This post extends my discussion of gaps in Finnegans Wake, which I first wrote about here. I want to look at a few instances of the word “blank,” as well as another instance of horseracing that describes HCE in terms of absence.

First, that description of horse racing. In the same passage in I.2 that mentions how rumors of HCE’s offense was spread at “breezy Baldoyle” (the race track), it was the same day that

the classic Encourage Hackney Plate was captured by two noses in a stablecloth finish, ek and nek, some and none, evelo nevelo, from the cream colt Bold Boy Cromwell after a clever getaway by Captain Chaplain Blount’s roe hinny Saint Dalough, Drummer Coxon, nondepict third, at breakneck odds, thanks to you great little, bonny little, portey little, Winny Widger! you’re all their nappies! who in his neverrip mud and purpular cap was surely leagues unlike any other phantomweight that ever toppitt our timber maggies.

If I’m reading this correctly, the prize was captured by Saint Dalough, who won by two noses over Bold Boy Cromwell. The third place horse, Drummer Coxon, was nondescript (and is not be depicted).

As ever, these are the constituent parts of HCE, who, as ALP puts it in her letter (as reported in I.5), “There were three men in him.” HCE is a “nondepict third,” the gap or void out of the which the two brothers emerge. Saint Dalough (Shaun) triumphs over Cromwell (Shem). We could also read it as Dalough representing Tristan, who defeats HCE (Cromwell), with the “nondepict” gap functioning as the brother battle that produces Tristan as a new HCE. 

Similarly, in the Prankquean paragraph — which represents the brother battle from the perspective of the female principle — the PQ first plucks a red rose (“pulled a rosy one”), then a white rose (“nipped a paly one”), and finally “picked a blank.”

The roses correspond to the symbols of the War of the Roses (Lancaster vs. York), a historical manifestation of the brother battle. Also, the phrase “pluck a rose” was slang for a woman to urinate or defecate, referencing the scandal in the Park. But the important point here is that the final round of the Prankquean’s visit to Howth Castle, which turns the brothers fully into Tristan and shoots down the old HCE to replace him with a new one, involves a blank: out of the gap of the missing HCE comes the contraries, the yin and the yang, whom ALP brings into balance to start the cycle over again.

There are many other instances of “blank” throughout the novel that serve similar purposes. For instance, it appears in I.3 in one of the several accounts of an HCE-figure being attacked, here by a gunman:

More than that Whenn the Waylayer (not a Lucalizod diocesan or even of the Glendalough see, but hailing fro’ the prow of Little Britain), mentioning in a bytheway that he, the crawsopper, had, in edition to Reade’s cutless centiblade, a loaded Hobson’s which left only twin alternatives as, viceversa, either he would surely shoot her, the aunt, by pistol, (she could be okaysure of that!) or, failing of such, bash in Patch’s blank face beyond recognition

Interestingly, the annotations say that “aunt” is slang for a prostitute, so this version of things is combining the Cad encounter with HCE’s crime before the two girls. “Aunt” and “crawsopper” refer to the Ant and the Grasshopper, those versions of Shaun and Shem that HCE (and his assailant-aspect) contains within himself. The word “blank” is now also reminding me of false ammunition for guns, something to make it look like a gun is firing without being dangerous or deadly. The Prankquean, too, after having “picked a blank,” proceeds to “shot the shutter.” Maybe these “blanks” could also refer to the Fortunate Fall, something that only seems calamitous (and thus can be more easily reconciled than we might think).

One more: from II.3, at the end of the radio play with Butt and Taff (again, the brothers or contraries that emerge from a blank). Immediately after they recombine into a new HCE/Tristan, the TV (or radio) shuts off, and the screen goes blank. Er, “blunk”:

[The pump and pipe pingers are ideally reconstituted. The putther and bowls are peterpacked up. All the presents are determining as regards for the future the howabouts of their past absences which they might see on at hearing could they once smell of tastes from touch. To ought find a values for. The must overlistingness. When ex what is ungiven. As ad where. Stillhead. Blunk.]

Everything has been reconstituted and set right, prepared for the next Fall. The present, past, and future are all connected, as are the five senses. The present is determining not the whereabouts of the past (which is absent) but the “howabouts” — how about this and how about that? — for the future. Although it is gone, the past nevertheless determines the future. The Eternal Story ever returns in new ways.

“Pump and pipe pingers” refers to the machinery of the television, as well as the phrase “thumb and five fingers” — the entire hand, on which one can count all the members of the Earwicker family (and/or the constituent parts of HCE/humanity). It may well signify something dirty also, as words like pump and pipe, along with the image of the hand, bring us back to the book’s obsession with male masturbation.

The very end sounds like a math problem — find the value of x — which recalls the math lesson in II.2 (and, combined with the reference to fingers, recalls for me the part where Shaun is counting on his fingers…this will have to be a future post). Simultaneously, it could be the human search for value and meaning (and what “ought” to be done).

Overlistingness may refer to the German uberlisten, to dupe or to trick. But also lust, and also listful (attentive, listening), like the three soldiers spying in the Park. The must: it must needs be. The cycles of the past must be repeated in the future.

Ask and it shall be granted. But what happens when the ask (the ex) is ungiven to us? Or when X is not given in our equations? What do we do in the face of the great mystery of life?

This is all in a manner of speaking, “as it were” or “As ad where,” as ads (advertisements) where we are sold things like whiskey (the “stillhead” is the upper part of a distillery still). Stilhed is Dutch for “Silence.” Out of the silence, blank, white (blanc) static — out of the gap and absence, the death of Tim Finnegan after his whiskey-induced Fall, in his wake — pours the entire universe of contrary forces. [See also the “SILENCE” on page 501 in III.3]

Thus, the end of the radio play sums up the energies of the Rise and the Fall.