Finnegans Wake II.3 is the longest chapter in the book: it’s nearly 1/6 of the length of the whole work. It’s also the densest chapter. The study chapter (II.2) may be the hardest to read, but I think this chapter is as dense as it gets. Words seem more packed with meaning than usual. The narrative, such as it is, continually confuses the present with the past. More so than any other chapter, it is a microcosm of the whole book.

It’s the dead center of the dream. The deepest part. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we get the longest sustained speech yet from HCE here, as well as a very long speech from his constituent parts that destroy him. The only other place with a long speech from him is III.3 – the second longest chapter. Third chapters seem to focus on HCE and give him voice.

The structure is quite complicated, but a broad view of it can be put simply: we get the densest telling yet of HCE’s fall (presented as a very long variant of the Prankqueen episode); we get a full reconciliation of the brothers, who turn into HCE; and then HCE falls again.

The chapter takes place in HCE’s tavern. The tavern’s patrons are the three soldiers who destroy HCE (his three aspects…Shem, Shaun, and their combined form).

A tale is told about a Norwegian Captain who came to Dublin to buy a suit. It seems like HCE is telling this story, but it quickly takes on a life of its own, and you get the sense that it’s being told by voices all around the tavern. Clearly, this Captain is HCE from a previous cycle. He arrives in Dublin, seeks out a tailor (Kersse), has a dispute with him, and rips him off by sailing away without paying. This happens three times, with many echoes of the Prankquean episode (“Stolp, tief, stolp, come bag to Moy Eireann! And the Norweeger’s capstan swaradeed, some blowfish out of schooling: All lykkehud!”). At the last repetition, he appears to be converted to Christianity by Kersse and married to his daughter, ALP. This is a new version of the fall: as it’s put with HCE’s characteristic stutter, he’s “Cawcaught. Coocaged.”

As the story unfolds (or circles around), the present and the past happen concurrently. HCE making change for his patrons in the “present” is the equivalent of Kersse catching up with the captain and taking back his ill-gotten money in the “past” is the equivalent of (another) HCE’s encounter with the Cad in the Park in the mythical “past.”

Everything is happening at once. “Present tense integument.”

Then, a bit of an interlude happens, summing up some of the themes of the book. The old maid, Kate, comes down with a message from ALP asking HCE to come to bed. I think this is an alternate version of the story in I.8 when she “sendred her boudeloire maids to His Affluence […] with respecks from his missus […] and a request might she passe of him for a minnikin.”

The confused storytelling mixes with sounds coming over the radio. The patrons want to hear a radio play! So HCE turns on the radio – it’s a vaudeville performance of Taff and Butt (Shem and Shaun), who discuss the crime of the Russian General (HCE, their father) and how Butt (also called Buckley) in retaliation shot him. At the end of their performance, the brothers reconcile, merging into a new HCE.

After the play is over, HCE defends the Russian General, and his patrons turn against him. He offers a defense of himself – like he did in the Park before the Cad – but it’s too late: he is to fall again.

It’s almost closing time. HCE is cleaning up. He can hear the sounds outside of the ballad that will destroy his reputation (from I.2). The ballad singers are getting closer.

The tavern patrons give a long speech condemning HCE and describing how they beat him up.

HCE wanders around his empty tavern, mixing together all the remaining bits of booze left in his patrons’ glasses. He drinks it all down and collapses drunk.

And that’s it – it’s the whole book in microcosm. Three cycles of the fall – the reconciliation of the children – the creation of a new HCE – his fall again.

*

Since I’ve been talking about the brother battle so much, I’m going to focus in this post on the Taff and Butt section and look closely at the bit where they reconcile and re-amalgamate.

It’s actually not clear whether they are supposed to be on the radio or on television. Their dialogue is written as a script with stage directions, which obviously wouldn’t be visible on a radio. Maybe Joyce just intends this to be like a dream, where you can hear a radio and simultaneously “know” what the speaker is doing (the way you just “know” things in a dream), but he also refers to the program as a “verbivocovisual presentment” and earlier talks about something with a screen that will “flash substittles of noirse-made-earsy from a nephew mind the narrator” (subtitles? The three soldiers are referred to as his nephews at times).

[At one point, the stage directions suggest that the dreamer of Finnegans Wake himself nearly wakes up (!), or at least that’s how Campbell and Robinson interpret it]

The dialogue between the brothers is extremely dense, and it’s full of references to wars, especially the Crimean War. There are numerous echoes of Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade” (celebrating a brave but doomed company of soldiers during the Crimean War). And there are a lot of Russian words.

Butt was evidently one of the three soldiers who witnessed HCE’s crime and attacked him for it. Taff asks him about the details of what he saw and what he did. So this is another one of Finnegans Wake‘s cross examinations, as in I.4 and III.3.

This is the clearest the novel has been so far about HCE’s crime in the Park. Of course, it’s still very obscure, but a few passages leave no doubt that he defecated in the Park. But it’s conflated with his sexual offense – he is described as having an erection, with the girls giving love to him — and it even suggests that he had sex with one of the soldiers/sons.

It’s the Oedipal scene. The Father is imagined as a threatening, rapacious force, claiming the girls for himself and dominating/castrating the sons, and Creating – and his creativity is perceived as a joyful relief and a dirty act to be ashamed of (defecation). As in Freud, the sons have an unconscious, repressed desire to be penetrated by the Father, but this is so threatening (both because of his Oedipal power in possessing the mother and because of the incest taboo) that it inspires the son to want to murder the Father. These energies pulse under the entire conversation/performance.

It’s no wonder they call HCE their “intrepidation of dreams.” Freud was an enormous influence on Joyce, and you could almost call this episode a ridiculous parody of Freud.

Beholding (participating in) this scatological primal scene/orgy reduces Butt to tears. But when the Russian General grabs a clump of the ground to wipe his backside – that is, when he insults mother Ireland like that – Butt feels he must attack.

This could be read as the child standing up against the Father to defend the Mother. It also could be read in a postcolonial manner: HCE often represents the forces of English colonialism. Claiming Ireland’s girls, dumping his filth all over the country, and using the very land itself as a rag to clean himself – it’s all too much for the victims of colonialism to take. They must rise up. They must…awake. [“Finnegans Wake” is also a call for all the Finnegans of the world – the hero inside of all of us — to rise up against oppression] The fall of HCE is, in one sense, the rise of the democratic age. More on this in a future post.

The writing is incredibly obscure, even more so than usual for the Wake:

Ullahbluh! Sehyoh narar, pokehole sann! Manhead very dirty by am anoyato. Like old Dolldy Icon when he cooked up his iggs in bicon. He gatovit and me gotafit and Oalgoak’s Cheloven gut a fudden. Povar old pitschobed! Molodeztious of metchennacht belaburt that pentschmyaso!

That passage seems to begin, “Sayonara, Poke-hole-san. Manhead very dirty.” And then it mixes descriptions of food and cooking (including several Russian words along those themes) with sex. For instance, when it says he cooked up his eggs and bacon, it uses “bicon” — French slang for a large vagina. I’ll leave most of the obscene interpretations to readers’ own ingenuity, but I’ll note that “Pentschmyaso” — try saying it out loud — combines Russian words that mean curse and meat.

Eventually, Shem (Taff) asks Shaun (Butt) something like, “You attacked him, right?”

Shaun replies, “Yass […] I don’t think I did not.” And he elaborates the scene:

when I heard his lewdbrogue reciping his cheap cheateary gospeds to sintry and santry and sentry and suntry I thought he was only haftara having afterhis brokeforths but be the homely Churopodvas I no sooner seen aghist of his frighteousness then I was bibbering with vear a few versets off fooling for fjorg for my fifth foot. Of manifest ’tis obedience and the. Flute!

He says he heard the Father lewdly reciting his gospel (or selling his cheap goods) to all and sundry, and at first he thought the Father was only like this after breakfast (after he went broke for this, as his voice broke forth), but when Shaun saw the Father’s frightfulness (which seems like the righteous wrath of God), he was blubbering with fear and gibbering a few verses to join him. Obedience to the father. Flood! The flood of his tears (to be matched with the flood of the Father’s urine or ejaculation) – the Fall.

Shem comments, “Is not athug who would. Weepon, weeponder, song of sorrowmon!” Go ahead, cry. And then he counsels, “Take the cawraidd’s blow!”

The “coward’s blow” is a reference to Ulysses, when a British soldier punches Stephen in a brothel in the night town episode.

It corresponds to Shaun punching Shem in the previous chapter.

But here, it’s Shem telling Shaun to “Take the coward’s blow!” Interestingly, “cawraidd’s” sounds like “courage.” I presume that undergoing this coward’s blow/courage blow means to tell the whole truth about what happened, to confess his Oedipal anxiety.

Shaun’s about to tell all, and talk about a memory that he’s tried to repress and drive out of his mind – the Oedipal guilt that’s driving him mad (the very thing that has inspired his cruel treatment of Shem throughout the book, attacking others so as to avoid condemning himself for his rage against the Father). Is disclosing that truth – being a tattle tale on father and on the self, essentially – an act of cowardice or courage? It’s perceived both ways by the mind.

But when I seeing him in his oneship fetch along within hail that tourrible tall with his nitshnykopfgoknob and attempting like a brandylogged rudeman cathargic, lugging up and laiding down his livepelts so cruschinly like Mebbuck at Messar and expousing his old skinful self tailtottom by manurevring in open ordure to renewmurature with the cowruads in their airish pleasantry I thanked he was recovering breadth from some herdsquatters beyond the carcasses and I couldn’t erver nerver to tell a liard story not of I knew the prize if from lead or alimoney. But when I got inoccupation of a full new of his old basemiddelism, in ackshan, pagne pogne, by the veereyed lights of the stormtrooping clouds and in the sheenflare of the battleaxes of the heroim and mid the shieldfails awail of the bitteraccents of the sorafim and caught the pfierce tsmell of his aurals, orankastank, a suphead setrapped, like Peder the Greste, altipaltar, my bill it forsooks allegiance (gut bull it!) and, no lie is this, I was babbeing and yetaghain bubbering, bibbelboy, me marrues me shkewers me gnaas me fiet, tob tob tob beat it, solongopatom. Clummensy if ever misused, must used you’s now!

To make a very long story short, Shaun saw the Father expose his backside (the General was manure-vring), and when he caught the smell of him he was blubbering like a baby. It’s infantilizing, to behold the power of the Father.

But then:

But, meac Coolp, Arram of Eirzerum, as I love our Deer Dirouchy, I confesses withould pridejealice when I looked upon the Saur of all the Haurousians with the weight of his arge fullin upon him from the travaillings of his tommuck and rueckenased the fates of a bosser there was fear on me the sons of Nuad for him and it was heavy he was for me then the way I immingled my Irmenial hairmaierians ammon-gled his Gospolis fomiliours till, achaura moucreas, I adn’t the arts to.

Significantly, Shaun finally says, “Mea Culpa”! It was Shem who had said “My fault” in I.7, and it was Shem who thanked Shaun for slugging him in II.2, but Shaun has not yet confessed wrongdoing of his own. Here, Shaun is recognizing his own role in the Fall and owning up to it. He loves his father, and when he saw age fallen upon him, he felt fear like a son of Noah. [The story of Noah’s three sons beholding the nakedness of their father is a parallel to the three soldiers and HCE]

The phrase “it was heavy he was for me” signifies that this is a weighty confession. Then he says something that roughly means “I blended my Irish Hail Marys with his Russian Our Fathers until I hadn’t the heart to.”

That is, he tried to make peace with the Father until he couldn’t do it anymore. This is personal psychology, but it’s also a religious allegory (Irish Catholicism versus the Eastern Orthodox Church?).

Look how he puts it: “I adn’t the arts to.” Shaun is finally acknowledging that he doesn’t have his brother’s gift for art, which he now thinks might be a way to reconcile with the father.

The word “adn’t” contains “ad” and is perhaps a reference to advertising, capitalism. The inferior art of advertising is all that Shaun has. He doesn’t have art – he has advertisements. [We’ll see his tired sloganizing in III.1-2]

Shem echoes back, “Grot Zot! You hidn’t the hurts? Vott Fonn!” That is, he’s acknowledging that the child hides the hurt of the Oedipal stage, represses it.

When you release that repressed guilt – even though you feel at first like a courageous coward – you can start to heal.

[In III.1, this is called Shem’s “Ailsweal” – All will be well when you realize that what ails you ultimately does you weal when you express it and embody it in art.

This is when the reconciliation takes place.

Shem says, “Trink off this scup and be bladdy orafferteed!”

Drink of this cup. The bloody offering. And here’s the moment:

BUTT (he whipedoff’s his chimbley phot, as lips lovecurling to the tongueopener, he takecups the communion of sense at the hands of the foregiver of trosstpassers and thereinofter centelinnates that potifex miximhost with haruspical hospedariaty proferring into his pauses somewhot salt bacon). Theres scares knud in this gnarld warld a fully so svend as dilates for the improvement of our foerses of nature by your very ample solvent of referacting upon me like is boesen fiennd.

He takes a communion of sins – through the senses – at the hands of his brother, the forgiver (fore-giver) of trespasses who forgives one who violates his trust.

What he says there is, very roughly, There’s scarce enough / scares enough / cares enough / scars enough in this whole / wide / gnarled world full of folly…(so enough of this pointless battle between us)…so (may god or their unity) send us delights to dilate us to improve us as forces of nature who are foes through the solvent (of this communion drink) which refracts / reflects on / acts upon me like my best, bosom friend and evil fiend.

That’s sort of the gist. The Two Contraries, ever reconciling, ever battling, like in Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

“Referacting upon” – also suggests “refer,” references, like all the references crammed into Finnegans Wake. Art, with all of its references and allusions, acts upon us…to send us delights. Through the delight of art, and through the erotic acceptance of the other, we dilate. We open up – we disclose our inner selves to others…and we leave an opening where they can enter. Not just sexually (which is a symbol for the true union) but so that they can come to dwell within us and know us as we really are.

There are incredibly deep insights to be had here; at the same time, I have always wondered whether the word “bladdy” is supposed to suggest “bladder,” implying that their communion might also have something to do with an erotic act involving urine.

It’s important to note that Joyce is not just making dirty jokes. He’s suggesting — profoundly — that deep insights into the self, its relationship with others, and art are not separate from materiality and sexuality: they are all deeply intertwined.

Eventually, the brothers recombine:

BUTT and TAFF (desprot slave wager and foeman feodal unsheckled, now one and the same person, their fight upheld to right for a wee while being baffled and tottered, umbraged by the shadow of Old Erssia’s magisquammythical mulattomilitiaman, the living by owning over the surfers of the glebe whose sway craven minnions had caused to revile, as, too foul for hell, under boiling Mauses’ burning brand, he falls by Goll’s gillie, but keenheartened by the circuminsistence of the Parkes O’Rarelys in a hurdly gurdly Cicilian concertone of their fonngeena barney brawl, shaken everybothy’s hands, while S. E. Morehampton makes leave to E. N. Sheilmartin after Meetinghouse Lanigan has embaraced Vergemout Hall, and, without falter or mormor or blathrehoot of sophsterliness, pugnate thc pledge of fiannaship, dook to dook, with a commonturn oudchd of fest man and best man astoutsalliesemoutioun palms it off like commodity tokens against a cococancancacacanotioun). When old the wormd was a gadden and Anthea first unfoiled her limbs wanderloot was the way the wood wagged where opter and apter were samuraised twimbs. They had their mutthering ivies and their murdhering idies and their mouldhering iries in that muskat grove but there’ll be bright plinnyflowers in Calomella’s cool bowers when the magpyre’s babble towers scorching and screeching from the ravenindove. If thees lobed the sex of his head and mees ates the seep of his traublers he’s dancing figgies to the spittle side and shoving outs the soord. And he’ll be buying buys and go gulling gells with his flossim and jessim of carm, silk and honey while myandthys playing lancifer lucifug and what’s duff as a bettle for usses makes coy cosyn corollanes’ moues weeter to wee. So till butagain budly shoots thon rising germinal let bodley chow the fatt of his anger and badley bide the toil of his tubb.

Much to say here – it’s another depiction of Finnegan’s/HCE’s fall and rise – but I’ll focus in on the last sentence: until Buckley again shoots the Russian General, let one brother chew the fat of his anger and the other bide the toil of his tubb.

I take this to mean that one way to overcome the Fall is to give voice to what bothers you (chew the fat), as Shaun did in this passage, but also get the practical work done, the toil (I’m reminded of a Zen saying, which runs something like Before enlightenment, I chopped wood and carrier water; after enlightenment, I chop wood and carry water).

“Toil of his tubb” is yet another of the Wake‘s references to A Tale of a Tub by Irish writer Jonathan Swift. It is about three brothers who represent Catholicism, Anglicanism, and Protestantism, and these three roughtly correspond to the three sons of HCE in Finnegans Wake.

*

I think what the brother battle of Finnegans Wake suggests is that while conflict is an intrinsic part of the world, there is a path forward toward the “true conciliation,” one that involves neither fetishizing the wounds of the past or deferring such conciliation until an imagined future. It is one that involves a poghue puxy, kiss with fists, a sharing of drink, a communion of sense – in the here and now, which is ultimately all times and places (when we learn to see it properly). It involves escaping the dreadful sense of “what I am owed,” and it ceases to imagine the world as a zero-sum competition where a gain for one is necessarily a loss for others (which is the only game in which a “debt” has any meaning, in which anyone can be “owed” anything).

But how to do that?

When we meet Shaun as “Justius,” he represents the cruel emphasis on “what I am owed,” the terrible aspect of justice when it is sundered from mercy and forgiveness, a ranting obsession with the wrongs of others, a desire to make the other confess and feel low. His speech goes on for ten pages, whereas Mercias speaks for barely two.

“Mercias” is the more insightful brother, but he is unable to act because he is weakness – he is pure forgiveness without the ability to be productive; he is the ingratiating coward who praises his bullies in I.7.

Both are chewing the fat of their anger, but neither can bide the toil of the tub. One looks backward, the other looks forward.

Book II is in part about the brothers’ journey toward the poghue puxy through the intervention of art. Through art, the artist begins to unplug from the zero-sum game (as Shem does toward the end of II.1), no longer seeing “loss,” in the game’s sense, as a defeat. It’s then he can thank his others for their trespasses against him (as Shem does toward the end of II.2) – not because he is ingratiating himself to them but because he authentically sees the opportunity they provide both of them. He begins to see that their trespasses and their flaws are part of him as well, that such things cannot be helped because…Here Comes Everybody. The “Mea Culpa” of Mercias unfolds into a deeper understanding of the shared capacity for wrongdoing and the need to begin to heal the wrong against the self by offering the other an olive branch – not out of some simpering obedience to a “turn the other cheek” doctrine, but out of authentic love and recognition of the self in the other.

The Tristurned Cluekey: HCE. Here Comes Everybody. Human, erring, condonable.

And that’s when Shaun is able to embrace the mea culpa as well, to acknowledge his fault, and to talk about the primal scene, and the deep guilt that motivates his rage, which feels like his fault but isn’t. The truth is, we all have these things inside of us. Here. Comes. Everybody.

Accepting the other is part of accepting the self, which a lot of the HCE material in the book deals with. It involves accepting the other as part of the self because the boundaries of “self” are not in actuality what they seem to be in the zero-sum fallen world. You are not an essence locked in battle. You are an everchanging series of stories, a riverrun, that ever retells the glory of all times and all places, and is retelling it right now, in this Moment.

More to come on all of this.