My title is a quote from the Keats poem “La Belle Dame Sans Merci.” I was thinking of this haunting ballad — which depicts a female figure ensnaring a knight — around the same time that I was first seriously contemplating the speech of Issy in I.6, the quiz chapter. Like the Belle Dame, Issy is a sort of temptress figure.

This post looks at some highlights of Issy’s speech and thinks about Issy as a character in Finnegans Wake.

Issy, short for Iseult (or Isolde), is the younger form of ALP. She’s HCE’s daughter, who grows up to be his wife (and/or the wife of the “next” HCE, his son in the next generation). She is also his temptress, the force that breaks him into pieces: looking at herself in the mirror, she is the two girls who tempt HCE to his crime in Phoenix Park.

The female principle of the universe manifests both as ALP and her younger form, and it is the older ALP who gathers the fallen HCE back together as Tristan (a combined form of the brothers in the next generation) so that he can marry Issy as she matures into the next ALP. [This is the equivalent of Tristan and Isolde cuckolding King Mark, and a version of this story is recounted in Finnegans Wake II.4]

Issy represents the psychological figure of the emanation or anima in its “maiden” form, the young, carefree, sometimes immature and naive aspects of each of us. If Shaun is our thoughtful extroverted side (and also our resentful rationalism) and Shem is our creative introverted side (linked to our guilt and shame), Issy is the connection between these elements of our personalities. In our lowest moods, in the grip of our Selfhood, these aspects are all divided and at war: Issy is the Nuvoletta looking down at a neglectful, warring Mooks and Gripes. But as we learn to cut others slack, and cut ourselves slack, as we escape from our sense of being wronged and what we are owed — we integrate these elements into a cohesive humanity (HCE) of both male and female aspects. Together, the letters of HCE and ALP can be arranged as CHAPEL, a word associated with Issy through the word “Chapelizod,” a village in Dublin whose name literally means “Chapel of Iseult.” It is often thought that the dreamer of Finnegans Wake lives in Chapelizod.

But who is Issy in I.6?

At this point in the novel, the dreamer’s mind has fully divided into a distinct Shem and Shaun. The separation first occurs in I.4, deepens in I.5 (especially in its concluding paragraph), and issues forth into the fractured question-and-answer form of I.6. Here, Shem is questioning Shaun, whose answers include the Mookse and the Gripes parable. The very form of the chapter bespeaks division.

Issy speaks a single paragraph in response to question 10, a paragraph that goes on for about 5 pages. [Is Shaun answering in the voice of Issy, much in the way that other voices pour out of Yawn in III.3?] She seems to be addressing a young lover, probably Shem, imagining that this lover is interested in another woman (her reflection). And she imagines her future lover (Shaun or Tristan), whom she will be with after she dumps her current lover.

(I’m deriving this interpretation largely from the fact that II.1 suggests that Shem is spurned by Issy: he is “divorced out of courts” by the girls who are her aspects. Parts of her speech — referring to her auditor as bookish and frightened — sound to me like references to Shem. Some critics, including Tindall, disagree and think Issy is talking to Shaun here; since the brothers are in some senses interchangeable, this is perhaps an academic point)

Here is the question Issy is answering:

What bitter’s love but yurning, what’ sour lovemutch but a bref burning till shee that drawes dothe smoake retourne?

It suggests that love is bittered and soured by yearning and burning. But it simultaneously says that love is the kind of bitter emotion that consists of yearning (what [kind of] bitter is love…but yearning?). And it simultaneously says that our love match is only a brief burning (“match” as in two people matched together…but also like a lighted match that produces fire and burns briefly).

Love is an ideal emotion that is bittered and soured by our human foibles, and/or it is an elevation of those human foibles into something great, though brief and painful.

In short – Blake’s torments of love and jealousy.

And so we begin.

I know, pepette, of course, dear, but listen, precious! Thanks, pette, those are lovely, pitounette, delicious! But mind the wind, sweet! What exquisite hands you have, you angiol, if you didn’t gnaw your nails, isn’t it a wonder you’re not achamed of me, you pig, you perfect little pigaleen! I’ll nudge you in a minute! I bet you use her best Perisian smear off her vanity table to make them look so rosetop glowstop nostop. I know her. Slight me, would she? For every got I care! Three creamings a day, the first during her shower and wipe off with tissue. Then after cleanup and of course before retiring.

She addresses Shem as her pet or puppet. Interestingly, “pepette” is a diminutive term for a young girl. One online translation makes it the equivalent of “chick,” another suggests it denotes a young girl who wants to appear older. So she’s feminizing Shem.

Issy is already jealous of another woman and imagines that her lover uses this woman’s creams…the ones she creams herself with three times a day.

I thought at first “pitounette” was a kind of candy or something, but http://www.fweet.org says that this is just another pet name for him. “Peter” is apparently French slang for fart (hence, “mind the wind” – is it flatulence that is delicious?)

Next she starts talking about other men who want her. “By my soul,” she begins….

Beme shawl, when I think of that espos of a Clancarbry, the foodbrawler, of the sociationist party with hiss blackleaded chest, hello, Prendregast! that you, Innkipper, and all his fourteen other fullback maulers or hurling stars or whatever the dagos they are, baiting at my Lord Ornery’s, just becups they won the egg and spoon there so ovally provencial at Balldole. My Eilish assent he seed makes his admiracion. He is seeking an opening and means to be first with me as his belle alliance. Andoo musnoo play zeloso! Soso do todas. Such is Spanish. Stoop alittle closer, fealse! Delightsome simply! Like Jolio and Romeune. I haven’t fell so turkish for ages and ages! Mine’s me of squisious, the chocolate with a soul. Extraordinary! Why, what are they all, the mucky lot of them only? Sht! I wouldn’t pay three hairpins for them. Peppt! That’s rights, hold it steady! Leg me pull. Pu! Come big to Iran. Poo! What are you nudging for? No, I just thought you were. Listen, loviest!

“Espos” is a husband (esposo in Spanish)…this is Shaun/Tristan, the next-to-be HCE to whom she will marry after leaving Shem. Tristan is more masculine than Shem and thus appears with his team of footballers (foodbrawlers…fighting over the food at the wake) (15 players on a team). They’re going to stay at the inn (HCE’s inn?) because they won the race at Baldoyle (the competition of the sons to overtake the father). A race that is won by Tristan is usually a horserace in Finnegans Wake, but here it’s an egg and spoon race. Eggs…Humpty Dumpty, breakfast eggs, eggs to be fertilized (“he seed”…. “he is seeking an opening….”).

“Belle alliance” is where the Battle of Waterloo ended (HCE’s fall — which is simultaneously his triumph in the form of his successor — is likened to Napoleon’s defeat and Wellington’s victory. See the Willingdone episode in I.8).

Zeloso is jealous in Spanish. “And you must not be jealous” (or “you must now be jealous”; or zealous). Soso is Spanish for dull. Or it’s the English So (thus). Or it’s the English so-so (moderation…do everything in moderation). Or it’s “thus do all (girls).” Don’t play jealous like all the girls do. Or do play jealous. Everything in moderation. It means all of the above at once.

Okay, I’m gonna pick up the pace here and just quote some highlights:

Of course it was too kind of you, miser, to remember my sighs in shockings, my often expressed wish when you were wandering about my trousseaurs and before I forget it don’t forget, in your extensions to my personality, when knotting my remembrancetie […] I’ll always in always remind of snappy new girters

That’s “my size in stockings.” 

Trousseau is a bride’s things…but also trousers. He was wondering about them while wandering about them.

She recalls

the rubberend Mr Polkingtone, the quonian fleshmonger who Mother Browne solicited me for unlawful converse with

This is HCE and ALP…she solicited Issy for sex with her husband, to tempt him in the Park (see I.8 and the accusation that ALP is a “proxenate” (procurer)!)

Issy apparently has oral sex with her lover during this speech:

Ha! O mind you poo tickly. Sall I puhim in momou. Mummum. Funny spot to have a fingey!

She expresses jealousy toward his other women he flirts with:

May […] that her blanches mainges may rot leprous off her whatever winking maggis I’ll bet by your cut you go fleurting after with all the glass on her and the jumps in her stomewhere! Haha! I suspected she was! Sink her! May they fire her for a barren ewe! So she says: Tay for thee? Well, I saith: Angst so mush: and desired she might not take it amiss if I esteemed her but an odd.

She wants to make him jealous too:

I’ll kiss you back to life, my peachest. I mean to make you suffer, meddlar, and I don’t care this fig for contempt of courting. That I chid you, sweet sir? You know I’m tender by my eye. Can’t you read by dazzling ones through me true? Bite my laughters, drink my tears. Pore into me, volumes, spell me stark and spill me swooning. I just don’t care what my thwarters think. Transname me loveliness, now and here me for all times!

I love “Pore into me, volumes.” She’s the muse, the anima, the Belle Dame Sans Merci lurking in each of our minds, the female figure who delivers selflessness.

Then in the following passage, Issy essentially says, “Wait a minute. Did you say something?” She’s not listening to Shem:

O, pardone! That was what? Ah, did you speak, stuffstuff? More poestries from Chickspeer’s with gleechoreal music or a jaculation from the garden of the soul. Of I be leib in the immoralities? O, you mean the strangle for love and the sowiveall of the prettiest? Yep, we open hap coseries in the home. And once upon a week I improve on myself I’m so keen on that New Free Woman with novel inside.

The “sowiveall of the prettiest” (survival, to wive/marry all)…there’s something distinctly Darwinian about these torments of love and jealousy.

As long as I’m noting the groaners, check this one out:

Let’s root out Brimstoker and give him the thrall of our lives. It’s Dracula’s nightout.

Issy seems impressed by the “New Free Woman with novel inside.” The New Freewoman was the periodical that first serialized A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (the periodical was later called The Egotist, and its editor Harriet Shaw Weaver would become one of Joyce’s most important patrons). Perhaps this is a reference to the figure of the “New Woman” of the late nineteenth century. Or perhaps Issy represents new kinds of literature or artistic inspiration: her form Nuvoletta is a pun on “nouvelles lettres” (French for “new literature”) [she is mentioned as “noveletta” in I.4]. Issy also says, just before the above quote, “And once upon a week I improve on myself,” which the annotations gloss as “read literature for ‘improving’ one’s mind and character.” Maybe Issy styles herself a “New Woman” who improves herself with literature, though she may be a thrall to works she finds “thrilling” (is she a shallow reader?). She is awash in “once upon a times,” so she reads them “once upon a week” (this seems to be a joke on the opening line of Portrait, which is itself sort of a joke — there are at least a handful of lines in the Wake goofing on the opening to Portrait).

Holy bug, how my highness would jump to make you flame your halve a bannan in two when I’d run my burning torchlight through

Here, she sounds like the Prankquean, dividing the male principle into two, or dividing herself into two. The Prankquean sets Fireland ablaze, and Issy carries a torch for love.

If I am laughing with you? No, lovingest, I’m not so dying to take my rise out of you, adored. Not in the very least. 

“I’m not trying to make you adore me less,” she says. And then she gives the reasons for this:

It’s only because the rison is I’m only any girl, you lovely fellow of my dreams, and because old somebooby is not a roundabout

“Somebooby” is HCE, as the next few lines clarify, who is not around any longer after his fall.

I’m going to skip over many lines, and she eventually continues to give reasons:

And because, you pluckless lankaloot, I hate the very thought of the thought of you and because, dearling, of course, adorest, I was always meant for an engindear from the French college, to be musband

She loves him and she hates him, she wants him to suffer and she wants him to adore her, and she is meant for another, an engineer (Shaun).

“Lankaloot” is, I think, Lancelot, who cuckolded King Arthur just as Tristan cuckolds king Mark, just as HCE’s sons cuckold him.

She drifts off into a fantasy of her future husband:

when we do and contract with encho tencho solver when you are married to reading and writing which pleasebusiness now won’t be long for he’s so loopy on me and I’m so leapy like since the day he carried me from the boat, my saviored of eroes, to the beach and I left on his shoulder one fair hair to guide hand and mind to its softness. Ever so sorry! I beg your pardon, I was listening to every treasuried word I said fell from my dear mot’s tongue

[The bolded part makes me think this is Shem she is talking to]

She calls herself “leapy.” She’s the leap year girl whose number is 29. “Leapy” recalls ALP dubbing herself “Leafy” on the last pages of the novel (all my leaves have drifted from me…but one clings still….).

She says here, “Oh, sorry! Sure, I was listening….” She’s not listening to him at all; she’s just prattling on and on about herself and her daft fantasies of love and jealousy.

If Keats’ Belle Dame is a mystical portrait of the inner female principle of inspiration, Joyce’s Issy is…not quite a parody, but something much closer to a real person who activates this part of our psyche.

Issy cuddles and kisses Shem:

Anyway, here’s my arm, pulletneck. Gracefully yours. Move your mouth towards minth, more, preciousest, more on more! To please me, treasure. Don’t be a, I’m not going to! Sh! nothing! A cricri somewhere! Buybuy! I’m fly! Hear, pippy, under the limes. You know bigtree are all against gravstone. They hisshistenency. Garnd ond mand! So chip chirp chirrup, cigolo, for the lug of Migo! The little passdoor, I go you before, so, and you’re at my apron stage. Shy is him, dovey? Musforget there’s an audience.

There’s an audience watching. She goes on to mention the 12 patrons of HCE’s pub and the other 28 girls of her school, whom she lists by name, the first 26 of which are named for the letters of the alphabet. 

The zodiac and alphabet, pieces of existence produced by the Fall, bear witness to their canoodling and love making, in a way not unlike the Four Old Men watching Tristan and Isolde in II.4.

She looks forward to her wedding:

When their bride was married all my belles began ti ting. A ring a ring a rosaring! Then everyone will hear of it. Whoses wishes is the farther to my thoughts.

She swears:

I swear to you by Fibsburrow churchdome and Sainte Andrée’s Undershift, by all I hold secret from my world and in my underworld of nighties and naughties and all the other wonderwearlds! Close your, notmust look! Now open, pet, your lips, pepette

My underworld of nighties and naughties. Lovely.

Her domain is the unconscious, the night world, the portion of the soul we explore in our dreams, the world of the id and the sexual impulses.

Are you enjoying, this same little me, my life, my love? Why do you like my whisping? Is it not divinely deluscious? But in’t it bafforyou? Misi misi! Tell me till my thrillme comes! I will not break the seal. I am enjoying it still, I swear I am! Why do you prefer its in these dark nets, if why may ask, my sweetykins? Sh sh! Longears is flying. No, sweetissest, why would that ennoy me? But don’t! You want to be slap well slapped for that. Your delighted lips, love, be careful!

Isn’t her whispering bad for you? Doesn’t it baffle you (bafforyou)? Be careful, do you want me to slap you?

Don’t start like that, you wretch! […] It’s only another queer fish or other in Brinbrou’s damned old trouchorous river again […] Excuse me for swearing, love, I swear to the sorrasims on their trons of Uian I didn’t mean to by this alpin armlet!

Don’t jump…it’s only a fish in the river. HCE as the salmon of knowledge that Finn MacCool consumed in Irish legend.

The fact that the lover jumps and is all trembly is another sign that he’s Shem.

Did you really never in all our cantalang lives speak clothse to a girl’s before? No! Not even to the charmermaid? How marfellows! Of course I believe you, my own dear doting liest, when you tell me.

He tells her he’s never been so close to a girl to speak to her about her clothes (her stockings and nighties and naughties). And she believes him!

[The girls who tempt HCE are identified with ALP’s chambermaids in I.8]

Chambermaids become charmer maids. How marvelous the two brothers of the same Great Sea/Mother, the “marfellows.”

Big finish:

Never that ever or I can remember dearstreaming faces, you may go through me! Never in all my whole white life of my matchless and pair. Or ever for bitter be the frucht of this hour! With my whiteness I thee woo and bind my silk breasths I thee bound! Always, Amory, amor andmore! Till always, thou lovest! Shshshsh! So long as the lucksmith. Laughs!

There’s something magical here, as often in Joyce’s conclusions. Amor becomes “and more.” “Luck” carries resonance with light (lux) and look (all the looking and witnessing going on in the Wake). Locksmith recalls keys.

The idea of laughter brings us back to Joyce’s comic vision, that all of this is ultimately supposed to be funny, a laughing acceptance of those torments of love and jealousy that we take oh so seriously too much of the time.