~ Finnegans Wake – A Prescriptive Guide ~

(RFW 018.32–019.23)

James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake takes its name from a popular Irish-American ballad of the 1860s. In the National Library of Ireland, among the Hans E Jahnke Bequest, there is a typed carbon copy of the lyrics of “Tim Finigan’s Wake”, in what is essentially the version of the ballad attributed to the Irish songsmith and variety artist John F Poole:

Joyce’s Handwritten Note on Tim Finigan’s Wake

Joyce added the handwritten note. His spidery script is difficult to decipher, but here is my best guess:

This, of course, is not mine. It is an old wellknown and quite vulgar Irish “comic” song of the 50’s or so which I have used as title.

Earlier in the opening chapter of Finnegans Wake we came across explicit references to the ballad. In fact, the passage comprising the fifth through ninth paragraphs of this chapter (Bygmester Finnegan, of the Stuttering Hand ... schlook, schlice and goodridhirring) is essentially a dramatization of the song. In the following pages, however, the ballad is largely absent.

Now, however, it returns with a vengeance, as though the intervening passages constituted a lengthy digression. Two of the earliest pioneers in the field of Wakean studies, Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson, thought as much. In A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, they suggest that the tale of the Prankquean and Jarl van Hoother marks the end of an important subsection of the opening chapter:

This tale concludes the little study of landscape and museum evidences. The prehistoric figures of Mutt and Jute, the medieval notices of the Blue Book of Mammon Lujius, the comparatively recent histories of the Wellington Museum, the entire sweep of the landscape, a certain midden dump ... and the fantasies of popular tales, all have revealed unmistakable symptoms of the common substratum. We are not surprised to see now, dimly at first, but then gradually more strongly, the Wake scene reemerging through the traits of the land. (Campbell & Robinson 50)

Hill, Rill

First-Draft Version

The first draft of this passage is much shorter than the published version:

O phenix culprit! Ex nicklow cometh good. Hill and rill we see but they will not speak the secret of their silentness. Quarry silex, Homfries Noanswa? Undy festiknees, Livia Noanswa? Wolkencap is on his head; he would hear. His vales are darkling! She lispeth to him ever and ever of thow and thow: she he she ho she ha to la: hairfluke, if he could but twig her!: he is impalpabunt, he abhears. Perpetrified in his offsprung, the moaning pipes tells him to his face how only for him there would not be a spier on the town or a vestal in the dock, no, nor a you nor an eye in nilbud new a’tall and noddy hint to the convaynience. He sweated his crowd and urned his dead and made louse for us and begad he did till his earsend to earsend.

And would again could whispring grassies wake him. Anam a dhoul! did ye drink me dead? (Hayman 59-60)

The image of HCE and ALP side by side in bed in the master bedroom of The Mullingar House in Chapelizod is compared once again to the landscape around Dublin. HCE is the cloud-capped Hill of Howth (hill ... Wolkencap), while ALP is the river Liffey (rill). The hill is silent—asleep?—but the constant babbling of the stream is like Issy’s voice, which comes to HCE via the chimney flue in the bedroom.

HCE’s Oedipal fear of his sons (Perpetrified in his offsprung) is offset by the high opinion he has of himself and of his contributions to the wellbeing of his city—a foreshadowing, perhaps, of the famous Haveth Childers Everywhere, which concludes III.3 (RFW 413.34-431.13). It is largely thanks to him that the city is flourishing, with spires on all the churches and merchant vessels in the dock. But he cannot escape his guilty conscience: his suspicious neighbours spy on him constantly and he imagines himself to be mixed up in scandals involving vestal virgins, voyeurism and criminal proceedings.

O phenix culprit! reminds us that HCE’s guilty conscience usually manifests itself as a sex crime committed in the Phoenix Park—standing in for the Garden of Eden—and involving two young girls.

The passage ends with a parody of a line from the ballad of Finnegan’s Wake—

Thanam o’n dhoul [Your soul to the Devil], do ye think I’m dead?

—which Tim Finnegan cries when some drops of whiskey revive his “corpse” during a riot at his wake. The Irish for whiskey is uisce beatha, or water of life.

Finnegan’s Wake

In several previous articles, I have argued that the opening chapter of Finnegans Wake is introductory in nature and foreshadows many of the later chapters of the book. This passage, which features an inconclusive episode between HCE and ALP in bed, clearly foreshadows III.4 (The Fourth Watch of Shaun, or Dawn the Ghost), in which HCE (Bartholomew Porter) and ALP (Mrs Porter) ring down the curtain on their love-life by engaging in sexual intercourse for the last time—without much success. Joyce began to write III.4 in late September or early October 1925, but he only began I.1 a year later (Crispi & Slote 410, 51, 485, 487).

As noted above, this passage also anticipates Haveth Childers Everywhere, which was first drafted in late 1924 (Crispi & Slote 487).

Joyce’s Hints

This passage is one of a handful in Finnegans Wake which Joyce glossed for his patron Harriet Shaw Weaver. As usual, Joyce’s glosses are often as mystifying as the text itself:

Harriet Shaw Weaver

Phoenix park—symbol used by Michelet to explain Vico’s theory
O felix culpa! S. Augustine’s famous phrase in praise of Adam’s sin. Fortunate Fault! Without it the Redeemer [would] not have been born. Hence also for the antecedent sin of Lucifer without which Adam [would] not have been created or able to fall.
Ex nihilo nihil fit
Ex male bonus fit
Out of nothing comes nothing
[Out of] evil [comes] good
Nicky (Old Nick, Lucifer, Satan)
Mickelmassed (Michael, his conqueror = much heaped up)
Malum in Latin means evil and apple.
Hill, rill, ones in company &c
This rhythm occurs often.
Arthur Guinness, Sons & Company, Ltd
Awful Grimmest Sunshat Cromwelly, Looted.
— — Sons & Company, & their carriageable tochters
Hill = [HCE]
Rill = [ALP]
Less be proud, be proud of them but naturally, as hill (go up it) as river (jump it).
Norronesen = Old Norse, warrior
Irenean = Irishborn, peace (eirene)
secrest = superlative of most secret
soorcelossness = the source is not yet to be found any more than that of the Nile
Quare siles = Why are you silent
Homfrie Noanswa (Albert Nyanza)
Unde gentium festinas? Where the dickens are you hurrying from?
Livia Noanswa (Victoria Nyanza)
the source of the Nile, later supposed to represent [HCE] + [ALP]
the quarry & the silexflint suggest [HCE] silent
undy, gentian & festy hues suggest [ALP] running & bubbling.
Wolken = (woollen cap of clouds (wolkin — welkin)
Frowned = He is crowned with the frown of the deaf
Audi urio (I long to hear)
Es urio ([I long to] eat)
Eavesdrip = [would] listen to the dripping drops of his house’s e(a)ve [ALP]water
mous = Chaucerian form to suggest distance in time
dinn = Oriental mixture of din & djinn, the noise of an angry armed spirit, to suggest distance in space
bottles (battles) = the vintner’s dream of Satan & Michael
far ear = far east
mous at hand = close at hand
Mark! (the king & the admonition)
His vales etc His hills begin to be clouded over in the effort to hear
With lithpth [ALP]babble
Hairfluke (Herrfluch = the curse of the Lord on you for not talking louder, he tries to grab her hair which he hopes to catch by a fluke)
If he could bad twig her
twig = Anglo-Irish = understand
twig = beat with a twig.
Impalpabunt
Oculos habent et non videbunt
Aures habent et [non] audient
Manus [habent et] non palpabunt
His ear having failed, he clutches with his hand & misses & turns away hopeless & unhearing (he abhears)

Mr Garnett says he can only stare (a man of letters, of a literary family and a very whimsical and good writer himself) like a cow at this. So much the worse for the cow. (Letters 13 May 1927, Ellmann 321-323, JJDA)

And this is a good place to stop.

References

Joseph Campbell, Henry Morton Robinson, Edmund L Epstein (editor), A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, New World Library, Novato CA (2005)
Luca Crispi & Sam Slote (editors), How Joyce Wrote Finnegans Wake: A Chapter-by-Chapter Genetic Guide, The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI (2007)
Richard Ellmann (editor), Selected Letters of James Joyce, Viking Press, New York (1975)
David Hayman, A First-Draft Version of Finnegans Wake, University of Texas Press, Austin, TX (1963)
James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, The Viking Press, New York (1958, 1966)
Danis Rose, John O’Hanlon, The Restored Finnegans Wake, Penguin Classics, London (2012)
Giambattista Vico, Goddard Bergin (translator), Max Harold Fisch (translator), The New Science of Giambattista Vico, Cornell University Press, Ithaca NY (1948)

Image Credits

Harriet Shaw Weaver: Copyright Unknown, Fair Use

Useful Resources

Kopimi

O Foenix Culprit!

First-Draft Version

Joyce’s Hints

References

Image Credits

Useful Resources