Finnegans Wake Grappa discussion

Brothers Swift and Sterne. They are with us throughout our night journey, yes? Popping in and up here and there, in many forms and guises? Here let's appreciate two of the many holy ghosts of this text.

Re-Swift ::

The Wake's made me Swift=curious. The tub=tail makes frequent appearances ; as do various creatures from Gull's Travs. But perhaps most prevalent is the Stella/Vanessa thing, the "ppt" and "MD" and such=like. The Journal to Stella which is partly/largely(?) written in Swift's "little language." Here's a sample ::

"So here comes ppt aden with her little watry postscript; o Rold, dlunken Srut drink pdfrs health ten times in a molning; you are a whetter, fais I sup Mds 15 times evly molning in milk porridge. lele's fol oo now, and lele's fol ee Rettle, & evly kind of sing, and now I must say something else."

fnt (p499, Bantam) : "These lines probably read: O Lord, drunken slut drink poor dear foolish rogue's [pdfrs] health ten times in a morning; you are a whetter, faith I sup my dears [Mds] 15 times every morning in milk porridge; there's for you now, and there's for you letter, and every kind of thing." [Letter L of Journal to Stella.]

Noticing of course the L/R split.

I realize that brother Atherton in his "Books at the Wake" points to Swift as the source of "Tail of a Tub". But i do not remember - I had his book in hand once - him elucidating exactly why or for what reason Joyce purloined Swift's title. I have a rather incomplete listing of some of the many morphed occurrences.

"...one yeastyday he sternely struck his tete in a tub..." p.4

"Tilling a teel of a tum,..." p.7

"Tal the tem of the tumulum..." p.56

"Try our Taal on a Taub..." p.105

"That's what you may call a tale of a tub!" p.212

"...it's toll but a till,..." p.266

"...that taletub..." p.272

"...like a tubtail of mondayne clothes,..." p.333

"...once tale of a tublin [dublin?] wished on to him..." p.335

"...let bodley chow the fatt of his anger and badley bide the toil of his tubb." p.354

"...the tell of the tud..." p.423

"...the stale of the staun..." p.423

All references are to a '76 Viking/Penguin FW.

Nice list Mark. I have Atherton and can look up his reasoning if you would like.

Yes, thank you. That would be cool.

I will do it when I get home from work tonight.

Cool! I wasn't sure there would be anyone out there "listening".

Wow, so this is going to take me a little longer than I thought. I remembered Tale of a Tub from Atherton but on closer inspection most of the discourse I remembered about it come from a book by Melvin New on Tristram Shandy.
I will read through Atherton's Swift section tomorrow (anything to take me away from the dreadful Bishop for a day) and see what turns up.
There is a rather nice thing about the 29 names of Allah and the wake having 29 names for Swift. I will list these either tonight or tomorrow.

Mark wrote: "Cool! I wasn't sure there would be anyone out there "listening"."

I am always up for discussing Finnegans Wake. I am glad you have joined the group.

According to Atherton on page 118:
"Perhaps A Tale of a Tub is named most often. The allusion to it which was the first to be written is in the Anna Livia chapter when one of the washerwomen says: 'That's what you may call a tale of a tub' (212.21. So it is possible when named in other sections of the Wake the reference may be to the conversation of Joyce's washerwomen as well as to Swift's book."
Take from that what you may. He also goes on to suggest the possibility that the word 'buttended' (3.11) could also be a reference to A Tale of a Tub but he is unsure of this.

Interesting. I'm just sort of surprised by Atherton not making a little more of an effort to make some sense here. But maybe that was not the compass of his book. I think the key here comes from Swift in his Preface to T. of a T. How he tells a story about whalers and the ship and a tub and a whale. So all you have to do is decide in Joyce's
case who, or better, what does the ship represent, what does the whale, and then, what does the tub...represent?

On another matter, I realize now I made a rather ridiculous remark earlier, which I now must retract and apologize for. I implied that I could possibly be of some assistance with the Bishop book: this is not true. I've just spent the last couple hours trying to re-familiarize with this black book and discovered that I could not make any sense out of it at all. Sorry. It's like a 100 times harder than the book it's trying to explain.

Back to T of T. I think that the ship stands for Ulysses. I think the tub is Finnegans Wake. And the whale represents the critics and the public and the censors. So, using the analogy laid out by Swift: Finnegans Wake is out there to distract the audience while or until Joyce can get Ulysses out of prison. Or something like that. (It just seems to me that Joyce is saying that Finnegans Wake is his Tail of a Tub; and that the only way I can attach any meaning to this idea is by trying to understand what Swift meant by coining it himself. Sorry to ramble. I had no idea I would be takin the wake today! peace.

I will definitely have to think about that analogy Mark but it is a very interesting one indeed. I have often felt that one of the big things hidden in the Wake and one of the main reasons for it being written is that Joyce was unhappy with how Ulysses was received. I think he took out a lot of his grievances in the Wake. I also think that Ulysses made him a little wary of sharing truth outright and so by encoding things into FW he was able to say what he wanted and not worry about being misunderstood by those who were not willing to take the time to understand.

I have spent the morning reading Atherton and on the bottom of 122 through 123 he discusses the pairing of Sterne and Swift. He gives an idea or two about why Joyce put these two next to each other throughout Finnegans Wake. Ultimately though, he doesn't know exactly why this was done.
After 3 weeks reading Bishop I cannot even begin to say how refreshing it is to read Atherton and see all his maybes, I am not sure but's, and quite posssiblys.
Here is a man who understands that making final judgments on FW is not his to do. He is willing to guide the reader and point out certain things that have caught his eye but in the end he doesn't force the reader into accepting only his view.
Atherton is what all scholars of FW should strive towards.

This discussion and Atherton have made me aware of Ppt in the text and the possible allusions it entails. He gives a list of occurrences that he says take place about every 24 pages. The list he gives in the footnote is from Glasheen's First Census. I have the Second Census and there seem to be a few more added which may screw up the every 24 page theory. Then again the list in Atherton is not every 24 pages.
I will post the list from the Second Census tonight.
Does anyone have any ideas on Ppt or why she would be every 24 pages? Even without the 24 pages there is definitely a pattern here.

So this Ppt thing has crossed into different threads and I didn't mean to cause confusion by. I am home and have Atherton so here it is:
"The word Pepette, for example, in various spellings represents in the Wake, the 'Ppt' which Swift used for Stella. It comes on twenty-four pages at roughly equal intervals throughout the book and is just as frequent in the H.C.E. passages as in any others, except perhaps Chapter III of Book III, which describes the inquest of Yaun (474-554), and contains all the characters in the book."

So Peppette (Ppt) is not Vanessa as I previously said but rather Stella. The part that struck me was the 'equal intervals' thing. If there is any occurrences in the Wake at equal intervals I believe it could only be by design. The question here is what is Joyce telling us with this character?

Seems like there has to be something there if the reference recurs every 24 pages (=1*2*3*4).

I'm also curious now whether there's any connection between ppt and "tip!"?

Ppt and Tip... Very interesting indeed!

In Glasheen's First Census the information about Ppt comes on page 106. The pages given there are:
14
96
143
144
232
248
272
276
301
366
374
413
449
459
470
478
500
502
540
563
571
580
601

Judging by these pages numbers (Given by Atherton in a footnote about Glasheen's findings) I cannot see the regular intervals.
Also if Atherton means that there are 24 pages in FW with Ppt references then why only 23 citings from Glasheen?

Additional Ppt's from Glasheen's Second Census are on pages:
79
147
178
314
327
588
624
(580) is missing from the Second Census
So if we exclude 580 the total count becomes 29 according to the Second Census which as was noted before is the number of names of Allah and also the number of names Joyce gives Swift in FW.
I do not know what the Third Census adds or subtracts and still do not see the 'equal intervals' but the number 29 here feels right. 29 girls and 29 Ppt's.

Using Wake logic, the number 29 does appear to be fitting for ppts recurrence.

Harry wrote: "In Glasheen's First Census the information about Ppt comes on page 106. The pages given there are:
14
96
143
144
232
248
272
276
301
366
374
413
449
459
470
478
500
502
540
563
571
580
601

Judging..."
A possible answer to the first question: the difference between 23 and 24: we might posit that there are two entries on page 143:
line (31) you have "pepette" and line (32) you have "pette".
A possible answer to the second question: why is (580) missing from the SC.: line (26) begins with the word "peepingpartner" which may have been withdrawn on second consideration.
(29 also ties in to leap year, which, of course, gets good play in the book.)