The proteiform graph itself is a polyexigetical piece of scripture. There was a time when alphabetters would have written it down the tracing of a pure deliquescent recidivist, snubnosed, probably, and having a profound rainbowl in his (or her) occiput. Closer inspection of the bordereau would however reveal a multiplicity of personalities inflicted on the provoking document and a prevision of crime or crimes unwarily be made before any suitable occasion for it or them had presented. But under the very eyes of inspection the traits which feature the sympathetic page coalesce, their contrarieties eliminated in a stable somebody, as by the warring of housebreaker on heartbreaker, of dram drinker with freethinker society bowls along bumpily through generations, more generations & still more generations. Who in hell wrote the durn thing anyway? Standing, seated, on horseback, against a partywall, below zero, by the use of quill or style, with perturbed or pellucid mind, accompanied or the reverse by mastication interrupted by visit of person to scriptor or of scriptor to place, rained upon or blown around, by a regular racer from the soil or a whittlewit laden with the loot of learning? And remember patience is the great thing. And above all things we must neither be nor become impatient. Think of all the patience possessed by Bruce & the spider. If after years and years of research a sage solemnly tells us that the great one is less than a name, that the ear of Earwicker was the trademark of a broadcaster and his wicker the local cant for an aeronaut then as to this oscillating epistle what is he who is the man to give us the dinkum oil? To conclude from the absence of political allusions and its [...] that it cannot ever have been the work of a man or woman of that period & those parts is as unjust as it would be to conclude from the nonpresence of inverted commas on any page that its compiler was constitutionally incapable of misappropriating the actual words of others.
Has anyone, it might with profit some evening be asked, ever looked sufficiently longly upon a stamped addressed envelope. Admittedly it is but a covering; it bears an economic classification: its character is the civil clothing of whatever purepassionpallid or plaguepurple nakedness it may or may not contain.
Yet to concentrate solely on the psychological content or even the mental configuration of any document to the neglect of the facts which circumstance it is as hurtful to good sense (and let us add, good taste) as were the ?indian when presented by a friend to a lady of the latter's acquaintance straightaway to vision her in unapparelled naturalness deliberately closing his eyes to the fact that she was after all wearing some definite articles of clothing, inharmonious, a captious one might, not strictly necessary, a little irritating suddenly full of local & personal colour, suggestive of much more, capable of being stretched if need were, their parts capable, even, of being separated for closer comparison by the careful hand of an expert. Who in his heart doubts either that the facts of clothing are there and that the feminine fiction, stranger than the facts, is there at the same time, and that one may be separated from the other, that both may be contemplated & that each may be considered in turn apart from the other successively? Let then the facts speak in their own favour. It was wont to be wittily wagged by the chuckler Mahappy Mahapnot that Lucalizod was the only place in the world where the possible was always improbable and the improbable the inevitable. This implies a sequentiality of impossible probables but nobody who has read up his subject probably in Aristotle will applaud the sentiment or sentence for utterly impossible as are all these events they are probably as like those which happened as any other which never took place at all are ever likely to be.
About that hen, first. Midwinter was in the offing when a poorly clad Shiverer, a mere bantling, observed a cold fowl behaving strangely on the fatal dump at the spot called the orangery when in the course of its deeper demolition it threw up certain fragments of orange peel, the remnant of an outdoor meal of some unknown sunseeker illico in in a mistridden past. What child but little Kevin would ever in such a scene have found a motive for future sainthood by euchring the discovery of the Ardagh chalice by another innocent on the seasands near the scene of the massacre of most of the jacobiters. The bird of promise in the case was the hen of the Doran's and what she was scratching looked uncommonly like a sheet of letterpaper of the eleventh of the fifth to dear which proceeded to mention Maggy well and everybody general health and well and lovely face of some gentleman and a parcel of cookycakes well and it was a grand funeral Maggy and hopes to hear from with love from a large looking stain of tea. The stain, & that of tea, marks it at once as a genuine old Irish MS. Any photoist worth his chemicals will tell you that if a negative melts while drying the resultant positive will be a grotesque distortion of values, tones & masses. This freely is what must have happened to that missive unfilthed by the sagacity of a hen. The heat residence for who knows when in the orangeflavoured mound had dissolved the first impression and caused some features palpably near us to be swollen up grossly while the farther back we get the more we need the loan of a lens to see as much as the hen saw.
Wonderfully well this explains the double nature of this gryphonic script and while its ingredients stand out with stereoptican relief we can see beyond the figure of the scriptor into the subconscious writer's mind.
One cannot help noticing that some of the lines run from E to W, others from N to S. Such crossing is antechristian though the explanation may be geographical quite as easily as domestic economic. Then, in addition to the original sand, pounce or soft rag, it has acquired accretions of terricious matter while loitering in the past. The teastain is a study in itself and its importance in establishing the identity of the writer complex (for if the hand was one the minds were more than so) will be appreciated by remembering that after before & after the battle of the Boyne it was the custom not to sign letters always. For why sign when every word, letter, penstroke, space, is a perfect signature in its own way. A person is known more by his personality, habits of dress, movements, response to appeals for charity rather than by his or her boots. Who that in scrutinising marvels at the indignant whiplashloops, the bolted and blocked rounds, the touching reminiscence of an incomplete trail or dropped final, the gossipy threadreels, the whirligig glorioles which ambiembellish the majuscule of Earwicker, the pardonable confusion which at times the pees are often kews who thus marvelling will not go on to see the vaulting ambition of those interbranching upsweeps continually controlled and led by the uniform undeviating course of a cold male fist. Duff-Moeggli called this partnership the Odyssean or heterochiric complex from the wellinformed observation that in the case of the periplic poem popularly associated with that name a Punic admiralty report has been capsized & then refloated by dodecanesian baedeker of an every-place-a-treat-itself variety which should amply satisfy the gander as well as the goose. The identity of the persons in the complex came to light in a curious way. The original document was what is known as unbreakable script, that is to say, it had no signs of punctuation of any kind. On holding it to the light it was seen to be pierced or punctuated (in the university sense of the word) by numerous dots and gashes inflicted <by> a pronged instrument. These paper wounds, four in type, were gradually understand to mean stop, please stop, do please stop, and O do please stop respectively and investigation showed that they were provoked by the fork of a professor at the breakfast table. Deeply religious by nature it was correctly suspected that such anger could not openly have been directed against the ancestral spirit of her who openly respected by him as our boys' best friend and when it was at last noticed that the fourth or heaviest gash was most frequent where the script was clear and the term terse and that these were the exact places carefully selected for her perforations by Dame Partland on the dunghill reluctantly the theory of the jabbering ape was abandoned and its place usurped by that odious & even now insufficiently despised person, Jim the Penman. [FDV]
Joyce is making fun of his own manuscripts, foreseeing (us) critics suffering over them, but the specific manuscript used here as an example-- the Revered Letter-- is purely in the voice of HCE's wife defending him, maybe just transcribed by Shem but maybe instead forged by him. But for all the malice and distrust directed at Shem, the content of the Letter seems conspicuously innocent/ harmless...???
why didn't Joyce feel that this fragment-- found by the hen-- meant to exemplify Joyce's own writings-- needed to offer any more shocking examples of what Ulysses' critics attacked? why ALP's voice not Bloom's or Stephen's or Molly's?
The proteiform graph itself is a polyexigetical piece of scripture.
"proteiform" mainly applied to diseases with hard-to-predict symptoms
"graph" doesn't seem to have been a word before about 1890, when it was shortened from 'graphic' (cf grapheme, paragraph)
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| 1869 'Carte Figurative' |
"proteiform graph" is paradoxical because it implies changes in time
(purposely vague? a single hard-to-read sheet?)
spelling: exEgetical
many separate exegeses, or self-contained?
messy handwritten documents offer all sorts of subtle clues to the author's intent (or identity)
"scripture" etymologically just any writing, but the implication is sacred/holy
3D sculpture?
FW2: "The proteiform graph itself is a polyhedron of scripture." ("polyhedron" is dramatically less applicable, more 3D)
There was a time when alphabetters would have written it down the tracing of a pure deliquescent recidivist, snubnosed, probably, and having a profound rainbowl in his (or her) occiput.
"There was a time" (...but no longer)
alpha betters (cf 'my betters', A-list alphas, bettors/gamblers/risk-takers?)
people who alphabetise? all literate people? people who transcribe things into an alphabet?
"written it down" dismissed/diminished/classified
why not 'down as the' or 'to the'?
"tracing" copied by tracing, or recording the traces?
"deliquescent" seems perfectly meaningless applied to persons (maybe their bones liquefying?)
delinquent adolescent? (recent phrase)
'recidivism' etymologically is just repetition, but the connotation is always negative
"snubnosed" (absurd deduction)
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| Dillinger |
"rainbowl" rainbow bowl
"(or her)" anticipating ALP?
"occiput" back of head (ob+caput)
graphology/phrenology? (pseudoscience squared)
tonsure?? (cf Berkeley and Patrick, or Kevin?)
shouldn't this be Joyce dismissing his critics? so, he's first showing them dismissing him for absurd reasons? projecting their own ignorance?
why don't they begin with the possibility ALP wrote it herself? do they know her to be illiterate? why don't they assume Shem should have corrected her typos?
FW2: "There was a time when naif alphabetters would have written it down the tracing of a purely deliquescent recidivist, possibly ambidextrous, snubnosed probably and presenting a strangely profound rainbowl in his (or her) occiput." ("naif" implying they've barely begun to think seriously about it)
Closer inspection of the bordereau would however reveal a multiplicity of personalities inflicted on the provoking document and a prevision of crime or crimes unwarily be made before any suitable occasion for it or them had presented.
"Closer inspection" is always a good thing, though the phrase might be misused rhetorically
the Dreyfus affair in the 1890s hinged on the handwriting on a "bordereau"
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| translation |
"bordereau" (French) a detailed listing of documents or accounts
(here maybe tracing the proteiform changes of the graph?)
border
"multiplicity of personalities" different handwritings? different critics? psycho?
"inflicted" anticipates hen-and-fork holes
"provoking" the content provoked the personalities-infliction?
"prevision" foreknowledge (cf?? T&I4 "the (proleptically) red sea")
'prOvision... made' preparation ('make a prevision' is nonsense?)
"crime"
so if you look too close you might accidentally imagine you foresee a crime???
Hayman assumes Joyce intended the eventual 'might' here
a 2nd document from the Dreyfus case was the 'faux Henry' with multiple handwritings:
FW2: "Closer inspection of the bordereau would reveal a multiplicity of personalities inflicted on the document or documents and some prevision of virtual crime or crimes might be made... before any suitable occasion for it or them had so far managed to happen along."
But under the very eyes of inspection the traits which feature the sympathetic page coalesce, their contrarieties eliminated in a stable somebody,
though a hasty reading of Ulysses might judge the multiple styles a crime against good taste, if you keep digging you'll eventually find an esthetic unity
"Closer inspection... the very eyes of inspection" redundancy fixed later
cliche: many variations of "under the very eyes of the"
"eyes of inspection" (cf?? VI.A Sisters "she tossed on the couch of separation and her eyes were blackened by the punch of sleeplessness")
"feature" = are featured on?
cf?? Berkeley1 "the violet contusions of the prince's feature"
"sympathetic page" the page seen with sympathetic eyes?
(think of Ellmann trying to make sense of contradictory anecdotes)
Joyce claiming his greatest strength is sympathy?
Shem has used his gift to make her vivid
FW2: "In fact, under the close eyes of the inspector the traits featuring the chiaroscuro coalesce, their contrarieties eliminated, in one stable somebody"
as by the warring of housebreaker on heartbreaker, of dram drinker with freethinker society bowls along bumpily through generations, more generations & still more generations.
"as by" traits coalesce, contrarieties eliminated, as by warring
"housebreaker" unambiguously a male thief? or also one who breaks a house, or houses? or even a housebroken pet?
"heartbreaker" maybe female? T or I?
maybe Isolde breaks Mark's heart so he breaks her house?
or Bloom breaks into his own house, his heart broken by Molly?
"dram drinker" an alcoholic [def] ROC, HCE
but dramdrinkers must mean Catholics here
"with" not "on" (more even fight)
"freethinker" Bloom, Stephen
society bowls along by warring (Bruno?) (cf "rainbowl")
so are these contrarieties already Shem and Shaun? viconian ages???
housebreaker/heartbreaker [order will be swapped]
"bowls along bumpily" cricket bowling??
'bowling along' used to refer to vehicles most, horse-drawn or auto, then ships
"rainbowl... bowls"
"generations, more generations & still more generations" purely rhetorical emphasis
FW2: "similarly as by the providential warring of heartshaker with housebreaker and of dramdrinker against freethinker our social something bowls along bumpily... down the long lane of... generations, more generations and still more generations." (providence is viconian)
Who in hell wrote the durn thing anyway?
Joyce/Shem in hell?
cf? Sam Johnson, cutting through abstractions
"the durn thing" goes back at least to 1894
was the Revered Letter really written by ALP, or by Shem for ALP, or by Shem as a forgery for his own malign purposes?
FW2: "Say, baroun lousadoor, who in hallhagal wrote the durn thing anyhow?"
Standing, seated, on horseback, against a partywall, below zero, by the use of quill or style, with perturbed or pellucid mind, accompanied or the reverse by mastication interrupted by visit of person to scriptor or of scriptor to place, rained upon or blown around, by a regular racer from the soil or a whittlewit laden with the loot of learning?
once the critics notice Ulysses' unity, they'll naturally wonder about its creator
not just 'who' but 'how'
Donne's "Good Friday, 1613, Riding Westward" seems to be the most famous piece written on horseback-- the rest are mostly soldiers' communiques
"against a partywall" (shared wall) purposely eavesdropping, or reluctantly distracted by noise?
"below zero" Fahrenheit probably (any examples?)
"style" maybe just poetic for pen, maybe a Roman stylus for writing on a wax tablet?
"perturbed" would be neatly shortened to "turbid"
"mastication" eg chewing tobacco to accompany thought? or just making chewing movements?
"interrupted by visit of person to scriptor" cf Coleridge's person from Porlock
"scriptor to place" Joyce's travels can (with effort) be correlated to his notes
"scriptor" is Latin (not English) for writer
"rained... blown" rainbow?? (seems farfetched)
(the writer wouldn't be literally blown around, but the paper could be)
cliche: 'racy of the soil' = characteristic of the true Irish race
U-Cyclops "So off they started about Irish sport and shoneen games the like of the lawn tennis and about hurley and putting the stone and racy of the soil and building up a nation once again and all to that."
"regular racer" seems to be an expression of modest praise for a racehorse or racing boat
unwhittled/whittled = natural-strong-dull/artificial-weak-sharp?
cf Dickens' Chuzzlewit?
"laden with the loot" greedy burdened (Joyce was?)
FW2: "Erect, beseated, amountback, against a partywall, below freezigrade, by the use of quill or style, with turbid or pellucid mind, accompanied or the reverse by mastication, interrupted by visit of seer to scribe or of scribe to site... rained upon or blown around, by a rightdown regular racer from the soil or by a too pained whittlewit laden with the loot of learning?"
And remember patience is the great thing. And above all things we must neither be nor become impatient. Think of all the patience possessed by Bruce & the spider.
"And remember" nonsequitur?
"neither be nor become" phrase of Plato's used also by Theosophists
advice to Wakeans? and also Ulysseans? did he foresee the vast degree of patience the Wake's final form would demand?
Robert Bruce learned to be patient after watching a spider climb a wall [Scott]
FW2: "Now, patience. And remember patience is the great thing. And above all things else we must avoid anything like being or becoming out of patience... think of all the sinking fund of patience possessed... by both brothers Bruce with whom are incorporated their Scotch spider and Elberfeld's Calculating Horses."
If after years and years of research a sage solemnly tells us that the great one is less than a name, that the ear of Earwicker was the trademark of a broadcaster and his wicker the local cant for an aeronaut then as to this oscillating epistle what is he who is the man to give us the dinkum oil?
"the great one" Revered4 calls him a "great civilian"
"is" not 'was'?
"less than a name" cf theories of Shakespeare?
"trademark of a broadcaster" [maybe among these Radio News pdfs?]
the BBC had only begun broadcasting in 1922 , with pulp novelist Edgar Wallace (EW!) as their first sports reporter
"aeronaut" one who flies in balloons or dirigibles (which used wicker baskets for their light weight) Hindenburg wasn't until 1937
broadcaster and aeronaut were conspicuously recent and glamorous occupations
"oscillating epistle" cf radiogram??
oscillating = proteiform? multiplicity of alternating personalities?
"what is he who is the man" what is he? he who is the man...
VI.B25.157 (Jul?): "give me the dinkum oil" (Australian slip us the dinkum oil: tell us what it all means, tell us the truth) sounds slippery?
VI.B25.156 (Jul?): "dinkum" (Australian dinkum: work, toil; honest, true, thorough, genuine)
T&I5: "the dinkum belle of Lucalizod"
FW2: "If after years upon years of delving in ditches dark one tubthumper... has got up for the darnall same purpose of reassuring us... that our great ascendant was properly speaking three syllables less than his own surname... that the ear of Dionn Earwicker aforetime was the trademark of a broadcaster with wicker local jargon for an ace's patent... then as to this radiooscillating epiepistle... whereabouts... is that bright soandsuch to slip us the dinkum oil?"
To conclude from the absence of political allusions and its [...] that it cannot ever have been the work of a man or woman of that period & those parts is as unjust as it would be to conclude from the nonpresence of inverted commas on any page that its compiler was constitutionally incapable of misappropriating the actual words of others.
"inverted commas" the accepted phrase
"compiler" Joyce rightly saw his method of writing as compiling phrases
the style suddenly drops puns and allusions
sounds like Shakespeare theories again
(remember the Letter is addressed to an unnamed king)
FW2: "To conclude... from the positive absence of political odia and monetary requests that its page cannot ever have been a penproduct of a man or woman of that period or those parts is only one more unlookedfor conclusion leaped at, being tantamount to inferring from the nonpresence of inverted commas... on any page that its author was always constitutionally incapable of misappropriating the spoken words of others."
Has anyone, it might with profit some evening be asked, ever looked sufficiently longly upon a stamped addressed envelope.
why "evening"? (cf Cad reflecting on HCE's words?)
"longly" implies longingly
"stamped addressed envelope" letter = book
person looks at own letter before mailing
or person looks at envelope of (love) letter received?
U&FW demand more attention than any other work (are they therefore stamped addressed envelopes?)
Crépieux-Jamin: Les Éléments de l'Écriture des Canailles [fweet-22] suggests the handwriting of the address provides a public contrast to the private handwriting of a loveletter
FW2: "Has any fellow... it might with some profit some dull evening quietly be hinted... ever looked sufficiently longly at a quite everywaylooking stamped addressed envelope?"
Admittedly it is but a covering; it bears an economic classification: its character is the civil clothing of whatever purepassionpallid or plaguepurple nakedness it may or may not contain.
letter = female body
"economic classification" poverty or wealth (vs esthetic, ie non-economic?)
(is Shaun the Post emerging here???)
"civil clothing" civilian, vs military uniform; or polite, vs rude
"purepassionpallid or plaguepurple nakedness" Tristan and maybe Kevin expressed the former (but what is pallid nakedness?), Leary and HCE the latter
plague purple??
FW2: "Admittedly it is an outer husk... it exhibits only the civil or military clothing of whatever passionpallid nudity or plaguepurple nakedness may happen to tuck itself under its flap."
Yet to concentrate solely on the psychological content or even the mental configuration of any document to the neglect of the facts which circumstance it
is this a warning about Ulysses?
"psychological content" [eg Bloom's kinks]
"mental configuration" [episodes' styles??]
"facts which circumstance it" [Homeric parallels???] facts of Joyce's life?
FW2: "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 as hurtful to good sense (and let us add, good taste) as were the ?indian when presented by a friend to a lady of the latter's acquaintance straightaway to vision her in unapparelled naturalness
good sense/ good taste (maybe critics can lack either or both?)
so here, Joyce is the lady offended by Ulysses' critics jumping to conclusions?
FW2: " 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... straightway to run off and vision her plump and plain in her natural altogether,"
deliberately closing his eyes to the fact that she was after all wearing some definite articles of clothing, inharmonious, a captious one might, not strictly necessary, a little irritating suddenly full of local & personal colour, suggestive of much more, capable of being stretched if need were, their parts capable, even, of being separated for closer comparison by the careful hand of an expert.
by closing his eyes to her clothing, he can see through it?
"captious" = nitpicking
Hayman thinks Joyce intended "say" after "might"
what's "personal colour"?
Wyndham Lewis: Time and Western Man 81: 'the local colour, or locally-coloured material, that was scraped together into a big variegated heap to make Ulysses'
Thomas Carlyle: Sartor Resartus, ch. 10: 'For our purposes the simple fact that such a Naked World is possible, nay actually exists (under the Clothed One) will be suficient'
(could this simply mean that Ulysses obviously isn't porn?)
so Ulysses' "clothing" can appear: inharmonious, not strictly necessary, irritating, full of local & personal colour, suggestive of much more...?
"capable of being stretched" by the author? is Joyce bragging that the techniques of U&FW can generate however much text he chooses?
"separated for closer comparison" (indeed! :)
Joyce claimed he could justify every line of FW, which would have required careful separation
(the image is exquisitely intimate)
FW2: "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?"
Who in his heart doubts either that the facts of clothing are there and that the feminine fiction, stranger than the facts, is there at the same time, and that one may be separated from the other, that both may be contemplated & that each may be considered in turn apart from the other successively?
is there an 'or' implied somewhere to go with the "either"? "Yet to concentrate solely on the psychological content or even the mental configuration of any document"? (the published version adds three "Or"s)
Carlyle: Sartor Resartus: 'For our purposes the simple fact that such a Naked World is possible, nay actually exists (under the Clothed One) will be suficient.'
phrase: fact or fiction
proverb: Truth is stranger than fiction
"are there... is there" (could "there" be 'in Ulysses'?)
what can "the feminine fiction, stranger than the facts" mean?
Dublin facts, Bloomian fictions? ALP's muddest cunt?
FW2: "Who in his heart doubts either that the facts of feminine clothiering are there all the time or that the feminine fiction, stranger than the facts, is there also at the same time... Or that one may be separated from the other? Or that both may then be contemplated simultaneously? Or that each may be taken up and considered in turn apart from the other?"
Let then the facts speak in their own favour. It was wont to be wittily wagged by the chuckler Mahappy Mahapnot that Lucalizod was the only place in the world where the possible was always improbable and the improbable the inevitable.
"chuckler" = leather-working pariah in India
.jpg)
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| 61yo in 1901 |
Sir John Pentland Mahaffy (Irish Greek-scholar, 1839-1919, not in Ulysses): 'In Ireland the inevitable never happens, the unexpected always'
'maybe happen, maybe not'
'maybe happy, maybe not'
"wittily wagged... chuckler Mayhappy" impressively upbeat!?
for the last half of 1923, all the vignettes seemed to be converging on "Lucalizod" as the name of the setting:
T&I5 (Aug?) "the dinkum belle of Lucalizod"
HCE1 (Aug) "the ragged tiny folk of Lucalizod"
Cad3 (Nov) "not a Lucalizodite"
Delivery (Dec?) "the spectacle of the Lucalizod lettercarrier"
Shem (Jan24?) "every door in muchtried Lucalizod"
FW2: "Here let a few artifacts fend in their own favour... That stern chuckler, Mayhappy Mayhapnot, once said... that Isitachapel-Asitalukin was the one place... in this madh vaal of tares... where the possible was the improbable and the improbable the inevitable."
- "where the possible was always improbable and the improbable the inevitable"
- In Ireland the inevitable never happens, the unexpected always (Mahaffy)
- the poet should prefer probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities (Aristotle)
- "impossible as are all these events they are probably as like those which happened as any other which never took place at all are ever likely to be"
- "Time has branded them and fettered they are lodged in the room of the infinite possibilities they have ousted. But can those have been possible seeing that they never were? Or was that only possible which came to pass? ...It must be a movement then, an actuality of the possible as possible." U25-26
Aristotle: De Poetica 24: 'Accordingly, the poet should prefer probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities'
the events in Ulysses may be impossible, but they're as plausible as possible...?
FW2: "we are in for a sequentiality of improbable possibles though possibly nobody after having grubbed up a lock of cwold cworn aboove his subject probably in Harrystotalies or the vivle will go out of his way to applaud him on the onboiassed back of his remark for, utterly impossible as are all these here events, they are probably as like those which may have taken place as any others which never took person at all are ever likely to be."
About that hen, first. Midwinter was in the offing when a poorly clad Shiverer, a mere bantling, observed a cold fowl behaving strangely on the fatal dump at the spot called the orangery when in the course of its deeper demolition it threw up certain fragments of orange peel, the remnant of an outdoor meal of some unknown sunseeker illico in in a mistridden past.
what hen??? (ROC4? "that put a poached fowl in the poor man's pot" T&I3? "Not as much as a pinch of henshit... Fowls up! Tristy's a spry young spark" Mmlj4? "that reminds me of Tim Tom Tarpey & Lapoule and the four widowers the four waves" Shem1? "having got up a kitchenette & fowlhouse for the sake of the eggs")
Greek 'to hen' = the One, the origin of all things (philosophy)
midwinter = either 21Dec or 5Feb (has there been an autumn scene yet?)
Ulysses published 2 Feb 1922
"Shiverer" = Joyce? Kevin?
"bantling" = infant (or brat, bastard??)
"cold fowl" was a phrase in old cookbooks, apparently meaning cooked leftovers
"strangely" how?
"fatal" why? ("fatal dump" is J's neologism)
the Basque word for orange (laranja) is possibly folk-etymologised as 'the fruit that was first eaten' (i.e. by Adam and Eve)
"demolition" the hen's?
"threw up" with feet, or regurgitated
was it already called "the orangery" before the peel was discovered? maybe for forgotten reasons?
the Dublin Botanic Gardens has an orangery/ greenhouse
U86: "Someone seems to have been making a picnic party here lately, Mr Power said."
Latin "illico" = there, on the spot
German 'Mist' = garbage, junk
FW2: "About that original hen. Midwinter... was in the offing... when... an iceclad shiverer, merest of bantlings, observed a cold fowl behaviourising strangely on that fatal midden... afterwards changed into the orangery when in the course of deeper demolition... its limon threw up a few spontaneous fragments of orangepeel, the last remains of an outdoor meal by some unknown sunseeker or placehider illico way back in his mistridden past."
What child but little Kevin would ever in such a scene have found a motive for future sainthood by euchring the discovery of the Ardagh chalice by another innocent on the seasands near the scene of the massacre of most of the jacobiters.
cf Kevineen4 why him here? (we've also met little Issy but not little Shem yet)
"motive"?
"sainthood"? Kevin's sainthood followed from his retreat and self-purification
euchre: to outwit an opponent in the card-game of Euchre
Jim Quinn and Paddy Flanagan found the chalice in 1868
Tara brooch found 1850
VI.B3.11: "child (found chalice in potatofield)" Flood: Ireland, Its Saints and Scholars 112: 'A child playing on the sea-shore near Drogheda found the Tara Brooch, and a boy digging potatoes near the old Rath of Ardagh in Limerick found the Ardagh Chalice'
VI.B3.11: "Ardagh Chalice (two handled)" Flood: Ireland, Its Saints and Scholars 112: 'The Ardagh Chalice is an almost unique example of the two-handled chalice used in the earliest Christian time'
Ardagh Chalice: an 8th century silver cup, one of the finest works of Irish medieval art (now in the National Museum of Ireland)
William of Orange's 1690 assault on the Jacobite stronghold of Limerick failed
FW2: "What child... but keepy little Kevin in the despondful surrounding of such sneezing cold would ever have trouved up on a strete that was called strate a motive for future saintity by euchring the finding of the Ardagh chalice by another heily innocent... out of Now Sealand in spight of the patchpurple of the massacre... of most of the Jacobiters."
The bird of promise in the case was the hen of the Doran's and what she was scratching looked uncommonly like a sheet of letterpaper of the eleventh of the fifth to dear which proceeded to mention Maggy well and everybody general health and well and lovely face of some gentleman and a parcel of cookycakes well and it was a grand funeral Maggy and hopes to hear from with love from a large looking stain of tea.
the Dakota Indians called the meadowlark 'the bird of promise', claiming it promises good things to its friends
cf?? 'land of promise', 'breach of promise'
cf maybe "Doran's Ass" [lyrics] ♬
Dubliners/Ulysses "Bob Doran"
Le Fanu, The House by the Churchyard: 'The sod just for so much as a good sized sheet of letter-paper might cover, was trod and broken'
May 11 (why?)
cf Revered Letter around this time ("Majesty" becomes "Maggy" here; "parcel" and "cakes" added at level two, "funeral" later)
whose synopsis is this, and why do they see "Maggy" instead of "majesty"?
"well... and well... well" ALP-speak [fweet-53]
 |
| modern cookycake |
if the letter is Ulysses, what's the teastain? dirty words and imagery? shit or semen? Joyce/Shem's "name and seal"?
cf U27: "He held out his copybook. The word Sums was written on the headline. Beneath were sloping figures and at the foot a crooked signature with blind loops and a blot. Cyril Sargent: his name and seal."
FW2: "The bird in the case was Belinda of the Dorans... and what she was scratching... looked for all this zogzag world like a goodishsized sheet of letterpaper... of the last of the first to Dear whom it proceeded to mention Maggy well & allathome's health well... with a lovely face of some born gentleman with a beautiful present of wedding cakes... and with grand funferall... Maggy & hopes soon to hear... with four crosskisses... from... affectionate largelooking tache of tch."
The stain, & that of tea, marks it at once as a genuine old Irish MS.
(if not tea, someone may have wiped their arse with it)
FW2: "The stain, and that a teastain... marked it off on the spout of the moment as a genuine relique of ancient Irish pleasant pottery"
Any photoist worth his chemicals will tell you that if a negative melts while drying the resultant positive will be a grotesque distortion of values, tones & masses.
phrase 'worth his salt'
"chemicals" Bloom presumably views people as bags of chemicals
"negative" unsentimental artwork?
"melts while drying" artistic compromise???
FW2: "almost any microphotoist worth his chemicots will tip anyone... that if a negative of a horse happens to melt enough while drying, well, what you do get is, well, a positively grotesquely distorted macromass of all sorts of horsehappy values and masses of meltwhile horse."
This freely is what must have happened to that missive unfilthed by the sagacity of a hen.
"freely"
"unfilthed" bowdlerised??? or rescued from hurled mud?
(Ulysses financed by Harriet Weaver?)
 |
| a hen??? |
FW2: "Well, this freely is what must have occurred to our missive... unfilthed from the boucher by the sagacity of a lookmelittle likemelong hen."
The heat residence for who knows when in the orangeflavoured mound had [gro] dissolved the first impression and caused some features palpably near us to be swollen up grossly while the farther back we get the more we need the loan of a lens to see as much as the hen saw.
"heat" printer's outrage?
"heat residence" (this seems to have become a technical term when heating plastics, too recently for J to have known it)
"orangeflavoured" Irish protestant?
"first impression" 1st edition???
"dissolved" 1st ed. of Dubliners supposedly burned by Church-of-Ireland George Roberts' printer)
scandal causes details to obscure esthetic unity
"swollen up grossly" (cf "plaguepurple nakedness" above?)
near/far: cf Bloom on parallax?
"lens" the schemata?
FW2: "Heated residence in the heart of the orangeflavoured mudmound had partly obliterated the negative to start with, causing some features palpably nearer your pecker to be swollen up most grossly while the farther back we manage to wiggle the more we need the loan of a lens to see as much as the hen saw."
Wonderfully well this explains the double nature of this gryphonic script and while its ingredients stand out with stereoptican relief we can see beyond the figure of the scriptor into the subconscious writer's mind.
(this sentence seems to have been replaced entirely in the published version)
"double nature" referring back to clothing/facts and nakedness/fiction? or scriptor/writer?
"gryphonic" neologism, = composite
 |
| heraldic gryphon |
cf (Gerald) Griffin? [fweet-15]
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| stereopticOn |
FW2??? "while the ear, be we mikealls or nicholists, may sometimes be inclined to believe others the eye, whether browned or nolensed, finds it devilish hard now and again even to believe itself... Drawing nearer to take our slant at it... let us see all there may remain to be seen."
One cannot help noticing that some of the lines run from E to W, others from N to S.
west to east, surely? (or Hebrew, or typesetter?) fixed in published version
Joyce customarily left wide margins for insertions
 |
| 18thC crossed letter |
FW2: "One cannot help noticing that rather more than half of the lines run north-south in the Nemzes and Bukarahast directions while the others go west-east in search from Maliziies with Bulgarad"
Such crossing is antechristian though the explanation may be geographical quite as easily as domestic economic.
cross/christian
some Asian languages written north-south? some east to west
FW2: "Such crossing is antechristian, of course, but... the intention may have been geodetic or, in the view of the cannier, domestic economical."
Then, in addition to the original sand, pounce or soft rag, it has acquired accretions of terricious matter while loitering in the past.
pounce: powder used to prevent ink spreading, or to prepare parchment (where might J have seen this used?)
terraceous = resembling dirt
terrigenous = produced from earth
"loitering" echoes 'toilet'?
FW2: "In addition to the original sand, pounce powder, drunkard paper or soft rag used.. it has acquired accretions of terricious matter whilst loitering in the past."
The teastain is a study in itself and its importance in establishing the identity of the writer complex (for if the hand was one the minds were more than so) will be appreciated by remembering that after before & after the battle of the Boyne it was the custom not to sign letters always.
Battle of Boyne, 1690 (victory of King Billy, William III of Orange) Protestants beat Catholics [wiki]
cf above: "near the scene of the massacre of most of the jacobiters"
FW2: "The teatimestained terminal... is a cosy little brown study all to oneself and... its importance in establishing the identities in the writer complexus (for if the hand was one the minds of active and agitated were more than so) will be best appreciated by never forgetting that both before and after the battle of the Boyne it was a habit not to sign letters always."
For why sign when every word, letter, penstroke, space, is a perfect signature in its own way.
U37: "Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs."
FW2: "So why, pray, sign anything as long as every word, letter, penstroke, paperspace is a perfect signature of its own?"
A person is known more by his personality, habits of dress, movements, response to appeals for charity rather than by his or her boots.
cf U48: "That is Kevin Egan's movement I made nodding for his nap, sabbath sleep."
cf Issy's charity
cf? U141: "Wonder is that young Dedalus the moving spirit. Has a good pair of boots on him today. Last time I saw him he had his heels on view. Been walking in muck somewhere. Careless chap. What was he doing in Irishtown?"
FW2: "A true friend is known much more easily, and better into the bargain, by his personal touch, habits of full or undress, movements, response to appeals for charity than by his footwear, say."
now the manuscript's complications are viewed as artistic like the Book of Kells: (cf Sullivan, The Book of Kells: 'Its weird and commanding beauty; its subdued and goldless colouring; the baffling intricacy of its fearless designs; the clean, unwavering sweep of rounded spiral; the creeping undulations of serpentine forms, that writhe in artistic profusion throughout the mazes of its decorations; the strong and legible minuscule of its text; the quaintness of its striking portraiture; the unwearied reverence and patient labour that brought it into being; all of which combined go to make up the Book of Kells, have raised this ancient Irish volume to a position of abiding preeminence amongst the illuminated manuscripts of the world')
Who that in scrutinising marvels at the indignant whiplashloops, the bolted and blocked rounds, the touching reminiscence of an incomplete trail or dropped final, the gossipy threadreels, the whirligig glorioles which ambiembellish the majuscule of Earwicker, the pardonable confusion which at times the pees are often kews
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| c1890 frame w/whiplash loops |
"bolted and blocked" seems to have been a phrase
"rounds" has lots of meanings; in design they're usually add-ons to smoothe corners
"touching reminiscence" is a minor cliche
maybe 'finial'?
George Eliot uses 'superfluous thread-reels' in Adam Bede (maybe bigger than spools?)
whirligigs = testicles (18thC slang)
"glorioles" = halos
 |
| one style of whirligig toy |
"at times... often"
FW2: "who that in scrutinising marvels at those indignant whiplooplashes: those so prudently bolted or blocked rounds: the touching reminiscence of an incomplete trail or dropped final: the gossipy threadreels, a round thousand whirligig glorioles, prefaced by (alas!) now illegible airy plumeflights, all tiberiously ambiembellishing the initials majuscule of Earwicker... the pardonable confusion for which... but unthanks to which the pees with their caps awry are puite as often as not taken for pews with their tails in their mouths"
who thus marvelling will not go on to see the vaulting ambition of those interbranching upsweeps continually controlled and led by the uniform undeviating course of a cold male fist.
'vaginal vault' is a medical/anatomical term
Shem's fist??
FW2: "who thus at all this marvelling but will press on hotly to see the vaulting feminine libido of those interbranching ogham sex upandinsweeps sternly controlled and easily repersuaded by the uniform matteroffactness of a meandering male fist?"
Duff-Moeggli called this partnership the Odyssean or heterochiric complex from the wellinformed observation that in the case of the periplic poem popularly associated with that name a Punic admiralty report has been capsized & then refloated by dodecanesian baedeker of an every-place-a-treat-itself variety which should amply satisfy the gander as well as the goose.
'duff' has lots of derogatory meanings
Kipling's Mowgli debuted in 1893
"partnership"??
hetero = other/different; chiro = hand (cf ambidextrous, above)
cf above: "writer complex"
Oedipus complex = Freud's theory that men lust after their mothers
periplus/periplous: Greek navigator's itinerary
V. Bérard's theory in Les Pheniciens et l'Odyssee that The Odyssey is a hellenisation of the sailing log (periplus) of a seafaring Semite
"capsized & then refloated" pared down and then refleshed? (cf Kevin)
Dodecanese Islands, Aegean Sea
dodeca = 12 (book two of Ulysses has 12 episodes)
Baedecker's guidebooks to European cities and countries (they even did one for Greek Islands in 1995)
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| 1st ed 1889 [ebook] |
"amply satisfy" antique/legal cliche
gander/goose = cock/hen? periplus = male? Joyce/HSW???
FW2: "Duff-Muggli... first called this kind of paddygoeasy partnership the ulykkean or tetrachiric-quadrumane or ducks and drakes or debts and dishes perplex... after the wellinformed observation... that in the case of the littleknown periplic bestteller popularly associated with the names of the wretched mariner... a Punic admiralty report... had been cleverly capsized and saucily republished as a dodecanesian baedeker of the every-tale-a-treat-in-itself variety which could hope satisfactorily to tickle me gander as game as your goose."
The identity of the persons in the complex came to light in a curious way. The original document was what is known as unbreakable script, that is to say, it had no signs of punctuation of any kind.
"the persons in the complex" (two in number?)
cf "multiplicity of personalities"
"facts of clothing... feminine fiction"
hen/Kevin???
scriptor/writer?
"writer complex"
"vaulting... male fist"
(there are many fragmentary unsolved alphabets but punctuation is not usually a major clue)
U18
Sullivan: The Book of Kells 35: 'We find, as a fact, in the Book of Kells, many consecutive lines... where there is no trace of punctuation at all'
FW2: "The unmistaken identity of the persons in the Tiberiast duplex came to light in the most devious of ways. The original document was in what is known as Hanno O'Nonhanno's unbrookable script, that is to say it showed no signs of punctuation of any sort."
On holding it to the light it was seen to be pierced or punctuated (in the university sense of the word) by numerous dots and gashes inflicted
"came to light... holding it to the light"
"pierced" (is Ulysses subtly pierced, somehow? is Joyce's brain the pronged instrument??) French earwig = perce-oreille
'punctuate' from Medieval Latin punctuare (“to mark with points”), from Latin punctus, perfect passive participle of pungō (“I prick, punch”)
"university sense" rare phrase
(maybe James = university sense, Nora = non-university-sense?)
ordinary sense: punctuation marks, university/etymological sense: punctures?
dots and dashes (Morse code)
PW Joyce 'Gash; a flourish of the pen in writing so as to form an ornamental curve, usually at the end. (Limerick.)' cf 'swash'?
"pronged instrument" Google Images
FW2: "Yet on holding the verso against a lit rush this new book of Morses responded most remarkably to the silent query of our world's oldest light and its recto let out the piquant fact that it was but pierced butnot punctured (in the university sense of the term) by numerous stabs and foliated gashes made by a pronged instrument."
These paper wounds, four in type, were gradually understand to mean stop, please stop, do please stop, and O do please stop respectively and investigation showed that they were provoked by the fork of a professor at the breakfast table.
Sullivan: The Book of Kells 35: 'Speaking of the early Irish manuscripts generally... three dots (:.) mark a period; two dots, a comma; (..,), a semicolon; and one dot at half the height of the letters, a comma' (not the system used in the Book of Kells, though)
1920s joke about a young lady being petted by a man and exclaiming: 'Stop!!!! Please stop!!! Do please stop!! O do please stop! O do please!! O do!!! O!!!!'
- stop
- please stop
- do please stop
- O do please stop
Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Autocrat of the breakfast table and The Professor at the Breakfast-Table
FW2: "These paper wounds, four in type, were gradually and correctly understood to mean stop, please stop, do please stop, and O do please stop respectively and, following up their one true clue... Yard inquiries pointed out → that they ád bîn "provòked” by Ʌ fork, òf à grave Brofèṡ
Deeply religious by nature it was correctly suspected that such anger could not openly have been directed against the ancestral spirit of her who openly respected by him as our boys' best friend
professor = religious, angry (secretly angry at his dead mother? May Joyce??)
"openly... openly"
'A Boy's Best Friend Is His Mother' ♬
FW2: "Deeply religious by nature... it was rightly suspected that such ire could not have been visited by him... upon the ancestral pneuma of one whom, with rheuma, he venerated shamelessly at least once a week at Cockspur Common as his apple in his eye and her first boy's best friend"
and when it was at last noticed that the fourth or heaviest gash was most frequent where the script was clear and the term terse and that these were the exact places carefully selected for her perforations by Dame Partland on the dunghill
'where the term was terse'???
Dame Partlet: in Chaucer, one of the cock Chanticleer's seven hen-wives
+ Pentland Mahaffy?
"perforations" deleted by censors?
FW2: "and... when some peerer or peeress detected that the fourleaved shamrock or quadrifoil jab was more recurrent wherever the script was clear and the term terse and that these two were the selfsame spots naturally selected for her perforations by Dame Partlet on her dungheap"
reluctantly the theory of the jabbering ape was abandoned and its place usurped by that odious & even now insufficiently despised person, Jim the Penman.
'gibbering ape' is the usual spelling
'jabbing ape' = professor w/fork?
Jim the Penman: nickname of James Townsend Saward, a 19th century English barrister and forger
In his play, Jim the Penman (1886), Sir Charles Young expanded the scope of the fictional version of Saward, making him a leader of an international forgery ring who forged letters to marry into high society.
FW2: "To all's much relief one's half hypothesis of that jabberjaw ape amok the showering jestnuts of Bruisanose was hotly dropped and his room taken up by that odious and still today insufficiently malestimated notesnatcher, Shem (kak, pfooi, bosh and fiety, much earny, Gus, poteen? Sez you!) the Penman."
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