JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE
Episode 014: REEL WORLD!
PAGE 63:20-69:4 | 2025-01-23
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 14, we’ll hear Irish-Canadian actor — and my good friend and colleague — Richard Harte performing pages 63 to 69 from Chapter 3 of Joyce’s last novel. I’m Adam Seelig, the director of the reading you’ll soon hear.
[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: Let’s go to the movies, or in the words of today’s excerpt, “the reel world,” spelled r-e-e-l, as in a reel of film.
Kathleen Ferrier sings “The Keel Row”.
Echoing the chorus of “The Keel Row,” a Scottish traditional that goes something like… “weel may the keel row,/ The keel row, the keel row,/ O weel may the keel row/ That my laddie's in,” today’s Finnegans Wake excerpt transports this 18th-century shanty from the River Tyne to the modern world of the cinema: “roll away the reel world, the reel world, the reel world!” (25:6)
Joyce was seriously interested in the new medium of film, and was instrumental, if not entirely successful, in bringing cinema to Ireland in early last century. In 1909, while living in Trieste, Joyce persuaded several Italian businessmen to open a movie theatre in Dublin by hooking them with this clever sales pitch: “I know a city of 500,000 inhabitants,” he said, “where there is not a single cinema” (Ellmann 301). By 1910, thanks to Joyce’s efforts, Dublin’s first movie theatre, named the Volta, was screening films. Joyce’s affiliation with the Volta was short-lived, lasting less than a year, but it attests to his enthusiasm for the growing medium of film. (The screening room at the James Joyce Centre in Dublin, incidentally, where One Little Goat’s films of Finnegans Wake have played, is naturally named The Volta Room.)
It's also worth noting Joyce’s influence on, admiration for, and meetings with a titan of cinematic art, Sergei Eisenstein (1898–1948), who directed the 1925 landmark film Battleship Potemkin and invented that essential film technique known as the montage. Joyce’s Ulysses was one of Eisenstein’s favourite books, a risky aesthetic preference for the Russian filmmaker given official Soviet hostility toward Joyce. One Soviet functionary dismissed Joyce’s writing as “a heap of dung” (Bergan 261) — a not entirely inaccurate characterization had it referred to Finnegans Wake in light of the “tip” or mound of crap we encounter in “the museyroom” of Chapter 1 (Ep003) — while Moscow’s official newspaper, Pravda, got far more specific and nasty in its denunciation of Ulysses, equally applicable to Finnegans Wake, as “written in English that can hardly be understood by Englishmen… Its style reminds one of the delirious babblings of a mad philosopher who has mixed all the known languages into one monstrous mess” (Bergan 280). What Eisenstein loved in Joyce’s work — to the point where he considered Ulysses “the Bible of the new Cinema” (Bergan 185) — was the “exceptionally musical prose” and technique of simultaneity, the verbal fugue of it all (Ep002 & Ep003), or, in Eisenstein’s own words, “unfolding the display of events simultaneously with a particular manner in which these events pass through the consciousness and feelings, the associations and emotions” of a character (Bergan 185). It’s no wonder, then, that Eisenstein yearned to adapt Ulysses to the screen and that Joyce once commented that if Ulysses were ever filmed, the Russian was one of only two filmmakers who could pull it off (Bergan 185).
Like all art, film can be an escape not merely from but into reality. The r-e-e-l “reel world” is in itself an r-e-a-l ‘real world.’
If the short “reel” we’re about to watch, so to speak, in today’s excerpt had a title, it would be “a strawberry frolic” (64:28), and like so much in the Wake, the “frolic” in question is sexual in nature. Before the reel begins, we’re exhorted to cherchez la femme (here it’s “Cherchons la flamme!” (64:28)), the French expression that literally means ‘look for the woman’ and figuratively means that at the heart of the story, there’s a woman to blame for a man’s misdeeds and downfall. Look, in other words, for the femme fatale. Is this suggesting Eve and her apple, and her man Adam who took the bait, corresponding respectively to our protagonists Annalivia and Earwicker? As the film reel loads onto the projector, we hear the sound of a French woman, or femme, not once, but twice: “Fammfamm! Fammfamm!” (64:28-9) So there are two women involved? This is starting to sound scandalous, and where there’s scandal, HCEarwicker can’t be far away. That’s because the film we’re about to watch is an entertaining adaptation of Earwicker’s alleged sin involving two girls in Phoenix Park (Ep008).
Benny Hill and two unnamed women in The Daily Mail.
We don’t have to go as far back as the original sin of Adam/Earwicker in the Garden of Eden/Phoenix Park to follow this scandal; its inspiration is contemporary to Joyce, as Edmund Epstein explains: “another scandal is uncovered — the great Daddy and Peaches Browning scandal of the 1920s in New York. Daddy Browning, a retired taxi-company millionaire, took up with a pudgy 16-year-old whom he nicknamed Peaches. The scandal sheet the New York Graphic (the PornoGraphic, some called it) picked up the juicy morsel and ran with it” (Epstein 44–45). The suggested ménage à trois in the short reel we’ll soon hear also anticipates the horny hijinks of English entertainer Benny Hill (1925–92), whose favourite form of sketch comedy involved young, scantily clad women flirtatiously surrounding the older Hill (over the hill?) himself. Recently, England’s Daily Mail, no stranger to salacious tabloid journalism, sanctimoniously described Hill’s comedy as sexist, to which the character Nigel in the 1984 cult film Spinal Tap might innocently ask, “What’s wrong with being sexy?” (On a side note, this may be the first and only time Battleship Potemkin and Spinal Tap are mentioned in the same piece.)
Going back to our 1939 novel, the “reel world” risqué comedy sketch in today’s excerpt is one page long and a lot of fun to hear Richard read. It ends with “Finny” (65:33), as if to announce “the end” in Italian while echoing the name of Earwicker’s avatar, our book’s eponymous Tim “Finnegan,” who ends (and begins), falls (and rises), again and again.
Here’s a quick synopsis of the rest of today’s excerpt before we get to Richard’s reading.
We left off last episode with our protagonist, HCEarwicker, fleeing “the terror of Errorland” (62:25) only to be subjected to new terrors, with a tall, masked assailant pulling a gun on him.
Now our protagonist appears to be both inside-and-outside a pub both attacking-and-defending himself, somewhat drunkenly; or maybe the attacker is the Cad from Chapter 2 (Ep008) banging at the pub’s door after closing, with the pub appearing to be back in Dublin since its name, “the Mullingcan Inn” (64:9), bears near perfect resemblance to the Mullingar Inn (Ep003), which backs onto Phoenix Park.
End of Reel Sound Effect.
We then take “Just one moment” (64:22) to set up the short film reel mentioned earlier and we’re off to the movies to encounter the threesome scandal. The reel ends with “Finny”, and is followed by “Ack, ack, ack” (65:34), which Epstein suggests is the sound of the film flapping once it’s reached the end of its reel (55). (For those accustomed to our current, quieter digital era of movie projection, I have linked in this episode’s transcript to an ‘end-of-film-reel’ “ack-ack-ack-ish” sound effect.)
We then learn that a letter in defence of HCE written by his spouse ALP should land at any moment and vindicate him, clearing him of the scandal that constantly surrounds him. This vital letter will appear in Chapter 5, which we can look forward to.
We then seem to go deeper into HCE’s unconscious, where we find him blaming women for his alleged sins — they teased him, he was pranked (68:22), etc. — but the last two words of today’s excerpt, “whispered sins” (69:4), remind us of the merciless rumours HCE is trying and repeatedly failing to escape.
Now it’s time for Richard’s performance of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, page 63 line 20 to page 69 line 4 for the continuation 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 you’ll hear is my own arrangement of “The Keel Row,” the 18th-century Scottish traditional referenced in the “reel world” in today’s excerpt, with Brandon Bak on drums and Adam Seelig, yours truly, on piano.
[Richard Harte reads and sings Finnegans Wake 63:20-69:4.]
[63] Fifthly, how parasoliloquisingly truetoned on his first time of
hearing the wretch's statement that, muttering Irish, he had had
had o'gloriously a'lot too much hanguest or hoshoe fine to
drink in the House of Blazes, the Parrot in Hell, the Orange Tree,
the Glibt, the Sun, the Holy Lamb and, lapse not leashed, in
Ramitdown's ship hotel since the morning moment he could
dixtinguish a white thread from a black till the engine of the
laws declosed unto Murray and was only falling fillthefluthered
up against the gatestone pier which, with the cow's bonnet
a'top o'it, he falsetook for a cattlepillar with purest peaceablest
intentions. Yet how lamely hobbles the hoy of his then pseudo-
jocax axplanation how, according to his own story, he vas a
process server and was merely trying to open zozimus a bottlop
stoub by mortially hammering his magnum bonum (the curter the
club the sorer the savage) against the bludgey gate for the boots
about the swan, Maurice Behan, who hastily into his shoes with
nothing his hald barra tinnteack and came down with homp,
[64] shtemp and jumphet to the tiltyard from the wastes a'sleep in his
obi ohny overclothes or choker, attracted by the norse of guns
playing Delandy is cartager on the raglar rock to Dulyn, said
war' prised safe in bed as he dreamed that he'd wealthes in mor-
mon halls when wokenp by a fourth loud snore out of his land
of byelo while hickstrey's maws was grazing in the moonlight
by hearing hammering on the pandywhank scale emanating from
the blind pig and anything like it (oonagh! oonagh!) in the
whole history of the Mullingcan Inn he never. This battering
babel allower the door and sideposts, he always said, was not in
the very remotest like the belzey babble of a bottle of boose
which would not rouse him out o'slumber deep but reminded
him loads more of the martiallawsey marses of foreign musi-
kants' instrumongs or the overthrewer to the third last days of
Pompery, if anything. And that after this most nooningless
knockturn the young reine came down desperate and the old
liffopotamus started ploring all over the plains, as mud as she
cud be, ruinating all the bouchers' schurts and the backers'
wischandtugs so that be the chandeleure of the Rejaneyjailey
they were all night wasching the walters of, the weltering walters
off. Whyte.
Just one moment. A pinch in time of the ideal, musketeers!
Alphos, Burkos and Caramis, leave Astrelea for the astrollajerries
and for the love of the saunces and the honour of Keavens pike
puddywhackback to Pamintul. And roll away the reel world, the
reel world, the reel world! And call all your smokeblushes,
Snowwhite and Rosered, if you will have the real cream! Now for
a strawberry frolic! Filons, filoosh! Cherchons la flamme! Famm-
famm! Fammfamm!
Come on, ordinary man with that large big nonobli head, and
that blanko berbecked fischial ekksprezzion Machinsky Scapolo-
polos, Duzinascu or other. Your machelar's mutton leg's getting
musclebound from being too pulled. Noah Beery weighed stone
thousand one when Hazel was a hen. Now her fat's falling fast.
Therefore, chatbags, why not yours? There are 29 sweet reasons
why blossomtime's the best. Elders fall for green almonds when
[65] they're raised on bruised stone root ginger though it winters on
their heads as if auctumned round their waistbands. If you'd had
pains in your hairs you wouldn't look so orgibald. You'd have
Colley Macaires on your lump of lead. Now listen, Mr Leer!
And stow that sweatyfunnyadams Simper! Take an old geeser
who calls on his skirt. Note his sleek hair, so elegant, tableau
vivant. He vows her to be his own honeylamb, swears they will
be papa pals, by Sam, and share good times way down west in a
guaranteed happy lovenest when May moon she shines and they
twit twinkle all the night, combing the comet's tail up right and
shooting popguns at the stars. Creampuffs all to dime! Every
nice, missymackenzies! For dear old grumpapar, he's gone on
the razzledar, through gazing and crazing and blazing at the stars.
Compree! She wants her wardrobe to hear from above by return
with cash so as she can buy her Peter Robinson trousseau and cut
a dash with Arty, Bert or possibly Charley Chance (who knows?)
so tolloll Mr Hunker you're too dada for me to dance (so off she
goes!) and that's how half the gels in town has got their bottom
drars while grumpapar he's trying to hitch his braces on to his
trars. But old grum he's not so clean dippy between sweet you
and yum (not on your life, boy! not in those trousers! not by a
large jugful!) for someplace on the sly, where Furphy he isn't by,
old grum has his gel number two (bravevow, our Grum!) and he
would like to canoodle her too some part of the time for he is
downright fond of his number one but O he's fair mashed on
peaches number two so that if he could only canoodle the two,
chivee chivoo, all three would feel genuinely happy, it's as simple
as A. B. C., the two mixers, we mean, with their cherrybum
chappy (for he is simply shamming dippy) if they all were afloat
in a dreamlifeboat, hugging two by two in his zoo-doo-you-doo,
a tofftoff for thee, missymissy for me and howcameyou-e'enso for
Farber, in his tippy, upindown dippy, tiptoptippy canoodle, can
you? Finny.
Ack, ack, ack. With which clap, trap and soddenment, three to
a loaf, our mutual friends the fender and the bottle at the gate seem
to be implicitly in the same bateau, so to singen, bearing also
[66] several of the earmarks of design, for there is in fact no use in
putting a tooth in a snipery of that sort and the amount of all
those sort of things which has been going on onceaday in and
twiceaday out every other nachtistag among all kinds of pro-
miscious individuals at all ages in private homes and reeboos
publikiss and allover all and elsewhere throughout secular
sequence the country over and overabroad has been particularly
stupendous. To be continued. Federals' Uniteds' Transports'
Unions' for Exultations' of Triumphants' Ecstasies.
But resuming inquiries. Will it ever be next morning the postal
unionist's (officially called carrier's, Letters Scotch, Limited)
strange fate (Fierceendgiddyex he's hight, d.e., the losel that
hucks around missivemaids' gummibacks) to hand in a huge
chain envelope, written in seven divers stages of ink, from blanch-
essance to lavandaiette, every pothook and pancrook bespaking
the wisherwife, superscribed and subpencilled by yours A Laugh-
able Party, with afterwite, S.A.G., to Hyde and Cheek, Eden-
berry, Dubblenn, WC? Will whatever will be written in lappish
language with inbursts of Maggyer always seem semposed, black
looking white and white guarding black, in that siamixed twoa-
talk used twist stern swift and jolly roger? Will it bright upon us,
nightle, and we plunging to our plight? Well, it might now, mircle,
so it light. Always and ever till Cox's wife, twice Mrs Hahn, pokes
her beak into the matter with Owen K. after her, to see whawa
smutter after, will this kiribis pouch filled with litterish frag-
ments lurk dormant in the paunch of that halpbrother of a herm,
a pillarbox? The coffin, a triumph of the illusionist's art, at first
blench naturally taken for a handharp (it is handwarp to tristin-
guishjubabe from jabule or either from tubote when all three
have just been invened) had been removed from the hardware
premises of Oetzmann and Nephew, a noted house of the gone-
most west, which in the natural course of all things continues to
supply funeral requisites of every needed description. Why nee-
ded, though? Indeed needed (wouldn't you feel like rattanfowl
if you hadn't the oscar!) because the flash brides or bride in
their lily boleros one games with at the Nivynubies' finery ball
[67]and your upright grooms that always come right up with you
(and by jingo when they do!) what else in this mortal world,
now ours, when meet there night, mid their nackt, me there na-
ket, made their nought the hour strikes, would bring them right-
came back in the flesh, thumbs down, to their orses and their
hashes.
To proceed. We might leave that nitrience of oxagiants to take
its free of the air and just analectralyse that very chymerical com-
bination, the gasbag where the warderworks. And try to pour
somour heiterscene up thealmostfere. In the bottled heliose case
continuing, Long Lally Tobkids, the special, sporting a fine breast
of medals, and a conscientious scripturereader to boot in the brick
and tin choorch round the coroner, swore like a Norewheezian
tailliur on the stand before the proper functionary that he was up
against a right querrshnorrt of a mand in the butcher of the blues
who, he guntinued, on last epening after delivering some car-
casses mattonchepps and meatjutes on behalf of Messrs Otto
Sands and Eastman, Limericked, Victuallers, went and, with his
unmitigated astonissment, hickicked at the dun and dorass against
all the runes and, when challenged about the pretended hick (it
was kickup and down with him) on his solemn by the imputant
imputed, said simply: I appop pie oath, Phillyps Captain. You
did, as I sostressed before. You are deepknee in error, sir, Madam
Tomkins, let me then tell you, replied with a gentlewomanly
salaam MackPartland, (the meatman's family, and the oldest in
the world except nick, name.) And Phelps was flayful with his
peeler. But his phizz fell.
Now to the obverse. From velveteens to dimities is barely a
fivefinger span and hence these camelback excesses are thought
to have been instigated by one or either of the causing causes of
all, those rushy hollow heroines in their skirtsleeves, be she ma-
gretta be she the posque. Oh! Oh! Because it is a horrible thing
to have to say to say to day but one dilalah, Lupita Lorette, short-
ly after in a fit of the unexpectednesses drank carbolic with all
her dear placid life before her and paled off while the other
soiled dove that's her sister-in-love, Luperca Latouche, finding
[68] one day while dodging chores that she stripped teasily for binocu-
lar man and that her jambs were jimpjoyed to see each other, the
nautchy girly soon found her fruitful hat too small for her and
rapidly taking time, look, she rapidly took to necking, partying
and selling her spare favours in the haymow or in lumber closets
or in the greenawn ad huck (there are certain intimacies in all
ladies' lavastories we just lease to imagination) or in the sweet
churchyard close itself for a bit of soft coal or an array of thin
trunks, serving whom in fine that same hot coney a la Zingara
which our own little Graunya of the chilired cheeks dished up
to the greatsire of Oscar, that son of a Coole. Houri of the coast
of emerald, arrah of the lacessive poghue, Aslim-all-Muslim, the
resigned to her surrender, did not she, come leinster's even, true
dotter of a dearmud, (her pitch was Forty Steps and his perch old
Cromwell's Quarters) with so valkirry a licence as sent many a
poor pucker packing to perdition, again and again, ay, and again
sfidare him, tease fido, eh tease fido, eh eh tease fido, toos top-
ples topple, stop, dug of a dog of a dgiaour, ye! Angealousmei!
And did not he, like Arcoforty, farfar off Bissavolo, missbrand
her behaveyous with iridescent huecry of down right mean false
sop lap sick dope? Tawfulsdreck! A reine of the shee, a shebeen
quean, a queen of pranks. A kingly man, of royal mien, regally
robed, exalted be his glory! So gave so take: Now not, not now!
He would just a min. Suffering trumpet! He thought he want.
Whath? Hear, O hear, living of the land! Hungreb, dead era,
hark! He hea, eyes ravenous on her lippling lills. He hear her voi
of day gon by. He hears! Zay, zay, zay! But, by the beer of his
profit, he cannot answer. Upterputty till rise and shine! Nor needs
none shaft ne stele from Phenicia or Little Asia to obelise on
the spout, neither pobalclock neither folksstone, nor sunkenness
in Tomar's Wood to bewray how erpressgangs score off the rued.
The mouth that tells not will ever attract the unthinking tongue
and so long as the obseen draws theirs which hear not so long
till allearth's dumbnation shall the blind lead the deaf. Tatcho,
tawney yeeklings! The column of lumps lends the pattrin of the
leaves behind us. If violence to life, limb and chattels, often as
[69] not, has been the expression, direct or through an agent male, of
womanhid offended, (ah! ah!), has not levy of black mail from
the times the fairies were in it, and fain for wilde erthe blothoms
followed an impressive private reputation for whispered sins?
[End of excerpt]
Adam Seelig: That was Richard Harte reading pages 63 to 69 of Chapter 3 from Finnegans Wake, recorded live in Toronto on October 2nd, 2023.
Join us for Episode 15 in a fortnight when Richard concludes his reading of Chapter 3. 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 and the complete film of Chapter 1, 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!
[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 Ep014]
Mentioned: “the reel world,” “The Keel Row” song, James Joyce and cinema, film, Dublin’s first movie theatre the Volta, Sergei Eisenstein, “a strawberry frolic,” cherchez la femme, ménage à trois, Peaches and Daddy Browning scandal, Benny Hill, synopsis.
Resources: Transcript for this episode, including the text of Finnegans Wake.
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.
Richard Ellmann’s biography of James Joyce. Oxford University Press, 1982.
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.
John Gordon’s annotations on his Finnegans Wake blog.
Roland McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake (4th edition). Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016.
Raphael Slepon, fweet.org
William York Tindall, A Reader’s Guide to Finnegans Wake. Syracuse University Press, 1996.
Cited: Ronald Bergan. Sergei Eisenstein: A Life in Conflict (1997). New York, Arcade, 2016.