This post looks more closely at the word “Amsad,” which appears in III.3 as an anagram for other words that I quoted in my last post.

In III.3 (the interrogation of Shaun/Yawn), the voice of ALP has just emerged from Shaun, giving a version of the Letter recounting HCE’s fall. One of the Four Old Men comments:

—Lordy Daw and Lady Don! Uncle Foozle and Aunty Jack! Sure, that old humbugger was boycotted and girlcutted in debt and doom, on hill and haven, even by the show-the-flag flotilla, as I’m given now to understand, illscribed in all the gratuitouses and conspued in the takeyourhandaways. Bumbty, tumbty, Sot on a Wall, Mute art for the Million. There wasn’t an Archimandrite of Dane’s Island and the townlands nor a minx from the Isle of Woman nor a one of the four cantins nor any on the whole wheel of his ecunemical conciliabulum nor nogent ingen meid on allad the hold scurface of the jorth would come next or nigh him, Mr Eelwhipper, seed and nursery man, or his allgas bumgalowre, Auxilium Meum Solo A Domino (Amsad), for rime or ration, from piles or faces, after that.

There are many echoes in this paragraph, which I will briefly note first. The idea that HCE was boycotted and girlcutted (attacked by both the girls and soldiers in the Park, a reflection of the fear of the Oedipal rebellion of the children against the Father) recalls this from the Willingdone paragraph in I.1:

The jinnies is jillous agincourting all the lipoleums. And the lipoleums is gonn boycottoncrezy onto the one Willingdone. And the Willingdone git the band up.

Then, there’s Mute/Mutt, connected to art (since Mutt was a form of Shem the Penman, the archetypal artist, in I.1).

Then, there’s a section of this paragraph in which I hear an echo from I.1, a sentence structure in which there is a repetition of negations in quick succession. It would be easiest to put these passages side-by-side. First, the bit from III.3:

There wasn’t an Archimandrite of Dane’s Island and the townlands nor a minx from the Isle of Woman nor a one of the four cantins nor any on the whole wheel of his ecunemical conciliabulum nor nogent ingen meid on allad the hold scurface of the jorth would come next or nigh him, Mr Eelwhipper, seed and nursery man, or his allgas bumgalowre, Auxilium Meum Solo A Domino (Amsad), for rime or ration, from piles or faces, after that.

And here’s the passage from I.1:

how butt for his hold halibutt, or […] how biff for her tiddywink of a windfall […] there would not be a holey spier on the town nor a vestal flouting in the dock, nay to make plein avowels, nor a yew nor an eye to play cash cash in Novo Nilbud by swamplight nor a’ toole o’ tall o’ toll and noddy hint to the convaynience.

Also, the reference to the surface of the earth reminds me of one of the singers of the ballad vanishing from the “sourface” of the earth near the beginning of I.3. 

And obviously, the reference to Humpty Dumpty.

*

But okay, why is the speaker sad?

“Amsad” is the abbreviation for Auxilium Meum Solo A Domino, which means “My help comes only from the Lord.” This paragraph identifies the dreamer/HCE as being alone, isolated in “debt and doom.” No one “would come next or nigh him, Mr Eelwhipper” — this is a silly reference to the sexual nature of the Fall: ever since he whipped out the eel, Mr. Earwicker must be alone.

At first, I thought that no one would come next or nigh him meant that no one could come compete with his greatness, and maybe that’s also a meaning of it, but the primary sense I’m getting is that he has been abandoned. And now, God is his only help.

“Amsad” then becomes twisted into Ma and Da:

—All ears did wag, old Eire wake as Piers Aurell was flappergangsted.
—Recount!

—I have it here to my fingall’s ends. This liggy piggy wanted to go to the jampot. And this leggy peggy spelt pea. And theese lucky puckers played at pooping tooletom. Ma’s da. Da’s ma. Madas. Sadam.

He was flabbergasted and flappergangsted (ganged up on by flappers?). A recounting of the events leads to a recount in the election (some passages in the book suggest that HCE lost an election due to the scandal against him). This recount becomes a counting on fingers, which I mentioned in my last post as summing up the sexual nature of the Fall (a telling or recounting of the events): Fingers, licking, spilling pee; peeping toms pooping with their tools out. The whole scandalous story of whatever wild things went on in the Park. The primal scene of humanity’s sexuality, shame, joy, and creativity. These are perhaps the Freudian Unconscious energies at their rawest. Ma and Da, together at last.

“Madas” is Sanskrit for drunk, which I guess he was at the moment of his crime in the Park (and/or is now in his fallen/intoxicated/dreaming/dead state).

It inverts the syllables of “Amsad.” Am becomes Ma and sad becomes das. Ma-das.

So this sadness of isolation is contained within his drunken Fall; it is its outcome. But I wonder if there is an implication that this Fall can be reversed, as the syllables are.

One of my earliest ideas about the Wake was that alcohol is the source of the Fall and the vehicle of redemption. Later, I would conclude that the same thing is true about sexuality in the book. And lo and behold, the word Madas is next converted into a sexual word by exchanging the order of the syllabes of Amsad without reversing them: Sadam (Sodom, referring to that Biblical city of sexual depravity).

Sexuality, liquor, bodily functions — all symbols for both the Fall and Redemption. Nothing is bad or good in itself: it’s all in how it’s used.

And so, feelings of sadness and isolation, of being swallowed up in debt and doom, can be overcome by knowing how to locate within that “Amsad” the keys to redemption. I think part of the trick is to inhabit these negative feelings fully, as much as you have to inhabit the word Amsad to find everything it contains. When meditating, we learn not to push away negative feelings but to experience the moment as it is. In that moment, we are the negative feelings, but we discover that we are also more than that: we are the consciousness in which they arise. Ultimately, we are the unified Self from which our fallen sense of self/ego has come. “My help comes only from the Integrated Self/Lord,” the All Father Finnegan who underlies all of experience.

Within the word “Amsad,” as in every experience of every moment, is the coincidence of contraries (Ma’s da. Da’s ma). Happy in sadness, sad in joy. It is only a matter of discovering it.