I was reflecting recently on a paragraph in in II.1, after Shem/Glugg’s second failure, where Joyce describes night falling on the zoo in Dublin’s Phoenix Park. This post will contain a few of my musings.

We begin:

It darkles, (tinct, tint) all this our funnaminal world.

The phenomenal world is a fun animal world. Animated by fun? The move from “tinct” to “tint” is a sign that it’s darkening…possibly because the word is growing smaller and fading, and possibly because removing the C means that it’s harder to “see.”

Yon marshpond by ruodmark verge is visited by the tide. Alvemmarea! We are circumveiloped by obscuritads. Man and belves frieren. There is a wish on them to be not doing or anything. Or just for rugs. Zoo koud!

Ave Maria, hail to the sea.

Man and beasts brothers, that says — but it could also be man and beasts cold (“belve” is “beasts” in Italian; “frieren” is German for “freeze,” but it resembles the French for “brothers”). “Zoo koud” is not only the zoo (zoo code?), but “so cold” in Dutch. It’s getting dark. Night is cold.

A fire is lit:

Drr, deff, coal lay on and, pzz, call us pyrress! Ha. 

A survey of the mother and father of the house:

Where is our highly honourworthy salutable spousefounderess? The foolish one of the family is within. Haha! Huzoor, where’s he? At house, to’s pitty. With Nancy Hands. Tcheetchee! 

The Nancy Hands is a pub on the edge of Phoenix Park.

The day has passed:

Hound through the maize has fled. What hou! Isegrim under lolling ears. Far wol! And wheaten bells bide breathless. All. The trail of Gill not yet is to be seen, rocksdrops, up benn, down dell, a craggy road for rambling. Nor yet through starland that silver sash. What era’s o’ering? Lang gong late. Say long, scielo! Sillume, see lo! Selene, sail O! Amune! Ark!? Noh?!

The moon appears near the end of those sentences (the O, by its shape, is probably a representation of the moon). And Noah’s Ark, the original zoo.

Gill is “Gaping Gill,” the Cad with the Pipe, with an allusion to “The Rocky Road to Dublin” at the end of that sentence. The reference to his “trail” that is “not yet to be seen,” his “rocksdrops,” reminds me of the end of I.3 when the Cad finishes raving at and threatening the trapped HCE, and his realization at what he might have done to him causes him to

leave downg the whole grumus of brookpebbles pangpung

And HCE (or the Cad?) has evidently left rocks behind him,

testament of the rocks from all the dead unto some the living. Olivers lambs we do call them, skatterlings of a stone

The “trail of Gill” further reminds me of the part in I.2 where Gaping Gill departs from HCE, leaving a trail of dandruff behihd him (the narrator reiterates the word “drop” in the scatalogical word “droppings”):

(one could hound him out had one hart to for the monticules of scalp and dandruff droppings blaze his trail)

And one last point on this curious sidenote: the word “rocksdrops” also appears (as two words) at the end of I.7 when the speech of Mercias/Shem blends with ALP’s voice and describes her:

with a beck, with a spring, all her rillringlets shaking, rocks drops in her tachie, tramtokens in her hair, all waived to a point and then all inuendation, little oldfashioned mummy, little wonderful mummy

I don’t know what to do with all of this, other than to make a note that I may need to explore the idea of trails and rocks in Finnegans Wake in a future post.

Back to the zoo. Things are quiet:

Nought stirs in spinney. The swayful pathways of the dragonfly spider stay still in reedery. Quiet takes back her folded fields. Tranquille thanks. Adew. In deerhaven, imbraced, alleged, injoynted and unlatched, the birds, tommelise too, quail silent. ii. Luathan? Nuathan! Was avond ere a while. Now conticinium. As Lord the Laohun is sheutseuyes. The time of lying together will come and the wildering of the nicht till cockeedoodle aubens Aurore. Panther monster. Send leabarrow loads amorrow. While loevdom shleeps.

According to Joyce, the animals are praying. The two I’s (ii) are supposed to look like birds offering up their prayers (which are the dots on the letters).

Hm. The word “ii” also looks like the way you would Romanize the Japanese word for “good.”

The animals continue to say their prayers and fall silent:

Elenfant has siang his triump, Great is Eliphas Magistrodontos and after kneeprayer pious for behemuth and mahamoth will rest him from tusker toils. Salamsalaim! Rhinohorn isnoutso pigfellow but him ist gonz wurst. Kikikuki. Hopopodorme. Sobeast! No chare of beagles, frantling of peacocks, no muzzing of the camel, smuttering of apes. Lights, pageboy, lights! Brights we’ll be brights. With help of Hanoukan’s lamp.

Brights will be brights…boys will be boys.

The passage continues for some time. Then comes the quieting of the fish in the Liffey:

the pesciolines in Liffeyetta’s bowl have stopped squiggling about Junoh and the whalk and feriaquintaism and pebble infinibility and the poissission of the hoghly course.

They’re no longer arguing about various topics: Jonah and the Whale…something that I can’t figure out…papal infallibility…and the procession of the Holy Ghost.

This is also the ceasing of the chattering of mankind’s religious nonsense. Everything is falling quiet into night.

[I looked up the second item in the list, the one I didn’t know: “feria quinta” is Latin for “fifth holiday,” and was a phrase used by early Christians for Thursday…which may be the day the Wake takes place on (a “trying thristay mournin,” I.1). “Feriaquintaism” could also be a reference to Spenser’s poem The Faerie Queene.

And if Lubbernabohore laid his horker to the ribber, save the giregargoh and dabardin going on in his mount of knowledge (munt), he would not hear a flip flap in all Finnyland.

That weird word at the beginning is a rendering of the Irish word for “tramp” (the Cad?). If a tramp laid his ear to the river, save for the noise in his mind, he would not hear a thing. The fish are silent.

The girls and the soldiers will soon be coming:

Soon tempt-in-twos will stroll at venture and hunt-by-threes strut musketeering. Brace of girdles, brasse of beauys. With the width of the way for jogjoy. Hulker’s cieclest elbownunsense. Hold hard! And his dithering dathering waltzers of. Stright!

Gotta love that throwback to the end of I.8.

It’s a marvelous little paragraph that deserves a read out loud.