Wishing everyone a happy day.
I had the opportunity recently to see the play Ulysses vs. The United States at the Irish Cultural Center in NYC (it was a play concerning the trial to overturn the ban on Ulysses in the states).
One of these days hopefully soon, I’ll write up my thoughts on a court scene from Finnegans Wake.
Until then, have a glass of burgundy, eat some gorgonzola cheese, and enjoy the day!
That’s all for now. Send post.
Among the gossipers telling tales of HCE, one woman
hoped Sid Arthar would git a Chrissman’s portrout of orange and lemonsized orchids with hollegs and ether, from the feeatre of the Innocident, as the worryld had been uncained.
“Chrissman’s portrout” is at once Christmas present, Christmas portrait, Christmas porter, and Christmas pardon. It also contains the word “trout,” recalling how Finn MacCool gained knowledge by eating a fish (cf. Issy in I.6, “It’s only another queer fish or other in Brinbrou’s damned old trouchorous river again”).
Continue readingChristmas is all over the Wake: “Fillagain’s criss or miss wake,” it’s called in I.1. Throughout the novel, the coming new year (“new yonks”) is associated with the New World of the children, which corresponds to Irishmen emigrating to America.
ALP is Santa Claus, delivering the gifts of the past, the Old World, to the New, in which the Old lives on. From I.8:
like Santa Claus […] with a Christmas box apiece for aisch and iveryone of her childer
In II.2, the word “Sundaclouths” — the Sunday clothes she gives to her sons — is also Santa Claus:
When she give me the Sundaclouths she hung up for Tate and Comyng and snuffed out the ghost in the candle at his old game of haunt the sleepper.
Now that I look at that quotation, I think it may be a reference to A Christmas Carol.
Elsewhere, the Letter — which represents the Wake — is called a “crossmess parzel,” a Christmas parcel that is also a crossword puzzle (and a mess, in which the Cross — loving self-sacrifice — provides a path of at-one-ment).
In I.4, when Pegger Festy (a new version of HCE who represents Shem and Shaun in the process of separating into more distinct entities) speaks in court, as he becomes more like Shem (and as the Cad becomes more like Shaun), he declares, “Mhuith peisth mhuise as fearra bheura muirre hriosmas.” With best wishes for a very merry Christmas.
It took four readings of the novel for me to notice that the first page, which declares that Tristram has not yet rearrived on the “scraggy isthmus,” also contains a Merry Christmas.
Finnegans Wake is a gift that gives endlessly.
Happy Holidays!
The Suspended Sentence 