A brief note on the name of Phoenix Park

The Irish is fionnuisce, which Ó Dónaill & Ua Maoileoin’s dictionary defines as “uisce locha nó abhann”, water of a lake or river. Uisce is water, and fionn (white, fair) in this context means clear. Fíoruisce is spring water (fíor means true, in this context pure).

Uisce beatha, of course is whiskey, which is more commonly called fuisce, which is a gaelicisation of the English, which itself is from the Gaelic uisge. Macbain’s 1911 etymological dictionary of Gaelic notes that “Stokes suggests the possibility of uisge being for *uskio-, and allied to Eng. wash.” Rounds.

“Tiers, tiers and tiers. Rounds.” (Finnegans Wake page 590) Tears when they are copious are uisce cinn, head water.

Tears in general are deora. An exile is deoraí. Exile is deoraíocht. Nice connection, although Macbain, citing Stokes again, says the latter may come from “un-countried”, something like dí-bhrughacht, whereas deor (the singular form) is related to Greek dákru (i.e., δάκρυ) and Latin lacrima (dacrima in early form) and thus cognate with the English.

James Joyce Encounters Before and With the 1916 Uprising in Ireland

In Ulysses, the characters of Mr Deasy and the citizen are extreme representations of opposite obsolete political views. The uprising of Easter Week 1916 was directed by men and women very much in the 20th century. (Ulysses was written from 1914 to 1922, published before the civil war began; Finnegans Wake was written from 1922 to 1939, published after the establishment of the Free State and steps toward the modern Republic.)

==================

Mr Deasy drives away Stephen Dedalus, who was leaving anyway (end of chapter 2, Ulysses):

He went out by the open porch and down the gravel path under the trees, hearing the cries of voices and crack of sticks from the playfield. The lions couchant on the pillars as he passed out through the gate; toothless terrors. Still I will help him in his fight. Mulligan will dub me a new name: the bullockbefriending bard.

—Mr Dedalus!

Running after me. No more letters, I hope.

—Just one moment.

—Yes, sir, Stephen said, turning back at the gate.

Mr Deasy halted, breathing hard and swallowing his breath.

—I just wanted to say, he said. Ireland, they say, has the honour of being the only country which never persecuted the jews. Do you know that? No. And do you know why?

He frowned sternly on the bright air.

—Why, sir, Stephen asked, beginning to smile.

—Because she never let them in, Mr Deasy said solemnly.

A coughball of laughter leaped from his throat dragging after it a rattling chain of phlegm. He turned back quickly, coughing, laughing, his lifted arms waving to the air.

—She never let them in, he cried again through his laughter as he stamped on gaitered feet over the gravel of the path. That's why.

On his wise shoulders through the checkerwork of leaves the sun flung spangles, dancing coins.

==================

The citizen drives away Leopold Bloom, who was leaving anyway (end of chapter 12, Ulysses):

Gob, the citizen made a plunge back into the shop.

—By Jesus, says he, I’ll brain that bloody jewman for using the holy name. By Jesus, I’ll crucify him so I will. Give us that biscuitbox here.

—Stop! stop! says Joe.

[...]

Gob, the devil wouldn’t stop him till he got hold of the bloody tin anyhow and out with him and little Alf hanging on to his elbow and he shouting like a stuck pig, as good as any bloody play, in the Queen’s royal theatre.

—Where is he till I murder him?

And Ned and J. G. paralysed with the laughing.

—Bloody wars, says I, I’ll be in for the last gospel.

But as luck would have it the jarvey got the nag’s head round the other way and off with him.

—Hold on, citizen, says Joe. Stop!

Begob he drew his hand and made a swipe and let fly. Mercy of God the sun was in his eyes or he’d have left him for dead. Gob, he near sent it into the county Longford. The bloody nag took fright and the old mongrel after the car like bloody hell and all the populace shouting and laughing and the old tinbox clattering along the street.

[...]

—Did I kill him, says he, or what?

And he shouting to the bloody dog:

—After him, Garry! After him, boy!

And the last we saw was the bloody car rounding the corner and old sheepsface on it gesticulating and the bloody mongrel after it with his lugs back for all he was bloody well worth to tear him limb from limb. Hundred to five! Jesus, he took the value of it out of him, I promise you.

When, lo, there came about them all a great brightness and they beheld the chariot wherein He stood ascend to heaven. And they beheld Him in the chariot, clothed upon in the glory of the brightness, having raiment as of the sun, fair as the moon and terrible that for awe they durst not look upon Him. And there came a voice out of heaven, calling : Elijah! Elijah! And He answered with a main cry : Abba! Adonai! And they beheld Him even Him, ben Bloom Elijah, amid clouds of angels ascend to the glory of the brightness at an angle of fortyfive degrees over Donohoe’s in Little Green Street like a shot off a shovel.

==================

Archdruid Berkeley rages against Saint Patrick, who, with the magic of the triune shamrock, transforms shit into the sun of a new day for Ireland (in last chapter (17) of Finnegans Wake):

That was thing, bygotter, the thing, bogcotton, the very thing, begad! Even to uptoputty Bilkilly-Belkelly-Balkally. Who was for shouting down the shatton on the lamp of Jeeshees. Sweating on to stonker and throw his seven. As he shuck his thumping fore features apt the hoyhop of His Ards.

Thud.

Good safe firelamp! hailed the heliots. Goldselforelump! Halled they. Awed. Where thereon the skyfold high, trampatrampatramp. Adie. Per ye comdoom doominoom noonstroom. Yeasome priestomes. Fullyhum toowhoom.

==================

Patrick Pearse on education (“The Murder Machine”, 1913):

It seems to me that there has been nothing nobler in the history of education than this development of the old Irish plan of fosterage under a Christian rule, when to the pagan ideals of strength and truth there were added the Christian ideals of love and humility. And this, remember, was not the education system of an aristocracy, but the education system of a people. It was more democratic than any education system in the world to-day. Our very divisions into primary, secondary, and university crystallise a snobbishness partly intellectual and partly social.

==================

Proclamation of the Irish Republic (Easter Monday, 1916, assumed to be mostly written by Patrick Pearse)

In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty: six times during the past three hundred years they have asserted it in arms. Standing on that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in the faces of the world, we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent State, and we pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades-in-arms to the cause of its freedom, of its welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations.

... the Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its reolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally, and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past.

==================

The sun of a new day is proclaimed, to awaken Dublin (start of last chapter of Finnegans Wake):

Sandhyas! Sandhyas! Sandhyas!

Calling all downs. Calling all downs to dayne. Array! Surrection! Eireweeker to the wohld bludyn world. O rally, O rally, O rally! Phlenxty, O rally! ... Sonne feine, somme feehn avaunt! ...

The eversower of the seeds of light to the cowld owld sowls that are in the domnatory of Defmut after the night of the carrying of the word of Nuahs and the night of making Mehs to cuddle up in a coddlepot, Pu Nuseht, lord of risings in the yonderworld of Ntamplin, tohp triumphant, speaketh.

... Arcthuris comeing! ... As of yours. We annew. ... A flasch and, rasch, it shall come to pasch, as hearth by hearth leaps live. ... It's a long long ray to Newirgland's premier. ...

Oyes! Oyeses! Oyesesyeses! The primace of the Gaulls, protonotorious, I yam as I yam, mitrogenerand in the free state on the air, is now aboil to blow a Gael warning. Inoperation Eyrlands Eyot, Meganesia, Habitant and the onebut thousand insels, Western and Osthern Approaches.

... Into the wikeawades warld from sleep we are passing.

Muta: So that when we shall have acquired unification we shall pass on to diversity and when we shall have passed on the diversity we shall have acquired the instinct of combat and when we shall have acquired the instinct of combat we shall pass back to the spirit of appeasement?

Juva: By the light of the bright reason which daysends to us from the high.

==================

The river Liffey flows out past Dublin rising (end of Finnegans Wake):

Rise up, man of the hooths, you have slept so long! ... You were pleased as Punch, recitating war exploits and pearse orations to them jackeen gapers. ... It’s Phoenix, dear. And the flame is, hear! ... Come! Step out of your shell! Hold up you free fing! ... You invoiced him last Eatster so he ought to give us hockockles and everything. Every letter is hard but yours sure is the hardest crux ever. ... But once done, dealt and delivered, tattat, you’re on the map. ... So content me now. Lss. Unbuild and be buildn our bankaloan cottage there and we’ll cohabit respectable. ... For the loves of sinfintins! ... Why I’m all these years within years in soffran, allbeleaved. To hide away the tear, the parted. It’s thinking of all. The brave that gave their. The fair that wore. All them that’s gunne. I’ll begin again in a jiffey. The nik of a nad. How glad you’ll be I waked you! my! How well you’ll feel! For ever after. First we turn by the vagurin here and then it’s gooder. So side by side, turn agate, weddingtown, laud men of Londub! I only hope whole the heavens sees us. ... Finn, again! Take. Bussoftlhee, mememormee! Till thousendsthee. Lps. The keys to. Given!

==================

James Connolly, Workers’ Republic, 8 April 1916:

In these days of doubt, despair, and resurgent hope we fling our banner to the breeze, the flag of our fathers, the symbol of our national redemption, the sunburst shining over an Ireland re-born.

Gramma’s Grammar

But all is her inbourne. Intend. From gramma’s grammar ... (Finnegans Wake, page 268)

‘The Giantess, or Guardian of the Egg’ by Leonora Carrington

‘The last word in stolentelling!’ Magpies and the collage aesthetic in Finnegans Wake
‘lov’d latakia’: Patterns of Gynemorphic Geography in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake
‘the scheme is like your rumba round me garden’: New Orcadian Neolithic rock art discoveries
“Till the Cows Come Home” (Part One): Towards a Natural History of Megaliths
“Till the Cows Come Home” (Part Two): The Social Life of Megaliths
A World in Your Shell-Like

—essays by Simon Crook, at The Grammar of Matter

in the muddle is the sounddance

What Is Finnegans Wake?

Some thoughts for those about to enter the river of life or dig in the mudmound for the first or the five-hundredth time.

By Karl Reisman, author of “Darktongues”: Fulfulde and Hausa in Finnegans Wake and more.

Many people begin their journey carrying as baggage certain preconceptions: about books, about novels, about characters and even about plots and their roles in such novels or books. True, Finnegans Wake has characters and plots but to focus on them, while sometimes enlightening, is often to miss the larger stream in which they are involved.

Also. as the wisest readers have discovered, it is not possible to make a consistent story or cast of characters that carries you through your reading - although sometimes the story line is very clear.

So the first notion that has to be abandoned is that Finnegans Wake is about something.

It is not about Life, it is life.

As Samuel Beckett said in the short profound essay he wrote for Mr. Joyce: "His writing is not about something; it is that something itself."

Scientists dealing with difficult concepts sometimes build a kind of "model" of what they are contemplating. The model behaves in the way that their object of study behaves and by understanding the model they are able to understand things about the world they have made a model of. Niels Bohr's model of the structure of the atom was one such. As even earlier the model of the solar system which most of us have in our head.

In that sense we might, although it is limiting, say that Finnegans Wake is a "model" of Life. It behaves the way life behaves. Finnegans Wake, then, is not a book in the traditional sense. It is a living object.

Finnegans Wake has many identities - it is, for instance, a river. Joyce lets us know this in the first word, "riverrun".

One feature of the world Joyce has created is that it is built pervasively on ironies - what Giordano Bruno called "the coincidence of contraries". We can see this immediately in understanding life as a river. There is the river of Heraclitus, constantly changing so that one can never step into the same river twice. But there is also the river that endlessly repeats the same process of moisture from the clouds down the same path to the sea, that takes us "by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs." Both are present and one in the structure of Finnegans Wake.

The book and its parts in many ways share features with stages in the life of human beings. At the end for instance as death approaches we come to see that much of what we have thought important in our lives is not so important, and life becomes much clearer and we see clearly the answers to questions we thought so difficult, so at this point the writing in Finnegans Wake becomes much clearer and simpler, until the final catastrophe of death itself on page 628.

The book is its own teacher. The keys to it have been given in the book.

"Lps. The keys to. Given!" (page 628.15)

As with rivers so with roads - or "ruads". And here the thing is that there are so many. There is no right road to the book. As it says on page 497: "from Rathgar, Rathanga, Rountown and Rush, from America Avenue and Asia Place and the Affrian Way and Europa Parade and besogar the wallies of Noo Soch Wilds and from Vico, Mespil Rock and Sorrento," ...

And so also it is a book of many languages all of which contribute to the multiple meanings of its sentences. When different languages come in contact they often break down the structure of language itself. One example that Joyce uses is the African based Creole languages of the West Indies and other plantation societies with African slaves. These languages often break words into syllables and play with the meanings that emerge - as Joyce himself does in Finnegans Wake. This book is "an earsighted view", you have to hear the sounds of the different languages as your are able, and at the same time see the words on the page, with their special and peculiar spellings. Each person brings different perceptions to this process.

Although as you become more and more familiar with the book you will find that you begin to speak its language.

For the language of Finnegans Wake is some of the most beautiful ever written, and it sounds in your head and becomes engraved in your memory, so that eventually it transforms from a written work into an oral one.

And of course Finnegans Wake is a book of the night and of the dark. Whether approached psychologically as John Bishop does in his remarkable Joyce's Book of the Dark, or mythologically or by any analysis of dreams and dreamers.

And then the remarkable mind of Joyce takes us far beyond all these.

Because it is such a living work, all reading of Finnegans Wake in which one finds pleasure, or enlightenment, or beauty or particularly laughter, is valuable reading whether by novice or longtime reader.

One consequence of what I am saying is that Finnegans Wake is not a "difficult" book. It may be unfamiliar at the start, but it speaks the language of us all.

So to answer the question in my title, Finnegans Wake is far more than a "book". It lives, it talks to us, it finds us new things. And we talk to it. And eventually it changes us and lives in us.

As I said the book is its own teacher, although one may be lead to discover many things through curiosity aroused by the book.

The only other "teachers" I would recommend to the beginner are Samuel Becket's little essay "Dante ... Bruno . Vico .. Joyce" from Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress and the remarkable and loving book by James Atherton, The Books at the Wake.

Bloomsday

More than any other writer, Joyce gave voice to the uncommon in the common, the commonness of the uncommon.

He rejected God and State for the human, who made (and makes) them.