Monday, January 25, 2010

Finnegans Wake p. 141-160

p. 141

"Summon In The House-sweep Dinah?"

Someone's in the kitchen with Dinah? This story takes on a whole new meaning after you read it in the Bible.

p. 142

"Who are those component partners of societate, the doorboy, the cleaner, the sojer, the crook, the squeezer, the lounger, the tourabout, the mussroomsniffer, the bleakablue tramp, the funpowtherplother, the christymansboxer,"

Who are the partners/speakers for all of the downtrodden (doorman, cleaner, soldier, etc.), I got a heavy Marxist vibe from this line.

"The Morphios"

The greek god of sleep and dreams. The Sandman.

"they think feeling"

I liked this whole paragraph, interesting to imagine a creature that thinks feelings. Maybe humans are like this?


p. 143

"What bitter's love but yurning, what' sour lovemutch"

Yearning makes you bitter? Absence makes the heart grow fonder?


p. 144 (nothin')
p. 145

"Bite my laughters, drink my tears. Pore into me, volumes, spell me stark and spill me swooning,"

This had a very poetic feel to it. Reminded me of a John Donne poem.

"Brimstoker and give him the thrall of our lives. It's Dracula's nightout."

Bram Stoker's Dracula would make people into thralls.

p. 146 (nothin')
p. 147 (nada)
p. 148

"Excuse me for swearing, love, I swear to the sorrasims their trons of Uian I didn't mean to by this alpin armlet."

I don't know exactly what's going on here, but it makes me kind of uncomfortable.

p. 149

"The speechform is a mere surrogate."

Once again, language is a poor method to express dreams and feelings.

p. 150

"though the reason I went to Jericho must remain for certain reasons a political secret"

Ooh, like a secret agent?

p. 151

"since his man's when is no otherman's quandour (Mine, dank you?) while, for aught I care for the contrary?"

I don't know exactly what this means, but it sounds like some kind of cool revolutionary statement. Like Ayn Rand or something (blegh).

p. 152

"when I have to sermo with muddlecrass pupils...snifflynosed, goslingnecked, clothyheaded, tangled in your lacings, tingled in your pants"

I'm going to talk down to you middle class folk now. I like all the "adjectives" going on in this passage.

p. 153

"My, my, my! Me and me! Little down dream don't I love thee!"

He loves the sleep of dreams? 

p. 154

"Well, sour? Is this space our couple of hours too dimensional for you, temporiser?"

I feel like this is a jab at the perception of literature as something that should be temporal/linear, as opposed to the dimensional text that it is.

p. 155

"by Neuclidius...by Orasmus"

The conflict between mathematics and theology maybe? This reminds me of a speech Captain Picard gives in one of my favorite episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Where Silence Has Lease." Here's the speech in all its campy glory: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GLU6wgTvL8

p. 156

"Wee, cumfused the Gripes limply, shall not even be the last of the first, wee hope, when oust are visitated by the Veiled Horror."

Sounds like an alien is talking. And what is the Veiled Horror? Death?

p. 157 (nada)
p. 158

"A domad Accanite, were not amoosed and the Gripes, a dubliboused Catalick, was pinefully obliviscent."

I think I'm getting Italian Catholic from this, but I'm not sure.

"shades began to glidder along the banks, greepsing, greepsing, duusk unto duusk,"

OOOOOOOooooooo...I'm a ghoooooost.

"Then there came down to the thither bank a woman of no appearance (I believe she was a Black with chills at her feet)"

What does this mean? Is it a political commentary?

p. 159

"she made up all her myriads of drifting minds in one. She cancelled all her engauzements. She climbed over the bannistars; she gave a childy cloudy cry: Nuee! Nuee!"

She made a decision. A decision to scream "Nuee!"

"I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!"

This sounds like the voice of the river.

p. 160

"You will say it is most unenglish and I shall hope to hear that you will not be wrong about it."

Joyce hopes that no one thinks of his book as a piece of "english literature".

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