrik Ibsen...c'mon, with wordplay/soundplay this might be up Joyce's alley). So I'm sure that Tristan was deep in his mind - especially since it is one of the 'turning points' of opera, and of music in general.

But since I can't talk in detail about Wagner's opera, I shall discuss something I'm much more familiar with:

Ludwig van Beethoven's sole opera: Fidelio.

Still in the 'Introduction' of the first chapter of FW, the narrator goes through a wide variety of wordplays and amusing musings. The sentence that sticks out in my mind is 6:25-26: 'With their deepbrow fundigs and the dusty fidelios.' It's a boring sentence compared to what is going on elsewhere, although it does contain 'deepbrow fundings' or De Profundis - the writing that Oscar Wilde produces whilst in his gaol - but 'fidelio' is in there. A tenuous connection to Beethoven, perhaps. But keep with me.

Fidelio in short is about a woman (Leonora) who dresses up as a man (then known as Fidelio) so that she can work in a prison in order to remain close to her husband, Florestan (if you reverse this name and make it 'tan flores', you have a translation from the Spanish of 'so many flowers' - an early symbol for womanhood, and of Leopold Bloom). Already there is the connection of disguised and confused identities - in the Wake it's pretty simple to see all the derivations of the HCE and ALP, and a combination when there're together: 'Hic cubat edilis. Apud libertinam parvulam' (7:22-23). Translated from the Latin, this means: 'Here lies the (edible) man/magistrate. By the tiny freewoman.' Already there's some sort of parallel. The swapping of 'tradtional' gender roles, in both FW and Fidelio.

My personal favourite aria - and probably most people's - is 'O welche Lust, in freier Luft'. It occurs towards the end of Act I. And it's the only time a chorus of voices is heard onstage.

For some reason I can't place the clip from YouTube on to the site, so please settle for the link.

The prisoners are set free, if only for a tiny moment in their lives. And are stunned - cannot move due to the liberating (libertinam...a word used to describe ALP; Fidelio, a woman, is the one that liberates the prisoners) sense of euphoria that has taken hold of them. You don't even have to know what they're saying in order to know what they're feeling. Which is why opera is more about gesture, in lyric and more importantly in music. But here are the lyrics translated to English:

PRISONERS' CHORUS
Oh what joy, in the open air
Freely to breathe again!
Up here alone is life!
The dungeon is a grave.

FIRST PRISONER
We shall with all our faith
Trust in the help of God!
Hope whispers softly in my ears!
We shall be free, we shall find peace.

ALL THE OTHERS
Oh Heaven! Salvation! Happiness!
Oh Freedom! Will you be given us?

SECOND PRISONER
Speak softly! Be on your guard!
We are watched with eye and ear.

ALL
Speak softly! Be on your guard!
We are watched with eye and ear.
Oh what joy, in the open air
Freely to breathe again!
Up here alone is life.
Speak softly! Be on your guard!
We are watched with eye and ear.


I personally think it's hysterical that the prisoners silence themselves in the middle of their beautiful aria, as they could be caught. But that doesn't stop them. They still sing out.

(Also, I'd like to bring to your attention that Malory wrote whilst imprisoned. And Stanley Kubrick's final film Eyes Wide Shut uses 'Fidelio' as the password to the house where Dr Harford 'grows up' through a bizarre sexual odyssey.)

One of the words emphasized with quite a bit of zealousness sounds like a word that could have been shouted above all during the Ninth Symphony: 'Freiheit' or 'Freedom'. A term that Beethoven, being a true philosopher and child of the Romantic and Enlightenment movements, took to heart. Freedom to the prisoners in Fidelio means life. And yet with freedom they can't really do anything.

Which then brings us back by recirculation to Finnegans Wake. We have the freedom, we are liberated, free from any one reading, any forced reading. And yet, we perhaps have to stand like a deer in the headlights when reading this text. We've been bogged down by structuralism and literary tropes that it's hard to know what to do when those almost have disappeared.

Fidelio is a beautiful opera, and if you don't think the Germanic languages can be beautiful, I suggest listening to it.

And Finnegans Wake is 'shaping' into a beautiful book. Does anyone agree that so far it's kind of reminiscent of chapter 11 aka 'Sirens' of Ulysses. Because chapter 1 definitely felt like an Overture of sorts too. And of course this is probably the most musical-infused novel one could probably read. It's like 600 pages of high poetry.

OK!  Sal knows, but I work in a bookstore, and tried to rescue 'Finnegan Wake' from the Returns pile (we hadn't sold a copy in three years).  Much to my chagrin, I was too late, so a copy is on order with the publisher, and should arrive shortly.  I hope it will.   It'll probably be a weekend of Joyce for me! 

Also, I like the Brueghel.  It sets an interesting tone for this project.  

Introduction

I just purchased my copy and as I drove home Kari (my girlfriend) read the opening line of the introduction to me:

"There is no agreement as to what Finnegans Wake is about, whether or not it is 'about' anything, or even whether it is, in any ordinary sense of the word, 'readable.'"

She laughed and threw the book in the back seat. I have no patience for Joyce despite my library containing most of his work; I hate Ulysses and I think Dubliners is good but far from perfect. Sal put me up to this and I hope all of you can help make this an enjoyable experience. I'll try my best in return.

To reading three reference books just to understand one!

Good luck.

Lots of fun at Finnegan's Wake

(Brueghel's Tower of Babel, the subject of which perhaps relates to 'the fall' in Finnegans Wake.)

Just as an introduction to this, I figured that I'd post the lyrics to the song upon which Joyce appropriated his title, though without the apostrophe. I know that it's common usage to drop the possessive apostrophes in England in names of antique places, as Old and Middle English basically tacked an -es or -s ending to nouns to put them into the genitive case. But of course Joyce is also looking for multiplicity, multiple subjects within the one - as Finnegan and 'Here Comes Everybody'/'HCE' are to be Everymen, and Everyone is Finnegan.

Tim Finnegan lived in Walkin Street

A gentleman Irish, mighty odd:

He'd a beautiful brogue so rich and sweet

And to rise in the world he carried a hod.

Now Tim had the sort o' the tipplin' way

With a love of the liquor poor Tim was born,

And to help him on with his work each day

He'd a drop of the craythur ev'ry morn.

Chorus

Whack fol the dah now dance to your partner

Welt the flure, your trotters shake;

Wasn't it the truth I told you,

Lots of fun at Finnegan's wake!

One mornin' Tim was rather full,

His head felt heavy which made him shake;

He fell from the ladder and broke his skull

And they carried him home, his corpse to wake.

They wrapped him up in a nice clean sheet

And laid him out across the bed

With a gallon of whiskey at his feet

And a barrel of porter at his head.

His friends assembled at the wake

And Mrs Finnegan called for lunch,

First they brought in tea and cake

Then pipes, tobacco, and whiskey punch.

Biddy O'Brien began to cry,

'Such a nice clean corpse, did you ever see?

'Arrah, Tim, mavourneen, why did you die?'

'Ah, shut your gob,' said Paddy McGee.

Then Maggie O'Connor took up the job;

'O Biddy,' says she, 'You're wrong, I'm sure';

Biddy gave her a belt in the gob

And left her sprawlin' on the floor.

And then the war did soon engage

`Twas woman to woman and man to man

Shillelagh law was all the rage

And the row and ruction soon began.

Then Mickey Maloney ducked his head
When a flagon of whiskey flew at him,
It missed, and fallin' on the bed
The liquor scattered over Tim.
Tim revives! See how he rises!
Timothy rising from the bed
Sayin': 'Whirl your liquor around like blazes!
'Thanam o'n Dhoul! D'ye think I'm dead?'

Interesting to note that in a high-rhythmed folk ballad - one marked with many Irish and working class colloquialisms - that obviously can be danced to, you get death and life, a fall and a rise, a funeral and re-birth (Phoenix Park, Dublin...; 'Come forth, Lazarus. And he came fifth and lost the job.') - and it's based on not taking things too seriously, on fighting and rude behaviour from men and especially women, on communities and names that it seems we 'should know' (a familiarity with these subjects/characters, even though that would be impossible), on the free motion of objects that eventually have to succomb to gravity, and on drinking and whiskey: uisce beatha, aqua vita, eau de vie, brandy, water of life; Wikipedia tells me that whiskey is an English bastardisation of 'uisce' from soldiers of Henry II when they came to Ireland - I'll believe it. It's also kind of amusing that it ends on such a humorous note, the re-birth through whiskey - Finnegan shocked that they think he's dead; then the chorus, which just goes on repeat, as if this was a common happening and 'true' as the chorus suggests ('Wasn't it the truth I told you').

Good hunting. Happy reading. More random items to come.