The published edition famously missed an entire line, restored in FW2: "This is me Belchum sneaking his phillippy out of his most {toocisive bottle of
Tilsiter. This is the libel on the battle.} Awful Grimmest Sunshat Cromwelly,
Looted."
"me Belchum" is more often called Sackerson or Sigurdsen [siglum]
"Yaw", "Shee", "Ayi", and "Hee" all sort-of mean 'yes' in other languages
FDV: "This is the jinnies dispatch fontannoy the Willingdone. Dear Awthur, field gates your tiny frow? They think to cotch the Willingdone. This the Willingdone dispatch. Cherry jinny, damn fairy ann, voutre, Willingdone. Pip. This is Prooshing balls. This the ffrinch! Tip. Guns, this is jinnies in blootchers, this is the frinches in the redditches. This is the Willingdone order, fire! Tonerre!"
Here's a first attempt to clean up Joyce's diagram. Can anyone explain its relation to the text, or to the historical battle? The jinnies should be the two (upsidedown) Ts, who seem to be running off to the lower right, but also encircling the Libra-mound ("our mounding's mass"?), along with two Ss for Belchum? The lipoleums are Shaun-Tristram-Shem and appear inverted on either side of the mountain range at the top. There's an X and some sawhorse-looking shapes...?
This tour of the museyroom seems as Freudian as anything in FW. It's also mysterious, with important allusions refusing to come into focus: lipoleums, Wallinstone, ffrinch, Tip.
The whole Joyce family toured the Waterloo battlefield in September 1926, coincidentally observed by (the) Thomas Wolfe: "[Joyce] walked next to the old guide who showed us around, listening with apparent interest to his harangue delivered in broken English, and asking him questions." [Ellmann p581] [more]
Is Kathe the tour guide, or another (male?)? Why ask her for the key if she's giving the tour too?
Why does it echo "The House that Jack Built"?
FDV: "From here when the clouds roll by, a clear view is enjoyable of the mound's mass, now national museum, with in greenish distance the charmful waterloose country and they two quitewhite villagettes who show herselves so gigglesome mixxt the follyages, the pretties! Penetrators are admitted in this museumound free, welshe and militaries one shellink. For her key supply to the janitrix, the Mistresse Kate. Tip. This way to the mewseyroom. Mind your boot going in. Now yez are in the Willingdone mewseyroom. This is a Prooshian gun. This is a ffrinch. Tip. This is the flag-o'-the-prushian. This is a bullet that bing the flag-o'-th prooshian. This is the ffrinch that fire the bull that bang the flag-o'-the-prooshian. Tip. This the hat of lipoleum. Tip. Lipoleum hat. This is Willingdone on his harse. This Willingdone, this his big wide harse. Tip. This is the first in the ditch. This is the gay first lipoleum boy that spy the Willingdone on his white harse. Tip. This is the jinnies making war oversides the Willingdone. This is the big Willingdone tallowscoop. Tip." (this section is remarkably free of revisions)
FDV: "For what we are about to believe. So sigh us! Whose on the gyant dish? Finfaw the Fush. What's at his head? A loaf of Singpatherick's bread. And what's at his tail? A glass of O'Connell's famous old Dublin ale. But what do I see? In his reins is planted a 1/2d gaff. Not one but legion. The king of the castle is k.o. The almost rubicund salmon of knowledge is one with the yesterworld of [...] We may see the brontoichthyan form outlined, even in our nighttime by the side of the troutlet stream that bronto loved and loves. What though she be in flags & flitters, rowdyrags or sundayclosies, with a mint of money or never a hapenny, yerra, we all love all of little Annie Ruiny, or I mean to say lobble Nanny Rainy, when under her brella, through piddle & poddle, she ninnygoes nannygoes nancing by. There Brontolone sleeps & snores. The cranial head, castle of his reason, look yonder. Howth?
His lay feet, swarded with verdure, stick up where he last fell on em, by the hump of the magazine wall, where Maggy seen all couldn't help it at all with her sister-in-shawl. Wile beyind the Ill Sixty, bagsides of the fort, bom, tarabom, tarrarabom, are the ambushes the scene of the lying-in-wait of the threetimesthree."
Magazine Fort/ Wall
007.36: "Hence when the clouds roll by, jamey..." various possible sources include: 1884? song by Fulmer and Wood "Wait Till the Clouds Roll By, Jenny" 1918 song "Till We Meet Again"
(When the clouds roll by I'll come to you) 1919 silent comedy film "When the Clouds Roll By" ♬ Bea Lillie from "Oh Joy"
(Are any of these remotely relevant?)
There's another, very different version of "Finnegan's Wake" [lyrics] that starts "I'm a decent gay laboring youth" and "I'll never commit such a sin [marriage] again". Maybe 'Barnaby Finegan' or 'Barney McFinnigan'.
All the "-ation"s are (by consensus) indications of the Twelve (boring) Citizens, jurors, sometimes called the Sullivans, represented by the siglum "O".
The rotated 'E' is supposedly HCE lying dead on his back, and the possible reference to page 88 may refer to a photo in a French book about Egypt that's now online.
FDV: "His howth filled heavy, his hodd did shake. He fell from the latter. Damb! He was dead. Dump! Size! I should say! MacCool, macool, why did ye die! Sore they sighed at Finn's wake. There was plumbs and grooms and sheriffs and zitherers & raiders and cittamen too. 'Twas he was the dacent gaylabouring youth! Arrah where in this world would you hear such a din again it? The owl hangsigns & the thirsty fidelios! They laid him low along his last bed. With abuckalyps of finisky at his feet & a barrowload of guinesis at his head. To the total of the fluid & the twaddle of the fuddled, O. Hurrah, there is but one globe for the owlglobe wheels anew which is testamount to the same thing as who shall see. He, a being so on the flat of his bulk, let wee peep at Hom, plate III."
FDV: "Haitch is for Husbandman planting his hoe. Hohohoho Mister Finn you're going to be Mr Finn again. Comeday morning when and your senday end you're Vinegar. Hahahaha Mister Finn you're going to be fined again. And, as sure as Eve ate little red apples, wan warning Finn felt tippling full."
The first half of the first paragraph seems to compress many historical adversary-battles, with lots of allusions to Rabelais, but then the last half returns to the seven 'not-yet's. Are the particular battles chosen to embody some deeper patterns, eg Shem vs Shaun? (Beats me.) [♬ Master McGrath] [♬ Bid Me to Live]
a giant ostracod (seed shrimp)
cashel (open stone fort)
FW2 changes "Assiegates" to "Assiegales" which seems a big improvement to me: gales/storms is much simpler to parse than gates/storms. (Joyce made several other corrections to this page after publication, but didn't notice/bother with this one.)
rushlit
The traditional lyrics of the song "Finnegan's Wake" offer one superstructure for chapter one [Fweet] The second paragraph is mostly about Finnegan as a builder, an apt archetypal coincidence from the song. (Most heroes in myth and history were not literally builders, but metaphorically they all were.) Old Testament books are named: Joshua, Judges, Numbers, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Genesis, Exodus, Pentateuch
FDV: "What cha of wills & wits were not here & there abouts! What chance cuddleys, what castles aired & ventilated, what biddymetolives sinduced by what egosetabsolvers, what true feeling for hair with false voice of haycup, what rorycrucians byelected by rival emilies! But O here how has sprawled upon the dust the father of fornications but O, my stars & body, how has finespanned in high heaven the skysign of soft advertisement. Was? Isot! Ere we sure? The oaks of old rest in peat. Elms leap where ashes lay. Till nevernever may our pharce be phoenished! Bygmister Finnegan, builder, lived on the broadest way imaginable and during mighty odd years this man of Hod made buildung upon buildung on the banks of the livers by the Soandso. He addle iddle wife and he hugged the liddle crathur wither tear tuck up your pardner."
Something to keep in mind, for people who've dug into Ulysses: each chapter there has its characteristic styles, and it may be that individual paragraphs (and even sentences?) in FW have characteristic styles. According to the footnote here, Joyce in 1923 was already labelling individual paragraphs "parataxis" and "hypotaxis" (literary terms so obscure that I haven't figured them out). (Chapter I.1 wasn't begun until 1926.)
People have found every sort of obscure multilingual pun in every line. A good rule of thumb is to ignore secondary echoes unless they're needed to explain Joyce's exact spellings. Eg, "commodius" seems to require "Commodus" because of the missing "o", but FW2 has restored that "o" so we can ignore Commodus altogether.
The first chapter is a condensed overview of the fundamental archetypes of human history, as Joyce saw them. [digest] We might picture it as the book's "rebooting" sequence.
The first paragraph offers a geographic metaphor of the Liffey River (ALP) flowing through Dublin past Adam and Eve's Church. Howth Castle is chosen mainly for the initials echoing "HCE", which will appear on almost every page.
For "riverrun" I like the French rêverons: "let us dream".
"vicus" can be pronounced VYcus, VEEcus, VIHcus, WIHcus or WEEcus. "Vico" is always VEEco, I think. Howth rhymes with oath.
The second paragraph seems to offer seven primary themes, as "not yet"s (but no neat theory yet accounts for these specific seven):
Sir Tristram had passencore rearrived
nor had topsawyer’s rocks exaggerated themselse ["Oconee"]
Ellmann: "The first draft, composed alternately with readings in Anita Loos's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, was dated 15 November 1926... Joyce asked an American visitor, Julien Levy, to look up Dublin, Georgia, for him. Levy found there were three Dublins in the United States, one of them named from the custom of bundling or doubling in. Joyce was anxious to find out if it lay on a river." (Dublin, Georgia as a sister-city reappears hardly at all after this paragraph.) The third paragraph deals with the sin/fall/death/burial of a great man. This emphasis may be entirely coincidental, inspired by Joyce's patron Harriet Weaver's humorous request for a piece about a megalith called the Giant's Grave in nw England:
The first of ten hundred-letter thunderclaps tries to express Joyce's genuine, infantile terror at the sound of thunder. [♬ erse solid man]
FDV: "Howth Castle & Environs! Sir Tristram had not encore arrived from North Armorica, nor stones exaggerated theirselves in Laurens county, Ga, doubling all the time, nor a voice answered mishe mishe to tufftuff thouartpatrick. Not yet had a kidson buttended an isaac not yet had twin sesthers played siege to twone Jonathan. Not a peck of malt had Shem and Son brewed & bad luck to the regginbrew was to be seen on the waterface. The story of the fall is retailed early in bed and later in life throughout most christian minstrelsy. The fall of the wall at once entailed the fall of Finnigan, and the humpty hill himself promptly sends an inquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes. Two facts have come down to us [...] is at the knock out in the park where there have always been oranges on the green always & ever since the Devlin first loved liffey." (Trying to simplify Hayman's FDV is awkward: the oldest layers are hardest to read, and Joyce revised continually as he wrote.)
Healy gives "Environs" the French pronunciation to rhyme with riverrun/reverons.
