James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake celebrates the circle of life and death. Writ large, this is the history of the world, with its rise and fall of empires and republics. Writ small, it is the story of the family, with its passing generations. In the pages of Finnegans Wake this circle takes the form of the Viconian Cycle, which Joyce borrowed from the philosophy of history of Giambattista Vico. Vico envisioned history as a repeating cycle of three ages followed by a ricorso:
The Theocratic Age of Gods and Giants The voice of God, heard in the thunder that disturbs the postdiluvian world, awes the brutish giants descended from the sons of Noah. They are driven to seek shelter in caves, where they create the first families and begin the long, slow ascent to civilization.
The Aristocratic Age of Heroes A heroic class of noble patricians emerges and rules over a subservient class of plebeians. This age is characterized by constant revolts of the plebeians against the patricians, forcing the latter to make greater and greater concessions in order to hold onto power.
The Democratic Age of Men The levelling of society due to these concessions ushers in an age of equality. But in Vico’s opinion, this type of society is inherently unstable and prone to corruption, decay and degeneracy. Society passes through several conflicting stages, each of which tries to correct the deficiencies of the previous stage. These include democracy and constitutional monarchy. But collapse is inevitable.
The Ricorso Things fall apart : the centre cannot hold : mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. History ebbs and the cycle begins again from the beginning with the voice of God calling the survivors to order.
The three-plus-one pattern of the Viconian Cycle can be discerned in the pages of Finnegans Wake. The four books into which the novel is divided depict the four divisions of the cycle. The four chapters of Book II comprise a smaller Viconian Cycle, as do the four chapters of Book III. The eight chapters of Book I comprise two Viconian Cycles. And the Viconian Cycle can also be discerned on even smaller scales. The opening paragraphs of Chapter I.4 of Finnegans Wake take us through the cycle twice, before the pattern is broken in the middle of a third cycle.
Take the first four paragraphs: the opening lines of the first allude to the Garden of Eden in Armenia, while the closing lines of the fourth find HCE laid in his grave between explosion and reexplosion (Donnaurwetter! Hunderthunder!)
The following paragraph begins with the voice of God summoning man once again with a thunderbolt out of the blue: But abide Zeit’s summonserving, rise after fall: blueblitzbolted. Vico once pointed out how the blue sky was identified with God, which is the origin of the French oath Parbleu!, meaning By God! The last lines of the eighth paragraph bring another Viconian Cycle to its close: the first babe of reconcilement is laid in its last cradle of hume sweet hume.
The next paragraph―the one we are currently studying―ushers in the next Viconian Cycle right on cue: For hear Allhighest sprack ... as it was let it be, says he! Fundamentally speaking, that is what the present paragraph is all about: the dawning of the first age again, a theocratic age of gods and giants. In the first half of this paragraph there are several allusions to eastern gods, the thunderbolt and the abating of the waters of the Flood.
But the second half of this paragraph is quite different from the first half. In the previous paragraph, we were introduced to Kate Strong, the garrulous old maid-of-all-work in HCE’s tavern. It is her voice that dominates the second half of this paragraph. The real challenge will be to reconcile the two halves of this paragraph. Why is God speaking with Kate’s voice?
First-Draft Version
Usually we begin our analysis of a passage of Finnegans Wake by examining the first draft, as recorded by David Hayman. But this paragraph was not part of the first draft, which Joyce created in November 1923. Instead, the introduction to Kate Strong was followed immediately by her account of the Oedipal Event, the assault on HCE that is rehearsed repeatedly throughout these opening chapters of Finnegans Wake. Between January 1924 and early 1927, however, Joyce revised this chapter, and it appears that the earliest draft of this paragraph read as follows:
For hear has the highest spoken: and the eagles have sharpened their beaks of prey: and every murphyl man, pome by pome, falls back into the tureen: as it was let it be. Says he. It is as though the obluvial waters of our noarchic memory withdrew at her word: lave that bloody stone be, go around be the bach of the minister’s, What are you doing you dirty minx & that big tree way in your path, take that barrel back to where you got it, MacShane’s, & you go the way your old one went. ―James Joyce Digital Archive
By July 1927, when an early draft of this chapter appeared in Number 4 of Eugene Jolas’s literary journal transition, it was beginning to resemble the final version:
For hear Allhighest sprack : and his nuptial eagles sharped their beaks of prey : and every murphyl man of us, pome by pome, falls back into this terrine : as it was let it be, says he ! And it is as though the obluvial waters of our noarchic memory withdrew, windingly goharksome, at his rude word. Lave that bloody stone as it is ! What are you doing your dirty minx and his big treeblockway up your path ? Slip around, you, by the rare of the ministers’s ! And, you, take that barrel back where you got it, Mac Shane’s, and go the way your old one went, Hatchettsbury Road ! And gish ! how they gushed away, the pennyfares, a whole school for scamper, with their sashes flying sish behind them, all the little pirlypettes ! Issy-la-Chapelle ! Any lucans, please ? ―transition 4:50
Note how the waters of the Noachic Deluge are now dispersed by his rude word, whereas in the first draft the waters withdrew at her word. It would seem, then, that Kate is the narrator of these words, but she is quoting HCE (ie the voice of God in Vico’s first age).
The Post-Lapsarian and Post-Diluvian World
The opening lines of this paragraph depict Vico’s first age as both post-lapsarian (after the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden) and post-diluvian (after Noah’s Flood). In both cases we hear the voice of God, represented here by eastern deities:
krischnians ... Agni ... Mithra ... Shiva ... Jove ... Posidonius Krishna (Hindu god of fire & storm) ... Agni (Hindu god of fire) ... Mithra (Zarathustran god of light) ... Shiva (Hindu god of destruction) ... Jupiter (Roman god of the sky and thunder) ... Poseidon (Greek god of the sea)
every morphyl man of us, pome by pome, falls back into this terrine The obvious allusion is to the Fall of Man in Eden, where the taste of the forbidden fruit made him mortal. The apple (French: pomme) is translated into Irish, becoming the potato: murphies is slang for potatoes because they were the staple diet of the Irish : pomme de terre is French for potatoes. Newton’s falling apple might also be relevant.
the obluvial waters of our noarchic memory withdrew The waters of the Noachic Deluge abated. In Greek mythology, the dead crossed the River Lethe, which caused oblivion or the loss of their memories. Finnegans Wake closes with a plea from ALP to mememormee and opens with a word that echoes the German Erinnerung (memory).
windingly ... flamenfan, the ward of the wind that lightened the fire that lay in the wood A flamen was an ancient Roman priest. To fan the flames means to make a bad situation worse by adding fuel to the fire. In ancient Ireland, druids lit a ritual fire on the Hill of Ward, County Meath, at Samhain (31 October, the forerunner of Halloween), which marked the Celtic New Year.
The Voice of God/Kate
In the final version of this chapter, Kate’s Voice of God says four things, apparently to four different people:
1: Posidonius O’Fluctuary! Lave that bloody stone as it is!
2: What are you doing your dirty minx and his big treeblock way up your path?
3: Slip around, you, by the rare of the minister’s!
4: And, you, take that barrel back where you got it, Mac Shane’s, and go the way your old one went
1: Poseidon was the Greek god of the sea, and fluctuary is an obsolete word meaning fluctuating or resembling waves: the floodwaters are abating. But who is Posidonius O’Fluctuary? Posidonius of Apamea (135–51 BC) was a Stoic polymath. We just met Hyacinth O’Flaherty, a “Fireworker” in the Royal Irish Artillery in Sheridan LeFanu’s The House by the Churchyard. The bloody stone anticipates the important role that will be played later in Finnegans Wake by the heliotrope or bloodstone. It will be most closely associated with Issy. As usual, the stone is contrasted with the tree in the next phrase, which may imply that Posidonius O’Fluctuary is Shaun. Lave is both leave and the French laver: to clean. John Gordon surmises that the stone way also be one of the glacial erratics, which were once believed to have been deposited by Noah’s Flood.
2: The dirty minx (ie a promiscuous woman) can only be Issy. In Latin minxit means she urinates, which reminds us of the Crime in the Park, the Wake’s Original Sin that precipitates the Fall of HCE. The treeblock way up your path may be Shem’s hardon, incestuously screwing his sister. In II.1 Glugg will be very curious about what lies hidden beneath his sister’s skirt. In Ulysses Molly uses the low slang block to mean fuck (Ulysses 711).
3: It is difficult not to detect hints of anal intercourse in these words.
4: To go the way your old one went seems to mean to die, like your father HCE. Is MacShane Shaun? In German, mach schon means Come On! Hurry up! In Book III, Shaun’s journey back in time to find his father is depicted as a barrel floating down the Liffey. When the tide turns and begins to rise, the barrel flows upstream towards the Hill of Uisneach in the centre of Ireland. A note in one of the Finnegans Wake notebooks may be relevant here:
barrels begin to come / back ―VI.B.6:34k (JJDA)
The closing lines of this paragraph seem to describe Issy’s schoolmates, the twenty eight rainbow girls, fleeing in terror:
And, gish, how they gushed away, the pennyfares, a whole school for scamper, with their sashes flying sish behind them, all the little pirlypettes! Issy-la-Chapelle! Any lucans, please?
These words obviously allude to Issy and ALP. But I have elsewhere argued that the two neighbouring villages of Chapelizod and Lucan―the one on the left bank of the Liffey, the other on the right bank―represent the rival twins Shem & Shaun, while Lucalizod represents the Oedipal Figure who embodies both brothers.
The penny-fare was a tram fare of one penny. It was introduced in 1884 and remained in place until 1949. Was the trip from the city centre to Chapelizod covered by the penny fare? In 1898, the Dublin United Tramways Company electrified Dublin’s trams. As part of their deal with Dublin Corporation, the DUTC agreed not to charge more than one penny from Nelson’s Pillar to any city boundary less than 1.5 miles (2.4 km) away (Geraghty & Whitehead 104). It is actually 6 km from the Pillar to Chapelizod, so perhaps this route was not covered by the penny fare. If it was, an extra charge would certainly have been incurred if the commuter intended to go on to Lucan, a further 7 km beyond Chapelizod. In the Wandering Rocks episode of Ulysses, Fr Conmee pays one penny to travel from Newcomen Bridge to the Howth Road stop, at the bottom of Malahide Road―a distance of less than 1 mile (1.34 km).
In Vico, the post-diluvian giants create the first families by having their way with the women they dragged into their caves:
506 The first of these solemnities was the auspices of Jove, taken from the thunderbolts by which the giants were induced to observe them. From this sors or lot [signified by the auspices], marriage was defined among the Romans as omnis vitae consortium, “a lifelong sharing of lot,” and the husband and wife were called consortes or “lot-sharers.” And to this day Italian girls when they marry are said to take up their lot, prender sorte. In this determinate way and in this first time of the world arose the law of nations that the wife follows the public religion of her husband. For husbands shared their first human ideas with their wives, beginning with the idea of a divinity of theirs which compelled them to drag their women into their caves; and thus even this vulgar metaphysics began to know the human mind in God. And from this first point of all human things gentile men began to praise the gods, in the ancient Roman legal sense of citing or calling them by name; whence the phrase laudare auctores, bidding men to cite the gods as authors of whatever they themselves did. Such must have been the praises which men owed to the gods. ―Giambattista Vico, The New Science, Third Edition, § 506 (Bergin & Fisch 153)
The Rape of the Sabine Women was an enactment of this event in a later Viconian Cycle.
And that’s as good a place as any to beach the bark of our tale.
References
- Joseph Campbell, Henry Morton Robinson, A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York (1944)
- Tom Geraghty & Trevor Whitehead, The Dublin Fire Brigade: A History of the Brigade, the Fires and the Emergencies, Dublin City Council, Dublin (2004)
- David Hayman, A First-Draft Version of Finnegans Wake, University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas (1963)
- Eugene Jolas & Elliot Paul (editors), transition, Number 4, Shakespeare & Co, Paris (1927)
- James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, The Viking Press, New York (1958, 1966)
- James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Works, Pynch (editor), Online (2013)
- Roland McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake, Third Edition, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland (2006)
- Danis Rose, John O’Hanlon, The Restored Finnegans Wake, Penguin Classics, London (2012)
- William York Tindall, A Reader’s Guide to Finnegans Wake, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York (1969)
Image Credits
- Hill of Ward: © A Martin (photographer), Fair Use
- Giambattista Vico: Francesco Jerace (sculptor), Castel Nuovo, Naples, Public Domain
- The Tower of Babel: Pieter Brueghel the Elder (artist), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Public Domain
- The Bloodstone or Heliotrope: © Ra’ike (photographer), Creative Commons License
- Lucan Tram Terminus: Valentine Postcard, No JV 57518, Valentine & Sons Ltd, Dundee, Public Domain
Useful Resources
- FWEET
- Jorn Barger: Robotwisdom
- Joyce Tools
- The James Joyce Scholars’ Collection
- FinnegansWiki
- James Joyce Digital Archive
- From Swerve of Shore to Bend of Bay
- John Gordon’s Finnegans Wake Blog
- Joyce Genetic Studies
- James Joyce: Online Notes
