After the overture that begins Finnegans Wake, one of the first paragraphs is about, among other things, human creativity moving through history, building cities and literature.

Tim Finnegan (from the song “Finnegan’s Wake”) becomes conflated with Finn Mac Cool, a legendary Irish hero who in some stories is a benevolent giant, not unlike Paul Bunyon in American myth. In this paragraph, he is human creativity itself, the force that constructed all the great cities of civilization:

Bygmester Finnegan, of the Stuttering Hand, freemen’s maurer, lived in the broadest way immarginable in his rushlit toofarback for messuages before joshuan judges had given us numbers or Helviticus committed deuteronomy (one yeastyday he sternely struxk his tete in a tub for to watsch the future of his fates but ere he swiftly stook it out again, by the might of moses, the very water was eviparated and all the guenneses had met their exodus so that ought to show you what a pentschanjeuchy chap he was!) and during mighty odd years this man of hod, cement and edifices in Toper’s Thorp piled buildung supra buildung pon the banks for the livers by the Soangso. He addle liddle phifie Annie ugged the little craythur. Wither hayre in honds tuck up your part inher. Oftwhile balbulous, mithre ahead, with goodly trowel in grasp and ivoroiled overalls which he habitacularly fondseed, like Haroun Childeric Eggeberth he would caligulate by multiplicables the alltitude and malltitude until he seesaw by neatlight of the liquor wheretwin ’twas born, his roundhead staple of other days to rise in undress maisonry upstanded (joygrantit!), a waalworth of a skyerscape of most eyeful hoyth entowerly, erigenating from next to nothing and celescalating the himals and all, hierarchitectitiptitoploftical, with a burning bush abob off its baubletop and with larrons o’toolers clittering up and tombles a’buckets clottering down.

He’s not a man of God, at least not in the traditional sense — he’s a man of hod…cement and edifices. A thorp is a village, and a toper is a drunk. He piled up these buildings (and his dung, dropping excrement like all humans, and like HCE in one version of the scandal in the Park) for the livers, those people living by all of the rivers of the world, the so and so (or the Yangtsee?) Also, the liver is the organ damaged by excess drinking. He’s the messy materiality of humanity, its creativity, and its enjoyment of (and suffering from) alcohol.

The word “banks” implies not just riverbanks, but monetary institutions. HCE is depicted throughout the novel as a salesman, constantly in debt and constantly paying our bill. The concept of debt is important to Finnegans Wake, as I will elaborate in future posts.

And out of his liquor rises a building that is at once the Eiffel Tower, the Woolworth Building, and all skyscrapers and great constructions: It is an “eyeful hoyth entowerly,” and indeed an eye full. “Hoy” is “today” in Spanish: it is built all through history and even now, to this day. In a sense, history “is” today. Human creativity participates in an Eternal Now.

There are a fair number of literary references here. The paragraph refers not only to many books of the Bible but to Henrik Ibsen (“Bygmester” recalling The Master Builder), Jonathan Swift, Lawrence Sterne, and Lewis Carroll (his Alice Liddell). Tindall suggests that “Helviticus” is a reference to T.S. Eliot (though I’ve never been particularly swayed by that claim).

Note also the word “balbulous”: “balbus” is Latin for “Stuttering,” and indeed HCE speaks with a guilty stutter throughout the book. But also, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen does a Latin exercise with the sentence “Balbus was building a wall.”

Thus, as Tindall points out, Joyce adds himself to a slew of literary references in a paragraph celebrating the spirit of human creativity that has rolled through all of history, even today and Now, erecting buildings and erecting literary monuments.

The passage puts me in mind of a scene from the television show The Sopranos, when the horrendously materialistic Carmela Soprano takes a trip to Paris and is gobsmacked by the city’s beauty and age, temporarily shocked out of her shallow limitations. She asks aloud, with utmost sincerity and wonder, “Who could have built this?”

The same could be asked of all the marvels of humanity compressed into this paragraph of Finnegans Wake.

We did. HCE means Here Comes Everybody.

The tower also obviously represents a penis, and this paragraph additionally refers to the masturbatory scandal in Phoenix Park. That’s not just a quirky joke…creativity and sexuality are inexorably intertwined, and they are the very essence of what it means to be human (as are transgression and forgiveness, subjects addressed throughout the book).