Finnegans Wake Grappa discussion

The sleeper, our prototagonist, our everyman HCE, the roaming rotating E- Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, or, Here Comes Everybody, Haveth Childers Everywhere, Howth Castle and Environs, Humme the Cheapner, Esq., hubbub caused in Edenborough, Habituels conspicuously emergent, He Can Explain, Humpheres Cheops Exarchas, Hark, the corne entreats!, H2CE3, Hush! Caution! Echoland!, and later on our dear innkeeper Mr. Porter. Here as we traverse nightland let’s gather up a collection of his namings, his pseudonymings, his iterations and incarnations, facts and myths and mysteries and rumors all about our dozing giant of Dyoublong!

I'm unterlining all occurrances myself. I think wat I'll do is after my current=chapter (Shaun) I'll post=list those encomia comma hisself in thises Shaun=chapter. Todie or to marry.

And one should be familiar with the Everyman play ::

"The Somonyng of Everyman (The Summoning of Everyman), usually referred to simply as Everyman, is a late 15th-century English morality play. Like John Bunyan's 1678 Christian novel Pilgrim's Progress, Everyman uses allegorical characters to examine the question of Christian salvation and what Man must do to attain it. The premise is that the good and evil deeds of one's life will be tallied by God after death, as in a ledger book. The play is the allegorical accounting of the life of Everyman, who represents all mankind. In the course of the action, Everyman tries to convince other characters to accompany him in the hope of improving his account. All the characters are also allegorical, each personifying an abstract idea such as Fellowship, (material) Goods, and Knowledge. The conflict between good and evil is dramatised by the interactions between characters. Everyman is being singled out because it is difficult for him to find characters to accompany him on his pilgrimage. Everyman eventually realizes through this pilgrimage that he is essentially alone, despite all the personified characters that were supposed necessities and friends to him. Everyman learns that when you are brought to death and placed before God all you are left with is your own good deeds."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everyman...

A modern English text :: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/...

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "And one should be familiar with the Everyman play ::

"The Somonyng of Everyman (The Summoning of Everyman), usually referred to simply as Everyman, is a late 15th-century English morality play. Li..."

Wonderful. Yes we need to do this with ALP Shem Shaun and Issy all...

III.1 Shaun Before the People (403; 313R)

"hash-say-ugh" (316R)
"Hireark Books and Chiefoverseer Cooks in their Eusebian Concordant Homilies" (318R)
"circulating about them new hikler's highways like them nameless souls, ercked and skorned and grizzild all over" (318R) [non-McHugh-endorsed!)
"compound eyes on hornitosehead" (322R)
"His Christian's Em" (325R)
"clerical horrors et omnibus" (326R)
"Hek" (326R)
"Here Commerces Enville" (326R)
"J.P. Converted to Hospitalism. Ere the March past" (326R)
"House Condamned by Eidiles" (327R)
"HeCitEncy!" (327R)
"Child Horrid, engrossing" (328R)
"Helpless Corpses Enactment" (329R)
"he caught the europicolas" (329R)
"earth, clouds and in heaven" (330R)
"earshot with his highly curious mode" (331R)

Useless I'm freudenly Miss Taken, 'tis all the HCE eye deed ed by MacPhew puss a phew(!) ivy myself iDeed'd. (Smack!)

I quoth "excellent". This should really be done section by section from the beginning, though I understand the labor costs involved. But from here on out as I go through I'll be contributing what I can. And since I'm several hundred pages behind you, I can try to fill in the previous chapters.

Geoff wrote: "section by section from the beginning"

I'll aim for spotty contributions. Illustrative rather than exhaustive. The one that might be really quite illustrative is Buckley shooting the Russian General in the Taverney scene, beginning 309 (238R) ; the chap with Butt/Taff. Those two characters too recur per noman.

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "I'll aim for spotty contributions. Illustrative rather than exhaustive."

Yes, I think that is a reasonable aim.

On pg. 88 of the OUP:

"And with tumblerous legs, redipnominated Helmingham Erchenwyne Rutter Egbert Crumwall Odin Maximus Esme Saxon Esa Vercingetorix Ethelwulf Rupperecht Ydwalla Bentley Osmond Dysart Yggdrasselmann? Holy Saint Eiffel, the very phoenix!

H.E.R.E.C.O.M.E.S.E.V.E.R.Y.B.O.D.Y

So in the course of my reading and rereading I came across an instance of a nice parallel and mutual=saturation of ALP and HEC.

In the ALP chap, final page :: "Anna was, Livia is, Plurabelle's to be." 215(169R) Past-Present-Future.

Much later, as HCE is defending himself in the Yawn chapter (III.3), he identifies his heraldry motto as "Hery Crass Evohodie" 546(424R) which is Latin for "yesterday, tomorrow, today." Which is kind of nice.

Naturally, this tom dick and harry stuff shows up multiply in other places.

This one blew the g.b.d. right outa my f.a.c.e. Occurs three times in the penultimate chapter, the sex=teen chapter.

"meseedo." 564(439R)
"Sidome." 582(453R)
"Two me see." 590(459R)

The McHugh explication from page 564 :: "In fixed-do system of solmization, C = do, E = mi, B (called H in German terminology) = si; therefore, 'mi-si-do' = EHC."

*face palm* brings us by a system of associations to B-A-C-H.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-K6Y...

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "This one blew the g.b.d. right outa my f.a.c.e. Occurs three times in the penultimate chapter, the sex=teen chapter.

"meseedo." 564(439R)
"Sidome." 582(453R)
"Two me see." 590(459R)

The McHugh ..."

Fantastic. Reminds me of the "translation" of Do-Re-Mi in Jaun Before St. Brides, though this is much more complicated.

Geoff wrote: "Reminds me of the "translation" of Do-Re-Mi in Jaun Before St. Brides"

And you remind me that I should have been reminded of Same, Shame.

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "And you remind me that I should have been reminded of Same, Shame."

Well, I just read it yesterday I think, so it's a bit fresher in mememoree.

Nathan "N.R." wrote: ""meseedo." 564(439R)
"Sidome." 582(453R)
"Two me see." 590(459R)"

There are in fact four of these, corresponding to Mamalujo and the four positions of the Porters. I'm too lazy to locate the other ; but there you have it!

Has anyone composed anything on the H-E-C motif? Can we musically inscribe ALP somehow? Could we contort the P into a B and the L into a G?, which would at minimum be typographically possible.

There seem to be just as many Persse O'Reillys in the latter sections of the Wake as there are HCE.

"perce-oreille" = "earwig"!

E.g. "Aperrytiff with valad of Erill Pearcey O..." [p. 493]

Maybe I need to start over and underline all these too?

Joshua wrote: "Maybe I need to start over and underline all these too?"

Start over? The Wake? Again? Finnfunagain? Nah! Trick is to naught look for them everywhere that is knot The Wake.

There is a nice article about the musical notation of HCE in Newslitter. Forget who wrote it or what issue.

Harry wrote: "There is a nice article about the musical notation of HCE in Newslitter. Forget who wrote it or what issue."

Oh yes please. Very interested should anyone run across it.

I have the whole thing on a CD-ROM and will look for it tonight.

Harry wrote: "I have the whole thing on a CD-ROM and will look for it tonight."

oh hey! Didn't know this existed. But there it is in McHugh on page x. And here it is (with two sample issues) :: http://www.harenet.co.uk/splitpea/awn/

It costs like 20 bucks and the guy will even email you the content while you are waiting for it to arrive. I would recommend it because it has a ton of great articles.

So the article is called "A Music Lesson" and it was written by Jack P. Dalton I am guessing around 1962 or 63. It is in the Old Series issue 16 which is from September 1963. I would post it here but I don't want to rip off the guy selling these CD-ROMS.

The musical references come from III.4 pages 555-590.

Harry wrote: "So the article is called "A Music Lesson" and it was written by Jack P. Dalton I am guessing around 1962 or 63. It is in the Old Series issue 16 which is from September 1963. I would post it here..."

Understood. I've got it on my wishing-in-fishin' list.

I’m just coming to the end of my favorite chapter so far, the meta-writing Chapter 5 of Book 1. I felt this bit did some very cool things with HCE. Aside from assorted Persse O’Reillys, Earwickers, Finnegans and a direct discussion of the HCE sig…lum(?), we have:

“He Can Explain” (105)
“Huffy Chops Eads” (106)
“hardily curiosing entomophilust” (107)
“eternal chimerahunter” (107)
“Elberfeld’s Calculating Horses” (108)
“Hear! Calls! Everywhere!” (108)
“its page cannot ever have been a penproduct…” (108)
“elucidation of complications of his” (109)
“Cheepslizzy’s Hane Exposition” (111)
“hidmost cognings of the earth” (118-119)

So, to the cloud of HCE ideas (this body, that body, every body, time, place), it seems like we get to add something of reader, reading process and maybe even text, too.

A few pages into Chapter V, the discussion seems to turn toward the infamous "letter". We have the familiar quote> "Biddy Doran first looked at literature." (112)
And on the facing page, "There were three men in him (schwrites)." (113)
Leading up to a very interesting line on pg. 114.

"The teatimestained terminal (say not the tag, mummer, or our show's a failure!) is a cosy little brown study all to oneself and, whether it be thumbprint, mademark or just a poor trait of the artless, its importance in establishing the identities of the writer complexus (for if the hand was one, the minds of active and agitated were more than so)..." (114)

What's most interesting here is the notion of a writer complexus; (also of interest is a poor>trait of the artless).
Anyway, there are some personalities mention in the Wake that seem to have also been present in Portrait; and since they are in both cases identified with the writer's art maybe there is a connection to be seen/found?

So, on pg. 421 we are introduced to the pixillated doodler; and on pg. 439 the stardaft journalwriter; and on pg. 122 the quickscribbler.

So going back to A Portrait, in Book II, one of the main story lines is Stephen trying to get written down his experience of the last tram scene. So, on pg. 67 (of a 1968 Viking Compass ed.) we find, "He chronicled with patience what he saw...". So I'm taking the liberty of stretching "He chronicled" into "journalwriter".
Then on pg. 70, we find, "he fell into a daydream and began to draw diagrams", and so again with a little stretching I read/or see "doodler" here. [It interesting, that the more I think about it, the harder it becomes to separate "stardaft" from "pixilated" - maybe a separate discussion.]

Finding the "scribbler" is a little more complicated. Though the word appears in Portrait it's used to designate a thing, a notebook, rather than a person. But if we go back to the second story in Dubliners; and if we accept the corrections made by Robert Scholes for the Viking Compass 1968 revised edition, we find a wonderful "foreshadowing" line, "The man who wrote it, I suppose, was some wretched scribbler that writes these things for a drink." (20). [The word that scribbler replaces, here, is fellow.]

So in a way it seems almost like personas glimpsed in previous Joyce works are also present, maybe, in Finnegans Wake?

This is a pretty separate comment, and just a more general note on Joyce himself, but does anyone else find it much easier to read sections of FW out of context than Ulysses? They're both phenomenal novels, of course, but FW makes "more sense" to me in parts than Ulysses does - possibly because of the wheel-structure? Maybe I read it more attentively....

After killing a couple years of my life reading and re-reading FW, I gave up and went back to the other books. For me Joyce is an amazingly consistent author and there is hardly any difference between the first sentence in Dubliners and the last sentence in the Wake.
I found that the scrutiny that I had necessarily acquired for studying Wake "paid-off" when I re-read Ulysses. Besides attending to more detail I discovered there are a lot of similarities between the two.
I've never understood a single page of FW, while after 30 years, Ulysses is still tons of fun! - )