JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE
Episode 004
MUTT & JUTE
CHARACTERLESSNESS
PAGE 13:20-19:19 | 2024-06-13
PODCAST AUDIO
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
[Music: Richard Harte sings “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly” from Finnegans Wake]
Have you heard of one Humpty Dumpty
How he fell with a roll and a rumble
And curled up like Lord Olofa Crumple
By the butt of the Magazine Wall
[Music fades out]
Adam Seelig: Welcome to James Joyce’s divine and delirious comedy, Finnegans Wake. In this episode, number 4, we’ll hear Irish-Canadian actor—and my good friend and colleague—Richard Harte reading pages 13 to 19 of Joyce’s last novel, which will include the dialogue of Mutt and Jute. I’m Adam Seelig, the director of the reading you’ll soon hear.
Will you be in Dublin this Sunday, June 16th? If so, come to the James Joyce Centre, where the Bloomsday Film Festival will be screening One Little Goat’s Finnegans Wake Chapters 1 and 2, screening all day from 10am - 4pm. And if you’re in Toronto on Bloomsday June the 16th, come see what our friends at Toronto Bloomsday Festival are doing to celebrate the day Leopold Bloom wandered the city of Dublin in Joyce’s second-best book (!), Ulysses. Details for both festivals are online. Wherever you may be, happy Bloomsday!
[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]
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]
Robert Houle exhibit, Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), 2022-03-30 (Snapshot: Adam Seelig)
A couple of years ago, on my way in to see the Robert Houle retrospective at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto (the same show, incidentally, that’s been at the Smithsonian Museum of Indigenous Americans in Washington, DC for the past year), I encountered this quote from Houle himself, printed on a tall banner near the entrance to the exhibition:
“The lack of a linear chronology in myth, storytelling, and dreams, the interchangeable grammar and the interchangeability of perception is what makes wonderful, rhythmical patterns of thought in the oral traditions of the ancient ones.”
While Houle, an Anishinaabe artist from Sandy Bay First Nation, was referring to Indigenous oral traditions, his brilliant statement here could just as easily describe Finnegans Wake, almost to the point of providing a stylistic checklist for Joyce’s dream novel:
— “lack of linear chronology”: check
— “myth, storytelling, dreams”: check
— “interchangeable grammar and […] perception”: check again (to which I’ll add the interchangeability of character, which we’ll get to in a moment)
— “wonderful, rhythmical patterns of thought”: check, for sure
— “oral traditions of the ancient ones”: Joyce encouraged reading the Wake aloud, and for all its modernism, the Wake regularly draws on ancient languages and age-old texts, many of which are composites of oral traditions, from the Egyptian Book of the Dead to the Hebrew Bible to A Thousand-and-One Nights of Scheherazade, or as the Wake puts it, “one thousand and one stories, all told, of the same” (5:28-9).
In today’s excerpt from Richard Harte’s reading of Finnegans Wake, Chapter 1, pages 13 to 19, we’re going to encounter all of the elements in Houle’s statement on ancient storytelling because the Wake is a “meandertale” (18:22), a meandering, nonlinear story stretching as far back as Neanderthal days. In similarly nonlinear fashion, I’m going to jump a little ahead in today’s excerpt to the Wake’s first dialogue, a dialogue conducted by a kind of vaudevillian duo of prehistory named Mutt & Jute.
It will come as no surprise that, as someone who makes plays, I love dialogue, so I naturally gravitate to Mutt and Jute’s exchange, which takes its tone from ‘Mutt and Jeff,’ the widely syndicated American comic strip that began in 1907. Joyce’s Mutt and Jute initially seem to divide into distinct identities à la Mutt and Jeff, Laurel and Hardy, tall and short, slim and fat, etc. Initially Mutt strikes me as an extroverted, talkative Irish character, and Jute as an introverted, taciturn, Scandinavian, especially given that a Jute is someone from Jutland, or Yoolan [Jylland] in Danish, a peninsula stretching up into Denmark. With Mutt as a native Irishman and Jute as a Dane, potentially of the invading Viking variety, we have two men on opposite sides of the bloody historical battle that informs their conversation, the Battle of Clontarf (or in Wake-speak, “Dungtarf”) in the year 1014, when the last High King of Ireland, Brian Boru, defeated the Danish occupying army.
Laurel & Hardy in Hats Off (1927)
Mutt initiates the dialogue with the strange man he sees before him by asking what language the stranger speaks: Danish, Norwegian, English, Anglo-Saxon? Given no affirmatives, Mutt concludes that the stranger is clearly a Jute. How on earth Mutt reaches that conclusion is beyond me. Maybe he’s putting on an act in an effort to get to know the stranger? As part of that act, he suggests they swap hats and have a chat; but in the process of hat-swapping — it’s hard not to picture those hats as the iconic bowlers of Laurel and Hardy — they also seem to have swapped identities. Now the character formerly known as Mutt is Jute, or “Yutah” as he pronounces it with a newfound Scandinavian inflection, and Jute is Mutt. Jute (or “Yutah”) now is the talkative one and Mutt, the taciturn. Until the conversational tide shifts and Mutt becomes the talkative one with only occasional comments from Jute. As Danis Rose puts it: “Jute had earlier complained that Mutt was almost inaudible to him. He now insists that he can barely understand a single word from start to finish in Mutt's patois” — which in Wake-speak becomes “patwhat” (17:14-15).
Joyce has swapped and confused Mutt and Jute’s identities from the moment they encounter. Going back to Robert Houle’s observation on interchangeable grammar and perception, which applies so well to Mutt and Jute’s dialogue, the Wake adds one more interchangeability: the interchangeability of character.
So not only is the Wake radically dismantling the norms of narrative fiction and how a book should be, it’s also dismantling the norms of drama and how a character should act.
We could say that rather than being three-dimensional characters — as Joyce’s characters very much are in his previous books — the characters of Finnegans Wake are four-dimensional, stretching across the dimension of time. The scene between Mutt and Jute, for example, takes place just as much in the Stone Age as it does in the year 1014 as it does in a 20th-century newspaper comic strip like Mutt and Jeff. Four-dimensional characters, characters capable of temporal simultaneity: I like the idea (and it brings to mind the recent movie Everything Everywhere All At Once) and it may prove useful when we talk more about Earwicker, the main character of Chapter 2.
At this moment, I prefer to think of the characters in the Wake, starting with Mutt and Jute, as characterless. That may sound pejorative, but I mean it the way Swedish playwright August Strindberg used the term when writing about his play Miss Julie:
“I have made my people [—I love that he calls them ‘people,’ not ‘characters’—]] somewhat ‘characterless’…. [Character] became the middle-class term for the automaton, one whose nature had become fixed or who had adapted himself to a particular role in life. In fact, a person who had ceased to grow was called a character, while one continuing to develop… was called characterless, in a derogatory sense, of course, because he was so hard to catch, classify, and keep track of. … A character came to signify a man fixed and finished.”
The characterlessness of Mutt and Jute and the malleability of their identities show Joyce undermining character as fixed and finished, much as he undermined the entire novel as fixed and finished. The original title for Finnegans Wake was Work in Progress. The novel and its characters are never finished. They are always in a state and stage of becoming, and in Mutt and Jute’s case they go so far as to become each other.
Maybe that’s because the exchange of both words and bodies between Mutt and Jute is ultimately, as John Gordon suggests, an exchange between Me and You — the internal dialogue of a dreamer. I’m also happy to make the case that ‘you’ could easily be a synonym for ‘me’ based on an expression that one of my kids would use when he was a toddler — instead of saying “Tell me” when he wanted to know something, he would say, “Tell you.” At one point I thought I would try to correct this pronoun mixup only to realize that it's impossible to explain to an early speaker the difference between ‘me’ and ‘you’ without confusion. In our early years, ‘you’ is ‘me,’ and ‘me,’ ‘you,’ just as in prehistoric years, Mutt is Jute, and Jute, Mutt, and the difference we see between them could be the two complementary or opposing parts of one person. There is no ‘me’ without ‘you,’ no Mutt without Jute, no Laurel without Hardy, and if we move beyond Joyce’s lifetime to Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot, there is no Vladimir without Estragon. And like Mutt and Jute before them, Beckett’s Didi and Gogo exchange hats. I’ll add that in Beckett’s later play, Ohio Impromptu — which, incidentally, recalls his days as Joyce’s amanuensis — he further dissolved the distinction between two characters on stage by placing only one hat between them.
Though Mutt and Jute start out Irish and Danish, respectively, they end up wearing each other’s hat, confused — perhaps more conjoined than confused given that Scandinavian genetics have been part of Irish ancestry since Vikings first invaded the Emerald Isle over a thousand years ago. There is no such thing as a pure identity, or as Finnegans Wake puts it a few lines after Mutt and Jute’s dialogue, “Miscegenations on miscegenations” (18:20). People — be they individuals or nations — are mixed up with and within each other. The merging of character, the dissolving of distinctions, the characterlessness, is deliberate.
It’s time to go back a few pages now and mention a few more things in today’s reading.
It opens with the word and number, “Four,” introducing us to four old historians, here referred to as “Mammon Lujius”, an acronym for the four Gospels of Christianity: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. These four also personify the four provinces of Ireland: Ulster, Munster, Leinster and Connacht. We’ll meet these four men again in various iterations throughout the novel. Woven into the same paragraph are the four seasons represented by Jewish months of the year: the month of Adar for winter, Nisan for spring, Tammuz for summer, and Marcheshvan for fall. And celebrating fall, the paragraph closes with the name of the Jewish harvesting festival, Sukkot.
The four historians share four historical dates with us about bloody wars in Dublin. The first is 1132 A.D.; the second is half of 1132, or 566 A.D.; the third is 566 A.D. again; and the fourth, 1132 A.D. again. In other words, the dates fall and rise again, the central theme and motion of Finnegans Wake. What to make of these dates/numbers, especially 1132 which recurs throughout the Wake? William Tindall tells us little of historical note happened in 1132 A.D. (excepting, I suppose, the usual bloody wars in Dublin) so he focuses on the number itself, separating 1132 into two parts: 11, which he interprets as rising, and which I understand as eleven elevating; and 32, which he interprets as falling, thanks to Galileo’s observation that objects fall at a rate of 32 feet per second per second. So here again we have the central theme and motion of Finnegans Wake with the rise of 11 and fall of 32. Tindall also points out 32 counties in Ireland. And he adds more ingenious meanings for the numbers, which I’ll include in the transcript of this podcast (posted on One Little Goat’s website [see note at foot of this transcript]). Roland McHugh notes the death of legendary Irish hunter-warrior-poet Finn MacCool was in the year 283 according to the chronicles of Irish history known as the Annals of the Four Masters, and 283 times 4 equals 1132. Richard and I like to see this recurring motif of 1132 throughout the Wake as individual digits, 1, 1, 3 and 2, with each digit representing a part in the alleged sin that takes place in Phoenix Park, which we’ll hear more about in Chapter 2: 1 for Earwicker, another 1 for the Cad, 3 for the soldiers, 2 for the girls peeing in the bushes.
All in all, the historical record is unclear, the Wake explains, because “the copyist must have fled with his scroll” as he was frightened by an elk or a bolt of lightning. Then the text offers a peaceful, post-war passage that includes one of my favourite phrases in the book, “lift we our ears, eyes of the darkness” (14:29), and it goes on to describe the tulips and twilight in Rush, a town in Dublin County that has particular resonance for our reader, Richard Harte, because it’s where he and his family are from.
This is where Mutt and Jute come in, whose dialogue, for all its vaudevillian shtick, conveys the consequences of war: “Now are all tombed to the mound”, and then a variation on ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust,’ which is transformed by the ever irreverent Wake into, “erde from erde” (17:30), erde being ‘earth’ in German, and merde being ‘shit’ in French, or ‘earth from shit,’ not exactly the kind of phrase you’d want to hear at someone’s funeral.
The last paragraph in today’s reading invites us to examine more closely the ancient mound of earth or shit before us — I’m also remembering the “tip” or dump from Kate’s “museyroom” tour a few pages earlier. We’re encouraged to read these ruins or mysterious runes if we are “abcedminded”, spelled a-b-c-e-d-minded, and we’re urged to bring ourselves closer to “this allaphbed”, a word that includes ‘alphabet,’ ‘alef bet’ (the name of the Hebrew alphabet), God’s Muslim name, ‘Allah,’ and suggestions of a natural ‘bed,’ be it of flowers or of a river, a riverrun of words.
Richard Harte’s reading of Finnegans Wake Chapter 1 was shot and recorded in 2022 in my home in Toronto with a small audience. It premiered at the Toronto Irish Film Festival, European Union Film Festival, and Bloomsday Film Festival at the James Joyce Centre in Dublin.
And now it’s time to welcome you all back into my home for Richard’s continued reading of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, page 13 line 20 to page 19 line 19 in Chapter 1.
[Richard Harte reads Finnegans Wake 13:20-19:19.]
[p13] Four things therefore, saith our herodotary Mammon Lujius
in his grand old historiorum, wrote near Boriorum, bluest book
in baile's annals, f. t. in Dyffinarsky ne'er sall fail til heathersmoke
and cloudweed Eire's ile sall pall. And here now they are, the fear
of um. T. Totities! Unum. (Adar.) A bulbenboss surmounted up-
on an alderman. Ay, ay! Duum. (Nizam.) A shoe on a puir old
wobban. Ah, ho! Triom. (Tamuz.) An auburn mayde, o'brine
a'bride, to be desarted. Adear, adear! Quodlibus. (Marchessvan.) A
penn no weightier nor a polepost. And so. And all. (Succoth.)
So, how idlers' wind turning pages on pages, as innocens with
anaclete play popeye antipop, the leaves of the living in the boke
of the deeds, annals of themselves timing the cycles of events
grand and national, bring fassilwise to pass how.
1132 A.D. Men like to ants or emmets wondern upon a groot
hwide Whallfisk which lay in a Runnel. Blubby wares upat Ub-
lanium.
566 A.D. On Baalfire's night of this year after deluge a crone that
[p14] hadde a wickered Kish for to hale dead turves from the bog look-
it under the blay of her Kish as she ran for to sothisfeige her cow-
rieosity and be me sawl but she found hersell sackvulle of swart
goody quickenshoon and small illigant brogues, so rich in sweat.
Blurry works at Hurdlesford.
(Silent.)
566 A.D. At this time it fell out that a brazenlockt damsel grieved
(sobralasolas!) because that Puppette her minion was ravisht of her
by the ogre Puropeus Pious. Bloody wars in Ballyaughacleeagh-
bally.
1132. A.D. Two sons at an hour were born until a goodman
and his hag. These sons called themselves Caddy and Primas.
Primas was a santryman and drilled all decent people. Caddy
went to Winehouse and wrote o peace a farce. Blotty words for
Dublin.
Somewhere, parently, in the ginnandgo gap between antedilu-
vious and annadominant the copyist must have fled with his
scroll. The billy flood rose or an elk charged him or the sultrup
worldwright from the excelsissimost empyrean (bolt, in sum)
earthspake or the Dannamen gallous banged pan the bliddy du-
ran. A scribicide then and there is led off under old's code with
some fine covered by six marks or ninepins in metalmen for the
sake of his labour's dross while it will be only now and again in
our rear of o'er era, as an upshoot of military and civil engage-
ments, that a gynecure was let on to the scuffold for taking that
same fine sum covertly by meddlement with the drawers of his
neighbour's safe.
Now after all that farfatch'd and peragrine or dingnant or clere
lift we our ears, eyes of the darkness, from the tome of Liber Li-
vidus and, (toh!), how paisibly eirenical, all dimmering dunes
and gloamering glades, selfstretches afore us our fredeland's plain!
Lean neath stone pine the pastor lies with his crook; young pric-
ket by pricket's sister nibbleth on returned viridities; amaid her
rocking grasses the herb trinity shams lowliness; skyup is of ever-
grey. Thus, too, for donkey's years. Since the bouts of Hebear
and Hairyman the cornflowers have been staying at Ballymun,
[p15] the duskrose has choosed out Goatstown's hedges, twolips have
pressed togatherthem by sweet Rush, townland of twinedlights,
the whitethorn and the redthorn have fairygeyed the mayvalleys
of Knockmaroon, and, though for rings round them, during a
chiliad of perihelygangs, the Formoreans have brittled the too-
ath of the Danes and the Oxman has been pestered by the Fire-
bugs and the Joynts have thrown up jerrybuilding to the Kevan-
ses and Little on the Green is childsfather to the City (Year!
Year! And laughtears!), these paxsealing buttonholes have quad-
rilled across the centuries and whiff now whafft to us, fresh and
made-of-all-smiles as, on the eve of Killallwho.
The babbelers with their thangas vain have been (confusium
hold them!) they were and went; thigging thugs were and hou-
hnhymn songtoms were and comely norgels were and pollyfool
fiansees. Menn have thawed, clerks have surssurhummed, the
blond has sought of the brune: Elsekiss thou may, mean Kerry
piggy?: and the duncledames have countered with the hellish fel-
lows: Who ails tongue coddeau, aspace of dumbillsilly? And they
fell upong one another: and themselves they have fallen. And
still nowanights and by nights of yore do all bold floras of the
field to their shyfaun lovers say only: Cull me ere I wilt to thee!:
and, but a little later: Pluck me whilst I blush! Well may they
wilt, marry, and profusedly blush, be troth! For that saying is as
old as the howitts. Lave a whale a while in a whillbarrow (isn't
it the truath I'm tallin ye?) to have fins and flippers that shimmy
and shake. Tim Timmycan timped hir, tampting Tam. Fleppety!
Flippety! Fleapow!
Hop!
In the name of Anem this carl on the kopje in pelted thongs a
parth a lone who the joebiggar be he? Forshapen his pigmaid
hoagshead, shroonk his plodsfoot. He hath locktoes, this short-
shins, and, Obeold that's pectoral, his mammamuscles most
mousterious. It is slaking nuncheon out of some thing's brain
pan. Me seemeth a dragon man. He is almonthst on the kiep
fief by here, is Comestipple Sacksoun, be it junipery or febrew-
ery, marracks or alebrill or the ramping riots of pouriose and
[p16] froriose. What a quhare soort of a mahan. It is evident the mich-
indaddy. Lets we overstep his fire defences and these kraals of
slitsucked marrogbones. (Cave!) He can prapsposterus the pil-
lory way to Hirculos pillar. Come on, fool porterfull, hosiered
women blown monk sewer? Scuse us, chorley guy! You toller-
day donsk? N. You tolkatiff scowegian? Nn. You spigotty an-
glease? Nnn. You phonio saxo? Nnnn. Clear all so! 'Tis a Jute.
Let us swop hats and excheck a few strong verbs weak oach ea-
ther yapyazzard abast the blooty creeks.
Jute. Yutah!
Mutt. Mukk's pleasurad.
Jute. Are you jeff?
Mutt. Somehards.
Jute. But you are not jeffmute?
Mutt. Noho. Only an utterer.
Jute. Whoa? Whoat is the mutter with you?
Mutt. I became a stun a stummer.
Jute. What a hauhauhauhaudibble thing, to be cause! How,
Mutt?
Mutt. Aput the buttle, surd.
Jute. Whose poddle? Wherein?
Mutt. The Inns of Dungtarf where Used awe to be he.
Jute. You that side your voise are almost inedible to me.
Become a bitskin more wiseable, as if I were
you.
Mutt. Has? Has at? Hasatency? Urp, Boohooru! Booru
Usurp! I trumple from rath in mine mines when I
rimimirim!
Jute. One eyegonblack. Bisons is bisons. Let me fore all
your hasitancy cross your qualm with trink gilt. Here
have sylvan coyne, a piece of oak. Ghinees hies good
for you.
Mutt. Louee, louee! How wooden I not know it, the intel-
lible greytcloak of Cedric Silkyshag! Cead mealy
faulty rices for one dabblin bar. Old grilsy growlsy!
He was poached on in that eggtentical spot. Here
[p17] where the liveries, Monomark. There where the mis-
sers moony, Minnikin passe.
Jute. Simply because as Taciturn pretells, our wrongstory-
shortener, he dumptied the wholeborrow of rubba-
ges on to soil here.
Mutt. Just how a puddinstone inat the brookcells by a
riverpool.
Jute. Load Allmarshy! Wid wad for a norse like?
Mutt. Somular with a bull on a clompturf. Rooks roarum
rex roome! I could snore to him of the spumy horn,
with his woolseley side in, by the neck I am sutton
on, did Brian d' of Linn.
Jute. Boildoyle and rawhoney on me when I can beuraly
forsstand a weird from sturk to finnic in such a pat-
what as your rutterdamrotter. Onheard of and um-
scene! Gut aftermeal! See you doomed.
Mutt. Quite agreem. Bussave a sec. Walk a dunblink
roundward this albutisle and you skull see how olde
ye plaine of my Elters, hunfree and ours, where wone
to wail whimbrel to peewee o'er the saltings, where
wilby citie by law of isthmon, where by a droit of
signory, icefloe was from his Inn the Byggning to
whose Finishthere Punct. Let erehim ruhmuhrmuhr.
Mearmerge two races, swete and brack. Morthering
rue. Hither, craching eastuards, they are in surgence:
hence, cool at ebb, they requiesce. Countlessness of
livestories have netherfallen by this plage, flick as
flowflakes, litters from aloft, like a waast wizzard all of
whirlworlds. Now are all tombed to the mound, isges
to isges, erde from erde. Pride, O pride, thy prize!
Jute. 'Stench!
Mutt. Fiatfuit! Hereinunder lyethey. Llarge by the smal an'
everynight life olso th'estrange, babylone the great-
grandhotelled with tit tit tittlehouse, alp on earwig,
drukn on ild, likeas equal to anequal in this sound
seemetery which iz leebez luv.
[p18] Jute. 'Zmorde!
Mutt. Meldundleize! By the fearse wave behoughted. Des-
pond's sung. And thanacestross mound have swollup
them all. This ourth of years is not save brickdust
and being humus the same roturns. He who runes
may rede it on all fours. O'c'stle, n'wc'stle, tr'c'stle,
crumbling! Sell me sooth the fare for Humblin! Hum-
blady Fair. But speak it allsosiftly, moulder! Be in
your whisht!
Jute. Whysht?
Mutt. The gyant Forficules with Amni the fay.
Jute. Howe?
Mutt. Here is viceking's graab.
Jute. Hwaad!
Mutt. Ore you astoneaged, jute you?
Jute. Oye am thonthorstrok, thing mud.
(Stoop) if you are abcedminded, to this claybook, what curios
of signs (please stoop), in this allaphbed! Can you rede (since
We and Thou had it out already) its world? It is the same told
of all. Many. Miscegenations on miscegenations. Tieckle. They
lived und laughed ant loved end left. Forsin. Thy thingdome is
given to the Meades and Porsons. The meandertale, aloss and
again, of our old Heidenburgh in the days when Head-in-Clouds
walked the earth. In the ignorance that implies impression that
knits knowledge that finds the nameform that whets the wits that
convey contacts that sweeten sensation that drives desire that
adheres to attachment that dogs death that bitches birth that en-
tails the ensuance of existentiality. But with a rush out of his
navel reaching the reredos of Ramasbatham. A terricolous vively-
onview this; queer and it continues to be quaky. A hatch, a celt,
an earshare the pourquose of which was to cassay the earthcrust at
all of hours, furrowards, bagawards, like yoxen at the turnpaht.
Here say figurines billycoose arming and mounting. Mounting and
arming bellicose figurines see here. Futhorc, this liffle effingee is for
a firefing called a flintforfall. Face at the eased! O I fay! Face at the
waist! Ho, you fie! Upwap and dump em, [F]ace to [F]ace! When
[p19] part so ptee does duty for the holos we soon grow to use of an
allforabit. Here (please to stoop) are selveran cued peteet peas of
quite a pecuniar interest inaslittle as they are the pellets that make
the tomtummy's pay roll. Right rank ragnar rocks and with these
rox orangotangos rangled rough and rightgorong. Wisha, wisha,
whydidtha? Thik is for thorn that's thuck in its thoil like thum-
fool's thraitor thrust for vengeance. What a mnice old mness it
all mnakes! A middenhide hoard of objects! Olives, beets, kim-
mells, dollies, alfrids, beatties, cormacks and daltons. Owlets' eegs
(O stoop to please!) are here, creakish from age and all now
quite epsilene, and oldwolldy wobblewers, haudworth a wipe o
grass. Sss! See the snake wurrums everyside! Our durlbin is
sworming in sneaks. They came to our island from triangular
Toucheaterre beyond the wet prairie rared up in the midst of the
cargon of prohibitive pomefructs but along landed Paddy Wip-
pingham and the his garbagecans cotched the creeps of them
pricker than our whosethere outofman could quick up her whats-
thats. Somedivide and sumthelot but the tally turns round the
same balifuson. Racketeers and bottloggers.
[End of reading excerpt]
Adam Seelig: That was my friend and colleague Richard Harte reading from Finnegans Wake, Chapter 1, pages 13-19, recorded live in Toronto on August 31st, 2022.
Special thanks to my friends in Norway, Øyvind and Susanna Haga, for advising Richard and me on Scandinavian pronunciations for the dialogue of Mutt and Jute/Yutah.
Join us for Episode 5 in a fortnight when Richard continues with the next five pages of Finnegans Wake, including the famous “prankquean” fable. To be sure you don’t miss the episode, why not follow or subscribe to this podcast? And for more on One Little Goat’s Finnegans Wake project, including transcripts of this podcast and trailers for the films, visit our website at OneLittleGoat.org.
[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]
Finnegans Wake is made possible by Friends of One Little Goat Theatre Company and the Emigrant Support Programme of the gov’t of Ireland. Thank you for your support!
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!
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Mentioned: Robert Houle, Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), dialogue, Mutt and Jute, Mutt and Jeff, Laurel and Hardy, Jutland, Denmark, Vikings, Battle of Clontarf (1014), Brian Boru, dismantling the norms of fiction and drama, four-dimensional characters, August Strindberg, characterless, characterlessness, pronouns ‘you’ and ‘me,’ Waiting for Godot, miscegenations, the Gospels, Mamalujo, Jewish calendar, 1132, Galileo on how things fall, Finn MacCool, Rush (Dublin County), “allaphbed”, synopsis.
William Tindall on 1132: “Joyce like playing with figures as well as with words. 1132 (rise and fall) includes H.C.E. and his sons. H is the eighth letter of the alphabet, C is the third, and E is the fifth. Adding 8, 3, and 5 gives 16, which multiplied by 2 (the twins in him), gives 32. Shaun’s number is 11 (renewal) and Shem’s is 21. Add 21 and 11 and you get 32 or H.C.E. Elsewhere (in Chapter X) H.C.E.’s number is 10, A.L.P.’s is 01. Put these together and you get 1001 or another of renewal’s numbers or another of renewal’s numbers. Consider A.L.P. again: A is 1, L is 12, P is 16. Add these numbers you get 29 or the leap-year girls. (p.53)
Resources:
Transcript for this episode, including the text of Finnegans Wake pages 13-19.
Finnegans Wake (1939) by James Joyce: there are many free copies of FW to read online or download, e.g. finwake.com
James Joyce Digital Archive, “Chicken Guide” to Finnegans Wake provides a ‘plain English’ paraphrase of each chapter by Danis Rose.
Edmund Epstein, A Guide through Finnegans Wake. University Press of Florida, 2009.
William York Tindall, A Reader’s Guide to Finnegans Wake. Syracuse University Press, 1996.
Roland McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake (4th edition). Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2016.
John Gordon’s annotations on his Finnegans Wake blog.
Richard Ellmann’s biography of James Joyce. Oxford University Press, 1982.
More on characterlessness: Adam Seelig, “EmergeNSee: Get Head Out of Ass: ‘Charactor’ and Poetic Theatre”. The Capilano Review, Vancouver, 2010, pp.32-52.