The beginning of Chapter I.7 — all about Shem the Penman — tells the brief story of Shem asking the “first riddle of the universe” to all of his brothers and sisters. The riddle is the title of this post, and it’s written in straightforward English there. The “brothron and sweestureens” take turns guessing, but none can get it right, so Shem has to tell them the answer: “When he is a […] Sham.”

This post looks at the riddle as it recurs throughout Finnegans Wake, considering what it implies about masculinity and art.

The paragraph in which the riddle first appears is amusing because it is filled with wrong guesses, all of which make for fruitful grounds of meditation, much like other lists in the Wake, including the list of insults applied to HCE in I.3, the list of titles for ALP’s Letter in I.5 (alternate titles for Finnegans Wake), and the insults hurled at Shem in I.7.

young Master Shemmy on his very first debouch at the very dawn of protohistory […] dictited to of all his little brothron and sweestureens the first riddle of the universe: asking, when is a man not a man?: telling them take their time, yungfries, and wait till the tide stops (for from the first his day was a fortnight) and offering the prize of a bittersweet crab, a little present from the past, for their copper age was yet unminted, to the winner. One said when the heavens are quakers, a second said when Bohemeand lips, a third said when he, no, when hold hard a jiffy, when he is a gnawstick and detarmined to, the next one said when the angel of death kicks the bucket of life, still another said when the wine’s at witsends, and still another when lovely wooman stoops to conk him, one of the littliest said me, me, Sem, when pappa papared the harbour, one of the wittiest said, when he yeat ye abblokooken and he zmear hezelf zo zhooken, still one said when you are old I’m grey fall full wi sleep, and still another when wee deader walkner, and another when he is just only after having being semisized, another when yea, he hath no mananas, and one when dose pigs they begin now that they will flies up intil the looft. All were wrong, so Shem himself, the doctator, took the cake, the correct solution being—all give it up?—; when he is a—yours till the rending of the rocks,—Sham.

Even in this little extract there is cute and engaging wordplay, such as Shem “dictit[ing]” and then being called a “doctator.” The former recalls the idea of tightness and the word “tides” (and the next line: “wait till the tide stops” — see the end of I.3). Perhaps he begins uptight (a tight dick?) amid the crashing tides of the fallen world before he graduates into a doctor and celebrates his learned self-image with the self-deprecation of the paragraph’s final word.

Although all the answers are called “wrong,” they each seem, via dream logic, like equally valid alternate answers. I like “when you are old I’m grey fall full wi sleep,” which recalls a Yeats poem, and when “he thath no mananas” — when he’s dead and has no more tomorrows/mananas or when he’s impotent and has no bananas/erections.

The “sham” — something not a man, less than a man — is both Shem himself and the fallen father HCE, of which Shem is an echo (the fallen, dead, sleeping figure who will one day wake and who is alluded to in many of the answers above). When Shem gives the correct answer, the word “Sham” is capitalized like his own name and given as a signature on the Letter (yours truly, yours till the rending of the rocks, until the resurrection). Since Shem in his capacity as artist writes the Letter for ALP, it turns out that she is the actual “doctator,” the actual one giving dictation, not Shem. Hm, I guess Shem really is a sham after all….

The very act of asking a riddle recalls the Sphinx from the Oedipus myth, connecting us back to a particular shame, guilt, and anxiety that Freud believed all men carry in their psyche. As I’ve discussed here, the story of HCE can be seen partially as an exploration of the energies of the Oedipus Complex, where the individual feels lesser (“not a man”) when faced with the past (the Father) and the coming future (the Son).

In I.7, this riddle and its answers seem to be Shem’s first piece of art, his first piece of debauchery (and debut, debouch), part of the Letter that represents all art.

This idea of being a sham or a fraud — feeling a kind of imposter syndrome — is part of the guilt of the dreamer and his various avatars such as Shem. This anxiety is everywhere explored in the novel, practically on every page, even as it is disguised and buried and hidden. On this page, it appears bluntly stated but also jokingly concealed by being made into a punchline following an avalanche of amusing guesses. As punchline, it is mixed with a signature/name and linked to the Letter. Someone who truly fears he’s a sham can only confess it while joking about it.

Is James Joyce — the ultimate form of Shem the Penman and HCE — an original writer, or is he an unoriginal hack who steals and remixes and garbles ideas and words from a myriad other sources? People who criticize Joyce on these grounds will be disappointed to find that the man himself already disparaged himself better than they ever could. Yet a lot of truth is often said in jest.

The riddle recurs in II.1 in the description of the youthful writing of Shem/Glugg, and he asks a riddle while asking again if “all give it up”:

where was a hovel not a havel (the first rattle of his juniverse) with a tingtumtingling and a next, next and next (gin a paddy? got a petty? gussies, gif it ope?), while itch ish shome.

When was a hovel not a hovel? When it is home. This version inverts the riddle. Rather than asking when a man is something lesser, it asks when a hovel is something greater. Here in the riddle that is his rattle, a childish plaything in his youthful universe (juniverse) of juvenilia, the answer gives it hope (“gif it ope”). Even a hovel can be made something more by virtue of being home, of being a place that we have imaginatively invested with memories and feelings by living in it (and here, it is a place with which Shem has mixed himself to produce “shome”).

[See also the idea that the earth itself is humus or homos or home that I discuss in this post]

A version of the riddle is asked in II.3 by a tavern keeper defending the Russian General, both forms of HCE. After the radio play by Butt and Taff, during his defense,

It sollecited […] of all […] the farst wriggle from the ubivence, whereom is man, that old offender, nother man, wheile he is asame. And fullexampling. 

Perhaps the riddle is not being posed by HCE but by the tavern patrons, solicited by his defense of the General, and his assertion immediately before this that the overthrow of the General is the overthrow of each of us.

This first riddle is a farse, a sham just like humanity. The question has now become when is a man another man (when is he connected to all others), but also when is a man no other man (that is, when is he truly himself): and the answer to both is when he is ashamed, and therefore the same as all other men, or equal to only himself, the same old person he always was, unique in his particular shame/sham.

It’s the question of whether we are all unique individuals or whether we are all just versions of the same eternal story, and therefore basically interchangeable with each other. True to the dream logic of the Wake, the answer is both at once, though it’s not actually illogical or contradictory because both statements are true in different ways. We’re each an utterly unique version of that story of the “overthrew of each and ilkermann of us,” to quote the sentence immediately before that extract, us and all of our ilk together in the same boat. That’s why it’s “redoubtedly” so, in addition to being undoubtedly so. These claims about humanity — we cannot doubt them, yet we should doubt and redoubt them.

ALP gives what at first appears to be the feminine version of this riddle in III.3, when her voice speaks through Shaun/Yawn and recalls something said by Sully, a form of the Cad (with whom Shem the Penman is often connected). He is a “wreuter of annoyimgmost letters and skirriless ballets” — that is, he wrote the scurrilous ballad as Hosty in I.2. The Cad, recall, contains the energies of both brothers (Shem and Shaun) about to divide. In some passages, he is associated more with one brother than another. Anyway, she recalls that he was

Sylphling me when is a maid nought a maid he would go to anyposs length for her!

Apparently, according to the annotations, “amaid” is Irish for a “foolish woman.” The fear for women appears not to be the fear of being (or being seen as) a sham. It is the fear of being thought foolish, naughty, or worthless (worth nought).

A “sylph” is an elemental spirit of air, which I guess connects Sully to the two brothers, who are the twins of Gemini (an air sign).

So when is a woman less than a woman (foolish, naughty, nothing)? It seems to be when a man would go to any possible length for her, when he would do anything for her. In saying “anyposs” out loud just now, I realized it was also Oedipus. What does it mean to go to Oedipus length for a woman? To project the unresolved feelings of the Oedipus complex onto her?

So this riddle is also about men, in the final analysis, which is fitting because everything in this novel comes back to the dreamer’s anxiety. When a man is not a man — when he is a sham, something lesser, something Oedipally deficient before past or the future (the father or the son) — his woman stops being a faithful, helpful companion or helpmeet and becomes foolish, naughty, and worthless.

In today’s parlance — and readers will pardon me for using terms that have become popular among some less than savory people — he becomes a “cuck” — a figurative or literal cuckold, like Leopold Bloom — or a “simp,” a man who follows women around like a lovesick puppy, a simpleton lacking self-respect.

These are terms that have gained ascendance in the so-called “manosphere,” a largely online movement that contains many elements of misogyny and immature, backwards ideas about gender relations. The notion that a “strong man” is needed to keep a “woman in line” — a regressive and weird idea, which this version of the riddle might be interpreted as saying — would be right up the alley of many people who adopt “manosphere” ways of thinking.

But I think there are other ways of interpreting this passage, notably that the anxieties of the Oedipus complex underline the *fears* that some men have that their own lack of masculinity will make them vulnerable to women (and thus make them henpecked, cucked, whipped, friendzoned, or otherwise converted into “simps”). In other words, rather than endorsing the bizarre beliefs of the manosphere, Joyce’s novel might be taken to be showing how these beliefs can arise from insecurity and can infect the way some men think about gender.

I’m recalling now how Shem is rejected by Issy and the other girls — or, rather, how Shem interprets their playful game as rejection. Issy is sad when he goes: “Poor Isa sits a glooming so gleaming in the gloaming […] Her beauman’s gone of a cool.”

Then the narrator tells us, “Be good enough to symperise.” The dreamer’s mind mixes up sympathizing with a sad woman and “simping” for her, becoming a pathetic sucker who pines for her love and never gets to have a romantic and sexual relationship with her.

[I don’t care that this slang term is too modern and that Joyce couldn’t have “intended” it. The words of the text suggest it, either way. Also, it works just as well if we use the word “simpleton”]

Really, it’s Issy who’s “simping” for Shem, but he sees it the other way around. Both ways of looking at it are correct: in the fallen world of guilt and shame, men are not men and women are not women. Everyone’s become simps and cucks — and no one is more of a cuck than a man who fears female sexual agency, fears appearing weak or vulnerable, or is ashamed of his natural appearance or feelings, or ashamed of natural, normal things like not everyone being interested in him sexually.

When I look at today’s world, I see the answer to the riddle, “When is a mature person not a mature person?” The answer is everywhere. The answer is all the pathetic weaklings who are desperate to appear strong, all the people ruled by insecurity who are desperate to cling to some image or identity that they think gives them meaning.

The formula for weakness is adherence to the zero-sum game of the fallen world, as I’ve discussed in this post, among other places.

In the final chapter (IV.1), surveying the fallen world, the narrator asks,

The first and last rittlerattle of the anniverse; when is a nam nought a nam whenas it is a. Watch! 

Here, “man” has been reversed into “nam,” suggesting a fallen man who has been converted into his reflection. These are the aforementioned weaklings, who are also a “name,” a reputation only (that is, they see themselves not as a rich, embodied experience but a concept that can be judged entirely by how others appraise them).

When is such a non-man not a non-man? When do the fallen rise? When they “watch” and learn to pay attention to their experience, shifting away from their false stories about reality.

Alternately, the riddle could be asking the opposite question: when does the Fall occur? When is one’s reputation truly ruined? When one is lost in the world of clock time (“watch” as in time piece), the segmenting and regulating of time to serve the ends of capitalist production — this would be a call back to HCE producing his watch in I.2 to give the Cad the time, as well as the way that the “Three Soldiers” aspects of HCE “watch” the transgression of the Father in the way that the three sons of Noah behold the father’s nakedness.

The word “watch” calls to mind all of the many references to looking that have written about here, and the associated feelings of guilt about sexuality that are tied up with the Oedipus complex and therefore intricately intertwined with the riddle and, ultimately, with art. Shem’s art — all of human art, the Letter of ALP — is a product of guilt, the artist whose watchful eyes survey humanity’s secrets and recurrently tattle on them by writing.

There’s more to say about the idea that art and writing are connected to the Fall and to feelings of guilt and shame. I’m tempted to draw connections to Blake’s work, which also links artistic creation to the Fall (the printing press of Los is linked to corporeal war, and the Fall, precipitated by guilt and sexual jealousy, is the motivation for Los as imagination to repair the world). Maybe more to come on that in the future.