Finnegans Wake II.2 — the study chapter — ends with the children being called to dinner after their homework. They had been outside to play (II.1), they studied (II.2), and now it’s time to eat. The scene is about to shift to the tavern downstairs, where their father is working and a feast is underway, including the feast of storytelling (II.3).

This post looks closely at the final page of II.2.

tea’s set, see’s eneugh!

Time for tea. That’s when ten monosyllables run down the page:

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

*

Campbell and Robinson spend pages talking about these syllables. Perhaps the syllables are supposed to be the clock striking ten (seems kind of late for dinner…).

But really, the syllables represent the ten sephiroth of the Qabalah, which is referenced several times in II.2.

The Qabalah is a system of Hebrew mysticism. Its major symbol is a diagram called the Tree of Life, which arranges the sephiroth — Hebrew for “emanations,” the emanations of God — as circles, from God himself (Kether) down to manifestation in the physical universe (Malkuth).

The paths between the sephiroth are attributed to tarot trumps, as well as to each of the Hebrew letters, so the image accommodates a whole set of symbology (the small cards of the tarot are attributed to the sephiroth themselves, so it’s possible to regard the tarot as an illustration of the Qabalistic system).

One could write a book or books on these syllables and their relationship to the rest of Finnegans Wake.

The sephiroth are arranged into three triangles, with Malkuth (10) appended to the bottom. These are called “triads.” One sephirah in each triad is active, one is passive (receptive), and the other represents the balance of those energies.

So let’s take them in threes:

Aun
Do
Tri

The first three sephiroth are called the “supernal triad,” and they emerge from what are called the “three veils” or the “negative veils” above the Tree.

Above the Tree are three veils: Ain (nothing), Ain Soph (Limitless), and Ain Soph Aur (Limitless Light). This is the nothingness from which all things came. Or, to be a little more accurate, it’s no-thing, the undifferentiated flux.

“Things” cannot exist until we pick a point and separate it out from everything else. Let’s pick a point and call it 1. This is Kether in the Qabalah (“Crown”). God. The creation event. The idea of beginning. The selecting of a point from which to start. A point in space.

Joyce calls it Aun, which sounds like one and the Hebrew Ain.

A point, by itself, isn’t much. We don’t know anything else about it. It could be anywhere in space. To locate it, we need another point. This is 2. Chokmah. 

Two points let you draw a line or a phallus, so 2 is the male number, representing the active part of creation or the cosmic Will. Hence Joyce’s syllable Do. Action.

But that line could be anywhere. We need to fix the initial point by introducing a third point. To triangulate it. This is 3, Binah (Understanding). Tri. The feminine force, the receptive side of creation, that which gives shape to the energy of 2.

A shape — a triangle — is now possible with three points. So Binah is also the idea of a physical world. The triangle is also symbolic of the vagina, like the triangular opening lines of Finnegans Wake I.8.

The supernal triad is unmanifest. It’s the concept of a physical world, the blueprint of one. It’s the idea of creating one. The Qabalistic system, then, adopts a kind of Platonic approach, where ideas precede material existence. However, a person does not have to subscribe to this view to find the system to be a useful set of symbols.

Notice that Kether (1) is the balance of (2) and (3)…in the supernal triad, the balanced sephirah is at the top: the universe starts with balance and then become divided. In the subsequent triads, the balance sephirah is on the bottom. Competing forces blend together, as in Hegel’s philosophy: thesis, antithesis, synthesis.

The Actual Triad, the next three numbers, signifies the manifest world.

With 4 (Chesed) points, you can now draw a three-dimensional shape. Alternatively, you can have a point that the triangle can move toward. Either way, it therefore represents the actual physical world, not the idea of it (which is 3).

4 is the receptive sphere of this triad.

And 5 is the active, signifying physical conflict (Geburah). The triangle now has two points it could choose between. Or, the three-dimensional shape has something external to it. Either way, it signifies conflict.

6 is the sphere of balance here…right in the middle of the whole Tree, in fact, so it is the number of equilibrating all of the opposites of existence.

Car

Cush

Shay

“Car” makes me think that the physical world is a vehicle for the spirit. [Again, in this Platonic conception; I’m not actually endorsing the idea of spirit apart from matter or operation through matter, and I’m not sure Joyce is either]

“Cush” might be onomatopoeia for the sound of two things hitting. Like, it’s the sound a kid makes when playing with toys and one of them strikes the other.

“Shay” is a smoother sound, and represents the harmonizing effect of 6. It also makes me think of the passage in which Shaun first recognizably appears in the Wake, and it describes how the girls praise him and how he (or his later form Tristan) will meld with Issy:

the shaym of his hisu shifting into the shimmering of her hers […] till the wild wishwish of her sheeshea melted most musically mid the dark deepdeep of his shayshaun.

I wrote in a note to myself elsewhere that this is likely Tristan because Shem is in there too (as “shaym”). This is the blending of opposites…the brothers and the male and female sides. Shay.

There’s a footnote attached to “Cush.” Next to the footnote, Issy has drawn this in the margin:

The footnote reads, “Kish is for anticheirst, and the free of my hand to him!”

“Cush” is the appearance of the brother battle. Christ and Anti-Christ.

“Cheir” is Greek for hand (anticheir actually means “thumb”). “Free of my hand” implies “freehand” (as in writing). 

“Kish” is also the name of a lightship off the coast of Dublin. Something to guide. The word makes me think of fish (HCE become a kettle of fruit for us….). And kiss.

The R is in a weird place, which makes the word sound like “anti-kersse” (Kersse and the Norwegian Captain, from II.3).

The drawing illustrates the phrase “the back of my hand to him,” a gesture of contempt. Campbell and Robinson, however, suggest that it’s also an image of the demiurge creating life with his breath. The Spirit (associated with the number 5, the fingers) descends from the breath (in-spir-ation), out of the nose.

And isn’t the creation of the universe the ultimate case of God thumbing his nose at us? Maybe it’s the antagonism of man against God too.

The notes I put in the margin of my copy direct me to two other references to this gesture I picked up elsewhere in the novel:

Page 253, in II.1, says that history — the battle of brothers — proceeds with “general thumbtonosery.”

Page 320, in II.3, finds the Norwegian Captain, in one of the tellings, insulting the tailor/Kersse/Cad by saying “the big bag of my hamd till hem.” [which references the Biblical Ham, as well as the meat…the scrotum (bag)…the hem of a garment…and the process of tilling]

It’s interesting to me that these two references come in chapters flanking II.2. I don’t know what to make of that, except to say that the gesture is one of conflict between brothers on the lower register (Shem v. Shaun) and the higher (HCE v. the Cad). [the difference between these registers is marked by how more complex the second reference is]

And right in the middle of those references, in II.2, is the illustration. Something for me to reflect on and perhaps write a post about in the future.

The Individual Triad describes the individual person.

(6) had been the original point (1) now capable of being defined in terms of all that other stuff. A definite thing in space and time, but still part of the cosmos. In order for us to have experience, we have to put up a veil through which we think of ourselves as distinct individuals, cut off from the universe. And that’s the function of sephiroth 7-9.

Shockt
Ockt
Ni

(7) represents emotion (shocked!), (8) represents knowledge, and (9) represents the imagination or self-image.

Campbell and Robinson give the attributions, time, space, and causality. Or, I guess, our senses of it.

And finally Geg. The egg.

We started with the cosmic egg of 0 (the negative veils). When we hit 10, we still have that egg, 0, but it has now become something, the nourishing meal of experience. The egg has been cracked and served up by the feminine principle, but in a sense it’s still the same whole egg. See my discussion of the math problem in II.2 for an exploration of how “Nothing” is another way to look at “all things” (and read here as well for further reflections).

All of the rigamarolre of experience doesn’t disturb the true Nothingness that underlies all things. It just adds the joy of experience. Hence, the 1, the unity, next to the 0, the Nothingness.

[Punning on Zoroaster, Joyce calls ten “Zero Thruster” earlier in the chapter…the phallic 1 and the feminine 0. The universe is cracked open and put back together in the sex act. Which is precisely how eggs are fertilized in the first place]

[Recall that sexuality is the cause of the Fall and the vehicle of Redemption…”Hearasays in Paradox Lust”]

There’s a footnote attached to Geg. This time, Issy draws this image in the margin:

And the footnote: “And gags for skool, and crossbuns and whopes he’ll enjoyimsolff over our drawings on the line”

The illustration appears to be crossed utensils, with which to enjoy the feast, but they are also a cross. It’s the X on the Tunc Page of the Book of Kells, with all that entails (I’ll have to write a post about crosses in the book soon as well).

“Whopes” suggests simultaneously hopes, oops (as in a mistake), and whoops (as in whooping with joy)

Drawings on the line could also be like a prize “drawing” (like a lottery, the lottery of existence), and “on the line” could be like “at stake.”

But guess what? We’re not done! We’ve seen Issy’s comments in the footnotes, but the brothers have their comments as well in the margins.

[once again, the brothers and Issy/ALP are all parts of HCE. We’re seeing here symbols for how the individual comes apart and gets put back together at once…surrounded by commentary from all his aspects, all the ways he feels about it]

On the left side is Shaun’s austere comments (he and Shem switched sides during the math problem, remember). He lists a bunch of words that, presumably, correspond to the sephiroth. Let’s do them three at a time:

Pantocracy.
Bimutualism.
Interchangeability.

That’s the supernal triad. Pantocracy is the “rule of all” at Kether…to the mutual togetherness of 2 to the Interchangeability of 3. To the Great Mother (3), we’re all interchangeable. We’re all in each other.

Next:

Naturality.
Superfetation.
Stabimobilism.

The emergence of the natural world (4), the production of the brothers (5) — “Superfetation” is the fertilizing of a second egg when there already has been a first egg fertilized — and the stability of (6).

Next:

Periodicity.
Consummation.
Interpenetrativeness.

Some interesting reflections there if we attribute these numbers to emotion, knowledge, imagination (or to [our perceptions of] time, space, and causality). I’ll note that Interpenetrativeness (9) makes an interesting contrast with Interchangeability (3). From the highest perspective, we’re all interchangeable. From a lower point of view, from our human vantage point, perhaps the most we can see is how we’re all interconnected.

And then, check out 10:

Predicament.

Ain’t it just, though?

His comment on “Their feed begins” is more cryptic: 

Balance of the factual by the theoric Boox and Coox, Amallagamated.

I take this to mean that in the world of our experience, we have to balance fact and theory, books balanced by cooks (book learning, like reading the recipe, balanced by action, actually cooking)…also, it recalls the words books and cocks. Theory and practice. “Amalgamated” has “Allah” mixed in there. Allah is not just the name of God, it also combines Al (Hebrew for all) with La (Hebrew for nothing). The balance of all elements.

The annotations tell me that Boox and Coox is a reference to a play. I’m sure there’s something to discover there if you dig more.

And now for Shem’s commentary!

He leads off this whole thing by saying,

MAWMAW,LUK, YOUR
BEEEFTAY’S
FIZZIN OVER!

The emanation of the sephiroth is like the mother’s tea bubbling up and spilling over. Since “tea” consistently refers to sex in the Wake (from the phrase “wet the tea”), I take this to mean that the process of descent through the sephiroth, or ascent back to Enlightenment, is sexual in nature, the cosmic orgasming of the Star Goddess.

LUK = LVX, “light.” Mawmaw signifies eating.

Luk = look (a comment on “see’s eneugh”? We’ve seen enough, balanced with “look”? There’s something about looking and witnessing in the Wake that I want to return to in another post)

It’s curious that there are three Es in BEEEFTAY. E is the symbol Joyce used for HCE in his notebook (“Earwicker”). Perhaps this signifies HCE as sacrificial animal.

At the end of the syllables, Shem comments:

KAKAO-POETICLIPPUDENIES
OF THE
UNGUMPTIOUS.

Kakopoiêtikos is Greek for “prone to do evil.”

But it also pretty clearly looks to me like “poetic” mixed with caca, excrement.

I have seen “lippudenies” glossed as “libido” (the libido of the unconscious….), but it also looks to me like denial mixed with lips (the keys to redemption, elsewhere, the kiss — see the final page of the Wake). On the one hand, it’s the libido, and on the other hand, it’s the denial of that same impulse.

Ungumptious is a garbled form of unconscious. But it also seems, to me, to be “those who lack gumption”…those who are timid (enough to suppress the libido).

So putting that all together, Shem’s comment means that the libido of the unconscious makes us prone to do evil, but so does the repression of the libido, our lack of gumption. But also, the libido and its repression can both be the root of our art/poetry, which necessarily engages with the matter of existence, the shit. Kakao is shit, but it’s also cocoa, chocolate.

There’s a sweetness in confronting the shit of existence and transmuting it, through art, into redemption.

Something like that. There’s so much more to be discovered here. I’ve barely scratched the surface.

What a page of Finnegans Wake!