by James Joyce
Sniffer of carrion, premature gravedigger, resurrecter of lazars, seeker of the nest of evil in the bosom of a good word, you, who sleep at our vigil and fast for our feast, you with your dislocated reason have cutely foretold, a jophet in your own absence, by blind poring upon your many scalds and burns and blisters, impetiginous sores and pustules, by the auspice of that raven cloud, your shade, and by the augury of rooks in parlament, death with every disaster, the dynamitisation of colleagues, the reducing of records to ashes, the levelling of all customs by blazes, the return of a lot of sweettempered gunpowdered didst unto dudst, but it never stphruck your mudhead’s obtundity (O hell, here comes our funeral! O pest, I’ll miss the post!) that the more carrots you chop, the more turnips you slit, the more murphies you peel, the more onions you cry over, the more bullbeef you butch, the more mutton you crackerhack, the more potherbs you pound, the fiercer the fire and the longer your spoon and the harder you gruel with more grease to your elbow the merrier fumes your new Irish stew.
O, by the way, yes! Another thing recurs to me. You, let me tell you with the utmost politeness, were very ordinarily designed, your birthwrong was, to fall in with Plan, as our nationals should, as all nationists must, and do a certain office (what, I will not tell you) in a certain holy office (nor will I say where) during certain agonising office hours (a clerical party all to yourself) from such a year to such an hour on such and such a date at so and so much a week pro anno (Guinness’s, may I remind, were just agulp for you, failing in which you might have taken the scales off boilers like any boskop of Yorek) and do your little thruppenny bit and thus earn from the nation true thanks, right here in our place of burden, your bourne of travail and ville of tares, where after a divine’s prodigence you drew the first watergasp in your lifeterm, from the crib where you once was bit to the crypt you’ll be twice as shy of, same as we, long of us, alone with the colt in the curner, where you were as popular as an armenial with the faithful, and you set fire to my tailcoat when I held the paraffin smoker under yours (I hope that chimney’s clear) but, slackly shirking both your bullet and your billet, you beat it backwards like Boulanger from Galway (but he combed the grass against his stride) to sing us a song of alibi (the cuthone call over the greybounding slowrolling amplyheaving metamorphoseous that oozy rocks paragargle their preposters with), nomad, homebreaker, hairytyke, mooner by lamplight, antinos, shemming amid everyone’s repressed laughter to conceal your scatchophily by mating, like a thoroughpaste prosodite, masculine monosyllables of the same numerical mus, an Irish emigrant the wrong way out, sitting on your crooked sixpenny stile, an unfrillfrocked quackfriar, you (will you for the laugh of Scheekspair just help mine with the epithet?) semisemitic serendipitist, you (thanks, I think that describes you) Europasianised Afferyank!
Shall we follow each others a steplonger, drowner of daggers, whiles our liege, tilyet a stranger in the frontyard of his happiness, is taking (heal helper! one gob, one gap, one gulp and gorger of all!) his refreshment?
There grew up beside you, amid our orisons of the speediest, in Novena Lodge, Novara Avenue, in Patripodium-am-Bummel, oaf, outofwork, one remove from an unwashed savage, on his keeping and in yours (I pose you know why possum hides is cause he haint the nogumtreeumption), that other, Immaculatus, from head to foot, sir, that pure one, Altrues of other times, he who was well known to celestine circles before he sped aloft, our handsome young spiritual physician that was to be, seducing each sense to selfwilling celebesty, the most winning counterfeuille on our incomeshare lotetree, a chum of the angelets, a youth those reporters so pettitily wanted as gamefellow that they asked his mother for ittle earp brupper to let him tome to Tindertarten, pease, and bing his scooter ’long and ’tend they were all real brothers in the big justright home where Dodd lives, just to teddyfy the life out of him and pat and pass him one with other like musk from hand to hand, that mothersmothered model, that goodlooker with not a flaw whose spiritual toilettes were the talk of half the town, for sunset wear and nightfallen use and daybroken donning and nooncheon showing and the very thing for teasetime, but him you laid low with one hand one fine May morning in the Meddle of your Might, your bosom foe, because he mussed your speller on you or because he cut a pretty figure in the focus of your frontispecs (not one did you slay, no, but a continent!), to find out how his innards worked!
Ever read of that greatgrand landfather of our visionbuilders, Baaboo, the bourgeoismeister, who thought to touch both himmels at the punt of his risen stiffstaff and how wishywashy sank the waters of his thought? Ever thought of that hereticalist Marcon and the two scissymaidies and how bulkily he shat the Ructions gunorrhal? Ever hear of that foxy, that lupo and that monkax and the virgin heir of the Morrisons, eh, blethering ape?
Malingerer in luxury, collector general, what has Your Lowness done in the mealtime with all the hamilkcars of cooked vegetables, the hatfuls of stewed fruit, the suitcases of coddled ales, the Parish funds, me schamer, man, that you kittycoaxed so flexibly out of charitable butteries by yowling heavy with a hollow voice drop of your horrible awful poverty of mind so as you couldn’t even pledge a crown of Thorne’s to pawn a coat off Trevi’s and as how you was bad no end, so you was, so whelp you Sinner Pitre and Sinner Poule, with the chicken’s gape and pas mal de siècle which, by the by, Reynaldo, is the ordinary emetic French for grenadier’s drip. To let you have your plank and your bonewash (O, the hastroubles you lost!), to give you your pound of platinum and a thousand thongs a year (O, you were excruciated, in honour bound to the cross of your own cruelfiction!), to let you have your Sarday spree and holinight sleep (fame would come to you twixt a sleep and a wake) and leave to lie till Paraskivee and the cockcock crows for Danmark (O, Jonathan, your estomach!). The simian has no sentiment secretions but weep cataracts for all me, Pain the Shamman! Oft in the smelly night will they wallow for a clutch of the famished hand, I say, them bearded jezebelles you hired to rob you, while on your sodden straw impolitely you encored (Airish and nawboggaleesh!) those hornmade ivory dreams you reved of the Ruth you called your companionate, a beauty from the bible, the flushpots of Euston and the hanging garments of Marylebone. But the dormer moonshee smiled selene and the lightthrowers knickered: who’s whinging we? Comport yourself, you inconsistency! Where are the little apples we lock up in the little saltbox? Where is that little alimony nestegg against our predictable rainy day? Is it not the fact (gainsay me, cakeeater!) that, while whistlewhirling your crazy elegies around Templetombmount joyntstone (let him pass, pleasegoodjesusalem, in a bundle of straw, he was balbettised after haymaking), you squandered among underlings the overload of your extravagance and made a hottentot of dulpeners crawsick with your crumbs? Am I not right? Yes? Yes? Yes? Holy wax and holifier! Don’t tell me, Leon of the fold, that you are not a loanshark! Look up, old sooty, be advised by mux and take your medicine! The Good Doctor mulled it. Mix it twice before repastures and powder three times a day. It does marvels for your gripings and it’s fine for the solitary worm.
Let me finish! Just a little judas tonic, my ghem of all jokes, to make you go green in the gazer. Do you hear what I’m seeing, hammet? And remember that golden silence gives consent, Mr Anklegazer! Cease to be civil, learn to say nay! Whisht! Come here till I tell you a wig in your ear. Iggri, I say, the booseleers! Look! Do you see your dial in the rockingglass, Herr Studiosus? Look well! Bend down a stigmy till I! It’s secret! We’ll do a whisper drive, for if the barishnyas got a twitter of it they’d tell the housetops and then all Cadbury would go crackers. I had it from Lamppost Shawe. And he had it from the Mullah. And Mull took it from a Bluecoat schooler. And Gay Socks jot it from Potaupheu’s wife. And Rantipoll tipped the wink from old Mrs Tinbullet. And as for her, she was confussed by pro-Brother Thacolicus. And the good brother feels he would need to defecate you. And the Flimsy Follettes are simply beside each other. And Kelly, Kenny and Keogh are up up and in arms. That a cross may crush me if I refuse to believe in it. That I may rock anchor through the ages if I hop
e it’s not true. That the host may choke me if I beneighbour you without my charity! In your ear. Sh! Shem, you are. Sh! You are mad!
He points the deathbone and the quick are still. Insomnia, somnia somniorum. Awmawm.
MERCIUS (of hisself): Domine, vopiscus! My fault, his fault, a kingship through a fault! Pariah, cannibal Cain, I who oathily forswore the womb that bore you and the paps I sometime sucked, you who ever since have been one black mass of jigs and jimjams, haunted by a convulsionary sense of not having been or being all that I might have been or you meant to becoming, bewailing like a man that innocence which I could not defend like a woman, lo, it is to you then, Cathmon-Carbery, and thank Movies from the innermost depths of my still attrite heart wherein the days of youyouth are evermixed mimine, now ere the compline hour of being alone athands itself and a puff or so before we yield our spiritus to the wind, for (though that royal one has not yet drunk a gouttelette from his consummation and the flowerpot on the pole, the spaniel pack and their quarry, the retainers and the public house proprietor have not budged a millimetre and all that has been done has yet to be done and done again, when’s day’s woe, and lo, you’re doomed, joyday dawns and, la, you dominate) it is to you, firstborn and firstfruit of woe, to me, branded sheep, to you, pick of the wastepaperbasket, by the tremours of Thundery and Ulerin’s dogstar, to you alone, windblasted tree of the knowledge of beautiful and evil, ay, clothed upon with the metuor and shimmering like the horescens, astroglodynamonologos, the child of Nilfit’s father, blzb, to me, unseen blusher in an obscene coalhole, the cubilibum of your secret sigh, dweller in the downandoutermost where voice only of the dead may come, because ye left from me, because ye laughed on me, because, O me lonly son, ye are forgetting me! that our turfbrown mummy is acoming, alpilla, beltilla, ciltilla, deltilla, running with her tidings, old the news of the great big world, sonnies had a scrap, woewoewoe! bab’s baby walks at seven months, waywayway! bride leaves her raid at Punchestime, stud stoned before a racecourseful, two belles that make the one appeal, dry yanks will visit old sod, and fourtiered skirts are up, mesdames, while Parimiknie wears popular short legs, and twelve hows to mix a tipsy wake, did ye hear, colt Cooney? did ye ever, filly Fortescue? with a beck, with a spring, all her rillringlets shaking, rocks drops in her tachie, tramtokens in her hair, all waived to a point and then all inuendation, little oldfashioned mummy, little wonderful mummy, ducking under bridges, bellhopping the weirs, dodging by a bit of bog, rapidshooting round the bends, by Tallaght’s green hills and the pool of the phooka and a place they call it Blessington and slipping sly by Sallynoggin, as happy as the day is wet, babbling, bubbling, chattering to herself, deloothering the fields on their elbows leaning with the sloothering slide of her, giddygaddy grannyma, gossipaceous Anna Livia!
He lifts the lifewand and the dumb speak.
— Quoiquoiquoiquoiquoiquoiquoiquoiq!
O
tell me all about
Anna Livia! I want to hear all
about Anna Livia. Well, you know Anna Livia? Yes, of course, we all know Anna Livia. Tell me all. Tell me now. You’ll die when you hear. Well, you know, when the old cheb went futt and did what you know. Yes, I know, go on. Wash away and quit dabbling. Tuck up your sleeves and loosen your talk-tapes. And don’t butt me—hike!—when you bend. Or whatever it was they threed to make out he thried to two in the Fiendish Park. He’s an awfulld reppe. Look at the shirt of him! Look at the dirt of it! He has all my water black on me. And it steeping and stuping since this time last wik. How many goes is it I wonder I washed it? I know by heart the places he likes to saale, duddurty devil! Scorching my hand and starving my famine to make his private linen public. Wallop it well with your battle and clean it. My wrists are wrusty rubbing the mouldaw stains. And the dneepers of wet and the gangres of sin in it! What was it he did a tail at all on Animal Sendai? And how long was he under loch and neagh? It was put in the newses what he did, nicies and priers, the King fierceas Humphrey, with illysus distilling, exploits and all. But toms will till. I know he well. Temp untamed will hist for no man. As you spring so shall you neap. O, the roughty old rappe! Minxing marrage and making loof. Reeve Gootch was right and Reeve Drughad was sinistrous. And the cut of him! And the strut of him! How he used to hold his head as high as a howeth, the famous eld duke alien, with a hump of grandeur on him like a walking wiesel rat! And his derry’s own drawl and his corksown blather and his doubling stutter and his gullaway swank. Ask Lictor Hackett or Lector Reade or Garda Growley or the Boy with the Billyclub. How elster is he a called at all? Qu’appelle? Huges Caput Earlyfouler. Or where was he born or how was he found? Urgothland, Tvistown on the Kattekat? New Hunshire, Concord on the Merrimake? Who blocksmitt her saft anvil or yelled lep to her pail? Was her banns never loosened in Adam and Eve’s or were him and her but captain spliced? For mine etherduck I thee drake. And by my wildgaze I thee gander. Flowey and Mount on the brink of time makes wishes and fears for a happy isthmass. She can show all her lines, with love, licence to play. And if they don’t remarry that hook and eye may! O, passmore that and oxus another! Don Dom Dombdomb and his wee follyo! Was his help inshored in the Stork and Pelican against bungelars, flu and third risk parties? I heard he dug good tin with his doll, delvan first and duvlin after, when he raped her home, Sabrine asthore, in a perokeet’s cage, by dredgerous lands and devious delts, playing catched and mythed with the gleam of her shadda (if a flic had been there to pop up and pepper him!), past auld min’s manse and Maisons Allfou and the rest of incurables and the last of immurables, the quaggy waag for stumbling. Who sold you that jackalantern’s tale? Pemmican’s pasty pie! Not a grasshoop to ring her, not an antsgrain of ore. In a gabbard he barqued it, the boat of life, from the harbourless Ivernikan Okean, till he spied the loom of his landfall and he loosed two croakers from under his tilt, the gran Phenician rover. By the smell of her kelp they made the pigeonhouse. Like fun they did! But where was Himself, the timoneer? That marchantman he suivied their scutties right over the wash, his cameleer’s burnous breezing up on him, till with his runagate bowmpriss he roade and borst her bar. Pilcomayo! Suchcaughtawan! And the whale’s away with the grayling! Tune your pipes and fall ahumming, you born ijypt, and you’re nothing short of one! Well, ptellomy soon and curb your escumo. When they saw him shoot swift up her sheba sheath, like any gay lord salomon, her bulls they were ruhring, surfed with spree. Boyarka buah! Boyana bueh! He erned his lille Bunbath hard, our staly brede, the trader. He did. Look at here. In this wet of his prow. Didn’t you know he was kaldt a bairn of the brine, Wasserbourne the waterbaby? Havemmarea, so he was! H.C.E. has a codfisck ee. Shur, she’s nearly as badher as him herself. Who? Anna Livia? Ay, Anna Livia! Do you know she was calling bakvandets sals from all around, nyumba noo, chamba choo, to go in till him, her erring cheef, and tickle the pontiff aisy-oisy? She was? Gota pot! Yssel that the limmat? As El Negro winced when he wonced in La Plate. O, tell me all I want to hear, how loft she was lift a laddery dextro! A coneywink after the bunting fell. Letting on she didn’t care, sina feza, me absantee, him man in passession, the proxenete! Proxenete and phwhat is phthat? Emme for your reussischer’s Honddu jarkon! Tell us in franca langua. And call a spate a spate. Did they never sharee you ebro at skol, you antiabecedarian? It’s just the same as if I was to go par examplum now in conservancy’s cause out of telekinesis and proxenete you. For Coxyt sake and is that what she is? Botlettle I thought she’d act that loa. Didn’t you spot her in her windaug, wubbling up on an osiery chair, with a meusic before her all cunniform letters, pretending to ribble a reedy derg on a fiddle she bogans without a band on? Sure she can’t fiddan a dee, with bow or abandon! Srue, she can’t! Tista suck. Well, I never now heard the like of that! Tell me moher. Tell me moatst.