Penguin Classics the Restored Finnegans Wake

by James Joyce

  Hake’s haulin! Hook’s fisk! Can you beat it? Whawe? I say, can you bait it? Was there ever heard of such lowdown blackguardism? Positively it woollies one to think over it. Yet the bumpersprinkler used to boast aloud alone to himself with a haccent on it when Mynfadher was a boer constructor and Hoy was a lexical student, parole, and corrected with the blackboard (trying to copy the stage Englesemen he broughts their house down on, shouting: Bravure, surr Chorles! Letterpurfect! Culossall, Loose Wallor! Spache!) how he had been toed out of all the schicker families of the Klondykers from Pioupioureich, Swabspays, the land of Nod, Shruggers’ Country, Pension Danubierhome and Barbaropolis, who had settled and stratified in the capital city after its hebdomodary metropoliarchialisation, as sunblistered, moonplastered, gory, wheedling, joviale, litcherous and full, ordered off the gorgeous premises in most cases on account of his smell which all the cookmaids eminently objected to as resembling the bombinubble puzzo that welled out of the pozzo. Instead of chuthoring those model households plain wholesome pothooks (a thing he never possessed of his Nigerian own) what do you think Vulgariano did but study with stolen fruit how cutely to copy all their various styles of signature so as one day to utter an epical forged cheque on the public for his own private profit until, as just related, the Dustbin’s United Scullerymaids’ and Househelps’ Sorority, better known as Sluttery’s Mowlted Futt, turned him down and assisted nature by unitedly shoeing the source of annoyance out of the place altogether and taytotally in the heat of the moment, holding one another’s gonk (for no-one, hound or scrublady, not even the Turk, ungreekable in purscent of the armenable, dared whiff the polecat at close range) and making some pointopointing remarks as they done so at the prefects of the Sniffey, your honour, aboon the lyow why a stunk, mister.

  [Jymes wishes to hear from wearers of abandoned female costumes, gratefully received, wadmel jumper, rather full pair of culottes and onthergarmenteries, to start city life together. His jymes is out of job, would sit and write. He has lately committed one of the then commandments but she will now assist. Superior built, domestic, regular layer. Also got the boot. He appreciates it. Copies. ABORTISEMENT.]

  One cannot even begin to post figure out a statuesquo ante as to how slow in reality the excommunicated Drumcondriac, nate Hamish, really was. Who can say how many unsigned first copies of original masterworks, how many pseudostylic shamiana, how few or how many of the most venerated public impostures, how very many piously forged palimpsests, slipped in the first place by this morbid process from his pelagiarist pen?

  Be that as it may, but for that light phantastic of his gnose’s glow as it slid lucifericiously within an inch of its page (he would touch at its from time to other, the red eye of his fear in saddishness, to ensign the colours by the beerlitz in his mathness and his educandees to outhue to themselves in the cries of girlglee: gember! inkware! chonchambre! cinsero! zinnzabar! tincture and gin!) Nibs never would have quilled a seriph to sheepskin. By that rosy lampoon’s effuvious burning and with help of the simulchronic flash in his pann (a ghinee a ghirk he ghets there!) he scrabbled and scratched and scriobbled and skrevened nameless shamelessness about everybody ever he met, even sharing a precipitation under the idlish tarriers’ umbrella of a showerproof wall, while all over and up and down the four margins of this rancid Shem stuff the evilsmeller (who was devoted to Uldfadar Sardanapalus) used to stipple endlessly inartistic portraits of himself in the act of reciting old Nichiabelli’s monolook interyerear Hanno o Nonanno, acce’l brubblemm’! as, ser Autore, q.e.d., a heartbreakingly handsome young paolo with love lyrics for the goyls in his eyols, a plaintiff’s tanner vuice, a jucal inkome of one hundred and thirtytwo dranchmas per yard derived from Broken Hill stranded estate, Camebreech mannings, cutting a great dash in a brandnew two-guinea dress suit and a burled hogsford hired for a Furskay evenin merry pawty, anna loavely long pair of inky Italian moostarshes glistering with boric vaseline and frangipani. Puh! How unwhisperably so!

  The house O’Shea or O’Shame, Quivapieno, known as the Haunted Inkbottle, no number Brimstone Walk, Asia in Ireland, as it was infested with the raps, with his penname SHUT sepiascraped on the doorplate and a blind of black sailcloth over its wan phwinshogue, in which the soulcon-tracted son of the secret cell groped through life at the expense of the taxpayers, dejected into day and night with jesuist bark and bitter bite, calico-hydrants of zolfor and scoppialamina by full and forty queasisanos, every day in everyone’s way more exceeding in violent abuse of self and others, was the worst, it is hoped, even in our western playboyish world for pure mousefarm filth. You brag of your brass castle or your tyled house in bally-fermont? Niggs, niggs and niggs again! For this was a stinksome inkenstink, quite puzzonal to the wrotter. Smatterafact, Angles oftanon browsing there thought not Edam reeked more rare. My wud! The warped flooring of the lair and soundconducting walls thereof, to say nothing of the uprights and imposts, were persianly literatured with burst loveletters, telltale stories, stickyback snaps, doubtful eggshells, bouchers, flints, borers, puffers, amygdaloid almonds, rindless raisins, alphybettyformed verbage, vivlical viasses, ompiter dictas, visus umbique, ahems and ahahs, ineffble tries at speech unasyllabled, you owe mes, eyoldhyms, fluefoul smut, fallen lucifers, vestas which had served, showered ornaments, borrowed brogues, reversible jackets, blackeye lenses, family jars, falsehair shirts, Godforsaken scapulars, neverworn breeches, cutthroat ties, counterfeit franks, best intentions, curried notes, upset latten tintacks, unused mill and stumbling stones, twisted quills, painful digests, magnifying wineglasses, solid objects cast at goblins, once current puns, quashed quotatoes, messes of mottage, unquestionable issue papers, seedy ejaculations, limerick damns, crocodile tears, spilt ink, blasphematory spits, stale chestnuts, schoolgirls’, young ladies’, milkmaids’, washerwomen’s, shopkeepers’ wives’, merry widows’, ex nuns’, vice abbesses’, pro virgins’, super whores’, silent sisters’, Charleys’ aunts’, grandmothers’, mothers-in-laws’, fostermothers’, godmothers’ garters, tress clippings from right, lift and cintrum, worms of snot, toothsome pickings, cans of Swiss condensed bilk, highbrow lotions, kisses from the antipodes, presents from pickpockets, borrowed plumes, relaxable handgrips, princess promises, lees of whine, deoxodised carbons, broken wafers, unloosed shoe latchets, convertible collars, diviliouker doffers, crooked strait waistcoats, fresh horrors from Hades, globules of mercury, undeleted glete, glass eyes for an eye, gloss teeth for a tooth, war moans, special sighs, longsufferings of long-standing, ahs ohs ouis sis jas jos gias neys thaws sos, yeses and yeses and yeses, to which, if one has the stomach to add the breakages, upheavals, distortions, inversions, of all this chambermade music, one stands, given a grain of good-will, a fair chance of actually seeing the whirling dervish, Tumult, son of Thunder, selfexiled in upon his ego, a nightlong a shaking betwixtween white or reddr hawrors, noondayterrorised to skin and bone by an ineluctable phantom (may the Shaper have mersery on him!), writing the mystery of himself in furniture.

  Of course our low hero was a selfvaleter by choice of need so up he got up whatever is meant by a Stourbridge clay kitchenette and lithargogalenu fowlhouse for the sake of akes (the umpple does not fall very far from the dumpertree) which the moromelodious jigsmith, in defiance of the Uncontrollable Birth Preservativation (Game and Poultry) Act, playing lallaryrook cookerynook, by the dodginess of his lentern, brooled and cocked and potched in an athanor, whites and yolks and yilks and whotes to the frulling fredonnance of Mas blanca que la blanca hermana and Amarilla, muy bien, with cinnamon and locusts and wild beeswax and liquorice and Carrageen moss and blaster of Barry’s and Asther’s mess and Huster’s micture and Yellownan’s embrocation and Pinkingtone’s patty and stardust and sinner’s tears, acuredent to Sharadan’s Art of Panning, chanting, for all regale to the like of the legs he left behind with Litty fun Letty fan Leven, his cantraps of fermented words, abracadabra calubra culorum (his oewfs à la Madame Gabrielle de l’Eglise, his avgs à la Mistress B. de B. Meinfeldes, his eiers U
squadmala à la pomme de ciel, his uoves, oves and uves à la Sulphate de Soude, his ochiuri sowtay sowmonay à la Monseigneur, his souffosion of oogs with somekat on toyast à la Mère Puard, his Poggadovies alla Fenella, his Frideggs à la Tricarême), in what was meant for a closet. (Ah ho! If only he had listened better to the four masters that infanted him, Father Mathew and Le Père Noble and Pastor Lucas and Padre Aguilar—not forgetting Layteacher Baudwin! Ah ho!) His costive Satan’s antimonian manganese limolitmious nature never needed such an alcove so, when Robber and Mumsell, the pulpic dictators, on the nudgment of their legal advisers, Messrs Codex and Podex, and under his own benefiction of their pastor Father Flammeus Falconer, boycotted him of all muttonsuet candles and romeruled stationery for any purpose, he winged away on a wildgoup’s chase across the kathartic ocean and made synthetic ink and sensitive paper for his own end out of his wits’ waste.

  You ask, in Sam Hill, how?

  Let manner and matter of this for these our sporting times be cloaked up in the language of blushfed porporates that an Anglican ordinal, not reading his own rude dunsky tunga, may ever behold the brand of scarlet on the brow of her of Babylon and feel not the pink one in his own damned cheek.

  Primum opifex, altus prosator, ad terram viviparam et cunctipotentem sine ullo pudore nec venia, suscepto pluviali atque discinctis perizomatis, natibus nudis uti nati fuissent, sese adpropinquans, flens et gemens, in manum suam evacuavit (highly prosy, crap in his hand, sorry!), postea, animale nigro exoneratus, classicum pulsans, stercus proprium, quod appellavit deiectiones suas, in vas olim honorabile tristitiae posuit, eodem sub invocatione fratrorum geminorum Medardi et Godardi lente ac melliflue minxit, psalmum qui incipit: Lingua mea calamus scribae velociter scribentis: magna voce cantitans (did a piss, says he was dejected, asks to be exonerated), demum ex stercore turpi cum divi Orionis iucunditate mixto, cocto, frigorique exposito, encaustum sibi fecit indelibile (faked O’Ryan’s, the indelible ink).

  Then, pious Eneas, conformant to the fulminant firman which enjoins on the tremulose terrian that, when the call comes, he shall produce nichthemerically from his unheavenly body a no uncertain quantity of obscene matter not protected by copriright in the United Stars of Ourania or bedeed and bedood and bedang and bedung to him, with this double dye, brought to blood heat, gallic acid on iron ore, through the bowels of his misery, flashly, faithly, nastily, appropriately, this Esuan Menschavik and the first till last alshemist wrote over every square inch of the only foolscap available, his own body, till by its corrosive sublimation one continuous present tense integument slowly unfolded all marryvoising moodmoulded cyclewheeling history (thereby, he said, reflecting from his own individual person life unlivable, transaccidentated through the slow fires of consciousness into a dividual chaos, perilous, potent, common to all flesh, human only, mortal) but with each word that would not pass away the squidself which he had squirtscreened from the crystalline world waned chagreenold and doriangrayer in its dudhud. This exists that isists after having been said we know. And dabal take dabnal! And the dal dabal dab aldanabal! So perhaps, agglaggagglomeratively asaspeaking, after all and arklast fore arklyst on his last public misappearance, on the deathfe^te of Saint Ignaceous Poisonivy of the Fickle Crowd (hopon the sexth day of Hogsober, killim our king, layum low!), circling the square and brandishing his bellbearing stylo, the shining keyman of the wilds of change, if what is sauce for the zassy is souse for the zazimas, the blond cop who thought it was ink was out of his depth but bright in the main.

  Petty constable Sistersen of the Kruis-Kroon-Kraal it was, the parochial watch, big the dog the dig the bog the bagger the dugger the begadag degabug, who had been detailed from pollute stoties to save him, this the quemquem, that the quum, from the ligatureliablous effects of foul clay in little clots and mobmauling on looks, that wrongcountered the tenderfoot an eveling near the livingsmeansuniumgetherum, Knockmaree, Comty Mea, reeling more to the right than he lurched to the left, on his way from a protoprostitute (he would always have a (stp!) little pigeoness somewhure with his arch girl, Arcoiris, smockname of Mergyt) just as he was butting in rand the coyner of bad times under a hideful between the rival doors of warm bethels of worship through his boardelhouse fongster, greeting for grazious oras as usual: Where ladies have they that a dog meansort herring? Sergo, search me, the incapable reparteed with a selfevitant subtlety so obviously spurious and, raising his hair after the grace, with the christmas under his clutcharm for Portsymasser and Purtsymessus and Pertsymiss and Partsymasters, like a prance of findingos, with a shillto shallto slipny stripny, in he skittled. Swikey! The allwhite poors guardiant, pulpably of balltossic stummung, was literally astundished over the painful sake, how he burstteself, which he was gone to, where he intent to did he, whether you think will, wherend the whole current of the afternoon whats the sonch of a surch hads of hits of hims urged, and staggered thereto in his countryports at the caledosian capacity for Lieutuvisky of the caftan’s wineskin and even more so during, upon looking his bigmost astonishments, it was said him, aschu, fun the concerned human outgift of the dead med dirt, how that, arrahbejibbers, conspuent to the dominical order and exking noblish permish, he was namely coon at bringher at home two gallonts, as per royal, full poultry till his murder. Nip up and nab it!

  Polthergeistkotzdondherhoploits! Kick? What mother? Whose porter? Which pair? Why namely coon? But our undilligence has been plutherotested so enough of such porterblack lowness, too base for printink! Perpending that Putterick O’Purcell pulls the coald stoane out of Winterwater’s and Silder Seas sing for Harreng our Keng, sept okt nov dez John Phibbs march! We cannot, in mercy or justice nor on the lovom for labaryntos, stay here for the residence of our existings discussing Tamstar Ham of Tenman’s thirst.

  JUSTIUS (to himother): Brawn is my name and broad is my nature and I’ve breit on my brow and all’s right with every feature and I’ll brune this bird or Brown Bess’s bung’s gone bandy. I’m the boy to bruise and braise. Baus!

  Stand forth, Nayman of Noland, come boldly in your true colours (for no longer will I follow you obliquelike through the inspired form of the third person singular and the moods and hesitensies of the deponent but address myself to you, with the empirative of my vendettative, pro vocative and out direct), stand forth, jolly me, move me, zwilling though I am, to laughter ere you be put back for ever till I give you your talkingto! Shem Macadamson, you know me and I know you and all your shemeries! Where have you been in the uterim, enjoying yourself all the morning since your last wetbed confession? I advise you to conceal yourself, my little friend, as I have said a moment ago, and put your hands in my hands and have a nightslong homely little confiteor over it all.

  Let us pry. We thought, would and did. Cur, quicquid, ubi, quando, quomodo, quoties, quibus auxiliis? Let me see. It is looking pretty black against you, we suggest, Sheem avick. You will need all the element in the river to clean you after this and a fortefine popespriestpower bull of attender to booth!

  You were bred, fed, fostered and fattened from holy childhood up in this two-easter island on the piejaw of hilarious heaven and roaring the other place (plunders to right of you, blunders what’s left of you, flash as flash can!) and now, forsooth, a nogger among the blankards of this dastard century, you have become of twosome twiminds forenenst gods hidden and discovered, nay, condemned fool, anarch, egoarch, hieresiarch, you have reared your disunited kingdom on the vacuum of your own most intensely doubtful soul. Do you hold yourself then for some god in the manger, Shehohem, that you will neither serve nor let serve, pray nor let pray? And here, pay the piety, must I too nerve myself to pray for the loss of selfrespect to equip me for the horrible necessity of scandalising (my dear sisters, are you ready?) by sloughing off my hope and tremors while we all swim together in the pool of Sodom? I shall shiver for my purity while they will weepbig for your sins. Away with covered words. New Solemonnities for old Badsheetbaths! That inharmonious detail, did you name it? Cold caldor! Ice! Victory! Now, opprobro of und
erslung pipes, johnjacobs, while yet an adolescent (what do I say?), while still puerile in your tubsuit with buttonlegs, you got a handsome present of a selfraising syringe and twin feeders (you know, Monsieur Abgott, in your art of arts, to my cost as well as I do, and don’t try to hide it, the penal lots I am now poking at) and the wheeze sort of was you should (if you were as bould a stroke now as the curate that christened you, sonny douth-the-candle!) repopulate the land of your birth and count up your progeny by the hungered head and the angered thousand but you thwarted the wious pish of your cogodparents, soph, among countless occasions of failing (for, said you, I will elenchate), adding to the malice of your transgressing, yes, and changing its nature (you see I have read your theology for you), alternating the morosity of my delectations—a philtred love, trysting by tantrums, small peace in ppenmark—with my lubbock’s other fear pleasures of a butler’s life, sensibility, sponsability, passibility and prostability, even extruding your strabismal apologia, when legibly depressed, upon defenceless paper and thereby adding to the already unhappiness of this our popeyed world, scribblative!—all that too with cantreds of countless catchaleens, the mannish as many as the minneful, accomplished women, indeed fully educanded, far from being old and not deterred either by bad weather when consumed by amorous passion and rich behind their dream of arrivisme if they have only their honour left, congested around and about you for acres and roods and poles or perches, thick as the fluctuant sands of Chalwador, struggling to possess themselves of your boosh, one son of Sorge for all daughters of Anguish, solus cum sola sive cuncties cum omnibobs (I’d have been the best man for you, myself), mutely aying for that natural knot, debituary vases or vessels preposterous, for what would not have cost you ten bolivars of collarwork or the price of one ping pang, just a lilt, let us trillt, of the oldest song in the wooed wood-world (two-we! to-one!), accompanied by a plain gold band! Hail! Hail! Highbosomheaving Missmisstress Morna of the allsweetheartening bridemuredemeanour! Her eye’s so gladsome we’ll all take shares in the groom!