Another metaphor for life in Finnegans Wake is a horse race. This post will look at some instances of horse racing in the novel.

Early in the Wake in I.1, we see an encounter between two men, one of whom appears to be a neanderthal or cave man and one of whom seems to be an explorer or conqueror. These are a proto-Shem and proto-Shaun (or early versions of HCE and the Cad) called “Mute” and “Jute.” They named for the old comic Mutt and Jeff. As in many instances of colonial contact, they have difficulty communicating with each other (anticipating other instances of miscommunication throughout the book, including HCE with the Cad in I.2 and the end of the washerwoman conversation in I.8, when they can’t hear each other over the rush of the water). One’s a native and one’s an invader, and their names recall the tribes the Saxons and the Jutes. Since the invader can’t understand the native, he interprets the native as a “mute.”

When Mute names famous battles where the Irish repelled would-be conquerors, Jute replies, “Boildoyle and rawhoney on me when I can beuraly forsstand a weird from sturk to finnic.”

That’s a garbled version of “Pour boiled oil and raw honey on me when I can barely understand a word from start to finish!” Presumably, boiling oil and honey were used to ward off invaders.

“Boildoyle” sounds like Baldoyle, the location of a race track in Dublin (Raheny, or “rawhoney,” is another suburb in Dublin).

In I.2, we learn that the gossip about HCE spread at the Baldoyle race course (“during a priestly flutter for safe and sane bets at the hippic runfields of breezy Baldoyle”). It is breezy perhaps because of HCE’s flatulence.

Much later, in II.3, during the “baffling yarn” in the tavern, one version is that Kersse (a form of the Cad) enters the pub fresh from the races. And he is asked,

—And, haikon or hurlin, who did you do at doyle today, my horsey dorksey gentryman. Serge Mee, suit! sazd he, tersey kersey.

“At doyle” is a reference to Baldoyle. “How did you do [in the races]?” he is asked. The “who did you do” perhaps recalls the fact that the Cad’s question to HCE in I.2 (which can be read as “how do you do?”) was possibly interpreted by him as an accusation of misconduct or even a proposition.

While the Cad had asked in I.2, in Irish, “How are you today my fair gentleman?” and the question put to Shem in I.4, in Latin, is “How fares your health today, noble gentleman?” here in II.3, the adjective is neither “fair” nor “noble” but “horsey dorksey.” Deeper in the dream, HCE has become a dark gentleman (as Shem is dark), and he not only recalls Humpty Dumpty but a horse or a gambler on horses.

“Search me!” he tersely replies. “Shit!” [or “Shoot!” — this is the “suit” being prepared for HCE by the tailors, the tale tellers. It’s also the “shoot” of the young soldier shooting the Russian General, the Oedipal displacement of the father by means of a phallic instrument. And it refers to HCE’s defecation in the Park.]

And when Tersse had sazd this Kersse stood them the whole koursse of training how the whole blazy raze acurraghed, from lambkinsback to sliving board and from spark to phoenish.

He told them how the race occurred, from start to finish. Spark to phoenish. 

Notice that this echoes “sturk to finnic” from the passage I quoted above from I.1, when Baldoyle is first introduced. The finish is a “phoenish,” the new beginning like a phoenix (this itself echoes the following on page 4: “Phall if you but will, rise you must: and none so soon either shall the pharce for the nunce come to a setdown secular phoenish”).

The longest version of the race comes in a news report that breaks into the middle of the vaudeville performance of Butt and Taff in II.3 (who are themselves alternate versions of Mutt and Jeff).

an admirable verbivocovisual presentment of the worldrenownced Caerholme Event has been being given by The Irish Race and World.

Caerholme is a race track in Lincoln. [Also, CaerHolme Event is CHE, another twist on our protagonist/dreamer]

The newspaper giving this report is “The Irish Race and the World.” This race is the story of the Irish people, but it’s also the story of the world. The general is found in the particular (as is the Russian General).

It’s the story of “how…Backlegs shirked the racing kenneldar” (a garbled version of “Buckley Shot the Russian General”)

Baldawl the curse, baledale the day!

Curse sounds like Kersse, and there are two garblings of Baldoyle here.

Gross Jumpiter, whud was thud? Luckluckluckluckluckluckluck! It is the Thousand to One Guinea-Gooseberry’s Lipperfull Slipver Cup. Hold hard, ridesiddle titelittle Pitsy Riley! Gurragrunch, gurragrunch! They are at the turn of the fourth of the hurdles. By the hross of Xristos, Holophullopopulace is a shote of excramation!

Great Jupiter! HCE is like the king of the gods, except he’s a gross version, and he’s also a jumping horse. Here we have the sounds of racing. A shout of exclamation, or a shot of excrement from HCE’s waste hitting the ground? Whud was thud, indeed. [This is also the thud of the defeated Druid by St. Patrick too, from IV.1, the body of HCE hitting the ground]

The repetitions of “luck” sound like horse hooves, which are also the clucking of the Hen who found the letter that is Finnegans Wake and all of literature (detailed in I.5). The letter is also this very race report (which is also a radio broadcast; in a dream, anything can be anything else at once).

The word “luck” sounds like “look,” and is a key word to several passages that should be the subject of a different essay (“Luck’s the winning word,” says Issy in II.1…she also says “Wait until the lucksmith laughs” in I.6 — recalling ALP’s laughter, “laughing through all plores for us” (I.1) — and Shem’s marginal note at the end of II.2 contains “LUK” (light) at the very end. [See this post for a discussion of “inner light” in Finnegans Wake]

Here is the conclusion of this race:

Emancipator, the Creman hunter (Major Hermyn C. Entwhistle) with dramatic effect reproducing the form of famous sires on the scene of the formers triumphs, 

HCE is a horse named “Emancipator.” He reproduces the form of his forefathers. Here Comes Everybody, repeating the past.

is showing the eagle’s way to Mr Whaytehayte’s three buy geldings Homo Made Ink, Bailey Beacon and Ratatuohy 

He teaches his ways to the three young ones (the three soldiers or sons of the Wake). They’re geldings — that is, they’ve been castrated (with all of the Freudian implications there).

[One’s a “Homo Made Ink,” parody of “Word Made Flesh”…Shaun calls Shem a “homo” in Book III. The word means “man,” it means “same” (pointing to Shem’s riddle of the universe, which will be discussed in a future post), and it also alludes to homosexuality, the repressed incestuous desires of these brothers/halves of the same man.]

[The other names are interesting too: one is the French dish ratatouille (which recalls for me the Pixar movie of that name), and the other is named for the phallic Bailey lighthouse on Howth Head]

while Furstin II and The Other Girl (Mrs ‘Boss’ Waters, Leavybrink) too early spring dabbles, are showing a clean pairofhids to Immensipater. 

The girls — clearly, the temptresses in the Park — show a pair of hides (pair of heels? Pair of ids?) to HCE. Emancipator has morphed into Immense-ipator. The immense father, and the effect of this temptation (referring to his erection)?

Our lorkmakor he is proformly annuysed He is shinkly thinkly shaking in his schayns.

Our lord and master (and our Maker) is…amused and annoyed…and shaking in his shame?

As an aside, I realize now that a horse and temptresses also figure prominently in a passage in I.1 where we survey the battles of history in a museum dedicated to the Duke of Wellington (the “Willingdone,” another avatar of HCE). This museum is called the “museyroom” — the action of the muse upon history, as well as a mushroom or penis.

There, the Willingdone is seen with his great white horse…rendered as his “great wide harse.”

In the museum, we see Wellington’s big telescope — his “tallowscoop” — through which he sees the “flanks of the jinnies.” The girls showing their hides. This is followed by the phrase “Sexcaliber hrosspower.”

From that same passage: “This is the jinnies’ hastings dispatch for to irrigate the Willingdone.” They irritate him by…irrigating him, urinating for his masturbatory pleasure. This is a hint of the Fall in the Park, the Crime that is rumored, and for which HCE feels great guilt, but which we never get the real details of.

Anyway, the Irish Race and World section in II.3 wraps up with the twin sons appearing to take HCE’s place after his shame:

This eeridreme has being effered you by Bett and Tipp. Tipp and Bett, our swapstick quackchancers, in From Topphole to Bottom of The Irish Race and World.

In my notes, I just wrote, “This book is absolutely filthy, from top to bottom.”

There’s one more major racing reference I want to discuss here.

Right before St. Patrick arrives to confront the Druid in IV.1 — the very end of the book — we get a conversation between Muta and Juva, bringing us full circle to where I began tracing references to horses.

But now their names suggestion mutability and rejuvenation (or youth? Or newness?)

They look to the Irish king, Leary:

Juva: Bitchorbotchum! Eebrydime! He has help his crewn on the burkeley buy but he has holf his crown on the Eurasian Generalissimo.

The king is betting on the competition. He has half a crown on Berkeley/Buckley/Druid, and half a crown on the Russian General, Patrick who comes from the East.

Half a crown…the coin and his kingly crown itself. Each of them is half of a full person, half of the human story of Here Comes Everybody.

Muta: Haven money on stablecert?

Juva: Tempt to wom Outsider!

He’s got money on this horse race, on the “10 to 1 outsider,” one who is tempted to…do something with a womb or warming.

Muta soon summarizes the brother battle with surprising clarity:

Muta: So that when we shall have acquired unification we shall pass on to diversity and when we shall have passed on to diversity we shall have acquired the instinct of combat and when we shall have acquired the instinct of combat we shall pass back to the spirit of appeasement?

Juva: By the light of the bright reason which daysends to us from the high.

And there you have it…life is a horse race.

This imagery always makes me think of the Sopranos episode “The Test Dream,” which is mostly a long dream sequence. One of its scenes features Tony sitting in his living room atop the racehorse that he had co-owned. His wife chastises him about keeping his horse/whores in the house. For Tony, the horse is an innocent creature that represents his own lost innocence, but it also signifies his animal nature and lusts that he strives (and fails) to keep separate from his home life and from the self-image he has built of himself as a family man.

I wonder to what extent some of this symbolism applies to HCE as well. His female portion, ALP, is described as a “turfwoman” in I.1. A “turfman” is someone who is interested in horse racing or who owns and races horses. But a woman “on the turf” is a prostitute.

The horse and the horse race may be symbols that point to the behavior we engage in outside the domestic space (and outside our sanitized, idealized images of ourselves) but that continually invade and spoil certain stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.

There’s one more reference to horse racing that I will discuss in a future post.