JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE
Episode 013: I DREAM THEREFORE I BECOME
PAGE 58:23-63:19 | 2025-01-09
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 13, we’ll hear Irish-Canadian actor — and my good friend and colleague — Richard Harte performing pages 58 to 63 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: I dream, therefore I become.
I’ll soon describe how this statement relates to today’s excerpt and to Finnegans Wake in general.
In pursuit of our ever-elusive protagonist, H. C. Earwicker, we left off last episode with “strongers” versus “softsies,” two opposing groups of Dubliners. The former are in favour of punishing HCE for his alleged misdemeanors, the latter prefer to defend him, seeing his actions as “human, erring and condonable” (58:16-19) — note here the initials for each word, H, E & C, drawing on HCE’s monogram. While “the unfacts… are too imprecisely few” (57:16-17) about the wrongs Earwicker may have committed and where he may have escaped, Finnegans Wake is still determined to find out.
Banksy’s first artwork in Ireland? This photo of ‘lost boy’ was posted in spring 2024 by Galway Tourism.
Today’s excerpt opens with a fact-finding mission, the narrative moving door-to-door and person-to-person to gather information on our protagonist. We saw in Chapter 2 how gossip spread across Dublin about Earwicker’s alleged misdemeanour in Phoenix Park — a hazy event involving a cad, two girls and three soldiers (Ep008). Now we’re going to get the word on the street, so to speak. Think of it as journalistic reportage, the result being a series of soundbites from a series of interviews, much as you might encounter on the nightly news. Or more specifically, think of the media’s many street interviews over the years in search of one of the world’s most mysterious people, the graffiti artist Banksy. The more testimony gathered, it seems, the less identifiable the person in question.
Here we have 20 different Dubliners providing 20 different takes on Earwicker, some attacking him (the “strongers”), others defending (the “softsies”), all of them comically contradictory and unreliable, including soundbites from three soldiers, an actress, an Irish jaunting car driver, a sweaty-and-out-of-breath tennis player, “a wouldbe martyr” (60:16), a teenage revivalist, a girl detective terrifically named Sylvia Silence (61:1) and many others. Adaline Glasheen elegantly observes that this reportage opens with three soldiers blaming two girls for Earwicker’s fall, and closes the other way around, with two girls indicating three soldiers are behind it (xxxiii). Ultimately, this mishmash of testimony brings us no closer to finding Earwicker and the sin he may have committed, but it does clearly testify to James Joyce’s — not to mention Richard Harte’s — exceptional ear and register for Dublin dialogue.
When I first read this reportage section along with Richard, I was curious about its many Buddhist references woven throughout. Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha himself, is mentioned, although this being Joyce, he merges with Sir Arthur Guinness of Guinness brewing fame to become “Sid Arthar” (59:7). Other Buddhist references here include Maya-prajapati, Buddha’s stepmother (59:14); Arata-Kalama and Asita, two Buddhist hermits (59:24 & 60:16); Buddha’s sister teaching the Buddha to wear bracelets (60:17); Sakya Muni, another name for the Buddha (60:19); the tree where Buddha meditated (60:20); Apsaras, the maidens who entertained the young Buddha (60:20); and nirvana, Buddhism’s celebrated concept of enlightenment, which here becomes “nearvanashed” (61:18).
Why so much about this 2,500-year-old religious figure, the Buddha (c.563–c.460 BCE)?
I can answer that question with the help of Karen Armstrong’s biography on the Buddha, appropriately titled Buddha. The following quote from Armstrong’s outstanding book not only provides a key to the Buddhist motif vis-à-vis the ever-shifting identity of Earwicker, it also provides a key to the ever-shifting narrative of Finnegans Wake as a whole. Here’s Armstrong:
The terms “self” and “myself” were simply conventions. The personality had no fixed or changeless core. […] Every sentient being was in a state of constant flux; he or she was merely a succession of temporary, mutable states of existence.
The Buddha pressed this message home throughout his life. Where the seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650) would declare “I think, therefore I am,” the Buddha came to the opposite conclusion. The more he thought, in the mindful, yogic way he had developed, the clearer it seemed that what we call the “self” is a delusion. In his view, the more closely we examine ourselves, the harder it becomes to find anything that we can pinpoint as a fixed entity. The human personality was not a static being to which things happened. Put under the microscope of yogic analysis, each person was a process. The Buddha liked to use such metaphors as a blazing fire or a rushing stream to describe the personality; it had some kind of identity, but was never the same from one moment to another. At each second, a fire was different; it had consumed and re-created itself, just as people did. In a particularly vivid simile, the Buddha compared the human mind to a monkey ranging through the forest: “it grabs one branch, and then, letting that go, seizes another.” What we experience as the “self” is really just a convenience-term, because we are constantly changing. In the same way, milk can become, successively, curds, butter, ghee, and fine-extract of ghee. There is no point in calling any one of these transformations “milk,” even though there is a sense in which it is correct to do so. (111-112)
René Descartes, engraving by unknown artist, 17th century, National Portrait Gallery London.
As we heard from ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus in the previous podcast episode (Ep012), “No one ever steps in the same river twice.” So too, as we just heard Armstrong describe, “the Buddha liked to use such metaphors as a […] a rushing stream to describe the personality; it had some kind of identity, but was never the same from one moment to another.” And Buddhism’s conception of a person as a flexible process rather than fixed-and-finished now leads me to adapt Descartes’ famous cogito ergo sum (“I think, therefore I am”) to the riverrunning stream of unconsciousness that comprises the flowing dream language of Finnegans Wake: I dream, therefore I become.
Nora Barnacle, photo by Berenice Abbott, 1926.
Following this reportage section with its Buddhist motif, we learn of Earwicker’s flight from the terror of Ireland/Errorland with a female Catholic (or “papishee”), much as Joyce eloped with Nora Barnacle (1884-1951) in 1904.
The next paragraph opens with one of my favourite sentences, a sentence that addresses and includes us, the audience collectively reading the Wake, as the narrative conveys us to a zone reminiscent of the 3,500-year-old Egyptian Book of the Dead. It’s a zone most fitting for anyone attending a wake: “We seem to us (the real Us!) to be reading our Amenti in the sixth sealed chapter of the going forth by black.” (62:26-27)
Spells of Coming Forth by Day, the original Egyptian name for the Book of The Dead (Wikipedia).
We then hear about a tall, masked man pulling a gun on HCE, although this anecdote, as another one of my favourite sentences indicates, is likely spurious: “But how transparingly nontrue, gentlewriter!” (63:9-10)
Now it’s time for Richard’s performance of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, page 58 line 23 to page 63 line 19 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 brief opening music you’ll hear is my own arrangement of “We Be Soldiers Three,” a 17th-century folk song referenced in the first sentence of today’s excerpt, with Brandon Bak on drums and Adam Seelig, yours truly, on piano.
[Richard Harte reads and sings Finnegans Wake 58:23-63:19.]
[58] Tap and pat and tapatagain, (fire firstshot, Missiers the Refusel-
eers! Peingpeong! For saxonlootie!) three tommix, soldiers free,
cockaleak and cappapee, of the Coldstream. Guards were walking,
in (pardonnez-leur, je vous en prie, eh?) Montgomery Street. One
voiced an opinion in which on either wide (pardonnez!), nod-
ding, all the Finner Camps concurred (je vous en prie, eh?). It
was the first woman, they said, souped him, that fatal wellesday,
Lili Coninghams, by suggesting him they go in a field. Wroth
mod eldfar, ruth redd stilstand, wrath wrackt wroth, confessed
private Pat Marchison retro. (Terse!) Thus contenters with san-
toys play. One of our coming Vauxhall ontheboards who is
resting for the moment (she has been callit by a noted stagey ele-
cutioner a wastepacket Sittons) was interfeud in a waistend pewty
parlour. Looking perhaps even more pewtyflushed in her cherry-
[59] derry padouasoys, girdle and braces by the halfmoon and Seven
Stars, russets from the Blackamoor's Head, amongst the climbing
boys at his Eagle and Child and over the corn and hay emptors
at their Black and All Black, Mrs F . . . A . . . saidaside, half in
stage of whisper to her confidante glass, while recoopering her
cartwheel chapot (ahat! — and we now know what thimbles a
baquets on lallance a talls mean), she hoped Sid Arthar would
git a Chrissman's portrout of orange and lemonsized orchids with
hollegs and ether, from the feeatre of the Innocident, as the
worryld had been uncained. Then, while it is odrous comparison-
ing to the sprangflowers of his burstday which was a virid-
able goddinpotty for the reinworms and the charlattinas and all
branches of climatitis, it has been such a wanderful noyth untirely,
added she, with many regards to Maha's pranjapansies. (Tart!)
Prehistoric, obitered to his dictaphone an entychologist: his pro-
penomen is a properismenon. A dustman nocknamed Seven-
churches in the employ of Messrs Achburn, Soulpetre and
Ashreborn, prairmakers, Glintalook, was asked by the sisterhood
the vexed question during his midday collation of leaver and
buckrom alternatively with stenk and kitteney phie in a hash-
housh and, thankeaven, responsed impulsively: We have just been
propogandering his nullity suit and what they took out of his ear
among my own crush. All our fellows at O'Dea's sages with
Aratar Calaman he is a cemented brick, buck it all! A more nor
usually sober cardriver, who was jauntingly hosing his runabout,
Ginger Jane, took a strong view. Lorry hosed her as he talked
and this is what he told rewritemen: Irewaker is just a plain pink
joint reformee in private life but folks all have it by brehemons
laws he has parliamentary honours. Eiskaffier said (Louigi's, you
know that man's, brillant Savourain): Mon foie, you wish to ave
some homelette, yes, lady! Good, mein leber! Your hegg he must
break himself. See, I crack, so, he sit in the poele, umbedimbt!
A perspirer (over sixty) who was keeping up his tennises panted
he kne ho har twa to clect infamatios but a diffpair flannels climb
wall and trespassing on doorbell. After fullblown Braddon hear
this fresky troterella! A railways barmaid's view (they call her
[60] Spilltears Rue) was thus expressed: to sympathisers of the Dole
Line, Death Avenue, anent those objects of her pity-prompted
ministrance, to wet, man and his syphon. Ehim! It is ever too
late to whissle when Phyllis floods her stable. It would be skar-
lot shame to jailahim in lockup, as was proposed to him by the
Seddoms creature what matter what merrytricks went off with
his revulverher in connections with ehim being a norphan and
enjoining such wicked illth, ehim! Well done, Drumcollakill!
Kitty Tyrrel is proud of you, was the reply of a B.O.T. official
(O blame gnot the board!) while the Daughters Benkletter mur-
mured in uniswoon: Golforgilhisjurylegs! Brian Lynsky, the cub
curser, was questioned at his shouting box, Bawlonabraggat, and
gave a snappy comeback, when saying: Paw! Once more I'll
hellbowl! I am for caveman chase and sahara sex, burk you! Them
two bitches ought to be leashed, canem! Up hog and hoar hunt!
Paw! A wouldbe martyr, who is attending on sanit Asitas where
he is being taught to wear bracelets, when grilled on the point,
revealed the undoubted fact that the consequence would be that
so long as Sankya Moondy played his mango tricks under the
mysttetry, with shady apsaras sheltering in his leaves' licence and
his shadowers torrifried by the potent bolts of indradiction, there
would be fights all over Cuxhaven. (Tosh!) Missioner Ida Womb-
well, the seventeenyearold revivalist, said concerning the coinci-
dent of interfizzing with grenadines and other respectable and
disgusted peersons using the park: That perpendicular person is
a brut! But a magnificent brut! 'Caligula' (Mr Danl Magrath,
bookmaker, wellknown to Eastrailian poorusers of the Sydney
Parade Ballotin) was, as usual, antipodal with his: striving todie,
hopening tomellow, Ware Splash. Cobbler. We have meat two
hourly, sang out El Caplan Buycout, with the famous padre's
turridur's capecast, meet too ourly, matadear! Dan Meiklejohn,
precentor, of S.S. Smack and Olley's was probiverbal with his
upsiduxit: mutatus mutandus. Dauran's lord ('Sniffpox') and Moir-
gan's lady ('Flatterfun') took sides and crossed and bowed to
each other's views and recrossed themselves. The dirty dubs upin
their flies, went too free, echoed the dainly drabs downin their
[61] scenities, una mona. Sylvia Silence, the girl detective (Meminerva,
but by now one hears turtlings all over Doveland!) when supplied
with informations as to the several facets of the case in her cozy-
dozy bachelure's flat, quite overlooking John a'Dream's mews,
leaned back in her really truly easy chair to query restfully through
her vowelthreaded syllabelles: Have you evew thought, wepow-
tew, that sheew gweatness was his twadgedy? Nevewtheless ac-
cowding to my considewed attitudes fow this act he should pay
the full penalty, pending puwsuance, as pew Subsec. 32, section
II, of the C. L. A. act 1885, anything in this act to the contwawy
notwithstanding. Jarley Jilke began to silke for he couldn't get
home to Jelsey but ended with: He's got the sack that helped him
moult instench of his gladsome rags. Meagher, a naval rating,
seated on one of the granite cromlech setts of our new fish-
shambles for the usual aireating after the ever popular act, with
whom were Questa and Puella, piquante and quoite, (this had a
cold in her brain while that felt a sink in her summock, wit's
wat, wot's wet) was encouraged, although nearvanashed himself,
by one of his co-affianced to get your breath, Walt, and gobbit
and when ther chidden by her fastra sastra to saddle up your
pance, Naville, thus cor replied to her other's thankskissing: I
lay my two fingerbuttons, fiancee Meagher, (he speaks!) he was
to blame about your two velvetthighs up Horniman's Hill — as
hook and eye blame him or any other piscman? — but I also
think, Puellywally, by the siege of his trousers there was some-
one else behind it — you bet your boughtem blarneys — about
their three drummers down Keysars Lane. (Trite!).
Be these meer marchant taylor's fablings of a race referend
with oddman rex? Is now all seenheard then forgotten? Can it
was, one is fain in this leaden age of letters now to wit, that so
diversified outrages (they have still to come!) were planned and
partly carried out against so staunch a covenanter if it be true
than any of those recorded ever took place for many, we trow,
beyessed to and denayed of, are given to us by some who use
the truth but sparingly and we, on this side ought to sorrow for
their pricking pens on that account. The seventh city, Urovivla,
[62] his citadear of refuge, whither (would we believe the laimen and
their counts), beyond the outraved gales of Atreeatic, changing
clues with a baggermalster, the hejirite had fled, silentioussue-
meant under night's altosonority, shipalone, a raven of the wave,
(be mercy, Mara! A he whence Rahoulas!) from the ostmen's
dirtby on the old vic, to forget in expiating manslaughter and,
reberthing in remarriment out of dead seekness to devine previ-
dence, (if you are looking for the bilder deep your ear on the
movietone!) to league his lot, palm and patte, with a papishee.
For mine qvinne I thee giftake and bind my hosenband I thee
halter. The wastobe land, a lottuse land, a luctuous land, Emerald-
illuim, the peasant pastured, in which by the fourth commandment
with promise his days apostolic were to be long by the abundant
mercy of Him Which Thundereth From On High, murmured,
would rise against him with all which in them were, franchisab-
les and inhabitands, astea as agora, helotsphilots, do him hurt,
poor jink, ghostly following bodily, as were he made a curse for
them, the corruptible lay quick, all saints of incorruption of an
holy nation, the common or ere-in-garden castaway, in red re-
surrection to condemn so they might convince him, first pha-
roah, Humpheres Cheops Exarchas, of their proper sins. Busi-
ness bred to speak with a stiff upper lip to all men and most occa-
sions the Man we wot of took little short of fighting chances but
for all that he or his or his care were subjected to the horrors of
the premier terror of Errorland. (perorhaps!)
We seem to us (the real Us !) to be reading our Amenti in the
sixth sealed chapter of the going forth by black. It was after the
show at Wednesbury that one tall man, humping a suspicious
parcel, when returning late amid a dense particular on his home
way from the second house of the Boore and Burgess Christy
Menestrels by the old spot, Roy's Corner, had a barkiss revolver
placed to his faced with the words: you're shot, major: by an un-
knowable assailant (masked) against whom he had been jealous
over, Lotta Crabtree or Pomona Evlyn. More than that Whenn
the Waylayer (not a Lucalizod diocesan or even of the Glenda-
lough see, but hailing fro' the prow of Little Britain), mention-
[63] ing in a bytheway that he, the crawsopper, had, in edition to
Reade's cutless centiblade, a loaded Hobson's which left only twin
alternatives as, viceversa, either he would surely shoot her, the
aunt, by pistol, (she could be okaysure of that!) or, failing of such,
bash in Patch's blank face beyond recognition, pointedly asked
with gaeilish gall wodkar blizzard's business Thornton had with
that Kane's fender only to be answered by the aggravated
assaulted that that that was the snaps for him, Midweeks, to sultry
well go and find out if he was showery well able. But how trans-
paringly nontrue, gentlewriter! His feet one is not a tall man, not
at all, man. No such parson. No such fender. No such lumber. No
such race. Was it supposedly in connection with a girls, Myramy
Huey or Colores Archer, under Flaggy Bridge (for ann there is
but one liv and hir newbridge is her old) or to explode his
twelvechamber and force a shrievalty entrance that the heavybuilt
Abelbody in a butcherblue blouse from One Life One Suit (a
men's wear store), with a most decisive bottle of single in his
possession, seized after dark by the town guard at Haveyou-
caught-emerod's temperance gateway was there in a gate's way.
[End of excerpt]
Adam Seelig: That was Richard Harte reading pages 58 to 63 of Chapter 3 from Finnegans Wake, recorded live in Toronto on October 2nd, 2023.
Join us for Episode 14 in a fortnight when Richard continues with the next five pages of Chapter 3, including the delightful “strawberry frolic” paragraph. 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, 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 Ep013]
Mentioned: “I dream, therefore I become,” “strongers” vs. “softsies,” reportage, 20 Dubliners, HCE as Banksy, Buddhism motif, Karen Armstrong’s Buddha biography, “self” as process in flux, identity as changing stream, Heraclitus, Descartes, Nora Barnacle, Book of the Dead, “the real Us!”, 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: Karen Armstrong, Buddha. Toronto, Penguin, 2001.