Saturday, May 16, 2015

"and what he gave was as a pattern"

(361.17-363.16)  Today's passage opens up with the continuation of "the dewfolded song of the naughtingels."  The song describes the leaves of the trees, which are "full o'liefing" and "fell alaughing" over the Irish citizenry.  They "leaved the most leavely of leaftimes and the most folliagenous" until HCE, "the marrer of mirth and the jangtherapper of all jocolarinas" came to Ireland.  In effect, the song says, he wiped out any trace of joy from the country, for the leaves "were as were they never ere."  But still, even in the face of the invader, we can still laugh like the leaves did while we're alive.

The song ended, the narrative shifts back toward the patrons of the pub.  They ask HCE to stop his storytelling and refill their glasses, shouting, "Back to Droughty!"  With their glasses full, they proceed to mock and attack HCE.  They are unanimous, with their "roasted malts with toasted burleys," in "condomnation of his totomptation and for the duration till his repepulation."  While they refer to HCE's sin in Phoenix Park in an aside -- "(to say nothing of him having done whatyouknow howyousaw whenyouheard whereyouwot . . .)" -- this particular attack is aimed closer to the proverbial bone, toward HCE's family and home life.  Of HCE, they say that "he, that hun of a horde, is a finn."  Of ALP, they say that "she, his tent wife, is a lap, at home on a steed, abroad by the fire."

Their attack now focuses on HCE's house.  While the family's lodgings indicate that they are poor, they have hopes of rising in class:  "Auspicably suspectable but in expectancy of respectableness."  Here, on the second half of page 362, Joyce uses as his source material passages from B. Seebohm Rowntree's Poverty, A Study of Town Life, a 1902 investigative report on the life of the poor in England.  In The Books at the Wake, James S. Atherton notes that Joyce's use of Rowntree's book is a prime example of Joyce using entire passages from another author's work but changing them in the slightest way to transform the material.  Here, rather than the documentarian's objective presentation of the life of the poor, we get the taunter's mocks:  "a sofa allbeit of hoarsehaar with Amodicum cloth, hired payono, still playing off, used by the youngsters for czurnying out oldstrums, three bedrooms upastairs, of which one with fireplace (aspectable), with greenhouse in prospect (particularly perspectable)."

The passage closes with the patrons asking HCE whether he always was as detestable as he is now.  Once again, they throw the sin in the park in his face:  "Why, hitch a cock eye, he was snapped on the sly upsadaisying coras pearls out of the pie when all the perts in princer street set up their tinker's humn . . . with them newnesboys pearcin screaming off their armsworths."  Here, they claim that HCE was found out by the stealthy "Deductive Almayne Rogers," which name McHugh notes sounds just like "Old Man River."  Finally, they mock HCE, wondering whether his children have been baptized and whether they can afford to pay the paperboy.  The verdict?  "He's their mark to foil the flouter and they certainly owe."

It looks like we get HCE's defense of these accusations tomorrow.

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