FW comments - page 3

Adam and Eve's is apparently a church in Dublin, on the bank of the river Liffey. In the first paragraph of the book, Joyce has reversed the names, to read, "Eve and Adam's". What can we learn from that?

Is he telling us that the paragraph moves from female to male? From the flow of time ("riverrun past") to the structure of space ("Howth Castle and Environs")?

Then, the book does not begin at the headwaters of the river, but after it is already past, at its mouth, by the sea. And that is where the book ended, by the seashore.

So the book begins with a theme of stage Three (CANCER, running water) on page Three, which contains Three paragraphs. And the first paragraph ends with Four (LEO, H.C.E.).

And by the seashore we see the swinging arc of CANCER (3) in, "from swerve of shore to bend of bay". That is at the tidal zone, the most fertile part of the sea, where the Crab walks forward and backward, like the back-and-forth arc. And the swinging tides are ruled by the Moon, as is CANCER, sign of birth and fertility.

Then the "commodius vicus of recirculation" would not be the river, which is relatively narrow (except in flood). It would be the tide. It is the tide which brings us "back" from the sea.

Bill Buttler mentioned the rainbow motif and the orange and green contrasts. in the next paragraph and the thunderword

Anyone else have something on the first paragraph? Thus far it has been mostly mishe mishe and then on to the 100 letter word.The first paragraph is packed of course with Tristam, of which there are 2, and the romantic Tristam with King Mark, and Mark Twain wrote Tom Sawyer kin which we find Huck Finn and there's the other Finn, again. Vanity Fair and brow of Henry II and finally the arclight rainbow. So that I see connections but there is so much to digest!

Elaine on Good Friday

3.9 nor had a voice from a fire bellowsed mishe, mishe

Mishe is the word for in Gaelic for 'I am' and is also (for Joyce's purposes) sufficiently close to 'Moses.' As often with Joyce the text becomes dense with meanings. The two of which that most conflate are the appearance of God in the burning bush to Moses and the Purgatory of St Patrick's Purge, a site to which pilgrims made pious journeys, much to the distress of church authorities since this cave, supposed to be the entrance to Hell, encouraged devotions of a singular and uncanonic sort. The site was more or less sealed off and late descriptions of it are slightly sarcastic in tone and marvel at the ease with which the simple allowed superstition to impose upon them.

The union of disparate elements characterises Joyce in most of FW but seems to be a matter of measured deliberation in the opening. Oystrygods gagin fishygods (quoted from memory and we all know how good that is!) conflates shore people with boat people as well as Ostrogoths and Visigoths. In addition to the enmity

between peoples, in other words, we have that between shore dwellers and invaders. As we also know from historical analyists (like Braudel) settlements are those of hill and shore with nothing in the regions between. By the law of historical dynamism this works out to the conflict of aboriginals with invaders. Did Joyce have any notion of these dynamisms? Braudel was after his time. Did he work it out by himself or was it the subject of some author who anticipated Braudel? If I had to give my opinion, I would say that this was an independent conclusion on Joyce's part since he was a very savvy person about historical possibilities and hypothecations.

Best Bob

I thought Joseph Campbell's analysis (in "Skeleton Key to FW") was Jordan Ruud writes,

There's something about his analysis I don't understand, though. How does "nor had avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe..." relate to Christianity coming to Ireland?

The full of it is "nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick," right? (This is from memory, so be nice to me.)

"Mishe" is a rough transliteration of the Gaelic, "I am." So therefore "avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe" relates to the Burning Bush. Moses asks God's name (Exodus 3:13-25 I think) and he replies in Hebrew, "I am that I am," or something like that. (Which in Hebrew can also mean, "I am that which I am becoming," if I remember correctly from my days studying this sort of thing. Rabbinical scholars feel free to correct me and send my Goyim ass packing.) "Taufen" is German for baptize; and of course we have the pun on Saint Patrick as "peatrick," or "peat rack," thereby grounding him to the land of Ireland. So with one sentence God states his nature as being eternal and ends up digging sod on Christian Ireland. Aleph to the Omagh, minus the snakes.

--Quail

nor had a voice from a fire bellowsed MISHE, MISHE

Is this the voice of the "Jabberwock, with eyes of flame?"

Martin Gardner's The Annotated Alice p.191:

"The opening stanza of Jabberwocky first appeared in MISCH-MASCH, the last of a series of private little "periodicals" that young Carroll wrote, illustrated and hand-lettered for the amusement of his brothers and sisters. In an issue dated 1855, under the heading "Stanza of Anglo-Saxon Poetry," the following "curios fragment" appears:

"Twas bryllyg, and ye slythy toves
did gyre and gymble in ye wabe;
all mimsy were ye borogoves;
and ye mome raths outgrabe."

Carroll then proceeded to interpret these words in much the same fashion as Humpty Dumpty was to do 16 years later in Through the Looking-Glass (1871).

7th Thunderword
1) bothallcho
2) ractorschu
3) mminaround
4) gansumumin
5) arumdrumst
6) rumtrumina
7) HUMPTADUMP
8) waultopoof
9) oolooderam
10) aunsturnup

After the the fool falls of the topoof the waul as ool (7 x 601) oo der king's maun turn up to put HUMPTADUMP back together again.

Crash at the end of (TLG) Chapter 6:
`Of all the unsatisfactory--' (she repeated this aloud, as it was a great comfort to have such a long word to say) `of all the unsatisfactory people I EVER met--' She never finished the sentence, for at this moment a heavy crash shook the forest from end to end.

Chapter 7

"I've sent them all!" the King cried in a tone of delight, on seeing Alice. `Did you happen to meet any soldiers, my dear, as you came through the wood?'
`Yes, I did,' said Alice: `several thousand, I should think.'
`Four thousand two hundred and seven, that's the exact number,' the King said, referring to his book."

Rumdrumstrumtrum at the end of (TLG) Chapter 7:

"But before Alice could answer him, the DRUMS began. Where the noise came from, she couldn't make out: the air seemed full of it, and it rang through and through her head till she felt quite deafened."

Chummin-around? (AW)

"BUTT (with the sickle of a scygthe but the humour of a HUMMER(i.e., Lobster), I feel spirts of itchery outching out from all over me and only for the SLUDGEHUMMER's force."

"Stand up and repeat 'Tis the voice of the SLUGGARD,' said the Gryphon.
'How the creatures order one about, and make one repeat lessons!' thought Alice; 'I might as well be at school at once.' However, she got up, and began to repeat it, but her head was so full of the LOBSTER Quadrille, that she hardly knew what she was saying, and the words came very queer indeed:-- '
''Tis the voice of the LOBSTER; I heard him declare, "You have baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair." As a duck with its eyelids, so he with his nose Trims his belt and his buttons, and turns out his toes.

[later editions continued as follows:

When the sands are all dry,
he is gay as a lark,
And will talk in contemptuous tones of the SHARK,
But, when the tide rises and sharks are AROUND,
His voice has a timid and tremulous sound.]

'That's different from what I used to say when I was a child,' said the Gryphon.
'Well, I never heard it before,' said the Mock Turtle; 'but it sounds uncommon nonsense.'

Art Neuendorffer

Hi. I'm off the list for a long time, so I'm not sure what is the exact point for the "Mishe, Mishe" discussion. Anyway, my computer can find some parts in which the sound "mishe" is used:

Also, the following sounds seem to be close:

148.02: Misi, misi!
In Japanese, "mishimishi" is an onomatopeia of squeaking. "meshi meshi" is a cry for a meal like "Gimme a meal!" for "misi" or "meshi" means a meal in Japanese.

481.26: Mushame, Mushame!
In Japanese, "musume" means a daughter.Cf. "Mousoumeselles"339.16: Fr. mademoiselles + Jp. musume).Maybe my comment will cause another confusion?

Eishiro

Arye Kendi, Jerusalem
Mishe, Mishe

Mishe is more than "sufficiently" close to Moses - it is Moshe in the "original". mi she- is Hebrew for "he, who.." "the one, who..", but I think that's out of context. mise. pronounced mishe, is Hungarian for Mass. That might be more relevant.

Arye Kendi, Jerusalem

If mishe mishe suggests pee and tauftauf suggests shit, and mishe=Mass (Hungarian) and tauf=Baptism (German) are we in a church where Somnbody pissed and shit in the Holy Water fonts? Meanwhile,descending by another declivity, Mishe =My-she=the woman inside Joyce? Augusta (JJ's middle) name was born Livia and became Augusta when Octavian became Augustus Anna Livia Plurabella=Joyce's Jungian anima?