Michael Groden — James Joyce's Ulysses
English 4520F — Fall 2013
2) from James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
excerpt from Book I, Chapter 2
p. 33, line 4 to p. 36, line 34
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A baser meaning has been read into these
characters the literal
sense of which decency can safely scarcely hint. It has been blur-
tingly bruited by certain wisecrackers (the stinks of Mohorat are
in the nightplots of the morning), that he suffered from a vile
disease. Athma, unmanner them! To such a suggestion the one
selfrespecting answer is to affirm that there are certain
statements
which ought not to be, and one should like to hope to be able to
add, ought not to be allowed to be made. Nor have his detractors,
who, an imperfectly warmblooded race, apparently conceive him
as a great white caterpillar capable of any and every enormity in
the calendar recorded to the discredit of the Juke and Kellikek
families, mended their case by insinuating that, alternately, he
lay
at one time under the ludicrous imputation of annoying Welsh
fusiliers in the people's park. Hay, hay, hay! Hoq, hoq, hoq!
Faun and Flora on the lea love that little old joq. To anyone who
knew and loved the christlikeness of the big cleanminded giant
H. C. Earwicker throughout his excellency long vicefreegal exis-
tence the mere suggestion of him as a lustsleuth nosing for trou-
ble in a boobytrap rings particularly preposterous. Truth, beard
on prophet, compels one to add that there is said to have been
quondam (pfuit! pfuit!) some case of the kind implicating, it is
interdum believed, a quidam (if he did not exist it would be ne-
cessary quoniam to invent him) abhout that time stambuling ha-
round Dumbaling in leaky sneakers with his tarrk record who
has remained topantically anonymos but (let us hue him Abdul-
lah Gamellaxarksky) was, it is stated, posted at Mallon's at the
instance of watch warriors of the vigilance committee and years
afterwards, cries one even greater, Ibid, a commender of the
frightful, seemingly, unto such as were sulhan sated, tropped head
(pfiat! pfiat!) waiting his first of the month froods turn for
thatt chopp pah kabbakks alicubi on the old house for the charge-
hard, Roche Haddocks off Hawkins Street. Lowe, you blondy
liar, Gob scene you in the narked place and she what's edith ar
home defileth these boyles! There's a cabful of bash indeed in
the homeur of that meal. Slander, let it lie its flattest, has
never
been able to convict our good and great and no ordinary Southron
Earwicker, that homogenius man, as a pious author called him, of
any graver impropriety than that, advanced by some woodwards
or regarders, who did not dare deny, the shomers, that they had,
chin Ted, chin Tam, chinchin Taffyd, that day consumed their
soul of the corn, of having behaved with ongentilmensky im-
modus opposite a pair of dainty maidservants in the swoolth of
the rushy hollow whither, or so the two gown and pinners plead-
ed, dame nature in all innocency had spontaneously and about the
same hour of the eventide sent them both but whose published
combinations of silkinlaine testimonies are, where not dubiously
pure, visibly divergent, as wapt from wept, on minor points touch-
ing the intimate nature of this, a first offence in vert or
venison
which was admittedly an incautious but, at its wildest, a partial
ex-
posure with such attenuating circumstances (garthen gaddeth green
hwere sokeman brideth girling) as an abnormal Saint Swithin's
summer and, (Jesses Rosasharon!) a ripe occasion to provoke it.
We can't do without them. Wives, rush to the
restyours! Of-
man will toman while led is the lol. Zessid's our kadem, villa-
pleach, vollapluck. Fikup, for flesh nelly, el mundo nov, zole
flen !
If she's a lilyth, pull early! Pauline, allow! And malers
abushed,
keep black, keep black! Guiltless of much laid to him he was
clearly for once at least he clearly expressed himself as being
with
still a trace of his erstwhile burr sod hence it has been received
of
us that it is true. They tell the story (an amalgam as absorbing
as
calzium chloereydes and hydrophobe sponges could make it) how
one happygogusty Ides-of-April morning (the anniversary, as it
fell out, of his first assumption of his mirthday suit and rights
in
appurtenance to the confusioning of human races) ages and ages
after the alleged misdemeanour when the tried friend of all crea-
tion, tigerwood roadstaff to his stay, was billowing across the
wide expanse of our greatest park in his caoutchouc kepi and
great belt and hideinsacks and his blaufunx fustian and ironsides
jackboots and Bhagafat gaiters and his rubberised inverness, he
met a cad with a pipe. The latter, the luciferant not the
oriuolate
(who, the odds are, is still berting dagabout in the same straw
bamer, carryin his overgoat under his schulder, sheepside out, so
as to look more like a coumfry gentleman and signing the pledge
as gaily as you please) hardily accosted him with: Guinness thaw
tool in jew me dinner ouzel fin? (a nice how-do-you-do in Pool-
black at the time as some of our olddaisers may still tremblingly
recall) to ask could he tell him how much a clock it was that the
clock struck had he any idea by cock's luck as his watch was
bradys. Hesitency was clearly to be evitated. Execration as
cleverly
to be honnisoid. The Earwicker of that spurring instant, realising
on fundamental liberal principles the supreme importance,
nexally
and noxally, of physical life (the nearest help relay being
pingping
K. O. Sempatrick's Day and the fenian rising) and unwishful
as
he felt of being hurled into eternity right then, plugged by a
soft-
nosed bullet from the sap, halted, quick on the draw, and reply-
in that he was feelin tipstaff, cue, prodooced from his gunpocket
his Jurgensen's shrapnel waterbury, ours by communionism, his
by usucapture, but, on the same stroke, hearing above the skirl-
ing of harsh Mother East old Fox Goodman, the bellmaster,
over
the wastes to south, at work upon the ten ton tonuant thunder-
ous tenor toller in the speckled church (Couhounin's call!) told
the inquiring kidder, by Jehova, it was twelve of em sidereal and
tankard time, adding, buttall, as he bended deeply with smoked
sardinish breath to give more pondus to the copperstick he
pre-
sented (though this seems in some cumfusium with the chap-
stuck ginger, which, as being of sours, acids, salts, sweets
and
bitters compompounded, we know him to have used as chaw-
chaw for bone, muscle, blood, flesh and vimvital,) that
where-
as the hakusay accusation againstm had been made, what was
known in high quarters as was stood stated in Morganspost, by
a creature in youman form who was quite beneath parr and seve-
ral degrees lower than yore triplehydrad snake. In greater sup-
port of his word (it, quaint 'anticipation of a famous phrase,
has
been reconstricted out of oral style into the verbal for all time
with ritual rhythmics, in quiritary quietude, and toosammen-
stucked from successive accounts by Noah Webster in the re-
daction known as the Sayings Attributive of H. C. Earwicker,
prize on schillings, postlots free), the flaxen Gygas tapped his
chronometrum drumdrum and, now standing full erect, above
the ambijacent floodplain, scene of its happening, with one Ber-
lin gauntlet chopstuck in the hough of his ellboge (by ancientest
signlore his gesture meaning: E!) pointed at an angle of thirty-
two degrees towards his duc de Fer's overgrown milestone as
fellow to his gage and after a rendypresent pause averred with
solemn emotion's fire: Shsh shake, co-comeraid! Me only, them
five ones, he is equal combat. I have won straight. Hence my
nonation wide hotel and creamery establishments which for the
honours of our mewmew mutual daughters, credit me, I am woo-
woo willing to take my stand, sir, upon the monument, that sign
of our ruru redemption, any hygienic day to this hour and to
make my hoath to my sinnfinners, even if I get life for it, upon
the Open Bible and before the Great Taskmaster's (I lift my hat!)
and in the presence of the Deity Itself andwell of Bishop and
Mrs Michan of High Church of England as of all such of said
my immediate withdwellers and of every living sohole in every
corner wheresoever of this globe in general which useth of
my
British to my backbone tongue and commutative justice that
there is not one tittle of truth, allow me to tell you, in that
purest
of fibfib fabrications.
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