Penguin Classics the Restored Finnegans Wake

by James Joyce

  Burrus, let us like to imagine, is a genuine prime, the real choice, full of natural greace, the mildest of milkstoffs yet unbeaten as a risicide and, of course, obsoletely unadulterous, whereat Caseous is obversely the revise of him and in fact not an ideal choose by any meals, though the betterman of the two is meltingly addicted to the more casual side of the arrivalist’s case and, let me say it at once, as zealous over him as is passably he.

  The seemsame home and histry seeks and hidepence which we used to be reading for our prepurgatory (hot, Schott?) till Duddy shut the shopper op and Mutti (poor Mutti!) brought us our poor suppy (ah who! eh how!!) in Acetius and Oleosus and Sellius Volatilis and Petrus Papricus! Our Old Party quite united round the Slatbowel at Commons: Pfarrer Salamoss himself and that sprog of a Pedersill and his Sprig of Thyme and a dozen of the Murphybuds and a score and more of the hot young Capels and Lettucia in her greensleeves and you too and me three, twinsome bibs but hansome ates, like shakespill and eggs! But there’s many a split pretext bowl and jowl; and (snob screwing that cork, Schott!) to understand this as well as you can, feeling how backward you are in your down-to-the-ground benches, I have completed the following arrangement for the coarse use of stools.

  Cheese it.

  The older sisars (tyrants, regicide is too good for you and if I don’t make away with you I’m beyond Caesar outnullused!), become unbeurrable from age (the compositor of the farce of dustiny however makes a thumpledrum mistake by letting off this pienofarte effect as his furst act as that is where the juke comes in), having been sort-of-nineknived and chewly removed (this soldier-author-batman for all his commontoryism is just another of those souftsiezed bubbles who never quite got the sandhurst out of his eyes so that the champaign he draws for us is as flop as a plankrieg) the twin-freer types are billed to make their reupprearance as the knew kneck and knife knickknots on the deserted champ de bouteilles.

  A most cursery reading into the Persic-Uraliens hostery shows us how Fonnumagogula picked up that propper numen out of a colluction of prifixes, though to the permienting cannasure the Coucousien oafsprung of this sun of a kuk is as sattin as there’s a tub in Tobolosk. Ostiak della Vogul Marina! But that I dannoy the fact of wanton to weste point I could paint you to that butter if you had some wash. Mordvealive! On me none onsens! Why the case is as inessive and impossive as kezom hands! Their interlocative is conprovocative just as every hazzy hates to having a hazbane in her hoze.

  Caseous may hethink himself a thought of a caviller but Burrus has the reachly roundered head that goes best with thoftthinking defensive fideism. He has the lac of wisdom under every dent in his lofter, while the other follow’s onni vesy milky indeedmum. Laughing over the linnuts and weeping off the uniun. He hisn’t the hey og he lisn’t the lug, poohoo! And each night sim misses mand he winks he had the semagen. It was aptly and corrigidly stated (and it is royally needless for one—ex ungue Leonem—to say by whom) that his seeingscraft was that clarety as were the whole-borough of Saint Poutresbourg to be averlaunched over him pitchbatch he could still make out with his augstritch the green moat in Ireland’s Eye. Let me sell you the fulltroth of Burrus when he wore a younker. Here it is, and churming too, in six by sevens! A cleanly line, by the gods! A king off duty and a jaw for ever! What brunoesque poportiums, me Ercles! And what a cheery ripe outlook, good help me Deus v Deus! If I were to speak my whole mouthful to ariman about it you should call me the ormuzd aliment in your midst of faime. Eat ye up, heat ye up! sings the somun in the salm. Butyrum et mel comedet ut sciat reprobare malum et eligere bonum. This, of course, also explains why we were taught to play in the childhood: Der Haensli ist ein Butterbrot, fein Butterbrot, mein Butterbrot! Und Koebi iss dein Schtinkenkot! Ja! Ja! Ja!

  This, in fact, just to show you, is Caseous, the brutherscutch or puir tyron: a hole or two, the highstink aforefelt and anygo prigging wurms. Cheesugh! you complain. And Hi Hi High must say you are not Hoa Hoa Hoally in the wrong!

  Thus we cannot escape our likes and mislikes, exiles or ambusheers, beggar and neighbour, and so—this is where the dimeshow advertisers advance the temporal relief plea—let us be tolerant of antipathies. Nex quovis burro num fit mercaseus? I am not hereby giving my final endorsement to the learned ignorants of the Cusanus philosophism in which old Nicholas pegs it down that the smarter the spin of the top the sounder the span of the buttom. (What the worthy old auberginiste ought to have meant was: the more stolidly immobile in space appears to me the bottom which is presented to use in time by the top primomobilisk &c.) And I shall be misunderstood if understood to give an unconditional sinequamnunc to the heroicised furibouts of the Nolanus theory, or, at any rate, of that substrate of apart from hissheory where the Theophile swoors by his Father Familiaritas and his Mother Contumelia and by the soul in his suit and the animus in his soul and the mind in his animus and the good in his mind that on principial he was the pointingstart of his odiose by comparison and that whiles eggs will fall cheapened all over the walled the Bure will be dear on the Brie.

  Now, while I am not out now to be taken up as unintentionally recommending the Silkebjorg tyrondynamon machine for the more enocomical helixtrolysis of these amboadipates until I can find space to look into it myself a little more closely first, I shall go on with my decisions after having shown to you in good time how both products of our social stomach (the excellent Dr Burroman, I noticed by the way from his emended food theory, has been carefully digesting the very wholesome criticism I helped him to in my princeps edition which is all so munch to the cud) are mutuearly polarised, the incompletude of any delusional acting as ambivalent to the fixation of his pivotism. Positing, as above, too male pooles, the one the pictor of the other and the omber the ûîôùè of the one, and looking wantingly around our undistributed middle between males, we feel we must waistfully woent a female to focus and on this stage there pleasantly appears the cowrymaid M (whom we shall often meet below) who introduces herself upon us at some precise hour which we shall again agree to call absolute zero or the babbling pumpt of platinism. And so like that former son of a kish who went up and out to found his farmer’s ashes we come down home gently on our own turnedabout asses to meet Margareen.

  We now romp through a period of pure lyricism of shamebred music (technologically, let me say, the appetising entry of this subject on a fool chest of vialds is plumply pudding the carp before doevre hors) evidenced by such words in distress as I cream for thee, sweet Margareen! and the more hopeful O Margareena! O Margareena! Still in the bowl is left a lump of gold! (Correspondents, by the way, will keep on asking me what is the correct garnish to serve drisheens with. Tansy sauce. Enough.) The pawnbreaking pathos of the first of these shoddy pieces reveals it as a Caseous effort. Burrus’s bit is often used for a toast. Criniculture can tell us very precisely indeed how and why this particular streak of yellow silver first appeared on (not in) the bowl, that is to see, the human head, bald, black, bronze, brown, brindled, betteraved or blanchemanged, where it might be usefully compared with an earwig on a fullbottom. I am offering this to Signorina Cuticura and I intend to take it up and bring it under the nosetice of Herr Harlene by way of diverting his attentions. Of course, the unskilled singer continues to pervert our wiser ears by subordinating the space-element, that is to sing, the aria, to the time-factor, which ought to be killed, ill tempor. I should advise any unborn singer who may still be among my heeders to forget her temporal diaphragm at home (the best thing that could happen to it!) and attack the roulade with a swift colpo di glottide to the lug (though Maace I will insist was reclined from overdoing this, his recovery often being slow) and then O! on the third dead beat O! to cluse her eyes and awpen her oath and see what spice I may send her.

  How? Cease thee, cantatrickee! I fain would be solo. Arouse thee, my valour! And save for e’er my true Bdur!

  I shall have a word to say in a few yards about the acoustic and orchidectural management of the tonehall but, as ours is a vivarious where one plant’s breaf is a lun
ger planner’s byscent and you may not care for the argon, it will be very convenient for me for the emolument to pursue Burrus and Caseous for a rung or two up their isocelating biangle. Every admirer of my “blank manner” has seen with eyes watered my goulache of Marge (she is so like the sister, you don’t know, and they both dress A L I K E!) which I titled The Very Picture of a Needlesswoman and which in the presence ornates our national cruetstand. This genre of portraiture of changes of mind in order to be truly torse should evoke the bush soul of the females so I am leaving it to the experienced victim to complete the general suggestion by the mental addition of a wallopy bound or, should the zulugical zealot prefer it, a congorool teal. The hatboxes which compose Rhomba, Lady Trabezond (Marge in her excelsis), also comprise the climactogram up which B and C may fondly be imagined ascending and are suggestive of gentlemen’s spring modes, these modes carrying us back to the superimposed claylayers of eocene and pleastoseen formation and the gradual morphological changes in our body politic which Professor Ebahi-Ahuri of Philadespoinis (Ill)—whose bluebutterbust I have just given his coupe de grass to—neatly names a boîte à surprises. The boxes, if I may break the subject gently, are worth about fourpence pourbox but I am inventing a more patent process, foolproof and pryperfect (I should like to ask that Shedlock Homes person who is out for removing the roofs of our criminal classics by what deductio ad domunum he hopes de tacto to detect anything unless he happens of himself, movibile tectu, to have a slade off), after which they can be reduced to a fragment of their true crust by even the youngest of Margees, if she will take plase to be seated and smile if I please.

  Now there can be no question about it either that I, having done as much, have quite got the size of that demilitery young female (we will continue to call her Marge) whose types may be met with in any public garden, wearing a very “dressy” affair, known as an “ethel”, of instep length and with a real fur, reduced to 3/9, and muffin cap (they are “angelskin” this fall) to tone, ostentatiously hemming apologetically over the shirtness of some “sweet” garment, when she is not sitting on all the free benches avidously reading about “it” but ovidently on the lookout for “him” or so “thrilled” about the best dressed dolly pram and beautiful elbow competition or at the movies swallowing sobs and blowing bixed mixcuits over “Childe” chaplain’s “latest” or on the verge of the gutter with some bobbedhair brieffrocked babyma’s toddler (the Smythe-Smythes now keep TWO domestics and aspire to THREE male ones, a “shover”, a “butlegger” and a “sectary”) held hostage at armslength, teaching His Infant Majesty how to make waters worse.

  I am closely watching Master Pules, as I have regions to suspect from my post that her “little man” is a secondary schoolteacher under the boards of education, a voted disciple of Infantulus, who is being utilised thus publicly by the seducente infanta to conceal her own more mascular personality by flaunting frivolish finery over men’s inside clothes. For the femininny of that totamulier will always lack the musculink of a verumvirum. My solotions for the proper parturience of matres and the education of micturious mites must stand over from the moment till I tackle this tickler hussy for occupying my uttentions.

  Margareena she’s very fond of Burrus but (alick and alack!) she velly fond of chee. (The important influence exercised on everything by this eastasian import has not been till now fully flavoured, though we can comfortably taste it in this case. I shall come back for a little more say farther on.) A cleopatrician in her own right, she at once complicates the position, while Burrus and Caseous are contending for her misstery, by implicating herself with an elusive Antonius, a wop who would appear to hug a personal interest in refined chees of all chades at the same time as he wags an antomine art of being rude like the boor. This Antonius-Burrus-Caseous grouptriad may be said to equate the qualis equivalent with the older socalled talis on talis one just as quaintly as in the hyperchemical economantarchy the tantum ergons irruminate the quantum urge so that eggs is to whey as whay is to zeed like your golfchild’s abe boob caddy. (And, taking off sourstuffs and alkalike matters, I hope we can kill time to reach the salt because there’s some forceglass neutric assets bittering in the soldpewter for you to plump your pottage in.) And this is why any simple strawbellied philadolphus of a fool you like to dress, an athemisthued lowtownian exleggest phratrisight, may be awfully green to one side of him and fruitfully blue on the other, which will not screen him however from appealing to my gropesarching eyes, through the strongholes of my acropoll, as a boosted blasted bleating blatant bloaten blasphorus blesphorous idiot who kennat tail a bomb from a painapple when he steals one and wonnot psing his psalmon with the cong for gregational purposes with the canting crew!

  No! Topsman, to your Tarpeia! This thing, Minster Abby, is nefand. The thundering legion has stormed Olymp that it end. Twelve tabular times till now have I edicted it. Merus Genius to Careous Caseous! Moriture, te salutat! My phemous themis’ race is run, so let Demoncracy take the highmost! (Abraham Tripier. Those old diligences are quite out of date. Read next answer.) I’ll now beat you so lon. (Bigtempered. Why not take direct action? See previous reply.) My unchanging Word is sacred. The Word is my Wife, to exspouse and expound, to vend and to velnerate, and may the curlews crown our nuptias! Till Breath us depart! Wamen. Beware would you change with my years! Be as young as your grandmother! The ring man in the rong shop but the rite words by the rote order! Ubi lingua nuncupassit, ibi fas! Adversus hostem semper sac! She that will not feel my fulmoon let her peel to thee as the hoyden and the impudent! That mon that hoth no moses in his sole nor is not awed by conquists of word’s law, who never with humself was fed and leaves his soil to lave his head, when his hope’s in his highlows from whisking his woe, if he came to my preach, a proud pursebroken ranger, when the heavens were welling the spite of their spout, to beg for a bite in our bark Noisdanger, would meself and Jaffe Jeffet, four-in-hand, foot him out?—ay!—were he my own breastbrother, my doubled width love and my singlebiassed hate, were we bread by the same fire and signed with the same salt, had we tapped from the same master and robbed of the same till, were we tucked in the one bed and bit by the one flea, homogallant and hemycapnoise, bum and dingo, jack by churl, though it broke my heart to pray it, still I’d fear I’d hate to say…!

  12. Sacer esto?

  ANSWER: Semus sumus!

  Shem is as short for Shemus as Jem is joky for Jacob. A few toughnecks are still getatable who pretend that aboriginally he was of respectable stemming (he was an outlex between the lines of Ragonar Blaubarb and Horrild Hairwire, and an inlaw to Capt. the Hon. and Rev. Mr Bbyrdwood de Trop Bloggg was among his most distant connections) but every honest to goodness man in the land of the space of today knows that his back life will not stand being written about in black and white. Putting truth and untruth together a shot may be made at what this hybrid actually was like to look at.

  Shem’s bodily getup, it seems, included: an adze of a skull, an eighth of a larkseye, the whole of a nose, one numb arm up a sleeve, fortytwo hairs off his uncrown, eighteen to his mock lip, a trio of barbels from his megageg chin (sowman’s son!), the wrong shoulder higher than the right, all ears, an artificial tongue with a natural curl, not a foot to stand on, a handful of thumbs, a blind stomach, a deaf heart, a loose liver, two fifths of two buttocks, one gleetsteen avoirdupoider for him, a manroot of all evil, a salmonkelt’s thinskin, eelsblood in his cold toes, a bladder tristended—so much so that young Master Shemmy on his very first debouch at the very dawn of protohistory seeing himself such and such, when playing with thistlewords in their nursery garden, Griefotrofio, at Phig Streat 111, Shuvlin, Old Hoeland (would we go back there now for sounds, pillings and sense? would we now for annas and annas? would we for fullscore eight and a liretta? for twelve blocks one bob? for four testers one groat? not for a dinar! not for jo!), dictited to all his little brothron and sweestureens the first riddle of the universe: asking, When is a man not a man? telling them take their time, yungfries, and wait til
l the tide stops (for from the first his day was a fortnight) and offering the prize of a bittersweet crab, a little present from the past (for their copper age was as yet unminted), to the winner. One said when the heavens are quakers, a second said when Bohemeand lips, a third said when he, no, when, hold hard a jiffy, when he is a gnawstick and detarmined to, the next one said when the angel of death kicks the bucket of life, still another said when the wine’s at witsends, and still another when lovely wooman stoops to conk him, one of the littliest said me, me, Sem, when pappa papared the harbour, one of the wittliest said when he yeat ye abblokooken and he zmear hezelf zo zhooken, still one said when you are old I’m grey fall full wi’ sleep, and still another when wee deader walkner, and another when he is just only after having being semisized, another when yea he hath no mananas, and one when dose pigs they begin now that they will flies up intil the looft. All were wrong, so Shem himself, the doctator, took the cake, the correct solution being—all give it up? —: When he is a—yours till the rending of the rocks—Sham.

  Shem was a sham and a low sham and his lowness creeped out first via foodstuffs. So low was he that he preferred Gibsen’s teatime salmon tinned, as inexpensive as pleasing, to the plumpest roeheavy lax or the friskiest parr or smolt troutlet that ever was gaffed between Leixlip and Island Bridge and many was the time he repeated in his botulism that no junglegrown pineapple ever smacked like the whoppers you shook out of Ananias’ cans, Findlater and Gladstone’s, Corner House, Englend. None of your inchthick blueblooded Balaclava fried-at-beliefstakes or juicejelly legs of the Grex’s molten mutton or greasily gristly grunters’ goupons or slice upon slab of luscious goosebosom with lump after load of plumpudding stuffing all aswim in a swamp of bogoak gravy for that greekenhearted yude! Rosbif of Old Zealand? He could not attouch it. See what happens when your somatophage merman takes his fancy to our virgitarian swan? He even ran away with hunself and became a farsoonerite, saying he would far sooner muddle through the hash of lentils in Europe than meddle with Irrland’s split little pea. Once when among those rebels in a state of hopelessly helpless intoxication the piscivore strove to lift a czitround peel to either nostril, hiccupping, apparently impromptued by the hibat he had with his glottal stop, that he kukkakould flowrish for ever by the smell, as the czitr, as the kcedron, like a scedar, of the founts, on mountains, with lemon on, of Lebanon. O, the lowness of him was beneath all up to that sunk to! No likedbylike firewater or firstserved firstshot or gulletburn gin or honest brewbarrett beer either. O dear no! Instead the tragic jester sobbed himself wheywhingingly sick of life on some sort of a rhubarbarous maundarin yellagreen funkleblue windigut diodying applejack squeezed from sour grape-fruice and, to hear him twixt his sedimental cupslips when he had gulfed down mmmmuch too mmmmany gourds of it retching off to his almost as low withswillers, who always knew notwithstanding when they had had enough and were rightly indignant at the wretch’s hospitality when they found to their horror they could not carry another drop, it came straight from the noble white fat, jo, openwide sat, jo jo, her why hide that, jo jo jo, the winevat, of the most serene magyarsty az archdiochesse (if she’s a duck she’s a douches, and when she has a feherbour snot her fault, nowisit?), artstouchups, funny you’re grinning at, fancy you’re in her yet, Fanny Urinia.