Wider Wake

I’ve noticed something reading Finnegans Wake for the first time – I call it ‘Wake Hang-over’. During the Corona lockdown I begin every morning by going out in the garden and reading. Latterly I start with a couple of pages of the Wake and then whatever book I’m reading, currently a light whodunnit by Anthony Horowitz entitled Magpie Murders, easy reading for hard times. When I go to read the second book I find that for a while I’m still in a different reading mode, hyperalert for word play, connections, double meanings; somehow floating a bit above the text; inhabiting a strangely comic world – or is it a comically strange one? That unique reading mode gradually fades but the overlap is interesting and enjoyable. As a linguist, it’s a bit like when you come out of a foreign language, back to English, and the shapes and dynamics of that other language are still what’s shaping your consciousness and thinking.

Picking up from my previous (second) Wake post I’m quickly going to update my lists:

HCE

• Harold or Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker (p30) – see last post
• Howth Castle and Environs (3) = 1st line of the novel, a key location in both the Wake and Ulysses
• Haveth Childers Everywhere (a section published in 1930 as part of Work in Progress) = Adam, father of mankind
• humile, commune and ensectuous (29)
• Here Comes Everybody (32) = Everyman – “for every busy eerie whig’s a bit of a torytale to tell” (20)
• habituels conspicuously emergent (33)
• He’ll Cheat E’erawan (46) = a sinful fella
• haughty, cacuminal, erubescent (55)
• Humpheres Cheops Exarchas (62)
• Haveyou-caught-emerods (63)
• Hyde and Cheek, Edenberry (66)
• House, son of Clod, to come out you jew-beggar to be Executed (70)
• Et Cur Heli! (73)
• at Howth or at Coolock or even at Enniskerry (73)

On Mullingar House pub, Chapelizod, Dublin

Dublin

• Dabblin (p16)
• (Brian) d’ of Linn (17)
• dun blink (17)
• durblin (19)
• Devlin (24)
• Dumbaling (34)
• Poolblack (35) = Dub/black Lin/Pool : dubh linn (Gaelic) black pool
• Dablena Tertia (57)
• Doveland (61)
• Dulyn (64)
• Dubblenn (66)
• deeplinns (76)
• blackpool (85) Blackpool (88)

And I’m starting a third such list- variations on “Ireland”. There is a linkage between HCE and Ireland: HCE > Earwicker > Earlander > Eire > Ireland

Ireland

• Errorland (62)
• Aaarlund (69)
• aleland (88)

(So these are all cumulative lists.)

To round off this post I’d like to start highlighting some of my favourite neologisms and word-collisions. Like the lists above, these highlight the variety and persistence of Joyce’s ludic approach to language. Joyce is “a mixer and wordpainter” as he describes Hyacinth O’Donnell on p.87.

The playfulness and transmutation of language is the essence of the dream state and the act of “sewing a dream together” (28) which is this fluid, complex book. “intermutuomergent” (55) is a wordflow that captures the dynamics of the language of the Wake. This is the “meandertale” (18) to end all meandertales. (The wandering river, the Liffey, runs through that heart of it, personified in ALP. And the neanderthal is just beneath the skin of us hairless apes, we Chimpdens.)

• tellafun book (86) [telephone]
• lexinction of life (83) [lexicon/extinction]
• nekropolitan (80)
• timesported across the yawning (abyss) (56) [transported across time]
• to clapplaud (32) [clap]

BTW my favourite Wake website so far is From Swerve of Shore to Bend of Bay, a blog by Peter Chrisp.

Returning to lockdown, on the basis that the Wake touches on everything, this seems like a good Corona sentence: “the obedience of the citizens elp the ealth of the ole” (76).

 

 

« Quotation: Teach us rightly to number our days

In Your Face wins Best Documentary in Lockdown Showcase »