Finnegans Wake II.2 is the study chapter. After coming in from playing, the children are apparently doing their homework: it’s Joyce’s chance to parody school books, as he writes the chapter sort of like a textbook with marginal comments and footnotes.

This post focuses on the end of the chapter, where the brothers work on a math problem, and then Shaun punches Shem, only for the latter to forgive him.

There are two sets of marginal comments in this chapter. The ones running along the left side are Shem’s; the one’s running along the right are Shaun’s. The footnotes are made by Issy. At least, that’s how I interpret the “voice” of each one. The effect is that the characters comment on the text as it unfolds. Symbolically, the text itself represents HCE, and the paratext signifies the various characters who constitute themselves and their identity through the stories they tell themselves about reality, their notes and glosses on experience. They are the parts of HCE who dream themselves to be separate.

Shaun’s notes are austere and complex and academic, written in all caps (Example of his language: “Gnosis of precreate determination. Agnosis of postcreate determinism”). Shem’s are jokey and disrespectful, written in italics: “Bet you fippence, anythesious, there’s no puggatory, are yous game?” The footnotes often seem unconnected to the text. Some of them are just weird, but some are clever. For instance, during the part where Shem offers to help his brother with their geometry homework, he tells him to “mull a mugfull of mud,” and when Shaun asks why he would do that, there’s this footnote: “Will you walk into my wavetrap? said the spiter to the shy.”

The chapter begins with an account of the creation of all things, using Qabalistic symbolism, and proceeds to a discussion of HCE’s tavern as a microcosm for the universe, an examination of the brother battle in the form of both the boys studying in their room and the Roman army versus the Huns, anthropology and psychology, the influence of the past on the present in the form of grammar instruction (and the grandmother tutoring Issy in the ways of seduction), the way that history illustrates various principles, how variation in the species leads to development over time, how Finnegan’s Wake is ongoing (underlying all things) – then a recess period, and then the boys doing their math homework, which culminates in a hysterical geometry problem that Shem helps Shaun with.

Here the brothers are called Dolph and Kevin. I’ll call them Shem and Shaun for convenience. Shem asks Shaun if he needs help (but he’s kind of teasing him as he does). So he starts to explain how to solve the problem. Here Shaun’s mind wanders in a parenthetical aside that goes on for six pages about Tristan and Iseult – when he snaps back to attention, the marginal notes have switched sides (that is, Shem’s comments are now on the right, in all caps, and Shaun’s are now on the left, in italics) [I suppose this suggests the beginning of their reconciliation…Campbell and Robinson compare it to passing through the line on a Cartesian grid, and + has become -.]

So he explains how to solve the problem. A drawing appears in the text: a Venn diagram in which two triangles are drawn in the overlapping region.

Shem explains underneath it how to create it. You make a point – let’s call it A – and then another point – let’s call it L. Then you connect the points and use that bar as the radius of two interlocking circles, one with A at the center, with a radius of AL, and the other with L at the center, with a radius of LA. The point where the circles meet on the bottom, let’s call it P. And now we join P to A and L to make the triangle ALP in the center.

So basically, it’s a diagram of ALP, with two interlocking circles (the two temptresses in the park), and the whole diagram is HCE. Shaun is the Pi at the top, and Shem is the P at the bottom. [saying out loud “Pee at the bottom” made me realize a joke that I had never twigged]

Notice all the doubles. The two brothers (Pi and P), the two girls (circle A and circle L), ALP and her double (the other triangle, the Cad’s wife/lover) as versions of the girls and/or the washerwomen of I.8. The drawing also looks like a cell dividing (or an egg dividing into twins, the two boys). It’s a symbol of all the doubles that sum up this entire story, and that sum up HCE, Here Comes Everybody. The “book of Doublends Jined” (I.1) — Dublin’s Giant, Finn Mac Cool or Finnegan or HCE, who joins the double ends of all the opposites/Blakean contraries. The story of us all.

But also, it’s a diagram of the female genitals. [ALP’s “safety vulve”]

Right smack in the middle of Finnegans Wake is this dirty drawing. That’s funny.

It’s also a parody of a famous diagram in one of Blake’s long poems, showing the path of the spirit of John Milton moving through the worlds ruled by the Four Zoas, the “Four Mighty Ones in Every Man” who correspond to the Four Old Men in Finnegans Wake (Joyce calls them the “Four Zoans”):

There’s much more to say about the relationship of Joyce and Blake, and these drawings, but that’s a post for another day (and perhaps a conference paper or a book).

So Shem guides Shaun in lifting the mother’s apron (flipping the bottom triangle up to match the top one) and exploring her mysteries. He tells him, “You must proach near mear for at is dark. Lob. And light your mech.” Indeed, Shaun’s marginal note here reads, “Prometheus or the Promise of Provision.” Light your match – bring fire from heaven to investigate.

Joyce is implying that human exploration or science – a Promethean endeavor, as Frankenstein suggests – is a sublimation of the Oedipal impulses of childhood. [This is also a point that Shelley makes in Frankenstein, anticipating Freud]

The passage immediately continues:

And this is what you’ll say. Waaaaaa. Tch! Sluice! Pla! And their, redneck, (for addn’t we to gayatsee with Puhl the Punkah’s bell?) mygh and thy, the living spit of dead waters, fastness firm of Hurdlebury Fenn, discinct and isoplural in its (your sow to the duble) sixuous parts, flument, fluvey and fluteous, midden wedge of the stream’s your muddy old triagonal delta, fiho miho, plain for you now, appia lippia pluvaville, (hop the hula, girls!) the no niggard spot of her safety vulve, first of all usquiluteral threeingles, (and why wouldn’t she sit cressloggedlike the lass that lured a tailor?) the constant of fluxion, Mahamewetma, pride of the province and when that tidled boare rutches up from the Afrantic, allaph quaran’s his bett und bier!

The first bolded bit suggests childbirth – maybe a regression and desire to return to the womb. Then the second bolded bit suggests that the two brothers realize they have a common source in the mother, the two living manifestations of the dead father, in whose wake they follow (Hurdlebury Fenn is a reference to Huck Finn (Finn in the New World, Finn again) – the ancient name of Dublin was “Hurdle Ford”).

The Mississippi River was called by Indians “Father of Waters,” and I feel an echo of that in “living spit of dead waters.” The New World is often connected with the children in Finnegans Wake. Here, the Atlantic is “Afrantic” – the waters are flowing frantically, but they go all the way back to Africa, which is where the human race is ultimately from. The boys are looking at the place they come from.

“Usquiluteral” is supposed to be “equilateral,” but it contains the Irish word for whiskey and the Latin word for playing an instrument. “Threeingles” suggests…three Englishes? Three angels? Three islands? I dunno. [HCE as Trinity? Three in one] There’s a ton here that’s worth many more essays to examine.

Then Shem goes on to propound a mathematical formula in incredibly complex sentences (which will be the subject of another post), but the gist is that the union of ALP and HCE produces all the things in existence, some indeterminate number of things.

As the passage continues, Shaun becomes angry with his brother because of Shem’s superior knowledge and artistic talent. Issy comments in a footnote about Shem, “He, angel that I thought him, and he not aebel to speel eelyotripes., Mr Tellibly Divilcult!” (Shoutout to the last chapter, in which Shem couldn’t guess heliotrope, or follow her clue spelling it out)

When Shem starts listing the major Irish writers and attributing them to the chakra centers on the body, Shaun’s had enough. Oooh, how jealous. Cain to his Abel.

So he hits him:

after all his autocratic writings of paraboles […] wun able rep of the triperforator awlrite blast through his pergaman hit him where he lived […] smarter like it done for a manny another unpious […] you one bladdy bragger […] Wince wan’s won! Rip!

Issy’s footnote comments, “A byebye bingbang boys! See you Nutcracker Sunday!” [Perhaps the Sunday of the Resurrection, after the rocks were rent during the Crucifixion?]

Shaun’s marginal note interestingly comments, “Ideal Present Alone Produces Real Future.”

Joyce is playing with the words “ideal” and “real” in philosophy, and he’s saying that this seemingly low, fallen moment is an “ideal” to produce the future. Incidentally, I get a sense from this like it locates the ideal (Platonic Ideas?) in the materiality of the present, setting the pattern for the future. As it says in the Wake‘s final chapter: “Today’s truth, tomorrow’s trend.”

But how does this fallen moment of one brother attacking another serve as an ideal to guide the future? Or another way to put it: how can the fall be fortunate?

Shem doesn’t respond with an attack. He thanks his brother:

Thanks eversore much, Pointcarried! I can’t say if it’s the weight you strike me to the quick or that red mass I was looking at but at the present momentum, potential as I am, I’m seeing rayingbogeys rings round me.

Poincare – the mathematician. But also, “point carried” – you win this round. He sees rainbows from the punch. The rainbow signifies, throughout the Wake, reconciliation and redemption. It is a Biblical symbol that Joyce uses to represent a new bond after the floody fall of Finnegan. I’m put in mind of the first page: “rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.”

I am put in mind of Nietzsche’s idea – surely familiar to Joyce – that you should not forgive your enemies but prove that they have done you some good.

This line begins a paragraph that I initially read as a speech by Shem. However, I can see an argument that the paragraph is actually a conversation between the brothers (without quotation marks, of course). I will write about it here as if it were entirely Shem’s speech, but I think one could argue that it (also?) indicates that the brothers are beginning to be absorbed back into one entity and beginning to forgive one another (that is, find the other’s flaw in themselves).

Shem says,

And that salubrated sickenagiaour of yaours have teaspilled all my hazeydency.

Your punch has dispelled all my hesitancy.

Teaspilled suggests the tea stain that’s on the letter, which is basically a semen stain. Tea is a huge symbol in Finnegans Wake. Back in Chapter 1, it’s introduced in a sexual way: “So true is it that therewhere’s a turnover the tay is wet too and when you think you ketch sight of a hind make sure but you’re cocked by a hin.” To “wet the tea” is an expression meaning to have sex.

Here in II.2, though, early in the chapter, tea takes on connotations of Thea, mother goddess. An early marginal note, while the text is describing the creation of all things, says “Tea tea.” Among other things, this is also “titty,” the mother’s breast being our earliest connection to the universe.

We’ll come back to tea in a moment.

Hesitancy is even more important. Hesitancy is characteristic of HCE, manifested in his guilty stutter, and his sons/aspects inherit this hesitancy. Shem lacks confidence in his ability to engage the external world. Shaun works in the external world but is plagued by imposter syndrome.

The word “hesitancy” is especially important because Charles Stuart Parnell, the Irish politician who was adored by Joyce and his family, was rocked with scandal when the London Times printed a letter (purported to be in his handwriting) that condoned the Phoenix Park Murders (a crime that is itself partial inspiration for HCE’s encounter in the Park). In actuality, the letter was a forgery created by one of Parnell’s enemies. The truth came out during an investigation in part because the forger had misspelled the word “hesitancy.” So that word – usually spelled incorrectly – is everywhere in the Wake.

[Parnell would later indeed be brought down by scandal — his affair with the married Kitty O’Shea. This is yet another inspiration for HCE’s indiscretions]

Shem adds, “I’m only out for celebridging over the guilt of the gap in your hiscitendency.”

It seems significant that Shem calls his own flaw “hazeydency” – suggesting density or mass and space, which is the provence of Shaun – while he calls Shaun’s flaw “hitcitendency,” which sounds like the tendency to cite, which is characteristic of Shem, scribe of Finnegans Wake.

The way I’ve been reading this is that Shem is recognizing his own flaw in his brother, and his brother’s flaw in himself.

[Sidenote: the “guilt of the gap” is a reference to the Cad in the Park, who is described in I.2 as “Gaping Gill” and “gildthegap Gaper” – Jesus, there’s so much in this book. “Gaping Gill” is a cave in England. Describing the Cad in this way hints at the homoerotic implications of their encounter]

He continues,

You are a hundred thousand times welcome, old wortsampler, hellbeit you’re just about as culpable as my woolfell merger would be.

Both of them are capable/culpable: capable of harming the other, and capable of reconciliation. Shem too has a will to do harm (like murder) – but it’s also a will to create a merger between them.

[It could also suggest woo-ful mother, the force that binds them together that they had just explored]

We saw in the previous chapter, II.1, that the first step is to get some distance on the fallen world and its conception of a zero-sum game. The second step is to recognize in yourself the same capacity to do harm that exists in those who trespass against you. The flaws of others are present in us, as our flaws are in them. Once we let go of the desire to respond tit-for-tat, to treat everything like a zero-sum game, we can start to move toward the union suggested by the mother.

And if you’re not your bloater’s kipper may I never curse again on that pint I took of Jamesons.

Brother’s keeper. Recognizing that you’re your brother’s keeper is the way to solve the brother battle.

The reference to Jameson suggests to me the earlier version of the brother battle on pages 81-84, where the two sides of HCE fight and one offers to lend the other money to buy Jameson (to pay back a debt that the lender himself is owed!). Of course, the one who went off to drink in that story was the proto-Shaun, and here it’s Shem who recalls drinking the whiskey. They’re becoming blurred with each other again. The one who offers the money – even though he’s the one who thinks of himself as first wronged – is correlated here with the one who forgives the blow. But now this is the same brother who enjoys the Jameson.

I suggested in a previous post that the lesson of the 81-84 passage is that reconciliation comes about when both sides feel like they’re the proto-Shem, when both sides are willing to cut some slack and extend the olive branch and offer a gesture of good will and even feel like they’re the one getting the bad end of the deal. But that gesture of goodwill — that giving up of something in a compromise and figuratively letting the other have a drink — is the equivalent of yourself taking the figurative celebratory drink, of also getting something in the compromise. The two opposites are equated with each other. In one sense, this is just a way of communicating how both sides gain something in a compromise. But in another sense, it points to a deeper level in which someone else’s joy can be enjoyed by me, even if I “lose” something in the deal (from one point of view). There’s a level on which “we are all one” in a very specific way that is not a mere platitude. That is, we are all none: we are stories that we are constantly telling, and thereby erecting the boundaries between ourselves and others. But we can construct those boundaries differently: we can abandon our “zero sum” conception of the world, let go of our obsession over “what we are owed,” and truly wish well for the other.

Shaun’s marginal note when Shem thanks him is “Service superseding self.” Shem’s note reads, “Euchre risk.” Their communion involves the risk entailed in offering that kindness to another.

Of course, Shem’s note continues, “Mercy buckup, and mind who you’re pucking flebby.” That’s obviously merci beaucoup. Remember that Shem took on the role of Mercias in I.7. So…he thanks Shaun for the blow and tells himself, “Buck up, Mercy.” Or maybe it means that showing mercy is how you truly buck up. I don’t know what to make of the last bit. “Watch out who you’re calling flabby” is I guess what it’s a garbled version of. “Pucking flebby” also sounds like an inverted “fucking, plebby.” Is he calling his brother a pleb? One gets the sense that the brotherly union is not yet complete, especially since Shem keeps needling him in the notes. Perhaps it can never be complete, since it is a “poghue puxy” (4.83), a kiss and a punch at once.

Shem blesses him:

Thou in shanty! Thou in scanty shanty!! Thou in slanty scanty shanty!!!

This is a joke on “Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus” from Roman Catholicism. But it’s also the Sanskrit Shanti, which is roughly the Hindu equivalent of sanctus. “Shanti” occurs three times at the end of Eliot’s Wasteland. Shortly, Shem will look forward to HCE coming to give the children candy, a “Noblett’s surprise”…Eliot received the Nobel Prize for literature, not Joyce. Tindall’s guide book goes into more detail on how Joyce might refer to Eliot throughout the Wake.

I plant my penstock in your postern, chinarpot.

We are reminded of the homoerotic implications of the brothers’ union.

The ideas of reconciliation and finding the self in the other and blending identities together…there’s an erotic component to it. It’s like Blake’s idea of an Eternity where comminglings happen through the whole body. When the constituent parts of HCE cease to think of themselves as “systentangled,” they blend erotically back into a whole. As it is written in I.1, “The tay is wet too…make sure but you’re cocked by a hin.”

With this laudable purpose in loud ability let us be singulfied. Betwixt me and thee hung cong. Item, mizpah ends.

Singulphed suggests “engulfed by sin”: this would be the brothers’ mutual recognition of each other’s sin so that they are made into a single being.

The reference to Hong Kong between them calls back again to 81-84, where one of the sides of HCE speaks pidgin English (Asian stereotypes).

Mizpah makes me think of mitzvah, but Campbell and Robinson report that it was the name of a brand of contraceptive. The time for childhood has ended: go forth and be fruitful. Hey, it is the math chapter. Go and multiply.

But there’s one more treat before the end.

We’re told that “tea’s set,” and we get ten syllables that run down the page, counting down the emanations of God, like in the Hebrew Qabalah.

They are:

Aun
Do
Tri
Car
Cush
Shay
Shockt
Ockt
Ni
Geg
Their feed begins.

Campbell and Robinson spend pages explaining this – they actually describe this moment as something like the “power center” of the book, sending energy out to every page.

Basically, it’s the sephiroth of the Tree of Life, from utter unity (Aun – which is like “Ain,” Hebrew for “not”) down to the earthy world of manifestation (Geg, the eggs that are served as a result of the Fall of Finnegan, the descent of spirit down into matter…”grinny sprids the boord” (I.1). I will have another post in the future on these words.

Shem’s footnote reads, “Mawmaw, luk, your beeftay’s fizzin over!”

The tea is bubbling over. The divine energy is bubbling up into physical manifestation. The cosmic mother/goddess is orgasming. [Luk – lux – light? St. Lucy (luc-y) is patron saint of eyesight (Look)…it’s reminding me of Issy’s “Luck!” in the previous chapter]

This sentence also refers to a very similar sentence in Ulysses. In his guidebook, Tindall notes this and then adds, “God knows why Joyce was obsessed with this.” Ha!

The chapter ends with a brief letter from the children in the New World. The energy of the previous generation has been shattered and spread to the children, who war and reconcile and prepare to re-amalgamate and start the whole cycle again.