A Reader's Guide to Finnegans Wake

339 Pages·1969·19.356 MB·English

by  William York Tindall

NOONDAY N-364 $2.25
A READER'S
GUIDE TO
FINNEGANS
WAKE
by William York Tindall
FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX
NEW YORK
A READER'S GUIDE TO
FINNEGANS WAKE
Excerpts from the following books are reprinted by permis
sion of The Viking Press, Inc. and Faber & Faber Ltd.:
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce, Copyright 1939 by James
Joyce, © 1967 by George Joyce and Lucia Joyce; Letters of
James Joyce, edited by Stuart Gilbert, Copyright © 1957.
1966 by The Viking Press, Inc.; Letters of James Joyce,
Volumes II and III, edited by Richard EHmann, Copyright
© 1966 by F. Lionel Monro, as Administrator of the Estate
of James Joyce.
Copyright © 1969 by William York Tindall
Library of Congress catalog card number: 69-13742
All rights reserved
FIR S T P R I N TIN G, I 9 6 9
Published simultaneously ill Canada by
Doubleday Canada Ltd., Toronto
Printed in the United States of America
Designed by Herb Johnson
To Celia
[ vii]
CONTENTS
Introduction 3
PART ONE
Chapter I (3-29) 29 Chapter V (104-25) 98
Chapter II (30-47) 55 Chapter VI (126-68) III
Chapter III (48-74) 66 Chapter VII (169-95) I3I
Chapter IV (75-103) 83 Chapter VIII (196--216) I40
PART TWO
Chapter IX (219-59) I53 Chapter XI (309-82) I87
Chapter X (260-308) I7I Chapter XII (383-99) 2IO
PART THREE
Chapter XIII (403-28) 223 Chapter XV (474-554) 253
Chapter XIV (429-73) 236 Chapter XVI (555-90) 283
PART FOUR
Chapter XVII (593-628) 305
Bibliography 333 Selective Index 335
A READER'S GUIDE TO
FINNEGANS WAKE
/
INTRODUCTION
Finnegans Wake is about anybody, anywhere, anytime or, as
Joyce puts it (598.1),1 about "Every those personal place ob
jects ... where soevers." At present or thereabouts the
whereabouts of anybody in particular-or somebody-is Cha
pelizod at the western edge of Dublin on the river Lilley. This
"Great Sommboddy within the Omniboss" (415.17)-he keeps
a pub now-is commonly known by his initials, H.C.E., which
stand for H. C. Earwicker or, when he is less individual, for
"Here Comes Everybody" or, when altogether up-to-date, for
"Heinz cans everywhere" or, at other times and higher places, for
"Haroun Childeric Eggeberth." Indeed, the "bynames" of this
"humile, commune and· ensectuous" man, at one "timecoloured
place" or another, are various: Adam, Christ, Caesar, Genghis
Khan, Cromwell, Wellington, Guinness, Finnegan, and "Ogel
thorpe or some other ginkus." When less particular, he is a Rus
sian general. It is difficult, therefore, to "idendifine the individu
one" (5 I. 6); for H.C.E. is "homogenius" entirely. In Dublin
they identify him with the hill of Howth, the Wellington Monu
ment, and the Magazine in Phoenix Park. But here and any
where else-Dublin is anywhere-H.C.B. is a faller, like Adam;
like Jesus, a riser; and like Tim Finnegan, the Master Builder, a
1 My parenthetical page and line references apply to every edition of
the Wake, English, American, hard cover or paperback. References to
Ulysses are to the new American edition (1961).
To make a line-marker, place a sheet of paper on any page of the
Wake. Make a mark on the margin of your sheet for each line of the
page and number your marks by fives.
4 ] A READER'S GUIDE TO
waker at his wake. Like the Phoenix too-Phoenix Park fronts
the back of the pub-except that this bird is singular and H.C.E.
plural. From his ashes and the debris of his battles rise children,
cities, and books.
His wife, Anna, has a hand in these. Anna Earwicker, com
monly known by the initials A.L.P. (Anna Livia Plurabelle), is
any woman or "annyma"-Anima. If H.C.E. is our father, she
is our Great Mother. He creates and falls. Picking his pieces up,
and renewing them, she wakes him at his wake. As he is the hill
in Joyce's familial geography, so she is the river-of life and
time. Among her signs are the delta or triangle, the female 0,
and Mrs. Bloom's "yes." This "wee" (or oui) girl is Eve, Mary,
Isis, any woman you can think of, and a poule-at once a river
pool, a whore, and a little hen.
Mr. and Mrs. Earwicker have three children, twin sons and a
daughter, who are as general as their parents. Known as Shem
and Shaun, Jerry and Kevin, Mutt and Jeff, the two boys are as
equal and opposite as the ant and the grasshopper or time and
space. The contention of these rivals-rivae are the banks of a
river-represents all wars and debates of man's history. Isabel,
the daughter, or Iseult la Belle-Chapelizod is the Chapel of
Iseult-is every girl, call her what you will: Nuvoletta, Marga
reena or Miss Butys Pott. There she sits at her mirror, admiring
herself, while father and sons admire her; for the boys are as
"ensectuous" as their old man. (A virgin, says Pussy Galore, is a
girl who can run faster than her brother, father or uncle.) The
tensions within this family are all the tensions of history. Family
process is historical process with all its quarrels, agreements,
loves, and hates. The sons, uniting like Brutus and Cassius, kill
the father. and take his place. Daughter, taking mother's place,
will be replaced by her daughter as the new father by new sons,
and so on, indefinitely. Rise and fall and rise again, sleeping and
waking, death and resurrection, sin and redemption, conflict and
appeasement, and, above all, time itself-saecula saeculorum
are the matter of Joyce's essay on man.
In Earwicker's local-universal household at Chapelizod are
Kate, the maid of all work, and Joe, the handyman. Kate, the
Finnegans Wake : In t rod u c t ion [ 5
more important of these, is old A.L.P. as Isabel is young A.L.P.
Like the White Goddess, A.L.P. has three aspects, young, old,
and middling. But the seven members of the household are not
the only people around. There are twelve men, customers of
Earwicker's pub, gossips, jurors at his trial, and mourners at his
wake. There are four old men, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
or, taken together, Mamalujo. These snoopers are judges and
historians, authors of the gospels and of Irish annals. (The
twelve and the four seem embodiments of Earwicker's guilt and
his conscience.) In the vicinity are twenty-eight girls, friends of
Isabel, the twenty-ninth. These twenty-eight Floras or rainbow
girls are extensions of Isabel, the leap-year girl, but all twenty
nine are extensions of A.L.P. In the Park, Dublin's Eden, are
two girls and three soldiers, involved somehow in Earwicker's
sin. The two temptresses seem A.L.P. and Isabel. The triumvi
rate seems Earwicker and his sons; for, as A.L.P. observes,
"There were three men in him" (II3.14), as in A.L.P. there are
three women. Since Earwicker's family is the heart of secular
process and since secular process is the subject of the book, it is
not surprising that the two girls and the three soldiers, projec
tions of the family, make more than two-hundred appearances,
according to my count. Down by the river are two washerwomen
who, gossiping about A.L.P. and H.C.E., make his private linen
public. These old girls seem tree and stone on the banks of the
river or, as rivals on the banks, aspects of Shem and Shaun. In
short, the people of the Wake, all thousand and one of them, are
members or projections of the family, aspects of H.C.E. and
A.L.P., who, in a sense, are the only people of the Wake and in
the world. In the beginning in the Garden were Adam and Eve,
our first parents; near the end near Phoenix Park are H.C.E. and
A.L.P., "ourforced payrents" (576.27).
A book about two people, here and everywhere, who, though
not themselves every time, are constant, demands suitable
method and shape. Joyce was equal to these demands; for, lead
ing a "doublin existents" (578.14), he was of three minds: ana
logical, verbal, and shaping. Take the first of these first. It may
be that Adam, Noah, and Finn MacCool are Earwicker's names