This post briefly looks at an exchange in I.8 and another exchange in III.3, both of which deal with the ideas of sounds and wounds in Finnegans Wake.

One washerwoman asks the other, haven’t you heard it before (the gossip, or the prayer she had just referred to)?

The other responds,

It’s that irrawaddyng I’ve stoke in my aars. It all but husheth the lethest zswound. 

(The Irrawaddy and the Aar are both rivers) Presumably that third word is supposed to be “ear wadding.” The first sentence could mean, “It’s the ear wadding I’ve stuck in my ears.” But it’s also written so that it sounds like “I’ve stuck in my arse.”

The second sentence suggests, “it all but hushes the least sound.” The Lethe is the river of forgetfulness in the underworld of Greek mythology. Souls drink from it so that they forget their mortal life before resting forever.

Stuffing the wadding in the ears/arse is what hushes the sounds…spelled like zounds, God’s wounds.

That word occurs in a critical place in III.3: there, during the interrogation of Yawn by the Four Old Men, the All Father Finnegan speaks from the deepest depths of Yawn. This is the voice of the Dreamer himself, the lowest level of the unconscious.

This exchange happens between one of the Old Men and Finnegan:

—Impassable tissue of improbable liyers! D’yu mean to sett there where y’are now, coddlin your supernumerary leg, wi’that bizar tongue in yur tolkshap, and your hindies and shindies, like a muck in a market, Sorley boy, repeating yurself, and tell me that?

—I mean to sit here on this altknoll where you are now, Surly guy, replete in myself, as long as I live, in my homespins, like a sleepingtop, with all that’s buried ofsins insince insensed insidesofme. If I can’t upset this pound of pressed ollaves I can sit up zounds of sounds upon him.

I love how this exchange echoes and garbles phrases: for instance, “repeating yurself” becomes “replete in myself.” We could look at this exchange as a reader of Finnegans Wake questioning Joyce. In the context of the novel, it’s a part of the dreamer questioning the dreamer himself.

To a reader (or to a dream character), it seems like the author of this text (or the mind that authors the dream) is just continuously repeating himself, mentally masturbating in a performance of linguistic acrobatics (“coddlin your supernumerary leg, wi’that bizar tongue in yur tolkshap”).

But the dreamer/artist is doing much more: he is expressing “all that’s buried ofsins insince insensed insidesofme.” There’s a lot of heavy unconscious baggage to which his art gives voice.

“Ollaves” is the word for a sage in ancient Ireland, one of the highest ranks of Druids. The dreamer/artist may not be able to “upset” his learned audience (in the way he wants?), but he is able to “sit up zounds of sounds upon him.”

That’s what Finnegans Wake is: it’s not, as some readers might assume, mere “bizar tongue” or mere intellectual masturbation or just endlessly repeating the same thing. Of course, it is all of that, but it’s much more.

It’s the outpouring of a creative mind “replete in himself,” which I take to mean not only full of himself but complete in himself — like God being utterly complete in himself but creating the world anyway (according to some theologies) out of an abundance of love. Here, though, the dreamer seems to have an abundance of sins, incensed feelings, insincerity (and maybe a tendency to blame, which the novel elsewhere associates with Shaun…”insince” contains the word “since,” which indicates causality).

And what he sends up (or sets up, the inverse of “upsets”), in a parallel to Finnegan sitting up at his wake, is zounds of sounds. That’s what Finnegans Wake is — zounds of sounds. The kind of sounds that make you go, “Zounds!” (“What an amazing artistic achievement!”) but also the kind of sounds that record, or perhaps inflict, the wounds of God.

Of course, “God” here is Finnegan, the Cosmic All-Father — and God is each of us, a manifestation of the Fall of that Unity. God is wounded constantly, through our transgressions and falls into Selfhood, but those wounds can also be the sources of redemption. The Fall and the Rise are equated in Finnegans Wake.

I am put in mind of the Willingdone’s “Wounderworker” — which is his telescope, his phallus, and the body of each of us — that which works wounds and works wonder. An instrument to know existence, which involves both hurting and healing. I recently learned that “wonder working power” is an evangelical term for the power of God. In Finnegans Wake, it’s a power that works through wounds.

To return to I.8: if sending up “zounds of sounds” corresponds to the Fall — entering the dream, where the unconscious mind unleashes these sounds and wounds — then the Redemption, waking up, happens by quieting those sounds, which is figured by blocking up the ears with ear wadding. There is a parallel here, I think, to quieting the conscious mind, as happens in certain styles of meditation.

As I discussed in an earlier post, the Fall is likened to a gorge or gap, and the Redemption is likened to bridging or filling that gap. This is the sexual interpretation of having a wad “stoke in my aars.” Indeed, as I discussed in that post, Shem declares to his brother when they reconcile, “I plant my penstock in your postern, chinarpot” (II.2). This corresponds to the “candlestock” of I.3.

The words “penstock” and “candlestock” contain a final syllable that resembles the word  “stoke” from “stoke in my aars.” “Stoke” also refers to stoking a flame, the fires of the Phoenix, which bring both destruction and rebirth.