This post is drawn from an email I wrote two or three years ago explicating the first page of Finnegans Wake. I present it mostly unedited. Future posts will not be a line-by-line explication of the text.

Finnegans Wake is longest night in literature. It is a representation of a dream, in which mythology and literary history (and languages) mix and mingle in a phantasmagoria that sums up humanity’s fall and redemption.

It opens in the middle of a sentence and ends in the middle of the same sentence. It has no beginning and no end — Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence. It’s a circle, in which the themes recur on every page and every paragraph. It’s like how the same DNA is in every cell of your body: the whole is summed up in the part.

Such is the first page. We begin:

>riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

This is the River Liffey, which runs through Dublin [and which will appear as ALP, the wife of the protagonist/dreamer HCE– Anna Livia (Liffey-a) Plurabelle…her monologue closes the novel (which means it also begins the novel), where she calls herself Leaf-y, bearing the leaves of the past (death to rebirth, which are also the leaves or pages of the very book we’re reading)] The River of Life. The River of Dreams. Row, row, row your boat. Life is but a dream, after all. It’s the flow of urine, too. Joyce’s art is rooted in urine and excrement, in the earthiness of life.

“riverrun” also sounds like reverons, French for “let us dream.”

The next word is “past” — moving past the past, from the past into the future at every moment. Riverrun. Heraclitus tells us that we cannot step into the same river twice. All things are in flux.

But we go all the way to the past — “past Eve and Adam’s.” Appropriate for the first sentence, announcing our first parents and their fall…the fall/wrong that will be committed again and again and again, and the greater redemption and forgiveness that it necessitates.

Notice that the typical order of “Adam and Eve” has been reversed. Perhaps this is ALP’s challenge to the phallocentric order? Maybe “Eve and Adam’s” is a pun on “even atoms” — the fall entails moving out of an even and orderly arrangement of atomic structures into the flux of experience (riverrun).

“Adam and Eve’s” is a church in Dublin on the Liffey, on the site of a pub called Adam and Eve’s, where Masses were said in secret during times of persecution. HCE appears as a tavern keeper or innkeeper later in the novel.

The “swerve of shore” and “bend of bay” put me in mind of the Irish coast and the body of a woman. The Greek philosopher Epicurus proposed that atoms could “swerve” and turn from their expected course, so that’s what may be inspiring in my mind the “atoms” pun on the earlier phrase.

Notice that we’re moving from shore to bay, moving inward to the land (while the last page of the novel moves outward to the ocean) — we’re returning to the novel after the last page, reversing direction much as the names “Adam and Eve” have switched their expected position and “swerved” from their expected course.

“commodius vicus of recirculation.” Large road (Vico Road in Dublin), and “vicus” is Latin for settlement, but it also recalls Giambatista Vico, the Italian philosopher who theorized that the world moves in repeating cycles of four ages (see also: the four worlds of the Hebrew Qabalah, the four sections of Finnegans Wake, and the four chapters of William Blake’s Jerusalem)

[This is a good time to mention that Joyce admired Blake’s “strange literary language,” and Finnegans Wake can be read as a retelling of Jerusalem, with HCE as Albion, ALP as Jerusalem, etc.]

Commodius is also a reference to Emperor Commodus, under whose rule Rome began to decline. The wide road to decline. The rocky road to Dublin indeed.

Oh, also the phrase “vicious circle,” obviously.

And a commode. This phrase is the flushing of a toilet. Life is an endless cycle of excrement. William Tindall points out that another word for a chamber pot is a jordan, suggesting Giordano Bruno, the other major philosophical mind that informs the philosophy of the Wake (Bruno held that the opposites of the universe were ultimately one — and thus, the Wake‘s Shem and Shaun are ultimately two sides of a greater whole, HCE himself). Tindell suggests that the phrase “commodius vicus” puts Bruno and Vico next to each other in the opening sentence. This might be a bit of a stretch, but I mention it here for the sake of completeness.

“Howth Castle and Environs” — that is, Dublin. Its abbreviation is HCE. Everything and all things bring us back to HCE because all dreams are about the dreamer, but also because humanity continually repeats its errors and glories. Wrongdoing and forgiveness abound of every page.

[HCE is all of us. Here Comes Everybody]

> Sir Tristram, violer d’amores, fr’over the short sea, had passencore rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war:

The first full paragraph of the book is set up in the form of “This has not yet happened; this has not yet happened; and this has not yet happened.” It’s establishing the themes of the novel. But in a way they have happened already because this is a cycle.

The legend of Tristan and Isolde (who appear in this sentence as Tristram and penisolate), and the idea of cuckolding King Mark (the old Finnegan/HCE) are major themes later in the novel. Notice he had not yet (passencore) rearrived — we’re reminded of the bizarre temporality of dreams (pas encore means “not yet,” passe encore means “still happening” — both). Penisolate war = peninsular war (all historical events are but specific manifestations of the energies contained in the Wake; the river will keep throwing up specific instances and washing them away, but what’s ultimately true is the riverrun itself, the archetypal forces that emerge into specifics). Penisolate war also = pen isolate, the isolated writer creating his art (HCE’s son and alter ego Shem the Penman). Also, penis-of-late. The latest conflict created by sexuality.

Frover means “comforter,” but also contains rover — HCE is also a Viking invader of Dublin.

>nor had topsawyer’s rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens County’s gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time:

A reference to the Irish settling in the New World (Dublin, Georgia/gorgious — Laurens County, on the Oconee). Thus they double the number of Dublins (mumper suggests “mum and pa,” the division of the self into two, the fracturing of the male and female sides of the psyche, the invention of gender as a concept).

Topsawyer is “Tom Sawyer” — Mark Twain is an appropriate reference in a sentence about doubling. He is the author of Huck Finn (Finn in the New World, Finn Again). This is also a reference to the job of top sawyer, which suggests the brother battle (with Shem as the bottom sawyer).

Rocks are symbolically testicles. Exaggerare is Latin for “pile up.” Also excrement piling up.

>nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac:

St. Patrick, and the Christianization of Ireland, concludes the novel. Mishe is Irish for “I am,” but it sounds like Moshe/Moses (“I am” is what god spoke from the fire to Moses). We get a taste of HCE’s stutter here (which is a reference to Charles Stuart Parnell and Irish politics).

A reference to the blind Isaac tricked by Jacob (the brother battle)

Avoice from afire = a voice from afar

Buttended might suggest anal sex, another potential deed committed in Phoenix Park. Isaac Butts was the leader in the Irish parliament defeated by a young (kidscad) Charles Stuart Parnell. The old (HCE) supplanted by the new (the sons). Bland = bland, blond, blend (HCE as the blending of the sons)

Cad = the French cadet, young son, and the character of the Cad will appear in I.2.

>not yet, though all’s fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe.

All’s fair in love and war (and in vanity) as the two girls in the park are interested in (or angry with?) the two sons of HCE, who fight over them. These twin girls are the two aspects of ALP who, in some tellings of the fall, seduce HCE in the park.

These saucy sisters are sosie (French for double or twin). Maybe sossed. Maybe there’s also a reference here to the “weird sisters” from Macbeth. References here to Susanna, Esther, and Ruth (vanessy, sesthers, wroth) – three Biblical legends that all involve young girls and old men (thematic in the Wake).

The other reference here is that Jonathan Swift — another towering Irish literary figure — was in love with two women named Esther, one whom he called Vanessa, and one whom he called Stella. HCE and the two girls, who are one (ALP). Vanessa’s poem A Rebus derives the name Jonathan from the Biblical names Joseph and Nathan. These are the two brothers who are one in the father, twin/twone/two-one.

>Rot a peck of pa’s malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.

A reference to Noah getting drunk by his sons (the sons displacing HCE). Rot instead of not — something’s rotten in this ridiculous biblical fable. Something’s rotten about humanity. But out of rot come new beginnings. That bible story features incest, which is also a theme in the Wake.

Rory end = Orient, the East, the direction of the rising sun. Also, red is the outmost color of the rainbow, which is here a regginbrow (the face of the king HCE rising again) Rainbow, a symbol of hope and God’s new covenant after the destruction of the flood, which is another symbol for the fall in the Wake. “Rory” literally means “red king” in Irish, and “Rot” from the first word of the sentence is German for red. Rory O’Connor was the last High King of Ireland, the end of the line. [This is also the name of a twentieth-century Irish republican revolutionary]

Regginbrow = Regenbogen, German for rainbow. The first letters of the last four words of the sentence spell ROTA (wheel in Latin, also the sentence opening: Rot a peck)

Ringsome = Ringsum, German for all around

There’s also an echo of the spirit of God moving over the waters in Genesis 1. The fall is a kind of creation, for it gives birth to the fallen world as we know it.

It’s noteworthy that in the above paragraph, the first full paragraph of the text, words for 14 different body parts are scattered. This signifies the dreamer falling into the dream and breaking apart, his pieces waiting to be reassembled by ALP, much like the Egyptian myth of the dismembered Osiris (who was cut into 14 pieces) put back together by his sister/wife Isis. These words include North Armorica (arm), isthmus (Greek isthmos or neck), penisolate (penis), rocks (testicles), Oconee (knee), gorgios (French gorge or throat), bellowsed (the bellows or lungs), tauftauf (the beating of the heart), after (German for anus), buttended (the buttocks), nathandjoe (hand), Shen (Hebrew for tooth), regginbrow (brow), and aquaface (face).

>The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later on life down through all christian minstrelsy.

That long word of 100 letters is one of the novel’s ten Thunderwords. This one is stitched together from words that mean “thunder” in lots of different languages. Joyce was terrified of thunder. Here, it’s the sound of the fall (the Fall of Man, Tim Finnegan falling off the latter, HCE defecating). It’s also the voice of god (avoice from afire).

The tenth Thunderword has 101 letters. Total letters of these words = 1001, a palindrome, just like the Wake (the same forwards and backwards, endlessly repeating)

Wallstrait = Wallstreet, stock market crash; also, “straight as a wall,” an upstanding or stand-up guy.

Retaled/Retailed — HCE and his crime is connected to capitalist exploitation, just as Albion’s fall is in Blake’s Jerusalem.

Parr is a fish — in fact, a stage in the life cycle of a salmon — to which HCE is compared throughout the Wake. Finn MacCool was said to have caught and consumed the salmon of knowledge. Parr is also the name of an Englishman who impregnated a girl when he was over 100 (old man, young girl theme). Also, Pere (father in French)

>The great fall of the offwall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan, erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes: and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the park where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since devlinsfirst loved livvy.

The idea here is that Finnegan/HCE is like Finn MacCool, a legendary giant whose prone body is the land of Ireland itself (much like Albion for England in Blake’s myth). [also, the position of a person sleeping in bed]

pftjschute is both parachute and anal cavity.

West is the direction of the setting sun and hence death (often the direction used in occult traditions to signify initiation, death of the ego).

And, obviously, the Humpty Dumpty reference.

“Knock out in the park.” Castleknox, the Dublin suburb. But also, Phoenix Park is where HCE falls or is “knocked out.” Also, to sleep is to knock out.

Oranges — different fruit for the fall, but also slang for female genitals. Also, I’m put in mind of how oranges signify death in The Godfather, and especially The Sopranos, neither of which could have consciously been intended by Joyce, but both of which work well (the symbol in those works is just another throwing up of a familiar trope by the River).

Laid to rust is a cute pun, even cuter because “rust” is Dutch for “rest.” Livvy brings us back to ALP and life itself.

That’s enough.

[This is where my email ended]