every word, letter, penstroke, paperspace is a perfect signature of its own (FW65, No. 10 - I.5, 124-end)

Chapter 5 of Book I must be the most readable (in the everyday, non-Wakean, dull sense of that word) in the entire thing. In essence, it is a parody (maybe not the best word, but I'll leave it...) of a scholarly treatment of a manuscript (based on a well-known edition of the Book of Kells which JJ knew and loved), in this case about ALP's letter, which exhaustively examines it from every angle, from the outer (findspot, envelope, paper) to the inner (scribal hand, vocabulary), to the speculative (the identity of the author and copyist, the date of its production)---everything except its content.

As I'm writing through my reading of FW, in the evenings after I spend my day writing through an early career as an academic inching closer to the precipice of a still-inchoate "plan B," this chapter hits me from two sides. The subject matter and discourse form of this chapter is, in essence, that of my professional endeavor in interpreting difficult texts and writing about my interpretations. It also speaks to my own struggles in general to write in a way that reflects something about me, is part of my journey of understanding and my effort to come to terms with my past and with my experience of the world. In my profession, becoming a better writer could make me a better provider for my family. In my personal life, it could be part of my self-realization.

At the very end of the chapter, the scholarly investigator (who may be a form of Shaun) deduces who the scribe of the document is: Shem the Penman. The letter itself, however, is ALP's. This makes Shem her amaneunsis, and raises the question of what hand he had in the creation of its text. 

I felt disappointment when I realized the disjoint between author and scribe in this chapter. The scholar is confident in identifying the unique ductus of the script, and for each letter of the alphabet can list peculiarities: "every word, letter, penstroke, paperspace is a perfect signature of its own." Even in the spaces, the voids between letters. But we don't have an understanding of the author yet. Did she write to be understood? Was her letter wholly meant for the other, or was she seeking self-expression and -knowledge? What does it mean to write something that not only survives but generates and re-generates itself through commentary and analysis, but to still be unknown? What is the point? 

It is the scribe---the hand behind the ink shapes on the surface of the page---that remains knowable, to some extent, but the author is lost behind the words, and is not even able to have her voice preserved, for as soon as her text is read, her voice is replaced with another's.

Everything I write will necessarily be an imperfect expression of who I am and will ultimately conceal me, whether it is read (less likely) or not (seems to be what will happen). Constantly faced with texts that are constantly receding out of my grasp, like in a dream where you are running to catch something or arrive somewhere but the harder you exert yourself the slower you go, I realize that what I write is just as fraught with unknowing as what I write about. Even my mother tongue is elusive to me as I write with phrases cobbled together from books and articles and conversations, melted together in an uneasy whole, a strange unity (as Derrida calls it) that is no less refractory as the ancient text fragments in lost languages or sacred scriptures in frozen holy tongues.

It is clear to me that I am still doing the negative work. What good comes from this? How can I change the way I write, and change my life?

Of the Two Ways of Opening the Mouth (FW65, No. 9 - I.5, beginning-124)

Two Ancient Egyptian things caught my eye in the outrageous list of names (none of them official, since the document never had its own title) given to ALP's letter: 

Of the Two Ways of Opening the Mouth. This is a patchwork title referring to the ritual of Opening the Mouth as well as the Book of the Two Ways. The Opening of the Mouth was performed both on statues as well as mummies, two artificial objects created (or augmented) by human hands meant to depict the unique image of the individual (what the Egyptians called the ka), and activated as such in the ritual. The Book of Two Ways is a title given to descriptions of the underworld which was meant as an aid to navigation for the deceased. JJ would have had a general knowledge of these two things, having read Budge's publications on the Book of the Dead. As a title for the letter, I wonder what the "Wakean logic" of the "two ways of opening the mouth," the conjoining of these two discrete Egyptian things, is? The letter is meant to vindicate HCE, which matches well the purpose of the Egyptian underworld guides and rituals, which were represented in different ways in the Book of the Dead, whose overarching goal was enabling the deceased to enjoy an afterlife worshipping Osiris as well as the sun god Re, which required knowledge of how to pass through a series of hostile gates as well as portals to increasingly sacred areas (see more on this below). Is HCE's trial to be equated to the famous "weighing of the heart" in the afterlife, depicted on most Book of the Dead scrolls, where the heart of the deceased is weighted against the feather standing for truth (ma'at), in order to determine if the person is worthy of entering the ultra-pure realm of the afterlife? The alternative was the annihilation of a second death. Is HCE facing, not prison, but a dark eternity of nothingness without hope of rebirth, and will ALP's letter vindicate him before the judge of the afterlife and allow him to "go forth by day" (the original title of the Book of the Dead)?  

I also read "two ways of opening the mouth" as a precis of FW's primary mode of communication (which, put not so nicely, could be called the pun). It can also refer to duplicity, doublespeak or speaking out of both sides of one's mouth, suggesting perhaps that the accusation made against HCE (or the defence!) could be taken simultaneously to mean the opposite.  

A depiction of the Opening of the Mouth ritual performed by a priest (R) holding an adze over the deceased scribe Ani, meant to impart the living divine breath. From the Papyrus of Ani (British Museum), digitized at the Internet Archive. Warning: Budge's publications are vastly out of date, so caution should be used, and this volume should really just be consulted for its beautiful reproductions of the scroll.

 
I have not Stopped Water Where It Should Flow and I Know the Twentynine Names of Attraente. The "surface" meaning (in Wakean terms) of the first part of this title is the allusion to HCE's impropriety concerning two girls urinating in Phoenix Park. By claiming to not have "stopped water where it should flow," the letter of ALP could be a transcript intended for HCE to declaim his innocence, stating that he did nothing to interfere with the girls' micturition. This idea of a court defense transcript has interesting resonance with the deeper meaning here, which has to do with the magical use of the Book of the Dead.

Both parts of this title are derived from sayings from spell 125 of the Book of the Dead (specifically what is referred to as the "negative confession"), which provides a list of ritual utterances for the deceased to proclaim whereby they can assert their purity of heart. The underworld was considered to be a sacred realm, much like the inner sanctum of a temple, and there are parallels in Egyptian texts between the negative confession and priestly initiation rituals.

Preventing water from flowing where it should is a particular concern of a society organized around the careful management of a floodplain. For the sake of accurate assessment of tax, income, and produce, the size of the fertile stretches of fields had to be measured each year after the flood waters of the Nile receded. Impeding the outflow of water, as well as the network of irrigation, would deprive farmers of their produce, as well as the temples and the state of their income. It was important, then, for someone wishing to attain to the pure realm of the afterlife to have never engaged in such manipulation, or disruption of the natural symbiosis of human flourishing and the annual Nile flood.

The weighing of the heart scene from the Book of the Dead (Papyrus of Ani; see previous caption).

Knowing the "twentynine names of Attraente" refers to another side of the Book of the Dead mentioned above: the need for knowledge about the realm of the afterlife, an important part of which was a series of gates protected by demons whose names must be known (in an "open sesasme" fashion) in order to advance into the afterlife's inner sanctum. There is also mention in these texts of the names of the deities presiding over the trail where the heart is weighed. "Attraente" is Italian for "charming, attractive, enticing." This seems to replace the Egyptian title of the "Hall of Two Truths," the trial venue for the aforementioned weighing (in the Egyptian mind, two was the number of completion: there are two banks of the Nile, two parts of Egypt [Upper and Lower], etc.). While the number 42 would have been associated with this hall in the Book of the Dead, here the number 28 is the typical Wakean number for Issy's accompaniment of girls.

Who is the "I" in this title? If HCE, the title implies that ALP's letter functions like a Book of the Dead: a compilation of magical spells to be recited by the deceased or on his behalf, permeated by his "I," allowing him to attain eternal life. ALP is providing HCE with instructions how, in his own name, to declare his innocence.

We list...by the waters of babalong (FW65, No. 8 - I.4, 85-end)

A difficult stretch to write about today. I finished I.4, and enjoyed reading it, with much of it making sense. Am not feeling able to do an illuminating exegesis of a short extract, however, and am not able to put some thoughts together more generally.

*    *    *

The Faddan More Psalter, cover

I am still stuck on the theme from yesterday's post, about finding precious books in bogs that were deliberately hidden from those who would plunder them. It is a particularly Irish notion, and is a rich metaphor for thinking about FW, or documents and letters within FW (like ALP's letter) that, in a mise en abyme, stand for the whole. I want to think beyond FW, though in its mode, about how every book (anything written) is like a bog book, or maybe isn't.

A single book is a fragile thing, and with a normal life of being used frequently, would not survive past more than a few generations, if that. I know from studying ancient papyrus scrolls that repairs were needed, and recopying (making a new book) was the preferred way to preserve knowledge. But buried in a bog, a book can last for centuries, maybe even millennia. It is the same for people, when they are buried in bogs, and some have been found that were buried over 2,000 years prior, in a remarkable state of preservation.

The Faddan More Psalter, excerpt

Though no longer read, the preservation that comes with bog burial keeps the disintegration of letters at bay, and makes a book as potentially readable (with some cleaning up and counter-measures, of course), theoretically, as any book on your shelf waiting for you to tolle lege. No oblivion comes for this book, unlike for Baudelaire's imagined self buried in a garden, wanting to dormir dans l'oubli comme un requin dans l'onde ("like a shark in the wave"; from his poem "Le Mort joyeux").

But does burial and preservation lead to transformation? Unlike the ancient myth where drowning in the Nile led to immortality, burial (mud-drowning) in a bog brings about a stasis. Without retrieval and re-reading, the one ensconced in that eternal mud ends up like the sibyl of Cumae. But even the sibyl retains her voice, however withered and small. Only when the eternity of preservation ends and the bog book is retrieved, can its voice (ours, yours, the one who takes up and reads) return.

Images of the Faddan More Psalter from Wikipedia; read more about it.

What subtler timeplace of the weald (FW65, No. 7 - I.4, 75-85)

I had to take a week off because I was sick. Sleepless nights because of coughing and fever made it hard to continue. For the first few days, I thought repeatedly about the last few pages of I.3 (which I'm mostly skipping over now) and about the layeredness of FW in general. I was stuck inside mental loops and was trying to find a sympathetic connection to the way FW was written. I think I might have had some ideas in that regard but they are lost now, driven out of my by what felt like a sickness that was never going to end and a brain shaken into submission and stupor by relentless coughing. I'm picking myself up off the ground and dusting myself off, and bravely continuing.

*    *    *

What subtler timeplace of the weald than such wolfsbelly castrament to will hide a leabhar from Thursmen's brandihands or a loveletter, lostfully hers, that would be lust on Ma, than then when ructions ended, than here where race began: and by four hands of forethought the first babe of reconcilement is laid in its last cradle of hume sweet hume. Give over it! And no more of it! So pass the pick for child sake! O men! (80.12-19)

The context is Kate's ability to convey a picture of what happened in Phoenix Park by piecing together the shards of the past she finds in her scavenging around the "Serpentine" (the magazine wall?) at the park. The narrator remarks that here, in particular the spot where Kate dumps her dirt and collected matter, would be a good place for hiding a precious book. This would be reminiscent of a legend about the Book of Kells in the Annals of Ulster, which was said to have been found under a layer of turf after it was stolen. In 2006, a copy of the Psalms, in fact, was found in a bog in Co. Tipperary (now called the "Faddan More Psalter"). In this passage, the idea seems to be hiding things of precious value from invaders in bogs and other places. A book is mentioned, as is a letter; two written objects which can stand for FW, the latter being ALP's letter defending HCE. I thought for a moment that the exclamations at the end of the passage (see more below) suggest that such a book/letter was found, and that what comes next quotes from it, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Instead, we have foreshadowing, as well as the reflection of the learned narrator as he conveys the facts about the case of HCE as he hears them.

I find the skeletal grammar of the sentence and its tense odd, especially the verb "to will hide," which seems like backforming English to match some other language (Irish?). "Will" could also be read as "well."

As a coherent thought, there's some tension. What starts out as a speculation or reflection on the suitability of this bog for hiding a book (called a leabhar after Irish) from looting invaders ("What subtler timeplace...began") becomes a present, vivid account of the stashing away of the book, now called a "babe" (the book is hidden in the bog like Horus in the marshes of the Delta by Isis), and with the promise of "reconcilement" that the discovery of this book/babe holds, the speech turns urgently into imperatives: dig! Yet the voice is the same. The men hiding the book and being addressed at the end ("four hands of forethought") could prefigure the four annalists that make up Mamalujo. We might even see the four exclamations at the end of the passage (each ending with "!") corresponding to one of the four annalists, shushing each other, fighting over the pickaxe (for excavation), eager to find the treasure and to rediscover the past. Of course, the wording of the exclamation "So pass the pick for child sake!" casts the excavation as the meal after HCE's wake (cf. in I.1 "pass the kish for crawsake"), and this motif (which crops up in FW a lot) seems to indicate Mamlujo praying an impatient grace before eating (glutton). It is exciting to see the voices of Mamalujo emerge in a way connected with the emergence of the object of FW itself and the letter.

Going forth by black (FW65, No. 6 – I.3, 58.23-68 bottom)

Here we can confront an allusion to the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and thus stand for a moment at the juncture of my professional life and my interest in FW. I really would like to work something up one day on the Book of the Dead in FW, although the angle would have to be carefully chosen. JJ's knowledge, as far as I know, is based on a few publications of Budge, all of which, to varying degrees, no longer stand up to critical scrutiny within Egyptology. This seems to be a unique challenge to studying FW's reception of something: it is not the thing in itself, but the thing as mediated through accounts available at JJ's specific time and place, that matters. Everything about the Book of the Dead is chosen as a vehicle for the HCE saga, and its appropriateness based on the basic idea of "going forth by day

We seem to us (the real Us!) to be reading our Amenti in the sixth sealed chapter of the going forth by black. (62.26-27)

The voice speaking is the usual narrator of this channel, who filters through all of the second-hand accounts and rumors about what happened between HCE and the cad in the park. Which then merges with a forensic investigation about a second thing that happened to HCE once he fled Dublin (for London? or Trieste? Or Dublin?). Different media are being studied by this voice: film reels, pure hearsay, the interviews of people on the street. With "We seem to us...", perhaps the voice is admitting that it is difficult to decipher these accounts, and that what happened to HCE seems to be covered up by strange writings, enigmatic signs, ancient lors: the chapter is "sealed."

Why sixth? BD spell 6 is the Shabti spell, which is meant to magically activate small servant figures called shabti or ushabti that will work for the deceased in the afterlife. It is hard to see the relevance for the present passage in FW. Maybe instead this is a reference to the sixth seal of the Book of Revelation, which could be a reference to the fall of Rome, and talks about the sun going black. I think this explains why it is the book of "going forth by black." This is a reversal of what the BD really was: "the book of going forth by day," which means (for JJ) resurrection in the afterlife, or more specifically for the Egyptians, for enabling the soul (ba) to travel freely throughout all realms of existence after death, to be able to transform into different forms, to be identified with Osiris in the afterlife and to worship him and the sun god Re, and, finally, to be enabled to live a productive and flourishing life in the beyond. In sum, we are not yet reading instructions for resurrection, but are faced with the demise of HCE.

Amenti. This is based on a common Egyptian word for the underworld and is the same as the word for "west" (following the sun as it sets leads you in to the other world). I'm trying to figure out what the immediate meaning is here. It looks Italian or Latin, and there is a Latin verb amento which is used for furnishing something with a strap or thong in order to hurl it (like a javelin). Does not seem to be relevant. JJ obviously means the name for the Egyptian realm of the dead, but how can one be "reading" that? Why is it "our"?

Note also that "the going forth by black" is not capitalized as it it is a title. It must be a reference to HCE's descent into ignominy. So is the narrator saying, in studying the accounts of HCE's decline, specifically in the still-sealed (uninterpretable, still mysterious, undeciphered) sixth chapter of the account, that it is as though we are beholding death?

Its whole wholume (FW65, No. 5 – I.3 beginning-58.22)

This book (I.3) is giving me problems. I'm also pretty sick, so just a short exegesis today.

…this Eyrawyggla saga (which, thorough readable to int from and, is from tubb to buttom all falsetissues, antilibellous and nonactionable and this applies to its whole wholume) (48.16-19)

Talk about the artistic compilation of the rumors and legends about HCE reaching the extent of an Icelandic saga (with and Irish twist, “Eyra” = Eire), is also talk about FW. The text has two dimensions: a linear one in the direction of the advancing text, “int from and” (end from end; “and” being the principle of parataxis or Nacheinander), but also a different one (oriented at a 90 degree axis, like the top and bottom of each page?). This different one could have to do with the double meanings, which can be double entendres in the strict sense (“tubb to bottom”; a Swift reference, but I need to refresh my memory exactly what the Tale of the Tub has to do with FW). Both dimensions make up the text as a whole, its “wholume.”

This second dimension of the text seems to be the source of controversy. The words used (falsetissues, antilibellous, nonactionable) seem of a legal nature to me, and make me think about the outlawing of Ulysses on pornographic grounds.

Interesting distinction to make between readability and truth.

Not a little token abock (FW65, No. 4 - I.2, 36.36-end)

A quote from Frederic Jameson today, read on the train home, came at a shockingly coincidental time, with me, early in this insane project of reading FW in 65 days, having sat despondent at my work desk for a not insignificant time today reading news, worrying about our future, and feeling a disconnect between my skills and occupation (ancient philology and literature) and the needs of greater society.

To imagine that, sheltered from the omnipresence of history and the implacable influence of the social, there already exists a realm of freedom—whether it be that of the microscopic experience of words in a text or the ecstasies and intensities of the various private religions—is only to strengthen the grip of Necessity over all such blind zones in which the individual subject seeks refuge, in pursuit of a purely individual, a merely psychological, project of salvation. The only effective liberation from such constraint begins with the recognition that there is nothing that is not social and historical—indeed, that everything is "in the last analysis" political. (Frederic Jameson, The Political Unconscious, p. 20)

Reading this I was taken aback. Since starting to read FW again, down to this morning, I had felt that realm of freedom in the words that Jameson talks about. Struggling through my writing projects and with not being glued to the news, reading this book has been a solace. On the other hand, FW can seem like the most un-political book ever written, the most elite, most talked-about-but-not-actually-read. It can seem like a book for everyone and no one. What Jameson says, however, is that even something like this is "finally," in the widest horizon, something political. I can see that. This is part of the challenge now for me. I wanted to read FW and write about it to learn how to write better, and to find new things to say, and to understand myself and find myself. What this means is liberating my own hesitancy (there's a word for you FW heads) to own up to my life being intertwined with this book, and to free myself to actually do something with it. I want to walk alongside the "mouvables...scrawling with motions" on these pages and trace their figures to discover the realm of freedom that JJ created in his cosmic vision, and to connect it to the one I want to build for myself.

*    *    *

I have a bit of a longer extract than usual to reflect on today, with parts I am interested in marked:

Gaping Gill, swift to mate errthors, stern to checkself, (diagnosing through eustacetube that it was to make with a markedly postpuberal hypertituitary type of Heidelberg mannleich cavern ethics) lufted his slopingforward, bad Seatagore good murrough and dublnotch on to it as he was greedly obliged, and like a sensible ham, with infinite tact in the delicate situation seen the touchy nature of its perilous theme, thanked um for guilders received and time of day (not a little token abock all the same that that was owl the God's clock it was) and, upon humble duty to greet his Tyskminister and he shall gildthegap Gaper and thee his a mouldy voids, went about his business, whoever it was, saluting corpses, as a metter of corse (one could hound him out had one hart to for the monticules of scalp and dandruff droppings blaze his trail) accompanied by his trusty snorler and his permanent reflection, verbigracious; I have met with you, bird, too late, or if not, too worm and early: and with tag for ildiot repeated in his secondmouth language as many of the bigtimer's verbaten words which he could balbly call to memory that same kveldeve... (36.35-37.16)

Context: the cad (called Gaping Gill here, a massive cave in northern England) thanks H. C. E. for giving him the time and heads off to home.

He has the embarrassment of Ham seeing his father Noah naked and taken aback, but unlike Ham of Genesis, is himself inebriated: "not a little token abock." This inebriation effects his speech: his "permanent reflection" (some kind of mental faculty? his memory, his ability to remember things without loss of information?) is "verbigracious": verbigeration is logorrhea, but without making sense, overly repetitive and ultimately meaningless. It is also verbi gratia, "for the sake of the word," that is at the service of speech only, without necessarily concern for the meaning. This is confirmed: the cad seems to struggle conveying exactly what happened, to his wife at home that evening. He had spoken with H.C.E. in English, but his "secondmouth" (second nature, and one that follows [secutus] his mouth directly, his native tongue), which is Irish, masks the true meaning of H.C.E.'s ipsissima verba ("verbaten" = verbatim), words which now seem forbidden ("verbaten" = verboten) in their meaning.

This gap between H.C.E.'s words (themselves, as discussed yesterday, fraught with hidden meanings and parapraxis) and the cad's report of what he could "balbly" (barely, and stammeringly) call to memory became the source of a line of gossip (beginning with his wife), hearsay, and tales, enough to form its own epic saga, although, in its final stage of evolution, H.C.E.'s deed (the Sage itself) becomes simply a bawdy barroom ballad. Lots of food for thought about JJ's thinking about oral storytelling.

The cad's poorly remembered account and the elaborations it creates, from verbigeration to ballad, are difficult to distinguish from FW itself. The narrator in these early chapters seems to be an annalist figure (who we meet at various times, seemingly comprised of four figures, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, called Mamalujo and var.), who often takes offense at what is said about H.C.E., but, at the same time, seems to be fully responsible for crafting the saga. The felix culpa of the "phoenix culprit," the (however misremembered) misdeed of H.C.E. is also the source of his rememberance, and even his life.

Here Comes Everybody (FW65, No. 3 - I.2, 30.1-38.8)

Do we see ourselves in HCE?

Your actions confused for something else, and even your attempt to correct the misapprehension is turned into a further affirmation, and even now a source of ridicule. H. is catching earwigs (garden pests), but thought by the king stopping on the highway, when seeing him come out from his yard, to be a lobster trapper (or perhaps a fisherman, since he is called a "pikebailer" by the king later). The king's question ("What kind of bait do you use?") is answered by Haromphreyld in the negative, and his explanation ("I was just catching earwigs") actually could be taken to be a direct answer (although I'm not sure if earwigs would work?). The king seems to continue to think of him as a fisherman of some sort, and ridicules Haromphreyld, who is supposed to be a "turnpiker" for the "bailiwick" (it is not clear if this is what H. actually is), for catching earwigs for these purposes. 

Is the nickname endearing or hurtful? As "Here Comes Everybody," H. is a man of the people and "magnificently well worthy of any and all such universalisation," but is also too big to be contained in the space he inhabits (he seems to be both a giant and a man). Comically, when he sits in the theater he takes up so much space there is standing room only, "having the entirety of his house about him" (is this the first "she sits around the house" joke?).

You overshare. When someone asks you what time it is (the cad with the pipe), and, stammering, you assert your innocence against false accusations. You happen to be standing in the same place where the improprieties in said accusations are said to have taken place. This description of H. C. Earwicker's overreaction reminds me of the style of the Ithaca episode of Ulysses: "realising on fundamental liberal principles the supreme importance, nexally and noxally, of physical life...and unwishful as he felt of being hurled into eternity right then..." 

The trauma of being confronted by a stranger who speaks gibberish (did the cad's Irish confuse and bewilder H.C.E., who is English, or Viking?). Image from the movie Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. "Guy just pulls up out of the blue, I mean, what is this world coming to?"

*    *    *

Slow, or close reading and quick, paragraph-by-paragraph reading are the two modes I work in, but their harmonious interaction is hampered by a refusal to be able to understand detail fully until the whole can come into view for me. I am good at making leaps in that direction (the latter) and sometimes even can gain good insights on a text as a whole based on instinct and cursory small-scale looks. But I can also be wildly wrong. I’m also stubborn and have a hard time moving past first impressions once the minuter data begin accumulating.

Working on texts in foreign languages, which is most of what I do professionally, makes this harder. I can’t read quickly as well as in English, and when it comes to the details, the word-by-word, it is easy to do endless dictionary work. Combine that with my natural paranoia that an answer has already been found, a correct reading out there in print (or, even worse, part of the Requisite Knowledge I’m to have deeply internalized and to have ready to fire like a shot out of a pistol), the reading and interpretive process can be a slow, tortuous, hesitating, unfulfilling process, the latter occurring when I realize I’ve been too long on the trail and have lost the momentum of the hunt.

Reading FW at this pace for “FW65” feels like a training regimen for working through this ingrained dialectical hesitation of my reading and writing method. More so than any ancient text, FW rewards minutest attention and slowest reading. But it is also, as JJ said, music, and music does not have to mean anything, it can just be (“you are the music while the music lasts”). It also has to be heard on its own pace, and that does not always (probably never) mean 10 beats per minute.

I sense a reason for a feeling I have always had, that reading really difficult texts is to be preferred because you already know that, at each encounter, you will only arrive at part of the truth. That an interplay between knowing and unknowing is built into the very stuff, making the moments of illumination precious, as well as, by design, accompanied by a humble reminder that there is more to come.

The mouvables are scrawling in motions (FW65, No. 2 - I.1, 20.19-29.36)

FW doesn't have a textual beginning, since the last sentence leads into the first, but that does not mean that there are not beginnings to the book in the normal way we encounter this book. Book I.1 ends with the waking of Finnegan (taking "wake" literally) before his replacement comes on the scene. Before that, alongside the stereoscopic depiction of the ur-ancient monumental tomb and the pages of the annal resolved together into the landscape of Dublin and environs (see yesterday's post), there is preparation for what is coming in the book: characters...and characters changing shapes and combining, each with a potential story (see my notes below on 20.20-23). 

The first story told in FW is the tale of the Prankquaen (21.5ff). This realization has come to me late today, and I want to send this post off soon, but I am still going to re-read the story with this idea in mind. 

In the paragraph leading up to it, I feel like I can make out someone (the same tour guide as before?) listing examples of stories that are there to be told ("One's upon a thyme...", "That one of a wife with folty barnets", Of a noarch and a chopwife; of a pomme full grave and a fammy of levity; or of golden youths that wanted gelding." They are about the members of the nuclear family that dominates the book or figures surrounding them. The last one listed (perhaps): "what the mischievmiss made a man do." This seems to describe the coming Prankquaen story. So this story has been picked out from among others there, ready for the telling. We're even told to listen: "Hohore!" (some seepage in the directive from the content to come). Or, is it not until 21.2, near the end of the paragraph, that this story is finally chosen ("So weenybeenyveenyteeny. Comsy seee!": eeny meeny miney mo: comme ça! "Lissom! I am doing it. Hark, the corne entreats! And the larpnotes prittle": a story about HCE and ALP). 

*    *    *

Cry not yet! There's many a smile to Nondum...But look what you have in your handself! The movibles are scrawling in motions, marching, all of them ago, in pitpat and zingzang for every busy eerie whig's a bit of a torytale to tell. (20.20-23)

FW is coming alive before my eyes. Unlike other books, printed after the movable type is shaken and lined up (I'm at a loss for the actual way to describe this, or the terms for the different component of a printing press and typeface), the type is still moving, the final impression not yet made.

This responds to the affirmation in the preceding paragraph that every word in the book will have 70 meanings, and that so many characters (signs on the page, and personas in the story) will be encountered in the book of "Doublends Jined." A long road awaits ("There's many miles to Babylon"). The characters on the page will be constantly moving and coming to life. How do you read a letter that continually changes shape? Maybe this is how we should think about JJ's dream/pun language in FW: as words in constant motion. It reminds me of what it is like to try and read in my own dreams: the words never seem to be fixed, and never make sense except for one or two words at a time. And, as asserted here, not only do they all include different meanings, but different stories. Each character (again, the two meanings) has a story. And there will be contradictions, or opposing forces: Whigs vs. Tories.

This also seems to evoke the difficulties of reading with bad eyesight (which JJ famously suffered from), or when drunk.

So This Is Dyoublong? (FW65, No. 1 - I.1, 3.1-20.18)

"So we're doing this again?" I say as I read the first words.

Reading FW on the train could be an act of giving in, of not being able to control how people see you. I remember when studying for my PhD exams in Egyptology (this would be winter of 2015, the winter before Saoirse was born in May 2016), I would work late on campus two or three nights a week and travel home on the train (the L, this was Chicago) usually between the ungodly hours of 12 and 1 in the morning. Very few people riding then, but there I was reading books about Ancient Egypt on nearly empty trains, and waiting for someone to strike up a conversation. (Would the Bible have been any better?) I think it happened a few times and it was always interesting; once I remember someone talking to me about the pyramids (I was reading I. E. S. Edwards's book on the subject). I wish I would have recorded this then. Looking back now I realize that there really wasn't much of a difference between me and the odd people I would encounter, if we are talking about life decisions and ways in which we choose to sail our ship of life through the trackless seas of this world. Nothing happened today with FW on the train.

These are some of the most worn pages in my copy, and many of the notes I have scribbled in are so old I cannot read them; but many I can, and some are still helpful. At this stage I am thinking about buying a new copy and starting fresh, and annotating less on the level of word elucidation (annihilating the etyms) but giving guideposts for larger units.

My impression this time around after reading a pretty significant chunk of I.1 (I did about two days' worth, from last night to this evening), from the riverrun to right before the Prankqueen, and after the first few programmatic paragraphs, is the back-and-forth motion of the text, wavering from the wake of Finnegan and the still-visible monumental tomb in the landscape, to the landscape itself (not only with its ancient tombs but its museum, its trash piles), to the pages of the annal. While some of it, really most of it, seems to speak about what happened a long time ago (such as the Museyroom, the annal extract), I feel a sense of anticipation, like these figures are being introduced, like I am being told about the kind of thing they do, the understanding being this is what I am going to see or hear about. The deceased (at his wake, historic, or prehistoric), the deceased's wife (the searcher for traces, the archaeologist, the gatherer of clues, the tour guide, the keeper of the place; or are these latter ones a different figure, supposedly a Kate?), their children. HCE is gone (long gone or just), ALP is serving at his wake, and serving him, not just a communion but in preserving his memory, or even writing it. I keep reading until I "finally (though not yet endlike) meet with the acquaintance of Mister Typus, Mistress Tope and all the little typtopies. Fillstup" (p.20). Their existence, for me, will be on the page. HCE is the inverted letter sitting on the metal arm hovering in front of the page, the prototype, while ALP is place (not utopia but just "topia"), the blank page stretching before and after that will be filled with the letter marks. This strikes me as an almost literal way to describe how JJ populates his book.

I'm also told about this book itself: FW is telling me about itself. "So you need hardly spell me how every word will be bound over to carry three score and ten toptypsical readings throughout the book of Doublends Jined" (p.20). Seventy readings at least. I like how JJ says "readings" and not "meanings." So far I know this book described on these pages (the annal of Mammalujo, or even the odds and ends gathered by the hen) is of "Dublin's giant," but I will (in 64 days) know that it is the book of "double ends joined" that creates millions (generations, Heb. dor): "till Daleth...who oped it closeth therof the. Dor."

*    *    *

Silence: between the eras, but also silence itself can reach the page of the annalist, and not as an omission, for silence itself can be a fact. Silence after the thunder and the tumbling stonework, spreading downwards and preserved for ever in its falling motion. Frozen by moss and lichen, verdigris of copper hoarded in darkness, damp deep down. But in this annal there are no gaps between the years except for omission: scribal flight, scribicide? Some leaves are lost; may have been hidden due to damage to names no longer able to be said. They may turn up thousands of miles away, stuck carelessly between pages of a catalogue which no human is likely to ever open: a skipping stone cast into a dark and bottomless lake. Its cover however is intact and remains the same bluegreen. It may have been placed in the tomb of some unknown figure, passage tomb (or body transformed?) now visible only in grassy waves, as long as you are looking from far enough away, billowing earth overtaking collapse. If you can spot fifty, I can spot four more. The trained eye, or the unfocused eye deliberately made to be blurry, able to pick out from a swathe of greenscape from high vantage point of sea cliff those things that were deliberately made. Read the landscape, read the runes. The book survives, its connection remaining ever unclear; the runes are barely legible along the edge of the monolith.

*    *    *

"rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface"
(taken by me in Kill Devil Hills, NC, USA)

Rot a peck of pa's malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface. (3.12-14)

This has long been a line of interest for me. What I am writing now connects to a few days spent in the Regenstein library of the University of Chicago (in late June or early July 2011), before officially starting grad school but having just gotten access, looking at Joyceana in the stacks and trying to write my first article ever on the opening of FW; I should have been preparing for my upcoming program; the article is still unwritten, the notes are long lost.

This is the "red" sentence (German Rot, "red") at the end of a paragraph of sentences corresponding to the colors of the rainbow backwards (VIBGYOR). {Rot} is probably to be read "Not": all of these rainbow sentences are "and there was not yet" statements befitting a creation story (cf. Genesis 2:5-6: "...with no shrub of the field yet existing on the earth, with no greenery of the field yet sprouted, for Yahweh God had not made it rain on the earth, and as for a human being, there was not one to work the soil, but a wetness went up from the earth and watered the face of the soil."). The world of FW is not yet created, the type not yet met the pages; the only thing that is yet in the landscape of swerving shore and bending bay, standing at these castle ruins, is a rainbow. "The spirit of God hovered over the waters." The flood has already happened; inundation precedes creation.

Our cubehouse still rocks as earwitness to the thunder of his arafatas but we hear also through successive ages that shebby choruysh of unkalified muzzlenimiisilehims (5.13-17)

Does the sound still echo in the house (still rocks) or is the oral tradition not trustworthy, leaving us to face the speechless (still() signs that need to be deciphered on the stones (rocks), to be made into witnesses?

her birth is uncontrollable (11.33)

This is ALP, the faithful wife of Finnegan serving the guests at every wake, no matter how many happen. When HEC becomes part of the earth, only the humped outline of his tomb remaining, she is not buried next to him, but is an old woman, or a hen, picking or scratching around the surrounding fields and collecting signs of what has passed. Maybe even she is "writing" the "wrunes for ever" (19.36)? She is also Eve, punished to bear children in pain. She also continues to be born. How is the lifecycle of ALP in FW different from HCE? Here at the beginning, in her different forms, she seems an old woman. At the end of the book (IV), in the final section, isn't she a little girl again?

'Tis ontophone which ontophanes (13.16)

What is (to ti ên einai) is revealed through sound.

Reading Finnegans Wake

In 65 days from now, on April 15th 2025, we are taking our first major family trip since moving to Berlin in June 2022, and will be flying to Dublin for a week. I was last in Ireland in 2004, over 20 years ago, when I was 20 years old and had just finished my sophomore year in college. Since then it has been a lifetime of things: marriage, three children, finishing college, finishing graduate school (twice), five major moves (one intercontinental), two Big Cities (Chicago and Berlin, where we currently are), three smaller cities (Austin, Dallas, Asheville), an almost three-year-long Zwischenzeit during a pandemic and living with family (Outer Banks, North Carolina), so many friends made, and more close friends than I deserve. Starting my career for what seems like half of that time, becoming a teacher and a scholar, mastering more ancient languages than is polite to mention in conversation, slowly getting better at one modern one (German) and all the while watching my children utterly master it in a year. Almost all of this with my partner and best friend and mother of my children. 

Facing these 65 days before our trip, in the beginning of the year and through a busy time of work obligations, I'm going to do something in preparation. This will be alongside the anxious budgeting and saving, reading through guidebooks, making itineraries and packing lists, checking bus and train schedules. Alongside all of that, I will do something to prepare myself for the trip, and will most likely not tell anyone about it, except through writing about it here. I will be reading James Joyce's Finnegans Wake in its entirety. 

James Joyce is my favorite writer, back since high school (O precocious me), when I felt the urge to learn about Ireland, since that is where my mother's family is from. She was the first generation in her family to be born outside of Ireland in the US. Maybe I should have started with someone easier; although I have read much Yeats over the years, and have learned and come to love so much about Ireland in the past 20+ years, both during my first trip there and afterwards, reading Joyce has become one of the most me things about me. Ulysses and Finnegans Wake have shaped the way I think and see the world, and relate myself to art, language, and the pursuit of truth and beauty, more than anything else. Already 20 years ago, when first in Ireland, it was a powerful experience to connect my readings in Joyce to my experience of Dublin, more powerful even (for better or for worse) than the connections to my own family history. This next time, in 65 days, a similarly powerful experience is waiting for me, though now with the added layers of showing Dublin to my children, and experiencing it with my wife.

65 days of Finnegans Wake: that's about 10 pages a day. A very respectable amount for nearly any book ever written; but for this one? It won't be easy.

A page (one of my favorites) from my personal copy of the book

Reading this book has been a constant endeavor of mine for ages (along with Ulysses, though more so I think at this point). I wouldn't say I have read the entire thing, but I have read a lot of it, and some of it many times. Some of it I know really well and love dearly. Much of it still seems like a wilderness to me. Maybe reading Finnegans Wake isn't something I am super proud of; I read it periodically, and intensely, and usually, after a period of days or weeks of intense engagement, I put it down and sometimes feel embarrassed about spending so much of my energy on this, at times, inscrutable thing. Having spent so much time with it, I have a feeling that I need to finally submit it by submitting myself to it, and force the issue: have I wasted my time? Can I read this book? Should I continue? 

So, I am going to read 10 pages of Finnegans Wake every day until I leave with my family for a trip, and am going to blog about it. I am not going to summarize what I read or produce a guide for it. I just want to say something about it everyday, and in doing that say something about myself. There is going to be a lot I am going to miss, although I do have a lot of notes in my copy from over the years. But the book is not ever meant to be finished, so why not take a brisk tour? Plus, and sorry to be a bit mawkish, I'm hoping I'll find myself in those pages too. Writing is a challenge for me, and although I am slowly getting the hand of the specialized genre of academic writing, I still feel that my creative potential is unrealized, and worried that it is falling away. I don't see myself in the words I write. My voice does not seem to be there on the page or screen. I never posted much on social media, or blogged in any extensive way before; I have been journaling as of late but not regularly enough. The only writing I do is when I struggle through an academic piece. But I'm not going to find my true voice there. In contrast to that, it is only when teaching (and only on the best days) where I feel like I am able to express myself in a way where I am actually creating, and connecting to something deep inside me. It is time to be able to do this with writing as well. If I've read this book for so long, yet can't say anything meaningful about it, let alone feel comfortable admitting to people that I'm a reader, what is the point? Can Finnegans Wake help me find myself as a writer?