JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE
Episode 006
TIM FINNEGAN’S WAKE
PAGE 24:16-29:36 | 2024-07-11
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 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]
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]
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.