Penguin Classics the Restored Finnegans Wake Read online

  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.

  Luckily there is another cant to the questy. 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 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 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. The river felt she wanted salt? That was just where Brien came in. The country asked for bearspaw for dindin? And boundin aboundin it got it surly. We who live under heaven, we of the clovery kingdom, we middleseas people have often watched the sky overreaching the land. We suddenly have. Our isle is Sainge. The place. 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. If the proverbial bishop of our holy and undivided with this me ken or no me ken Zot is the Quiztune havvermashed his twoe nails on the head 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. Ahahn!

  About that original hen. Midwinter (fruur or kuur?) was in the offing and Premver a promise of a pril when, as kischabrigies sang life’s old sahatsong, an iceclad shiverer, merest of bantlings, observed a cold fowl behaviourising strangely on that fatal midden or chip factory or comical-bottomed copsjute (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 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 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.

  Why then how?

  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 (there’s a sod of a turb for you! please wisp off the grass!) 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. Tip.

  You is feeling like you was lost in the bush, boy? You says: It is a puling sample jungle of woods. You most shouts out: Bethicket me for a stump of a beech if I have the poultriest notions what the forest he all means. Gee up, girly! The quad gospellers may own the targum but any of the zingari shoolerim may pick a peck of kindlings yet from the sack of auld hensyne.

  Lead, kindly fowl! They always did: ask the ages. What bird has done yesterday man may do next year, be it fly, be it moult, be it hatch, be it agreement in the nest. For her socioscientific sense is sound as a bell, sir: her volucrine automutativeness right on normalcy: she knows, she just feels she was kind of born to lay and love eggs (trust her to propagate the species and hoosh her fluffballs safe through din and danger!): lastly but mostly, in her genesic field it is all game and no gammon: she is ladylike in everything she does and plays the gentleman’s part every time. Let us auspice it! Yes, before all this has time to end the golden egg must return with its vungence. Man will become dirigible, ague will be rejuvenated, woman with her ridiculous white burden will reach by one step sublime incubation, the manewanting human lioness with her dishorned discipular manram will lie down together publicly flank upon fleece. No, assuredly, they are not justified, those gloompourers who grouse that letters have never been quite their old selves again since that weird weekday i
n bleak Janiveer (yet how palmy date in a waste’s oasis!) when, to the shock of both, Biddy Doran looked at literature.

  And. She may be a mere marcella, this midget madgetcy, Misthress of Arths. But. It is not a hear or say of some anomorous letter, signed Toga Girilis (teasy dear). We have a cop of her fist right against our nosibos. We note the paper with her jotty young watermark: Notre Dame du Bon Marché. And she has a heart of Arin! What lumililts as she fols with her fallimineers and her nadianods. As a strow will shaw so does the wind blague, recting to show the rudess of a robur, curling and shewing the fansaties of a frizette. But how many of her readers realise that she is not out to dizzledazzle with a graith uncouthrement of postmantuam glasseries from the lapins and the grigs? Nuttings on her wilelife! Grabar gooden grandy for old almeanium adamologists like Dariaumaurius and Zovotrimaserovmeravmerouvian; (dmzn!); she feel plain plate one flat fact thing and if, lastways firdstwise, a man alones sine anyon anyons utharas has no rates to done a kik at with anyon anakars about tutus milking fores and the rereres on the outerrand asikim the tutus to be forrarder. Thingcrooklyexineverypasturesixdixlixencehimaroundhersthemaggerbykinkinkankanwithdownmindlookingated. Mesdaims, Marmouselles, Mescerfs! Silvapais! All schwants (schwrites) ischt tell the Cock’s trooth about him. Kapak kapuk. No minzies matter. He had to see life foully, the plak and the smut (schwrites). There were three men in him (schwrites). Dancings (schwrites) was his only ttoo feebles. With apple harlottes. And a little mollvogels. Spissially (schwrites) when they peeches. Honeys wore camelia paints. Yours very truthful. Add dapple inn. Yet it is but an old story, the tale of a Treestone with one Ysold, of a Mons held by tentpegs and his Pal whatholootsed on the run, what Cadman could but Badman wouldn’t, any Genoaman against any Venis, and why Kate takes charge of the waxworks.

  Let us now, weather, health, dangers, public orders and other circumstances permitting, when perfectly convenient, if you police, ofter you, policepolice, pardoning mein, ich beam so fresch, hey?, drop this jiggery-pokery and talk straight turkey as meet to mate for 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. Habes aures et num videbis? Habes oculos ac mannepalpabunt? Tip! Drawing nearer to take our slant at it (since after all it has met with misfortune while all underground), let us see all there may remain to be seen.

  I am a worker, a tombstone mason, anxious to pleace averyburies and jully glad when Christmas comes his once ayear. You are a poorjoist, unctuous to polise nopebobbies and tunnibelly soully when ’tis thime took o’er home, gin. We cannot say aye to aye. We cannot smile noes from noes. Still. 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 for, tiny tot though it looks when schtschupnistling alongside other incunabula, it has its cardinal points for all that. These ruled barriers along which the traced words run, march, halt, walk, stumble at doubtful points, stumble up again in comparative safety seem to have been drawn first of all in a pretty checker with lamp-black and blackthorn. Such crossing is antechristian, of course, but the use of the homeborn shillelagh as an aid to calligraphy shows a distinct advance from savagery to barbarism. It is seriously believed by some that the intention may have been geodetic or, in the view of the cannier, domestic economical. But by writing thithaways end to end and turning, turning and end to end hithaways writing and with lines of litters slittering up and louds of latters slettering down, the old semetomyplace and jupetbackagain from Ham Let Rise till Hum Lit Sleep, where in the waste is the wisdom?

  Another point. In addition to the original sand, pounce powder, drunkard paper or soft rag used (any vet or inhanger in our sot’s social can see the seen for seemself, a wee ftofty od room, the cheery spluttered on the one karrig, a darka disheen of voos from Dalbania, any gotsquantity of racky, a portogal and some buk setting out on the sofer, you remember the sort of softball sucker motru used to tell us when we were all biribiyas or nippies and messas) it has acquired accretions of terricious matter whilst loitering in the past. The teatimestained terminal (say not the tag, mummer, or our show’s a failure!) is a cosy little brown study all to oneself and, whether it be thumbprint, mademark or just a poor trait of the artless, 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. Tip. And it is surely a lesser ignorance to write a word with every consonant too few than to add all too many. The end? Say it with missiles then and thus arabesque the page. You have your cup of scalding Souchong, your taper’s waxen drop, your cat’s paw, the clove or coffinnail you chewed or champed as you worded it, your lark in clear air. So why, pray, sign anything as long as every word, letter, penstroke, paperspace is a perfect signature of its own? 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.

  And, speaking anent Tiberias and other incestuish salacities among gerontophils, a world of warning about the tenderloined passion hinted at. Some softnosed peruser might mayhem take it up erogenously as the usual perfectly usual case of spoons, prostituta in herba plus dinky pinks deliberatively summersaulting off her bisexycle at the main entrance of curate’s perpetual soutane suit with her one to see and awoh! who picks her up as gingerly as any balmbearer would to feel whereupon the virgin was most hurt and nicely asking: whyre have you been so grace a mauling and where were you chaste me child? Be who, farther potential? and so wider but we grisly old Sykos who have done our unsmiling bit on ’alices, when they were yung and easily freudened, in the penumbra of the procuring room (and what oracular comepression we have had, very priveetly, of course, to apply to them!) could (did we care to sell our feebought silence in camera) tell our very moistnostrilled one that father in such virgated contexts is not always that undemonstrative relative (often held up to our contumacy) who settles our hashbill for us and what an innocent allabroad’s adverb such as Michaelly looks like can be suggestive of under the pudendascope and, finally, what a neurasthene nympholept, endocrine-pineal typus, of inverted parentage with a prepossessing drauma present in her past and a priapic urge for congress with agnates before cognates fundamentally is feeling for under her lubricitous meiosis when she refers with liking to some feeler she fancie’s face. And. Mm. We could. Yes. What need to say? ’Tis as human a little story as paper could well carry, in affect, as singsing so Salaman susuing to swittvitles while as unbluffingly blurtubruskblunt as an Esra, the cat, the cat’s meeter, the meeter’s cat’s wife, the meeter’s cat’s wife’s half better, the meeter’s cat’s wife’s half better’s meeter, and so back to our horses, for we also know, what we have perused from the pages of I Was A Gemral, that showting up of Bulsklivism by “Schottenboum”, that Father Michael about this red time of the white terror equals the old regime and Margaret is the social revolution while cakes mean the party funds and dear thank you signifies national gratitude. In fine, we have heard, as it happened, of Spartacus intercellular. We are not corknered yet, dead hand! We can recall, with voluntears, the froggy jew and sweeter far ’twere now wes-thinks in Dumbil’s fair city ere one more year is o’er. We tourned our coasts to the good gay tunes when from down swords the sea merged the oldowth guns and answer made the bold O’Dwyer. But. Est modest in verbos. Let a prostitute be whoso stands before a door and winks or parks herself in the fornix near a makeussin wall (sinsin! sinsin!) and the curate one who brings strong waters (gingin! gingin!), but also, and dinna forget, that there is many asleeps between someathome’s first and moreinausland’s last, that the beautiful presence of waiting kates will until life’s (!) be more than enough to make any milkmike, in the tonguage of sweet tarts, pu
nch hell’s hate into his twin nicky, and that Maggy’s tea, or your Majesty, if heard as a boost from a born gentleman is (?). For if the iridated lingo gasped between kicksheets, however basically English, were to be preached from the homo-sapuel mouths of wickerchurchwardens and metaphysicians in the row and advokaatoes, allvoyous, demivoyelles, languoaths, lesbiels, dentelles, gutter-howls and furtz, where would their practice be or where the human race itself were the Pythagorean sesquipedalia of the panepistemion, however apically Volapucky, grunted and gromwelled, ichabod, habakuk, opanoff, uggamyg, hapaxle, gomenon, ppppfff, over country stiles, behind slated dwellinghouses, down blind lanes or, when all fruit fails, under some sacking left on a coarse cart?

  So hath been, love: tis tis: and will be: till wears and tears and ages. Thief us the night, steal we the air, shawl thiner liefest, mine! Here, O here, insult the fair! Traitor, bad hearer, brave! The lightning look, the birding cry, awe from the grave, everflowing on the times. Feueragusaria iordenwater; now godsun shine on menday’s daughter; a good clap, a fore marriage, a bad wake, tell hell’s well; such is manowife’s lot of lose and win again, like he’s gruen quhiskers on who’s chin again, she plucketed them out but they grown in again. So what are you going to do about it? O dear!