And whereas distracted

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1980

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Finnegans Wake ‒ A Prescriptive Guide

Green Street Courthouse (February 1887)

The trial of Festy King comes to a close. The judges―the Four Old Men, Mamalujo―pass their verdict: Festy is acquitted under the Scottish legal principle of not proven. As he is leaving the tribunal scot-free, the Swiss Guard asks him: “How fare you today, noble gentleman?” Festy responds by farting, much to the dismay of the twenty-eight Flower Maidens, who cry shame.

First-Draft Version

As usual, we begin our analysis by examining the first draft of this passage recorded by David Hayman:

The four judges Unchus, Munchus, Punchus and Pylax could no more than pass the usual sentence of Nolans Brumans & King left his court trailing his tunic. On the Swiss bobbyguard’s curial but courtlike: Commodore valley O hairy Arthery jennyrosy? : the firewaterloover replied with such a fortytudor ages rowdawnham tanyouhide that all the advocatesses within echo
pulling up their briefs simply soccered him imprumptu rightaway like the muddy goalbird who he was, conclaiming: Hon! Verg! Putor! Nan! Shams! Shames! ―David Hayman 77–78

These lines were drafted in November 1923. By July 1927, when an early draft of this chapter appeared in issue 4 of Eugene Jolas’s literary journal transition, this paragraph had swelled to twenty-six lines. The final published version of 1939 adds only a few further embellishments. Note that both versions omitted the word turn in the phrase would turn the latten stomach ... The error appears on the list of errata Corrections of Misprints in Finnegans Wake which Joyce prepared for the Viking Press and which was published in 1945. The missing word was also restored to its proper place by Danis Rose & John O’Hanlon in The Restored Finnegans Wake (2010).

transition 4:58

The Four Justicers

In the first draft, the Four Old Men are named: Unchus, Munchus, Punchus, and Pylax. The last two obviously allude to the Biblical Pontius Pilate, who tried unsuccessfully to acquit Jesus of the charges laid against him. The first two were later emended to Untius and Muncius. In Finnegans Wake, the Four Old Men often represent the four provinces of Ireland, so these two names probably allude to Ulster and Munster, while rhyming with Pontius.

There may also be allusions to the Chinese philosopher Mencius (4th century BC) and to the Roman hero Gaius Mucius Scaevola, who famously thrust his right hand into a brazier to demonstrate Roman bravery and endurance to the Etruscan king Lars Porsena.

Note that the four justicers are distracted, in the sense of distrait, absent-minded, perplexed. Their verdict of Nolans Brumans suggests that the judges have their mind on the trial of Giordano Bruno of Nola by the Roman Inquisition. Bruno was burnt at the stake―he died standing. The French brumant = being foggy also underscores the befuddled state of the judges’ minds. Finally, the Latin nolens volens = willy-nilly implies that they are not truly in charge and must deliver this verdict whether they will or no.

Palace of the Holy Office, Rome

Festy and the Swiss Guard

the Switz bobbyguard’s curial but courtlike: The Swiss Guard is the Vatican’s security service, while the Roman Curia is the Vatican’s civil service―more reminders that Festy King’s trial was largely informed by the trial of Giordano Bruno at the Palace of the Holy Office in Rome. The Swiss Guard is both the Papal bodyguard and police force―hence bobbyguard. In Latin curia = court.

Commodore valley O hairy, Arthre jennyrosy? Joyce rings sixteen changes on this phrase throughout the pages of Finnegans Wake. We first encountered it in I.1 just before the Mutt & Jute Dialogue:

Come on, fool porterfull, hosiered women blown monk sewer?

French: Comment vous portez-vous aujourd’hui, mon blond monsieur? = How are you today, my fair sir?

The second variation occurred in I.2 when HCE was accosted by the Cad with a Pipe in the Phoenix Park:

Guinness thaw tool in jew me dinner ouzel fin?

Irish: Conas atá tú indiu, mo dhuine uasal fionn? = How are you today, my fair sir?

This, the third variation, is Latin: Quomodo vales hodie, Arator generose? = How are you today, noble farmer? The phrase seems to represent unsuccessful attempts to communicate between two individuals who don’t see eye to eye or even speak the same language. A perfectly ordinary question spoken in one language is horribly mutilated when the listener attempts to interpret it in his language. Its appearance here is entirely appropriate in the light of Myles Joyce’s trial.

Festy’s attempts to understand the phrase bring in their train allusions to the Duke of Wellington (Arthre = Arthur Wellesley) and his famous Dear Jenny: publish and be damned! (jennyrosy), as Mrs Warren recalls it in Bernard Shaw’s play Mrs Warren’s Profession. Note also Waterloo in the following firewaterloover. Firewater is whiskey. Whiskey is distilled: hence Festy returted, a retort being an apparatus used for distillation. Fest’s vile-smelling and vine-smelling retort is another phrase that occurs with several variation throughout Finnegans Wake:

fortytudor ages rawdownhams tanyouhide

The basic form is the Latin Fortitudo eius Rhodanum tenuit = His Strength Has Held the Rhône. This is one of the many possible explanations of FERT, the obscure motto of the Kingdom of Italy and the House of Savoy. The R is more often rendered Rhodum = Rhodes, but Rhodanum better fits Joyce’s uses. In my opinion FERT is simply a dream distortion of FART and the phrase’s appearance in the text implies that the sleeper in Finnegans Wake has just broken wind.

Sigmund Freud

Joyce has been influenced here by his reading of Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams:

A similar difficulty confronts the political writer who has disagreeable truths to tell to those in authority. If he presents them undisguised, the authorities will suppress his words ... A writer must beware of the censorship, and on its account he must soften and distort the expression of his opinion ... he finds himself compelled ... to speak in allusions in place of direct references, or he must conceal his objectionable pronouncement beneath some apparently innocent disguise ...

The fact that the phenomena of censorship and of dream-distortion correspond down to their smallest details justifies us in presuming that they are similarly determined. We may therefore suppose that dreams are given their shape in individual human beings by the operation of two psychical forces (or we may describe them as currents or systems); and that one of these forces constructs the wish which is expressed by the dream, while the other exercises a censorship upon this dream-wish and, by the use of that censorship, forcibly brings about a distortion in the expression of the wish. ―Freud 167–168

And here are the details

having murdered all the English he knew Perhaps another allusion to the infamous trial in Dublin’s Green Street Courthouse where Myles Joyce was convicted of the Maamtrasna Murders. The trial was conducted in English, a language that Joyce could not speak. William York Tindall sees an allusion here to Joyce himself:

Festy King, with his Shem-side out, has become the author of Finnegans Wake, where he “murdered all the English he knew.” ―Tindall 90

picked out his pockets Apparently, a gesture indicating his poverty (Gordon 93.2). Tommeylommey’s conceals the Danish tomme lommer = empty pockets. Note also the allusion to Tom, Dick (picked) & Harry (hurry), who represent Shem, Shaun & the Oedipal Figure.

showing off the blink pitch to his britgits to prove himself (an’t plase yous!) a rael genteel St Patrick and St Brigid are joint Patron Saints of Ireland. Saint Patrick Was a Gentleman is a traditional Irish song with humorous and irreverent lyrics by Henry Bennett and John Toleken. Joyce often wore a black patch when recovering from one of his many eye operations―confirming Tindall’s observation that Festy is also the Paris Poser (Parish Poser) from Dublin. The Scottish form for James, Hamish, may be hidden in hames. In Ireland, to make a hames of something is to make a mess of it. See RFW 143.33, where Shem is explicitly named Hamish. Finally, the phrase gash from a burner alludes to Gas from a Burner, a satirical broadside that Joyce wrote in 1912, a Parthian shot fired at the Irish literary establishment as Joyce returned to the Continent for the final time.

James Joyce (Paris 1926)

as would turn the latten stomach even of a tumass equinous Thomas Aquinas was allegedly a ravenous and obese eater, which identifies him with Shaun―though contemporary accounts portray him as tall and robust rather than obese. Latin was his preferred language, while latten was a copper alloy used for crucifixes and funerary monuments. Equine = horselike, a reference to the expression to eat like a horse. tumass alludes to Thomas’s massive tummy.

the twofromthirty advocatesses within echo, pulling up their briefs The Flower Maidens are cast in a legal role for Festy’s trial. An advocate is an attorney or legal counselor who speaks on one’s behalf in a court of law, and a brief is an attorney’s legal argument in written form. But briefs are also short ladies’ underwear, so there is another foreshadowing here of the children’s game Angels & Devil or Colours, which will be played out in II.1, where Shem will be challenged to guess the colour of Issy’s knickers. It is possible that the allusions in this paragraph to soccer (association football, another popular game) also foreshadow the twilight games of II.1.

Shun the Punman!, safely and soundly soccered that fenemine Parish Poser, (how dare he!) umprumptu rightoway hames ... (for like your true venuson Esau he was dovetimid as the dears at Bottome), biss Drinkbattle’s Dingy Dwellings (toegang) where he shat in (zoo), like the muddy goalbird who he was (dun) This foreshadows I.7, a blackly comic portrait of Shem the Penman, who retires to the Haunted Inkbottle, where he manufactures ink out of his own faeces and proceeds to produce a no uncertain quantity of obscene matter.

And that’s as good a place as any to beach the bark of our tale.

References

Joseph Campbell, Henry Morton Robinson, A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York (1944)
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams: The Complete and Definitive Text, Translated & Edited by James Strachey, Basic Books, Perseus Books Group, New York (1955, 2010)
David Hayman, A First-Draft Version of Finnegans Wake, University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas (1963)
William & Charles Ingram, The Illustrated London News, Volume 90, January–June 1887, Ingram Brothers, London (1887)
Eugene Jolas & Elliot Paul (editors), transition, Number 4, Shakespeare & Co, Paris (1927)
James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, The Viking Press, New York (1958, 1966)
James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Works, Pynch (editor), Online (2013)
John MacDonald, Diary of the Parnell Commission, T Fisher Unwin, London (1890)
Roland McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake, Third Edition, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland (2006)
Danis Rose, John O’Hanlon, The Restored Finnegans Wake, Penguin Classics, London (2012)
Susan Swartzlander, Multiple Meaning and Misunderstanding: The Mistrial of Festy King, James Joyce Quarterly, Volume 23, Number 4, Pages 465–476, University of Tulsa, Tulsa, Oklahoma (1986)
William York Tindall, A Reader’s Guide to Finnegans Wake, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York (1969)

Image Credits

Green Street Courthouse: The Illustrated London News, 26 February 1887, Volume 90, Pages 228–229 : Illustration of the trial of five Irish MPs during the Plan of Campaign
Sigmund Freud: Ludwig Grillich (photographer), Public Domain