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Chapter thirteen is the start of Book Three, aka 'the watches of the night', which supposedly tells the story of Shaun as a mirror reversal of Book One (Shem).
JAJ: "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"
via crucis = Stations of the Cross [qv]
Theory: At the most abstract level, Shem in Book One may have been engaging life and then retreating to turn it into art, where Shaun avoids and denies life (and is rewarded for his shallowness?). (This dialectic probably echoes a hidden symmetry in Ulysses, between Eolus and Cyclops, with the newspapermen continually acceding to censorship (like Shaun), while the Citizen and the narrator flaunt extremes of self-expression, like Shem.)
As the clock strikes midnight, Shaun the postman appears to Mamalujo's donkey (who for some reason has become the narrator!): [fw]
Hark!
Tolv two elf kater ten (it can't be) sax.
Hork!
Pedwar pemp foify tray (it must be) twelve.
If it's striking twelve, either hark or hork or foify must conceal an extra strike.
McH: 12-2-11-4-10-6, 4-5-50-3-12 (incl Danish, German, Irish, Welsh, Italian)
missing: 1-7-8-9
doubled: 4-12
ringer: 50
And low stole o'er the stillness the heartbeats of sleep...Methought as I was dropping asleep... I heard at zero hour as 'twere the peal of vixen's laughter... from out the belfry of the cute old speckled church tolling... as nighthood's unseen violet rendered all... objects nonviewable to human watchers... And as I was jogging along in a dream... arrah, methought broadtone was heard... all vociferated echoating: Shaun! Shaun! Post the post...!
When look, was light and now'twas as flasher, now moren as the glaow. Ah, in unlitness 'twas in very similitude, bless me, 'twas his belted lamp...!
ALP borrows this lamp in ch8 [qv] (and at the end of that chapter, one of the washerwomen thinks she sees a light).
Ay, he who so swayed a will of a wisp before me... dressed like an earl in just the correct wear... with his motto through dear life embrothred over it in peas, rice, and yeggyyolk... everything the best -- none other... than (and may his hundred thousand welcome... letters... multiply, ay faith, and plultiply!) Shaun himself.What a picture primitive!
Had I the concordant wiseheads of Messrs Gregory and Lyons alongside of Dr Tarpey's and I dorsay the reverend Mr Mac Dougall's, but I, poor ass, am but as their fourpart tinckler's dunkey.
Perhaps Mamalujo are a fourfold version of Shaun (amplified), while their ass is Shem (reduced)?
Yet methought Shaun... stood before me. And I pledge you my agricultural word... that young fellow looked the stuff, the Bel of Beaus' Walk, a prime card if ever was! Pep? Now without deceit it is hardly too much to say he was looking grand, so fired smart, in much more than his usual health. No mistaking that beamish brow! ...Those jehovial oyeglances...!
Shaun's hearty appetite = Christ's Last Supper (in relation to the Stations of the Cross)
There's also a persistent playing-card motif around here. [fw]
He was immense, topping swell for he was after having a great time of it... in a porterhouse... while his knives of hearts made havoc he had recruited his strength by meals of spadefuls of mounded food, in anticipation of the faste of tablenapkins...
McH: Feast of Tabernacles (late September) [info]
his breakfast of first, a... blood and thirsthy orange, next, the half of a pint of becon with newled googs and a segment of riceplummy padding... then... his stockpot dinner of a half a pound or round steak, very rare... with a side of riceypeasy... and bacon with... a pair of chops... and gaulusch gravy and pumpernickel to wolp up and a gorger's bulby onion... and then finally, after his avalunch oclock snack... of saddlebag steak... with her old phoenix portar... and praties sweet... and he getting his tongue arount it and Boland's broth broken into the bargain... a carusal consistent with second course eyer and becon (the rich of) with broad beans...
becon with googs... bacon with chops... eyer and becon
McH: Eier = eggs (German)
Thomas Becon (1512-1567, Puritan): "For when the wine is in, the wit is out." (also??? "Everybody has to believe in something. I believe I'll have another drink," "Everything in moderation, including moderation" [qv])
while'twas after that he scoffed a drakeling snuggily stuffed following cold loin of veal more cabbage and in their green free state a clister of peas, soppositorily petty, last. P.S. but a fingerhot of rheingenever to give the Pax cum Spiritututu.
Joyce saw butterfed priests as a symbol of the Church in Ireland, and Shaun in Book Three is as often a priest as a mailman. [fw]
Drily thankful. Burud and dulse and typureely jam, all free of charge, aman, and. And the best of wine avec. For his heart was as big as himself, so it was, ay, and bigger! ...Thus thicker will he grow now... And better and better on butterand butter... However! Mind you, nuckling down to nourritures... I don't mean to make the ingestion for the moment that he was guilbey of gulpable gluttony as regards chewable boltaballs, but... upon the whole, when not off his oats... between gormandising and gourmeteering, he grubbed his tuck all right... every time he... felt like a bottle of ardilaun arongwith... a lecker biss of a welldressed taart... And he was so jarvey jaunty with a romp of a schoolgirl's completion sitting pretty over his Oyster Monday print face and he was plainly out on the ramp and mash, as you might say, for he sproke.Overture and beginners!
Shaun's voice is heard telepathically, like Morse code via transatlantic radio: [fw]
When lo (whish, O whish!) mesaw mestreamed... through deafths of durkness greengrown deeper I heard a voice, the voce of Shaun, vote of the Irish, voise from afar... from Inchigeela call the way... to scented nightlife as softly as the loftly marconimasts... sough open tireless secrets... to Nova Scotia's listing sisterwands. Tubetube!
(The phrase 'voice of the Irish' comes from St Patrick's Confessio [qv] where a dream calls him to his mission in Ireland.)
Trained in public speaking, Shaun begins with well-rehearsed gestures, but immediately collapses from exhaustion:
His handpalm lifted, his handshell cupped, his handsign pointed, his handheart mated, his handaxe risen, his handleaf fallen... It gested.And it said:
-- Alo, alass, aladdin, amobus! ...Shaun yawned... addressing himself ex alto and complaining with vocal discontent... he sank his hunk... to resk at once, exhaust as winded hare, utterly spent, it was all he could do... upon the native heath he loved... for who who e'er trod sod of Erin could ever sleep off the turf!
Shaun launches into a stream of excuses and complaints, comparing himself to Shem: [fw]
Well, I'm liberally dished seeing myself in this trim! How all too unwordy am I, a mere mailman of peace, a poor loust hastehater of the first degree... for such eminence... as to be the bearer extraordinary of these postoomany missive on his majesty's service...! I, the mightif beam maircanny, which bit his mirth too early or met his birth too late!
McH: might-have-been Marconi
It should of been my other with his leickname for he's the head and I'm an everdevoting fiend of his... We shared the twin chamber and we winked on the one wench... He looks rather thin, imitating me. I'm very fond of that other of mine... We're the musichall pair that won... at the Guinness gala... I ought not to laugh with him on this stage. But he' such a game loser! I lift my disk to him...
Shem's energetic early curiosity?
First he was living to feel what the eldest daughter she was panseying and last he was dying to know what old Madre Patriack does be up to... I am no helotwashipper but I revere her! ...But, Gemini, he's looking frightfully thin! I heard the man Shee shinging in the pantry bay. Down among the dustbins let him lie! ...For I'm at the heart of it. Yet I cannot... recollect ever having done of anything of the kind to deserve of such. Not... by a long trollop! I just didn't have the time to. Saint Anthony Guide!
Mamalujo begin a series of questions about how he came to deliver the letter, and Shaun begins by protesting what a burden it is: [fw]
-- But have we until now ever besought you, dear Shaun, we remembered, who it was, good boy, to begin with, who out of symphony gave you the permit?-- Goodbye now, Shaun replied, with a voice pure as a churchmode, in echo rightdainty... Fatiguing, very fatiguing. Hobos hornknees and the corveeture of my spine. Poumeerme! My heaviest crux and dairy lot it is, with a bed as hard as the thinkamuddles of the Greeks and a board as bare as a Roman altar...
He recalls being crucified with the two thieves (Stations of the Cross):
No later than a very few fortnichts since I was meeting on the Thinker's Dam with a pair of men out of glasshouse whom I shuffled hands with named MacBlacks -- I think their names is MacBlakes -- from the Headfire Clump...
McH: Hellfire Club [qv]
-- and they were improving me... I have the highest gratification by anuncing how I have it from whowho but Hagios Colleenkiller's prophecies. After suns and moons, dews and wettings, thunders and fires, comes sabotag...
St Columkille's (spurious) prophecies gave him the permit to deliver the letter.
-- Then, we explained, salve a tour, ambly andy, you possibly might be so by order?-- Forgive me, Shaun repeated from his liquid lipes, not what I wants to do a strike of work but it was condemned on me... by Hireark Books... and there does be a power coming over me that is put upon me from on high out of the book of breedings and so... I have of coerce nothing in view to look forward at unless it is... beating the blindquarters out of my oldfellow's orologium...
A bad attack of maggot it feels like. 'Tis trope, custodian said. Almost might I say of myself... I am... about fed up be going circulating about them new hikler's highways... till it's rusty October in this bleak forest... as away... to isolate i from my multiple Mes on the spits of Lumbage Island or bury meself, clogs, coolcellar and all, deep in my wineupon ponteen... and where on dearth or in the miraculous meddle of this expending umniverse to turn since it came into my hands I am hopeless off course to be doing anything concerning.
He's desperate to avoid the job. [fw]
-- We expect you are, honest Shaun, we agreed... that in the end it may well turn out, we hear to be you, our belated, who will bear these open letter. Speak to us of Emailia.-- As, Shaun replied patly... to that I have the gumpower and, by the benison of Barbe, that is a lock to say with everything, my beloved.
-- Would you mind telling us, Shaun honey... where mostly are you able to work. Ah, you might! Whimper and we shall.
-- Here! Shaun replied... There's no sabbath for nomads and I mostly was able to walk, being too soft for work proper, sixty odd eilish mires a week between three masses a morn and two chaplets at eve. I am always telling those pedestriasts, my answerers, Top, Sid and Hucky... how it was forstold... for my vacation in life while possessing stout legs to be disbarred after holy orders from unnecessary servile work of reckless walking of all sorts...
I would get into a blame there... Go thou this island, one housesleep there, then go thou other island, two housesleep there, then catch one nightmaze, then home to dearies... Amen; ptah! His hungry will be done! ...But believe me in my simplicity I am awful good, I believe, so I am, at the root of me... And I can now truthfully declaret before my Geity's Pantokreator... that I do my reasonabler's best to recite my grocery beans for mummy... regular, genuflections enclosed... In fact, always, have I believe. Greedo! Her's me hongue!
-- ...Yet one minute's observation, dear dogmestic Shaun, as we point out how you have while away painted our town a wearing greenridinghued.
Painting the town red (ie, drunk), or painting the country green (ie, liberating Ireland from England), or painting the grass green (gilding the lily). [fw]
-- O murder mere, how did you hear? Shaun replied, smoiling the ily way up his lampsleeve (it just seemed the natural thing to do), so shy of light was he then.
So Shaun is hiding in the dark/night? (Cf Kevin's retreat from temptation [vignette])
Well, so be it! The gloom hath rays, her lump is love. And I will confess to have, yes. Your diogneses is anonest man's. Thrubedore I did! Inditty I did. All lay I did... Like the regular redshank I am. Impregnable as the mule himself. Somebody may perhaps hint at an aughter impression of I was wrong. No such a thing! You never made a more freudful mistake, excuse yourself! ...But it is grandiose by my ways of thinking from the prophecies. New worlds for all...!-- How mielodorous is thy bel chant, O songbird, and how exqueezit thine after draught! ...But do you mean... we gathered substantively whether furniture would or verdure varnish?
("Will Ireland endure or vanish"? There's an early note about 'painting the grass green' that may fit here.)
McH (611): Berkeley [qv] used phrase 'furniture of earth' to refer to totality of material objects
The question angers Shaun, who blames the previous postmistress (?) and promises to write a book explaining it all: [fw]
-- It is a confoundyous injective so to say, Shaun the fiery boy shouted, naturally incensed, as he shook the red pepper out of his auricles. And another time please confine your glaring intinuations to some other mordant body. What on the physiog of this furnaced planet would I be doing besides your verjuice? That is more than I can fix, for the teom bihan, anyway. So let I and you now kindly drop that, angryman! That's not French pastry. You can take it from me.Understand me when I tell you (and I will ask you not to whisple, cry golden or quoth mecback) that under the past purcell's office, so deeply deplored by my erstwhile elder friend, Miss Enders, poachmistress... allbethey blessed with twentytwo thousand sorters out of a biggest poss of twentytwo thousand... too much privet stationery and safty quipu was ate up larchly by those nettlesome goats out of pension greed...
Proceding, I will say it is also one of my avowal's intentions, at some time pease Pod... (when I am not prepared to say) so apt as my pen is upt to scratch, to compound quite the makings of a verdigrease savingsbook... surrounding this matter... for my publickers, Nolaner and Browno... so long as, thanks to force of destiny, my selary as a paykelt is propaired, and there is a peg under me and there is a tum till me.
Shaun's book will resemble a bankbook. And it's another version of the Letter: [fw]
To the Very Honourable The Memory of Disgrace, the Most Noble, Sometime Sweepyard at the Service of the Writer. Salutem dicint. The just defunct Mrs Sanders... with her shester Mrs Shunders, both mudical dauctors from highschoolhorse and aslyke as Easther's leggs. She was the niceliest person of a wellteached nonparty woman that I ever acquired her letters, only too fat, used to babies... She was well under ninety, poor late Mrs, and had tastes of the poetics... Honour thy farmer and my litters.
And his will:
This, my tears, is my last will intesticle wrote off... about their absent female assauciations which I... have the honour to had... in the real presence of devouted Mrs Grumby when her skin was exposed to the air. O what must the grief of my mund be for two little ptpt coolies worth twenty thousand quad herewitdnessed with both's maddlemass wishes to Pepette for next match from their dearly beloved Roggers, M.D.D. O.D. May doubling drop of drooght! Writing.
And an official government report:
-- Hopsoloosely kidding you are... and goat along nose how we shall complete that white paper... Otherwise, frank Shaun, we pursued, what would be the autobiography of your softbodied fumiform?
Shaun's postman's uniform is equated with the letter's envelope, and Shaun shows he's delivered it because he now wears only a barrel:
-- Hooraymost! None whomsoever, Shaun replied, Heavenly blank! ...All of it... was handled over spondaneously by me (and bundle end to my illwishers' Miss Anders...!) in the ligname of Mr van Howten of Tredcastles, Clowntalkin... What I say is... I never spont it. Nor have I the ghuest of innation on me the way to. It is my rule so. It went anyway like hot pottagebake. And this brings me to my fresh point. Quoniam, I am as plain as portable enveloped... care of one of... Goonness's registered... barrels...
-- So vi et! we responded. Song! Shaun, song! Have mood! Hold forth!-- I apologuise, Shaun began, but I would rather spinooze you one from the grimm gests of Jacko and Esaup, fable one, feeble too. Let us here consider the casus, my dear little cousis [*] of the Ondt and the Gracehoper.
[*] thunderwords for 'cough' [list]
JAJ: ondt = angry
McH: ondt = hard, ill (Norwegian)
Shem flirts shamelessly: [fw]
The Gracehoper was always jigging ajog, hoppy on akkant of his joyicity... or, if not, he was always making ungraceful overtures to Floh and Luse and Bienie and Vespatilla...
McH: flea, louse, bee and wasp (via various languages)
The flea motif is well attested in the earliest (1922-23) notes-- perhaps as the sexual itch?
...to play pupa-pupa... and to commence insects with him, there mouthparts to his orefice and his gambills to there airy processes, even if only in chaste... harry me, marry me, bury me, bind me, till she was puce for shame and allso fourmish her in Spinner's housery... so summery as his cottage, which was cald fourmillierly Tingsomingenting, groped up.
FDV: he would furnish her in housery as quickly as his cottage, which was called Tingandingenting, grew up.
McH: en ting som ingen ting = a thing like no thing (Danish)
so presumably: en ting og ingen ting = a thing and no thing
('and' in Danish = duck!? [qv])
He pursues trivial entertainments (instead of scientific profundities):
Or, if he was always striking up funny funereels... with tambarins and cantoridettes soturning around his eggshill rockcoach their dance McCaper in retrophoebia... to the ra, the ra, the ra, the ra, langsome heels and langsome toesis, attended to by a mutter and doffer duffmatt baxingmotch and... pszozlers pszinging... Ho, Time Timeagen, Wake!For if sciencium (what's what) can mute uns nought, 'a thought, abought the Great Sommboddy within the Omniboss, perhops an artsaccord (hoot's hoot) might sing ums tumtim abutt the Little Newbuddies that ring his panch. A high old tide for the barheated publics and the whole day as gratiis! ...Erething above ground... so as everwhy... zeemliangly to kick time.
FDV: anything above ground so as only to kill time.
Shaun is practicing stern looks in the mirror: [fw]
Grouscious me and scarab my sahull What a bagateller it is!...Ptuh! What a zeit for the goths! vented the Ondt, who, not being a sommerfool, was thothfolly making chilly spaces at hisphex affront of the icinglass of his windhame, which was cold antitopically Nixnixundnix.
(So Shem's unfinished summerhouse is a thing which is no thing, while Shaun's winterhouse is just nothing, nothing, and nothing... or deny, deny, and deny.)
We shall not come to party at that lopp's, he decided possibly, for he is not on our social list...The Ondt was a weltall fellow, raumybult and abelboobied... He was sair sair sullemn and chairmanlooking when he was not making spaces in his psyche, but, laus! when he wore making spaces on his ikey, he ware mouche mothst secred and... wisechairmanlooking.
Shem's food runs out: [fw]
Now whim the sillybilly of a Gracehoper had jingled through a jungle of love and debts... drikking with nautonects... and horing after ladybirdies... he fell joust as sieck as a sexton... and wheer... to sirch for grub for his corapusse... alick, he wist gnit! ...Not one pickopeck of muscowmoney to bag a tittlebits of beebread! ... O moy Bog, he contrited with melanctholy. Meblizzered, him sluggered! I am heartily hungry!He had eaten all the whilepaper... devoured forty flights of styearcases, chewed up all the mensas... made mundballs of the ephemerids and vorasioused most glutinously with the very timeplace in the ternitary -- not too dusty a cicada of neutriment for a chittinous chip so mitey.
(Not unlike Hyacinth the pig in ch4! [qv])
Winter drives him to seek out Shaun's house:
But when Chrysalmas was on the bare branches, off he went from Tingsomingenting. He took a round stroll and he took a stroll round and he took a round strollagain till the grillies in his head... made him thought he had the Tossmania... Was he come to hevre with his engiles or gone to hull with the poop? The June snows was flocking in thuckflues on the hegelstomes... ruching sleets off the coppeehouses... with an irritant, penetrant, siphonopterous spuk...
JAJ: "Tasmania, he stands on his head to be really 'antipodal'"
The Gracehoper... though blind as batflea...promptly tossed himself in the vico... on top of his buzzer, tezzily wondering wheer would his aluck alight...
FDV: The gracehoper who knew the correct thing promptly tossed himself ontop his head in the snow
In Shaun's version of the fable, his labors win him the very wealth Shem squandered, allowing a degree of role-reversal: [fw]
...and the next time he makes the aquinatance of the Ondt... it shall be motylucky if he will beheld not a world of differents. Behailed His Gross the Ondt... upon his dhrone, in his Papylonian babooshkees, smolking a spatial brunt of Hosana cigals, with unshrinkables farfalling from his unthinkables...
JAJ: unshrinkables = pyjamas
...swarming of himself in his sunnyroom, sated before his comfortumble phullupsuppy of a plate o'monkynous and a confucion of minthe (for he was a conformed aceticist and aristotaller)...
JAJ: swarming of = enthusiastic over (eg) himself (German)
McH: a plate of monkeynuts; infusion de menthe
ascetic; teetotaller
(So in Shaun's version, he's the opposite of a glutton.)
as appi as a oneysucker or a baskerboy on the Libido, with Floh biting his leg thigh and Luse lugging his luff leg and Bieni bussing him under his bonnet and Vespatilla blowing cosy fond tutties up the allabroad length of the large of his smalls. As entomate as intimate could pinchably be......be jadeses whipt! schneezed the Gracehoper, aguepe with ptchjelasys and at his wittol's indts, what have eyeforsight!
(In Shaun's version, Shem is jealous.)
The Ondt, that true and perfect host... was making the greatest spass a body could with his queens laceswinging... boundlessly blissfilled in an allallahbath of houris. He was ameising himself hugely at crabround and marypose, chasing Floh out of charity and tickling Luse, I hope too, and tackling Bienie, faith, as well, and jucking Vespatilla jukely by the chimiche...
Shaun is delighted by Shem's plight:
The veripatetic imago of the impossible Gracehoper on his odderkop in the myre... actually and presumptuably sinctifying chronic's despair, was sufficiently and probably coocoo much for his chorous of gravitates... The thing pleased him...
JAJ: odderkop = other head
JAJ: "despair and presumption are sins against hope"
Shem forgives Shaun for laughing: [fw]
He larved ond he larved on he merd such a nauses
The Gracehoper feared he would mixplace his fauces.
I forgive you, grondt Ondt, said the Gracehoper, weeping,
For their sukes of the sakes you are safe in whose keeping.
Teach Floh and Luse polkas, show Bienie where's sweet
And be sure Vespatilla fines fat ones to heat.
As I once played the piper I must now pay the count
So saida to Moyhammlet and marhaba to your Mount!
...I pick up your reproof, the horsegift of a friend,
For the prize of your save is the price of my spend...
We are Wastenot with Want, precondamned, two and true,
Till Nolans go volants and Bruneyes come blue...
Your feats end enormous, your volumes immense,
(May the Graces I hoped for sing your Ondtship song sense!),
Your genus its worldwide, your spacest sublime!
But, Holy Saltmartin, why can't you beat time?In the name of the former and of the latter and of their holocaust. Allmen.
(So even in his own fable, Shaun must acknowledge he's missing a dimension?)
Summary by Bill Cadbury
-- Now? How good you are in explosition! How farflung is your fokloire and how velktingeling your volupkabulary! ...But could you, of course, decent Lettrechaun... read the strangewrote anaglyptics of those shemletters patent for His Christian's Em?-- Greek! Hand it to me! Shaun replied... I am... letter potent to play the sem backwards... with my oyes thickshut and all. But, hellas, it is harrobrew bad on the corns and callouses. As far as that goes I... quite agree in your prescriptions for indeed... it is not a nice production. It is a pinch of scribble... Overdrawn! Puffedly offal tosh! Besides its auctionable, all about crime and libel! ...The fuellest filth ever fired since Charley Lucan's.
Flummery is what I would call it if you were to ask me to put it on a single dimension what pronounced opinion I might possibly orally have about them bagses of trash which the mother and Mr Unmentionable... has reduced to writing... When she slipped under her couchman. And where he made a cat with a peep.
McH: met a cad with a pipe
How they wore two madges on the makewater. And why there were treefellers in the shrubrubs...Letter, carried of Shaun, son of Hek, written of Shem, brother of Shaun, uttered for Alp, mother of Shem, for Hek, father of Shaun. Initialled... Baile-Atha-Cliath. 31 Jan. 1132 A.D... L.B. Not known at 1132 a... Noon sick parson... No such no... Finn's Hot... Opened by Miss Take... At sea... Return to City Arms... Wrongly spilled... Drowned in the Laffey... Back in Few Minutes... Key at Kate's... Kainly forewarred... All reddy berried... Sender. Boston (Mass). 31 Jun. 13, 12... Step out to Hall out of that, Ereweaker, with your Bloody Big Bristol. Bung. Stop. Bung. Stop. Cumm Bumm. Stop. Came Baked to Auld Aireen. Stop.
(The jottings on the much-forwarded envelope.)
Hasn't Shaun used language as bad or worse than Shem's? [fw]
-- Kind Shaun, we all requested, much as we hate to say it, but since you rose to the use of money have you not... millions of moods used up slanguage tun times as words as the penmarks used out in sinscript with such hesitancy by your cerebrated brother -- excuse me not mentioningahem?-- CelebrAted! Shaun replied... vigorously rubbing his magic lantern to a glow of fullconsciousness... Your words grates on my ares. Notorious I rather would feel inclined... to describe Mr O'Shem the Draper... should I be accentually called upon... to pass my opinions... But let me say my every belief before my high Gee is that I much doubt of it. I've no room for that fellow on my fagroaster, I just can't. As I hourly learn... he, the pixillated doodler, is on his last...!
She, the mammy far, was put up to it by him, the iniquity that ought to be depraved of his libertins to be silenced, sackclothed and suspended, and placed in irons into some drapyery institution off the antipopees for wordsharping... Gach! ...I will describe you in a word. Thou. (I beg your pardon.) Homo! Then putting his bedfellow on me! ...The criniman: I'll give it to him for that! ...Obnoximost posthumust! With his unique hornbook and his prince of the apauper's pride... Ho's nos halfcousin of mine, pigdish! Nor wants to! I'd famish with the cuistha first. Aham!
Could Shaun equal Shem's language if asked? [fw]
-- May we petition you, Shaun illustrious, then, to put his prentis' pride in your aproper's purse and to unravel in your own sweet way with words of style to your very and most obsequient, we suggested, with yet an esiop's foible, as to how?-- Well it is partly my own, isn't it? and you may, ought and welcome, Shaun replied, taking at the same time, as his hunger got the bitter of him, a hearty bite out of the honeycomb of his... hat... Sure, I thunkum you knew all about that... that is... as commonpleas now... as Nelson his trifulgurayous pillar. However. Let me see, do.
McH: Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square
Shaun summarizes the scandal:
Beerman's bluff was what begun it, Old Knoll and his borrowing! And then the liliens of the veldt, Nancy Nickies and Folletta Lajambe! Then mem and hem and the jaquejack. All about Wucherer and righting his name for him.
McH: Wucherer = usurer (German)
I regret to announce, after laying out his litterery bed, for two days she kept... bawling out... huw Ananymus pinched her tights...
Shaun reverts to defaming Shem: [fw]
It was given meeck, thank the Bench, to assist at the whole thing byck special chancery licence. As often as I think of that unbloody housewarmer, Shem Skrivenitch, always cutting my prhose to please his phrase, bogorror, I declare I get the jawache! ...You know he's peculiar, that eggschicker, with the smell of old woman off him, to suck nothing of his switchedupes...
Shem was born old:
He was grey at three, like sygnus the swan, when he made his boo to the public and barnacled up to the eyes when he repented after seven... He's weird, I tell you... Never mind his falls feet and his tanbark complexion. That's why he was forbidden tomate and was warmed off the ricecourse of marrimoney, under the Helpless Corpses Enactment... Then he was pusched out of Thingamuddy's school by Miss Garterd, for itching... Shim! I have the outmost contempt for... Go o'er the sea, haythen, from me and leave your libber to TCD. Your puddin is cooked! You're served, cram ye! Fatefully yaourth... Ex. Ex. Ex. Ex.
(Joyce's ellipsis. Shaun's insatiable hunger shapes his verbal imagery.) [fw]
-- But for what, thrice truthful teller, Shaun of grace? weakly we went on to ask now of the gracious one. Vouchsafe to say. You will now, goodness, won't you? Why?-- For his root language, if you ask me whys, Shaun replied, as he blessed himself devotionally like a crawsbomb, making act of oblivion, footinmouther! (what the thickuns else?) which he picksticked into his lettruce invrention. [*] Thor's for yo!
[*] Norse gods [list]
-- The hundredlettered name again, last word of perfect language. But you could come near it, we do suppose, strong Shaun O', we foresupposed. How?-- Peax! Peax! Shaun replied... I might as well be talking to the four waves... No one in his seven senses could as I have before said, only you missed my drift, for it's being incendiary. Every dimmed letter in it is a copy and not a few of the silbils and wholly words I can show you in my Kingdom of Heaven. The lowquacity of him! ...The last word in stolentelling! ...Yes. As he was rising my lather... How's that for Shemese?
-- Still in a way, not to flatter you, we fancy you that you are so strikingly brainy and well letterread in yourshelves as ever were the Shamous Shamonous, Limited, could use worse of yourself, ingenious Shaun, we still so fancied, if only you would take your time so and the trouble of so doing it. Upu now!-- Undoubtedly but that is show, Shaun replied, the muttermelk of his blood donor beginning to work, and while innocent of disseminating the foul emanation, it would be a fall day I could not... and by the power of blurry wards I am loyable to do it... any time ever I liked... with the allergrossest transfusiasm as... it is an openear secret... how I am extremely ingenuous at the clerking even with my badily left... and my trifolium librotto, the authordux Book of Lief, would, if given to daylight, (I hold a most incredible faith about it) far exceed what that bogus bolshy of a shame, my soamheis brother, Gaoy Fecks, is conversant with in audible black and prink.
Outragedy of poetscalds! Acomedy of letters! I have them all, tame, deep and harried, in my mine's I. And one of these fine days, man dear, when the mood is on me... I will be ormuzd moved to take potlood and introvent it Paatryk just like a work of merit, mark my words... that will open your pucktricker's ops for you, broather brooher, only for... I would never for anything take so much trouble of such doing. And why so? Because I am altogether a chap too fly and hairyman for to infradig the like of that ultravirulence. And by all I hold sacred on earth clouds and in heaven I swear to you on my piop and oath by the awe of Shaun (and that's a howl of a name!) that I will commission to the flames any incendiarist... who would endeavour to set ever annyma... moother of mine on fire. Rock me julie but I will soho!
And, with that... big hottempered husky... pugiliser, such as he was, he virtually broke down... getting quite jerry over her, overpowered by himself with the love of the tearsilver that he twined through her hair for, sure, he was the soft... slob of the world with a heart like Montgomery's in his showchest and... loads of feeling in him... Still, grossly unselfish... he dished allarmes away and laughed it off with a wipe at his pudgies and a gulp apologetic... oogling around...
Shaun leans back, looking up at the stars to get his bearings, but loses his balance: [fw]
Mind you, now, that he was in the dumpest of earnest orthough him jawr war hoo hleepy hor halk urthing hurther... he stopped short in looking up up upfrom his tide shackled wrists... scruting foreback into the fargoneahead to feel out what age in years... he might find by the sirious pointstand... and, lusosing the harmonical balance of his ballbearing extremities, by the holy kettle, like a flask of lightning over he careened (O the sons of the fathers!) by the mightyfine weight of his barrel...
A brilliant evocation of a barrel racing down a river (plus he's fourfooted now?):
and rolled buoyantly backwards in less than a twinkling... out of farther earshot with his highly curious mode of slipashod motion, surefoot, sorefoot, slickfoot, slackfoot... and by Killesther's lapes and falls, with corks, staves and treeleaves and more bubbles to his keelrow... in the direction of Mac Auliffe's... down in the valley before he was really uprighted ere in a dip of the downs... he spoorlessly disappaled and vanesshed, like a popo down a papa, from circular circulatio. Ah, mean!...And the stellas were shinings. And the earthnight strewed aromatose. His pibrook creppt mong the donkness. A reek was waft on the luftstream. He was ours, all fragrance. And we were his for a lifetime. O dulcid dreamings languidous! Taboccoo!
It was sharming! But sharmeng!
And the lamp went out as it couldn't glow on burning, yep, the lmp wnt out for it couldn't stay alight.
(Jesus's example quickly forgotten?) [fw]
Well... it is to bedowern that thou art passing hence, mine bruder, able Shaun... ere the morning of light calms our hardest throes... but for all your deeds of goodness you were soo ooft and for ever doing... it is hardly we in the country of the old... can part you for... you were the walking saint, you were... Winner of the gamings, primed at the studience, propredicted from the storybouts, the choice of ages wise...!
Jesus has left the building (with an echo of Patrick's dream of Ireland calling to him to return):
Musha, beminded of us out there in Cockpit... sometime or other anywhen you think the time. Wisha, becoming back to us way home in Biddyhouse one way or either anywhere we miss your smile.Palmwine breadfruit sweetmeat milksoup! ...Our people here in Samoanesia will not be after forgetting you... How you would be thinking in your thoughts how the deepings did it all begin... Sireland calls you... Turn your coat, strong character, and tarry among us down the vale, yougander, only once more! And may the mosse of prosperousness gather you rolling home! ...'Tis well we know you were loth to leave us... right royal post, but, aruah sure, pulse of our slumber, dreambookpage, by the grace of Votre Dame, when the natural morning of your nocturne blankmerges into the national morning of golden sunup... you will shiff across the Moylendsea and round up in your own escapology some canonisator's day or other, sack on back... like the good man you are, with your picture pockets turned knockside out in the rake of the rain for fresh remittances and from that till this in any case, timus tenant, may the tussocks grow quickly under your trampthickets and the daisies trip lightly over your battercops.
Chapter fourteen
offers a sermon by Shaun (now called Jaun, ie 'yellow' in French) for the 28 Floras and Issy.
The structure is mysterious-- Shaun was in the middle of a Q&A with Mamalujo, but fell into the river. Suddenly (without even a chapter break in FDV), he's pausing on his rounds to give a speech to the Floras-- at the end of which he'll fall into the river again (probably echoing two of Jesus's three stumbles along the Stations of the Cross). But then III.3 resumes the Q&A without any reference to the earlier chapters-- so perhaps time is running backwards, too, at some level.
The narrator is probably the donkey again: [fw]
Jaunty Jaun, as I was shortly before that made aware, next halted to fetch a breath... and to loosen... both of his bruised brogues... as truly he merited to do. He was... amply altered for the brighter, though still the graven image of his squarer self... perspiring but happy notwithstanding his foot was still asleep on him, the way he thought... he had a bullock's hoof in his buskin...
So he's part ox... and part bottle?
...bigmouthed poesther, propped up, restant, against a butterblond warden of the peace, one comestabulish Sigurdsen... who, buried upright... kozydozy, had tumbled slumbersomely on sleep at night duty behind the curing station, equilebriated amid the embracings of a monopolized bottle.Now, there were as many as twentynine hedge daughters out of... Saint Berched's national nightschool... learning their... lesson of life, under its tree... beseated, as they were, upon the brinkspondy... while they paddled away, keeping time magnetically with their eight and fifty pedalettes... all barely in their typtap teens, describing a charming dactylogram of nocturnes though repelled by the snores of the log who looked stuck to the sod as ever and oft, when liquefied...
brinkspondy = transponder, part of an 'etext motif' of typewriters, telegraphs, Morse code by radio
The Floras are dabbling their feet in a pond (or the river?), with Issy among them... and the repellant log (Sigurdsen) murmurs in his sleep in Danish (McH, passage trimmed): this is the best, my beautiful bottle.
We get a very long parenthesis, with Jaun now a kindly priest: [fw]
Jaun (after he had... doffed a hat... and bowed to all the others in that chorus of praise of goodwill girls... all rushing sowarmly for the post... to read his kisshands, kittering all about, rushing and making a tremendous girlsfuss over him... mussing his frizzy hair and the golliwog curls of him, all, but that one; Finfria's fairest, done in loveletters like a trayful of cloudberry tartlets... and smilingly smelling... the nice perfumios that came cunvy peeling off him (nice!) which was angelic simply, savouring of wild thyme and parsley jumbled with breadcrumbs (O nice!) and feeling his full fat pouch for him so tactily and jingaling his jellybags for, though he looked a young chapplie of sixtine, they could frole by his manhood that he was just the killingest ladykiller all by kindness... asking kindlily... after their howareyous... (and where's Agatha's lamb? and how are Bernadetta's columbillas...?) he next went on... to drop a few stray remarks anent their personal appearances... asking coy one... had she read Irish legginds and gently reproving one that the ham of her hom could be seen below her hem... for Jaun, by the way, was by the way of becoming (I think, I hope he was) the most purely human being that ever was called man, loving all up and down the whole creation...)
McH: Stephen Foster lyric!
...Jaun... made out through his eroscope the apparition of his fond sister Izzy for he knowed his love by her waves of splabashing and she showed him proof by her way of blabushing nor could he forget her so tarnelly easy as all that since he was brotherbesides her benedict godfather and heaven knows he thought the world and his life of her sweet heart could buy, (brao!) poor, good, true, Jaun!
(this may echo Stephen Dedalus's vision of the birdgirl Lucy in Portrait IV.) [qv]
his speech is framed as a farewell (Christ going off to Heaven again): [fw]
-- Sister dearest, Jaun delivered himself with express cordiality... as he began to take leave of his scolastica... we honestly believe you sorely will miss us the moment we exit yet we feel as a martyr... it is about time... we would shove off to stray on our long last journey and not be the load on ye.
Issy was an older sister who helped make him what he is (but how can he also be her godfather?):
This is the gross proceeds of your teachings in which we were raised, you, sis, that used to write to us the exceeding nice letters for presentation and would be telling us... thy oldworld tales of homespinning and derringdo...
(this may be based on Harriet Weaver's childhood.)
our pet pupil of the whole rhythmetic class and the mainsay of our erigenal house, the time we younkers twain were fairly tossing ourselves... in bed, having been laid up with Castor's oil on the Parrish's syrup (the night we will remember) for to share our hard suite of affections with thee...
I was asking his advice... from Father Mike, P.P... and I am giving youth now again... those verbs he said to me... Comeallyedimseldamsels, siddle down and lissle all! Follow me close! Keep me in view! ... Now. During our brief apsence... adhere to as many as probable of the ten commandments touching purgations and indulgences and in the long run they will prove for your better guidance along your path of right of way.
This chapter will consist mostly of Jaun's ethical precepts. But first he curses Shem's failure to assist him:
Where the lisieuse are we and what's the first sing to be sung? ...I'll sack that sick server the minute I bless him. That's the mokst I can do for his grapce... I've a hopesome's choice if I chouse of all the sinkts in the colander... Here she's, is a bell, that's wares in heaven, virginwhite... Words taken in triumph, my sweet assistance, from the sufferant pen of our jocosus inkerman militant of the reed behind the ear.
Jaun's enumeration of taboos grows increasingly lascivious: [fw]
Never miss your lostsomewhere mass... Never let a hog of the howth trample underfoot your linen of Killiney... Make a strong point of never kicking up your rumpus over the scroll end of sofas in the Dar Bey Coll Cafeteria by tootling risky apropos songs at commercial travellers' smokers for their Columbian nights entertainments the like of White limbs they never stop teasing...First thou shalt not smile. Twice thou shalt not love. Lust, thou shalt not commix idolatry... Never slip the silver key through your gate of golden age... Especially beware please of being at a party to any demoralizing home life. That saps a chap...
Beware the wiles of Shem: [fw]
But now reappears Autist Algy... oleas Mr Smuth... taking you to the playguehouse to see the Smirching of Venus and asking with whispered offers in a very low bearded voice, with a nice little tiny manner and in a very nice little tony way, won't you be an artist's moral and pose in your nudies as a local esthetic before voluble old masters, introducing you... to hogarths like Bottisilly and Titteretto... And the phyllisophies of Bussup Bulkeley... Put off the old man at the very font... Stick wicks in your earshells when you hear the prompter's voice... Secret satieties and onanymous letters make the great unwatched as bad as their betters. Don't on any account acquire a paunchon for that alltoocommon fagbutt habit of frequenting and chumming together with the braces of couples in Mr Tunnelly's hallways... with the end to commit acts of interstipital indecency... It's the thin end; wedge your steps!
Jaun's distaste for the human body: [fw]
...And is that any place to be smuggling his madam's apples up? Deceitful jade. Gee wedge! Begor, I like the way they're half cooked... Love through the usual channels, cisternbrothelly, when properly disinfected and taken neat in the generable way upon retiring to roost in the company of a husband-in-law or other respectable relative of an apposite sex, not love that leads by the nose as I foresmellt but canalised love, you understand, does a felon good... By the stench of her fizzle and the glib of her gab know the drunken draggletail Dublin drab. You'll pay for each bally sorraday night every billing sumday morning...Mades of ashens when you flirt
spoil the lad but spare his shirt!Lay your lilylike long his shoulder but buck back if he buts bolder and just hep your homely hop... Nor must you omit to screw the lid firmly on that jazz jiggery and kick starts... Deal with Nature the great greengrocer and pay regularly the monthlies. Your Punt's Perfume's only in the hatpinny shop beside the reek of the rawny. It's more important than air -- I mean than eats -- air (Oop, I never open momouth but I pack mefood in it) and promotes that natural emotion. Stamp out bad eggs...
Likewise if I were in your envelope shirt I'd keep my weathereye well cocked open for your furnished lodgers paying for their feed on tally with company and piano tunes... The too friendly friend sort... who mix himself so at home mid the musik and spanks the ivory that lovely for this your Mistro Melosiosus MacShine MacShane may soon prove your undoing and bane... should you, whilst Jaun is from home, get used to basking in his loverslowlap, inordinately clad, moustacheteasing, when closehended together behind locked doors, kissing steadily...
Pianist Jay McShann's jazz orchestra was touring before 1941, but was probably too late to be relevant here [bio]. Similarly, pianist Thelonious Monk didn't start recording until mid-1941 [discog]. [fw]
...with the calfloving selfseeker, under the influence of woman, inching up to you, disarranging your modesties and fumblingwith his forte paws in your bodice... making much of you, bilgetalking... about your glad neck and the round globe and the white milk and the red raspberries (O horrifier!) and prying down furthermore to chance his lucky arm with his pregnant questions up to our past lives. What has that caught to sing with him?
(bodice: this reminds me a bit of Proust's Swann rearranging Odette's cattleyas [cite].)
...Anything but that, for the fear and love of gold! Once and for all, I'll have no college swankies... trespassing on your danger zone... If ever I catch you at it, mind, it's you that will cocottch it! I'll tackle you to feel if you have a few devils in you. Holy gun, I'll give it to you, hot, high and heavy before you can say sedro!
The plot recapitulated, as The House That Jack Built? [fw]
Or may the maledictions of Lousyfear fall like nettlerash
on the white friar's father that converted from moonshine
the fostermother of the first nancyfree that ran off after
the trumpadour that mangled Moore's melodies and so
upturned the tubshead of the stardaft journalwriter
to inspire the prime finisher
to fellhim the firtree
out of which Cooper Funnymore planed the flat of the beerbarrel
on which my grandydad's lustiest sat his seat of unwisdom
with my tante's petted sister for the cause of his joy! Amene.
Jaun rationalises the lusts that are gripping him:
Poof! There's puff for ye, begor, and planxty of it... Glor galore and glory be! ...Theo Dunnohoo's warning from Daddy O'Dowd. Whoo? What I'm wondering to myselfwhose for there's a strong tendency, to put it mildly, by making me the medium. I feel spirts of itchery outching out from all over me and only for the sludgehummer's force in my hand to hold them the darkens alone knows what'll who'll be saying of next.However. Now, before my upperotic rogister, something nice. Now? Dear Sister, in perfect leave again I say take a brokerly advice and keep it to yourself that we, Jaun, first of our name here now make all receptacles of, free of price. Easy, my dear, if they tingle you either say nothing or nod...
Jaun's recommended reading:
I'd burn the books that grieve you... Perousse instate your Weekly Standerd, our verile organ that is ethelred by all pressdom... Skim over Through Hell with the Papes (mostly boys) by the divine comic Denti Alligator... Sifted science will do your arts good... Remember, maid, thou dust art powder but Cinderella thou must return...
How dare ye be laughing out of your mouthshine at the lack of that? Keep cool your fresh chastity which is far better far. Sooner than part with that vestalite emerald of the first importance, descended to me by far from our family, which you treasure up so closely where extremes meet... rather let the whole ekumene universe belong to merry Hal... What's overdressed if underclothed?
FDV: Rather than part with that jewel of yours let the entire universe perish a 1000 times in a pitfall first
...Guard that gem, Sissy, rich and rare, ses he. In this cold old worold who'll feel it? Hum! The jewel you're all so cracked about there's flitty few of them gets it for there's nothing now but the sable stoles and a runabout to match it. Sing him a ring. Touch me low. And I'll lech ye so, my soandso. Show and show. Show on show. She. Shoe. Shone.
Jaun channels his lust into images of violence toward Shem and Issy:
Divulge, sjuddenly jouted out hardworking Jaun... braying aloud like Brahaam's ass, and... clenching his manlies... and gradually quite warming to her... divorce into me and say the curname... of any lapwhelp or sleevemongrel who talks to you upon the road... and volunteers to trifle with your roundlings... without taking out his proper password from the eligible ministriss for affairs... and I don't care a tongser's tammany hang who the mucky is... but... sure as home we come... rest insured that... as soon as we do possibly it will be a poor lookout for that insister. He's a markt man from that hour.
And why do we say that, you may query me? ...Think and think and think, I urge on you. Muffed! The wrong porridge. You are an ignoratis! Because then probably we'll dumb well soon show him what the Shaun way is like how we'll go a long way towards breaking his outsider's face for him for making up to you... chancetrying my ward's head into sanctuary before feeling with his two dimensions for your nuptial dito...
McH: dito = finger (Italian)
Cf Tristan's three dimensions? "with sinister dexterity he alternately rightandlefthandled fore and aft, on and offside her palpable rugby and association bulbs" [qv, 1923]
Open the door softly, somebody wants you, dear! You'll hear him calling you, bump, like a blizz, in the muezzin of the turkest night... I have his quoram of images all on my retinue... Moreover after that, bad manners to me, if I don't think strongly about giving the brotherkeeper into custody to the first police bubby cunstabless... I might chance to follopon...
If Issy should get pregnant he'll beat her: [fw]
And lest there be no misconception, Miss Forstowelsy, over who to fasten the plightforlifer on... when the nice little smellar squalls in his crydle... you better keep in the gunbarrel straight... or... I'll be all over you myselx horizontally... for knocking me with my name and yourself and your babybag down at such a greet sacrifice... or I'll smack your fruitflavoured jujube lips well for you... if you don't keep a civil tongue in your pigeonhouse. The pleasures of love lasts but a fleeting but the pledges of life outlusts a lieftime...I overstand you, you understand... You'll ging naemaer wi'Wolf the Ganger. Cutting chapel, were you? and had dates with slickers in particular hotels, had we? ...I'll homeseek you, Luperca... and in striped conference here's how... If you twos goes to walk upon the railway, Gard, and I'll goad to beat behind the bush! ...I'll tear up your limpshades and lock all your trotters in the closet, I will, and cut your silkskin into garters...
There's a lot of lecit pleasure coming bangslanging your way, Miss Pinpernelly satin. For your own good, you understand, for the man who lifts his pud to a woman is saving the way for kindness... For I'll just draw my prancer and give you one splitpuck in the crupper, you understand, that will bring the poppy blush of shame to your peony hindmost till you yelp papapardon... if you think I'm so tan cupid as all that. Lights out now (bouf!), tight and sleep on it. And that's how I'll bottle your greedypuss beautibus for ye, me bullin heifer, for 'tis I that have the peer of arrams that carry a wallop. Between them...
Jaun pictures their marriage when he returns, and their exemplary roles in the community [cf the Floras' pov in II.1]:
How... times out of oft, my future, shall we think with deepest of love and recollection... of thee but me far away on the pillow... a big corner fill you do in this unadulterated seat of our affections... If I've proved to your sallysfashion how I'm a man of Armor let me so, let me sue, let me see your isabellis. How I shall, should I survive... positively cover the two pure chicks of your comely plumpchake with zuccherikissings... when, upon the mingling of our meeting waters, wish to wisher, like massive mountains to part no more, you will there and then, in those happy moments of ouryour soft accord, rainkiss on me back... when I come... wildflier's fox into my own greengeese again... on my safe return to ignorance and bliss... with my ropes of pearls for gamey girls the way ye'll hardly. Knowme.
Slim ye, come slum with me... completing our Abelite union by the adoptation of fosterlings... and between us in our shared slaves... we'll pull off our working programme... We'll circumcivicise all Dublin country... and generally ginger things up...
FDV: We will adopt all the poorest children possible.
The role of schoolteacher reasserts itself: [fw]
Write me your essayes, my vocational scholars... on mortinatality in the life of jewries... I'd write it all by mownself if I only had here of my jolly young watermen... Explain why there is such a number of orders of religion in Asea! Why such an order number in preference to any other number? Why any number in any order at all...?
Let this cup pass from me: [fw]
Sis dearest, Jaun added... as he turned his dorse to her to pay court to it... Pursonally, Grog help me, I am in no violent hurry... I'd turn back as lief as not if I could only spoonfind the nippy girl of my heart's appointment... to guide me by gastronomy under her safe conduct. That's more in my line. I'd ask no kinder of fates than to stay where I am, with my tinny of brownie's tea... with Peter Roche, that frind of my boozum, leaning on my cubits, at this passing moment.. till well on into the beausome of the exhaling night... but for that owledclock (fast cease to it!) has just gone twoohoo the hour...
I could sit on safe side... for hoopoe's hours... as peacefed as a philopotamus... What wouldn't I poach... for a dace feast of grannom with the finny ones, those happy greppies... or, when I'd like own company best... to be reclined by the lasher on my logansome... with the jealosomines wilting away to their heart's deelight and the king of saptimber letting down his humely odours for my consternation...
...while... all Adelaide's naughtingerls juckjucking benighth me, I'd ... pipe musicall airs on numberous fairyaciodes... Isn't that lovely though? I give to me alone I trouble give! ...I've a voicical lilt too true... Yet ware the wold, you! What's good for the gorse is a goad for the garden... Dash the gaudy deathcup! Bryony O'Bryony, thy name is Belladama! But enough of greenwood's gossip. Birdsnests is birdsnests...
The scene from A Portrait is echoed, when Stephen 'invests' his school prize money:
Doublefirst I'll head foremost through all my examhoops. And what sensitive coin I'd be possessed of at Latouche's, begor, I'd sink it sumtotal... in vestments of subdominal poteen... and I bait you... I'm the gogetter that'd make it pay like cash registers as sure as there's a pot on a pole... And before you knew where you weren't, I stake my ignitial's divy, cash-and-cash-can-again, I'd be staggering humanity and loyally rolling you over, my sowwhite sponse, in my tons of red clover, nighty nigh to the metronome... Holy petter and pal, I'd spoil you altogether, my sumptuous Sheila! ...There'd be no standing me, I tell you.
JAJ: "This passage goes to the lilt of an Irish song, Jaun is swinging the girl higher and higher in his arms"
He'd stay chaste until he could offer her luxury: [fw]
And... I'd never say let fly till we shot that blissup and swumped each other, manawife, into our sever nevers where I'd plant you, my Gizzygay, on the electric ottoman in the lap of lechery, simpringly stitchless with admiracion, among the most uxuriously furnished compartments, with sybarate chambers, just as I'd run my shoestring into near a million or so...
JAJ: "Jaun thinks how cold it is out in the night under the stars... His cold is getting worse and thus he snuffles"
Only for one thing that, howover famiksed I would become, I'd he awful anxious, you understand, about shoepisser pluvious...
McH: Jupiter Pluvius, god of rain
and that's the truth now... for truly sure, for another thing, I never could tell the leest falsehood that would truthfully give sotisfiction. I'm not talking apple sauce eithou. Or up in my hat. I earnst. Schue!
JAJ: so 'tis fiction
JAJ: "he foreshortens his mendacious 'I am in earnest'"
JAJ: schue = a sneeze
Sissibis dearest... 'tis tramsported with grief I am this night sublime... to go forth, frank and hoppy... from our nostorey house, upon this benedictine errand but it is historically the most glorious mission, secret or profund, through all the annals of our... efferfreshpainted livy... The Vico road goes round and round to meet where terms begin. Still... unappalled by the recoursers we feel all serene, never you fret, as regards our dutyful cask.
His destiny is to meet the Lord:
Full of my breadth from pride I am... for 'tis a grand thing (superb!) to be going to meet a king, not an everynight king... but the overking of Hither-on-Thither Erin himself, pardee, I'm saying... We only wish everyone was as sure of anything in this watery world as we are of everything in the... fellow that's bound to follow... Tell mother that. And tell her tell her old one. 'Twill amuse her...
FDV: I wish everyone was as sure of anything in the real world as I am of everything in the other. Tell mother that. Now cheer up all. We'll soon be dead and happy.
Don't cry for me, Biddy Doran: [fw]
So now, I'll ask of you, let ye create no scenes in my poor primmafore's wake. I don't want yous to be billowfighting you biddy moriarty duels, gobble gabble, over me... when voiceyversy it's my gala bene fit, robbing leaves out of my taletold book... Once upon a drunk and a fairly good drunk it was and the rest of your blatherumskite! Just a plain shays by the fire for absenter Sh the Po... while I stray and let ye not be getting grief out of it... on my poor headsake, even should we forfeit our life. Lo, improving ages wait ye! ...So cut out the lonesome stuff! Drink it up, ladies, please, as smart as you can lower it! ...So for e'er fare thee welt! Parting's fun... Goodbye, swisstart, goodbye! ...I sign myself. With much leg. Inflexibly yours. Ann Posht the Shorn. To be continued. Huck!
Something of a sidesplitting nature must have occurred to... Jaunathaun for a grand big blossy hearty stenorious laugh... hopped out of his wooly's throat... when suddenly (how like a woman!), swifter as mercury he wheels right round... with his gimlets blazing rather sternish (how black like thunder!), to see what's loose. So they stood still and wondered. Till first he sighed (and how ill soufered!) and they nearly cried (the salt of the earth!) after which he pondered and finally he replied:
(A rehearsed dramatic effect, no doubt.)
We'll soon be dead and happy:
-- There is some thing more. A word apparting and shall the heart's tone be silent... All I can tell you is this, my sorellies. It's prayers in layers all the thumping time, begor... in the suburrs of the heavenly gardens, once we shall have passed... to our snug eternal retribution's reward... No petty family squabbles Up There... no cupahurling nor apuckalips... nor no nothing... Toborrow and toburrow and tobarrow! That's our crass, hairy and evergrim life, till one finel howdiedow Bouncer Naster raps on the bell with a bone and his stinkers stank behind him with the sceptre and the hourglass... what a humpty daum earth looks our miseryme heretoday as compared beside the Hereweareagain Gaieties of the Afterpiece... Putting Allspace in a Notshall.
He's been chowing down this whole time? [fw]
Well... home cooking everytime... I've eaten a griddle... Give us another cup of your scald. Santos Mozos! That was a damn good cup of scald! You could trot a mouse on it. I ingoyed your pick of hissing hot luncheon fine, I did... Tenderest bully ever I ate...Soupmeagre! Couldn't look at it! But if you'll buy me yon coat of the vairy furry best, I'll try and pullll it awn mee. It's in fairly good order and no doubt 'twill sarve to turn...
(Has this turncoat motif been discussed anywhere?)
I want to get outside monasticism. Mass and meat mar no man's journey... All the vitalmines is beginning to sozzle in chewn and the hormonies to clingleclangle... and very presently from now posthaste it's off yourll see me ryuoll on my usual rounds again...
The journey Jaun is avoiding involves collecting a bad debt:
...and my next item's platform it's how I'll try and collect my extraprofessional postages owing to me by Thaddeus Kellyesque Squire, dr, for nondesirable printed matter... But I know what I'll do... I'll knock it out of him! I'll stump it out of him! ...By the horn of twenty of both of the two Saint Collopys, blackmail him I will in arrears or my name's not penitent Ferdinand! And it's daily and hourly I'll nurse him till he pays me fine fee. Ameal.
Well, here's looking at ye! If I never leave you biddies till my stave is a bar I'd be tempted rigidly to become a passionate father. Me hunger's weighed... Me anger's suaged! ...If any lightfoot Clod Dewvale was to hold me up... I'd let him have my best pair of galloper's heels in the creamsourer. He will have better manners, I'm dished if he won't! Console yourself, drawhure deelish! There's a refond of eggsized coming to you out of me so mind you do me duty on me! ...And you'll miss me more as the narrowing weeks wing by...
Issy speaks up, offering a parting letter-gift (her maidenhead?), like Veronica of the Stations of the Cross [qv]:
-- Meesh, meesh, yes, pet. We were too happy. I knew something would happen. I understand but listen...Tizzy intercepted, flushing but flashing from her dove and dart eyes as she tactilifully grapbed her male corrispondee to flusther sweet nunsongs in his quickturned ear, I know, benjamin brother, but listen, I want... to whisper my whish...
Of course, engine dear, I'm ashamed for my life... over this lost moment's gift of memento nosepaper which I'm sorry, my precious, is allathome I with grief can call my own but all the same, listen, Jaunick, accept this witwee's mite, though a jennyteeny witween piece torn in one place from my hands in second place of a linenhall valentino with my fondest and much left to tutor. X.X.X.X.
It was heavily bulledicted for young Fr Ml, my pettest parriage priest, and you know who between us by your friend the pope, forty ways in forty nights, that's the beauty of it... Too perfectly priceless for words. And, listen, now do enhance me, oblige my fiancy and bear it with you morn till life's e'en and, of course, when never you make usage of it, listen, please kindly think galways again or again, never forget, of one absendee not sester Maggy. Ahim. That's the stupidest little cough. Only be sure you don't catch your cold and pass it on to us. And... don't be all the night. And this, Joke, a sprig of blue speedwell... so you'll mind your veronique. Of course, Jer, I know you know who sends it, presents that please... but it doesn't do her justice, apart from her cattiness...Of course, please too write, won't you, and leave your little bag of doubts, inquisitive, behind you unto your utterly thine... what exquisite buttons, gorgiose, in case I don't hope to soon hear from you... I will tie a knot in my stringamejip to letter you with my silky paper, as I am given now to understand it will be worth my price in money one day so don't trouble to ans unless sentby special as I am getting his pay and wants for nothing so I can live simply and solely for my wonderful kinkless and its loops of loveliness...
So distant you're always... I will pack my comb and mirror to praxis oval owes and artless awes and it will follow you pulpicly as far as come back under all my eyes... with nurse Madge, my linkingclass girl, she's a fright, poor old dutch, in her sleeptalking when I paint the measles on her and mudstuskers to make her a man. We. We. Issy done that, I confesh! But you'll love her for her hessians and sickly black stockies... Simply killing, how she tidies her hair! I call her Sosy because she's sosiety for me and she says sossy while I say sassy... she's but nice for enticing my friends and she loves your style... and she would kiss my white arms for me so gratefully but apart from that she's terribly nice really, my sister... and I'll be strictly forbidden always and true in my own way and private where I will long long to betrue you along with one who will so betrue you that not once while I betreu him not once well he be betray himself.
Issy's confessing an infidelity to Jaun? Or is she just telling her twin about Jaun? [fw]
Can't you understand? O bother, I must tell the trouth! My latest lad's loveliletter I am sore I done something with. I like him lots coss he never cusses. Pity bonhom. Pip pet. I shouldn't say he's pretty but I'm cocksure he's shy. Why I love taking him out when I unletched his cordon gate. Ope, Jack, and atem! ...He fell for my lips, for my lisp, for my lewd speaker. I felt for his strength, his manhood, his do you mind? There can be no candle to hold to it, can there? And, of course, dear professor, I understand. You can trust me that though I change thy name though not the letter never while I become engaged with my first horsepower, masterthief of hearts, I will give your lovely face of mine away, my boyish bob, not for tons of donkeys, to my second mate... You may be certain of that, fluff, now I know how to tackle...
So don't keep me now... for the love of my fragrant saint, you villain, peppering with fear, my goodless graceless, or I'll first murder you but, hvisper, meet me after by next appointment near you know Ships just there beside the Ship... to show my disrespects now... I must really so late. Sweet pig, he'll be furious! How he stalks to simself louther and lover, immutating aperybally. My prince of the courts who'll beat me to love! ...We say. Trust us. Our game. (For fun!) The Dargle shall run dry the sooner I you deny. Whoevery heard of such a think?...I will write down all your names in my gold pen and ink. Everyday, precious, while m'm'ry's leaves are falling deeply... I will dream telepath posts dulcets on this isinglass stream (but don't tell him or I'll be the mort of him!)... and 'twill carry on my hearz'waves my still waters reflections in words... to thee, Jack, ahoy, beyond the boysforus. Splesh of hiss splash springs your salmon... Listen, here I'll wait on thee... like a born gentleman till you'll resemble me, all the time you're awhile way, I swear to you, I will, by Candlemas!
...And never mind me laughing at what's atever! I was in the nerves but it's my last day... but last at night, look, after my golden violents wetting... I just want to see will he or are all Michales like that, I'll strip straight after devotions before his fondstare... and poke stiff under my isonbound with my soiedisante-chineknees cheeckchubby chambermate for the night's foreign males and your name of Shane will come forth between my shamefaced whesen with other lipth I nakest open my thight when just woken by his toccatootletoo my first morning. So now, to thalk thildish, thome, theated with Mag at the oilthan we are doing to thay one little player before doing to deed. An a tiss to the tassie for lu and for tu! Coach me how to tumble, Jaime, and listen, with supreme regards, Juan, in haste, warn me which to ah ah ah ah....-- MEN! Juan responded fullchantedly to her sororal sonority... Esterelles, be not on your weeping what though Shaunathaun is in his fail! To stir up love's young fizz I tilt with this bridle's cup champagne, dimming douce from her peepair of hideseeks, tightsqueezed on my snowybrusted and while my pearlies in their sparkling wisdom are nippling her bubblets I swear (and let you swear!) by the bumper round of my poor old snaggletooth's solidbowel I ne'er will prove I'm untrue to your liking (theare!) so long as my hole looks. Down.
Jaun reaches an erotic climax (?) but immediately introduces an alter ego he can hide his feelings behind (?): [fw]
So gullaby, me poor Isley! But I'm not for forgetting me innerman monophone for I'm leaving my darling proxy behind for your consolering, lost Dave the Dancekerl, a squamous runaway and a dear old man pal of mine too. He will arrive incessantly in the fraction of a crust, who, could he quit doubling and stop tippling, he would be the unicorn of his kind... Be sure and link him... as often as you learn provided there's nothing between you but a plain deal table...But soft! Can't be? Do mailstanes mumble? ...Now! The froubadour! I fremble! ...Why, bless me swits, here he its, darling Dave... coming home to mourn mountains from his old continence and not on one foot either or on two feet aether but on quinquisecular cycles after his French evolution... He's the sneaking likeness of us, faith, me altar's ego in miniature... for ever cracking quips on himself, that merry...
(James returns from the continent, Patrick heeds the call of the Irish, Tristram rearrives.) [fw]
He has novel ideas I know and he's a jarry queer fish betimes, I grant you, and cantanberous, the poisoner of his word, but lice and all... I'm enormously full of that foreigner, I'll say I am! Got by the one goat, suckled by the same nanna, one twitch, one nature makes us oldworld kin... To camiflag he turned his shirt... He is looking aged with his pebbled eyes, and johnnythin too... he's been slanderising himself, but I pass no remark. Hope he hasn't the cholera... Dave knows I have the highest of respect of annyone in my oweand smooth way... And we're the closest of chems... It's a pity he can't see it for I'm terribly nice about him...
Shem displays a monk's tonsure (shaved crown): [fw]
Ho, be the holy snakes, someone has shaved his rough diamond skull for him as clean as Nuntius' piedish! ...He's the spatton spit, so he is, scaly skin and all, with his blackguarded eye and the goatsbeard... Ah, he's very thoughtful and sympatrico that way is Brother Intelligentius, when he's not absintheminded, with his Paris addresse! He is, really...
Jaun/Shaun greets Shem, and presses Issy lewdly upon him:
Give us your dyed dextremity here, frother, the Claddagh clasp! ...And tid you meet with Peadhar the Grab at all? ...Was Mona, my own love, no bigger than she should be, making up to you in her bestbehaved manor when you made your breastlaw and made her, tell me? ...I'm better pleased than ten guidneys! You rejoice me! Faith, I'm proud of you, french davit!
You've surpassed yourself! Be introduced to yes! This is me aunt Julia Bride, your honour... You don't reckoneyes him? He's Jackot the Horner who boxed in his corner, jilting no fewer than three female bribes. That's his penals. Shervorum!You haven't seen her since she stepped into her drawoffs. Come on, spinister, do your stuff! Don't be shoy, husbandmanvir! Weih, what's on you, wip? ...She has plenty of woom in the smallclothes for the bothsforus, nephews push! ...Enjombyourselves thurily! Would you wait biss she buds till you bite on her? Embrace her bashfully by almeans at my frank incensive... Have a hug! ...It's good for her bilabials, you understand... Be ownkind. Be kithkinish. Be bloodysibby. Be irish. Be inish...
Wrestling imagery: [fw]
Why, they might be Babau and Momie! Yipyip! ...Give us a pin for her and we'll call it a tossup. Can you reverse positions? ...Put me down for all ringside seats. I can feel you being corrupted. Recoil. I can see you sprouting scruples. Get back... Shuck her! Let him! What he's good for. Shuck her more! Let him again! All she wants!
Jaun/Shaun the emcee asks Shem the guest for a song:
Could you wheedle a staveling encore out of your imitationer's jubalharp, hey, Mr Jinglejoys? ...Uck! He's so sedulous to singe always if prumpted, the mirthprovoker! ...Sweet fellow ovocal, he stones out of stune. But he could be near a colonel with a voice like that... Ruffle her! ...Did you note that worrid expressionism on his megalogue? A full octavium below me!
...But it's all deafman's duff to me, begob. Sam knows miles bettern me how to work the miracle. And I see by his diarrhio he's dropping the stammer out of his silenced bladder since I bonded him off... to try and grow a muff and canonise his dead feet... by thinking himself into the fourth dimension and place the ocean between his and ours... after he was capped out of beurlads scoel for the sin against the past participle... and being as homely gauche as swift B.A.A...Illstarred punster... He'll prisckly soon hand tune -your Erin's ear for you... How used you learn me, brather soboostius, in my augustan days? With cesarella looking on. In the beginning was the gest he jousstly says, for the end is with woman, flesh-without-word, while the man to be is in a worse case after than before since she on the supine satisfies the verg to him! Toughtough, tootoological... That'll hint him how to click the trigger. Show you shall and won't he will! His hearing is indoubting just as my seeing is onbelieving... You'll feel what I mean. Fond namer, let me never see thee blame a kiss for shame a knee!
Echo, read ending...!-- Well, my positively last at any stage! ...'tis time to be up and ambling... This shack's not big enough for me now... I'm going. I know I am. I could bet I am... I'll borrow a path to lend me wings, quickquack, and... travel the void world over... Farewell awhile to her and thee! The brine's my bride to be... Here's me take off. Now's nunc or nimmer, siskinder! Here goes the enemy! ...Fik yew! I'm through. Won. Toe. Adry. You watch my smoke.
Stephen Hero: "It's absurd. It's Barnum. He comes into the world God knows how, walks on the water, gets out of his grave and goes up off the Hill of Howth. What drivel is this?"
After poor Jaun the Boast's last fireless words... of his soapbox speech... twentyaid add one with a flirt of wings were pouring to his bysistance... prepared to cheer him should he leap or to curse him should he fall, but... repulsing all attempts at first hands on... our greatly misunderstood one we perceived to give himself some sort of a hermetic prod or kick to sit up and take notice, which acted like magic, while the phalanx of daughters of February Filldyke... voiced approval in their customary manner by dropping kneedeep in tears over their concelebrated meednight sunflower... and splattering together joyously the plaps of their tappyhands as, with a cry of genuine distress, so prettly prattly pollylogue, they viewed him, the just one, their darling, away.
JAJ: Jaun "departs like Osiris the body of the young god being pelted and incensed. He is seen already as a Yesterday..."
A dream of favours, a favourable dream. They know how they believe that they believe that they know. Wherefore they wail...Pipetto, Pipetta has misery unnoticed!
But the strangest thing happened. Backscuttling for the hop off with the odds altogether in favour of his tumbling into the river, Jaun just then I saw to collect from the gentlest weaner among the weiners... the familiar yellow label into which he let fall a drop, smothered a curse, choked a guffaw, spat expectoratiously and blew his own trumpet. And next thing was he gummalicked the stickyback side and stamped the oval badge of belief to his agnelows brow with a genuine dash of irrepressible piety that readily turned his ladylike typmanzelles capsy curvy (the holy scamp!), with half a glance of Irish frisky... from under the shag of his parallel brows.
It was then he made as if be but waved instead a handacross the sea as notice to quit while the pacifettes made their armpacts widdershins... but in selfrighting the balance of his corporeity to reexchange widerembrace with the pillarbosom of the Dizzier he loved prettier... their star and gartergazer at the summit of his climax, he toppled a lipple on to the off and, making a brandnew start for himself to run down his easting... his bungaloid borsaline with the hedgygreen bound blew off in a loveblast... and Jawjon Redhead, bucketing after... kingscouriered round... by the bridge... and then... let off like a wind hound loose... with a posse of tossing hankerwaves to his windward like seraph's summonses on the air and a tempest of good things in packetshape teeming from all accounts into the funnel of his fanmail shrimpnet, along the highroad of the nation, Traitor's Track, following which fond floral fray he was quickly lost to sight... while Sickerson, that borne of bjoerne, la garde auxiliaire she murmured...: Where maggot Harvey kneeled till bags? Ate Andrew coos hogdam farvel!
McH: Danish for 'How much have we held back? To change course and so goodbye'
(Holding back may imply Shaun's chastity.)
...May your bawny hair grow rarer and fairer, our own only wideheaded boy! Rest your voice! Feed your mind! ...Good by nature and natural by design, had you but been spared to us, Hauneen lad, but sure where's the use my talking quicker when I know you'll hear me all astray?My long farewell I send to you, fair dream of sport and game and always something new. Gone is Haun! ...'Tis well you'll be looked after from last~to first as yon beam of light we follow receding on your photophoric pilgrimage to your antipodes in the past, you who so often consigned your... tidings of great joy into our nevertoolatetolove box... Thy now paling light lucerne we ne'er may see again.
But could it speak how nicely would it splutter to the four cantons praises be to thee, our pattern sent! For you had -- may I, in our, your and their names, dare to say it? -- the nucleus of a glow of a zeal of soul of service such as rarely, if ever, have I met with single men. Numerous are those who, nay, there are a dozen of folks still unclaimed by the death angel in this country of ours today... who... will fervently pray to the spirit above that they may never depart this earth of theirs till... their Janyouare Fibyouare... comes marching ahome... Life, it is true, will be a blank without you...
But, boy, you did your strong nine furlong mile in slick and slapstick record time and a farfetched deed it was in troth, champion docile, with your high bouncing gait of going and your feat of passage will be contested with you and through you, for centuries to come... Eftsoon so too will our own sphoenix spark spirt his spyre and sunward stride the rampante flambe. Ay, already the sombrer opacities of the gloom are sphanished! Brave footsore Haun! Work your progress! Hold to! Now! Win out, ye divil ye! The silent cock shall crow at last. The west shall shake the east awake. Walk while ye have the night for morn, lightbreakfastbringer, morroweth whereon every past shall full fost sleep. Amain.
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