JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE
Episode 007 THE GENESIS OF HCE
PAGE 30:1-34:29 | 2024-08-29
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 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]
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]
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.
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 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.
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 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.