Regular readers of this blog will recognise the name of Bill from The Australian Legend because he often comments on my posts, and because I regularly link to his reviews of 20th century Australian literature. Well, *envious sigh* Bill is in Paris at the moment – and look what he found at a street stall! How on earth did anyone ever translate Finnegans Wake into French?!!!
Whatever do the French make of this passage, for example, however it’s translated?
For he kinned Jom Pill with his court so gray and his haunts in his house in the mourning.
I don’t know why I know this is a playful allusion to an old hunting ballad. Maybe I learned it at school, or maybe it was a song that my mother sang. I found this explanation of its origins, but it doesn’t explain how the song made its way to America.
Anyway, it comes in the first part of chapter two which concerns the genesis of Harold or Humphrey Chimpden’s occupational agnomen ( we are back in the presurnames prodomarith period, of course, …) (p. 24), that is to say, when Joyce is having fun telling us his hero’s name. It takes two pages for him to reveal his initials, HCE, offering the nickname Here Comes Everybody (and identifying him as an Everyman), and another page before we discover that his name is Earwicker.
Well. It seems that our hero is in trouble. He is being slandered of having behaved with an ongentilmensky immodus opposite a pair of dainty maidservants. Whether he has actually ‘misbehaved’ isn’t clear and neither is what he has supposed to have done. The maids themselves are
where not dubiously pure, visibly divergent, as warpt from wept, on minor points touching the intimate nature of this, a first offence in vert or venison which was admittedly an incautious but, at its wildest a partial exposure. (p.27)
The narrative says he’s guiltless, but that matters not to the gossips and slander-mongers of Dublin. Earwicker meets a Cad With a Pipe who asks him the time and foolish Earwicker misunderstands him and launches into a denial of the rumours that the Cad hadn’t yet heard:
upon the Open Bible and befu before the Great Taskmaster’s eye (I lift my hat!) and in the presence of the Deity Itself andwell of Bishop and Mrs Michan of High Church of England as of all such of said my immediate withdwellers and of every living sohole in every corner wheresoever of this globe in general which useth of my British to my backbone tongue and commutative justice that there is not one tittle of truth, allow me to tell you, in that purest of fibfab fabrications. (p.29)
Well, if I may appropriate a bit of Shakespeare, methinks he protesteth too much. And obviously The Cad doesn’t believe him, and he tells his wife. She tells the priest Mr Brown (who is (inexplicably also a Nolan) who passes it on to a teacher having a day at the races (the Encourage Hackney Plate) and before you know it, the accusation was poured forth […[ to an overflow meeting of all the nations in Lenster. And that brings forth a ballad, and here it is, sung by the Dubliners recounting Earwicker’s fall from grace:
(Not exactly the same as the lyrics in the book but close enough.)
Campbell tells me that chapter three will be about Earwicker’s trial and incarceration….
Sources:
-
- A Reader’s Guide to “Finnegans Wake” by William York Tindall, Syracuse University Press, 1969; and
- A Skeleton Key to “Finnegan’s Wake”: James Joyce’s Masterwork Revealed, by Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson, Collected Works Edition, New World Library, 2005
- Finnegans Wake (Modern Classics) read by Jim Norton with Marcella Riordan, Naxos AudioBooks 2009
- Finnegans Wake, (Folio Edition) by James Joyce (with help from Tindall and Campbell) #1 Getting started
- Finnegans Wake, (Folio Edition) by James Joyce #2 Chapter 1
- Finnegans Wake, (Folio Edition) by James Joyce #3 Chapter 2
- Finnegans Wake, (Folio Edition) by James Joyce #4 Chapter 3
- Finnegans Wake, (Folio Edition) by James Joyce #5 Chapter 4
- Finnegans Wake, (Folio Edition) by James Joyce #6 Chapter 5
- Finnegans Wake, (Folio Edition) by James Joyce #7 Chapter 6
- Finnegans Wake, (Folio Edition) by James Joyce #8 Chapter 7
- Finnegans Wake, (Folio Edition) by James Joyce #9 Chapter 8
- Finnegans Wake, (Folio Edition) by James Joyce #10 Chapter 9
- Finnegans Wake, (Folio Edition) by James Joyce #11 Chapter 10
- Finnegans Wake, (Folio Edition) by James Joyce #12 Chapter 11
- Finnegans Wake, (Folio Edition) by James Joyce #13 Chapter 12
- Finnegans Wake, (Folio Edition) by James Joyce #14 Chapter 13
- Finnegans Wake, (Folio Edition) by James Joyce #15 Chapter 14
- Finnegans Wake, (Folio Edition) by James Joyce #16 Chapter 15
- Finnegans Wake, (Folio Edition) by James Joyce #17 Chapter 16
- Finnegans Wake, (Folio Edition) by James Joyce #18 Chapter 17
ANZ LitLovers LitBlog 
I admire your enterprise in taking on the book. I opened it once, looked through several pages, and knew I would never invest the time and attention to read it. (I’m not an admirer of Ulysses either, although there were sections of it which I liked.)
About the “horse and the hounds in the morning” I remember singing it as a child in the midwestern U.S.
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By: SilverSeason on April 1, 2017
at 12:17 am
You too? Isn’t it strange! It’s such an English song, fox-hunting and all…
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By: Lisa Hill on April 1, 2017
at 9:10 am
Hey, I understood most of that. It must be getting easier.
Didn’t buy any books, but bought a watercolour of bridges over the Seine to go with almost the same scene my grandmother bought on her first visit in the 1950s.
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By: wadholloway on April 1, 2017
at 5:25 am
*chuckle* It’s being in a place where all around you is a different language. Your ear is tuned in for the words you understand and your brain has learned happily to ignore the rest:)
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By: Lisa Hill on April 1, 2017
at 9:14 am
I find those quotes intriguing and rather poetic but I don’t think I will ever read James Joyce I’m afraid.
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By: heavenali on April 1, 2017
at 7:40 am
Hello, and thanks for dropping by:)
*chuckle* Don’t worry, most people don’t, and I suspect that most people who start don’t continue!
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By: Lisa Hill on April 1, 2017
at 9:07 am
I too remember learning that song at school in Glasgow in the 50’s. It sounds like it’s from the borders of England and Scotland but am only guessing. Well done your commitment to F.W.
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By: Fay Kennedy on April 1, 2017
at 5:01 pm
*chuckle* It looks like we could get a choir together of people who learned that song!
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By: Lisa Hill on April 1, 2017
at 7:18 pm
[…] Finnegans Wake, (Folio Edition) by James Joyce #3 Chapter 2 […]
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By: Finnegans Wake, (Folio Edition) by James Joyce #15 Chapter 14 | ANZ LitLovers LitBlog on December 10, 2017
at 9:59 pm
[…] Finnegans Wake, (Folio Edition) by James Joyce #3 Chapter 2 […]
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at 6:47 pm
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at 6:52 pm
[…] Finnegans Wake, (Folio Edition) by James Joyce #3 Chapter 2 […]
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at 6:53 pm
[…] Finnegans Wake, (Folio Edition) by James Joyce #3 Chapter 2 […]
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at 6:55 pm
[…] Finnegans Wake, (Folio Edition) by James Joyce #3 Chapter 2 […]
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at 6:56 pm
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By: Finnegans Wake, (Folio Edition) by James Joyce #6 Chapter 5 | ANZ LitLovers LitBlog on December 22, 2017
at 6:57 pm
[…] Finnegans Wake, (Folio Edition) by James Joyce #3 Chapter 2 […]
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By: Finnegans Wake, (Folio Edition) by James Joyce #7 Chapter 6 | ANZ LitLovers LitBlog on December 22, 2017
at 6:58 pm
[…] Finnegans Wake, (Folio Edition) by James Joyce #3 Chapter 2 […]
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By: Finnegans Wake, (Folio Edition) by James Joyce #8 Chapter 7 | ANZ LitLovers LitBlog on December 22, 2017
at 6:59 pm
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By: Finnegans Wake, (Folio Edition) by James Joyce #9 Chapter 8 | ANZ LitLovers LitBlog on December 22, 2017
at 6:59 pm
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