In Which I'm Blown Away by Chapter V of Finnegans Wake

Week 9, May 31, page 116

Week 10, June 7, page 128

Instead of sticking to any one 12-page segment, I want to address Chapter V of Finnegans Wake.  Chapter V happens to start on page 104, so it nicely matches up with our reading schedule. But once I began the chapter, I had to take it in as a whole (it runs through page 125, which makes it close to two weeks’ reading).

As I mentioned in our latest virtual book club conversation, I’ve begun to wonder about the usefulness of thinking of FW as a dream.  Or, more accurately, as just a dream.  Clearly, we are inhabiting a dreamworld, but this is so much more than one man’s night of sleep. It has to be. 

I was thinking about this issue, about FW-as-a-dream, as I began Chapter V. At first, I thought the chapter was starting to provide some essential clues to answering my concerns, and it does.  But it also becomes what is, hands down, my favorite chapter of the book.  Yes, it relates to what’s going on in the dream, but Chapter V is first and foremost Joyce’s impassioned defense of his own novel, of Finnegans Wake. So I had to put aside the larger question and really dig into what’s going on with the chapter on its own. We shall leave the issue of the dream for another day.

So far in the book, HCE has been accused of a crime, stammered his way through his self-defense, and been incriminated and shamed by a parade of characters across Dublin. Now, his wife, Anna Livia Plurabelle, comes to his defense. She writes a letter, which is known as her manifesto, or, in Joyce’s feminization of the word, her “mamafesta.” The letter, and the interpretation of the letter, evolves into a consideration of literature and the criticism of literature. At the center of that consideration is Finnegans Wake itself.

Here’s how the chapter begins:

In the name of Annah the Allmaziful, the Everliving, the Bringer of Plurabilities, haloed be her eve, her singtime sung, her rill be run, unhemmed as it is uneven!

Clearly, we have a play on the Lord’s Prayer, but as a prayer to something feminine: Eve, the original woman, the source of all life.  This strikes me as a particularly beautiful introduction to ALP. Then comes a long list of names given to her “mamafesta.”

And then, the Wake begins to turn on itself.

“The proteiform graph itself is a polyhedron of scripture,” is the first line following the three pages of names. From here, I think it’s safe to read everything as both a comment on ALP’s letter and on Finnegans Wake.  They are constantly changing (“proteiform”) and many sided (“polyhedron”).

From here, well, my copy is now covered in black ink, as I attempted to underline or make a notation whenever the chapter looks inward.  Just a few tastes:

 Who in hallhagal wrote the durn thing anyway?

OK, that’s easy enough.  But how about this passage, where Joyce riffs on criticism of just the sort of writing he’s engaging in. Are you looking just at content? Or do you realize that vital importance of the envelope (the form), as well?

Yet to concentrate solely on the literal sense or even the psychological content of any document to the sore neglect of the enveloping facts themselves circumstantiating it is just as hurtful to sound sense (and let it be added to the truest taste) as were some fellow in the act of perhaps getting an intro from another fellow turning out to be a friend in need of his, say, to a lady of the latter's acquaintance, engaged in performing the elaborative antecistral ceremony of upstheres, straightaway to run off and vision her plump and plain in her natural altogether, preferring to close his blinkhard's eyes to the ethiquethical fact that she was, after all, wearing for the space of the time being some definite articles of evolutionary clothing, inharmonious creations, a captious critic might describe them as, or not strictly necessary or a trifle irritating here and there, but for all that suddenly full of local colour and personal perfume and suggestive, too, of so very much more and capable of being stretched, filled out, if need or wish were, of having their surprisingly like coincidental parts separated don't they now, for better survey by the deft hand of an expert, don't you know?

And there’s more, so much more!  Because look at this:

But by writing thithaways end to end and turning, turning and end to end hithaways writing and with lines of litters slittering up and louds of latters slettering down, the old semetomyplace and jupetbackagain from tham Let Rise till Hum Lit. Sleep, where in the waste is the wisdom?

And then, the ultimate description of everyone’s favorite funferal, Finnegans Wake:

look at this prepronominal funferal, engraved and retouched and edgewiped and pudden-padded, very like a whale's egg farced with pemmican, as were it sentenced to be nuzzled over a full trillion times for ever and a night till his noddle sink or swim by that ideal reader suffering from an ideal insomnia

OK, OK, that’s enough.  I might as well simply copy/paste that whole chapter here.  Yes, this is about ALP and her shaky defense of her husband, but let’s be honest: it’s about Finnegans Wake.

As I alluded to in a previous post, the book is its own reward.  Hell, I even said, “Is there anything to it other than putting the old noodle through a workout?”  And here comes Joyce, telling me that I need to read his book a trillion until my noodle sinks or swims.

I’ll repeat what I said at the beginning—this was my favorite chapter so far, by a long shot. Perhaps that’s because it’s relatively accessible if approached in the right way, or because I’m getting better at reading this beast, or because I’ll enjoy every section about Anna Livia Plurabelle.  I can’t say for sure. But I was pretty well blown away.