Untitled as her memorial gone by many names in many times: Pro Honafrio, The Groans of a Briton, An Apology for a Husband, Can you excuse him, The only true account all about Mr. Earwicker & the Snake by an honest woman of the world who can only tell the naked truth about a dear man and all his conspirators how they tried to fall him by putting it all around Lucalizod by a mean sneak about E-- and a dirty pair of sluts, showing to all the unmentionableness falsely accused about the redcoats.
The proteiform graph itself is a polyexigetical piece of scripture. There was a time when naif alphabetters would have written it down the tracing of a pure deliquescent recidivist possibly ambidexterous, snubnosed, probably, and having a fairly 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 virtual crime or crimes unwarily be made before any suitable occasion for it or them had arisen. But under the very eyes of the inspector the traits which feature the sympathetic chiaroscuro coalesce, their contrarieties eliminated in a stable somebody, as by the providential warring of housebreaker with heartbreaker, & of dram drinker with freethinker our social something 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? Now, patience, 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 both Bruce Brothers & their Scotch spider. If after years and years of research a sage solemnly tells us that the great one is 3 syllables less than his own surname, that the ear of Earwicker was the trademark of a broadcaster and his wicker the local cant for an aeronaut patent then as to this radio-oscillating epiepistle to which we must ceaselessly return where exactly at present is the bright soandso who is able to give us the dinkum oil? To conclude purely negatively from the positive absence of political hatred and its [...] that it cannot ever have been the pen product 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 cloudy evening be quietly suggested, 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 nudity 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, the best taste) as were someone or other when perhaps presented by a friend of his 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, or not strictly necessary, or a little irritating but still suddenly full of local colour & personal perfume, 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 feminine 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 then be contemplated simultaneously & 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 stern chuckler Mahappy Mahapnot that Lucalizod was the only place in the world where the possible was always the improbable and the improbable the inevitable. This implies a sequentiality of improbable possibles though possibly 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 took place 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, the merest 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 unexpectedly 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 the desponful atmosphere of such biting cold have found a motive for future saintity 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 goodishsized sheet of letterpaper originating from Boston (Mass) of the eleventh of the fifth to dear which proceeded to mention Maggy well and everybody athome is general health well and a lovely face of some born gentleman with a parcel of cookycakes for tea well and must now close a grand funeral Maggy and hopes to hear from with love & four crosses from loving from a [large] looking stain of tea. The stain, & that of tea, marks it at once as a genuine relique of old Irish poetry. 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 slant eyed hen. Heated residence since nobody knows when in the orangeflavoured mound had partly dissolved the first impression and caused some features palpably nearer us to be swollen up most grossly while the farther back we seem to 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 peep tour beyond the figure of the scriptor into the subconscious writer's mind.
Let us now draw nearer to it since it has after all met with misfortune & see all there is to be seen. One cannot help noticing that about half of the lines run from E to W, others from N to S. These ruled lines along which the traced words can run, march, walk, stumble in comparative safety seem to have been first of all drawn in a pretty checker by using lampblack & a blackthorn. Such crossing is antechristian though the explanation may be geodetic quite as easily as domestic economic. Then, in addition to the original sand, pounce powder 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 in the time 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. While we may have our irremovable doubts as to the whole sense of the text, the meaning of any phrase in it, the meaning of every word deciphered and interpreted we must not have any doubts as to its authorship and authoritativeness. Though apparently & to a rough mind this document is a thing once for all done & there you are somewhere and finished in a certain time be it a day or a year or even supposing it should turn out to be a long stretch of goodness only knows how many days or years. But anyhow somebody somewhere sometime wrote it, wrote it all, wrote it all down and there it is, full stop. Ah yes but one who deeply thinks will always bear in his mind that this downright there you are & there it is is only all in his eye. Every single person place & thing was moving, changing every part of the time: the travelling inkpot, the hare & turtle, pen & paper, the continually more & less intermisunderstanding minds of the anticollaborators, the variously inflected, differently pronounced, otherwise spelled, changeably meaning vocable scriptsigns. We ought to be deeply thankful that we have even a written on with now dried ink piece of paper after it all & cling to it as with drowning hands. Who that in scrutinising marvels at the indignant whiplashloops, the so prudently bolted or 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 monology of the interiors, the pardonable confusion, owing to which the pees with their caps awry are quite often as not kews with their tails in their mouths, the sudden petulence of a capitalised middle, the curt witty dashes never quite at the truth letter. Then a sudden sinistrogyric return to some sore point in the past a word here so cunningly hidden a [of] maze like a fieldmouse in a nest of coloured ribbons I the innocent exhibitionism of those capricious underlinings, those exotic serpentines since properly banished from our scriptures, the toomuchness and toomanyness of its fourlegged ems, the penelopean patience of the paraphe tailed by a leaping lasso— who thus at this marvelling will not press on to see the feminine vaulting libido of those interbranching sex up&insweeps sternly controlled easily repersuaded by the uniform course matter of factness of a meandering male fist. Duff-Moeggli called this kind of partnership the Odyssean or heterochiric complex after the wellinformed observation that in the case of the littleknown periplic poem popularly associated with that name a Punic admiralty report has been cleverly capsized & then saucily reissued as a dodecanesian baedeker of an every-tale-a-treat-itself variety which could hope to 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 tracery, 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 cuts and 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 professionally piqued to introduce tempo into a plane surface by making holes in space. Deeply religious by nature it was correctly suspected that such anger could not have been directed against the ancestral spirit of one openly respected by him once a week as our first boys' best friend and when it was at last detected that the fourth or heaviest gash was more frequent wherever the script was clear and the term terse and that these were the exact places carefully selected for her perforations by Dame Partlet on the dunghill reluctantly the theory of the jabbering ape was hotly dropped and its place usurped by that odious & even today insufficiently despised notetaker, Jim the Penman.
No it is not a riot of blots & blues & bars and balls & hoops & wriggles: it only looks so as like as damn it.
Untitled as her memorial [it has been named] {gone by} many names in many times: Pro Honafrio, The Groans of a Briton, An Apology for a Husband, Can you excuse him,
(confused syntax published as: "Her untitled mamafesta memorialising the Mosthighest has gone by many names at disjointed times. Thus we hear of... ")
"her memorial" her memorial for HCE, apparently
the four or five titles in this added paragraph, along with the one-sentence 'summary' in the oldest draft, are clearly describing the vignette called the Revered Letter, but the rest of this vignette could just as well refer to any manuscript, with the emphasis on psychoanalysing the handwriting, not the content at all
"Pro" common in Latin speech titles in support of a person or principle
Onofrio (surname)
Onuphrius or Onoufrios (Greek: Ὀνούφριος, from Egyptian: Wnn-nfr meaning "he-who-is-continuingly-good"), venerated as St. Onuphrius by Catholics, lived as a hermit in the Egyptian desert c4thC (cf Kevin)
'Groans of the Britons': a letter of plea for assistance against the invading Saxons, sent by Britons to Aëtius, the Roman leader in Gaul, AD446
'an apology for a husband' usually means a poor example
"Can you excuse him" ("Apology... excuse")
FW2: "Her untitled mamafesta memorialising the Mosthighest has gone by many names at disjointed times. Thus we hear of... Groans of a Britoness, ...An Apology for a Big (some such nonoun as Husband...)" [3 pages of barnacles added]
The only true account all about Mr. Earwicker & the Snake by an honest woman of the world who can only tell the naked truth about a dear man and all his conspirators how they tried to fall him by putting it all around Lucalizod by a mean sneak about E-- and a dirty pair of sluts, showing to all the unmentionableness falsely accused about the redcoats.
so, Eve's version of the Eden story?
this summary of the Revered Letter has a completely different focus from the other: "dear which proceeded to mention Maggy well and everybody athome is general health well and a lovely face of some born gentleman with a parcel of cookycakes for tea well and must now close a grand funeral Maggy and hopes to hear from with love & four crosses from loving"
"only true account" [another example]
"woman of the world" [two examples]
"naked truth" A&E saw they were naked
these "conspirators" could include the cad and Hosty
"fall him" 'to fall a tree' is acceptable
"Lucalizod" 2nd appearance in this vignette
VI.B6.72: "unmentionables inexplicables unwhisperables" Jespersen: The Growth and Structure of the English Language 249: 'trousers... the very absurdity of the taboo, which made people invent no end of comic names (inexpressibles, inexplicables, indescribables, ineffables, unmentionables, unwhisperables... etc.)' also in Shem1
(if must be significant that the throwaway rumors of "sluts" and "redcoats" get preserved here quite precisely)
"redcoats"
 |
| dress uniform of Welsh Fusiliers |
The proteiform graph itself is a polyexigetical piece of scripture. There was a time when naif alphabetters would have written it down the tracing of a pure deliquescent recidivist possibly ambidexterous, snubnosed, probably, and having a fairly 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 virtual crime or crimes unwarily be made before any suitable occasion for it or them had [presented]{arisen}.
"naif" (cf delinquent adolescent?)
"possibly ambidexterous" (isn't this a good thing? or maybe evidence of shiftiness?)
"fairly" fair hair?
"virtual crime" not legally, but in effect, almost
"arisen" (erection??)
FW2: "The proteiform graph itself is a polyhedron of scripture. 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... 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 by anyone unwary enough before any suitable occasion for it or them had so far managed to happen along."
But under the very eyes of the inspector the traits which feature the sympathetic chiaroscuro coalesce, their contrarieties eliminated in a stable somebody, as by the providential warring of housebreaker with heartbreaker, & of dram drinker with freethinker our social something bowls along bumpily through generations, more generations & still more generations.
"the inspector" police inspector?
"chiaroscuro" (is Joyce hinting we'll find a pattern of light-and-dark throughout Ulysses, if we look?)
 |
| eg Rembrandt |
"our social something" a phrase
FW2: "In fact, under the close eyes of the inspector the traits featuring the chiaroscuro coalesce, their contrarieties eliminated, in one stable somebody similarly as by the providential warring of heartshaker with housebreaker and of dramdrinker against freethinker our social something bowls along bumpily, experiencing a jolting series of prearranged disappointments, down the long lane of... generations, more generations and 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? Now, patience, 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 both Bruce Brothers & their Scotch spider.
"Now, patience," [fixing nonsequitur]
"both Bruce Brothers & their Scotch spider" Robert and Edward; the spider story first appears in Sir Walter Scott (set in Ireland not Scotland, Edward not present)
FW2: "Say, baroun lousadoor, who in hallhagal wrote the durn thing anyhow? 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, atwixt two showers or atosst of a trike, 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?
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. A good plan used by worried business folk who may not have had many momentums to master Kung's doctrine of the meang or the propriety codestruces of Carprimustimus is just to think of all the sinking fund of patience possessed in their conjoint names 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 3 syllables less than his own surname, that the ear of Earwicker was the trademark of a broadcaster and his wicker the local cant for an aeronaut patent then as to this radio-oscillating epiepistle to which we must ceaselessly return where exactly at present is the bright soandso who is able to give us the dinkum oil?
"3 syllables less than his own surname" (cf Cad1? "Shorty disappeared from the surface of the earth so completely as to lead one to suppose that his habitat had become the interior.")
"patent" the aeronaut patented something called 'wicker'?
"radio-oscillating" recent awkward phrase
"epiepistle" is Ulysses a message about a message?
"to which we must ceaselessly return" Vico? we must return to the Letter
"where exactly at present" Heisenberg's uncertainty?
"the bright soandso who is able" not the sage, apparently (level one sounded like it referred to Joyce himself, but here it sounds like a future critic)
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 (yes, yes, less!), that the ear of Dionn Earwicker aforetime was the trademark of a broadcaster with wicker local jargon for an ace's patent (Hear! Calls! Everywhair!), then as to this radiooscillating epiepistle to which... we must ceaselessly return, whereabouts exactly at present in Siam, Hell or Tophet... is that bright soandsuch to slip us the dinkum oil?"
To conclude purely negatively from the positive absence of political hatred and its [...] that it cannot ever have been the pen product 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.
"purely negatively"
"positive absence" a useful phrase
"political hatred" was "political allusions" (Joyce's furies weren't especially political)
"pen product" (was "work") not really a phrase
FW2: "Naysayers we know. To conclude purely negatively 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 (sometimes called quotation marks) on any page that its author was always constitutionally incapable of misappropriating the spoken words of others."
Has anyone, it might with profit some cloudy evening be quietly suggested, 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 nudity or plaguepurple nakedness it may or may not contain.
"cloudy" when perception is noticeably obstructed
"quietly suggested" hint hint?
nudity/nakedness = passive/active
FW2: "Has any fellow of the dime a dozen type, it might with some profit some dull evening quietly be hinted—has any usual sort of ornery josser, flatchested, fortyish, faintly flatulent and given to ratiocination by syncopation in the elucidation of complications, of his greatest Fung Yang dynasdescendanced, only another the son of, in fact, ever looked sufficiently longly at a quite everywaylooking stamped addressed envelope? Admittedly it is an outer husk: its face, in all its featureful perfection of imperfections, is its fortune: 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 as hurtful to good sense (and let us add, the best taste) as were someone or other when perhaps presented by a friend of his 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, or not strictly necessary, or a little irritating but still suddenly full of local colour & personal perfume, 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.
"the best taste" Victorian cliche, usually as a negative
"someone or other" suggests (feigned?) unconcern; Sterne used it in a letter
"or"s instead of 'and's
"perfume" suddenly turns us into pantysniffers
"taste... vision... eyes... colour... perfume... hand" missing sound?
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 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, straightway 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?"
Who in his heart doubts either that the facts of feminine 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 then be contemplated simultaneously & 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 stern chuckler Mahappy Mahapnot that Lucalizod was the only place in the world where the possible was always the improbable and the improbable the inevitable.
Mahaffy's 1887 book on conversation includes a serious chapter on humor and wit
'a stern chuckle' not unknown phrase
'stern check' appears in Scott and Arnold
farfetched:
German Sterngucker: stargazer (pronounced SHTAIRN-GAWKer)
'Der Sterngucker' 1916 operetta by Franz Lehár
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, only a little to the rere? 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? Here let a few artifacts fend in their own favour... That stern chuckler, Mayhappy Mayhapnot, once said to repeation in that lutran conservatory way of his that Isitachapel-Asitalukin was the one place, ult aut nult, in this madh vaal of tares (whose verdhure's yellowed therever Phaiton parks his car while its tamelised tay is the drame of Drainophilias) where the possible was the improbable and the improbable the inevitable."
This implies a sequentiality of improbable possibles though possibly 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 took place as any other which never took place at all are ever likely to be.
"This implies a sequentiality of impossible probables but" →
"This implies a sequentiality of improbable possibles though possibly"
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, the merest 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 unexpectedly threw up certain fragments of orange peel, the remnant of an outdoor meal of some unknown sunseeker illico in in a mistridden past.
FW2: "About that original hen. Midwinter (fruur or kuur?) was in the offing and Premver a promise of a pril when... an iceclad shiverer, merest of bantlings, observed a cold fowl behaviourising strangely on that fatal midden... (dump for short) afterwards changed into the orangery when in the course of deeper demolition unexpectedly one bushman's holiday 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 the desponful atmosphere of such biting cold have found a motive for future saintity 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 goodishsized sheet of letterpaper originating from Boston (Mass) of the eleventh of the fifth to
Le Fanu: The House by the Churchyard, ch. 53: 'The sod just for so much as a good sized sheet of letter-paper might cover, was trod and broken'
why Boston?
"goodishsized... large looking"
FW2: "What child of a strandlooper 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 and beachwalker whilst trying with pious clamour to wheedle Tipperaw raw raw reeraw puteters out of Now Sealand in spight of the patchpurple of the massacre, a dual a duel to die to day, goddam and biggod, sticks and stanks, of most of the Jacobiters. The bird in the case was Belinda of the Dorans, a more than quinquegintarian (Terziis prize with Serni medal, Cheepalizzy's Hane Exposition), and what she was scratching at at the hour of klokking twelve looked for all this zogzag world like a goodishsized sheet of letterpaper originating by transhipt from Boston (Mass.) of the last of the first to"
dear which proceeded to mention Maggy well and everybody athome is general health well and a lovely face of some born gentleman with a parcel of cookycakes for tea well and must now close a grand funeral Maggy and hopes to hear from with love & four crosses from loving from a [large] looking stain of tea. The stain, & that of tea, marks it at once as a genuine relique of old Irish poetry.
(Joyce must have looked for a better word than "large" but filed to find one)
'Reliques of Irish Poetry' 1789
FW2: "Dear whom it proceeded to mention Maggy well & allathome's health well only the hate turned the milk on the van Houtens and the general's elections with a lovely face of some born gentleman with a beautiful present of wedding cakes for dear thank you Chriesty and with grand funferall of poor Father Michael don't forget unto life's & Muggy well how are you Maggy & hopes soon to hear well & must now close it with fondest to the twoinns with four crosskisses for holy paul holey corner holipoli whollyisland pee ess from (locust may eat all but this sign shall they never) affectionate largelooking tache of tch. The stain, and that a teastain (the overcautelousness of the masterbilker here, as usual, signing the page away), marked it off on the spout of the moment as a genuine relique of ancient Irish pleasant pottery of that lydialike languishing class known as a hurry-me-o'er-the-hazy."
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 slant eyed hen. Heated residence since nobody knows when in the orangeflavoured mound had partly dissolved the first impression and caused some features palpably nearer us to be swollen up most grossly while the farther back we seem to 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 peep tour beyond the figure of the scriptor into the subconscious writer's mind.
"slant eyed" usually Asian/ suspicious? (cf Corny Kelleher's squint?)
Bloom's cat had "avid shameclosing eyes"
"since nobody knows when" phrase
Hayman thinks Joyce forgot to cross out "peep"
FW2: "Well, almost any microphotoist worth his chemicots will tip anyone tossing him the teaser 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. Tip. Well, this freely is what must have occurred to our missive... unfilthed from the boucher by the sagacity of a lookmelittle likemelong hen. 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..."
Let us now draw nearer to it since it has after all met with misfortune & see all there is to be seen. One cannot help noticing that about half of the lines run from E to W, others from N to S. These ruled lines along which the traced words can run, march, walk, stumble in comparative safety seem to have been first of all drawn in a pretty checker by using lampblack & a blackthorn.
morbid curiosity?
"ruled lines" graph paper?
 |
| blackthorn thorns |
Such crossing is antechristian though the explanation may be geodetic quite as easily as domestic economic. Then, in addition to the original sand, pounce powder 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 in the time 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.
While we may have our irremovable doubts as to the whole sense of the text, the meaning of any phrase in it, the meaning of every word deciphered and interpreted we must not have any doubts as to its authorship and authoritativeness.
Though apparently & to a rough mind this document is a thing once for all done & there you are somewhere and finished in a certain time be it a day or a year or even supposing it should turn out to be a long stretch of goodness only knows how many days or years.
But anyhow somebody somewhere sometime wrote it, wrote it all, wrote it all down and there it is, full stop.
Ah yes but one who deeply thinks will always bear in his mind that this downright there you are & there it is is only all in his eye.
Every single person place & thing was moving, changing every part of the time: the travelling inkpot, the hare & turtle, pen & paper, the continually more & less intermisunderstanding minds of the anticollaborators, the variously inflected, differently pronounced, otherwise spelled, changeably meaning vocable scriptsigns.
We ought to be deeply thankful that we have even a written on with now dried ink piece of paper after it all & cling to it as with drowning hands.
Who that in scrutinising marvels at the indignant whiplashloops, the so prudently bolted or 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 monology of the interiors,
the pardonable confusion, owing to which the pees with their caps awry are quite often as not kews with their tails in their mouths, the sudden petulence of a capitalised middle, the curt witty dashes never quite at the truth letter.
Then a sudden sinistrogyric return to some sore point in the past a word here so cunningly hidden a [of] maze like a fieldmouse in a nest of coloured ribbons I
the innocent exhibitionism of those capricious underlinings, those exotic serpentines since properly banished from our scriptures, the toomuchness and toomanyness of its fourlegged ems, the penelopean patience of the paraphe tailed by a leaping lasso—
who thus at this marvelling will not press on to see the feminine vaulting libido of those interbranching sex up&insweeps sternly controlled easily repersuaded by the uniform course matter of factness of a meandering male fist.
Duff-Moeggli called this kind of partnership the Odyssean or heterochiric complex after the wellinformed observation that in the case of the littleknown periplic poem popularly associated with that name a Punic admiralty report has been cleverly capsized & then saucily reissued as a dodecanesian baedeker of an every-tale-a-treat-itself variety which could hope to 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 tracery, 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 cuts and 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 professionally piqued to introduce tempo into a plane surface by making holes in space.
Deeply religious by nature it was correctly suspected that such anger could not have been directed against the ancestral spirit of one openly respected by him once a week as our first boys' best friend
and when it was at last detected that the fourth or heaviest gash was more frequent wherever the script was clear and the term terse and that these were the exact places carefully selected for her perforations by Dame Partlet on the dunghill reluctantly the theory of the jabbering ape was hotly dropped and its place usurped by that odious & even today insufficiently despised notetaker, Jim the Penman.
No it is not a riot of blots & blues & bars and balls & hoops & wriggles: it only looks so as like as damn it.
