Tag Archives: Shem and Shaun

Clipper Clipper

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Finnegans Wake has a way of burrowing into the mind, and after readers have internalized enough of it, they can more easily connect it to their everyday experience. In this post, I briefly examine how the word “clipper” in everyday life can become a jumping off point for reflecting on Joyce’s literature and, ultimately, the human condition. It is as Buck Mulligan says in Ulysses: “Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptible eon of the gods.” Mulligan is, of course, being his usual, mocking self, but — as Joyce often reveals — a lot of Truth can be said in jest.

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Fearra Bheura Muirre Hriosmas

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Christmas 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!