Episode 011: Running Away (p. 48:1-53:6, start of Ch03)

December 12, 2024 Adam Seelig

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE
Episode 011 RUNNING AWAY

PAGE 48:1-53:6 | 2024-12-12

PODCAST AUDIO

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

[Music: Richard Harte sings “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly” from Finnegans Wake]
Have you heard of one Humpty Dumpty
How he fell with a roll and a rumble
And curled up like Lord Olofa Crumple
By the butt of the Magazine Wall
[Music fades out]

Adam Seelig: Welcome to James Joyce’s divine and delirious comedy, Finnegans Wake. In this episode, number 11, we’ll hear Irish-Canadian actor — and my good friend and colleague — Richard Harte performing pages 48 to 53, to begin Chapter 3 of Joyce’s last novel. I’m Adam Seelig, the director of the reading you’ll soon hear.

I’m sharing the good news that One Little Goat Theatre Company recently released our film of “Finnegans Wake Chapter 1” online this fall. After several festival screenings last year, it’s now out for all to watch. You can find it on YouTube or through our website, and I’ll link to it in the podcast transcript, which is also on our website, www.OneLittleGoat.org. For the listeners who’ve enjoyed Richard reading Chapter 1 on our podcast, you can now enjoy seeing the face and body that go with the voice. The film also contains a handful of montages shot in Toronto, where the reading took place, thematically connecting some places in the city with some moments in the chapter. Happy watching and listening.

And some more good news that we recently wrapped our film shoot of “Finnegans Wake, Chapter 5,” shot with a wonderful live audience at the Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library in Toronto. Surrounded by dozens of volumes related to Chapter 5 and the Wake, from an original King James Bible to Sir Edward Sullivan’s The Book of Kells, it was a special evening that will make for a terrific podcast and film in future. I want to extend a special thanks to the two regular podcast listeners who schlepped up from New Jersey and Massachusetts to join us for the reading — I’m delighted you were with us on that night.

And finally, as I record this in December of 2024, One Little Goat, a registered charity in the United States and Canada, is fundraising so we can keep offering our programming. For over 20 years we have been producing poetic theatre of the highest calibre, which wouldn’t be possible without the generous support of individuals like you. We love producing these recordings and films of Finnegans Wake — at the same time, they require money to produce. So please, if you’re financially able, take a moment to donate through our website, www.OneLittleGoat.org, and click on “Contact & Donate.” All donations made by December 31 will receive an official tax receipt. Many many thanks to all of you who have already donated to One Little Goat — we really appreciate your support.
[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]

Adam Seelig: Finnegans Wake is a production of One Little Goat Theatre Company. For the next five years, One Little Goat will film and record all 17 chapters (roughly 30 Hours) of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake before live audiences in various locations, screening and releasing them along along the way, with the aim of completing the entire book in time for its 90th birthday, May 4, 2029. One Little Goat Theatre Company is an official charity in Canada and the United States — if you’d like to support our work, please visit us online at www.OneLittleGoat.org to make a charitable donation. And if monetary support is not an option, you can still help this podcast by rating and reviewing it and by spreading the word. To get in touch, you’ll find our email address on the One Little Goat Theatre Company website and we’d love to hear from you.
[Music fades out]

Adam Seelig: Here we are at Chapter 3 of Finnegans Wake. I’m going touch on the chapter’s theme of fleeing, then highlight how the 19th-century Irish Nationalist Charles Stewart Parnell informs the character of Earwicker and the Wake, and then offer a quick synopsis of the five pages you’ll soon hear Richard Harte read. As I’ve said in previous episodes, if you’d like to jump straight to Richard’s performance, by all means skip ahead.

Chapter 1 served as an overture to Finnegans Wake, sounding out, among its many motifs, the cyclical fall and rise of humanity. Chapter 2 introduced us to Earwicker, or HCE, including his alleged sin in Phoenix Park and the wildfire rumours that consequently spread across Dublin and Ireland, culminating in the salacious and slanderous public performance of “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly” by the muckraking street busker, Hosty.

In Chapter 3 we’ll find Earwicker trying to run and hide from all the earwigging gossip surrounding and hounding him. As a lyric from Bob Marley’s 1978 Kaya puts it,
”You’re running and you’re running and you’re running away
But you can't run away from yourself.”
Earwicker is not only running away, perhaps he’s running away from himself. As Joyce’s admirer and occasional amanuensis Samuel Beckett said of his own work, “perhaps” might be the most important word. Likewise with Finnegans Wake. Perhaps Chapter 3 is an evocation of Earwicker’s unconscious, his own dream state, and he’s not only being chased, but also the one doing the chasing through invented characters of his own imagining. In this way, in addition to the cyclical rise and fall at the core of the novel, which we can picture vertically as Tim Finnegan’s rise and fall from the ladder or Humpty Dumpty’s wall fall or the phoenix up from the ashes or Adam and Eve’s Biblical apple grab, Finnegans Wake adds a similar, cyclical loop, which we can picture horizontally as Earwicker running away, perhaps from himself, across Dublin.

Could Earwicker be his own worst enemy, chasing and biting his own tail, a self-persecuting ouroboros? Consider for a moment that Hosty’s caustic ballad, which utterly defames Earwicker at the end of Chapter 2, is titled “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly.” Perce-oreille is French for earwig, leading us to “The Ballad of Earwig” and by extension to “The Ballad of Earwicker,” which we can now hear in two ways: “The Ballad about Earwicker” and “The Ballad by Earwicker.” The title’s ingenious preposition, “of,” “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly,” allows us to hear and experience the song as a throwdown that could be simultaneously about and by Earwicker, the deliverer and recipient, the subject and object of the musical invective, with Hosty an invention of Earwicker’s own imagination. Perhaps. Regardless of whether Earwicker is persecuted by others or by himself, one thing is (perhaps!) for sure: Earwicker in Chapter 3 is “subjected to the horrors of the premier terror of Errorland. (perorhaps!)” (62:24-25).

So is he purely victim or is he also victimizer? Who is Earwicker? As you’ll hear in today’s excerpt, the narrative of Chapter 3 pursues the answer by attempting to tease out the identity of our elusive protagonist from the scandalous fog that surrounds him, “given the wet and low visibility” and “the average human cloudyphiz” it’s a considerable challenge to “idendifine the individuone” (51:1-6).

In short, as Earwicker runs and hides, Chapter 3 will be asking not only where he is, but who.

An elusive protagonist hounded by scandal — this may serve as a description of Earwicker, but it could just as easily describe the 19th-century Irish nationalist, Charles Stewart Parnell. Earwicker is the talk of the town; Parnell was (and in many ways still is) the talk of the Irish nation. Since Parnell’s political rise and ignominious fall provide another facet for understanding Earwicker and the Wake, I’m going to share Adaline Glasheen’s brilliant entry on this larger-than-life figure of modern Irish history.

*Charles Parnell (1846-1891) and Katherine O’Shea (1846-1921)*

Charles Stewart Parnell, born in 1846, died in 1891 — betrayed Irish leader […] who haunts Joyce’s works […] just about everywhere. In [Joyce,] Parnell is not a character, but a presence, ghost, shade […] There was a legend that Parnell would return magically, like the Phoenix, Finn, Christ, or unmagically, like Ulysses, Tim Finnegan.
Parnell was an Anglo-Irish landowner, a skilled political boss who led the Irish nationalist party in the British Parliament. He frightened the British and they set out to destroy him; their first try, the Pigott affair, failed; but they succeeded when Captain William O’Shea sued his wife [Katherine, or Kitty, O’Shea, with whom Parnell had an affair and three children] for divorce. Parnell was revealed as an adulterer, a user of false names, a sneaker down fire-escapes or ladders. The rest [Glasheen writes] may be quoted from “The Shade of Parnell”:
“He was deposed in obedience to Gladstone’s orders. Of his 83 representatives only 8 remained faithful.... The high and low clergy entered the lists to finish him off. The Irish press emptied on him and the woman he loved the vials of their envy. The citizens of Castlecomer threw quicklime in his eyes. He went from county to county, from city to city, ‘like a hunted deer’, a spectral figure. . . within a year he died...’’ […]
[Glasheen goes on:] He was by no means innocent of forging his own destruction; whether from hubris or from not changing his wet socks, he died, and note all the “idol with feet of clay” jokes in Ulysses and FW. […]
Parnell pervades and appears in moments of intensity, but he is not, after all, often named in FW. Parnell’s presence is, then, indicated by indirection, by quoting, by recreating one of his scenes, by using certain words - e.g., treeshade, chief, Fox - which call him up, even when those words are used in ways that do not directly apply to him.
Parnell was elusive. He is elusive on Joyce’s pages. (222-23)

Richard Harte (left) and Adam Seelig at the Parnell Monument, Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, June 2023.

Chapter 3 opens with applause for Hosty’s “Ballad of Persse O’Reilly,” which closed Chapter 2, with particular praise for the street busker’s impressive “Chest Cee!”, a high-C sung by old-fashioned tenors. And indeed in my co-arrangement of the ballad with Richard in Chapter 2, when Richard, as Hosty, sings the song’s last word, “Cain,” he ultimately ends on a high concert C. (Aren’t we clever.) And since C can stand for Cain, Abel’s lethal brother, it may come as no surprise that issuing from the exhalation of that final Cain-charged chest C is a deadly, toxic cloud, “a poisoning volume of cloud barrage indeed.” (48:5)

This fog, or spit-fog if you will, clouds the beginning of this chapter. It’s a fog so thick that even my regular trusted guides (Epstein, Tindall and company) seem to differ on what is happening here, so don’t worry in the least if we get a little lost as we try to discern a thing or two in the foggy and fascinating paragraphs ahead!

I’ll also quickly add that Chapter 3 opens with fog and closes with rain. I’ll come back to this drizzle that bookends Chapter 3 when we reach its conclusion in episode 15.

As the poisonous cloud spreads, we hear of how various scandal mongers who sang the toxic ballad ultimately expire, starting with Hosty, here described singsongily—or maybe amid all the fog sing-soggily?!—as “poor Osti-Frosti” (48:19). I don’t believe this series of men, from Hosty to “A’Hara” to “Paul Horan” to “Sordid Sam” and so on, dies as a result of having sung the ballad—the correlation strikes me as more coincidental than causal—but the association between the song and their deaths reminds me of Monty Python’s “Killer Joke” sketch, also known as “The Funniest Joke in the World,” which I would love to tell you but of course anyone who reads or hears the joke promptly dies from laughter, so I will prudently link to it online in this podcast’s transcript — enjoy at your own risk.

*Ireland legalizes gay marriage in 2015.*

There are a few choice phrases that I’d like to point out as you listen. “his husband” (49:2) always catches my ear — it’s not uncommon to hear these two words together today in Ireland and beyond where gay marriage is legal, but when Joyce combined them, “his husband” was unheard of and arguably ridiculous yet a century ahead of its time. “loquacity lunacy” (49:17) is another favourite phrase that seems to address this hyper verbal logomaniacal world in which we find ourselves. And we’ll hear a euphemistic description for a central theme of Finnegans Wake: gossip, that social phenomenon by which people like Earwicker and Parnell are “semiprivately convicted” (50:28).

Following this string of histrionic obituaries, we can discern within the fog a hazy remix of Earwicker’s confrontation in Phoenix Park from Chapter 2, a recurring event in the novel that plays out through different iterations of the Cad, the two girls, and the three soldiers, the male actors intimating violence, the females, temptation, and all suggesting the ambiguous sin committed, if committed at all, by Earwicker. Here the controversial contingent of 1 Cad, 2 girls and 3 soldiers will appear as “the Haberdasher, the two Curchies and the three Enkelchums” (51:9-10), the main initials of which, incidentally, form Earwicker’s monogram, HCE.

On the same page, page 51, the seven-items-of-clothing motif, which occurs in Chapters 1 and 2 as well, will invoke Earwicker, dressed “in scratch wig, squarecuts, stock, lavaleer, regattable oxeter, baggy pants and shufflers” (6-8).

In the paragraph beginning with, “Sport’s a common thing” (51:21), we will hear about Earwicker’s “regifugium persecutorum” (51:31), a term that provides a key to this chapter. Roland McHugh’s indispensable Annotations to Finnegans Wake breaks it down as follows:

regifugium is an ancient Roman ceremony celebrating the expulsion of kings that literally means ‘flight of the king’;
refugium peccatorum means ‘refuge of sinners’, from the Roman Catholic Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary; and
persecutorum means ‘of the persecuted’.

So Earwicker’s “regifugium persecutorum” represents his expulsion and his refuge, his sin and his persecution, his running and his hiding. Indeed by chapter’s end, we will find our protagonist holed up behind some fortification, seeking refuge from 111 expulsive, and expletive, insults hurled his way (that will be Ep015).

We then experience an early newsreel via television, still a young technology at the time of Joyce’s writing, and again we’ll encounter Earwicker in another seven articles of clothing, including “the refaced unmansionables of gingerine hue” (52:26), which sounds to me like his patched up, reddish underwear. The newsreel also briefly introduces the “brothers’ broil” that plays out between HCE and ALP’s oppositional sons, Shaun and Shem, in Chapter 6 onward.

*Wyndham Lewis in 1929, photo by George Beresford.*

One last note before we get to Richard’s reading: we have a heckler in the house, or at least in the text of Chapter 3. Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957), the brilliant (Canadian-born) English modernist author and painter and foil of sorts to James Joyce, makes his first intrusions in today’s excerpt. (Lewis, incidentally, escaped during the Second World War to a regifugium persecutorum of his own in Canada, including a stint in my town of Toronto, which he considered, perhaps justifiably, a miserable backwater.) Lewis butts in throughout Chapter 3 (and can barely keep his mouth shut later on in Chapter 6). For today’s excerpt, he limits his contributions to two parenthetical monosyllabic insults, or what my kids would call ‘sick burns’: the first is “cogged!”, i.e. fraudulent, and the second, which also serves as the last word of today’s reading, is “Prigged!”, i.e. stolen.

Now it’s time for Richard’s performance of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, page 48 line 1 to page 53 line 6 for the beginning of Chapter 3.

The performance was shot and recorded at my home in Toronto on October 2, 2023 with a live audience. The film premiered at the Toronto Irish Film Festival, European Union Film Festival, and Bloomsday Film Festival at the James Joyce Centre in Dublin.

The opening music for the chapter is my own arrangement of “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly,” with Brandon Bak on drums and yours truly on piano.

[Richard Harte reads and sings Finnegans Wake 48:1-53:6.]

[48] Chest Cee! 'Sdense! Corpo di barragio! you spoof of visibility
in a freakfog, of mixed sex cases among goats, hill cat and plain
mousey, Bigamy Bob and his old Shanvocht! The Blackfriars
treacle plaster outrage be liddled! Therewith was released in that
kingsrick of Humidia a poisoning volume of cloud barrage indeed.
Yet all they who heard or redelivered are now with that family
of bards and Vergobretas himself and the crowd of Caraculacticors
as much no more as be they not yet now or had they then not-
ever been. Canbe in some future we shall presently here amid
those zouave players of Inkermann the mime mumming the mick
and his nick miming their maggies, Hilton St Just (Mr Frank
Smith), Ivanne Ste Austelle (Mr J. F. Jones), Coleman of Lucan
taking four parts, a choir of the O'Daley O'Doyles doublesixing
the chorus in Fenn Mac Call and the Seven Feeries of Loch Neach,
Galloper Troppler and Hurleyquinn the zitherer of the past with his
merrymen all, zimzim, zimzim. Of the persins sin this Eyrawyg-
gla saga (which, thorough readable to int from and, is from tubb
to buttom all falsetissues, antilibellous and nonactionable and this
applies to its whole wholume) of poor Osti-Frosti, described as
quite a musical genius in a small way and the owner of an
exceedingly niced ear, with tenorist voice to match, not alone,
but a very major poet of the poorly meritary order (he began
Tuonisonian but worked his passage up as far as the we-all-
hang-together Animandovites) no one end is known. If they

[49] whistled him before he had curtains up they are whistling him
still after his curtain's doom's doom. Ei fù. His husband, poor old
A'Hara (Okaroff?) crestfallen by things and down at heels at the
time, they squeak, accepted the (Zassnoch!) ardree's shilling at
the conclusion of the Crimean war and, having flown his wild
geese, alohned in crowds to warnder on like Shuley Luney,
enlisted in Tyrone's horse, the Irish whites, and soldiered a bit
with Wolsey under the assumed name of Blanco Fusilovna Buck-
lovitch (spurious) after which the cawer and the marble halls
of Pump Court Columbarium, the home of the old seakings,
looked upon each other and queth their haven evermore for it
transpires that on the other side of the water it came about that on
the field of Vasileff's Cornix inauspiciously with his unit he
perished, saying, this papal leafless to old chap give, rawl chaw-
clates for mouther-in-louth. Booil. Poor old dear Paul Horan,
to satisfy his literary as well as his criminal aspirations, at the
suggestion thrown out by the doomster in loquacity lunacy, so
says the Dublin Intelligence, was thrown into a Ridley's for
inmates in the northern counties. Under the name of Orani he
may have been the utility man of the troupe capable of sustain-
ing long parts at short notice. He was. Sordid Sam, a dour decent
deblancer, the unwashed, haunted always by his ham, the unwished,
at a word from Israfel the Summoner, passed away painlessly
after life's upsomdowns one hallowe'en night, ebbrous and in
the state of nature, propelled from Behind into the great Beyond
by footblows coulinclouted upon his oyster and atlas on behanged
and behooved and behicked and behulked of his last fishandblood
bedscrappers, a Northwegian and his mate of the Sheawolving
class. Though the last straw glimt his baring this stage thunkhard
is said (the pitfallen gagged him as 'Promptboxer') to have
solemnly said — as had the brief thot but fell in till his head like
a bass dropt neck fust in till a bung crate (cogged!): Me drames,
O'Loughlins, has come through! Now let the centuple celves of
my egourge as Micholas de Cusack calls them, — of all of whose
I in my hereinafter of course by recourse demission me — by
the coincidance of their contraries reamalgamerge in that indentity

[50] of undiscernibles where the Baxters and the Fleshmans may
they cease to bidivil uns and (but at this poingt though the iron
thrust of his cockspurt start might have prepared us we are well-
nigh stinkpotthered by the mustardpunge in the tailend) this
outandin brown candlestock melt Nolan's into peese! Han var.
Disliken as he was to druriodrama, her wife Langley, the prophet,
and the decentest dozendest short of a frusker whoever stuck his
spickle through his spoke, disappeared, (in which toodooing he
has taken all the French leaves unveilable out of Calomne-
quiller's Pravities) from the sourface of this earth, that austral
plain he had transmaried himself to, so entirely spoorlessly (the
mother of the book with a dustwhisk tabularasing his obliteration
done upon her involucrum) as to tickle the speculative to all but
opine (since the Levey who might have been Langley may have
really been a redivivus of paganinism or a volunteer Vousden)
that the hobo (who possessed a large amount of the humoresque)
had transtuled his funster's latitat to its finsterest interrimost. Bhi
she. Again, if Father San Browne, tea and toaster to that quaint-
esttest of yarnspinners is Padre Don Bruno, treu and troster to
the queen of Iar-Spain, was the reverend, the sodality director,
that eupeptic viceflayer, a barefaced carmelite, to whose palpi-
tating pulpit (which of us but remembers the rarevalent and
hornerable Fratomistor Nawlanmore and Brawne.) sinning society
sirens (see the [Roman Catholic] presspassim) fortunately became
so enthusiastically attached and was an objectionable ass who very
occasionally cockaded a raffles ticket on his hat which he wore all
to one side like the hangle of his pan (if Her Elegance saw him
she'd have the canary!) and was semiprivately convicted of mal-
practices with his hotwashed tableknife (glossing over the cark
in his pocket) that same snob of the dunhill, fully several year-
schaums riper, encountered by the General on that redletter
morning or maynoon jovesday and were they? Fuitfuit.
When Phishlin Phil wants throws his lip 'tis pholly to be fortune
flonting and whoever's gone to mix Hotel by the salt say water
there's nix to nothing we can do for he's never again to sea. It
is nebuless an autodidact fact of the commonest that the shape of

[51] the average human cloudyphiz, whereas sallow has long daze
faded, frequently altered its ego with the possing of the showers
(Not original!). Whence it is a slopperish matter, given the wet
and low visibility (since in this scherzarade of one's thousand one
nightinesses that sword of certainty which would indentifide the
body never falls) to idendifine the individuone in scratch wig,
squarecuts, stock, lavaleer, regattable oxeter, baggy pants and
shufflers (he is often alluded to as Slypatrick, the llad in the llane)
with already an incipience (lust!) in the direction of area baldness
(one is continually firstmeeting with odd sorts of others at all
sorts of ages!) who was asked by free boardschool shirkers in
drenched coats overawall, Will, Conn and Otto, to tell them
overagait, Vol, Pov and Dev, that fishabed ghoatstory of the
haardly creditable edventyres of the Haberdasher, the two Cur-
chies and the three Enkelchums in their Bearskin ghoats! Girles
and jongers, but he has changed alok syne Thorkill's time! Ya, da,
tra, gathery, pimp, shesses, shossafat, okodeboko, nine! Those
many warts, those slummy patches, halfsinster wrinkles, (what
has come over the face on wholebroader E?), and (shrine of
Mount Mu save us!) the large fungopark he has grown! Drink!
Sport's a common thing. It was the Lord's own day for damp
(to wait for a postponed regatta's eventualising is not of Battlecock
Shettledore - Juxta - Mare only) and the request for a fully
armed explanation was put (in Loo of Pat) to the porty (a native
of the sisterisle — Meathman or Meccan? — by his brogue, ex-
race eyes, lokil calour and lucal odour which are said to have
been average clownturkish (though the capelist's voiced nasal
liquids and the way he sneezed at zees haul us back to the craogs
and bryns of the Silurian Ordovices) who, the lesser pilgrimage
accomplished, had made, pats' and pigs' older inselt, the south-
east bluffs of the stranger stepshore, a regifugium persecutorum,
hence hindquarters) as he paused at evenchime for some or so
minutes (hit the pipe dannyboy! Time to won, barmon. I'll take
ten to win.) amid the devil's one duldrum (Apple by her blossom
window and Charlotte at her toss panomancy his sole admirers,
his only tearts in store) for a fragrend culubosh during his week-

[52] end pastime of executing with Anny Oakley deadliness (the con-
summatory pairs of provocatives, of which remained provokingly
but two, the ones he fell for, Lili and Tutu, cork em!) empties
which had not very long before contained Reid's family (you ruad
that before, soaky, but all the bottles in sodemd histry will not
soften your bloodathirst!) stout. Having reprimed his repeater
and resiteroomed his timespiece His Revenances, with still a life
or two to spare for the space of his occupancy of a world at a time,
rose to his feet and there, far from Tolkaheim, in a quiet English
garden (commonplace!), since known as Whiddington Wild, his
simple intensive curolent vocality, my dearbraithers, my most
dearbrathairs, as he, so is a supper as is a sipper, spake of the
One and told of the Compassionate, called up before the triad of
precoxious scaremakers (scoretaking: Spegulo ne helpas al mal-
bellulo, Mi Kredas ke vi estas prava, Via dote la vizago rispondas
fraulino) the now to ushere mythical habiliments of Our Farfar
and Arthor of our doyne.
Television kills telephony in brothers' broil. Our eyes de-
mand their turn. Let them be seen! And wolfbone balefires blaze
the trailmost if only that Mary Nothing may burst her bibby
buckshee. When they set fire then she's got to glow so we may
stand some chances of warming to what every soorkabatcha,
tum or hum, would like to know. The first Humphrey's latitu-
dinous baver with puggaree behind, (calaboose belong bigboss
belong Kang the Toll) his fourinhand bow, his elbaroom surtout,
the refaced unmansionables of gingerine hue, the state slate
umbrella, his gruff woolselywellesly with the finndrinn knopfs
and the gauntlet upon the hand which in an hour not for him
solely evil had struck down the might he mighthavebeen d'Est-
erre of whom his nation seemed almost already to be about to
have need. Then, stealing his thunder, but in the befitting le-
gomena of the smaller country, (probable words, possibly said, of
field family gleaming) a bit duskish and flavoured with a smile,
seein as ow his thoughts consisted chiefly of the cheerio, he aptly
sketched for our soontobe second parents (sukand see whybe!)
the touching seene. The solence of that stilling! Here one might

[53] a fin fell. Boomster rombombonant! It scenes like a landescape
from Wildu Picturescu or some seem on some dimb Arras, dumb
as Mum's mutyness, this mimage of the seventyseventh kusin of
kristansen is odable to os across the wineless Ere no oedor nor
mere eerie nor liss potent of suggestion than in the tales of the
tingmount. (Prigged!)

[End of excerpt]

Adam Seelig: That was Richard Harte reading the beginning of Chapter 3 from Finnegans Wake, pages 48 to 53, recorded live in Toronto on October 2nd, 2023.

Join us for Episode 12 in a fortnight when Richard continues with the next five pages of Chapter 3, including the “Casaconcordia” paragraph, one of my favourites, which features Finnegans Wake at its polyglottally ludicrous best. To be sure you don’t miss the episode, why not follow or subscribe to this podcast? For more on One Little Goat’s Finnegans Wake project, including transcripts of this podcast, the complete film of Chapter 1, and trailers for others, visit our website at OneLittleGoat.org. And to hear about upcoming performances and screenings, join our mailing list, also on our website.

One Little Goat Theatre Company is a nonprofit, artist-driven, registered charity in the United States and Canada that depends on donations from individuals to make our productions, including this one, possible. If you’re able, please make a tax-deductible donation through our website, www.OneLittleGoat.org

See you in two weeks and wishing you happy holidays!

[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]

Finnegans Wake is made possible by Friends of One Little Goat Theatre Company and the Emigrant Support Programme of the government of Ireland. Thank you for your support!

And thank you to the artists for this episode: Richard Harte; Sound by William Bembridge; Podcast production by Sean Rasmussen; Stage Management by Sandi Becker; Directed by yours truly, Adam Seelig; Music arranged and performed on the piano by me, with Brandon Bak on drums, and recorded at Sound Department in Toronto.

A big thanks to our wonderful live audience of Sandi Becker, David Mackett, Andrew Moodie, Cathy Murphy, Nomi Rotbard, Arlo Rotbard-Seelig, Adam Seelig, Aaron Tucker and Catherine Vaneri.

Thank you to everyone at the Irish Consulate in Toronto. Thank you to Production Consultants Cathy Murphy and Andrew Moodie and to Music Consultants Warwick Harte and Kevin Kennedy.

Thank you for listening!

[Music fades out]

[End of Ep011]

Mentioned: Earwicker running and hiding from gossip, Bob Marley’s “Running Away,” “perhaps,” vertical and horizontal cycles, Earwicker as his own worst enemy, “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly” possibly both about and by Earwicker, where and who is Earwicker, Irish nationalist Charles Parnell, “Chest Cee!”, poisonous cloud, ‘spit-fog,’ Monty Python’s “Killer Joke,” “his husband” and other phrases, Cad confrontation redux, seven-items-of-clothing motif, regifugium persecutorum, TV newsreel, Wyndham Lewis, synopsis.

Resources: Transcript for this episode, including the text of Finnegans Wake pages 48-53.
Finnegans Wake (1939) by James Joyce: there are many free copies of FW to read online or download, e.g. finwake.com
James Joyce Digital Archive, “Chicken Guide” to Finnegans Wake provides a ‘plain English’ paraphrase of each chapter by Danis Rose.
Edmund Epstein, A Guide through Finnegans Wake. University Press of Florida, 2009.
Adaline Glasheen, Third Census of Finnegans Wake: An Index of the Characters and Their Roles, University of California Press, 1977.
William York Tindall, A Reader’s Guide to Finnegans Wake. Syracuse University Press, 1996.
Roland McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake (4th edition). Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016.
John Gordon’s annotations on his Finnegans Wake blog.
Richard Ellmann’s biography of James Joyce. Oxford University Press, 1982.

Cited: “Running Away,” Bob Marley and the Wailers, Kaya, Island Studios, London, 1978.
“The Funniest Joke in the World,” Monty Python’s Flying Circus, BBC, 1969.

Episode 010: Ballad of Persse O’Reilly (p. 44:7-47:34, End of Ch02)

October 10, 2024 Adam Seelig

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE
Episode 010 BALLAD OF PERSSE O’REILLY

PAGE 44:07-47:34 | 2024-10-10

PODCAST AUDIO

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

*“Humpty Dumpty on the wall,” Sir John Tenniel, 1872*

Adam Seelig: Welcome to James Joyce’s divine and delirious comedy, Finnegans Wake. In this episode, number 10, we’ll hear Irish-Canadian actor — and my good friend and colleague — Richard Harte performing pages 44 to 47, featuring the song, “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly,” to conclude Chapter 2 of Joyce’s last novel. I’m Adam Seelig, the director of the reading you’ll soon hear, and in today’s case, also Richard’s piano accompanist.

I’m sharing the good news that One Little Goat Theatre Company is releasing our film of “Finnegans Wake Chapter 1” online this fall of 2024 and I encourage you to sign up for our mailing list on our website, www.OneLittleGoat.org, so you’re among the first to know when the movie goes live.

Will you be in Toronto on Monday, October 21st? If so, join us at the Fisher Rare Books Library in the University of Toronto for a very special live taping of Chapter 5 of Finnegans Wake, which will also feature a display of rare books related to the novel, including Marshall McLuhan’s heavily annotated first edition of the Wake and Sir Edward Sullivan’s landmark study, The Book of Kells. The event is free. For more details and to reserve a seat, visit our website at www.OneLittleGoat.org.

[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]

[Music fades out]

Adam Seelig: The previous episode of this podcast series (Ep009) introduced us to the scandalmongering busker, Hosty, and left off with Hosty about to sing a slanderous song about protagonist HCEarwicker. This “longawaited Messiagh of roaratorios” (41:28) is titled “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly,” with Persse O’Reilly playing on the name of Earwicker, since perce-oreille is French for ‘earwig.’ So while Chapter 2 of Finnegans Wake opened with Earwicker and the origins of his name, often attesting to his honourable nature, it now closes with both his name and character perversely distorted. “[O]ur good and great and no ordinary Southron Earwicker, that homogenius man, as a pious author called him,” (34:13-14) is now the salacious and sordid stuff of tabloids — or more precisely, the salacious and sordid stuff of Hosty’s caustic ballad.

*Drake (left) vs. Kendrick Lamar, “the toxic feud dominating the world of hip hop.*”

Chapter 2 so far has introduced us to Earwicker, described his encounter with the Cad in Phoenix Park, then followed the rumours about Earwicker that spread from that event, spreading initially across Dublin through the highly lubricated medium of “Irish saliva” (37:25), then throughout the Emerald Isle through the printing of Hosty’s “Ballad of Persse O’Reilly.” As you’ll hear in today’s episode, Chapter 2 climaxes and closes with Hosty’s performance of the ballad for a large, eager crowd. The recent rap battle, in the spring of 2024, between hip hop luminaries Drake and Kendrick Lamar, described in the Toronto Star as “the toxic feud dominating the world of hip hop,” proves that the public has an insatiable appetite for a throwdown, showdown, no-holds-barred evisceration of someone’s character. Hosty’s hostile song with its knack for crowd-pleasing malice may predate the hip hop icons of Toronto and L.A. by a century, but ingenious shit-talking has clearly never gone out of fashion. It’s always handy to have a scapegoat or simply someone to kick around.

Joyce wrote the melody for “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly” and included the notation in Finnegans Wake at the bottom of page 44 (which you can also find in the transcript for this podcast episode published on One Little Goat Theatre Company’s website). As Edmund Epstein points out, the melody of the ballad resembles the familiar Italian tune “Carnival of Venice,” popularized by the composer and violinist Niccolò Paganini (we’ll also link on One Little Goat’s website to Paganini’s variations). The Wake’s version, however, bears a significant difference: it starts in A major, like Paganini’s version, but then — in Epstein’s words — “modulates to A minor, and ends up in A modal; that is, the melody slumps downward, mirroring the Fall of Man, and the tone of the ballad turns grim as the hero of the ballad is identified twice as the runaway Cain.” (38)

*Niccolò Paganini by Andrea Cefaly (1827)*

In my co-arrangement of the song with Richard, we begin not in A but in E major for three reasons: (1) the song felt good in that key vis-à-vis Richard’s tenor range (incidentally, Joyce himself was a tenor); (2) this gave us room to modulate upward for a number of verses, creating some variation in what could otherwise be a fairly plodding song, the music ironically rising as Earwicker’s reputation goes down; and (3) this ultimately enabled Richard to end the song on a high C. Now for people like me who keep track of such things, this third reason, the ultimate high-C, is very exciting because the very next chapter of the Wake opens with the exclamatory words, “Chest Cee!” — that is, words praising a “chest C” or high-C sung by old-fashioned tenors (McHugh 48:1).

We’re going to start today’s excerpt by repeating the paragraph from the previous episode so we can all enjoy the Wake’s spirited introduction to Hosty’s ballad and then continue into the song uninterrupted. So, as at the end of Episode 9 you’ll hear Hosty’s introduction to and the audience’s anticipation of the ballad; you’ll hear the 100-letter ‘thunderword’ that contains multilingual phonemes conveying clapping and crapping, which perfectly sets up Hosty to sing/talk crap about Earwicker; you’ll then hear my piano introduction to the song (during which, in the film for Chapter 2, from which the podcast audio is taken, I included a montage of various music venues — so wherever you may be listening to this excerpt, be it the US or Canada or Ireland etc., feel free to imagine Hosty taking the stage at your own favourite music venue as the piano intro plays); and finally, we are into the song itself, “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly.”

I’m going to let Hosty’s merciless and highly entertaining evisceration of Earwicker speak/sing for itself. I’d just like to point out that the third verse begins with a stutter, always so important to the Wake as a form of visceral, elemental speech and as a potential sign of guilt (for more on such stuttering, please visit Episode 8 of this podcast series).

Now it’s time to welcome you back to Noonan’s Irish Pub for Richard’s performance of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, page 44 line 7 to page 47 line 34 for the conclusion of Chapter 2. Richard’s singing is accompanied on the piano by yours truly, Adam Seelig.

Our performance was shot and recorded in Toronto at Noonan’s Irish Pub on June 26th, 2023 with a lovely live audience. The film premiered at the Toronto Irish Film Festival, European Union Film Festival, and Bloomsday Film Festival at the James Joyce Centre in Dublin.

[Richard Harte reads and sings Finnegans Wake 44:7-47:34.]

[44] And aroud the lawn the rann it rann and this is the rann that
Hosty made. Spoken. Boyles and Cahills, Skerretts and Pritchards,
viersefied and piersified may the treeth we tale of live in stoney.
Here line the refrains of. Some vote him Vike, some mote him
Mike, some dub him Llyn and Phin while others hail him Lug
Bug Dan Lop, Lex, Lax, Gunne or Guinn. Some apt him Arth,
some bapt him Barth, Coll, Noll, Soll, Will, Weel, Wall but I
parse him Persse O’Reilly else he’s called no name at all. To-
gether. Arrah, leave it to Hosty, frosty Hosty, leave it to Hosty
for he’s the mann to rhyme the rann, the rann, the rann, the king
of all ranns. Have you here? (Some ha) Have we where? (Some
hant) Have you hered? (Others do) Have we whered (Others dont)
It’s cumming, it’s brumming! The clip, the clop! (All cla) Glass
crash. The (klikkaklakkaklaskaklopatzklatschabattacreppycrotty-
graddaghsemmihsammihnouithappluddyappladdypkonpkot!).

Ardite, arditi!
Music cue.

[Adam Seelig plays piano accompaniment for Richard’s singing.]

"The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly."

[45] Have you heard of one Humpty Dumpty
How he fell with a roll and a rumble
And curled up like Lord Olofa Crumple
By the butt of the Magazine Wall,
(Chorus) Of the Magazine Wall,
Hump, helmet and all?

He was one time our King of the Castle
Now he’s kicked about like a rotten old parsnip.
And from Green street he’ll be sent by order of His Worship
To the penal jail of Mountjoy

(Chorus) To the jail of Mountjoy!
Jail him and joy

He was fafafather of all schemes for to bother us
Slow coaches and immaculate contraceptives for the populace,
Mare’s milk for the sick, seven dry Sundays a week,
Openair love and religion’s reform,
(Chorus) And religious reform,
Hideous in form.

Arrah, why, says you, couldn’t he manage it?
I’ll go bail, my fine dairyman darling,
Like the bumping bull of the Cassidys
All your butter is in your horns.
(Chorus) His butter is in his horns.
Butter his horns!

(Repeat) Hurrah there, Hosty, frosty Hosty, change that shirt
[on ye,
Rhyme the rann, the king of all ranns!

Balbaccio, balbuccio!
We had chaw chaw chops, chairs, chewing gum, the chicken-
[pox and china chambers
Universally provided by this soffsoaping salesman.

[46] Small wonder He’ll Cheat E’erawan our local lads nicknamed him
When Chimpden first took the floor
(Chorus) With his bucketshop store
Down Bargainweg, Lower.

So snug he was in his hotel premises sumptuous
But soon we’ll bonfire all his trash, tricks and trumpery
And’tis short till sheriff Clancy’ll be winding up his unlimited
                                                          [company
With the bailiff’s bom at the door,
    (Chorus) Bimbam at the door.
                   Then he’ll bum no more.

Sweet bad luck on the waves washed to our island
The hooker of that hammerfast viking
And Gall’s curse on the day when Eblana bay
Saw his black and tan man-o’-war.
(Chorus) Saw his man-o’-war.
On the harbour bar.

Where from? roars Poolbeg. Cookingha’pence, he bawls Donnez-
                                           [moi scampitle, wick an wipin’fampiny
Fingal Mac Oscar Onesine Bargearse Boniface
Thok’s min gammelhole Norveegickers moniker
Og as ay are at gammelhore Norveegickers cod.
    (Chorus) A Norwegian camel old cod.
                   He is, begod.

Lift it, Hosty, lift it, ye devil ye! up with the rann, the rhyming
                                                                [rann!
It was during some fresh water garden pumping
Or, according to the Nursing Mirror, while admiring the mon
                                                           [keys
That our heavyweight heathen Humpharey
Made bold a maid to woo
    (Chorus) Woohoo, what’ll she doo!
                   The general lost her maidenloo!

[47] He ought to blush for himself, the old hayheaded philosopher,
For to go and shove himself that way on top of her.
Begob, he’s the crux of the catalogue
Of our antediluvial zoo,
(Chorus) Messrs. Billing and Coo.
Noah’s larks, good as noo.

He was joulting by Wellinton’s monument
Our rotorious hippopopotamuns
When some bugger let down the backtrap of the omnibus
And he caught his death of fusiliers,
(Chorus) With his rent in his rears.
Give him six years.

‘Tis sore pity for his innocent poor children
But look out for his missus legitimate!
When that frew gets a grip of old Earwicker
Won’t there be earwigs on the green?
(Chorus) Big earwigs on the green,
The largest ever you seen.

Suffoclose! Shikespower! Seudodanto! Anonymoses!

Then we’ll have a free trade Gaels’ band and mass meeting
For to sod the brave son of Scandiknavery.
And we’ll bury him down in Oxmanstown
Along with the devil and Danes,
(Chorus) With the deaf and dumb Danes,
And all their remains.

And not all the king’s men nor his horses
Will resurrect his corpus
For there’s no true spell in Connacht or hell
(bis) That’s able to raise a Cain.

[End of excerpt]

Adam Seelig: That was Richard Harte as Hosty singing “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly” to conclude Chapter 2 of Finnegans Wake, pages 44 to 47, recorded with a live audience at Noonan’s Irish Pub in Toronto on June 26th, 2023.

Join us for Episode 11 when Richard begins Chapter 3 of Finnegans Wake. This podcast series is taking a short break between chapters to focus on the film production of future chapters, so please note that the next episode, Episode 11, will release later this fall, exact date to be determined, and we’ll then resume our fortnightly podcast releases every other Thursday. In the meantime, why not follow or subscribe to this podcast so you’re alerted for upcoming episodes. For more on One Little Goat’s Finnegans Wake project, including transcripts of this podcast and trailers for the films, visit our website at OneLittleGoat.org. And to hear about upcoming performances and screenings, join our mailing list, also at OneLittleGoat.org.

To those of you celebrating the Jewish New Year, Shanah Tovah.

And don’t forget to keep an eye out for our film of “Finnegans Wake Chapter 1” releasing online this fall — again, join One Little Goat’s mailing list to be among the first to know.

[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]

Finnegans Wake is made possible by Friends of One Little Goat Theatre Company and the Emigrant Support Programme of the government of Ireland. Thank you for your support!

And thank you to the artists for this episode: Richard Harte; Sound by William Bembridge; Podcast production by Sean Rasmussen; Stage Management by Jobina Sitoh; Directed by yours truly, Adam Seelig.

A big thanks to Jane Noonan and the staff at Noonan’s Irish Pub, as well as to our wonderful live audience. Thank you to everyone at the Irish Consulate in Toronto. And to Production Consultants Cathy Murphy and Andrew Moodie.

One Little Goat Theatre Company is a nonprofit, artist-driven, registered charity. To donate or find out more or to join our mailing list please visit www.OneLittleGoat.org

Thank you for listening!

[Music fades out]

[End of Ep010]

Mentioned: “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly,” Hosty the scandalmongering busker, ‘perce-oreille’ is ‘earwig’ in French, Drake vs. Kendrick Lamar rap battle, scapegoat, “Carnival of Venice” melody, Paganini, Seelig and Harte new arrangement of “Ballad of PO’R,” stutter, synopsis.

Resources: Transcript for this episode, including the text of Finnegans Wake pages 44-47.
Finnegans Wake (1939) by James Joyce: there are many free copies of FW to read online or download, e.g. finwake.com
James Joyce Digital Archive, “Chicken Guide” to Finnegans Wake provides a ‘plain English’ paraphrase of each chapter by Danis Rose.
Edmund Epstein, A Guide through Finnegans Wake. University Press of Florida, 2009.
William York Tindall, A Reader’s Guide to Finnegans Wake. Syracuse University Press, 1996.
Roland McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake (4th edition). Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2016.
John Gordon’s annotations on his Finnegans Wake blog.
Richard Ellmann’s biography of James Joyce. Oxford University Press, 1982.

Episode 009: : Hosty the Busker (p. 39:14-44:24)

September 26, 2024 Adam Seelig

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE
Episode 009 HOSTY THE BUSKER

PAGE 39:14-44:24 | 2024-09-26

PODCAST AUDIO

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Adam Seelig: Welcome to James Joyce’s divine and delirious comedy, Finnegans Wake. In this episode, number 9, we’ll hear Irish-Canadian actor—and my good friend and colleague—Richard Harte reading pages 39 to 44 from Chapter 2 of Joyce’s last novel. I’m Adam Seelig, the director of the reading you’ll soon hear.

[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]

[Music fades out]

Adam Seelig:

Barrie Phillip Nichol, better known as bpNichol, a patron saint of Canadian poetry, would have been 80 years old this September 30th, 2024. He was born in Vancouver in 1944 and died in Toronto at far too early an age, just shy of his 44th birthday.

In Episode 2 of this podcast series, we discussed the sounds and meanings emerging from the evocative opening word of Finnegans Wake, “riverrun”, including reverence, a river’s flow, a stream, a stream of consciousness, and a stream of unconsciousness conveying the dream language of Joyce’s night novel, hence “riverrun” as a dream (from rêverons in French) and as a ‘round dream’ (from the French, rêve rond), reminding us that the novel, like Shakespeare’s Tempest, like us, is “such stuff/ As dreams are made on, and our little life/ Is rounded with a sleep.”

In opening bpNichol’s recently published notebook excerpts — beautifully assembled by Coach House Books under the title, Some Lines of Poetry — I was delighted to discover on the first page a poem called “a river” (1980), a mostly visual poem comprised of the letters in the word “river”, which allowed me, for the first time, to see and hear not only the nocturnal dream of the Wake’s opening word, “riverrun,” but the daydream in it, too, its ‘reverie’. ‘Reverie’: the musing unconsciousness of waking hours. And tracing ‘reverie’ to its etymological roots, I found two words, ‘revelry’ and ‘rejoicing’, the latter, ‘re-Joyce-ing’, echoing the author’s name, and the former, ‘revelry’, a reminder that what we have before us is — in the end and from its beginning — lots of fun.

I’ve posted a photo of bp’s poem on One Little Goat’s website, so you can enjoy it in bp’s own handwriting — you’ll find that at www.onelittlegoat.org/podcast, or better yet, pick up a copy of the book from Coach House. It’s a beauty.

riveri veriveriveriver
iveri veriveriveriveri
verive riveriveriveriv
eriveri veriveriverive
riverive riveriveriver
iveriveri veriveriveri
veriveri veriveriveriv
eriveri veriveriverive
riveri veriveriveriver
iveriv eviveriveriveri

bpNichol, *some lines of poetry: from the notebooks of bpNichol*. Coach House Books, Toronto, 2024.

"a river" (May 9, 1980), bpNichol, *from the notebooks of bpNichol*. Coach House Books, Toronto, 2024.

Now as this is a podcast, I’ll at least attempt to sound out the opening two lines of the 10-line poem, “a river”:

riveri veriveriveriver
iveri veriveriveriveri

This sound helped me hear one more element in the Wake’s “riverrun” of words, and that is ‘ever’, its ever-ness, foreverness and, famously, its never-ending-ness, the novel’s last page continuous with the first. The ever-present “riverrun” of Finnegans Wake is always now — it ever-runs.

Thank you bpNichol for that poem, and happy 80th birthday!

At the heart of today’s episode is one of the Wake’s outstanding characters, the scandalmongering balladeer—or in today’s terms, the caustic singer-songwriter—by the name of Hosty. We’ll get to him in a moment.

Jumping back into the stream where we left off last time in Chapter 2 on page 39…

The Brazen Head, The Liberties' landmark pub.

The zigzagging relay of gossip about HCEarwicker from the previous episode (Episode 008) that ended up galloping around at the racetrack now reaches the ears of two down-and-out Dubliners, recently out of jail, the brothers Treacle Tom and Frisky Shorty. Treacle Tom gets seriously drunk in the historically disreputable distillery district known as The Liberties — I love how the text itself becomes positively slurred and alcoholic in Treacle Tom’s section. Treacle Tom then crashes in a rooming-house, and during a bad night’s sleep, talks in his sleep, repeating the rumours about HCE, which are heard by a trio of homeless men, the last of whom is the scandalous street busker, Hosty.

That name, Hosty, aside from being a mononymous musician anticipating the likes of Elvis, Prince and Beyoncé, is another case where the Wake can be suggesting both ‘it and its opposite’. On the one hand, the name “Hosty” can suggest welcoming, as a host would be, while on the other, someone who’s hostile, from the Latin hostis, meaning ‘stranger’ and ‘enemy.’ There’s also a faint echo of our protagonist, “HCE”, in the sound “Hosty” — more on that in the next episode.

That same cold night, Hosty, unlucky in life, considers suicide, but the gossip about Earwicker, having reached his ears, rejuvenates him by morning (41:13) and inspires him to write a new ballad, after some morning drinking with his buddies.

In the last two paragraphs of today’s reading, Hosty, through his scandalous song about Earwicker, spreads the gossip further. We are told that he sings it to “a singleminded supercrowd, easily representative” (42:22) of every social strata in Dublin — and here the Wake describes the full range of this audience/mob with a level of detail comparable to a Bruegel painting of a village packed with people or a busy scene in a Where’s Waldo book. The shocking song then makes its way into print, and before you know it, the wind blows sheets of it from village to village across all of Ireland.

A Village Festival in honour of St. Hubert and St. Anthony. Pieter Brueghel II, 1627.

So in Chapter 2, what started as a seemingly straightforward encounter between Earwicker and the cad in Dublin’s Phoenix Park (Episode 8) has blown up into a nation-wide scandal. As the text puts it, turning the Irish nationalist song, ‘A Nation Once Again,’ into something rubbernecky and salacious, “a nation wants a gaze” (43:21-30).

A large crowd has assembled to hear Hosty sing his widely distributed song, the text gives him a full-throated, bouncing introduction, and the audience breaks out in wild applause. So thunderous is this clapping, and so like a “Glass crash” (44:15-16) that it morphs into one of the Wake’s ‘thunderwords’ containing 100 letters. This particular ‘thunderword’, the third of ten in the novel, is comprised of phonemes and words that mean ‘clapping’ or ‘applause’, with the final syllable, “kot”, intriguingly suggesting ‘shit’— kot in German means ‘feces’. It’s a fitting end for the thunderous applause of this 100-letter ‘thunderword’ in light of the slander-filled shitstorm that Hosty, the ultimate shit-talker, unleashes on Earwicker through his song, “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly”.

We’ll hear Richard Harte, as Hosty, sing that “longawaited Messiagh of roaratorios” (41:28) in the next episode, and we’ll also publish on our website the corresponding shit music, excuse me, sheet music, written by Joyce himself.

Right now, it’s time to welcome you back to Noonan’s Irish Pub for Richard’s reading of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, page 39 line 14 to page 44 line 24 for the continuation of Chapter 2.

Richard’s reading was shot and recorded in Toronto at Noonan’s Irish Pub on June 26th, 2023 with a live audience. The film premiered at the Toronto Irish Film Festival and Bloomsday Film Festival at the James Joyce Centre in Dublin.

[Richard Harte reads Finnegans Wake 39:14-44:24.]

[39] ‘Twas two pisononse Timcoves (the wetter is pest, the renns are
overt and come and the voax of the turfur is hurled on our lande)
of the name of Treacle Tom as was just out of pop following the
theft of a leg of Kehoe, Donnelly and Packenham’s Finnish pork
and his own blood and milk brother Frisky Shorty, (he was, to be
exquisitely punctilious about them, both shorty and frisky) a tip-
ster, come off the hulks, both of them awful poor, what was out
on the bumaround for an oofbird game for a jimmy o’goblin or
a small thick un as chanced, while the Seaforths was making the
colleenbawl, to ear the passon in the motor clobber make use of
his law language (Edzo, Edzo on), touchin the case of Mr Adams
what was in all the sundays about it which he was rubbing noses
with and having a gurgle off his own along of the butty bloke in
the specs.
This Treacle Tom to whom reference has been made had
been absent from his usual wild and woolly haunts in the land
of counties capalleens for some time previous to that (he was, in
fact, in the habit of frequenting common lodginghouses where
he slept in a nude state, hailfellow with meth, in strange men’s
cots) but on racenight, blotto after divers tots of hell fire, red
biddy, bull dog, blue ruin and creeping jenny, Eglandine’s choic-
est herbage, supplied by the Duck and Doggies, the Galop-
ping Primrose, Brigid Brewster’s, the Cock, the Postboy’s Horn,

[40] the Little Old Man’s and All Swell That Aimswell, the Cup and
the Stirrup, he sought his wellwarmed leababobed in a hous-
ingroom Abide With Oneanother at Block W.W., (why didn’t
he back it?) Pump Court, The Liberties, and, what with
moltapuke on voltapuke, resnored alcoh alcoho alcoherently to
the burden of I come, my horse delayed, nom num, the sub-
stance of the tale of the evangelical bussybozzy and the rusinur-
bean (the ‘girls’ he would keep calling them for the collarette
and skirt, the sunbonnet and carnation) in parts (it seemed he
was before the eyots of martas or otherwales the thirds of fossil-
years, he having beham with katya when lavinias had her mens
lease to sea in a psumpship doodly show whereat he was looking
for fight ------- with whilde roarses) oft in the chilly night (the
metagonistic! the epickthalamorous!) during uneasy slumber in
their hearings of a small and stonybroke cashdraper’s executive,
Peter Cloran (discharged), O’Mara, an exprivate secretary of no
fixed abode (locally known as Mildew Lisa), who had passed
several nights, funnish enough, in a doorway under the blankets
of homelessness on the bunk of iceland, pillowed upon the stone
of destiny colder than man’s knee or woman’s breast, and
Hosty, (no slouch of a name), an illstarred beachbusker, who,
sans rootie and sans scrapie, suspicioning as how he was setting
on a twoodstool on the verge of selfabyss, most starved, with
melancholia over everything in general, (night birman, you served
him with natigal’s nano!) had been towhead tossing on his shake-
down, devising ways and manners of means, of what he loved
to ifidalicence somehow or other in the nation getting a hold of
some chap’s parabellum in the hope of taking a wing sociable
and lighting upon a sidewheel dive somewhere off the Dullkey
Downlairy and Bleakrooky tramaline where he could throw true
and go and blow the sibicidal napper off himself for two bits to
boldywell baltitude in the peace and quitybus of a one sure shot
bottle, he after having being trying all he knew with the lady’s
help of Madam Gristle for upwards of eighteen calanders to get
out of Sir Patrick Dun’s, through Sir Humphrey Jervis’s and
into the Saint Kevin’s bed in the Adelaide’s hosspittles (from

[41] these incurable welleslays among those uncarable wellasdays
through Sant Iago by his cocklehat, goot Lazar, deliver us!)
without after having been able to jerrywangle it anysides. Lisa
O’Deavis and Roche Mongan (who had so much incommon,
epipsychidically; if the phrase be permitted hostis et odor insuper
petroperfractus) as an understood thing slept their sleep of the
swimborne in the one sweet undulant mother of tumblerbunks
with Hosty just how the shavers in the shaw the yokels in the
yoats or, well, the wasters in the wilde, and the bustling tweeny-
dawn-of-all-works (meed of anthems here we pant!) had not been
many jiffies furbishing potlids, doorbrasses, scholars’ applecheeks
and linkboy’s metals when, ashhopperminded like no fella he go
make bakenbeggfuss longa white man, the rejuvenated busker (for
after a goodnight’s rave and rumble and a shinkhams topmorning
with his coexes he was not the same man) and his broadawake
bedroom suite (our boys, as our Byron called them) were up
and ashuffle from the hogshome they lovenaned The Barrel, cross
Ebblinn’s chilled hamlet (thrie routes and restings on their then
superficies curiously correspondant with those linea and puncta
where our tubenny habenny metro maniplumbs below the ober-
flake underrails and stations at this time of riding) to the thrum-
mings of a crewth fiddle which, cremoaning and cronauning, levey
grevey, witty and wevey, appy, leppy and playable, caressed the
ears of the subjects of King Saint Finnerty the Festive who, in
brick homes of their own and in their flavory fraiseberry beds,
heeding hardly cry of honeyman, soed lavender or foyneboyne
salmon alive, with their priggish mouths all open for the larger
appraisiation of this longawaited Messiagh of roaratorios, were
only halfpast atsweeeep and after a brisk pause at a pawnbroking
establishment for the prothetic purpose of redeeming the song-
ster’s truly admirable false teeth and a prolonged visit to a house
of call at Cujas Place, fizz, the Old Sots’ Hole in the parish of
Saint Cecily within the liberty of Ceolmore not a thousand or one
national leagues, that was, by Griffith’s valuation, from the site
of the statue of Primewer Glasstone setting a match to the march
of a maker (last of the stewards peut-être), where, the tale rambles

[42] along, the trio of whackfolthediddlers was joined by a further —
intentions — apply — tomorrow casual and a decent sort of the
hadbeen variety who had just been touching the weekly insult,
phewit, and all figblabbers (who saith of noun?) had stimulants
in the shape of gee and gees stood by the damn decent sort after
which stag luncheon and a few ones more just to celebrate yester-
day, flushed with their firestufffostered friendship, the rascals came
out of the licensed premises, (Browne’s first, the small p.s. ex-ex-
executive capahand in their sad rear like a lady’s postscript: I want
money. Pleasend), wiping their laughleaking lipes on their sleeves,
how the bouckaleens shout their roscan generally (seinn fion,
seinn fion’s araun.) and the rhymers’ world was with reason the
richer for a wouldbe ballad, to the balledder of which the world
of cumannity singing owes a tribute for having placed on the
planet’s melomap his lay of the vilest bogeyer but most attrac-
tionable avatar the world has ever had to explain for.
This, more krectly lubeen or fellow—me—lieder was first
poured forth where Riau Liviau riots and col de Houdo humps,
under the shadow of the monument of the shouldhavebeen legis-
lator (Eleutheriodendron! Spare, woodmann, spare!) to an over-
flow meeting of all the nations in Lenster fullyfilling the visional
area and, as a singleminded supercrowd, easily representative,
what with masks, whet with faces, of all sections and cross sections
(wineshop and cocoahouse poured out to brim up the broaching)
of our liffeyside people (to omit to mention of the mainland mino-
rity and such as had wayfared via Watling, Ernin, Icknild and
Stane, in chief a halted cockney car with its quotal of Hardmuth’s
hacks, a northern tory, a southern whig, an eastanglian chroni-
cler and a landwester guardian) ranging from slips of young
dublinos from Cutpurse Row having nothing better to do than
walk about with their hands in their kneepants, sucking air-
whackers, weedulicet, jumbobricks, side by side with truant
officers, three woollen balls and poplin in search of a croust of
pawn to busy professional gentlemen, a brace of palesmen with
dundrearies, nooning toward Daly’s, fresh from snipehitting and
mallardmissing on Rutland heath, exchanging cold sneers, mass-

[43] going ladies from Hume Street in their chairs, the bearers baited,
some wandering hamalags out of the adjacent cloverfields of
Mosse’s Gardens, an oblate fater from Skinner’s Alley, brick-
layers, a fleming, in tabinet fumant, with spouse and dog, an aged
hammersmith who had some chisellers by the hand, a bout of
cudgel players, not a few sheep with the braxy, two bluecoat
scholars, four broke gents out of Simpson’s on the Rocks, a
portly and a pert still tassing Turkey Coffee and orange shrub in
tickeyes door, Peter Pim and Paul Fry and then Elliot and, O,
Atkinson, suffering hell’s delights from the blains of their annui-
tant’s acorns not forgetting a deuce of dianas ridy for the hunt, a
particularist prebendary pondering on the roman easter, the ton-
sure question and greek uniates, plunk em, a lace lappet head or
two or three or four from a window, and so on down to a few good
old souls, who, as they were juiced after taking their pledge over at
the unkle’s place, were evidently under the spell of liquor, from the
wake of Tarry the Tailor a fair girl, a jolly postboy thinking off
three flagons and one, a plumodrole, a half sir from the weaver’s
almshouse who clings and clings and chatchatchat clings to her, a
wholedam’s cloudhued pittycoat, as child, as curiolater, as Caoch
O’Leary. The wararrow went round, so it did, (a nation wants
a gaze) and the ballad, in the felibrine trancoped metre affectioned
by Taiocebo in his Casudas de Poulichinello Artahut, stump-
stampaded on to a slip of blancovide and headed by an excessively
rough and red woodcut, privately printed at the rimepress of
Delville, soon fluttered its secret on white highway and brown
byway to the rose of the winds and the blew of the gaels, from
archway to lattice and from black hand to pink ear, village crying
to village, through the five pussyfours green of the united states
of Scotia Picta — and he who denies it, may his hairs be rubbed
in dirt! To the added strains (so peacifold) of his majesty the
floote, that onecrooned king of inscrewments, Piggots’s purest, ciello
alsoliuto, which Mr Delaney (Mr Delacey?), horn, anticipating
a perfect downpour of plaudits among the rapsods, piped
out of his decentsoort hat, looking still more like his purseyful
namesake as men of Gaul noted, but before of to sputabout, the

[44] snowycrested curl amoist the leader’s wild and moulting hair,
‘Ductor’ Hitchcock hoisted his fezzy fuzz at bludgeon’s height
signum to his companions of the chalice for the Loud Fellow,
boys’ and silentium in curia! (our maypole once more where he rose
of old) and the canto was chantied there chorussed and christened
where by the old tollgate, Saint Annona’s Street and Church.
And aroud the lawn the rann it rann and this is the rann that
Hosty made. Spoken. Boyles and Cahills, Skerretts and Pritchards,
viersefied and piersified may the treeth we tale of live in stoney.
Here line the refrains of. Some vote him Vike, some mote him
Mike, some dub him Llyn and Phin while others hail him Lug
Bug Dan Lop, Lex, Lax, Gunne or Guinn. Some apt him Arth,
some bapt him Barth, Coll, Noll, Soll, Will, Weel, Wall but I
parse him Persse O’Reilly else he’s called no name at all. To-
gether. Arrah, leave it to Hosty, frosty Hosty, leave it to Hosty
for he’s the mann to rhyme the rann, the rann, the rann, the king
of all ranns. Have you here? (Some ha) Have we where? (Some
hant) Have you hered? (Others do) Have we whered (Others dont)
It’s cumming, it’s brumming! The clip, the clop! (All cla) Glass
crash. The (klikkaklakkaklaskaklopatzklatschabattacreppycrotty-
graddaghsemmihsammihnouithappluddyappladdypkonpkot!).
Ardite, arditi!
Music cue.

[End of reading excerpt]

Adam Seelig: That was Richard Harte reading from Chapter 2 of Finnegans Wake, pages 39 to 44, recorded with a live audience at Noonan’s Irish Pub in Toronto on June 26th, 2023.

Join us in two weeks for Episode 10 when Richard concludes Chapter 2 of Finnegans Wake with Hosty’s scandalous song, “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly”. To be sure you don’t miss any episodes, why not follow or subscribe to this podcast? For more on One Little Goat’s Finnegans Wake project, including transcripts of this podcast and trailers for the films, visit our website at OneLittleGoat.org. And to hear about upcoming performances and screenings, join our mailing list, also at OneLittleGoat.org.

[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]

Finnegans Wake is made possible by Friends of One Little Goat Theatre Company and the Emigrant Support Programme of the government of Ireland. Thank you for your support! And thank you to the artists for this episode: Richard Harte; Sound by William Bembridge; Podcast production by Sean Rasmussen; Stage Management by Jobina Sitoh; Directed by yours truly, Adam Seelig. A big thanks to Jane Noonan and the staff at Noonan’s Irish Pub, as well as to our wonderful live audience. Thank you to everyone at the Irish Consulate in Toronto. And to Production Consultants Cathy Murphy and Andrew Moodie. One Little Goat Theatre Company is a nonprofit, artist-driven, registered charity. To donate or find out more or to join our mailing list please visit www.OneLittleGoat.org

Thank you for listening!

[Music fades out]

[End of Ep009]

Mentioned: bpNichol, more glosses on “riverrun”, The Liberties, Hosty the scandalmongering busker, Bruegel, Where’s Waldo, Hosty’s ballad on HCE spreads across Ireland, third ‘thunderword’ in Finnegans Wak, synopsis.

Resources: Transcript for this episode, including the text of Finnegans Wake pages 39-44.
Finnegans Wake (1939) by James Joyce: there are many free copies of FW to read online or download, e.g. finwake.com
James Joyce Digital Archive, “Chicken Guide” to Finnegans Wake provides a ‘plain English’ paraphrase of each chapter by Danis Rose.
Edmund Epstein, A Guide through Finnegans Wake. University Press of Florida, 2009.
William York Tindall, A Reader’s Guide to Finnegans Wake. Syracuse University Press, 1996.
Roland McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake (4th edition). Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2016.
John Gordon’s annotations on his Finnegans Wake blog.
Richard Ellmann’s biography of James Joyce. Oxford University Press, 1982.
bpNichol, some lines of poetry: from the notebooks of bpNichol. Edited by Derek Beaulieu and Gregory Betts. Coach House, Toronto, 2024.

Episode 008: Cad confrontation (p. 34:29-39:13)

September 12, 2024 Adam Seelig

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE
Episode 008 CAD CONFRONTATION

PAGE 34:29-39:13 | 2024-09-12

PODCAST AUDIO

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Adam Seelig: Welcome to James Joyce’s divine and delirious comedy, Finnegans Wake. In this episode, number 8, we’ll hear Irish-Canadian actor—and my good friend and colleague—Richard Harte reading pages 34 to 39 from Chapter 2 of Joyce’s last novel. I’m Adam Seelig, the director of the reading you’ll soon hear.

[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]

[Music fades out]

Adam Seelig: From Emily Dickinson:

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies

If Finnegans Wake tells the truth, assuming there’s even any truth in it to be told, then it does so at many slants from many perspectives, often in the dubious form of gossip.

In the previous episode (Episode 7) which opened Chapter 2 of Finnegans Wake, we heard about the origins of our protagonist’s name, H. C. Earwicker, and about possible rumours surrounding him. In today’s episode, those rumours will travel further and faster. Humanity is, after all, “an imperfectly warmblooded race” (33:21), and don’t we just love to talk.

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies

The “lies” of Dickinson’s second line offsets—maybe úpsets—the “truth” of the first. In today’s excerpt from Chapter 2, the closest we can come to any definitive truth about Earwicker lies in the ‘circuity’ of gossip, that loved and loathed source of news. Or so-called news. Or ‘fake news’. How much of this gossip, in other words, is information versus “illformation” (137:34)? Should we take what we hear as gospel or “gossiple” (38:23)? Facts can be suspect in a work of fiction, and Finnegans Wake, in addition to being a phantasmagoric poem, is a mammoth work of fiction within which we find many mini fictions, however factual, about HCE. And as these little fictions go through the rumour mill, as they make their successful rounds on the gossip circuit, they gain mass and momentum. It’s no coincidence that today’s reading, which follows a zigzagging relay of HCE-related rumours, ends up at the racetrack, one of the fastest circuits around, where the gossip about Earwicker reaches a veritable gallop.

The main event in today’s reading is Earwicker’s encounter with a guy described as “a cad with a pipe.” (35:11) It takes place in Dublin’s Phoenix Park, or as the text puts it, “the wide expanse of our greatest park”, (35:8) and indeed Phoenix Park is great: at seven square kilometres, it’s twice the size of New York’s Central Park, making it one of the largest urban parks in the world. The scene begins on the “ides-of-April morning”, i.e. on April 13th, which, we are told, happens to be Earwicker’s birthday. We are also told that this event is “ages and ages after the alleged misdemeanour” (35:5-6), a coy reference to the gossip that hounds HCE. Keep in mind that this tale of HCE’s confrontation with the cad is itself the product of rumour, beginning not with an authoritative, ‘Once upon a time’, but with a far less reliable, “They tell the story […]”.

The “ides-of-April” ominously echoes the Ides of March, when Julius Caesar was assassinated, and Earwicker dressed in seven items of clothing — ‘dressed to the sevens’ as we called it in the previous episode — could be foreshadowing a potential confrontation.

Is this meeting of Earwicker and the cad in the park a chance encounter or a spontaneous confrontation? Is it innocent or threatening?

Well, this is what seems to happen on that April morning… The cad with the pipe crosses paths with HCE and asks him, in a Wakean kind of Gaelic, something along the lines of: ‘How do you do? Could you tell me the time, because my watch is running slow?’ Ostensibly, this all sounds pretty innocuous. But as with the earlier encounter of two men, Mutt & Jute, in Chapter 1 (Episode 4), some miscommunication ensues. HCE interprets the cad’s words as a kind of attack and, in a panic, goes on the defensive. At this point the narrative, adhering to Earwicker’s state of mind, adopts the language of a cowboy-like showdown, so that instead of simply taking his watch out of his pocket and telling the cad that it’s twelve o’clock — which appears to be what happens (so much for it being morning) — HCE, we are told, is “quick on the draw” when he pulls his watch out of his “gunpocket” (35:26-27). For all his cowboy heroics, however, Earwicker ends up stuttering out his response to the cad, launching into an unsolicited, cringeworthy self-exoneration: “there is not one tittle of truth, allow me to tell you, in that purest of fibfib fabrications.” (36:34) This stuttering, which might betray HCE’s guilty conscience, is a motif throughout the novel that I’ll discuss in more detail in a minute.

Gaping Gill, an innocent bystander, “with infinite tact in the delicate situation seen the touchy nature of its perilous theme”, (37:4-5) politely extricates himself and walks off with his dog.

Now it’s evening, “ere the hour of the twattering of bards in the twitterlitter between Druidia and the Deepsleep Sea” (37:17-18). A wonderful, quiet passage follows, filled with the gentle sounds of letters reduced to their essence: a double F, a double K, a single T, a single I. I love Joyce’s writing, and Richard’s reciting, of these gloaming sounds of our alphabet, somewhere between the language of birds and lovers. (37:20-22)

The cad, home for supper, recounts his Phoenix Park encounter/confrontation with Earwicker, as best he can, to his wife. And from here, the zigzagging relay of gossip runs its course. In light of all this word of mouth, it makes sense that the text alludes, hilariously, to “Irish saliva” (37:25), the main ingredient in Dublin gossip. So the cad, chewing the cud, tells his wife, the wife tells her priest, and the priest tells the science teacher Philly Thurnston at the racetrack where the horses, like the rousing rumour itself, take on a life of their own.

Before we get to Richard’s reading, I want to highlight the stuttering motif that features prominently in Earwicker’s interaction/altercation with the cad.

From the very first page of Finnegans Wake, stuttering plays a part:

[Richard Harte reads Finnegans Wake 3:9-10.]

nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to
tauftauf thuartpeatrick

Adam Seelig: And here’s Richard reading a more pronounced example a few lines later, with stuttering built into the novel’s first 100-letter ‘thunderword’:

[Richard Harte reads Finnegans Wake 3:15-17.]

The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner-
ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthur-
nuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr

Adam Seelig: One page later, we hear of “Bygmester Finnegan, of the Stuttering Hand” (4:18); on page 16, in the prehistoric dialogue of Mutt and Jute, Mutt stammers to Jute that, “I became a stun a stummer” (16:17); and there are many more examples.

So why all the stuttering? As with everything in the Wake, we can read into it endlessly, but for now let’s consider two reasons:

(1) Stuttering as a form of early, elemental, prehistoric speech.
(& 2) Stuttering as a betrayal of guilty feelings; or in the parlance of poker, stuttering as a ‘tell’.

About (1) stuttering as early human speech…

Roland McHugh, in the introduction to his incredible Annotations to Finnegans Wake, details the influence of 18th-century philosopher Giambattista Vico on Joyce’s writing. In The New Science, published in 1725, Vico proposes that the history of nations divides into three ages: divine, heroic, and human — plus a kind of ‘fourth age’ or ‘coda’ during which the human age, number 3, reverts back to number 1, the divine age in a ‘rinse-and-repeat’ cycle, or a ricorso, which helps explain the cyclical structure of Finnegans Wake and adds another complexion to the word “recirculation” on the novel’s first page (and the word “vicus” in that same first sentence, in addition to suggesting Vico Road in Dublin or the Latin word for village, can also point to our Italian philosopher, Vico). As McHugh explains, in the first age, “the age of gods, brutish men are driven by shame and fear into caves to escape the thunder, which is the voice of the sky-god.” (p.x) And as William Tindall explains, in the divine age, prehistoric people, “like so many Mutts and Jutes, communicate by grunts, gestures, [etc.]” (9) including stutters. So, going back to that first thunder word after the fall—

[Richard Harte reads Finnegans Wake 3:15-17.]

**Zeus** hurling a thunderbolt, bronze statuette from Dodona, Greece, early 5th century BCE; Staatliche Museen, Berlin.

The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner-
ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthur-
nuk!)

Adam Seelig: —we can hear the thunder of the sky-god or Zeus or ‘capital G God’ ‘capital H Himself’ generating language, birthing the first babble/babel, the first “bababada” of an infant humanity.

McHugh mentions that early humanity escapes thunder in “shame and fear”, which brings me to (2) stuttering as a sign of guilt…

In today’s reading, you’ll hear the text stammer when mentioning, “the hakusay accusation againstm” (36:3-4), i.e. the accusation about HCE’s “alleged misdemeanor” or, put simply, his sin. But what is this alleged sin? When Earwicker stutters during his unprovoked self-exoneration in response to the cad, the possible guilt revealed by his stammering is about what? McHugh offers a hint, pointing out that Charles Parnell, the Irish nationalist, and Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland — both men (referenced throughout Finnegans Wake) stuttered. The former, Parnell, committed the sin of adultery, which led to his political downfall, while the latter, Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll), photographed children in the nude as a hobby, which, while not a sin, per se, has fueled speculation about Dodgson ever since, leading to rumours about his own “alleged misdemeanor[s]”.

And Earwicker: what’s his sin?

The examples of Parnell and Dodgson suggest that Earwicker, through the dream language of the Wake, experiences inappropriate sexual desires. But don’t we all, especially in our own personal, private dreams? The answer is yes, yes we do. The scandal of Parnell falling for Katherine (or Kitty) O’Shea, then falling from political grace, is an eminently relatable tale because, as the Wake reminds us on virtually every page, humanity, that is, all of us, fell from grace the moment Eve and Adam were swayed by the snake and ate the forbidden fruit. (In today’s reading, incidentally, Eden’s famous apple becomes a far more suggestive fruit: a banana eaten by Eve, whose original Hebrew name is Chava, hence the mention of “Havvah-ban-Annah” (38:30).) HCE, as a necessarily flawed character who contains multitudes, from Biblical Adam to folksy Tim Finnegan to admired Parnell, is ultimately “Here Comes Everybody” (as we heard in the previous episode), he’s all of us, embodying our original and subsequent sins, with his occasional stutter reminding us those sins are always there, however deeply and unconsciously buried.

"Adam & Eve, Serpent & Apple," Heinz Seelig.

So it’s thanks to the forked tongue of the serpent and the forked lightning of the gods that our stuttering fall into sin and speech began.

I’m going to close with the poem with which I opened, partly because it contains a flash of lightning and some thematic overlap with today’s episode, but mostly because Emily Dickinson knew how to write a damn good poem. Here it is in full:

Tell all the truth but tell it slant — (1263)

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —

Richard Harte’s reading of Finnegans Wake Chapter 2 was shot and recorded in Toronto at Noonan’s Irish Pub on June 26th, 2023 with a live audience. The film premiered at the Toronto Irish Film Festival and Bloomsday Film Festival at the James Joyce Centre in Dublin.

Now it’s time to welcome you to Noonan’s Irish Pub for Richard’s reading of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, page 34 line 29 to page 39 line 13 for the continuation of Chapter 2.

[Richard Harte reads Finnegans Wake 34:29-39:13.]

[34] We can’t do without them. Wives, rush to the restyours! Of-
man will toman while led is the lol. Zessid’s our kadem, villa-
pleach, vollapluck. Fikup, for flesh nelly, el mundo nov, zole flen!
If she’s a lilyth, pull early! Pauline, allow! And malers abushed,
keep black, keep black! Guiltless of much laid to him he was
clearly for once at least he clearly expressed himself as being with
still a trace of his erstwhile burr and hence it has been received of

[35] us that it is true. They tell the story (an amalgam as absorbing as
calzium chloereydes and hydrophobe sponges could make it) how
one happygogusty Ides-of-April morning (the anniversary, as it
fell out, of his first assumption of his mirthday suit and rights in
appurtenance to the confusioning of human races) ages and ages
after the alleged misdemeanour when the tried friend of all crea-
tion, tigerwood roadstaff to his stay, was billowing across the
wide expanse of our greatest park in his caoutchouc kepi and
great belt and hideinsacks and his blaufunx fustian and ironsides
jackboots and Bhagafat gaiters and his rubberised inverness, he
met a cad with a pipe. The latter, the luciferant not the oriuolate
(who, the odds are, is still berting dagabout in the same straw
bamer, carryin his overgoat under his schulder, sheepside out, so
as to look more like a coumfry gentleman and signing the pledge
as gaily as you please) hardily accosted him with: Guinness thaw
tool in jew me dinner ouzel fin? (a nice how-do-you-do in Pool-
black at the time as some of our olddaisers may still tremblingly
recall) to ask could he tell him how much a clock it was that the
clock struck had he any idea by cock’s luck as his watch was
bradys. Hesitency was clearly to be evitated. Execration as cleverly
to be honnisoid. The Earwicker of that spurring instant, realising
on fundamental liberal principles the supreme importance, nexally
and noxally, of physical life (the nearest help relay being pingping
K. O. Sempatrick’s Day and the fenian rising) and unwishful as
he felt of being hurled into eternity right then, plugged by a soft-
nosed bullet from the sap, halted, quick on the draw, and reply-
in that he was feelin tipstaff, cue, prodooced from his gunpocket
his Jurgensen’s shrapnel waterbury, ours by communionism, his
by usucapture, but, on the same stroke, hearing above the skirl-
ing of harsh Mother East old Fox Goodman, the bellmaster, over
the wastes to south, at work upon the ten ton tonuant thunder-
ous tenor toller in the speckled church (Couhounin’s call!) told
the inquiring kidder, by Jehova, it was twelve of em sidereal and
tankard time, adding, buttall, as he bended deeply with smoked
sardinish breath to give more pondus to the copperstick he pre-
sented (though this seems in some cumfusium with the chap-

[36] stuck ginger which, as being of sours, acids, salts, sweets and
bitters compompounded, we know him to have used as chaw-
chaw for bone, muscle, blood, flesh and vimvital,) that where-
as the hakusay accusation againstm had been made, what was
known in high quarters as was stood stated in Morganspost, by
a creature in youman form who was quite beneath parr and seve-
ral degrees lower than yore triplehydrad snake. In greater sup-
port of his word (it, quaint anticipation of a famous phrase, has
been reconstricted out of oral style into the verbal for all time
with ritual rhythmics, in quiritary quietude, and toosammen-
stucked from successive accounts by Noah Webster in the re-
daction known as the Sayings Attributive of H. C. Earwicker,
prize on schillings, postlots free), the flaxen Gygas tapped his
chronometrum drumdrum and, now standing full erect, above
the ambijacent floodplain, scene of its happening, with one Ber-
lin gauntlet chopstuck in the hough of his ellboge (by ancientest
signlore his gesture meaning: ℈!) pointed at an angle of thirty-
two degrees towards his duc de Fer’s overgrown milestone as
fellow to his gage and after a rendypresent pause averred with
solemn emotion’s fire: Shsh shake, co-comeraid! Me only, them
five ones, he is equal combat. I have won straight. Hence my
nonation wide hotel and creamery establishments which for the
honours of our mewmew mutual daughters, credit me, I am woo-
woo willing to take my stand, sir, upon the monument, that sign
of our ruru redemption, any hygienic day to this hour and to
make my hoath to my sinnfinners, even if I get life for it, upon
the Open Bible and before the Great Taskmaster’s (I lift my hat!)
and in the presence of the Deity Itself andwell of Bishop and
Mrs Michan of High Church of England as of all such of said
my immediate withdwellers and of every living sohole in every
corner wheresoever of this globe in general which useth of my
British to my backbone tongue and commutative justice that
there is not one tittle of truth, allow me to tell you, in that purest
of fibfib fabrications.
Gaping Gill, swift to mate errthors, stern to checkself, (diag-
nosing through eustacetube that it was to make with a markedly

[37] postpuberal hypertituitary type of Heidelberg mannleich cavern
ethics) lufted his slopingforward, bad Sweatagore good mur-
rough and dublnotch on to it as he was greedly obliged, and
like a sensible ham, with infinite tact in the delicate situation seen
the touchy nature of its perilous theme, thanked um for guilders
received and time of day (not a little token abock all the same that
that was owl the God’s clock it was) and, upon humble duty to
greet his Tyskminister and he shall gildthegap Gaper and thee his
a mouldy voids, went about his business, whoever it was, saluting
corpses, as a metter of corse (one could hound him out had one
hart to for the monticules of scalp and dandruff droppings blaze
his trail) accompanied by his trusty snorler and his permanent
reflection, verbigracious; I have met with you, bird, too late,
or if not, too worm and early: and with tag for ildiot repeated
in his secondmouth language as many of the bigtimer’s verbaten
words which he could balbly call to memory that same kveldeve,
ere the hour of the twattering of bards in the twitterlitter between
Druidia and the Deepsleep Sea, when suppertide and souvenir to
Charlatan Mall jointly kem gently and along the quiet darkenings
of Grand and Royal, ff, flitmansfluh, and, kk, ‘t crept i’ hedge
whenas to many a softongue’s pawkytalk mude unswer u sufter
poghyogh, Arvanda always aquiassent, while, studying castelles
in the blowne and studding cowshots over the noran, he spat in
careful convertedness a musaic dispensation about his hearthstone,
if you please, (Irish saliva, mawshe dho hole, but would a respect-
able prominently connected fellow of Iro-European ascendances
with welldressed ideas who knew the correct thing such as Mr
Shallwesigh or Mr Shallwelaugh expectorate after such a callous
fashion, no thank yous! when he had his belcher spuckertuck in his
pucket, pthuck?) musefed with his thockits after having supped
of the dish sot and pottage which he snobbishly dabbed Peach
Bombay (it is rawly only Lukanpukan pilzenpie which she knows
which senaffed and pibered him), a supreme of excelling peas,
balled under minnshogue’s milk into whitemalt winesour, a pro-
viant the littlebilker hoarsely relished, chaff it, in the snevel season,
being as fain o’t as your rat wi’fennel; and on this celebrating

[38] occasion of the happy escape, for a crowning of pot valiance,
this regional platter, benjamin of bouillis, with a spolish olive to
middlepoint its zaynith, was marrying itself (porkograso!) ere-
busqued very deluxiously with a bottle of Phenice-Bruerie ‘98,
followed for second nuptials by a Piessporter, Grand Cur, of
both of which cherished tablelights (though humble the bounquet
‘tis a leaman’s farewell) he obdurately sniffed the cobwebcrusted
corks.
Our cad’s bit of strife (knee Bareniece Maxwelton) with a quick
ear for spittoons (as the aftertale hath it) glaned up as usual with
dumbestic husbandry (no persicks and armelians for thee, Pome-
ranzia!) but, slipping the clav in her claw, broke of the matter
among a hundred and eleven others in her usual curtsey (how
faint these first vhespers womanly are, a secret pispigliando, amad
the lavurdy den of their manfolker!) the next night nudge one
as was Hegesippus over a hup a ‘ chee, her eys dry and small and
speech thicklish because he appeared a funny colour like he
couldn’t stood they old hens no longer, to her particular reverend,
the director, whom she had been meaning in her mind primarily
to speak with (hosch, intra! jist a timblespoon!) trusting, between
cuppled lips and annie lawrie promises (mighshe never have
Esnekerry pudden come Hunanov for her pecklapitschens!) that
the gossiple so delivered in his epistolear, buried teatoastally in
their Irish stew would go no further than his jesuit’s cloth, yet
(in vinars venitas! volatiles valetotum!) it was this overspoiled
priest Mr Browne, disguised as a vincentian, who, when seized
of the facts, was overheard, in his secondary personality as a
Nolan and underreared, poul soul, by accident — if, that is, the
incident it was an accident for here the ruah of Ecclectiastes
of Hippo outpuffs the writress of Havvah-ban-Annah — to
pianissime a slightly varied version of Crookedribs confidentials,
(what Mere Aloyse said but for Jesuphine’s sake!) hands between
hahands, in fealty sworn (my bravor best! my fraur!) and, to the
strains of The Secret of Her Birth, hushly pierce the rubiend
aurellum of one Philly Thurnston, a layteacher of rural science
and orthophonethics of a nearstout figure and about the middle

[39] of his forties during a priestly flutter for safe and sane bets at the
hippic runfields of breezy Baldoyle on a date (W. W. goes
through the cald) easily capable of rememberance by all pickers-
up of events national and Dublin details, the doubles of Perkin
and Paullock, peer and prole, when the classic Encourage Hackney
Plate was captured by two noses in a stablecloth finish, ek and nek,
some and none, evelo nevelo, from the cream colt Bold Boy
Cromwell after a clever getaway by Captain Chaplain Blount’s
roe hinny Saint Dalough, Drummer Coxon, nondepict third, at
breakneck odds, thanks to you great little, bonny little, portey
little, Winny Widger! you’re all their nappies! who in his never-
rip mud and purpular cap was surely leagues unlike any other
phantomweight that ever toppitt our timber maggies.

[End of reading excerpt]

Adam Seelig: That was my friend and colleague Richard Harte reading from Chapter 2 of Finnegans Wake, pages 34 to 39, recorded with a live audience at Noonan’s Irish Pub in Toronto on June 26th, 2023.

Join us in two weeks for Episode 9 when Richard continues Finnegans Wake Chapter 2, in which we meet the scandalous balladeer, Hosty. To be sure you don’t miss any episodes, why not follow or subscribe to this podcast? For more on One Little Goat’s Finnegans Wake project, including transcripts of this podcast and trailers for the films, visit our website at OneLittleGoat.org. And to hear about upcoming performances and screenings, join our mailing list, also at OneLittleGoat.org.

[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]

Finnegans Wake is made possible by Friends of One Little Goat Theatre Company and the Emigrant Support Programme of the government of Ireland. Thank you for your support!

And thank you to the artists for this episode: Richard Harte; Sound by William Bembridge; Podcast production by Sean Rasmussen; Stage Management by Jobina Sitoh; Directed by yours truly, Adam Seelig.

One Little Goat Theatre Company is a nonprofit, artist-driven, registered charity. To donate or find out more or to join our mailing list please visit www.OneLittleGoat.org Thank you for listening!

[Music fades out]
[End of Ep008]

Mentioned: Emily Dickinson poem, “Tell all the truth but tell it slant”, HCE rumours, fiction, HCE’s encounter/confrontation with the cad, Dublin’s Phoenix Park, stuttering motif, language of birds and love, gossip relay, stuttering as early speech and signifying guilt, Giambattista Vico, cycle of three eras, first ‘thunderword’, Charles Parnell and Charles Dodgson, Adam and Eve, original sin, synopsis.

Resources: Transcript for this episode, including the text of Finnegans Wake pages 34-39.
Finnegans Wake (1939) by James Joyce: there are many free copies of FW to read online or download, e.g. finwake.com
James Joyce Digital Archive, “Chicken Guide” to Finnegans Wake provides a ‘plain English’ paraphrase of each chapter by Danis Rose.
Edmund Epstein, A Guide through Finnegans Wake. University Press of Florida, 2009.
William York Tindall, A Reader’s Guide to Finnegans Wake. Syracuse University Press, 1996.
Roland McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake (4th edition). Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2016.
John Gordon’s annotations on his Finnegans Wake blog.
Richard Ellmann’s biography of James Joyce. Oxford University Press, 1982.

Episode 007: the genesis of HCE (p. 30:1-34:29, start of Ch02)

August 29, 2024 Adam Seelig

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE
Episode 007 THE GENESIS OF HCE

PAGE 30:1-34:29 | 2024-08-29

PODCAST AUDIO

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Adam Seelig: Welcome to James Joyce’s divine and delirious comedy, Finnegans Wake. In this episode, number 7, we’ll hear Irish-Canadian actor—and my good friend and colleague—Richard Harte reading pages 30 to 34 to begin Chapter 2 of Joyce’s last novel. I’m Adam Seelig, the director of the reading you’ll soon hear. [Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]

I’m happy to be back after a short break spent on film production for future chapters of Finnegans Wake. If you’re only joining us now, welcome and no worries — Finnegans Wake is a nonlinear novel after all, so beginning at Chapter 2 is as good a place as any. And as I’ve been saying in nearly every episode, feel free to jump ahead to Richard’s reading if you’d rather skip my introduction.

In the previous podcast episode, Richard Harte concluded his reading of Chapter 1, which served as an overture, sounding out the novel’s main themes, especially the theme of humanity’s cyclical, and comical, fall and rise and fall again, our funereal wake at which we awaken like Tim Finnegan of the Irish American folk song, who is both fin and again, a person who ends and begins repeatedly.

Chapter 2 introduces us to the novel’s protagonist, who goes by the initials HCE and the moniker Earwicker, among his many other names and nicknames. The chapter opens with an origin story for Earwicker’s name and a further exploration, and confusion, of his numerous names and identities. That’s because H. C. Earwicker is the furthest thing from a conventional character in a work of fiction, but rather an entity who contains multifarious multitudes. He is at turns Adam, the Hebrew Bible’s original man; Tim Finnegan of folk song fame; the barkeeper at the Mullingar Inn in Chapelizod, Dublin, who goes by the family name Porter; and many other identities. His characterlessness — as I described Mutt and Jute in Episode 4 — enables him to shift into many shapes and morph into many molds.

So for Chapter 2 to pursue the genesis of HCE’s name, to ask essentially, “Who is Earwicker?” is a lot like asking, “Who was Homer?” the Ancient Greek bard about whom we know little by way of concrete biographical facts and whose epic poems, The Odyssey and The Iliad, influenced the contours and contents of Joyce’s two epics, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. When Emily Wilson, in her introduction to her brilliant new translation of The Iliad, describes the conjecture surrounding Homer’s identity, I’m reminded of the Wake’s search for Earwicker’s. Here’s Wilson on Homer:

How, where, when exactly, and by whom the poems [The Iliad and The Odyssey] were made, we do not know. Maybe an oral poet, or several such poets, became literate. Maybe an illiterate or semiliterate poet, or group of poets, collaborated with one or more scribes, perhaps using dictation. Perhaps one great composer was named Homer (a name that was associated in antiquity with the word for “hostage,” homeros, although various other speculative etymologies were also posited). The composer may have been “a blind man who came from Rocky Chios,” as the narrator of the Hymn to Delian Apollo asserts — although this was only one of numerous rival local legends about this most elusive of poets. Every statement about the historical person or people who composed The Iliad must be hedged with maybes. Ancient “lives” of Homer are set in the cloudy lands of biographical myth. (p.xix)

Chapter 2 of Finnegans Wake begins in such a land of biographical myth, where every statement about Earwicker must be hedged with maybes.

The myth in this case is that HCE — or Harold or Humphrey or whatever his name may be — was out gardening one Sabbath afternoon when royalty approached on horseback. His Majesty wants to know what caused all the potholes in the road, but through a misunderstood exchange, the nervous, subservient HCE, who is merely a vassal, tells His Highness that he was catching some earwigs. As a result, the name of Earwigger or Earwicker has stuck to the man ever since.

As with every word in the Wake, “Earwicker” can connote many things, including a character whose ears are particularly receptive, ‘wicking up’ his auditory surroundings; or an entomological character like his near namesake, the earwig; and if there is something insect-like about him, perhaps there’s also something ‘insectuous,’ or, as novelist Anthony Burgess has suggested with the swap of two letters, something ‘incestuous’ within this character; or given his many identities, HCE, as you’ll soon hear in Chapter 2, could stand for “Here Comes Everybody” (32:18), with Earwicker representing humanity, all of us; or if we hear ‘earwigging’ as older English slang for ‘eavesdropping’ (and the expression is still, if rarely, used today), then Earwicker’s name itself presents the main subject of Chapter 2, and that is: gossip, slander.

On page 32, after suggesting that HCE could signify “Here Comes Everybody”, the Wake’s wonderfully associative dream language riffs and runs (rifferuns?!) on theatrical, hyped-up language full of play and dramatics, with all the world, for a moment, a stage, or “worldstage” (33:3).

And then, on page 33, the ‘earwigging,’ i.e. gossiping and slander, associated with the name and character of “Earwicker” begins to emerge. As the text puts it, “A baser meaning has been read into” HCE’s name (33:14). And what’s all this gossip, you may want to know, or ‘Spill the tea,’ as my kids like to say. It may be hazy, as rumours tend to be, but it seems to involve three Welsh soldiers, two girls peeing in the rushes of Dublin’s Phoenix Park, and a threatening cad, whom we’ll meet later in this chapter. It’s worth noting that these three elements, comprised of the three soldiers, two girls and one cad, will become a recurring motif throughout Finnegans Wake, represented by the numbers 3, 2 and 1. At the suggestion of this gossip on page 33, the text seems to grow defensive on behalf of Earwicker: “the mere suggestion of [H. C. Earwicker] as a lustsleuth nosing for trouble in a boobytrap rings particularly preposterous.” (33:31). Perhaps the text here protests too much. And by page 34, it denounces all this hearsay even more forcefully as “Slander” (34:12). But of course, the juicier the details, and the more emphatically they’re denied, the more they pique our interest. And indeed, there’s more gossip to come in Chapter 2 — this is just the beginning.

Before we get to Richard’s reading, I want to point out another motif that figures throughout the novel, which you’ll hear on the opening page of Chapter 2, and that’s the motif of characters getting dressed in seven items of clothing. It’s always seven. In this chapter, it happens when Earwicker dresses hurriedly — though arguably horridly — in order to see His Majesty, who has arrived nearby on horseback. In Chapter 1, this motif of ‘dressing to the sevens,’ so to speak, occurs near the climax of the prankquean fable (Episode 5 of our podcast series) when Jarl von Hoother girds up his loins to put an end, he hopes, to the prankquean’s disruptive antics. The seven items may sound strange in the dream language of the Wake, but a close listening/reading will reveal the Jarl’s seven items, beginning with his “broadginger hat” and ending with his “furframed panuncular cumbottes,” which I hear as gumboots. Here's an excerpt of Richard reading that moment:

[Richard Harte reads Finnegans Wake 22:30-23:3.]

For like the campbells acoming with a fork lance of lightning, Jarl von Hoother Boanerges himself, the old terror of the dames, came hip hop handihap out through the pikeopened arkway of his three shuttoned castles, in his broadginger hat and his civic chollar and his allabuff hemmed and his bullbraggin soxangloves and his ladbroke breeks and his cattegut bandolair and his fur framed panuncular cumbottes like a rudd yellan gruebleen orangeman in his violet indigonation, to the whole longth of the strongth of his bowman's bill.

Adam Seelig: And here’s another example from earlier in Chapter 1 in the “museyroom” (Episode 3 of our podcast) when Kate describes the Duke of Wellington on horseback — Kate calls him “Willingdone” in this Wakean war museum — listing seven items on his person, from his golden spurs to his “wartrews” or war trousers. This is Richard reading that moment:

[Richard Harte reads Finnegans Wake 8:17-22.]

This is the Willingdone on his same white harse, the Cokenhape. This is the big Sraughter Willingdone, grand and magentic in his goldtin spurs and his ironed dux and his quarterbrass woodyshoes and his magnate's gharters and his bangkok's best and goliar's goloshes and his pulluponeasyan wartrews. This is his big wide harse. Tip.

Adam Seelig: I opened with Emily Wilson’s comments on The Iliad, and I’m going to close with an excerpt from her translation because this ‘dressed to the sevens’ motif of Finnegans Wake is very much in the epic tradition of Homer (whoever that may have been). Just listen to how closely this epic description of Agamemnon dressing for battle, composed nearly 3,000 years ago, establishes the template, and even partly the tone in its fastidious specificity, for Joyce’s comic spin on the clothing and gear his characters would wear:

Then Agamemnon,
the son of Atreus, addressed the Greeks,
shouting that all of them must arm themselves.
And he himself put on his shining bronze.
He strapped fine greaves around his lower legs,
fitted with silver shin-guards. Next, he fastened
onto his chest the corselet that Cinyres
had given him to seal their bond of friendship
when the important news had come to Cyprus—
that Greeks were sailing in their ships to Troy.
Cinyres gave this gift to Agamemnon,
the leader, in the hope of winning favor.
It had ten stripes of dark blue-black enamel,
and twelve of gold and twenty made of tin.
And three dark snakes coiled up towards the neck
on either side, like rainbows, which the son
of Cronus sets in clouds as signs for humans.
Across his shoulders, Agamemnon strapped
his sword, all shimmering with golden studs,
held in a silver scabbard, which was set
with golden rings. Then he picked up his shield,
a splendid, deadly shield, strong on both sides,
adorned with many splendid decorations.
Around it ran ten circles made of bronze,
and it had ten white bosses made of tin,
and one of blue enamel at the center.
The middle garland was a glaring Gorgon,
whose gaze was terrifying, and around her,
Panic and Fear. The strap was made of silver,
and round it coiled a blue snake with three faces,
each turning different ways, grown from one neck.
Then Agamemnon put onto his head
his leather helmet, which had two bronze plates,
four bosses, and a horsehair crest. The plume
nodded ferociously right at the top.
Last, he picked up two warlike sharp spears, tipped
with bronze, whose gleam shone far into the sky.
(p.234-44, Book 11 lines 19-55 [14-45 in the original Greek])

I know it’s not a competition, but Homer may have out-epic’ed Joyce on this one.

Now it’s time to welcome you to Noonan’s Irish Pub for Richard’s reading of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, page 30 line 1 to page 34 line 29 for the beginning of Chapter 2.

[Richard Harte reads Finnegans Wake 30:1-34:29.]

[p30] Now (to forebare for ever solittle of Iris Trees and Lili O’Ran-
gans), concerning the genesis of Harold or Humphrey Chimp-
den’s occupational agnomen (we are back in the presurnames
prodromarith period, of course just when enos chalked halltraps)
and discarding once for all those theories from older sources which
would link him back with such pivotal ancestors as the Glues, the
Gravys, the Northeasts, the Ankers and the Earwickers of Sidles-
ham in the Hundred of Manhood or proclaim him offsprout of
vikings who had founded wapentake and seddled hem in Herrick
or Eric, the best authenticated version, the Dumlat, read the
Reading of Hofed-ben-Edar, has it that it was this way. We are
told how in the beginning it came to pass that like cabbaging
Cincinnatus the grand old gardener was saving daylight under his
redwoodtree one sultry sabbath afternoon, Hag Chivychas Eve,
in prefall paradise peace by following his plough for rootles in the
rere garden of mobhouse, ye olde marine hotel, when royalty was
announced by runner to have been pleased to have halted itself on
the highroad along which a leisureloving dogfox had cast fol-
lowed, also at walking pace, by a lady pack of cocker spaniels. For-
getful of all save his vassal’s plain fealty to the ethnarch Humphrey
or Harold stayed not to yoke or saddle but stumbled out hotface
as he was (his sweatful bandanna loose from his pocketcoat) hast-
ing to the forecourts of his public in topee, surcingle, solascarf and
plaid, plus fours, puttees and bulldog boots ruddled cinnabar with

[31] flagrant marl, jingling his turnpike keys and bearing aloft amid
the fixed pikes of the hunting party a high perch atop of which a
flowerpot was fixed earthside hoist with care. On his majesty, who
was, or often feigned to be, noticeably longsighted from green
youth and had been meaning to inquire what, in effect, had caused
yon causeway to be thus potholed, asking substitutionally to be
put wise as to whether paternoster and silver doctors were not
now more fancied bait for lobstertrapping honest blunt Harom-
phreyld answered in no uncertain tones very similarly with a fear-
less forehead: Naw, yer maggers, aw war jist a cotchin on thon
bluggy earwuggers. Our sailor king, who was draining a gugglet
of obvious adamale, gift both and gorban, upon this, ceasing to
swallow, smiled most heartily beneath his walrus moustaches and
indulging that none too genial humour which William the Conk
on the spindle side had inherited with the hereditary whitelock
and some shortfingeredness from his greataunt Sophy, turned to-
wards two of his retinue of gallowglasses, Michael, etheling lord
of Leix and Offaly and the jubilee mayor of Drogheda, Elcock,
(the two scatterguns being Michael M. Manning, protosyndic of
Waterford and an Italian excellency named Giubilei according to
a later version cited by the learned scholarch Canavan of Can-
makenoise), in either case a triptychal religious family symbolising
puritas of doctrina, business per usuals and the purchypatch of
hamlock where the paddish preties grow and remarked dilsydul-
sily: Holybones of Saint Hubert how our red brother of Pour-
ingrainia would audibly fume did he know that we have for sur-
trusty bailiwick a turnpiker who is by turns a pikebailer no sel-
domer than an earwigger! For he kinned Jom Pill with his court
so gray and his haunts in his house in the mourning. (One still
hears that pebble crusted laughta, japijap cheerycherrily, among
the roadside tree the lady Holmpatrick planted and still one feels
the amossive silence of the cladstone allegibelling: Ive mies outs
ide Bourn.) Comes the question are these the facts of his nom-
inigentilisation as recorded and accolated in both or either of the
collateral andrewpaulmurphyc narratives. Are those their fata
which we read in sibylline between the fas and its nefas? No dung

[32]on the road? And shall Nohomiah be our place like? Yea, Mulachy
our kingable khan? We shall perhaps not so soon see. Pinck
poncks that bail for seeks alicence where cumsceptres with scen-
taurs stay. Bear in mind, son of Hokmah, if so be you have me-
theg in your midness, this man is mountain and unto changeth
doth one ascend. Heave we aside the fallacy, as punical as finikin,
that it was not the king kingself but his inseparable sisters, un-
controllable nighttalkers, Skertsiraizde with Donyahzade, who
afterwards, when the robberers shot up the socialights, came down
into the world as amusers and were staged by Madame Sudlow
as Rosa and Lily Miskinguette in the pantalime that two pitts
paythronosed, Miliodorus and Galathee. The great fact emerges
that after that historic date all holographs so far exhumed ini-
tialled by Haromphrey bear the sigla H.C.E. and while he was
only and long and always good Dook Umphrey for the hunger-
lean spalpeens of Lucalizod and Chimbers to his cronies it was
equally certainly a pleasant turn of the populace which gave him
as sense of those normative letters the nickname Here Comes
Everybody. An imposing everybody he always indeed looked,
constantly the same as and equal to himself and magnificently well
worthy of any and all such universalisation, every time he con-
tinually surveyed, amid vociferatings from in front of Accept these
few nutties! and Take off that white hat!, relieved with Stop his Grog
and Put It in the Log and Loots in his (bassvoco) Boots, from good
start to happy finish the truly catholic assemblage gathered together
in that king’s treat house of satin alustrelike above floats and foot-
lights from their assbawlveldts and oxgangs unanimously to clap-
plaud (the inspiration of his lifetime and the hits of their careers)
Mr Wallenstein Washington Semperkelly’s immergreen tourers
in a command performance by special request with the courteous
permission for pious purposes the homedromed and enliventh
performance of problem passion play of the millentury, running
strong since creation, A Royal Divorce, then near the approach
towards the summit of its climax, with ambitious interval band
selections from The Bo’ Girl and The Lily on all horserie show
command nights from his viceregal booth (his bossaloner is ceil-

[33] inged there a cuckoospit less eminent than the redritualhoods of
Maccabe and Cullen) where, a veritable Napoleon the Nth, our
worldstage’s practical jokepiece and retired cecelticocommediant
in his own wise, this folksforefather all of the time sat, having the
entirety of his house about him, with the invariable broadstretched
kerchief cooling his whole neck, nape and shoulderblades and in
a wardrobe panelled tuxedo completely thrown back from a shirt
well entitled a swallowall, on every point far outstarching the
laundered clawhammers and marbletopped highboys of the pit
stalls and early amphitheatre. The piece was this: look at the lamps.
The cast was thus: see under the clock. Ladies circle: cloaks may
be left. Pit, prommer and parterre, standing room only. Habituels
conspicuously emergent.
A baser meaning has been read into these characters the literal
sense of which decency can safely scarcely hint. It has been blur-
tingly bruited by certain wisecrackers (the stinks of Mohorat are
in the nightplots of the morning), that he suffered from a vile
disease. Athma, unmanner them! To such a suggestion the one
selfrespecting answer is to affirm that there are certain statements
which ought not to be, and one should like to hope to be able to
add, ought not to be allowed to be made. Nor have his detractors,
who, an imperfectly warmblooded race, apparently conceive him
as a great white caterpillar capable of any and every enormity in
the calendar recorded to the discredit of the Juke and Kellikek
families, mended their case by insinuating that, alternately, he lay
at one time under the ludicrous imputation of annoying Welsh
fusiliers in the people’s park. Hay, hay, hay! Hoq, hoq, hoq!
Faun and Flora on the lea love that little old joq. To anyone who
knew and loved the christlikeness of the big cleanminded giant
H. C. Earwicker throughout his excellency long vicefreegal exis-
tence the mere suggestion of him as a lustsleuth nosing for trou-
ble in a boobytrap rings particularly preposterous. Truth, beard
on prophet, compels one to add that there is said to have been
quondam (pfuit! pfuit!) some case of the kind implicating, it is
interdum believed, a quidam (if he did not exist it would be ne-
cessary quoniam to invent him) abhout that time stambuling ha-

[34] round Dumbaling in leaky sneakers with his tarrk record who
has remained topantically anonymos but (let us hue him Abdul-
lah Gamellaxarksky) was, it is stated, posted at Mallon’s at the
instance of watch warriors of the vigilance committee and years
afterwards, cries one even greater, Ibid, a commender of the
frightful, seemingly, unto such as were sulhan sated, tropped head
(pfiat! pfiat!) waiting his first of the month froods turn for
thatt chopp pah kabbakks alicubi on the old house for the charge-
hard, Roche Haddocks off Hawkins Street. Lowe, you blondy
liar, Gob scene you in the narked place and she what’s edith ar
home defileth these boyles! There’s a cabful of bash indeed in
the homeur of that meal. Slander, let it lie its flattest, has never
been able to convict our good and great and no ordinary Southron
Earwicker, that homogenius man, as a pious author called him, of
any graver impropriety than that, advanced by some woodwards
or regarders, who did not dare deny, the shomers, that they had,
chin Ted, chin Tam, chinchin Taffyd, that day consumed their
soul of the corn, of having behaved with ongentilmensky im-
modus opposite a pair of dainty maidservants in the swoolth of
the rushy hollow whither, or so the two gown and pinners plead-
ed, dame nature in all innocency had spontaneously and about the
same hour of the eventide sent them both but whose published
combinations of silkinlaine testimonies are, where not dubiously
pure, visibly divergent, as wapt from wept, on minor points touch-
ing the intimate nature of this, a first offence in vert or venison
which was admittedly an incautious but, at its wildest, a partial ex-
posure with such attenuating circumstances (garthen gaddeth green
hwere sokeman brideth girling) as an abnormal Saint Swithin’s
summer and, (Jesses Rosasharon!) a ripe occasion to provoke it.

[End of reading excerpt]

Adam Seelig: That was my friend and colleague Richard Harte reading the opening of Chapter 2 from Finnegans Wake, pages 30 to 34, recorded with a live audience at Noonan’s Irish Pub in Toronto on June 26th, 2023.

Join us in two weeks for Episode 8 when Richard continues Finnegans Wake Chapter 2, in which H. C. Earwicker encounters the cad in Phoenix Park. To be sure you don’t miss any episodes, why not follow or subscribe to this podcast? For more on One Little Goat’s Finnegans Wake project, including transcripts of this podcast and trailers for the films, visit our website at OneLittleGoat.org. And to hear about upcoming performances and screenings, join our mailing list, also at OneLittleGoat.org.

[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]

Finnegans Wake is made possible by Friends of One Little Goat Theatre Company and the Emigrant Support Programme of the government of Ireland. Thank you for your support!

And thank you to the artists for this episode: Richard Harte; Sound by William Bembridge; Podcast production by Sean Rasmussen; Stage Management by Jobina Sitoh; Directed by yours truly, Adam Seelig.

One Little Goat Theatre Company is a nonprofit, artist-driven, registered charity. To donate or find out more or to join our mailing list please visit www.OneLittleGoat.org

Thank you for listening!

[Music fades out] [End of Ep007]

Mentioned: origin of HCE/Earwicker’s name, “Here Comes Everybody”, characterlessness, Homer, ‘who was Homer?’, Ancient Greek epic poetry, The Iliad, translator Emily Wilson, meanings of “Earwicker”, earwigging as eavesdropping, gossip and slander, 3 soldiers 2 girls 1 cad (motif), ‘dressed to the sevens’ (motif) with examples from the prankquean and museyroom fables, ancient example of Agamemnon girding up his loins in The Iliad, synopsis.

Resources: Transcript for this episode, including the text of Finnegans Wake pages 30-34.
Finnegans Wake (1939) by James Joyce: there are many free copies of FW to read online or download, e.g. finwake.com
James Joyce Digital Archive, “Chicken Guide” to Finnegans Wake provides a ‘plain English’ paraphrase of each chapter by Danis Rose.
Edmund Epstein, A Guide through Finnegans Wake. University Press of Florida, 2009.
William York Tindall, A Reader’s Guide to Finnegans Wake. Syracuse University Press, 1996.
Roland McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake (4th edition). Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2016.
John Gordon’s annotations on his Finnegans Wake blog.
Richard Ellmann’s biography of James Joyce. Oxford University Press, 1982.
Emily Wilson’s translation of Homer, The Iliad. Norton, New York, 2023.
Anthony Burgess introduces Finnegans Wake (1973), YouTube.

Embed Block

Add an embed URL or code. Learn more

Episode 006: Tim Finnegan's wake (p. 24:16-29:36, End of Ch01)

July 11, 2024 Adam Seelig

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE
Episode 006
TIM FINNEGAN’S WAKE

PAGE 24:16-29:36 | 2024-07-11

PODCAST AUDIO

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Adam Seelig: Welcome to James Joyce’s divine and delirious comedy, Finnegans Wake. In this episode, number 6, we’ll hear Irish-Canadian actor—and my good friend and colleague—Richard Harte reading pages 24 to 29 to conclude Chapter 1 of Joyce’s last novel. I’m Adam Seelig, the director of the reading you’ll soon hear.

[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]

[Music fades out]

Richard Harte’s reading left off last time with Tim Finnegan rising from the dead, as he does in the eponymous folk song, following a splash of whiskey. We are—in these final 6 pages of Chapter 1 which you’ll soon hear Richard read—at Tim Finnegan’s Wake.

And there’s our novel’s title, of course. In podcast Episode 1, I commented on how Joyce’s removal of the apostrophe from the folk song title, ‘Finnegan’s Wake,’ allows us to hear ‘Wake’ as both a celebration of the life of the deceased and as a verb for awakening. I’m going to offer another gloss on the book’s title, because every word in the dream language of Finnegans Wake, starting with the title itself, can always evoke another meaning.

Fittingly for the end of Chapter 1, the title takes on an eschatalogical layer, a layer concerned with ending, with ‘the end’, with, in French, la fin, F-I-N, fin, as in fin de siècle to describe the end of a century. Similarly, we can see the Italian version of ‘the end’ in musical scores when the final bar is marked ‘fine’, F-I-N-E.

So the first letters of Joyce’s title, F-I-N or F-I-N-N-E, connote ‘the end’, and Finn-egan yields, paradoxically, ‘end again’. Finn-again, end again. Here (again) we have the central theme and movement of the novel, the cyclical fall and rise and fall of humanity, which goes hand in hand with ending and again-ing. When Tim Finnegan falls off the ladder in the Irish American folk song, he naturally dies; when he rises from his coffin, he (maybe-not-so-naturally) lives. When he falls again, he ‘ends again,’ but so, too, when he revives, he’s ‘Finn again’, Finnegan alive.

Already in the very first word of the title, one of the most brilliant devices of Finnegans Wake is at play. It’s a technique that in rehearsals I’ve been calling: ‘it and its opposite’. John Gordon describes it as ‘equal opposites’. In ‘Finnegan’ we have ‘the end’ and ‘again,’ ‘it and its opposite’. In other words, for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction. Where there’s a fall, there’s a rise; where there’s a death, a revival; for every Fin, an again; for every end, a ‘Finn again’; and for every ‘Wake’ of the deceased, an awakening — all we need is some whiskey. Sláinte, as Richard likes to say, or l’chaim, as I like to, to life.

We are at Tim Finnegan’s wake on page 24, addressing the deceased, with this ingenious ‘it and its opposite’ device in the very first sentence when our dearly departed is addressed as “good Mr Finnimore, sir”. “Finnimore”, finn-no-more, end no more, no more end — the end of Tim’s life also spells out his eternity. And we’ll hear this same ‘it and its opposite’ several pages later when he’s eulogized as “Finn no more!” (28:34)

Maybe our dead friend shouldn’t be so quick to revive and is better off taking it easy, “like a god on pension” (24:17). And anyhow, we continue to tell him, with all the crap you encounter these days in Dublin from Watling Street to Phibsborough, “You're better off, sir, where you are” (24:28). Joyce’s novel was definitely prescient here — the traffic in Dublin, ranked this year as the second slowest city for drivers in the world, can make you want to die, or as the Wake puts it, “’Twould turn you against life, so ’twould.” (24:24-5) (My city of Toronto, incidentally, ranked third-worst in the world right behind Ireland’s capital.) But our friend is not simply limited to his coffin. He has expanded into cosmic dimensions, traversing space from the stars of the sky to the shores of the sea — “Your heart is in the system of the Shewolf […] And that's ashore as you were born.” (26:11-14) — and traversing time — “Your olala is in the region of sahuls”, with ‘sahu’ indicating ancient Egypt’s eternal zone of souls.

“Everything’s going on the same” (26:25), we tell our friend, with the usual ups and downs of market prices: “Meat took a drop […] Coal's short […] And barley's up again” (26:32-3). Flu outbreaks are still imminent, as indicated by the name of our relative, “aunt Florenza” (26:27), and little horny teens like you once were are still around, hence “Timmy the Tosser.” (27:1)

But though we’ve been telling him he’s not missing much, our friend still tries to revive, so it looks like we’ll have to keep him dead, so to speak, by force: “Hold him here”! That seems to work, so we go on catching him up on the latest neighbourhood goings-on. We tell him about his wife, whom we idealize “Like the queenoveire” (28:1), combining the beautiful Guinevere of Arthurian legend with the Queen of Ireland. We even read him some of the latest sensationalized headlines: “News, news, all the news.” (28:21)

The last paragraph of today’s reading includes one of my favourite sentences of Chapter 1 — “Creator he has created for his creatured ones a creation.” — and suggests that our falling and rising friend, the ending and again-ing Finnegan, presages the coming, in Chapter 2, of H. C. Earwicker, the Adam-like protagonist responsible for the problems that began in the garden of Eden, which in Wake-speak takes on a Gaelic inflection, becoming “Edenborough.” (29:35-6) I initially saw this final word of Chapter 1 as a combination of Eden and Scotland’s capital, Edinburgh, until the resourceful Roland McHugh pointed out another possibility, one that most fittingly anchors the last word of Chapter 1 back in Ireland’s capital: Dublin’s Eden and Burgh Quays face one another on the River Liffey. It makes sense: where there’s HCE, the man of the mainland, ALP, the woman of the river, can never be far away. He’s her bridge above, connecting Eden and Burgh Quays, and she’s his waters below.

Richard Harte’s reading of Finnegans Wake Chapter 1 was shot and recorded in 2022 in my home in Toronto with a small audience. Aunt Florenza was not invited, nor was Uncle Covid, which is why the audience was masked at the time. Chapter 1 premiered at the Toronto Irish Film Festival, European Union Film Festival, and Bloomsday Film Festival at the James Joyce Centre in Dublin.

And now it’s time to welcome you all back into my home for Richard’s continued reading of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, page 24 line 16 to page 29 line 36 for the conclusion of Chapter 1.

[Richard Harte reads Finnegans Wake 24:16-29:36.]

[p24] Now be aisy, good Mr Finnimore, sir. And take your laysure
like a god on pension and don't be walking abroad. Sure you'd
only lose yourself in Healiopolis now the way your roads in
Kapelavaster are that winding there after the calvary, the North
Umbrian and the Fivs Barrow and Waddlings Raid and the
Bower Moore and wet your feet maybe with the foggy dew's
abroad. Meeting some sick old bankrupt or the Cottericks' donkey
with his shoe hanging, clankatachankata, or a slut snoring with an
impure infant on a bench. 'Twould turn you against life, so
'twould. And the weather's that mean too. To part from Devlin
is hard as Nugent knew, to leave the clean tanglesome one lushier
than its neighbour enfranchisable fields but let your ghost have
no grievance. You're better off, sir, where you are, primesigned
in the full of your dress, bloodeagle waistcoat and all, remember-
ing your shapes and sizes on the pillow of your babycurls under
your sycamore by the keld water where the Tory's clay will scare
the varmints and have all you want, pouch, gloves, flask, bricket,
kerchief, ring and amberulla, the whole treasure of the pyre, in the
land of souls with Homin and Broin Baroke and pole ole Lonan
and Nobucketnozzler and the Guinnghis Khan. And we'll be
coming here, the ombre players, to rake your gravel and bringing

[p25] you presents, won't we, fenians? And it isn't our spittle we'll stint
you of, is it, druids? Not shabbty little imagettes, pennydirts and
dodgemyeyes you buy in the soottee stores. But offerings of the
field. Mieliodories, that Doctor Faherty, the madison man,
taught to gooden you. Poppypap's a passport out. And honey is
the holiest thing ever was, hive, comb and earwax, the food for
glory, (mind you keep the pot or your nectar cup may yield too
light!) and some goat's milk, sir, like the maid used to bring you.
Your fame is spreading like Basilico's ointment since the Fintan
Lalors piped you overborder and there's whole households be-
yond the Bothnians and they calling names after you. The men-
here's always talking of you sitting around on the pig's cheeks
under the sacred rooftree, over the bowls of memory where every
hollow holds a hallow, with a pledge till the drengs, in the Salmon
House. And admiring to our supershillelagh where the palmsweat
on high is the mark of your manument. All the toethpicks ever
Eirenesians chewed on are chips chepped from that battery
block. If you were bowed and soild and letdown itself from the
oner of the load it was that paddyplanters might pack up plenty and
when you were undone in every point fore the laps of goddesses
you showed our labourlasses how to free was easy. The game old
Gunne, they do be saying, (skull!) that was a planter for you, a
spicer of them all. Begog but he was, the G.O.G! He's dudd-
andgunne now and we're apter finding the sores of his sedeq
but peace to his great limbs, the buddhoch, with the last league
long rest of him, while the millioncandled eye of Tuskar sweeps
the Moylean Main! There was never a warlord in Great Erinnes
and Brettland, no, nor in all Pike County like you, they say. No,
nor a king nor an ardking, bung king, sung king or hung king.
That you could fell an elmstree twelve urchins couldn't ring
round and hoist high the stone that Liam failed. Who but a Mac-
cullaghmore the reise of our fortunes and the faunayman at the
funeral to compass our cause? If you was hogglebully itself and
most frifty like you was taken waters still what all where was
your like to lay the cable or who was the batter could better
Your Grace? Mick Mac Magnus MacCawley can take you off to

[p26] the pure perfection and Leatherbags Reynolds tries your shuffle
and cut. But as Hopkins and Hopkins puts it, you were the pale
eggynaggy and a kis to tilly up. We calls him the journeyall
Buggaloffs since he went Jerusalemfaring in Arssia Manor. You
had a gamier cock than Pete, Jake or Martin and your archgoose
of geese stubbled for All Angels' Day. So may the priest of seven
worms and scalding tayboil, Papa Vestray, come never anear you
as your hair grows wheater beside the Liffey that's in Heaven!
Hep, hep, hurrah there! Hero! Seven times thereto we salute
you! The whole bag of kits, falconplumes and jackboots incloted,
is where you flung them that time. Your heart is in the system
of the Shewolf and your crested head is in the tropic of Copri-
capron. Your feet are in the cloister of Virgo. Your olala is in the
region of sahuls. And that's ashore as you were born. Your shuck
tick's swell. And that there texas is tow linen. The loamsome
roam to Laffayette is ended. Drop in your tracks, babe! Be not
unrested! The headboddylwatcher of the chempel of Isid,
Totumcalmum, saith: I know thee, metherjar, I know thee, sal-
vation boat. For we have performed upon thee, thou abrama-
nation, who comest ever without being invoked, whose coming
is unknown, all the things which the company of the precentors
and of the grammarians of Christpatrick's ordered concerning
thee in the matter of the work of thy tombing. Howe of the ship-
men, steep wall!
Everything's going on the same or so it appeals to all of us,
in the old holmsted here. Coughings all over the sanctuary, bad
scrant to me aunt Florenza. The horn for breakfast, one o'gong
for lunch and dinnerchime. As popular as when Belly the First
was keng and his members met in the Diet of Man. The same
shop slop in the window. Jacob's lettercrackers and Dr Tipple's
Vi-Cocoa and the Eswuards' desippated soup beside Mother Sea
gull's syrup. Meat took a drop when Reilly-Parsons failed. Coal's
short but we've plenty of bog in the yard. And barley's up again,
begrained to it. The lads is attending school nessans regular, sir,
spelling beesknees with hathatansy and turning out tables by
mudapplication. Allfor the books and never pegging smashers

[p27] after Tom Bowe Glassarse or Timmy the Tosser. 'Tisraely the
truth! No isn't it, roman pathoricks? You were the doublejoynted
janitor the morning they were delivered and you'll be a grandfer
yet entirely when the ritehand seizes what the lovearm knows.
Kevin's just a doat with his cherub cheek, chalking oghres on
walls, and his little lamp and schoolbelt and bag of knicks, playing
postman's knock round the diggings and if the seep were milk
you could lieve his olde by his ide but, laus sake, the devil does
be in that knirps of a Jerry sometimes, the tarandtan plaidboy,
making encostive inkum out of the last of his lavings and writing
a blue streak over his bourseday shirt. Hetty Jane's a child of
Mary. She'll be coming (for they're sure to choose her) in her
white of gold with a tourch of ivy to rekindle the flame on Felix
Day. But Essie Shanahan has let down her skirts. You remember
Essie in our Luna's Convent? They called her Holly Merry her
lips were so ruddyberry and Pia de Purebelle when the redminers
riots was on about her. Were I a clerk designate to the Williams-
woodsmenufactors I'd poster those pouters on every jamb in the
town. She's making her rep at Lanner's twicenightly. With the
tabarine tamtammers of the whirligigmagees. Beats that cachucha
flat. 'Twould dilate your heart to go.
Aisy now, you decent man, with your knees and lie quiet and
repose your honour's lordship! Hold him here, Ezekiel Irons, and
may God strengthen you! It's our warm spirits, boys, he's spoor-
ing. Dimitrius O'Flagonan, cork that cure for the Clancartys! You
swamped enough since Portobello to float the Pomeroy. Fetch
neahere, Pat Koy! And fetch nouyou, Pam Yates! Be nayther
angst of Wramawitch! Here's lumbos. Where misties swaddlum,
where misches lodge none, where mystries pour kind on, O
sleepy! So be yet!
I've an eye on queer Behan and old Kate and the butter, trust me.
She'll do no jugglywuggly with her war souvenir postcards to
help to build me murial, tippers! I'll trip your traps! Assure a
sure there! And we put on your clock again, sir, for you. Did or
didn't we, sharestutterers? So you won't be up a stump entirely.
Nor shed your remnants. The sternwheel's crawling strong. I

[p28] seen your missus in the hall. Like the queenoveire. Arrah, it's
herself that's fine, too, don't be talking! Shirksends? You storyan
Harry chap longa me Harry chap storyan grass woman plelthy
good trout. Shakeshands. Dibble a hayfork's wrong with her only
her lex's salig. Boald Tib does be yawning and smirking cat's
hours on the Pollockses' woolly round tabouretcushion watch-
ing her sewing a dream together, the tailor's daughter, stitch to
her last. Or while waiting for winter to fire the enchantement,
decoying more nesters to fall down the flue. It's allavalonche that
blows nopussy food. If you only were there to explain the mean-
ing, best of men, and talk to her nice of guldenselver. The lips
would moisten once again. As when you drove with her to Fin-
drinny Fair. What with reins here and ribbons there all your
hands were employed so she never knew was she on land or at
sea or swooped through the blue like Airwinger's bride. She
was flirtsome then and she's fluttersome yet. She can second a
song and adores a scandal when the last post's gone by. Fond of
a concertina and pairs passing when she's had her forty winks
for supper after kanekannan and abbely dimpling and is in her
merlin chair assotted, reading her Evening World. To see is
it smarts, full lengths or swaggers. News, news, all the news.
Death, a leopard, kills fellah in Fez. Angry scenes at Stormount.
Stilla Star with her lucky in goingaways. Opportunity fair with
the China floods and we hear these rosy rumours. Ding Tams he
noise about all same Harry chap. She's seeking her way, a chickle
a chuckle, in and out of their serial story, Les Loves of Selskar
et Pervenche, freely adapted to The Novvergin's Viv. There'll
be bluebells blowing in salty sepulchres the night she signs her
final tear. Zee End. But that's a world of ways away. Till track
laws time. No silver ash or switches for that one! While flattering
candles flare. Anna Stacey's how are you! Worther waist in the
noblest, says Adams and Sons, the wouldpay actionneers. Her
hair's as brown as ever it was. And wivvy and wavy. Repose you
now! Finn no more!
For, be that samesake sibsubstitute of a hooky salmon, there's
already a big rody ram lad at random on the premises of his

[p29] haunt of the hungred bordles, as it is told me. Shop Illicit,
flourishing like a lordmajor or a buaboabaybohm, litting flop
a deadlop (aloose!) to lee but lifting a bennbranch a yardalong
(Ivoeh!) the breezy side (for showm!), the height of Brew-
ster's chimpney and as broad below as Phineas Barnum; humph-
ing his share of the showthers is senken on him he's such a
grandfallar, with a pocked wife in pickle that's a flyfire and three
lice nittle clinkers, two twilling bugs and one midgit pucelle.
And aither he cursed and recursed and was everseen doing what
your fourfootlers saw or he was never done seeing what you cool-
pigeons know, weep the clouds aboon for smiledown witnesses,
and that'll do now about the fairyhees and the frailyshees.
Though Eset fibble it to the zephiroth and Artsa zoom it round
her heavens for ever. Creator he has created for his creatured
ones a creation. White monothoid? Red theatrocrat? And all the
pinkprophets cohalething? Very much so! But however 'twas
'tis sure for one thing, what sherif Toragh voucherfors and
Mapqiq makes put out, that the man, Humme the Cheapner,
Esc, overseen as we thought him, yet a worthy of the naym,
came at this timecoloured place where we live in our paroqial
fermament one tide on another, with a bumrush in a hull of a
wherry, the twin turbane dhow, The Bey for Dybbling, this
archipelago's first visiting schooner, with a wicklowpattern
waxenwench at her prow for a figurehead, the deadsea dugong
updipdripping from his depths, and has been repreaching him-
self like a fishmummer these siktyten years ever since, his shebi
by his shide, adi and aid, growing hoarish under his turban and
changing cane sugar into sethulose starch (Tuttut's cess to him!)
as also that, batin the bulkihood he bloats about when innebbi-
ated, our old offender was humile, commune and ensectuous
from his nature, which you may gauge after the bynames was
put under him, in lashons of languages, (honnein suit and
praisers be!) and, totalisating him, even hamissim of himashim
that he, sober serious, he is ee and no counter he who will be
ultimendly respunchable for the hubbub caused in Eden-
borough.

[End of reading excerpt]

Adam Seelig: That was my friend and colleague Richard Harte reading the conclusion of Chapter 1 from Finnegans Wake, pages 24 to 29, recorded live in Toronto on August 31st, 2022.

Join us for Episode 7 for Richard’s reading of Finnegans Wake Chapter 2, which introduces us to the protagonist HC Earwicker. This podcast series is taking a short break this summer so I can focus on the film production of future chapters, so please note that the next episode, Episode 7, will release on Thursday, August 29th, when we’ll be resuming our fortnightly podcast releases. In the meantime, why not follow or subscribe to this podcast so you’re alerted for upcoming episodes. And for more on One Little Goat’s Finnegans Wake project, including transcripts of this podcast and trailers for the films, visit our website at OneLittleGoat.org.

[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]

Finnegans Wake is made possible by Friends of One Little Goat Theatre Company and the Emigrant Support Programme of the gov’t of Ireland. Thank you for your support!

And thank you to the artists for this episode: Richard Harte; Sound by William Bembridge; Podcast production by Sean Rasmussen; Stage Management by Laura Lakatosh; Rehearsal Stage Management by Sandi Becker; Directed by yours truly, Adam Seelig.

Thanks to our live audience of Pip Dwyer, Kevin Kennedy, Cathy Murphy, Nomi Rotbard, Arlo Rotbard-Seelig. And thanks to our rehearsal audience of Jackie Chau, Jordy Koffman, Andrew Moodie & Shai Rotbard-Seelig. Thank you to the Embassy of Ireland in Ottawa and the Irish Consulate in Toronto. And to Production Consultants Cathy Murphy and Andrew Moodie.

One Little Goat Theatre Company is a not-for-profit, artist-driven, registered charity. To find out more and to join our mailing list please visit www.OneLittleGoat.org

Thank you for listening!

[Music fades out]

Mentioned: Tim Finnegan, “Finnegan’s Wake” Irish American folk song, the title of Finnegans Wake, FIN FINNE & FINE as ‘the end’, EGAN as ‘again’, literary device of ‘it and its opposite’, at Tim’s wake, “Finn no more!”, better off dead?, Dublin (and Toronto) traffic, Aunt Florenza & Timmy the Tosser, “queenoveire”, neighbourhood news, Edenborough as Eden & Burg Quays in Dublin, synopsis.

Resources:
Transcript for this episode, including the text of Finnegans Wake pages 24-29.
Finnegans Wake (1939) by James Joyce: there are many free copies of FW to read online or download, e.g. finwake.com
James Joyce Digital Archive, “Chicken Guide” to Finnegans Wake provides a ‘plain English’ paraphrase of each chapter by Danis Rose.
Edmund Epstein, A Guide through Finnegans Wake. University Press of Florida, 2009.
William York Tindall, A Reader’s Guide to Finnegans Wake. Syracuse University Press, 1996.
Roland McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake (4th edition). Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2016.
John Gordon’s annotations on his Finnegans Wake blog.
Richard Ellmann’s biography of James Joyce. Oxford University Press, 1982.

Episode 005: the prankquean (p.19:20-24:15)

June 27, 2024 Adam Seelig

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE
Episode 005
THE PRANKQUEAN

PAGE 19:20-24:15 | 2024-06-27

PODCAST AUDIO

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

[Music: Richard Harte sings “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly” from Finnegans Wake]

Have you heard of one Humpty Dumpty
How he fell with a roll and a rumble
And curled up like Lord Olofa Crumple
By the butt of the Magazine Wall

[Music fades out]

Adam Seelig: Welcome to James Joyce’s divine and delirious comedy, Finnegans Wake. In this episode, number 5, we’ll hear Irish-Canadian actor—and my good friend and colleague—Richard Harte reading pages 19 to 24 of Joyce’s last novel, which will include the famous “prankquean” fable. I’m Adam Seelig, the director of the reading you’ll soon hear.

[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]

[Music fades out]

Adam Seelig: In 1899, forty years before James Joyce’s dream-language epic, Finnegans Wake, was published, Sigmund Freud pointed out in The Interpretation of Dreams that, “Words are often treated as things in dreams, and then they go through […] combinations, displacements, substitutions and […] condensations” (227). Dreams, in other words, play with words. They pun. Finnegans Wake multiplies such wordplay, often taking double entendres and doubling them (Dublin them?!) again.

Chapter 1 of Finnegans Wake, which can serve as an overture to the rest of the novel, has three standout scenes: the “museyroom” (which we heard in podcast Episode 3), Mutt and Jute (from our Episode 4) and the “prankquean”, which we’ll hear Richard Harte read in today’s episode.

While I’m eager to get you to Richard’s reading (and honestly, you can still enjoy the “prankquean” without an introduction so feel free to jump ahead), I’m going to outline and point out a few things in this brilliant, bewildering piece of writing. Deliberately bewildering, because this fairy tale for adults, like so much else in the Wake, takes us, readers and listeners, back to an almost pre-verbal state where sound can be pleasure before it is sense. That’s why I often think of the Wake as a kind of Mother Goose for grown-ups, as I mentioned in the first podcast episode. With the introduction of the “prankquean” we can now, to Mother Goose, add Hans Christian Andersen.

The “prankquean” is a rare case of sequential narrative in the famously nonlinear Wake. Like many children’s stories, it opens with ‘a long long time ago’ — or the Wakean equivalent of that proverbial beginning to a story — and follows the three-part structure of many fables involving conflict and resolution, from “The Three Little Pigs” to “The Three Billy Goats Gruff”: there’s a first event, a second similar event, and finally a most dramatic event, after which, you won’t be surprised to discover, ‘they all lived happily ever after’ — or the Wakean equivalent of that proverbial end to a story, which Joyce turns into something that sounds like ‘and they all drank tea’, but this being a fable for grownups, the Wake gives us, “And they all drank free.” (23:7-8)

The prankquean character is modeled on Ireland’s celebrated Sea Queen and Maritime Pirate, Grace O’Malley, and the story is modeled on a popular tale of her altercation with the Earl of Howth in Dublin in the late 16th century. So popular is the tale, that I’ll turn to a website representing one of the world’s most popular drinks — beer — for the tale’s retelling. Here is how Howth’s very own brewery, Hope Beer, summarizes it:

“According to the popular tale, [Grace O’Malley] was refused entry to Howth Castle in 1576 when she attempted to call in unexpectedly to the Earl of Howth. Furious with this social snub she kidnapped the Earl’s grandson and her ransom was a promise that unanticipated guests would never be turned away again. She also made the Earl promise that the gates of Deer Park, where the castle is located, would never be closed to the public again. The gates are still open to this day, and an extra place is set for unexpected guests during formal dinners in the dining room.”

*“Eve and Adam in the Garden of Eden,” oil on canvas by* *Heinz Seelig*.

In the Wake’s version, Grace O’Malley becomes the prankquean, who is also referred to as “grace o’malice”, and the Earl of Howth becomes Jarl van Hoother — “Jarl” meaning “chief” in Danish, a reminder of the cultural and literal clashes between the Irish and Ireland’s Viking invaders (as we heard in the previous episode with the dialogue of Mutt and Jute).

The tale begins a long time ago in an Edenic setting that references Adam and the woman born from his rib, the eternal “ribberrobber,” Eve (21:8). It’s a beginning that echoes and “recirculates” the very opening line of Finnegans Wake, which took us “past Eve and Adam’s […] to Howth Castle and Environs” (3:1). This being a kind of Paradise, we’re in a prelapsarian world of universal love when “everybilly lived alove with everybiddy else” (21:9, I love that phrase).

Enter Jarl van Hoother positioned high up in his fortress — the text initially calls it “his lamphouse,” which corresponds to the Baily Lighthouse in Howth — where we discover van Hoother suggestively “laying cold hands on himself.” (21:11) It can get lonely at the top, so who can blame him. We then hear of his children, described as “two little jiminies”, or Geminis, i.e. they are twins, and also introduced to “their dummy”, which continues to be a mystery for virtually everyone who reads this fable, myself included.

From there, the story carries out its three-peating structure: the “prankquean” spontaneously appears, she poses a riddle to van Hoother, gets denied or shut down (notice how the word “shut”, so close to “shit”, pops out at that moment), leading her to kidnap one of the twins, unleash a flood of rain, and disappear with the child for 40 years — 40 years being a Biblical number for the passage of an entire generation, echoing the 40 Biblical days of the flood survived by Noah. Then the prankquean returns and the event repeats with some variation. And again she returns for a third and final and most dramatic, explosive iteration that breaks the cycle of conflict between her and the Jarl, bringing the tale to its happy resolution: “And they all drank free.” This is followed by a summation of the story that foreshadows later moments in the Wake, establishes the novel’s family unit and closes with a riff on the official motto for the city of Dublin, that is (translated from the Latin), “The obedience of citizens produces a happy city”.

Of the many things that can be said about this story, here are four:

(1) “quean” in “prankquean” is spelled Q-U-E-A-N, allowing us to hear her as a ruler (Q-U-E-E-N) while reading her as the archaic, Old English definition of a Q-U-E-A-N quean, which my dictionary defines as, “an impudent or ill-behaved girl or woman; a prostitute.” (By the way, for those who want to read along with today’s excerpt, you can always find the complete text in the podcast transcript on One Little Goat’s website.)

(2) Of the 35 sentences comprising the “prankquean” fable, 21 of them begin with the word ‘And…’, with the other sentences beginning with the words ‘But…’, ‘So…’, and a few others. This highlights the oral quality of the storytelling — so called proper written grammar would never begin a sentence with the word ‘And’ — and it contributes to the continuous flow and stream of the tale. The Wake here, to my ear, is working with the cadences of ancient storytelling, exemplified by the rhythms of the Hebrew Bible. Take a look at the first chapter of the Bible’s first book, Genesis, referenced by the “prankquean” fable with its Adam-and-Eve beginning, and you’ll see that every single verse starts with the word ‘And…’.

(3) Jarl van Hoother’s stuttering, explosive response to the prankquean’s third and final visit includes the second of the Wake’s 10 famous 100-letter ‘thunderwords’, and just as the first ‘thunderword’ marked Tim Finnegan’s fall from the ladder (and by extension humanity’s fall from grace), this second ‘thunderword’ marks the Jarl’s fall from the heights of his fortress.

(4) Keep an ear out for the names of the “jiminies”, or twins, and how they go through those “combinations, displacements, substitutions and condensations” we heard Freud mention earlier. One is named Tristopher, which likely makes Tristopher sad, or in French, triste; while the other is named Hilary, which likely makes Hilary happy. After the prankquean abducts them, their names change: the syllables in Hilary swap to become “Larryhill” (22:19) and those in Tristopher become “Toughertrees” (22:24).

There’s so much more to say about the ever evocative “prankquean” fable. Much has been made of its relation to the rest of the Wake, especially in how it represents — or as Freud might put it, condenses — the establishment of the novel’s central family of ALP, HCE and their children. For those who’d like to read more about it, I’ll list some resources in this episode’s transcript, which again you can find on One Little Goat’s website.

It's time for a quick overview of the rest of today’s excerpt, which begins on page 19, a couple of pages before we meet the “prankquean”.

The “meandertale” we heard on the previous page and in the previous podcast episode has now grown into a “meanderthalltale” (19:25), so not only is it ancient and meandering, it also stretches the truth. And again we’re reminded of the Wake’s ancient underpinnings: “All was of ancientry.” (19:33)

One of my favourite phrases in the book comes up here: “But the world, mind, is, was and will be writing its own wrunes for ever, man” (19:35-6). It’s such an expressive moment, suggesting, among many things, that the world: rights (with an R) its wrongs, writes (with a W) its own ruins, and writes (with a W) its own wrunes (with a W), with that word alone, “wrunes” (with a W) connoting a whole range of writing and prophecy, including mysterious symbols, spells and incantations, ancient Norse wisdom poetry. “writing its own wrunes” — it’s one of the Wake’s many resonant phrases that keeps on giving.

The novel’s male and female protagonists, Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker and Anna Livia Plurabelle, are then invoked right before the “prankquean” fable begins: “Hark, the corne entreats! And the larpnotes prittle” (21:3-4) — the beginning letters of each word spelling out HCE and ALP.

The “prankquean” episode then unfolds.

And immediately after, we hear a motif that runs throughout the novel: “O foenix culprit!” (23:16) This is the first of many Wakean variations on the Catholic concept of felix culpa, referring to Adam’s happy fall — happy because without the fall there would be no redemption. With “foenix culprit” the Wake has combined felix culpa with the mythological Phoenix that falls and rises, the central movement of Finnegans Wake, as well as with Dublin’s Phoenix Park, the central location of the novel.

Our excerpt closes with what appears to be Tim Finnegan rising, as he does in the eponymous folk song, from the dead following a splash of whiskey. The alcoholic resurrection, though, really shouldn’t surprise us given that whiskey, formally known as usquebaugh, derives from the Gaelic uisge beatha [ishka baha], meaning ‘water of life’.

Richard Harte’s reading of Finnegans Wake Chapter 1 was shot and recorded in 2022 in my home in Toronto with a small audience. It premiered at the Toronto Irish Film Festival, European Union Film Festival, and Bloomsday Film Festival at the James Joyce Centre in Dublin.

And now it’s time to welcome you all back into my home for Richard’s continued reading of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, page 19 line 20 to page 24 line 15 in Chapter 1.

[Richard Harte reads Finnegans Wake 19:20-24:15.]

[p19] Axe on thwacks on thracks, axenwise. One by one place one
be three dittoh and one before. Two nursus one make a plaus-
ible free and idim behind. Starting off with a big boaboa and three-
legged calvers and ivargraine jadesses with a message in their
mouths. And a hundreadfilled unleavenweight of liberorumqueue
to con an we can till allhorrors eve. What a meanderthalltale to
unfurl and with what an end in view of squattor and anntisquattor
and postproneauntisquattor! To say too us to be every tim, nick
and larry of us, sons of the sod, sons, littlesons, yea and lealittle-
sons, when usses not to be, every sue, siss and sally of us, dugters
of Nan! Accusative ahnsire! Damadam to infinities!
True there was in nillohs dieybos as yet no lumpend papeer
in the waste, and mightmountain Penn still groaned for the micies
to let flee. All was of ancientry. You gave me a boot (signs on
it!) and I ate the wind. I quizzed you a quid (with for what?) and
you went to the quod. But the world, mind, is, was and will be
writing its own wrunes for ever, man, on all matters that fall

[p20] under the ban of our infrarational senses fore the last milch-
camel, the heartvein throbbing between his eyebrowns, has still to
moor before the tomb of his cousin charmian where his date is
tethered by the palm that's hers. But the horn, the drinking, the
day of dread are not now. A bone, a pebble, a ramskin; chip them,
chap them, cut them up allways; leave them to terracook in the
muttheringpot: and Gutenmorg with his cromagnom charter,
tintingfast and great primer must once for omniboss step rub-
rickredd out of the wordpress else is there no virtue more in al-
cohoran. For that (the rapt one warns) is what papyr is meed
of, made of, hides and hints and misses in prints. Till ye finally
(though not yet endlike) meet with the acquaintance of Mister
Typus, Mistress Tope and all the little typtopies. Fillstup. So you
need hardly spell me how every word will be bound over to carry
three score and ten toptypsical readings throughout the book of
Doublends Jined (may his forehead be darkened with mud who
would sunder!) till Daleth, mahomahouma, who oped it closeth
thereof the. Dor.
Cry not yet! There's many a smile to Nondum, with sytty
maids per man, sir, and the park's so dark by kindlelight. But
look what you have in your handself! The movibles are scrawl-
ing in motions, marching, all of them ago, in pitpat and zingzang
for every busy eerie whig's a bit of a torytale to tell. One's upon
a thyme and two's behind their lettice leap and three's among the
strubbely beds. And the chicks picked their teeths and the domb-
key he begay began. You can ask your ass if he believes it. And
so cuddy me only wallops have heels. That one of a wife with
folty barnets. For then was the age when hoops ran high. Of a
noarch and a chopwife; of a pomme full grave and a fammy of
levity; or of golden youths that wanted gelding; or of what the
mischievmiss made a man do. Malmarriedad he was reverso-
gassed by the frisque of her frasques and her prytty pyrrhique.
Maye faye, she's la gaye this snaky woman! From that trippiery
toe expectungpelick! Veil, volantine, valentine eyes. She's the
very besch Winnie blows Nay on good. Flou inn, flow ann.
Hohore! So it's sure it was her not we! But lay it easy, gentle

[p21] mien, we are in rearing of a norewhig. So weenybeeny-
veenyteeny. Comsy see! Hetwis if ee newt. Lissom! lissom!
I am doing it. Hark, the corne entreats! And the larpnotes
prittle.
It was of a night, late, lang time agone, in an auldstane eld,
when Adam was delvin and his madameen spinning watersilts,
when mulk mountynotty man was everybully and the first leal
ribberrobber that ever had her ainway everybuddy to his love-
saking eyes and everybilly lived alove with everybiddy else, and
Jarl van Hoother had his burnt head high up in his lamphouse,
laying cold hands on himself. And his two little jiminies, cousins
of ourn, Tristopher and Hilary, were kickaheeling their dummy
on the oil cloth flure of his homerigh, castle and earthenhouse.
And, be dermot, who come to the keep of his inn only the niece-
of-his-in-law, the prankquean. And the prankquean pulled a rosy
one and made her wit foreninst the dour. And she lit up and fire-
land was ablaze. And spoke she to the dour in her petty perusi-
enne: Mark the Wans, why do I am alook alike a poss of porter-
pease? And that was how the skirtmisshes began. But the dour
handworded her grace in dootch nossow: Shut! So her grace
o'malice kidsnapped up the jiminy Tristopher and into the shan-
dy westerness she rain, rain, rain. And Jarl van Hoother war-
lessed after her with soft dovesgall: Stop deef stop come back to
my earin stop. But she swaradid to him: Unlikelihud. And there
was a brannewail that same sabboath night of falling angles some-
where in Erio. And the prankquean went for her forty years'
walk in Tourlemonde and she washed the blessings of the love-
spots off the jiminy with soap sulliver suddles and she had her
four owlers masters for to tauch him his tickles and she convor-
ted him to the onesure allgood and he became a luderman. So then
she started to rain and to rain and, be redtom, she was back again
at Jarl van Hoother's in a brace of samers and the jiminy with
her in her pinafrond, lace at night, at another time. And where
did she come but to the bar of his bristolry. And Jarl von Hoo-
ther had his baretholobruised heels drowned in his cellarmalt,
shaking warm hands with himself and the jimminy Hilary and

[p21] the dummy in their first infancy were below on the tearsheet,
wringing and coughing, like brodar and histher. And the prank-
quean nipped a paly one and lit up again and redcocks flew flack-
ering from the hillcombs. And she made her witter before the
wicked, saying: Mark the Twy, why do I am alook alike two poss
of porterpease? And: Shut! says the wicked, handwording her
madesty. So her madesty aforethought set down a jiminy and
took up a jiminy and all the lilipath ways to Woeman's Land she
rain, rain, rain. And Jarl von Hoother bleethered atter her with
a loud finegale: Stop domb stop come back with my earring stop.
But the prankquean swaradid: Am liking it. And there was a wild
old grannewwail that laurency night of starshootings somewhere
in Erio. And the prankquean went for her forty years' walk in
Turnlemeem and she punched the curses of cromcruwell with
the nail of a top into the jiminy and she had her four larksical
monitrix to touch him his tears and she provorted him to the
onecertain allsecure and he became a tristian. So then she started
raining, raining, and in a pair of changers, be dom ter, she was
back again at Jarl von Hoother's and the Larryhill with her under
her abromette. And why would she halt at all if not by the ward
of his mansionhome of another nice lace for the third charm?
And Jarl von Hoother had his hurricane hips up to his pantry-
box, ruminating in his holdfour stomachs (Dare! O dare!), and
the jiminy Toughertrees and the dummy were belove on the
watercloth, kissing and spitting, and roguing and poghuing, like
knavepaltry and naivebride and in their second infancy. And the
prankquean picked a blank and lit out and the valleys lay twink-
ling. And she made her wittest in front of the arkway of trihump,
asking: Mark the Tris, why do I am alook alike three poss of por-
ter pease? But that was how the skirtmishes endupped. For like
the campbells acoming with a fork lance of lightning, Jarl von
Hoother Boanerges himself, the old terror of the dames, came
hip hop handihap out through the pikeopened arkway of his
three shuttoned castles, in his broadginger hat and his civic chol-
lar and his allabuff hemmed and his bullbraggin soxangloves
and his ladbroke breeks and his cattegut bandolair and his fur-

[p23] framed panuncular cumbottes like a rudd yellan gruebleen or-
angeman in his violet indigonation, to the whole longth of the
strongth of his bowman's bill. And he clopped his rude hand to
his eacy hitch and he ordurd and his thick spch spck for her to
shut up shop, dappy. And the duppy shot the shutter clup (Per-
kodhuskurunbarggruauyagokgorlayorgromgremmitghundhurth-
rumathunaradidillifaititillibumullunukkunun!) And they all drank
free. For one man in his armour was a fat match always for any
girls under shurts. And that was the first peace of illiterative
porthery in all the flamend floody flatuous world. How kirssy the
tiler made a sweet unclose to the Narwhealian captol. Saw fore
shalt thou sea. Betoun ye and be. The prankquean was to hold
her dummyship and the jimminies was to keep the peacewave
and van Hoother was to git the wind up. Thus the hearsomeness
of the burger felicitates the whole of the polis.
O foenix culprit! Ex nickylow malo comes mickelmassed bo-
num. Hill, rill, ones in company, billeted, less be proud of. Breast
high and bestride! Only for that these will not breathe upon
Norronesen or Irenean the secrest of their soorcelossness. Quar-
ry silex, Homfrie Noanswa! Undy gentian festyknees, Livia No-
answa? Wolkencap is on him, frowned; audiurient, he would
evesdrip, were it mous at hand, were it dinn of bottles in the far
ear. Murk, his vales are darkling. With lipth she lithpeth to him
all to time of thuch on thuch and thow on thow. She he she ho
she ha to la. Hairfluke, if he could bad twig her! Impalpabunt,
he abhears. The soundwaves are his buffeteers; they trompe him
with their trompes; the wave of roary and the wave of hooshed
and the wave of hawhawhawrd and the wave of neverheedthem-
horseluggarsandlisteltomine. Landloughed by his neaghboormis-
tress and perpetrified in his offsprung, sabes and suckers, the
moaning pipers could tell him to his faceback, the louthly one
whose loab we are devorers of, how butt for his hold halibutt, or
her to her pudor puff, the lipalip one whose libe we drink at, how
biff for her tiddywink of a windfall, our breed and washer givers,
there would not be a holey spier on the town nor a vestal flout-
ing in the dock, nay to make plein avowels, nor a yew nor an eye

[p24] to play cash cash in Novo Nilbud by swamplight nor a' toole o'
tall o' toll and noddy hint to the convaynience.
He dug in and dug out by the skill of his tilth for himself and
all belonging to him and he sweated his crew beneath his auspice
for the living and he urned his dread, that dragon volant, and he
made louse for us and delivered us to boll weevils amain, that
mighty liberator, Unfru-Chikda-Uru-Wukru and begad he did,
our ancestor most worshipful, till he thought of a better one in
his windower's house with that blushmantle upon him from ears-
end to earsend. And would again could whispring grassies wake
him and may again when the fiery bird disembers. And will
again if so be sooth by elder to his youngers shall be said. Have
you whines for my wedding, did you bring bride and bedding,
will you whoop for my deading is a? Wake? Usgueadbaugham!
Anam muck an dhoul! Did ye drink me doornail?

[End of reading excerpt]

Adam Seelig: That was my friend and colleague Richard Harte reading from Finnegans Wake, Chapter 1, pages 19-24, recorded live in Toronto on August 31st, 2022.

Join us for Episode 6 in a fortnight when Richard continues with the next five pages of Finnegans Wake to conclude Chapter 1 of Joyce’s extraordinary epic. To be sure you don’t miss any episodes, why not follow or subscribe to this podcast? And for more on One Little Goat’s Finnegans Wake project, including transcripts of this podcast and trailers for the films, visit our website at OneLittleGoat.org.

[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]

Adam Seelig: Finnegans Wake is made possible by Friends of One Little Goat Theatre Company and the Emigrant Support Programme of the gov’t of Ireland. Thank you for your support!

One Little Goat Theatre Company is a not-for-profit, artist-driven, registered charity. To find out more and to join our mailing list please visit www.OneLittleGoat.org

Thank you for listening!

[Music fades out]

Mentioned: Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), puns, Mother Goose, Hans Christian Andersen, the “prankquean”, linear/nonlinear narrative, fables, fairy tales, tripartite structure, Hope Beer in Howth, Grace O’Malley, Earl of Howth, Howth Castle, Baily Lighthouse, Jarl (Danish “chief”), Eden, Adam and Eve, quean and queen, ancient storytelling cadences, “And…”, Hebrew Bible, Genesis, second thunderword, wordplay with twins’ names, family unit, “meanderthalltale”, “writing its own wrunes”, ALP and HCE, felix culpa and happy fall, whiskey as water of life, synopsis.

Resources:
Transcript for this episode, including the text of Finnegans Wake pages 19-24.
Finnegans Wake (1939) by James Joyce: there are many free copies of FW to read online or download, e.g. finwake.com
James Joyce Digital Archive, “Chicken Guide” to Finnegans Wake provides a ‘plain English’ paraphrase of each chapter by Danis Rose.
Brendan Ward’s blog post on the “prankquean”.
Edmund Epstein, A Guide through Finnegans Wake. University Press of Florida, 2009.
William York Tindall, A Reader’s Guide to Finnegans Wake. Syracuse University Press, 1996.
Roland McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake (4th edition). Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2016.
John Gordon’s annotations on his Finnegans Wake blog.
Richard Ellmann’s biography of James Joyce. Oxford University Press, 1982.

Cited:
Sigmund Freud. The Interpretation of Dreams (1899). Trans. Joyce Crick. Oxford University Press, 1999.
“Stories of Howth”, Hope Beer website.

Episode 004: Mutt and Jute, characterlessness (p.13:20-19:19)

June 13, 2024 Adam Seelig

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE
Episode 004
MUTT & JUTE
CHARACTERLESSNESS

PAGE 13:20-19:19 | 2024-06-13

PODCAST AUDIO

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

[Music: Richard Harte sings “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly” from Finnegans Wake]

Have you heard of one Humpty Dumpty
How he fell with a roll and a rumble
And curled up like Lord Olofa Crumple
By the butt of the Magazine Wall

[Music fades out]

Adam Seelig: Welcome to James Joyce’s divine and delirious comedy, Finnegans Wake. In this episode, number 4, we’ll hear Irish-Canadian actor—and my good friend and colleague—Richard Harte reading pages 13 to 19 of Joyce’s last novel, which will include the dialogue of Mutt and Jute. I’m Adam Seelig, the director of the reading you’ll soon hear.

Will you be in Dublin this Sunday, June 16th? If so, come to the James Joyce Centre, where the Bloomsday Film Festival will be screening One Little Goat’s Finnegans Wake Chapters 1 and 2, screening all day from 10am - 4pm. And if you’re in Toronto on Bloomsday June the 16th, come see what our friends at Toronto Bloomsday Festival are doing to celebrate the day Leopold Bloom wandered the city of Dublin in Joyce’s second-best book (!), Ulysses. Details for both festivals are online. Wherever you may be, happy Bloomsday!

[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]

[Music fades out]

Robert Houle exhibit, Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), 2022-03-30 (Snapshot: Adam Seelig)

A couple of years ago, on my way in to see the Robert Houle retrospective at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto (the same show, incidentally, that’s been at the Smithsonian Museum of Indigenous Americans in Washington, DC for the past year), I encountered this quote from Houle himself, printed on a tall banner near the entrance to the exhibition:

“The lack of a linear chronology in myth, storytelling, and dreams, the interchangeable grammar and the interchangeability of perception is what makes wonderful, rhythmical patterns of thought in the oral traditions of the ancient ones.”

While Houle, an Anishinaabe artist from Sandy Bay First Nation, was referring to Indigenous oral traditions, his brilliant statement here could just as easily describe Finnegans Wake, almost to the point of providing a stylistic checklist for Joyce’s dream novel:
— “lack of linear chronology”: check
— “myth, storytelling, dreams”: check
— “interchangeable grammar and […] perception”: check again (to which I’ll add the interchangeability of character, which we’ll get to in a moment)
— “wonderful, rhythmical patterns of thought”: check, for sure
— “oral traditions of the ancient ones”: Joyce encouraged reading the Wake aloud, and for all its modernism, the Wake regularly draws on ancient languages and age-old texts, many of which are composites of oral traditions, from the Egyptian Book of the Dead to the Hebrew Bible to A Thousand-and-One Nights of Scheherazade, or as the Wake puts it, “one thousand and one stories, all told, of the same” (5:28-9).

In today’s excerpt from Richard Harte’s reading of Finnegans Wake, Chapter 1, pages 13 to 19, we’re going to encounter all of the elements in Houle’s statement on ancient storytelling because the Wake is a “meandertale” (18:22), a meandering, nonlinear story stretching as far back as Neanderthal days. In similarly nonlinear fashion, I’m going to jump a little ahead in today’s excerpt to the Wake’s first dialogue, a dialogue conducted by a kind of vaudevillian duo of prehistory named Mutt & Jute.

It will come as no surprise that, as someone who makes plays, I love dialogue, so I naturally gravitate to Mutt and Jute’s exchange, which takes its tone from ‘Mutt and Jeff,’ the widely syndicated American comic strip that began in 1907. Joyce’s Mutt and Jute initially seem to divide into distinct identities à la Mutt and Jeff, Laurel and Hardy, tall and short, slim and fat, etc. Initially Mutt strikes me as an extroverted, talkative Irish character, and Jute as an introverted, taciturn, Scandinavian, especially given that a Jute is someone from Jutland, or Yoolan [Jylland] in Danish, a peninsula stretching up into Denmark. With Mutt as a native Irishman and Jute as a Dane, potentially of the invading Viking variety, we have two men on opposite sides of the bloody historical battle that informs their conversation, the Battle of Clontarf (or in Wake-speak, “Dungtarf”) in the year 1014, when the last High King of Ireland, Brian Boru, defeated the Danish occupying army.

Mutt initiates the dialogue with the strange man he sees before him by asking what language the stranger speaks: Danish, Norwegian, English, Anglo-Saxon? Given no affirmatives, Mutt concludes that the stranger is clearly a Jute. How on earth Mutt reaches that conclusion is beyond me. Maybe he’s putting on an act in an effort to get to know the stranger? As part of that act, he suggests they swap hats and have a chat; but in the process of hat-swapping — it’s hard not to picture those hats as the iconic bowlers of Laurel and Hardy — they also seem to have swapped identities. Now the character formerly known as Mutt is Jute, or “Yutah” as he pronounces it with a newfound Scandinavian inflection, and Jute is Mutt. Jute (or “Yutah”) now is the talkative one and Mutt, the taciturn. Until the conversational tide shifts and Mutt becomes the talkative one with only occasional comments from Jute. As Danis Rose puts it: “Jute had earlier complained that Mutt was almost inaudible to him. He now insists that he can barely understand a single word from start to finish in Mutt's patois” — which in Wake-speak becomes “patwhat” (17:14-15).

Joyce has swapped and confused Mutt and Jute’s identities from the moment they encounter. Going back to Robert Houle’s observation on interchangeable grammar and perception, which applies so well to Mutt and Jute’s dialogue, the Wake adds one more interchangeability: the interchangeability of character.

So not only is the Wake radically dismantling the norms of narrative fiction and how a book should be, it’s also dismantling the norms of drama and how a character should act.

We could say that rather than being three-dimensional characters — as Joyce’s characters very much are in his previous books — the characters of Finnegans Wake are four-dimensional, stretching across the dimension of time. The scene between Mutt and Jute, for example, takes place just as much in the Stone Age as it does in the year 1014 as it does in a 20th-century newspaper comic strip like Mutt and Jeff. Four-dimensional characters, characters capable of temporal simultaneity: I like the idea (and it brings to mind the recent movie Everything Everywhere All At Once) and it may prove useful when we talk more about Earwicker, the main character of Chapter 2.

At this moment, I prefer to think of the characters in the Wake, starting with Mutt and Jute, as characterless. That may sound pejorative, but I mean it the way Swedish playwright August Strindberg used the term when writing about his play Miss Julie:

“I have made my people [—I love that he calls them ‘people,’ not ‘characters’—]] somewhat ‘characterless’…. [Character] became the middle-class term for the automaton, one whose nature had become fixed or who had adapted himself to a particular role in life. In fact, a person who had ceased to grow was called a character, while one continuing to develop… was called characterless, in a derogatory sense, of course, because he was so hard to catch, classify, and keep track of. … A character came to signify a man fixed and finished.”

The characterlessness of Mutt and Jute and the malleability of their identities show Joyce undermining character as fixed and finished, much as he undermined the entire novel as fixed and finished. The original title for Finnegans Wake was Work in Progress. The novel and its characters are never finished. They are always in a state and stage of becoming, and in Mutt and Jute’s case they go so far as to become each other.

Maybe that’s because the exchange of both words and bodies between Mutt and Jute is ultimately, as John Gordon suggests, an exchange between Me and You — the internal dialogue of a dreamer. I’m also happy to make the case that ‘you’ could easily be a synonym for ‘me’ based on an expression that one of my kids would use when he was a toddler — instead of saying “Tell me” when he wanted to know something, he would say, “Tell you.” At one point I thought I would try to correct this pronoun mixup only to realize that it's impossible to explain to an early speaker the difference between ‘me’ and ‘you’ without confusion. In our early years, ‘you’ is ‘me,’ and ‘me,’ ‘you,’ just as in prehistoric years, Mutt is Jute, and Jute, Mutt, and the difference we see between them could be the two complementary or opposing parts of one person. There is no ‘me’ without ‘you,’ no Mutt without Jute, no Laurel without Hardy, and if we move beyond Joyce’s lifetime to Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot, there is no Vladimir without Estragon. And like Mutt and Jute before them, Beckett’s Didi and Gogo exchange hats. I’ll add that in Beckett’s later play, Ohio Impromptu — which, incidentally, recalls his days as Joyce’s amanuensis — he further dissolved the distinction between two characters on stage by placing only one hat between them.

Though Mutt and Jute start out Irish and Danish, respectively, they end up wearing each other’s hat, confused — perhaps more conjoined than confused given that Scandinavian genetics have been part of Irish ancestry since Vikings first invaded the Emerald Isle over a thousand years ago. There is no such thing as a pure identity, or as Finnegans Wake puts it a few lines after Mutt and Jute’s dialogue, “Miscegenations on miscegenations” (18:20). People — be they individuals or nations — are mixed up with and within each other. The merging of character, the dissolving of distinctions, the characterlessness, is deliberate.

It’s time to go back a few pages now and mention a few more things in today’s reading.

It opens with the word and number, “Four,” introducing us to four old historians, here referred to as “Mammon Lujius”, an acronym for the four Gospels of Christianity: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. These four also personify the four provinces of Ireland: Ulster, Munster, Leinster and Connacht. We’ll meet these four men again in various iterations throughout the novel. Woven into the same paragraph are the four seasons represented by Jewish months of the year: the month of Adar for winter, Nisan for spring, Tammuz for summer, and Marcheshvan for fall. And celebrating fall, the paragraph closes with the name of the Jewish harvesting festival, Sukkot.

The four historians share four historical dates with us about bloody wars in Dublin. The first is 1132 A.D.; the second is half of 1132, or 566 A.D.; the third is 566 A.D. again; and the fourth, 1132 A.D. again. In other words, the dates fall and rise again, the central theme and motion of Finnegans Wake. What to make of these dates/numbers, especially 1132 which recurs throughout the Wake? William Tindall tells us little of historical note happened in 1132 A.D. (excepting, I suppose, the usual bloody wars in Dublin) so he focuses on the number itself, separating 1132 into two parts: 11, which he interprets as rising, and which I understand as eleven elevating; and 32, which he interprets as falling, thanks to Galileo’s observation that objects fall at a rate of 32 feet per second per second. So here again we have the central theme and motion of Finnegans Wake with the rise of 11 and fall of 32. Tindall also points out 32 counties in Ireland. And he adds more ingenious meanings for the numbers, which I’ll include in the transcript of this podcast (posted on One Little Goat’s website [see note at foot of this transcript]). Roland McHugh notes the death of legendary Irish hunter-warrior-poet Finn MacCool was in the year 283 according to the chronicles of Irish history known as the Annals of the Four Masters, and 283 times 4 equals 1132. Richard and I like to see this recurring motif of 1132 throughout the Wake as individual digits, 1, 1, 3 and 2, with each digit representing a part in the alleged sin that takes place in Phoenix Park, which we’ll hear more about in Chapter 2: 1 for Earwicker, another 1 for the Cad, 3 for the soldiers, 2 for the girls peeing in the bushes.

All in all, the historical record is unclear, the Wake explains, because “the copyist must have fled with his scroll” as he was frightened by an elk or a bolt of lightning. Then the text offers a peaceful, post-war passage that includes one of my favourite phrases in the book, “lift we our ears, eyes of the darkness” (14:29), and it goes on to describe the tulips and twilight in Rush, a town in Dublin County that has particular resonance for our reader, Richard Harte, because it’s where he and his family are from.

This is where Mutt and Jute come in, whose dialogue, for all its vaudevillian shtick, conveys the consequences of war: “Now are all tombed to the mound”, and then a variation on ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust,’ which is transformed by the ever irreverent Wake into, “erde from erde” (17:30), erde being ‘earth’ in German, and merde being ‘shit’ in French, or ‘earth from shit,’ not exactly the kind of phrase you’d want to hear at someone’s funeral.

The last paragraph in today’s reading invites us to examine more closely the ancient mound of earth or shit before us — I’m also remembering the “tip” or dump from Kate’s “museyroom” tour a few pages earlier. We’re encouraged to read these ruins or mysterious runes if we are “abcedminded”, spelled a-b-c-e-d-minded, and we’re urged to bring ourselves closer to “this allaphbed”, a word that includes ‘alphabet,’ ‘alef bet’ (the name of the Hebrew alphabet), God’s Muslim name, ‘Allah,’ and suggestions of a natural ‘bed,’ be it of flowers or of a river, a riverrun of words.

And now it’s time to welcome you all back into my home for Richard’s continued reading of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, page 13 line 20 to page 19 line 19 in Chapter 1.

[Richard Harte reads Finnegans Wake 13:20-19:19.]

[p13] Four things therefore, saith our herodotary Mammon Lujius
in his grand old historiorum, wrote near Boriorum, bluest book
in baile's annals, f. t. in Dyffinarsky ne'er sall fail til heathersmoke
and cloudweed Eire's ile sall pall. And here now they are, the fear
of um. T. Totities! Unum. (Adar.) A bulbenboss surmounted up-
on an alderman. Ay, ay! Duum. (Nizam.) A shoe on a puir old
wobban. Ah, ho! Triom. (Tamuz.) An auburn mayde, o'brine
a'bride, to be desarted. Adear, adear! Quodlibus. (Marchessvan.) A
penn no weightier nor a polepost. And so. And all. (Succoth.)

So, how idlers' wind turning pages on pages, as innocens with
anaclete play popeye antipop, the leaves of the living in the boke
of the deeds, annals of themselves timing the cycles of events
grand and national, bring fassilwise to pass how.

1132 A.D. Men like to ants or emmets wondern upon a groot
hwide Whallfisk which lay in a Runnel. Blubby wares upat Ub-
lanium.

566 A.D. On Baalfire's night of this year after deluge a crone that

[p14] hadde a wickered Kish for to hale dead turves from the bog look-
it under the blay of her Kish as she ran for to sothisfeige her cow-
rieosity and be me sawl but she found hersell sackvulle of swart
goody quickenshoon and small illigant brogues, so rich in sweat.
Blurry works at Hurdlesford.

(Silent.)

566 A.D. At this time it fell out that a brazenlockt damsel grieved
(sobralasolas!) because that Puppette her minion was ravisht of her
by the ogre Puropeus Pious. Bloody wars in Ballyaughacleeagh-
bally.

1132. A.D. Two sons at an hour were born until a goodman
and his hag. These sons called themselves Caddy and Primas.
Primas was a santryman and drilled all decent people. Caddy
went to Winehouse and wrote o peace a farce. Blotty words for
Dublin.

Somewhere, parently, in the ginnandgo gap between antedilu-
vious and annadominant the copyist must have fled with his
scroll. The billy flood rose or an elk charged him or the sultrup
worldwright from the excelsissimost empyrean (bolt, in sum)
earthspake or the Dannamen gallous banged pan the bliddy du-
ran. A scribicide then and there is led off under old's code with
some fine covered by six marks or ninepins in metalmen for the
sake of his labour's dross while it will be only now and again in
our rear of o'er era, as an upshoot of military and civil engage-
ments, that a gynecure was let on to the scuffold for taking that
same fine sum covertly by meddlement with the drawers of his
neighbour's safe.

Now after all that farfatch'd and peragrine or dingnant or clere
lift we our ears, eyes of the darkness, from the tome of Liber Li-
vidus and, (toh!), how paisibly eirenical, all dimmering dunes
and gloamering glades, selfstretches afore us our fredeland's plain!
Lean neath stone pine the pastor lies with his crook; young pric-
ket by pricket's sister nibbleth on returned viridities; amaid her
rocking grasses the herb trinity shams lowliness; skyup is of ever-
grey. Thus, too, for donkey's years. Since the bouts of Hebear
and Hairyman the cornflowers have been staying at Ballymun,

[p15] the duskrose has choosed out Goatstown's hedges, twolips have
pressed togatherthem by sweet Rush, townland of twinedlights,
the whitethorn and the redthorn have fairygeyed the mayvalleys
of Knockmaroon, and, though for rings round them, during a
chiliad of perihelygangs, the Formoreans have brittled the too-
ath of the Danes and the Oxman has been pestered by the Fire-
bugs and the Joynts have thrown up jerrybuilding to the Kevan-
ses and Little on the Green is childsfather to the City (Year!
Year! And laughtears!), these paxsealing buttonholes have quad-
rilled across the centuries and whiff now whafft to us, fresh and
made-of-all-smiles as, on the eve of Killallwho.

The babbelers with their thangas vain have been (confusium
hold them!) they were and went; thigging thugs were and hou-
hnhymn songtoms were and comely norgels were and pollyfool
fiansees. Menn have thawed, clerks have surssurhummed, the
blond has sought of the brune: Elsekiss thou may, mean Kerry
piggy?: and the duncledames have countered with the hellish fel-
lows: Who ails tongue coddeau, aspace of dumbillsilly? And they
fell upong one another: and themselves they have fallen. And
still nowanights and by nights of yore do all bold floras of the
field to their shyfaun lovers say only: Cull me ere I wilt to thee!:
and, but a little later: Pluck me whilst I blush! Well may they
wilt, marry, and profusedly blush, be troth! For that saying is as
old as the howitts. Lave a whale a while in a whillbarrow (isn't
it the truath I'm tallin ye?) to have fins and flippers that shimmy
and shake. Tim Timmycan timped hir, tampting Tam. Fleppety!
Flippety! Fleapow!

Hop!

In the name of Anem this carl on the kopje in pelted thongs a
parth a lone who the joebiggar be he? Forshapen his pigmaid
hoagshead, shroonk his plodsfoot. He hath locktoes, this short-
shins, and, Obeold that's pectoral, his mammamuscles most
mousterious. It is slaking nuncheon out of some thing's brain
pan. Me seemeth a dragon man. He is almonthst on the kiep
fief by here, is Comestipple Sacksoun, be it junipery or febrew-
ery, marracks or alebrill or the ramping riots of pouriose and

[p16] froriose. What a quhare soort of a mahan. It is evident the mich-
indaddy. Lets we overstep his fire defences and these kraals of
slitsucked marrogbones. (Cave!) He can prapsposterus the pil-
lory way to Hirculos pillar. Come on, fool porterfull, hosiered
women blown monk sewer? Scuse us, chorley guy! You toller-
day donsk? N. You tolkatiff scowegian? Nn. You spigotty an-
glease? Nnn. You phonio saxo? Nnnn. Clear all so! 'Tis a Jute.
Let us swop hats and excheck a few strong verbs weak oach ea-
ther yapyazzard abast the blooty creeks.
    Jute.      Yutah!
    Mutt.      Mukk's pleasurad.
    Jute.      Are you jeff?
    Mutt.      Somehards.
    Jute.      But you are not jeffmute?
    Mutt.      Noho. Only an utterer.
    Jute.      Whoa? Whoat is the mutter with you?
    Mutt.      I became a stun a stummer.
    Jute.      What a hauhauhauhaudibble thing, to be cause! How,
                  Mutt?
    Mutt.      Aput the buttle, surd.
    Jute.      Whose poddle? Wherein?
    Mutt.      The Inns of Dungtarf where Used awe to be he.
    Jute.      You that side your voise are almost inedible to me.
                  Become a bitskin more wiseable, as if I were
                  you.
    Mutt.      Has? Has at? Hasatency? Urp, Boohooru! Booru
                  Usurp! I trumple from rath in mine mines when I
                  rimimirim!
    Jute.      One eyegonblack. Bisons is bisons. Let me fore all
                  your hasitancy cross your qualm with trink gilt. Here
                  have sylvan coyne, a piece of oak. Ghinees hies good
                  for you.
    Mutt.      Louee, louee! How wooden I not know it, the intel-
                  lible greytcloak of Cedric Silkyshag! Cead mealy
                  faulty rices for one dabblin bar. Old grilsy growlsy!
                  He was poached on in that eggtentical spot. Here
[p17]           where the liveries, Monomark. There where the mis-
                  sers moony, Minnikin passe.
    Jute.      Simply because as Taciturn pretells, our wrongstory-
                  shortener, he dumptied the wholeborrow of rubba-
                  ges on to soil here.
    Mutt.      Just how a puddinstone inat the brookcells by a
                  riverpool.
    Jute.      Load Allmarshy! Wid wad for a norse like?
    Mutt.      Somular with a bull on a clompturf. Rooks roarum
                  rex roome! I could snore to him of the spumy horn,
                  with his woolseley side in, by the neck I am sutton
                  on, did Brian d' of Linn.
    Jute.      Boildoyle and rawhoney on me when I can beuraly
                  forsstand a weird from sturk to finnic in such a pat-
                  what as your rutterdamrotter. Onheard of and um-
                  scene! Gut aftermeal! See you doomed.
    Mutt.      Quite agreem. Bussave a sec. Walk a dunblink
                  roundward this albutisle and you skull see how olde
                  ye plaine of my Elters, hunfree and ours, where wone
                  to wail whimbrel to peewee o'er the saltings, where
                  wilby citie by law of isthmon, where by a droit of
                  signory, icefloe was from his Inn the Byggning to
                  whose Finishthere Punct. Let erehim ruhmuhrmuhr.
                  Mearmerge two races, swete and brack. Morthering
                  rue. Hither, craching eastuards, they are in surgence:
                  hence, cool at ebb, they requiesce. Countlessness of
                  livestories have netherfallen by this plage, flick as
                  flowflakes, litters from aloft, like a waast wizzard all of
                  whirlworlds. Now are all tombed to the mound, isges
                  to isges, erde from erde. Pride, O pride, thy prize!
    Jute.      'Stench!
    Mutt.      Fiatfuit! Hereinunder lyethey. Llarge by the smal an'
                  everynight life olso th'estrange, babylone the great-
                  grandhotelled with tit tit tittlehouse, alp on earwig,
                  drukn on ild, likeas equal to anequal in this sound
                  seemetery which iz leebez luv.
[p18] Jute.     'Zmorde!
    Mutt.      Meldundleize! By the fearse wave behoughted. Des-
                  pond's sung. And thanacestross mound have swollup
                  them all. This ourth of years is not save brickdust
                  and being humus the same roturns. He who runes
                  may rede it on all fours. O'c'stle, n'wc'stle, tr'c'stle,
                  crumbling! Sell me sooth the fare for Humblin! Hum-
                  blady Fair. But speak it allsosiftly, moulder! Be in
                  your whisht!
    Jute.      Whysht?
    Mutt.      The gyant Forficules with Amni the fay.
    Jute.      Howe?
    Mutt.      Here is viceking's graab.
    Jute.      Hwaad!
    Mutt.      Ore you astoneaged, jute you?
    Jute.      Oye am thonthorstrok, thing mud.

(Stoop) if you are abcedminded, to this claybook, what curios
of signs (please stoop), in this allaphbed! Can you rede (since
We and Thou had it out already) its world? It is the same told
of all. Many. Miscegenations on miscegenations. Tieckle. They
lived und laughed ant loved end left. Forsin. Thy thingdome is
given to the Meades and Porsons. The meandertale, aloss and
again, of our old Heidenburgh in the days when Head-in-Clouds
walked the earth. In the ignorance that implies impression that
knits knowledge that finds the nameform that whets the wits that
convey contacts that sweeten sensation that drives desire that
adheres to attachment that dogs death that bitches birth that en-
tails the ensuance of existentiality. But with a rush out of his
navel reaching the reredos of Ramasbatham. A terricolous vively-
onview this; queer and it continues to be quaky. A hatch, a celt,
an earshare the pourquose of which was to cassay the earthcrust at
all of hours, furrowards, bagawards, like yoxen at the turnpaht.
Here say figurines billycoose arming and mounting. Mounting and
arming bellicose figurines see here. Futhorc, this liffle effingee is for
a firefing called a flintforfall. Face at the eased! O I fay! Face at the
waist! Ho, you fie! Upwap and dump em, [F]ace to [F]ace! When

[p19] part so ptee does duty for the holos we soon grow to use of an
allforabit. Here (please to stoop) are selveran cued peteet peas of
quite a pecuniar interest inaslittle as they are the pellets that make
the tomtummy's pay roll. Right rank ragnar rocks and with these
rox orangotangos rangled rough and rightgorong. Wisha, wisha,
whydidtha? Thik is for thorn that's thuck in its thoil like thum-
fool's thraitor thrust for vengeance. What a mnice old mness it
all mnakes! A middenhide hoard of objects! Olives, beets, kim-
mells, dollies, alfrids, beatties, cormacks and daltons. Owlets' eegs
(O stoop to please!) are here, creakish from age and all now
quite epsilene, and oldwolldy wobblewers, haudworth a wipe o
grass. Sss! See the snake wurrums everyside! Our durlbin is
sworming in sneaks. They came to our island from triangular
Toucheaterre beyond the wet prairie rared up in the midst of the
cargon of prohibitive pomefructs but along landed Paddy Wip-
pingham and the his garbagecans cotched the creeps of them
pricker than our whosethere outofman could quick up her whats-
thats. Somedivide and sumthelot but the tally turns round the
same balifuson. Racketeers and bottloggers.

[End of reading excerpt]

Adam Seelig: That was my friend and colleague Richard Harte reading from Finnegans Wake, Chapter 1, pages 13-19, recorded live in Toronto on August 31st, 2022.

Special thanks to my friends in Norway, Øyvind and Susanna Haga, for advising Richard and me on Scandinavian pronunciations for the dialogue of Mutt and Jute/Yutah.

Join us for Episode 5 in a fortnight when Richard continues with the next five pages of Finnegans Wake, including the famous “prankquean” fable. To be sure you don’t miss the episode, why not follow or subscribe to this podcast? And for more on One Little Goat’s Finnegans Wake project, including transcripts of this podcast and trailers for the films, visit our website at OneLittleGoat.org.

[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]

Finnegans Wake is made possible by Friends of One Little Goat Theatre Company and the Emigrant Support Programme of the gov’t of Ireland. Thank you for your support!

One Little Goat Theatre Company is a not-for-profit, artist-driven, registered charity. To find out more and to join our mailing list please visit www.OneLittleGoat.org

Thank you for listening!

[Music fades out]

Mentioned: Robert Houle, Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), dialogue, Mutt and Jute, Mutt and Jeff, Laurel and Hardy, Jutland, Denmark, Vikings, Battle of Clontarf (1014), Brian Boru, dismantling the norms of fiction and drama, four-dimensional characters, August Strindberg, characterless, characterlessness, pronouns ‘you’ and ‘me,’ Waiting for Godot, miscegenations, the Gospels, Mamalujo, Jewish calendar, 1132, Galileo on how things fall, Finn MacCool, Rush (Dublin County), “allaphbed”, synopsis.

William Tindall on 1132: “Joyce like playing with figures as well as with words. 1132 (rise and fall) includes H.C.E. and his sons. H is the eighth letter of the alphabet, C is the third, and E is the fifth. Adding 8, 3, and 5 gives 16, which multiplied by 2 (the twins in him), gives 32. Shaun’s number is 11 (renewal) and Shem’s is 21. Add 21 and 11 and you get 32 or H.C.E. Elsewhere (in Chapter X) H.C.E.’s number is 10, A.L.P.’s is 01. Put these together and you get 1001 or another of renewal’s numbers or another of renewal’s numbers. Consider A.L.P. again: A is 1, L is 12, P is 16. Add these numbers you get 29 or the leap-year girls. (p.53)

Resources:
Transcript for this episode, including the text of Finnegans Wake pages 13-19.
Finnegans Wake (1939) by James Joyce: there are many free copies of FW to read online or download, e.g. finwake.com
James Joyce Digital Archive, “Chicken Guide” to Finnegans Wake provides a ‘plain English’ paraphrase of each chapter by Danis Rose.
Edmund Epstein, A Guide through Finnegans Wake. University Press of Florida, 2009.
William York Tindall, A Reader’s Guide to Finnegans Wake. Syracuse University Press, 1996.
Roland McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake (4th edition). Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2016.
John Gordon’s annotations on his Finnegans Wake blog.
Richard Ellmann’s biography of James Joyce. Oxford University Press, 1982.
More on characterlessness: Adam Seelig, “EmergeNSee: Get Head Out of Ass: ‘Charactor’ and Poetic Theatre”. The Capilano Review, Vancouver, 2010, pp.32-52.

Episode 003: the museyroom (p.8:9-13:19)

May 30, 2024 Adam Seelig

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE
Episode 003
THE MUSEYROOM

PAGE 8:9-13:19 | 2024-05-30

PODCAST AUDIO

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

[Music: Richard Harte sings “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly” from Finnegans Wake]

Have you heard of one Humpty Dumpty
How he fell with a roll and a rumble
And curled up like Lord Olofa Crumple
By the butt of the Magazine Wall

[Music fades out]

Adam Seelig: Welcome to James Joyce’s divine and delirious comedy, Finnegans Wake. In this episode, number 3, we’ll hear Irish-Canadian actor—and my good friend and colleague—Richard Harte reading pages 8 to 13 of Joyce’s last novel, which will include the famous “museyroom” scene. I’m Adam Seelig, the director of the reading you’ll soon hear.

[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]

[Music fades out]

Finnegans Wake, in Joyce’s own words, “is all so simple. If anyone doesn’t understand a passage, all [they] need do is read it aloud” (Ellmann, 590). True, sound and sense converge in this miraculously lyrical book such that sound is sense; and true, we have actor Richard Harte reading it aloud for us with tonguetwisting virtuosity; but I’m not so sure it’s “all so simple” as the author once claimed. So I’m going to highlight a few elements in today’s reading before we hear Richard read the text itself, beginning on page 8 with “the museyroom” episode. And again, as I mentioned in the previous episode, if you prefer to hear Richard’s reading only without any preamble, please skip ahead and enjoy!

We ended Episode 2 in this podcast of Finnegans Wake at the top of page 8 in Dublin’s Phoenix Park at the entrance to a war museum, where Kate is about to give us a tour. One of the novel’s recurring characters, Kate is the museum’s custodian described here as a “janitrix,” combining ‘janitor’ with ‘genetrix’ (an old term for a ‘female ancestor’). She leads us into the “museyroom”, as she calls the museum, and advises us to mind our hats going in; two pages later, when the tour concludes, she’ll flip this advice into, “Mind your boots goan out”, suggesting that this tour may actually contain the entire arc of human life, from our entrance at birth, head first, to our exit at death, feet first.

The action-packed, battle-heavy life we read and experience in the “museyroom”, like everything in life and in Joyce, can be read and experienced on multiple levels. Or in musical terms, since Finnegans Wake is a massive literary fugue, the “museyroom” allows us to hear multiple motifs simultaneously. In this case it’s mostly a fugue of feuds, including the ultimate feud of war, the Oedipal conflict of father and sons, the tension between the novel’s male protagonist, HCE and his bugaboos (which we’ll discover in more detail in the next chapter, including the Cad, the two girls who are possibly peeing in the bushes and three soldiers). And also, because this is Joyce after all, there’s the motif of bodily needs and functions, which allows us to hear the “museyroom” as (I’ll quote Brendan Ward) “a description of HCE urinating, defecating and masturbating in the outhouse behind his pub, The Mullingar House, in Chapelizod” (to which I’d like to add three things about the Mullingar House, which still exists today in the Chapelizod area of Dublin: (1) it was established in 1694; (2) it sits right at the edge of Phoenix Park, it backs onto it, so HCE’s fictional outhouse would likely have been in the park itself; and (3), most importantly, as of my most recent visit to Dublin in June of 2023, a big banner hangs over the Mullingar’s main bar claiming the following: “The Mullingar House, Chapelizod, Ireland’s Best Chicken Wings”).

**Plaque on the Mullingar House: “Home of all the characters and elements in James Joyce’s novel *Finnegans Wake*”**

While the “museyroom” maintains all of these motifs and more, making it a central fable in the novel, I’m only going tease out the first and most literal one: the museyroom as a war museum, specifically as a museum commemorating the Battle of Waterloo, June 18th, 1815 when the Duke of Wellington and his coalition defeated Napoleon, ending 23 years of war in Europe. Kate, our janitor-cum-tour-guide, will draw our attention to various historical objects from the battle, including guns, bullets, flags, the 3-pointed hat of Napoleon and a depiction of Wellington’s favourite white horse named Copenhagen. In the Wake-speak of Kate, we’ll hear Napoleon as “Lipoleum,” Wellington as “Willingdone,” and his horse Copenhagen as his “white harse, the Cokenhape.” Does this turn Napoleon into a linoleum floor on which victorious Wellington walks all over with his wellies? Some readers think so, although Wellington is defeated in Kate’s bonkers version of the battle. Allowing for a victorious Wellington might have been too much for Joyce to stomach, given the English commander’s antipathy for Ireland, despite being born in Dublin. As Joyce scholar John Gordon writes, “Wellington once remarked that he was an Irishman only if a man born in a stable was a horse, a nasty crack for which Joyce pays him back by making him a ‘harse’” (113) and indeed in the “museyroom” it’s virtually impossible to distinguish between this man and his equine when what we see repeatedly is his ‘big white harse.’

The “museyroom” episode is also a breakneck viewing of the most prominent structure in Dublin’s Phoenix Park, and that is the Wellington Monument, a granite obelisk whose four sides are etched with the names of Britain’s many military victories and topped with four self-congratulatory bronze friezes depicting the Empire’s global conquests. Erected by the British in the mid-19th century and standing at a height of over 60 metres (or 200 feet), the Wellington Monument is a veritable erection if ever there was, a phallic monstrosity of which Finnegans Wake makes good use by personifying HCE—among the many things he is—as the city of Dublin, with his head in Howth, feet in Chapelizod, and ‘monumental’ penis in Phoenix Park.

**The Wellington Monument, Phoenix Park, Dublin**

If you’re lucky enough to be visiting Phoenix Park one day, read the “museyroom” (or listen to Richard’s reading from this podcast) by the Wellington Monument — you’ll be amazed by how much of the bronze battle scenes and how many of the etched battle names appear in the writing. It’s almost as if Kate the janitor is taking us on a tour of this war memorial by riffing on what she sees in front of her, improvising all kinds of wacky, pseudo historical details. Sometimes I get the feeling that Kate is simply making it up on the spot. For all the painstaking details Joyce stuffed into this scene, and for all the conceptual planning he invested in writing it, I’m always amazed by how in-the-moment and extemporaneous the language feels. No matter how many times I read it or hear it, the “museyroom” always offers up something new. Then again, that could easily be said of any page in Finnegans Wake.

**Battle of Waterloo, frieze on the Wellington Monument. (Did I say “topped” with bronze friezes? They’re actually closer to the base.)**

Before we leave the “museyroom”, I’ll mention one tiny word that peppers Kate’s speech: “tip”. T - I - P. Tip: is Kate angling for a few coins in gratuity from us, her tourists? Tip: is she alluding to a heap of junk or mound of crap if we use the British-English or Irish-English definition for “tip” as a ‘garbage dump’? Maybe she’s suggesting that the many wars of France, England and Europe, including the Battle of Waterloo, amount to one big historical dump — if so, she’s putting the ‘loo’ back in Waterloo. Tip: is this pointed word Kate’s way of pointing things out? Is everything she’s saying off the tip of her tongue? Tip: is this the tapered top of the gargantuan boner that is the Wellington Monument?

For those who want to read more on the “museyroom”—and there’s so much more to say—I’ll link to some articles and resources in the show notes.

We leave the “museyroom” at the bottom of page 10 and find ourselves on the post-battle battlefield, where the Duke is unhorsed and by the sounds of it, upside down: “Skud ontorsed” is how the text now describes the centaur-like Wellington, “Skud” being “Duke’s” backwards. Among the post-war detritus, we’ll hear some crows and pigeons, and we’ll see early intimations of another recurring character, ‘the hen,’ here introduced as an early bird, or as the text puts it, “gnarlybird”, gathering various items “into her nabsack”. The war may be over, but this post-war paragraph pays its remembrance with a somber, single-word sentence: “Slain.”

Emerging from ‘the hen’ are early contours of our female protagonist, HCE’s spouse, Anna Livia Plurabelle or ALP, here described at the bottom of page 11 as “bootifull and how truetowife” (11:29). And then this paragraph takes on a more resigned or philosophical or (this being Joyce) horny view of humanity’s skirmishes: “Gricks may rise and Troysirs fall” (11:35) — combining ‘Greeks may rise and Trojans fall’ with ‘pricks may rise and trousers fall’ — but “that's what makes life-work leaving” (12:1-2); and yes, as we read on, Humptys may fall off walls, but hey, there’ll still be eggs for breakfast (12).

The following few paragraphs, beginning in the middle of page 12, provide us with a zoomed out view of Dublin, a vantage from which we can say (and I’ll paraphrase): ‘So this is Dublin.’ I’m not sure if we should hear that as a dis or a compliment — I have the feeling Joyce is always happy for us to hear it more ways than one.

And now it’s time to welcome you all back into my home for Richard’s continued reading of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, page 8 line 9 to page 13 line 19 in Chapter 1.

[Richard Harte reads Finnegans Wake 8:9-13:19.]

This the way to the museyroom. Mind your hats goan in!
Now yiz are in the Willingdone Museyroom. This is a Prooshi-
ous gunn. This is a ffrinch. Tip. This is the flag of the Prooshi-
ous, the Cap and Soracer. This is the bullet that byng the flag of
the Prooshious. This is the ffrinch that fire on the Bull that bang
the flag of the Prooshious. Saloos the Crossgunn! Up with your
pike and fork! Tip. (Bullsfoot! Fine!) This is the triplewon hat of
Lipoleum. Tip. Lipoleumhat. This is the Willingdone on his
same white harse, the Cokenhape. This is the big Sraughter Wil-
lingdone, grand and magentic in his goldtin spurs and his ironed
dux and his quarterbrass woodyshoes and his magnate's gharters
and his bangkok's best and goliar's goloshes and his pullupon-
easyan wartrews. This is his big wide harse. Tip. This is the three
lipoleum boyne grouching down in the living detch. This is an
inimyskilling inglis, this is a scotcher grey, this is a davy, stoop-
ing. This is the bog lipoleum mordering the lipoleum beg. A
Gallawghurs argaumunt. This is the petty lipoleum boy that
was nayther bag nor bug. Assaye, assaye! Touchole Fitz Tuo-
mush. Dirty MacDyke. And Hairy O'Hurry. All of them
arminus-varminus. This is Delian alps. This is Mont Tivel,
this is Mont Tipsey, this is the Grand Mons Injun. This is the
crimealine of the alps hooping to sheltershock the three lipoleums.
This is the jinnies with their legahorns feinting to read in their
handmade's book of stralegy while making their war undisides
the Willingdone. The jinnies is a cooin her hand and the jinnies is
a ravin her hair and the Willingdone git the band up. This is big
Willingdone mormorial tallowscoop Wounderworker obscides
on the flanks of the jinnies. Sexcaliber hrosspower. Tip. This

[p9] is me Belchum sneaking his phillippy out of his most Awful
Grimmest Sunshat Cromwelly. Looted. This is the jinnies' hast-
ings dispatch for to irrigate the Willingdone. Dispatch in thin
red lines cross the shortfront of me Belchum. Yaw, yaw, yaw!
Leaper Orthor. Fear siecken! Fieldgaze thy tiny frow. Hugact-
ing. Nap. That was the tictacs of the jinnies for to fontannoy the
Willingdone. Shee, shee, shee! The jinnies is jillous agincourting
all the lipoleums. And the lipoleums is gonn boycottoncrezy onto
the one Willingdone. And the Willingdone git the band up. This
is bode Belchum, bonnet to busby, breaking his secred word with a
ball up his ear to the Willingdone. This is the Willingdone's hur-
old dispitchback. Dispitch desployed on the regions rare of me
Belchum. Salamangra! Ayi, ayi, ayi! Cherry jinnies. Figtreeyou!
Damn fairy ann, Voutre. Willingdone. That was the first joke of
Willingdone, tic for tac. Hee, hee, hee! This is me Belchum in
his twelvemile cowchooks, weet, tweet and stampforth foremost,
footing the camp for the jinnies. Drink a sip, drankasup, for he's
as sooner buy a guinness than he'd stale store stout. This is Roo-
shious balls. This is a ttrinch. This is mistletropes. This is Canon
Futter with the popynose. After his hundred days' indulgence.
This is the blessed. Tarra's widdars! This is jinnies in the bonny
bawn blooches. This is lipoleums in the rowdy howses. This is the
Willingdone, by the splinters of Cork, order fire. Tonnerre!
(Bullsear! Play!) This is camelry, this is floodens, this is the
solphereens in action, this is their mobbily, this is panickburns.
Almeidagad! Arthiz too loose! This is Willingdone cry. Brum!
Brum! Cumbrum! This is jinnies cry. Underwetter! Goat
strip Finnlambs! This is jinnies rinning away to their ouster-
lists dowan a bunkersheels. With a nip nippy nip and a trip trip-
py trip so airy. For their heart's right there. Tip. This is me Bel-
chum's tinkyou tankyou silvoor plate for citchin the crapes in
the cool of his canister. Poor the pay! This is the bissmark of the
marathon merry of the jinnies they left behind them. This is the
Willingdone branlish his same marmorial tallowscoop Sophy-
Key-Po for his royal divorsion on the rinnaway jinnies. Gam-
bariste della porca! Dalaveras fimmieras! This is the pettiest

[p10] of the lipoleums, Toffeethief, that spy on the Willingdone from
his big white harse, the Capeinhope. Stonewall Willingdone
is an old maxy montrumeny. Lipoleums is nice hung bushel-
lors. This is hiena hinnessy laughing alout at the Willing-
done. This is lipsyg dooley krieging the funk from the hinnessy.
This is the hinndoo Shimar Shin between the dooley boy and the
hinnessy. Tip. This is the wixy old Willingdone picket up the
half of the threefoiled hat of lipoleums fromoud of the bluddle
filth. This is the hinndoo waxing ranjymad for a bombshoob.
This is the Willingdone hanking the half of the hat of lipoleums
up the tail on the buckside of his big white harse. Tip. That was
the last joke of Willingdone. Hit, hit, hit! This is the same white
harse of the Willingdone, Culpenhelp, waggling his tailoscrupp
with the half of a hat of lipoleums to insoult on the hinndoo see-
boy. Hney, hney, hney! (Bullsrag! Foul!) This is the seeboy,
madrashattaras, upjump and pumpim, cry to the Willingdone:
Ap Pukkaru! Pukka Yurap! This is the Willingdone, bornstable
ghentleman, tinders his maxbotch to the cursigan Shimar Shin.
Basucker youstead! This is the dooforhim seeboy blow the whole
of the half of the hat of lipoleums off of the top of the tail on the
back of his big wide harse. Tip (Bullseye! Game!) How Copen-
hagen ended. This way the museyroom. Mind your boots goan
out.

Phew!

What a warm time we were in there but how keling is here the
airabouts! We nowhere she lives but you mussna tell annaone for
the lamp of Jig-a-Lanthern! It's a candlelittle houthse of a month
and one windies. Downadown, High Downadown. And num-
mered quaintlymine. And such reasonable weather too! The wa-
grant wind's awalt'zaround the piltdowns and on every blasted
knollyrock (if you can spot fifty I spy four more) there's that
gnarlybird ygathering, a runalittle, doalittle, preealittle, pouralittle,
wipealittle, kicksalittle, severalittle, eatalittle, whinealittle, kenalittle,
helfalittle, pelfalittle gnarlybird. A verytableland of bleakbardfields!
Under his seven wrothschields lies one, Lumproar. His glav toside
him. Skud ontorsed. Our pigeons pair are flewn for northcliffs.

[p11] The three of crows have flapped it southenly, kraaking of de
baccle to the kvarters of that sky whence triboos answer; Wail,
'tis well! She niver comes out when Thon's on shower or when
Thon's flash with his Nixy girls or when Thon's blowing toom-
cracks down the gaels of Thon. No nubo no! Neblas on you liv!
Her would be too moochy afreet. Of Burymeleg and Bindme-
rollingeyes and all the deed in the woe. Fe fo fom! She jist does
hopes till byes will be byes. Here, and it goes on to appear now,
she comes, a peacefugle, a parody's bird, a peri potmother,
a pringlpik in the ilandiskippy, with peewee and powwows
in beggybaggy on her bickybacky and a flick flask fleckflinging
its pixylighting pacts' huemeramybows, picking here, pecking
there, pussypussy plunderpussy. But it's the armitides toonigh,
militopucos, and toomourn we wish for a muddy kissmans to the
minutia workers and there's to be a gorgeups truce for happinest
childher everwere. Come nebo me and suso sing the day we
sallybright. She's burrowed the coacher's headlight the better to
pry (who goes cute goes siocur and shoos aroun) and all spoiled
goods go into her nabsack: curtrages and rattlin buttins, nappy
spattees and flasks of all nations, clavicures and scampulars, maps,
keys and woodpiles of haypennies and moonled brooches with
bloodstaned breeks in em, boaston nightgarters and masses of
shoesets and nickelly nacks and foder allmicheal and a lugly parson
of cates and howitzer muchears and midgers and maggets, ills and
ells with loffs of toffs and pleures of bells and the last sigh that
come fro the hart (bucklied!) and the fairest sin the sunsaw
(that's cearc!). With Kiss. Kiss Criss. Cross Criss. Kiss Cross.
Undo lives 'end. Slain.

How bootifull and how truetowife of her, when strengly fore-
bidden, to steal our historic presents from the past postpropheti-
cals so as to will make us all lordyheirs and ladymaidesses of a
pretty nice kettle of fruit. She is livving in our midst of debt and
laffing through all plores for us (her birth is uncontrollable), with
a naperon for her mask and her sabboes kickin arias (so sair! so
solly!) if yous ask me and I saack you. Hou! Hou! Gricks may
rise and Troysirs fall (there being two sights for ever a picture)

[p12] for in the byways of high improvidence that's what makes life-
work leaving and the world's a cell for citters to cit in. Let young
wimman run away with the story and let young min talk smooth
behind the butteler's back. She knows her knight's duty while
Luntum sleeps. Did ye save any tin? says he. Did I what? with
a grin says she. And we all like a marriedann because she is mer-
cenary. Though the length of the land lies under liquidation
(floote!) and there's nare a hairbrow nor an eyebush on this glau-
brous phace of Herrschuft Whatarwelter she'll loan a vesta and
hire some peat and sarch the shores her cockles to heat and she'll
do all a turfwoman can to piff the business on. Paff. To puff the
blaziness on. Poffpoff. And even if Humpty shell fall frumpty
times as awkward again in the beardsboosoloom of all our grand
remonstrancers there'll be iggs for the brekkers come to mourn-
him, sunny side up with care. So true is it that therewhere's a
turnover the tay is wet too and when you think you ketch sight
of a hind make sure but you're cocked by a hin.

Then as she is on her behaviourite job of quainance bandy,
fruting for firstlings and taking her tithe, we may take our review
of the two mounds to see nothing of the himples here as at else-
where, by sixes and sevens, like so many heegills and collines,
sitton aroont, scentbreeched ant somepotreek, in their swisha-
wish satins and their taffetaffe tights, playing Wharton's Folly,
at a treepurty on the planko in the purk. Stand up, mickos!
Make strake for minnas! By order, Nicholas Proud. We may see
and hear nothing if we choose of the shortlegged bergins off
Corkhill or the bergamoors of Arbourhill or the bergagambols
of Summerhill or the bergincellies of Miseryhill or the country-
bossed bergones of Constitutionhill though every crowd has its
several tones and every trade has its clever mechanics and each
harmonical has a point of its own, Olaf's on the rise and Ivor's
on the lift and Sitric's place's between them. But all they are all
there scraping along to sneeze out a likelihood that will solve
and salve life's robulous rebus, hopping round his middle like
kippers on a griddle, O, as he lays dormont from the macroborg
of Holdhard to the microbirg of Pied de Poudre. Behove this

[p13] sound of Irish sense. Really? Here English might be seen.
Royally? One sovereign punned to petery pence. Regally? The
silence speaks the scene. Fake!

So This Is Dyoublong?

Hush! Caution! Echoland!

How charmingly exquisite! It reminds you of the outwashed
engravure that we used to be blurring on the blotchwall of his
innkempt house. Used they? (I am sure that tiring chabelshovel-
ler with the mujikal chocolat box, Miry Mitchel, is listening) I
say, the remains of the outworn gravemure where used to be
blurried the Ptollmens of the Incabus. Used we? (He is only pre-
tendant to be stugging at the jubalee harp from a second existed
lishener, Fiery Farrelly.) It is well known. Lokk for himself and
see the old butte new. Dbln. W. K. O. O. Hear? By the mauso-
lime wall. Fimfim fimfim. With a grand funferall. Fumfum fum-
fum. 'Tis optophone which ontophanes. List! Wheatstone's
magic lyer. They will be tuggling foriver. They will be lichening
for allof. They will be pretumbling forover. The harpsdischord
shall be theirs for ollaves.

[End of reading excerpt]

Adam Seelig: That was my friend and colleague Richard Harte reading from Finnegans Wake, Chapter 1, pages 8-13, recorded live in Toronto on August 31st, 2022.

Join us for Episode 4 in a fortnight when Richard continues with the next five pages of Finnegans Wake, including the dialogue of Mutt and Jute. To be sure you don’t miss the episode, why not follow or subscribe to this podcast? And for more on One Little Goat’s Finnegans Wake project, including liner notes and trailers for the films, visit our website at OneLittleGoat.org.

[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]

Finnegans Wake is made possible by Friends of One Little Goat Theatre Company and the Emigrant Support Programme of the gov’t of Ireland. Thank you for your support!

One Little Goat Theatre Company is a not-for-profit, artist-driven, registered charity. To find out more and to join our mailing list please visit www.OneLittleGoat.org

Thank you for listening!

[Music fades out]

Mentioned: “the museyroom”, character Kate, Phoenix Park, Brendan Ward, Dublin, Mullingar House pub, Chapelizod, character HCE (Earwicker), Battle of Waterloo, Duke of Wellington, Napoleon, John Gordon, Wellington Monument, British Empire, “tip,” character ‘the hen,’ character ALP (Anna Livia Plurabelle), synopsis.

Resources:

Transcript for this episode, including the text of Finnegans Wake pages 8-13.
Finnegans Wake (1939) by James Joyce: there are many free copies of FW to read online or download, e.g. finwake.com
Brendan Ward’s excellent article, “In the Museyroom” (13 August 2022), in his blog, Finnegans Wake - A Prescriptive Guide.
James Joyce Digital Archive, “Chicken Guide” to Finnegans Wake provides a ‘plain English’ paraphrase of each chapter by Danis Rose.
Edmund Epstein, A Guide through Finnegans Wake. University Press of Florida, 2009.
William York Tindall. A Reader’s Guide to Finnegans Wake. Syracuse University Press, 1996.
Roland McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake (4th edition). Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2016.
John Gordon’s Finnegans Wake: A Plot Summary. Syracuse University Press, 1986. And Gordon’s annotations on his Finnegans Wake blog.
Richard Ellmann’s biography of James Joyce. Oxford University Press, 1982.

Episode 002: riverrun (p.3:1-8:8)

May 16, 2024 Adam Seelig

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE
Episode 002
RIVERRUN

PAGE 3:1-8:8 | 2024-05-16

PODCAST AUDIO

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

[Music: Richard Harte sings “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly” from Finnegans Wake]

Have you heard of one Humpty Dumpty
How he fell with a roll and a rumble
And curled up like Lord Olofa Crumple
By the butt of the Magazine Wall

[Music fades out]

Adam Seelig: Welcome to the opening pages of James Joyce’s divine and delirious comedy, Finnegans Wake. In this episode, number 2, we’ll hear Irish-Canadian actor—and my good friend and colleague—Richard Harte reading the opening five pages of Joyce’s last novel, recorded with a live audience in my home in Toronto. I’m Adam Seelig, the director of the reading you’ll soon hear.

[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]

[Music fades out]

Adam Seelig: Some of you listening know a lot more about this novel than I, and some of you are new to it entirely. I’m going to say a few things about Finnegans Wake in general and today’s reading in particular because I think it’s helpful to have some ideas and signposts going in. There’s really no end to what we can read into this extraordinary book, which seems to have as many interpretations as it does readers — everyone will find something new here. I’m simply going to share some of what I find amazing about it, often with thanks to others, including my partner in this project, Richard Harte, and the many people who have commented on the Wake since its publication 85 years ago.

If you prefer to hear Richard’s reading and Richard’s reading alone without any preamble (however illuminating such preamble may be), then feel free to jump ahead. I don’t mind in the least.

In Episode 1 we listened to the folk song that gave Finnegan Wake its title and its main theme: the rise and fall and rise again (and fall and rise etc.) of humanity.

That rising and falling motion carries over from the title to the first word we see and hear in the book: “riverrun” — a word of Joyce’s invention that combines “river” and “run” to form “riverrun”, a word that is central to the overall movement of this book with its riverrun of language, of musical sound, with music and sound being so important to Joyce that his whole approach could be summarized in the words of French poet Stephanne Mallarmé: “To give music back to poetry.”

“riverrun” — that first word brings us naturally to water. Richard Ellmann’s biography describes a friend complaining to Joyce that Finnegans Wake is all nonsense, to which the author responded, “It is an attempt to subordinate words to the rhythm of water.” Ellmann adds (and this is my favourite moment in the biography): “[Joyce] felt some misgivings about Finnegans Wake the night it was finished, and went down to the Seine [Joyce lived in Paris at the time] to listen by one of the bridges to the waters. He came back content” (Ellmann 564).

“riverrun”, like so many words in the Wake, generates many more meanings. Roland McHugh’s Annotations—which cover nearly every word and phrase of the novel in mind-blowing detail—offers us “riverrun” as “an excursion on a river,” fitting for those of us embarking on reading the Wake. John Gordon invites us to hear “riverrun” as “rêverons,” French for “we will dream,” and as “Reverend,” which will be significant later in the novel. “Reverend” is close to “reverence,” reverence for the river before us, which for Joyce and the Wake, so grounded in the city of Dublin, is the River Liffey.

“riverrun” also points us to streams, in this case the stream of consciousness narratives Joyce famously explored. Or more precisely, Joyce’s previous novel, Ulysses, explores streams of consciousness, while Finnegans Wake explores streams of unconsciousness. Ulysses is the daytime novel that unfolds chronologically; Finnegans Wake is the night novel that unfolds in a dream. It is a dream book.

Which brings us to a gloss on “riverrun” that French-Canadian poet Thierry Bissonnette and I came up with recently in conversation, and that is “rêve rond” meaning “round dream.” Finnegans Wake is famously a circular novel whose opening line is actually a continuation of the novel’s last. So what we have in Finnegans Wake is a circular dream novel, a rounded dream, a rêve rond, a riverrun. It brings to mind Shakespeare’s Prospero in The Tempest: “We are such stuff/ As dreams are made on, and our little life/ Is rounded with a sleep.”

Finnegans Wake is a dream world that’s mostly nonlinear. And it’s a dream language that’s often nonsensical, a dream dialect comprised of as many languages as Joyce could possibly stuff in there. Incredibly, the Wake includes phrases, words and phonemes from—according to McHugh—62 languages (and remember, kids, this was before the internuts). They include — get ready:

Albanian
Amaro (an Italian criminal slang)
Anglo-Irish
Anglo-Indian
Armenian (Eastern dialect)
Arabic
Basque
Bog Latin
Beche-la-Mar (a Melanesian pidgin)
Bearlagair Na Saer
Breton
Bulgarian
Burmese
Chinese (Mandarin)
Chinese with French romanization of characters
Chinese pidgin
Czech
Danish
Dutch
Esperanto
French
Finnish
German
Greek
Hebrew
Hindustani
Hungarian
Irish
Icelandic
Italian
Japanese
Latin
Lithuanian
Malay
Middle English
Modern Greek
Norwegian
Old Church Slavonic
Old English
Old French
Old Icelandic
Old Norse
Persian
Portuguese
Provençal
Pan-Slavonic
Romani
Romanian
Roumansch
Russian
Samoan
Sanskrit
Serbo-Croat
Shelta
Spanish
Swahili
Swiss German
Turkish
Ukrainian
Volapük (an artificial language)
Welsh
and… English.

Who are the characters in Finnegans Wake? Even though they’re not characters in a conventional sense—they’re a little too porous and malleable for that—we can say there are two principals, Anna Livia Plurabelle, or ALP, a woman associated with the water who may date back as far as Eve, and her husband, Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, or HCE, a man associated with the land who may date back as far as Adam. Together they have two sons and one daughter. We’ll meet and talk about them all later in the novel.

And there’s one more thing I want to say about Finnegans Wake before we get into the first pages, and it’s something that’s not said nearly enough: Finnegans Wake is a comedy. Is it filled with puns? Abundantly! Are there puerile gags and fart jokes? Yes, yes there are. There are also moments that sound funny — we’re not always sure why, yet somehow they tickle us. I often think of the Wake as a kind of Mother Goose for adults, taking us back to a pre-verbal state akin to that of a baby finding pleasure in a nursery rhyme. And the truth is, we (humans) are far from fully understanding what makes something funny, though the best explanation I’ve found is this: laughter is ultimately not about getting the joke, but about getting along, which is a great way to think of this book that’s so often read and shared with others: we may not always get Finnegans Wake, but we can certainly get along with it and each other. Maybe this is my roundabout way of saying: I’m glad you’re here to share the novel with Richard and me.

[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano, music fades]

In a few minutes we’re going to hear Richard Harte read the opening pages of Finnegans Wake. The first page is a kind of overture to the entire novel, sounding out its motifs, including the cyclical fall and rise of humankind, love/desire/sin, family, the city of Dublin. I mentioned before that the so-called ‘first line’ on page 3 is actually a continuation of the book’s ‘last’ on page 628, which explains why the opening word, “riverrun”, is not capitalized. It also explains why the word “recirculation” comes up in this opening sentence. I also mentioned “riverrun” as “rêve rond” or circular dream — another kind of recirculation. To that I’ll add “riverrun” as “rive rond” or “round shore”. And indeed we’ll hear the word “shore” in the novel’s opening line, that is, the shore of Dublin’s River Liffey. The river runs past certain places in Dublin in this opening line, including Adam and Eve’s Church and Howth Castle.

Edmund Epstein in his Guide Through Finnegans Wake describes the river Liffey here as flowing in reverse, away from the sea and back into Dublin Bay, hence Adam and Eve’s Church becomes “Eve and Adam’s”, followed soon by the word “back”. Marshall McLuhan has an equally ingenious take on the river’s reverse flow: in his first annotated copy of the Wake, he notes that “back” in the opening sentence sounds like “Bach” (as in Johann Sebastian), and “bach” is German for “brook,” which is a stream or kind of river. So this ‘river running backwards’ is also a ‘river running Bachwords,’ making Joyce’s text a kind of verbal fugue. And I’ll also state the obvious in this opening sentence, that Eve and Adam, biblically speaking, are the world’s original woman and man.

There’s so much more to say about the novel’s opening line alone, but I’m going to move on now to point out a few things in the rest of the reading. Early on we’re going to hear a ‘thunderword,’ a word comprised of 100 letters and many languages whose phonemes all mean thunder. Is this thunder the sound of Tim Finnegan falling off his ladder, or Adam and Eve falling from their original apple-eating sin, or the thunder engendering the first frightened stutters of humanity at the prehistoric dawn of our speech (as theorized by the 18th-century Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico, whose influence was so great on Joyce that we hear his name in the novel’s second line), or is this the sound of Humpty Dumpty falling off the wall? Humpty D will also make a cameo on the novel’s first page, which ends with the word “livvy”, linking to the Liffey, to life, to love and to Anna Livia Plurabelle, the Eve of the novel. We’ll then hear of heroic clashes in a paragraph that ends with the word “phoenish,” spelled in a way that resembles “Phoenix,” the mythological fire bird that falls and rises again and again, the dynamic cycle central to Finnegans Wake. Then Tim Finnegan, the tipsy folk song character we heard about in our first podcast episode, makes an appearance, along with a number of analogous characters or avatars, including HCE himself, and as we know from the song, he climbs his ladder only to fall down. We hear of this character’s coat of arms, his gigantism, his drinking. And then the book asks, ‘What brought about this sinful tragedy that led to his fall?’ Its answer is that while there may be 1,001 versions of the tale, we at least seem to know that, as in the folk song, Tim-Finnegan/HCE/etc. fell to his death on a building site. That building is first called a “collupsus” (combining “colossus” and “collapse,” which doesn’t sound especially auspicious) and later it’s called an “erection” (which sounds a lot more exciting). So there’s a sexual aspect to this downfall, much like the Original Sin of Adam & Eve. We then go to this man’s wake, where mourners cry and sob and sing his praises and other songs. They place a bucket of whiskey at his feet and barrel of Guinness at his head. And then in a kind of zoom out, we get a sense for the massive contours of this Finnegan or HCE character, described as a sleeping giant of the Dublin landscape stretching from head in Howth to toes in Chapelizod (a distance of about a dozen miles or 20 km), with his better half, the Liffey or ALP right there beside him to awaken him. Not merely a giant, though, HCE becomes Christ-like, and like Christ, is the Host or sacramental bread or in this case fish that can be eaten, and sure enough, those around him say “Grace before Glutton” and chow down. The sleeping giant, now an eaten salmon, goes back to sleep like a kind of dinosaur or “brontoichthyan” by the riverside. Then the clouds roll by and we zoom out even further for for a bird’s-eye view of HCE and ALP’s landscape, i.e. Dublin, and the green we see is Phoenix—there’s that bird again—Phoenix Park, within which there’s a large mound mass that also serves as a war museum. It’s the “museomound” to which admission is free but we’ll need a new character, Kate, to give us the tour. And that’s where this episode’s reading ends and Episode 3 will begin.

We could talk about these opening pages for days, but it’s time to get to the text itself. For those who want more detail, I linked to some resources in the show notes. Do not worry if a lot of the reading rushes past you quickly — it’s impossible to catch it all — and feel free to take solace in what Gertrude Stein had to say about Joyce’s writing: “Joyce is good. He is a good writer. People like him because he is incomprehensible and anybody can understand him.”

Richard Harte, our reader, is third generation in a family of actors and musicians, but I assure you he’s still a lovely, kind person — and gifted, most certainly, at reading Joyce. Born in Ireland’s capital and raised in both Dublin and Halifax, Nova Scotia, Richard has made Toronto his home for the past 25 years. He’s performed on prestigious stages across Canada, hundreds of times with One Little Goat Theatre Company, and made numerous TV appearances. He is also a member of Toronto’s Anna Livia Company, performing Joyce’s Ulysses every Bloomsday (June 16).

The opening pages from Chapter 1 were shot and recorded in 2022 in my home in Toronto with a small—and at that time all masked—audience. It premiered at the Toronto Irish Film Festival, European Union Film Festival, and Bloomsday Film Festival at the James Joyce Centre in Dublin.

And now it’s time to welcome you all into my home for Richard’s terrific reading of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, page 3 line 1 to page 8 line 8 in Chapter 1.

[Richard Harte reads Finnegans Wake 3:1-8:8.]

riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend
of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to
Howth Castle and Environs.

Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passen-
core rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy
isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor
had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse
to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper
all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to
tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a
kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all's fair in
vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a
peck of pa's malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory
end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.

The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner-
ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthur-
nuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later
on life down through all christian minstrelsy. The great fall of the
offwall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan,
erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends
an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes:
and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the park
where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since dev-
linsfirst loved livvy.

[p.4] What clashes here of wills gen wonts, oystrygods gaggin fishy-
gods! Brékkek Kékkek Kékkek Kékkek! Kóax Kóax Kóax! Ualu
Ualu Ualu! Quaouauh! Where the Baddelaries partisans are still
out to mathmaster Malachus Micgranes and the Verdons cata-
pelting the camibalistics out of the Whoyteboyce of Hoodie
Head. Assiegates and boomeringstroms. Sod's brood, be me fear!
Sanglorians, save! Arms apeal with larms, appalling. Killykill-
killy: a toll, a toll. What chance cuddleys, what cashels aired
and ventilated! What bidimetoloves sinduced by what tegotetab-
solvers! What true feeling for their's hayair with what strawng
voice of false jiccup! O here here how hoth sprowled met the
duskt the father of fornicationists but, (O my shining stars and
body!) how hath fanespanned most high heaven the skysign of
soft advertisement! But was iz? Iseut? Ere were sewers? The oaks
of ald now they lie in peat yet elms leap where askes lay. Phall if
you but will, rise you must: and none so soon either shall the
pharce for the nunce come to a setdown secular phoenish.

Bygmester Finnegan, of the Stuttering Hand, freemen's mau-
rer, lived in the broadest way immarginable in his rushlit toofar-
back for messuages before joshuan judges had given us numbers
or Helviticus committed deuteronomy (one yeastyday he sternely
struxk his tete in a tub for to watsch the future of his fates but ere
he swiftly stook it out again, by the might of moses, the very wat-
er was eviparated and all the guenneses had met their exodus so
that ought to show you what a pentschanjeuchy chap he was!)
and during mighty odd years this man of hod, cement and edi-
fices in Toper's Thorp piled buildung supra buildung pon the
banks for the livers by the Soangso. He addle liddle phifie Annie
ugged the little craythur. Wither hayre in honds tuck up your part
inher. Oftwhile balbulous, mithre ahead, with goodly trowel in
grasp and ivoroiled overalls which he habitacularly fondseed, like
Haroun Childeric Eggeberth he would caligulate by multiplicab-
les the alltitude and malltitude until he seesaw by neatlight of the
liquor wheretwin 'twas born, his roundhead staple of other days
to rise in undress maisonry upstanded (joygrantit!), a waalworth
of a skyerscape of most eyeful hoyth entowerly, erigenating from

[p.5] next to nothing and celescalating the himals and all, hierarchitec-
titiptitoploftical, with a burning bush abob off its baubletop and
with larrons o'toolers clittering up and tombles a'buckets clotter-
ing down.

Of the first was he to bare arms and a name: Wassaily Boos-
laeugh of Riesengeborg. His crest of huroldry, in vert with
ancillars, troublant, argent, a hegoak, poursuivant, horrid, horned.
His scutschum fessed, with archers strung, helio, of the second.
Hootch is for husbandman handling his hoe. Hohohoho, Mister
Finn, you're going to be Mister Finnagain! Comeday morm and,
O, you're vine! Sendday's eve and, ah, you're vinegar! Hahahaha,
Mister Funn, you're going to be fined again!

What then agentlike brought about that tragoady thundersday
this municipal sin business? Our cubehouse still rocks as earwitness
to the thunder of his arafatas but we hear also through successive
ages that shebby choruysh of unkalified muzzlenimiissilehims that
would blackguardise the whitestone ever hurtleturtled out of
heaven. Stay us wherefore in our search for tighteousness, O Sus-
tainer, what time we rise and when we take up to toothmick and
before we lump down upown our leatherbed and in the night and
at the fading of the stars! For a nod to the nabir is better than wink
to the wabsanti. Otherways wesways like that provost scoffing
bedoueen the jebel and the jpysian sea. Cropherb the crunch-
bracken shall decide. Then we'll know if the feast is a flyday. She
has a gift of seek on site and she allcasually ansars helpers, the
dreamydeary. Heed! Heed! It may half been a missfired brick, as
some say, or it mought have been due to a collupsus of his back
promises, as others looked at it. (There extand by now one thou-
sand and one stories, all told, of the same). But so sore did abe
ite ivvy's holired abbles, (what with the wallhall's horrors of rolls-
rights, carhacks, stonengens, kisstvanes, tramtrees, fargobawlers,
autokinotons, hippohobbilies, streetfleets, tournintaxes, mega-
phoggs, circuses and wardsmoats and basilikerks and aeropagods
and the hoyse and the jollybrool and the peeler in the coat and
the mecklenburk bitch bite at his ear and the merlinburrow bur-
rocks and his fore old porecourts, the bore the more, and his

[p.6] blightblack workingstacks at twelvepins a dozen and the noobi-
busses sleighding along Safetyfirst Street and the derryjellybies
snooping around Tell-No-Tailors' Corner and the fumes and the
hopes and the strupithump of his ville's indigenous romekeepers,
homesweepers, domecreepers, thurum and thurum in fancymud
murumd and all the uproor from all the aufroofs, a roof for may
and a reef for hugh butt under his bridge suits tony) wan warn-
ing Phill filt tippling full. His howd feeled heavy, his hoddit did
shake. (There was a wall of course in erection) Dimb! He stot-
tered from the latter. Damb! he was dud. Dumb! Mastabatoom,
mastabadtomm, when a mon merries his lute is all long. For
whole the world to see.

Shize? I should shee! Macool, Macool, orra whyi deed ye diie?
of a trying thirstay mournin? Sobs they sighdid at Fillagain's
chrissormiss wake, all the hoolivans of the nation, prostrated in
their consternation and their duodisimally profusive plethora of
ululation. There was plumbs and grumes and cheriffs and citherers
and raiders and cinemen too. And the all gianed in with the shout-
most shoviality. Agog and magog and the round of them agrog.
To the continuation of that celebration until Hanandhunigan's
extermination! Some in kinkin corass, more, kankan keening.
Belling him up and filling him down. He's stiff but he's steady is
Priam Olim! 'Twas he was the dacent gaylabouring youth. Sharpen
his pillowscone, tap up his bier! E'erawhere in this whorl would ye
hear sich a din again? With their deepbrow fundigs and the dusty
fidelios. They laid him brawdawn alanglast bed. With a bockalips
of finisky fore his feet. And a barrowload of guenesis hoer his head.
Tee the tootal of the fluid hang the twoddle of the fuddled, O!

Hurrah, there is but young gleve for the owl globe wheels in
view which is tautaulogically the same thing. Well, Him a being
so on the flounder of his bulk like an overgrown babeling, let wee
peep, see, at Hom, well, see peegee ought he ought, platterplate. *E*
Hum! From Shopalist to Bailywick or from ashtun to baronoath
or from Buythebanks to Roundthehead or from the foot of the
bill to ireglint's eye he calmly extensolies. And all the way (a
horn!) from fiord to fjell his baywinds' oboboes shall wail him

[p.7] rockbound (hoahoahoah!) in swimswamswum and all the livvy-
long night, the delldale dalppling night, the night of bluerybells,
her flittaflute in tricky trochees (O carina! O carina!) wake him.
With her issavan essavans and her patterjackmartins about all
them inns and ouses. Tilling a teel of a tum, telling a toll of a tea-
ry turty Taubling. Grace before Glutton. For what we are, gifs
a gross if we are, about to believe. So pool the begg and pass the
kish for crawsake. Omen. So sigh us. Grampupus is fallen down
but grinny sprids the boord. Whase on the joint of a desh? Fin-
foefom the Fush. Whase be his baken head? A loaf of Singpan-
try's Kennedy bread. And whase hitched to the hop in his tayle?
A glass of Danu U'Dunnell's foamous olde Dobbelin ayle. But,
lo, as you would quaffoff his fraudstuff and sink teeth through
that pyth of a flowerwhite bodey behold of him as behemoth for
he is noewhemoe. Finiche! Only a fadograph of a yestern scene.
Almost rubicund Salmosalar, ancient fromout the ages of the Ag-
apemonides, he is smolten in our mist, woebecanned and packt
away. So that meal's dead off for summan, schlook, schlice and
goodridhirring.

Yet may we not see still the brontoichthyan form outlined a-
slumbered, even in our own nighttime by the sedge of the trout-
ling stream that Bronto loved and Brunto has a lean on. Hiccubat
edilis. Apud libertinam parvulam. Whatif she be in flags or flitters,
reekierags or sundyechosies, with a mint of mines or beggar a
pinnyweight. Arrah, sure, we all love little Anny Ruiny, or, we
mean to say, lovelittle Anna Rayiny, when unda her brella, mid
piddle med puddle, she ninnygoes nannygoes nancing by. Yoh!
Brontolone slaaps, yoh snoores. Upon Benn Heather, in Seeple
Isout too. The cranic head on him, caster of his reasons, peer yu-
thner in yondmist. Whooth? His clay feet, swarded in verdigrass,
stick up starck where he last fellonem, by the mund of the maga-
zine wall, where our maggy seen all, with her sisterin shawl.
While over against this belles' alliance beyind Ill Sixty, ollol-
lowed ill! bagsides of the fort, bom, tarabom, tarabom, lurk the
ombushes, the site of the lyffing-in-wait of the upjock and hock-
ums. Hence when the clouds roll by, jamey, a proudseye view is

[p.8] enjoyable of our mounding's mass, now Wallinstone national
museum, with, in some greenish distance, the charmful water-
loose country and the two quitewhite villagettes who hear show
of themselves so gigglesomes minxt the follyages, the prettilees!
Penetrators are permitted into the museomound free. Welsh and
the Paddy Patkinses, one shelenk! Redismembers invalids of old
guard find poussepousse pousseypram to sate the sort of their butt.
For her passkey supply to the janitrix, the mistress Kathe. Tip.

[End of reading excerpt]

Adam Seelig: That was my friend and colleague Richard Harte reading the beginning of Finnegans Wake, recorded live in Toronto on August 31st, 2022.

Join us for Episode 3 in a fortnight when Richard continues with the next five pages of Finnegans Wake, including the famous “Museyroom” scene. To be sure you don’t miss the episode, why not follow or subscribe to this podcast? And for more on One Little Goat’s Finnegans Wake project, including liner notes & trailers for the films, visit our website at OneLittleGoat.org.

[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]

Finnegans Wake is made possible by Friends of One Little Goat Theatre Company and the Emigrant Support Programme of the gov’t of Ireland. Thank you for your support!

One Little Goat Theatre Company is a not-for-profit, artist-driven, registered charity. To find out more and to join our mailing list please visit www.OneLittleGoat.org

Thank you for listening!

[Music fades out]

Mentioned: riverrun, music, sound, rivers, water, streams of consciousness and unconsciousness, dreams, dream language, multiple languages, characters ALP (Anna Livia Plurabelle) and HCE (Earwicker), comedy, Mother Goose, what makes something funny?, circularity and “recirculation,” synopsis, Roland McHugh, John Gordon, Edmund Epstein, Marshall McLuhan’s copy of the Wake (accessed at Fisher Rare Books Library), Thierry Bissonnette, Gertrude Stein.

Resources:

Finnegans Wake (1939) by James Joyce: there are many free copies to read online or download, e.g. finwake.com
James Joyce Digital Archive, “Chicken Guide” to Finnegans Wake provides a ‘plain English’ paraphrase of each chapter by Danis Rose.
Edmund Epstein, A Guide through Finnegans Wake. University Press of Florida, 2009.
William York Tindall. A Reader’s Guide to Finnegans Wake. Syracuse University Press, 1996.
Roland McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake (4th edition). Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2016.
John Gordon’s annotations on his Finnegans Wake blog.
Richard Ellmann’s biography of James Joyce. Oxford University Press, 1982.
For fun: “What’s So Funny? Well, Maybe Nothing,” John Tierney. New York Times, March 13, 2007.

Episode 001: The song that gave Finnegans Wake its title

May 4, 2024 Adam Seelig

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE
Episode 001
The song that gave Finnegans Wake its title

2024-05-04

PODCAST AUDIO

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

[Music: Richard Harte sings “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly” from Finnegans Wake]

Have you heard of one Humpty Dumpty
How he fell with a roll and a rumble
And curled up like Lord Olofa Crumple
By the butt of the Magazine Wall

[Music fades out]

Adam Seelig: Welcome to the inaugural episode of James Joyce’s divine and delirious comedy, Finnegans Wake. Published on the 4th of May, 1939, Joyce’s last novel celebrates its 85th anniversary today, the 4th of May 2024 (so May 4th is not just for Star Wars — in any case, May the 4th be with you). I’m Adam Seelig, the director of the readings you’ll soon hear performed by Irish-Canadian actor—and my good friend and colleague—Richard Harte.

[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]

[Music fades out]

Adam Seelig: 20 years ago, I opened Finnegans Wake, read 10 pages, and put back on shelf, utterly bewildered. Then early in the pandemic, during one of Toronto’s several lockdowns, Jordy Koffman, who teaches at George Brown College, invited me to read Finnegans Wake with him and his colleague Thomas Ponnaiah. I told Jordy, “You do know that it’s essentially impossible to read this book, right?” but he was undeterred, and at our first meeting via Zoom, as we took turns reading from the first page of the novel, I found it—and perhaps this was the result of so much isolation—I found it bringing a whole world to me. From the first word on that page—“riverrun”—Joyce’s text felt so expansive at a time when my own world had contracted. And it was lyrical, it was strange, it was funny and it was smart as all hell, and it was communal, it was great to be reading it as a group. What was missing, though, was someone who really knew Ireland, and Dublin in particular, given the Wake’s boundless references to Joyce’s native city. So I invited two friends who fit the bill: Cathy Murphy and Richard Harte, the latter of whom was born and raised in Dublin. And at our next meeting, when Richard took his turn to read, his delivery was so dynamic and free-flowing and funny, we all thought he’d read this book before. He hadn’t, but in a way it’s as if he’d been training for nearly a quarter century because Richard’s been reading & performing Joyce’s Ulysses annually for over 20 years with Toronto’s Bloomsday group, Anna Livia Productions.

As we continued to meet weekly, it became clear that the rest of us preferred hearing Richard read from the novel than hear ourselves stumble through the famously difficult text, because Richard speaks fluent Joyce, fluid Wake. And I was convinced then, as I am today, that he’s one of the people on planet earth to read this novel (and I promise you that’s not hyperbole). So I made a plan to record R’s renditions of the text. Initially I thought we’d do it as an audio book or podcast, but because Richard and I have done a lot of work together in the theatre and we love the live moment, the idea of going into an isolated studio after so much social isolation was not particularly appealing. Plus, reading Finnegans Wake without the reading group or an audience present would lose a sense of comedy (there’s a reason standup comedians do live albums with live audiences).

And that’s how we ended up turning to film — film has enabled us to capture R’s reading for a live audience and give us that feeling of being in the room with him, as does the audio from the films, which comprise our podcast episodes.

Ch01 was shot and recorded in 2022 in my home in Toronto with a small—and at that time all masked—audience. It premiered at the Toronto Irish Film Festival, European Union Film Festival, and Bloomsday Film Festival at the James Joyce Centre in Dublin.

What is Finnegans Wake about? Well, Finnegans Wake is a different kind of book that requires a different kind of question. I can’t say what it’s about, but rather what it is. For Samuel Beckett, Joyce’s younger friend and admirer, the Wake “is not to be read – or rather it is not only to be read. It is to be looked at and listened to.” Joyce’s writing, Beckett insists, “is not about something; it is that something itself.”

Okay then, so what is Finnegans Wake? Let’s start with title. “Finnegan’s Wake” takes its name from a comedic 19th-Century Irish American folk song that goes something like this: Tim Finnegan goes to work a little bit drunk; climbs up a ladder and falls down to his death; at his wake a bar fight breaks out, and when someone chucks a bottle of whiskey across the room, it misses the intended target, scatters over Tim’s body laid out in the coffin, and before you know it, Tim has revived, he’s risen from the dead. Joyce, in his singular ability to read something into everything, saw in this folk song nothing less than an allegory for the rise and fall and rise again of humankind, and this a major theme of novel. So Joyce took the song title and removed the apostrophe in “Finnegan’s,” which does at least two things:

(1) it makes Finnegan plural. So this is a novel involving many Finnegans. Finnegan singular is a kind of Everyman; Finnegans plural are a kind of Everyone; and

(2) it transforms the “Wake” of the folk song title—that is, an Irish Wake celebrating the life of the deceased—it transforms it into a verb. Now we have Finnegans in the plural awaking, awakening.

So one gloss on Joyce’s title, “Finnegans (sans apostrophe) Finnegans Wake”, could be “Everyone wake up (and down, and up again)”

That cycle of rising and falling and rising again is a key to Finnegans Wake. So as a way into Joyce’s extraordinary, bananas novel, and as a way to kick off Chapter 1, I invited Irish-Canadian folk singer Kevin Kennedy to perform the “Finnegan’s Wake” folk song for a live audience before Richard started his reading.

Kevin Kennedy is a gem. He was born in Ireland in Westport, Co. Mayo, and moved to Canada in 1968. He’s performed for decades across eastern Canada and the United States, and like Richard Harte, he’s also part of Toronto’s Anna Livia Productions, who perform Joyce’s Ulysses every Bloomsday, June 16th. He’s recorded over 700 Irish folk songs, viewed and heard over 100,000 times on his YouTube Channel, “Kevin Kennedy — Irish.”

Okay so it’s time to welcome Kevin, and you, into my home for Kevin’s terrific rendition of the 19th-C Irish-American folk song, “Finnegan’s Wake.”

[Music: Kevin Kennedy sings “Finnegan’s Wake,” accompanying himself on guitar; the live audience sings and claps along at the choruses]

Kevin Kennedy sings:

[VERSE 1]

Tim Finnegan lived in Watling Street
A gentleman Irish mighty odd
He had a beautiful brogue both rich and sweet
And to rise in the world he carried a hod

Now Tim had a sort of a tipplin’ way
With a love for the liquor poor Tim was born
And to help him on with his work each day
He’d a drop of the craythur every morn

[CHORUS]

Whack fol de dah now dance to your partner
Welt the floor your trotters shake
Wasn’t it the truth I told you
Lots of fun at Finnegan’s wake

[VERSE 2]

One morning Tim felt rather full
His head felt heavy and it made him shake
He fell from the ladder and he broke his skull
And they carried him home his corpse to wake

They wrapped him up in a nice clean sheet
And they laid him out upon the bed
With a barrel of porter at his feet
And a gallon of whiskey at his head

[CHORUS]

[VERSE 3]

His friends assembled at the wake
And Mrs Finnegan called for lunch
First they brought in tea and cake
Then pipes, tobacco and brandy punch

Biddy O’Brien began to cry,
“Such a nice clean corpse did you ever see?
Arragh, Tim mavourneen, why did you die?”
“Arrah, hold your gob,” says Maggie McGhee!

[CHORUS]

[VERSE 4]

Then Maggie O’Connor took up the job
“Ah Biddy,” says she, “you’re wrong, I’m sure”
Biddy gave her a belt in the gob
And left her sprawlin’ on the floor

It was then the war did all engage
Woman to woman and man to man
Shillelagh law was all the rage
And a row and a ruction soon began

[CHORUS]

[VERSE 5]

Then Mickey Maloney ducked his head
When a flagon of whiskey flew at him
It missed and landed on the bed
The liquor scattered over Tim

Bedad he revives see how he rises
The bold Timothy risin’ in the bed
Sayin’, “Whirl your liquor around like blazes
By the thunderin’ Jaysus do you think I’m dead?”

[Audience applauds; Music ends]

Adam Seelig: That was the wonderful Kevin Kennedy performing the Irish American folk song “Finnegan’s Wake,” filmed and recorded live in Toronto on August 31st, 2022.

Join us for Episode 2 in a fortnight when Richard Harte begins his reading of Joyce’s legendary novel, Finnegans Wake. To be sure you don’t miss the episode, why not subscribe to this podcast? And for more on One Little Goat’s Finnegans Wake project, including liner notes & trailers for the films, visit our website at OneLittleGoat.org.

[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]

Finnegans Wake is made possible by Friends of One Little Goat Theatre Company and the Emigrant Support Programme of the gov’t of Ireland. Thank you for your support!

And thank you to the artists for this episode: Kevin Kennedy; Sound by William Bembridge; Podcast production by Sean Rasmussen; Stage Management by Laura Lakatosh; Rehearsal Stage Management by Sandi Becker; Directed by yours truly, Adam Seelig.

Thanks to our live audience of Pip Dwyer, Cathy Murphy, Nomi Rotbard, Arlo Rotbard-Seelig. And thanks to our rehearsal audience of Jackie Chau, Jordy Koffman, Andrew Moodie & Shai Rotbard-Seelig. Thank you to the Embassy of Ireland in Ottawa and the Irish Consulate in Toronto. And to Production Consultants Cathy Murphy and Andrew Moodie.

One Little Goat Theatre Company is a not-for-profit, artist-driven, registered charity. To find out more and to join our mailing list please visit www.OneLittleGoat.org

Thank you for listening!

[Music fades out]

Episode 000: Introducing James Joyce's Finnegans Wake

April 26, 2024 Adam Seelig

Episode 000 (TRAILER)
Introducing James Joyce's Finnegans Wake
2024-04-26

PODCAST TRAILER AUDIO

Trailer: Introducing James Joyce's Finnegans Wake is available on podcast services such as Apple, Spotify, YouTube, etc. or feel free to listen on this site.

PODCAST TRAILER TRANSCRIPT

[Music: Richard Harte sings “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly” from Finnegans Wake]

Have you heard of one Humpty Dumpty
How he fell with a roll and a rumble
And curled up like Lord Olofa Crumple
By the butt of the Magazine Wall

Adam Seelig: Arguably the most outlandish book ever written, James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake turns 85 years old on May the 4th of 2024.

Join us on that celebratory date as we launch our podcast series of Irish-Canadian actor Richard Harte reading the entire epic, comedic novel, with introductions to each episode by yours truly, Adam Seelig.

Finnegans Wake is a production of One Little Goat Theatre Company. For more please visit www.OneLittleGoat.org

Thanks for listening and see you soon!

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKEEpisode 011 RUNNING AWAY

PAGE 48:1-53:6 | 2024-12-12

PODCAST AUDIO

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKEEpisode 010 BALLAD OF PERSSE O’REILLY

PAGE 44:07-47:34 | 2024-10-10

PODCAST AUDIO

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKEEpisode 009 HOSTY THE BUSKER

PAGE 39:14-44:24 | 2024-09-26

PODCAST AUDIO

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKEEpisode 008 CAD CONFRONTATION

PAGE 34:29-39:13 | 2024-09-12

PODCAST AUDIO

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKEEpisode 007 THE GENESIS OF HCE

PAGE 30:1-34:29 | 2024-08-29

PODCAST AUDIO

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKEEpisode 006TIM FINNEGAN’S WAKE

PAGE 24:16-29:36 | 2024-07-11

PODCAST AUDIO

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKEEpisode 005THE PRANKQUEAN

PAGE 19:20-24:15 | 2024-06-27

PODCAST AUDIO

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKEEpisode 004MUTT & JUTECHARACTERLESSNESS

PAGE 13:20-19:19 | 2024-06-13

PODCAST AUDIO

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKEEpisode 003THE MUSEYROOM

PAGE 8:9-13:19 | 2024-05-30

PODCAST AUDIO

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKEEpisode 002RIVERRUN

PAGE 3:1-8:8 | 2024-05-16

PODCAST AUDIO

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKEEpisode 001The song that gave Finnegans Wake its title

2024-05-04

PODCAST AUDIO

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Episode 000 (TRAILER)Introducing James Joyce's Finnegans Wake2024-04-26

PODCAST TRAILER AUDIO

PODCAST TRAILER TRANSCRIPT

ONE LITTLE GOAT THEATRE COMPANY IS A REGISTERED CHARITABLE ORGANIZATION

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE
Episode 011 RUNNING AWAY

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE
Episode 010 BALLAD OF PERSSE O’REILLY

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE
Episode 009 HOSTY THE BUSKER

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE
Episode 008 CAD CONFRONTATION

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE
Episode 007 THE GENESIS OF HCE

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE
Episode 006
TIM FINNEGAN’S WAKE

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE
Episode 005
THE PRANKQUEAN

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE
Episode 004
MUTT & JUTE
CHARACTERLESSNESS

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE
Episode 003
THE MUSEYROOM

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE
Episode 002
RIVERRUN

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE
Episode 001
The song that gave Finnegans Wake its title

Episode 000 (TRAILER)
Introducing James Joyce's Finnegans Wake
2024-04-26