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It may be, we habben to upseek a bitty door our good township's courants want we knew't,

B46: Wij hebben, upseek, courant (journal) good township, a bitty, door (thro)

Dutch: we hebben -> we have; upzoeken -> inspect, look up; een beetje -> a little; door -> through; courant -> newspaper; want -> for; 't -> it

habben carries inhabitant, for me

we have to look up/ inspect a little through our town's newspapers, for we knew it (...but we've forgotten it now?)

courants -> currants, currents

wind blows up her skirts?

why courantS?

courants is letter-as-journalism/history, hce's crimes written publicly, the northroomer pegging glatt stones and insults, but also maybe toilet paper for his anxious seat (below)?

There may be a pattern in the Dutch, of a hunted figure fleeing: was he then looking up some travel schedule in the township's courants? looking for signs they've noticed his flight? he checks all the papers out of paranoia?

Biddy Doran, the hen ALP

bitty door -> Alice in Wonderland

the littlest door, high up on the wall, leading to the biggest room?

peeked up her skirts?

A-Exiles2 9 "Fluchende Frau as long as my hole looks down?" cursing (German) Mop

want -> once

is newt possibly phallic?

The three "it may be"s on 75, each followed by a Dutch phrase, still puzzle me. I notice the first of the three phrases is about mail, the second about speech, and the third about newspapers. I also notice that Joyce has a characteristic way of handling foreign phrases, deforming them into almostEnglish words, often centered loosely (!) around a perpendicular-to-theliteral-meaning theme. My prototype for this is the cad's question, which HCE hears as "Guinness thaw tool in jew me dinner ouzel fin?" (35.15) (-> How are you today my fair gentleman, in Irish), which seems to carry a vaguely sexual improper suggestion.

Back up one level.

that with his deepseeing insight (had not wishing oftebeen but good time wasted), <petrified> within his patriarchal shamanah,

Nautical theme: deep sea

the homily about wasted time seems strikingly banal. does it hide something?

11.140 "wishing is good time wasted"

be merry, for tomorrow...

petrified may have been dropped because of redundancy with petrifake, etc (below)

petrified -> terrified

petrified -> mummified by passage of ages

shaman = witch doctor

Rose and O'Hanlon found 'tent' in "shamanah" via "shamianah", which the OED calls a tent-awning, from the Urdu. (When I find something like this in the OED, I always check the citations to see if it's in Shakespeare or someone else Joyce-probable, but I didn't find any source I knew, here.)

why patriarchal? the great white father in his tent, besieged by revolting natives?

Dual: lion in cage/ hunter in tent

shame, Shem

Back up one level.

broadsteyne 'bove citie (Twillby! Twillby!)

Dutch (not from B46-- the final FW form predates the 1938 Dutch flood): brood -> bread; steen -> stone

Steyne = pillar in Dublin erected by Vikings

Broadstone Railway Terminus, Dublin, not far from Eccles street (not elevated, surely?)

Patriarchal shaman, Brodstein (Rabbi perhaps?) (sem. Bloom)

Possibly also Lev Davidovich Bronstein (Trotsky's real name)?

by = town (Danish)

In the movie "Svengali," which I presume was based on the popular play current in Joyce's youth, Svengali calls telepathically to Trilby from the window of a turret above the rooftops of the city.

"Trilby" was first a novel, I think.

The "(Twillby! Twillby!)" on 75.15 sounds like an emphasis on the coming City of God. That is, it's: "... broadsteyne 'bove citie (Twillby! Twillby!) he conscious of enemies ...". HCE's municipal associations often lead to his coming salvation in terms of the restoration of his city (Dublin) as the New Jerusalem. See also the next page, line 8 - 9: " ... the obedience of the citizens elp the ealth of the ole.", echoing the Dublin city motto "Obedientia Civium Urbis Felicitas", with an emphasis on ALP and healing. HCE is looking forward to his resurrection and redemption. This fits quite well with the current Viconian 'coordinates': this is the fourth chapter, of the first main cycle of chapters. So I think Twillby! sounds like 'Twill be!

Twillby, is also, perhaps, it will pass, by, not necessarily be. And by is also buy...

This reminds me of "where wilby citie by law of isthmon" at 017.21... but I don't know what that means!

I think the echo on page 17 fits very well. It's from the Mutt/Jute passage. Mutt is talking about the battles fought near Howth Head, in reference to the merging of the light and dark races. He refers to 'this albutisle' (Howth, a peninsula). The site of the ancient conflict is the seashore near Dublin, where a city will be: 'where wilby citie by law of isthmon'. Here's my understanding of this:

The 'isthmon' may refer to Sir Amory Tristram, first Earl of Howth, a foreign nobleman who moved to Ireland. In FW, he's usually associated with the 'Tristy' character, the combined version of the two sons who makes up the third soldier and is the personality who finally overthrows HCE as Buckley. My reasoning is this: 'isthmon' certainly reminds one of 'isthmus', and that is usually a reference to Howth. It also sounds to me like 'Ikhnaton', the Egyptian Pharaoh who ushered in monotheism through sun (!!) worship.

Back up one level.

he conscious of enemies, a kingbilly whitehorsed in a Finglas mill,

He Conscious of Enemies -> HCE

King Billy -> equestrian statue in Dublin of William III

King Billy -> last male Tasmanian aborigine, whose grave was robbed

WWI motif: I suggest that the main historical figure behind this portrait [of HCE] is Kaiser Wilhelm II, who during the composition of FW was in exile, and virtually emprisoned, in a castle above the Dutch town of Doorn. (Cf. "door:" 75.12) By far the most famous of tiergartens is the one in Berlin, surrounded by what what once the administrative center of the German empire. The echo of "Mademoiselle from Armentieres" recalls WW I, when he was in his glory, before his fall. He is "besieged" where once he was "Sieger," i.e. Caesar (see 281.23), i.e. Kaiser. He has every cause to be "conscious of enemies, a kingbilly whitehorsed in a Finglass mill," with "whitehorsed" echoing "unhorsed" (and a king's horse put to work in a mill, like the horse of Gabriel Conroy's story, or like Samson, with perhaps a suggestion that the flour has powdered him white) and "on anxious seat," since during the early years of his exile there were calls all over Europe for his execution. Typically, the voice assailing him most violently here is English, "engles to the teeth."

About King Billy, see Yeats's "Lapis Lazuli":

Aeroplane and Zeppelin will come out,

Pitch like King Billy bomb-balls in

Until the town lie beaten flat. (ll.6-8)

In the notes Finneran says that this is "a pun on William III at the Battle of the Boyne... and Kaiser Wilhelm (1859-1941), German emperor and king of Prussia during World War I." He further notes-- and this too works in the Wake - that "The Battle of the Boyne" was also an anonymous ballad in _Irish Minstrelsy_ (1888) which describes how:

"King James he pitched his tents between

The lines for all to retire;

But King William threw his bomb-balls in,

And set them all on fire."

(And cp. "between the shifts" in the Yeatsian context of the diagram in II.ii.)

pitch a ball --> cricket?

William III stayed at Finglas after the Battle of Boyne, 1690

to be white-horsed is to obtain a job through influence (what's the story behind this one?)

echoes "unhorsed" (and a king's horse put to work in a mill, like the horse of Gabriel Conroy's story, or like Samson, with perhaps a suggestion that the flour has powdered him white)

There are many statues in Ireland of their British "masters" atop white horses (see Vincent Cheng's article in the new Joyce Studies Annual); this fits in with the general sense of signs of foreign invasion (the "broad*steyne*" on ln. 14). This and other things remind me of the museyroom scene: whitehorse as waterhouse (i.e. toilet) = waterloo. Note that "he sat on an anxious seat" (ln. 16); and "koorts order of the gorundwet" (076.17-8): the wet ground at Waterloo played a decisive role in Wellington's victory (a fact that amused Joyce and strengthened the waterloo-loowater link; SD said something to this effect in *Ulysses* (I can't find the ref. offhand); also in VIB 15 there is the entry "loowater carnage" JJA 32 p. 280, VIB 15 p. 73). The combination of toilet, war and sexual fantasy/frustration seems to add up to a solid link of some kind (but what kind?).

Finglas carries spun glass for me, or finespunglass!

Continuity: HCE is besieged in his own tavern. Whitehorsed in a mill suggests either that he's doing menial labor there, or maybe living in opulence, thru influence.

he's been retired, put out to pasture, put on display (king billy the aborigine), given sinecure, frightened by sieger.

Back up one level.

prayed, as he sat on anxious seat,

Continuity: The anxious seat is so because the stones may come flying-- HCE maybe is not dreaming of the girls, but panicked about the boys.

also toilet seat, anxious implies constipated?

Did anyone mention Luther as the constipated visionary?

(ref back to museyroom {9.31.7-9.32.5}) 3&1/2 hrs on the seat, "Phew! What a warm time..." that WOULD be.

Back up one level.

(kunt ye neat gift mey toe bout a peer saft eyballds!)

B46: kunt ye gif mij pair of soft eggs

Dutch: kunt u niet -> can't you; geef mij -> give me; gift -> poison (!?); toegeven -> add extra to the deal; toe -> please!; peer -> pear (pear juice?); zacht -> soft; zachtgekookt -> softboiled; ei -> egg

neat -> neat whiskey

toe bout -> toe boot, aching feet?

can you not give me to boot a piece of

German: Saft -> juice (only fruit or veggie-- not alcoholic)

saft eyballds: of Theobald? of Tybalt?

bald

Manuscripts: eyballds was first eggers

and two softboiled eggs? (honkhonk ;^)

I notice that Hart's "Overtones" gives "cunt" for "kunt", as well as "pair" "soft", and "eyeball" for the lines in question. I don't know how he was thinking, but "cunt" and "pair of soft balls" suggest something sexual.

Bishop notes (Book of the Dark, p. 47) that the "prostrate central figure lies 'deafadumped', his 'eyballds' glazed over"--my notes tell me that when I first worked this over I thought one of HCE's imprisonments or agonies in through here was that he (Joyce) was having an eye attack, as Bishop notes so many suggestions of in many places. And there is a fair amount here about reseeing and preseeing and deepseeing etc. Could the call for "a peer [that is, a pair through which one could peer] saft [safe, undangerous, as well as soft?] eyballds [I don't get this right]" be a wish for eyes that don't hurt, mixed up with something sexual? We know Joyce saw green when suffering; does anyone know if maybe his eyeballs felt hard?

glaucoma is a disease in which one of the symptoms is that pressure builds up within the eyes

peer saft eyballds could be begging for peace, or good eyes, or a drink (Saft = juice in German)

"peer saft eyballds" might be a prayer to see something thru someone else's eyes, from their point of view, ie a prayer for increased compassion.

isn't there a scene around here somewhere where HCE or Shem is peering fearfully out the keyhole with a telescope?

the beggar here is probably Shem (see below at forescut) here's the hen's eggs served up to blind shemus, and deeper, alp's eggs offered up to hum's seed

I've begun to see here James in Dublin writing to Nora on the continent about the nasty rumor that Giorgio might not be his son. So the Shem-beg-egg motif becomes the cuckoo cuckolding JJ. Considering Hayman's claim that Tristram was the root-myth, this fits: JJ Mark HCE, Shem Tristram Cad. The rumor being bandied all around Dublin, too.

...the male principal's cuckoldry suspicions center on the manservant - Sackerson or whatever - but are usually displaced in the half-confected character of Shem, who partially derives from an oedipally filtered impression of the dreamer's son. (One son: I think Shem and Shaun are two halves of one figure.) Most elementally, I'd guess that Joyce gravitated to the Tristram story because in his post-"Ulysses" forties ("Soon I am old," says Bloom, at thirty-eight) he was starting to feel old, passing his prime, ripe for usurpation.

The weird and wonderful layers of "peer saft eyballds" are a perfect example of a certain strain of Djoytch that scares me with its 'schizophrenism'. My prototype here is the long list JJ sent HSW of approved readings for the "chinx on the flur" title for the mamafesta (a list far more outrageous than anything any of us could ever dream of proposing):

*ARK*

Letter of July 26, 1927 (Ellmann 594):

L'Arcs en His Cieling Flee Chinx on the Flur

1) God's in his heaven and All's Right with the World

2) The Rainbow is in the sky (arc-en-ciel) the Chinese (Chinks) live tranquilly on the Chinese meadowplane (China alone almost of the old continent(s) has no record of a Deluge. Flur in this sense is German. It suggests also Flut (flood) and Fluss (river) and could even be used poetically for the expanse of a waterflood Flee = free)

3) The ceiling of his ([HCE-siglum, in M-position]) house is in ruins for you can see the birds flying and the floor is full of cracks which you had better avoid

4) There is merriment above (larks) why should there not be high jinks below stairs?

5) The electric lamps of the gin palace are lit and the boss Roderick Rex [!?!?] is standing free drinks to all on the 'flure of the house'

6) He is a bit gone in the upper storey, pook jink. Let him lie as he is (Shem, Ham and Japhet)

7) The birds (doves and ravens) (cf the jinnies is a cooin her hair and the jinnies is a ravin her hair) he saved escape from his waterhouse and leave the zooless patriark alone.

What's a waterhouse? an outhouse??

I refer you to 213.15: "'Tis endless now senne eye or erewone last saw Waterhouse's clogh." What the hell that means, I cannot say.

waterhouse = Noah's ark

Waterhouse's clock designed by Alfred Waterhouse

Ark motif in early notes:

10.05 "Guinness (oars)" Noah = brewer = Guinness

10.33 "shipping mogul Lucalizod"

10.35 "Wm Dakin Waterhouse" the clock designer was Alfred. Thom's 1915 has a Wm. Waterhouse in Dalkey.

A-Eveline 3 "ma laughed that fat that after that when she sat flat on her fat arks they was all sheeks" arks = arse, sheeks = cheeks?

A-Personal 543 "$[] floats on drink" what could this have said? barrel? ark? tavern? waterhouse?

A-Exiles2 78 "Tr. and Sy wander in U boat" to torpedo Mark's waterhouse??? Is 'Sy' the evil Issy?

Back up one level.

during that three and a hellof hours' agony of silence,

3 1/2 hours

God motif (dying god): Is the "three and a hellof hours agony of silence" as Christ's agony on Good Friday (the Harrowing of Hell) too obvious to mention? But it does suggest that ex profundis malorum (below) refers not only to Wilde, but to the FallDeathResurrection motifs.

Manuscripts: When H.C.E. became "he conscious of enemies" the word 'enemies' is never written down, and the 'of' may have consequently insinuated itself into the wrong place, turning "prayed... in silence" to "agony of silence".

Continuity: The silence is agonizing because he's waiting for the attack to start again-- lethelulled between explosions, perhaps (see below).

Back up one level.

*ex profundis malorum*,

ex profundis malorum = out of the depths of evil (Latin)

I wish I had the Latin to hear the subtleties of "ex profundis malorum." That malorum I suspect could hold volumes of meaning: from the depths of *his* evil?

'malorum' is genitive _plural_, thus 'out of the depths of evils' or something of the sort.

Is "ex profundis malorum" a reference to Wilde's "De Profundis?" The scenario has certain similarities to the return of Wilde, out of prison, in III.3.

Background on Wilde: sued his boyfriend (Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas)'s father for calling him "a posing somdomite" [sic], lost the suit which Alfred had pressed him to pursue, due largely to Alfred's indiscretion with some loveletters, suffered humiliating imprisonment for two years, wrote "De Profundis" as a howl from the depths of anguished betrayal. He died 3.5 years after his release.

My sense is that that the trial and imprisonment initiated the long spell of exile and decline that ended in his death. (Joyce's "Collected Works" essay dwells on the way that Wilde was broken and made an outcast.)

A-Telemachus 6 "OW died of a broken arse"

De Profundis are the opening words of Psalm 129 in the Vulgate (Psalm 130 in RSV), a psalm sung at Masses for the Dead and quite appropriate to the Good Friday liturgy. It then also echoes the felix culpa motif.

Back up one level.

[and bred] with unfeigned charity that his ouxtrador wordwounder

Manuscripts: "and bred" was never meant to be here. It was inserted in the wrong place by the printer-- it should have changed "born engles" into born and bred engles. Instead of fixing it JJ changed "born engles" to "engles to the teeth".

bred -> prayed

bred...charity: gift of bread?

Manuscripts: very late in the game JJ tried to add "ouxtrador" before wordwounder. It didn't take.

B46: ouxd (voeu), ouxdador (pelerin)

Armenian: ukhd -> a vow; ukhdavor -> pilgrim

Shem the wordsmith, wounds with words

Wonderworker for rectal complaints (Ulysses?) (How did this work? Could it possibly 'unfold'? (see below))

the "bullocky" has been throwing words and stones, and "Earwicker, longsuffering...compiled a long list of all the abusive names he was called but did not other wise reply" (FDV74). Is this "list" (which is 71.10-72.16) the "wordwounder"? that is, does language's report of reality take the sting from the words, get in control of them, lick them by joining them, amount to the victory over language which is the Wake itself

wounder-OF-words???

Museyroom echo: this word recalls "wounderworker." (008.35; also the museyroom, surprise, surprise). In the museyroom, before the fall, or during the shamefull falling (as HCE masturbates on the toilet and falls off his horse in ignominious defeat) the phallus ("remedy for rectal complaints") is a wounderworker: the work is inflicting wounds. Perhaps the sort of wound here is a kind of invagination which is now "mormorialized" by the museyroom--i.e. underground in the wax museum the phallus has become a fantasy and a memory. Now after the fall, at the wake in the first pp. of I.4 this totem is a wordwounder: the words are themselves enwounded in the act of writing, or something like that. In the museyroom the wounderworker/wordwounder rebus is mock-triumphant (but ultimately defeated); in I.4 it is the remains of a fantasy of genealogical power (?--see First draft version of this pp.).

Perhaps ultimately this word is unglossable, although I've been trying to wipe this gloss with what I know. I used the word "rebus" (i.e. word-thing) above to describe it--it comes from Abraham and Torok's *The Wolf-Man's Magic Word*, I think that their work on the wolfman's polyglot neologisms could be usefull in accounting for various unglossable words in the Wake. Also Derrida's introduction to their book (the essay "Fors") might be the most usefull text he's written in terms of reading the Wake, even though he doesn't mention Joyce (but he has a few words to say regarding crypts). But then that's part of the theoretical work I'm doing now so I won't bore you.

Back up one level.

(an engles to the teeth

Engel is German for angel

Manuscripts: see bred above. (a type -> a born engels -> a born and bred engels)

is "to the teeth" ever used any way but armed to the teeth?

engles to the teeth -> snake fangs?

Marx & Engels -> a communist, an overthrower of the privileged classes?

One perpetual trouble with reading JJ is that suddenly one remembers two disparate earlier things that should have gone together. Someone, correctly, pointed out that 76.36 alludes to Pere-la-Chaise, the cemetery where Wilde was buried. Indeed it is, and I should then have remembered, first, that Wilde had been spotted on 75.18, and immediately associated those two facts with the lion of 75.01 and the "engles" of 75.l9 -- a sort of portmanteau of eagle and angel, and remembered my first visit (of three over the years) to that cemetery. (Abelard and Heloise are buried there, even if Tristan and Isolde aren't -- with a huge sword between them!). But to the point. I asked the custodian if there were separate parts of the cemetery for groups (by religion, nationality or whatever), and he, a chap in standard French uniform and gendarme-like cap, replied, "Ah, non! Ils sont tous melanges." (There all mixed together). He had large eyeballs with much white showing, and a waxed moustache. With the aid of a small map I visited a number of interesting tombs, coming also to that of Wilde. This is an impressive "cenotaph" (if I may) in Assyro-Babylonian style, quite huge, in the form of a beast with the body of a _lion_ and the wings of either an eagle or angel -- those who have seen such statues will know the form I mean, but with the features of Oscar Wilde, somewhat idealized, the whole by Epstein. This is what should have come to my mind earlier in our discussion. But, unfortunately, vandals have attacked the nude "front" of the statue, and "emasculated", chiseling off penis and one testicle. When I subsequently questioned the custodian he at first said "Ah, ha" with a nasal vowel in each, rolling his eyes. I asked if it was known who had committed this desecration, and he looked first to each side, with his large white rimmed eyeballs, and said, "Les bonnes soeurs!" "Euh, les bonnes soeurs???" I echoed, rephrasing it to be sure I had understood, "Les nonnains?" (nuns). "Oui!", he said, prolonging the word with a fricative like the German _ch_. Then looked me in the eye, and with British accent and intent, "Shocking!" Several years later when I came back with my wife there was a different attendant, who had a tendancy to giggle. The cemetery is worth a visit.

Back up one level.

who, nomened Nash of Girahash,

nomen is Latin for name

omen

Hebrew words: nasha -> cunning; nahash -> snake; gur -> exile; hasha -> silence

Nash of Girahash as the serpent is also an angel (engels), though a fallen one

Nash the Girahash could also evoke Ganesh, the Hindu god (of creativity, among other things), who appears as an elephant.

I'd also like to point out that Ganesha is the scribe of the gods, and the recorder of the Mahabharata (but not its author, who is Vyasa). This agrees with the murky Sackerson figure we discussed here, who is often associated with low journalists and gossipmongers; that is, scribblers who aren't Shemian artistes.

would go anyold where in the weeping world on his mottled belly (the rab, the kreeponskneed!) for milk, music or married missusses)

Manuscripts: a type who would go on his belly anywhere for milk, music, or married women

what figure of speech is it when you say "the weeping world" meaning the world-as-experienced-by-the-weeping-Nash? (Romantic fallacy?)

why mottled? cf Mark's speckled trousers?

Hebrew word: rab -> slave

rab is Irish for hog

Why is he a rab/ slave? Noah's curse upon Ham? (was 'rab' the word used?)

Coming after rab, which is definitely Russian for slave [with meanings related to manual labor and servitude throughout the Slavic languages], this *looks* Russian -- krepanskii or kreponskii -- but it's not. It may be another Slavic language; presumably Joyce knew Croatian best. But there is an interesting portmanteau in Russian:

krepostnoi -- serf, an adjectival form, sometimes used as a noun; also means fortress

krestianskii -- peasant, adjectival form

So the combination looks like a peasant or serf -- and with rab, there is a Hamlet echo of "rogue and peasant slave"

kreeponskneed -> creeps on knees, friend in need?

Ulysses 516: "Serpents too are gluttons for woman's milk"

"milk, music, or married missusses" is a variant of "wine, women, and song."

The snake Nash slithers around the sad world, looking for fun.

rab-belly --> Rabelais?

Back up one level.

might, mercy to providential benevolence's who hates prudencies' astuteness,

gracehoper vs ondt

mercy to... astuteness sounds like the language of the twelve

Manuscripts: "mercy to providential benevolence's astuteness"

So the punctuation might really be:

mercy to providential benevolence's (who hate prudencies') astuteness

That "mercy to prov..." line puts me instantly to sleep, hypnotically dull. You expect it to be an acronym: MPBwHPA? MPBA?

Or it sounds like a stream of euphemistic invective... or a mumbled rosary?

Back up one level.

unfold into the first of a distinguished dynasty of his posteriors,

is the wordwounder a folded piece of paper? (ooh! 76.01 then offers "not of the fold"!?!?)

toilet paper?

unfold = leave the fold?

posteriors -> descendants

posteriors -> arses/ asses, in America anyway (cursing him to beget only asses)

"Go wipe your ass with your insults!"?

The fantasy of the wordwounder "unfold[ing]" into a truly criminal class might make sense in terms of HCE's motives at that moment: the "bullocky" has been throwing words and stones, and "Earwicker, longsuffering...compiled a long list of all the abusive names he was called but did not other wise reply" (FDV74). Is this "list" (which is 71.10-72.16) the "wordwounder"? that is, does language's report of reality take the sting from the words, get in control of them, lick them by joining them, amount to the victory over language which is the Wake itself, and thus hopefully fulfill a truly subversive function, become a "truly criminal stratum" (76.05 below) as defense against the imperialisms and chaos of the "much desultory delinquency" which we realized was omitted from 76.06 and which clearly is what HCE feels in his attack? That is, can writing words wound words? Can you win in the world by hunkering down and writing a list? by writing the Wake? Certainly HCE might like to think so while the stones pound on the gate! And the version of attack-defense we're reading now works out what the opposite is, the "other spring offensive" (below) besides the offensive with words.

Back up one level.

blackfaced connemaras not of the fold but elder children of his household,

Blackfaced Connemara is a breed of sheep

black sheep

Yonic motif: the first syllable of 'connemaras' is another French term for this same locus amoenus.

Elder Children of His Household = ECH

This phrase appears in the Egyptian Book of the Dead

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