Where flash becomes word (FW65, No. 18 - II.2, 260-273)

Much of the first half or so of this chapter (II.2) is the slow approach of the narrators to the upper room itself, present to the children at their study. What kind of narrator not only tells about their subject but enters into their presence? The text is difficult to follow since, at times, they seem to speak of Shem, Shaun, and Issy as if they are there, witnessing what they are doing, and even reflecting their thoughts, but then make it clear that they are still approaching. For example, on p.267-68, the talk about Issy seems to imply presence, observation, but the verbs are future ("will preen her for...soon...will cudgel about...will sit and knit..."). It is as if the narrator (which commentators tell me is taking shape slowly as the voice of the four annalist masters, i.e. Mamalujo) is anticipating the arrival and dreaming about it. We aren't, yet, seeing the children on their own, hearing from them.

The narrator even anticipates the dawn, looking at a streetlamp ("Belisha beacon, beckon bright!"). If you search for this online you'll see that they are orange/yellow globular lamps hovering above crosswalks: the sun rising. They are walking towards the house in Chapelizod, they naturally encounter these and beseech them for safe voyage. 

A Belisha beacon in the UK. It flashes when a pedestrian will cross. It also looks like the rising sun, or maybe better a full moon just above the horizon. Source: flickr.

The streetlight "waves us to yonder...Where flash becomes word and silents selfloud" (267.13-16). I love the inversion of et Verbum caro factum est. "Selfloud" sounds like German Selbstlaut, which is an older term for "vowel" but literally "makes sound on its own." There is a lot of talk, in this paragraph focalizing Issy, about vowels and syllables and their secret meanings: "So mag this sybilette be our shibboleth that we may syllable her well" (267.20-21). I'm not sure if there is such a desire on its/their part for speaking rightly of Shem or Shaun.

Where flesh becomes word: the art of narration put concisely. As flash it accompanies thunder, even can be said to be thunder, which we know can speak all languages. Silents selfloud: if the last phrase was a simple, if metaphorical statement about what narrative does, this is an impossible dream: the silence begins speaking of its own accord? The "silents" i.e. the ones who are silent (persons, places, things...words!) begin speaking by themselves? The story tells itself? The reader is unnecessary? The "where" of this primeval uttering is the upstairs study room, the destination of the narrator (he will not arrive for some pages yet). The children are not merely studying but interpreting the thunder, reading for signs of their parents. Pursuing a perfect act of interpretation where the interpreter acts in such a way that the signs themselves come alive on their own (like the mystic macrocosmos signs at the beginning of Faust) and interpret themselves. It is all there in the words, in the thunder. That, at least, is a claim made by this speaker on this page.