The Children’s Hour (Finnegans Wake II.1) is a lovely little chapter.

The structure is simple: Shem and Shaun – under the guise of Glugg and Chuff – are playing a game with Issy, who appears as Izod and the Floras (the flower girls, the 28 girls who are aspects of her, a “month’s bunch of pretty maidens” – associated with the monthly, lunar cycle – which makes Issy the 29th, the leap year girl).

Glugg tries to guess the girls’ color. They titter and mock and tease him. He guesses wrong. So, possessed by rage and his failure and rejection, he runs away and sulks to himself and becomes an artist who writes Portrait of the Artist and Ulysses. These passages of sulking are extraordinarily difficult to parse, even for FW. One gets the impression that they are very personal to Joyce, even more so than the rest of this extremely personal book.

When Glugg fails and runs away, the girls dance in a circle around Chuff and worship him like an angel of light. These passages are much easier to read.
This pattern repeats three times – corresponding to Vico’s three ages of history – until the boys start physically brawling. The parents call them home, and we anticipate the arrival of the Father, “until they adumbrace a pattern of somebody else or other, after which they are both carried off the set and brought home to be well soaped, sponged and scrubbed again by ANN [the mother, ALP].” And indeed, at the end of the chapter, the father closes the door to the house, with a thunder word.

[The three rounds of the children’s game correspond to the three rounds of the Prankquean in I.1, and the thunderword corresponds to Jarl Van Hoother slamming the door and/or being shot down, which appears as the book’s first thunderword]

This is supposed to be a parable for history (and its three ages) leading to the End of Time, when the children will be called Home from their petty and insignificant squabbles. These are the battles of the Wake of Finnegan (from the song), the wars of history. All of the struggles of history — it’s all a bunch of silly children playing a dumb game and then going home.

Notice that “adumbrace” in the above quote marries the words adumbrate and embrace (and dumb!): history will end in a reconciliation of the opposites (the brothers), which amalgamate into a new HCE to start the cycle all over again.

Much of the chapter is sing songy, like children’s rhymes. I absolutely adore this bit from the beginning:

Chuffy was a nangel then and his soard fleshed light like likening. Fools top! Singty, sangty, meekly loose, defendy nous from prowlabouts. Make a shine on the curst. Emen.

But the duvlin sulph was in Glugger, that lost-to-lurning. Punct. He was sbuffing and sputing, tussing like anisine, whipping his eyesoult and gnatsching his teats over the brividies from existers and the outher liubbocks of life. He halth kelchy chosen a clayblade and makes prayses to his three of clubs. To part from these, my corsets, is into overlusting fear. Acts of feet, hoof and jarrety: athletes longfoot. Djowl, uphere!

There’s a lot there. The “Singty, sangty” sentence is so beautiful, and it’s a garbling of a Latin prayer to St. Michael. Chuff is the angel, defending the girls. Glugg is the devil, the interloper, the gross little reject who needs to be expelled by the better-looking, outgoing Chuff.

The “clayblade” and “three of clubs” is presumably a shamrock. Glugg is perceived as the devil, but he is indoctrinated into religion like the young Joyce, as testified in Portrait. Perhaps the shamrock, to which he “makes prayses” (praises and prayers) here associates this religiousity with Irish nationalism.

And now the girls:

Aminxt that nombre of evelings, but how pierceful in their sojestiveness were those first girly stirs, with zitterings of flight released and twinglings of twitchbells in rondel after, with waverings that made shimmershake rather naightily all the duskcended airs and shylit beaconings from shehind hims back. Sammy, call on. Mirrylamb, she was shuffering all the diseasinesses of the unherd of.

Geez, basically every word is worth devoting at least a sentence or two to pulling apart. I love how their “sojestiveness” was “pierceful.” That is, their suggestiveness, which often takes the form of their teasing jests, was the kind of thing that appears peaceful but pierces the heart of an observer (and possibly also threatens with castration anxiety, the very thing the male gaze seeks to alleviate by fragmenting and fetishizing the female body).

Anyway, speaking of male gaze and fetishizing –

When Glugg is supposed to guess their “color,” it’s the color of their panties.

This was not clear at all to me on a first reading long ago. But if you pay attention, it is made clear enough:

The youngly delightsome frilles-in-pleyurs are now showen drawen, if bud one, or, if in florileague, drawens up consociately at the hinder sight of their commoner guardian. Her boy fiend or theirs, if they are so plurielled, cometh up as a trapadour, sinking how he must fand for himself by gazework what their colours wear as they are all showen drawens up. Tireton, cacheton, tireton, ba! Doth that not satisfy youth, sir? Quanty purty bellas, here, Madama Lifay! And what are you going to charm them to, Madama, do say? Cinderynelly angled her slipper; it was cho chiny yet braught her a groom. He will angskt of them from their commoner guardian at next lineup (who is really the rapier of the two though thother brother can hold his own, especially for he bandished it with his hand the hold time, mamain, a simply gracious: Mi, O la!), and reloose that thong off his art: Hast thou feel liked carbunckley ones? Apun which his poohoor pricoxity theirs is a little tittertit of hilarity (Lad-o’-me-soul! Lad-o’-me-soul, see!) and the wordchary is atvoiced ringsoundinly by their toots ensembled, though not meaning to be clever, but just with a shrug of their hips to go to troy and harff a freak at himself by all that story to the ulstramarines. Otherwised, holding their noises, they insinuate quiet private, Ni, he make peace in his preaches and play with esteem.

The first few bolded bits speak for themselves. Toward the end, “thong off his art” is supposed to be the movie “Song of his Heart.” “Wordchary” is witchery, and their “toots ensembled” (tout ensemble) is farting.

Last sentence: They all hold their noses at Glugg and suggest that he has peed his pants and played with himself.

But “peace in his preaches” could also mean that he was always trying to make nice and ingratiate himself with his bullies, like Shem the Penman in I.7. And “play with esteem” suggests something about his self-esteem – maybe constantly obsessing over it and anticipating how his art will play with his sense of self-esteem in his many self portraits (and his art functions as a kind of literary masturbation).

I really like Glugg’s reaction:

So olff for his topheetuck the ruck made raid, aslick aslegs would run; and he ankered on his hunkers with the belly belly prest. Asking: What’s my muffinstuffinaches for these times? To weat: Breath and bother and whatarcurss. Then breath more bother and more whatarcurss. Then no breath no bother but worrawarrawurms. And Shim shallave shome.

This reads so nicely. It took me forever to realize that “muffinstuffinaches” is a garbled version of Mephistopholes. He’s the devil, man! Regarding “belly belly prest” — I believe I read that the earliest memory that Joyce’s brother Stanislaus could recall was putting on a play with his siblings: it was about Adam and Eve, and little James made it up. Stanislaus was Adam, their sister was Eve, and James crawled on his belly as the serpent.

“Topheetuck” makes me think of “coffee cup,” but also tophee and tuck – Stephen Dedalus is called a piece of candy (Baby Tucko) on the first page of Portrait.

I won’t go through the whole chapter page by page, but the gist of it is that it’s a contrast between the light and frothy superficial bits of Chuff being praised by the girls and the intense psychological depths of Glugg, whose failures correspond to the fall of HCE/Finnegan and who hides himself away like Shem the Penman in his inkbottle/mind.

They’re very dense and difficult passages. Take a gander at how one paragraph begins:

Allwhile, moush missuies from mungy monsie, preying in his mind, son of Everallin, within himself, he swure. Macnoon maggoty mag! Cross of a coppersmith bishop! He would split. He do big squeal like holy Trichepatte. Seek hells where from yank islanders the petriote’s absolation. Mocknitza! Genik! He take skiff come first dagrene day overwide tumbler, rough and dark, till when bow of the shower show of the bower with three shirts and a wind, pagoda permettant, crookolevante, the bruce, the coriolano and the ignacio. From prudals to the secular but from the cumman to the nowter. Byebye, Brassolis, I’m breaving! Our war, Dully Gray! A conansdream of lodascircles, he here schlucefinis. Gelchasser no more! Mischnary for the minestrary to all the sems of Aram. Shimach, eon of Era. Mum’s for’s maxim, ban’s for’s book and Dodgesome Dora for hedgehung sheolmastress. And Unkel Silanse coach in diligence. Disconnection of the succeeding.

On a first read, I had no idea what I was reading. He’s leaving, I guess (“He would split […] Byebye”). And confess something? (“He do big squeal”)

You have to consult a guidebook to find out that this is a dream version of Stephen Dedalus’ oaths of silence, exile, and cunning from Portrait. “[T]he bruce, the coriolano, and the ignacio” are references to three historical figures that embody those three virtues. The passage just gets harder from there.

These dense bits are the best stuff in the chapter, though. You don’t really need to know what’s “happening” – it’s enough to recognize that these are attempts to put down onto the page what it feels like to be rejected. To feel that no one wants you. To feel like art is your only solace.

I smiled to see, during a discussion of his family’s descent into poverty (a real experience of Joyce’s), a reference to his first riddle of the universe:

And oil paint use a pumme if yell trace me there title to where was a hovel not a havel (the first rattle of his juniverse) with a tingtumtingling and a next, next and next (gin a paddy? got a petty? gussies, gif it ope?), while itch ish shome.

Issy seems to like Glugg, and she’s frustrated by his shyness:

It’s driving her dafft like he’s so dumnb. If he’d lonely talk instead of only gawk as thought yateman hat stuck hits stick althrough his spokes and if he woold nut wolly so! Hee. Speak, sweety bird! Mitzymitzy! Though I did ate tough turf I’m not the bogdoxy.

The last bit has references to “Mishe mishe” and Tauf tauf, from the first page of Finnegans Wake. This is a repetition of HCE in the world of the children.

Issy seems upset she’s lost Glugg when he flees:

Poor Isa sits a glooming so gleaming in the gloaming; the tincelles a touch tarnished wind no lovelinoise awound her swan’s. Hey, lass! Woefear gleam she so glooming, this pooripathete I solde? Her beauman’s gone of a cool. Be good enough to symperise.

[I note with amusement that the word “symperise” makes me think of the modern slang “simp”]

But don’t worry! She’ll just get another man! On it goes, the cycle of history:

And among the shades that Eve’s now wearing she’ll meet anew fiancy, tryst and trow. Mammy was, Mimmy is, Minuscoline’s to be. In the Dee dips a dame and the dame desires a demselle but the demselle dresses dolly and the dolly does a dulcydamble. The same renew. For though she’s unmerried she’ll after truss up and help that hussyband how to hop. Hip it and trip it and chirrub and sing. Lord Chuffy’s sky sheraph and Glugg’s got to swing.

I love this part. It’s like a fun little dance, the torments of love and jealousy. She’ll teach the other girls (her aspects) how to dance, the “hussyband.” But this is also “husband,” as this whole episode reflects how the girls tempted HCE into his crime. [“truss up” – dress up, just like ALP in I.8]

All the characters in this book are aspects of each other, always acting out versions of the same story of temptation, transgression, and reconciliation – “The same renew.”

Last sentence: Chuff is a shepherd of the girls, as well as a seraph/angel. Glugg has to learn how to dance to the rhythm of this cruel game, to use art to respond to it (“swing” also suggests hanging, execution, death like the fall of HCE). “[S]wing” can also be the swing of a punch — striking back at the unfairness of life through art]

The girls dance around Chuff: “So and so, toe by toe, to and fro they go round, for they are the ingelles, scattering nods as girls who may, for they are an angel’s garland.”

On the first two repetitions, Glugg goes running away and composes his art, bearing the secrets of his family to the world. He tattles about the crimes of HCE and ALP. During the second repetition, he makes like he’s confessing, but he really confesses HCE’s crimes, denying that he’s guilty the whole time.

Then the day fades – the moon rises. Night is on its way here. The call goes out for the children to come home.

One last repetition. Now a difference. Glugg is ready for the confrontation.

If you nude her in her prime, make sure you find her complementary or, on your very first occasion, by Angus Dagdasson and all his piccions, she’ll prick you where you’re proudest with her unsatt speagle eye.

He is aware of the castrating gaze, almost like the Medusa’s. Indeed, Issy speaks in the next paragraph and says, “I see through your weapon.” So he knows to “make sure you find her complementary,” the double, the shadow side, the mirror reflection (that makes Issy into the two girls in the Park).  [Maybe it also means to find her complimentary – take the game as a compliment, or something that complements your nature…not so personally]

At the end of Issy’s speech, she tells him, “Luck!” (good luck, but also… “Look!” – open your eyes and look at me…use your eyes)

Glugg fixates on her mouth:

There lies her word, you reder! […] A window, a hedge, a prong, a hand, an eye, a sign, a head and keep your other augur on her paypaypay. And you have it, old Sem, pat as ah be seated! And Sunny, my gander, he’s coming to land her. The boy which she now adores. She dores. Oh backed von dem zug! Make weg for their tug!

That list of random items consist of the translations of the Hebrew letters that spell out “Heliotrope” (which is the answer to the riddle). She’s giving him a hint.

Keep your auger (eye, German) on her paypaypay – “Peh” is “mouth” in Hebrew.

Interesting that it’s pay, pay, pay – payment, cash, a zero-sum game, the realm of Shaun/Chuff. This may be the moment where Glugg starts to reject this zero-sum conception of things.

When the girls tease him next, he doesn’t respond with words, but with actions. 

Here’s the last one, how it ends:

He finges to be cutting up with a pair of sissers and to be buytings of their maidens and spitting their heads into their facepails.

Spickspuk! Spoken.

His last action is to pretend to be cutting them with scissors, biting off their heads, and spitting them into pails. It’s an act of aggression – he’s castrating them for a change! This is the ability of the male gaze – and art – to fragment the threatening other (Not for nothing, “buytings of their maidens and spitting their heads” suggests taking their “maidenhead,” that is, symbolically deflowering the flower girls…notice the intrusion of the capitalist fallen world in “buytings” — Glugg’s not free of the fallen world yet, not by a long shot)

It feels to me like “Spickspuk! Spoken” is his sarcastic comment that this is all the speaking you’ll get out of me. I’m just going to mock you and refuse to play your silly game. 

Right now, my reading of this moment is Shem beginning to extract himself from the childish game of love by refusing to play on their terms.

He’s learned how to “swing” by his own rules. Art has given him a distance. But he’s still caught in the fallen world, in its ideas of a capitalist, zero-sum game. 

There is more growth to be done.

One sign that there is more growth needed is that his brother then goads him into a fight, the preface to which finds them sarcastically thanking each other:

As he was queering his shoolthers. So was I. And as I was cleansing my fausties. So was he. And as way ware puffiing our blowbags. Souwouyou.

That’s “squaring his shoulders” and “clenching my fists.” Faust (which actually means “fist”) is in there. Cleansing Faust, beginning to turn away from temptation. But not totally.

Come, thrust! Go, parry! Dvoinabrathran, dare. The mad long ramp of manchind’s parlements, the learned lacklearning, merciless as wonderful.

Their fight represents the squabbles of the governments of mankind (parlements).

—Now may Saint Mowy of the Pleasant Grin be your everglass and even prospect!

—Feeling dank.

Exchange, reverse.

—And may Saint Jerome of the Harlots’ Curse make family three of you which is much abedder!

—Grassy ass ago.

[Dank = thanks, Grassy ass = gracias, ago = I go, i.e. I will attack now…the other kind of “swing”!]

We’ll see in II.2 that Shem actually does (sincerely) thank his brother for striking him. But here it appears to be sarcastic on both sides – they’re still locked in the brother battle and not able to get a wider perspective.

The prayer at the end of the chapter looks forward to the reunification of the brothers, referring to Shem as Nick and Shaun as Mick (or Michael):

And let Nek Nekulon extol Mak Makal and let him say unto him: Immi ammi Semmi. And shall not Babel be with Lebab? And he war. And he shall open his mouth and answer: I hear, O Ismael, how they laud is only as my loud is one. If Nekulon shall be havonfalled surely Makal haven hevens. Go to, let us extell Makal, yea, let us exceedingly extell. Though you have lien amung your posspots my excellency is over Ismael. Great is him whom is over Ismael and he shall mekanek of Mak Nakulon. And he deed.

There are echoes of the Egyptian Book of the Dead and Psalms 68.

Immi ammi Semmi means, “I am Shem,” of course, but those are also the Hebrew words for nation, mother, and name. Nation, family, individual. I get a feeling like that scene in Portrait where Stephen locates where he is in the universe and on planet Earth, proceeding down to his name.

Lebab is “Babel” backwards, and it means “heart” in Hebrew. Shall not the Babel of this book, produced by Shem the Penman, reach the heart? Isn’t the babble of this book – the babble of the fallen world – just a reflection of the human heart? Doesn’t the plight of those who are hurt/fallen touch the heart of those who hear it? This is how reconciliation begins.

Shaun will be extolled, but he will also be ex-telled (to tell from? That is, he will be prompted to say that) the excellency of the laud/Lord is over Shem/Ismael, lingerer among the posspots/pisspots though he may be. He’s gross, but he’s great.

The name Mak Nakulon is their combined form, Tristan, the next HCE.

He’s coming. Give it time. The brothers need to grow first.

The chapter then ends with the children’s prayer as they go to bed.

Thou hast closed the portals of the habitations of thy children and thou hast set thy guards thereby, even Garda Didymus and Garda Domas, that thy children may read in the book of the opening of the mind to light and err not in the darkness which is the afterthought of thy nomatter by the guardiance of those guards which are thy bodemen, the cheeryboyum chirryboth with the kerrybommers in their krubeems, Pray-your-Prayers Timothy and Back-to-Bunk Tom.

Till tree from tree, tree among trees tree over tree become stone to stone, stone between stones, stone under stone for ever.

O Loud, hear the wee beseech of thees of each of these thy unlitten ones! Grant sleep in hour’s time, O Loud!

That they take no chill. That they do ming no merder. That they shall not gomeet madhowiatrees.

Loud, heap miseries upon us yet entwine our arts with laughters low!

Ha he hi ho hu.

Mummum.

Heap miseries upon us but entwine our arts with laughters low.

Mysteries, miseries (all life is suffering), but let our hearts – and our arts – speak a humorous acceptance of human nature. Life may be suffering, but we can choose to live in joy.

The vowels: Ha He Hi Ho Hu.

Supposedly some Gnostics thought the secret name of God was all the vowel sounds put together.

Mumum is both Amen and silence. It also suggests mother, as well as the consonant sounds that are paired with the vowel sounds to give us the entirety of human languages. Thus, the vowels and the consonants can be taken to be the eternal father and mother, symbols of the universe: their division, in the form of manifestation (Finnegan’s fall), produces the alphabet and the fragmentary babble of language.