Gemini.Finnegans.Wake.09

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So This Is Dyoulong?

Hush! Caution! Echoland!

How charmingly exquisite! It reminds you of the outwashed engravure that we used to be blurring on the blotchwall of his innkempt house. Used they? (I am sure that tiring chabelshoveller with the mujikal chocolat box, Miry Mitchel, is listening) I say, the remains of the outworn gravemure where used to be blurried the Ptollmens of the Incabus. Used we? (He is only pretendant to be stugging at the jubalee harp from a second existed lishener, Fiery Farrelly.) It is well known. Lokk for himself and see the old butte new. Dbln. W.K.O.O.Hear? By the mausolime wall. Fimfim fimfim. With a grand funferall. Fumfum fumfum. ‘Tis optophone which ontophanes. List! Wheatstone’s majic lyer. They will be tuggling foriver. They will be lichening for allof. They will be pretumbling forover. The harpsdischord shall be theirs for ollaves.

As Friday night begins, the mood shifts dramatically. The noisy museum tour is over, and we are ushered into a new space with a new set of instructions.

So This Is Dyoulong?

Hush! Caution! Echoland!

The paragraph opens with a question, as if we have arrived at a new destination: Dyoulong (a pun on Dublin). We are immediately told to be quiet and careful, because we are now in “Echoland”—a place where sounds, stories, and meanings reverberate and repeat. This signals the start of a new chapter and a new style of narration.

The Faded Picture and the Two Listeners

We are asked to look at a faint image from the past, an outwashed engravure on the wall of HCE’s house, or the remains of the outworn gravemure (grave-wall). This is the faint memory of the fallen father.

But we are not observing alone. Joyce introduces two rival listeners who are watching the scene with us:

  • Miry Mitchel: A tiring chabelshoveller (chapel-shoveller) who is “miry” (muddy). This is our first real glimpse of Shem the Penman, the introverted, dirty, artist figure who represents the writer himself.
  • Fiery Farrelly: A pretendant who plays a harp. This is Shaun the Post, the extroverted, popular, performer figure who is Shem’s opposite.

The stage is now set with the ghost of the father being observed by his two rival sons.

The Eternal Struggle

The paragraph ends by defining the relationship between these two brothers. We are told to listen to Wheatstone's majic lyer (a “magic lyre” that is also a “magic liar”—representing art and storytelling). This “liar” reveals the truth of the brothers’ relationship:

They will be tuggling foriver. They will be lichening for allof. They will be pretumbling forover. The harpsdischord shall be theirs for ollaves.

This is their destiny:

  • They will struggle (tuggling) forever.
  • They will create likenesses and grow like lichen on a stone (lichening) forever.
  • They will be pretending and pre-tumbling (pretumbling) forever.

Their eternal conflict creates the harpsdischord—the discordant, out-of-tune music of the Irish harp. Their rivalry is the broken song of Ireland, and they are the ollaves (ancient Irish masters/poets) destined to play it for all time.

This paragraph serves as a prelude, introducing the two main antagonists of the next section of the book and defining their eternal, creative, and discordant struggle over the memory of their father.

Four things there fore, saith our herodotary Mammon Lujius in his grand old historiorum, wrote near Boriorum, bluest book in baile’s annals, f.t. in Dyffinarsky ne’er sall fail til heathersmoke and cloudweed Eire’s ile sall pall. And here now they are the fear of um. T.Totities! Unum. (Adar.) A bulbenboss surmounted upon an alderman. Ay, ay! Duum. (Nizam.) A shoe on a puir old wobban. Ah, ho! Triom. (Tamuz.) An auburn mayde, o’brine a’bride, to be desarted. Adear, adear! Quodlibus. (Marchessvan.) A penn no weightier nor a polepost. And so. And all. (Succoth.)

This paragraph acts as a formal introduction, a kind of prologue that presents the four central symbolic images of the book. The narrative voice puts on a scholarly costume, quoting from a fake ancient history book to lay out the key players of the drama.

The Four Signs

Our mock historian, Mammon Lujius, presents “Four things” that will define the story. These four items are a symbolic representation of the nuclear family at the heart of Finnegans Wake. Each is presented as a riddle or a heraldic sign, and each is linked to a month from the Hebrew calendar, suggesting a timeless, cyclical nature.

  1. Unum (One): A bulbenboss surmounted upon an alderman.
    This is the father, HCE (Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker). The image is of a “bulbous boss” (like a crown, a bishop’s mitre, or just a head) on top of a civic leader (alderman). It’s a symbol of male authority, hierarchy, and the public man.

  2. Duum (Two): A shoe on a puir old wobban.
    This is the mother, ALP (Anna Livia Plurabelle). The image of a shoe on a “poor old woman” evokes the nursery rhyme “There was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe.” It symbolizes the maternal figure as a container for multitudes, burdened but enduring.

  3. Triom (Three): An auburn mayde, o’brine a’bride, to be desarted.
    This is the daughter, Issy. She is the “auburn-haired maiden,” a young bride who is destined to be deserted. She represents youth, emerging sexuality, romance, and the sorrow that often accompanies it.

  4. Quodlibus (Four): A penn no weightier nor a polepost.
    This represents the two rival sons. It’s a comparison between a penn—representing Shem the Penman, the introverted artist—and a polepost—representing Shaun the Post, the extroverted man of action and messages. Their eternal conflict is presented as a weighing of these two objects.

In essence, this paragraph lays out the book’s entire cast of characters in symbolic form. The rest of the Wake is an endless exploration of the relationships and conflicts between these four fundamental archetypes.

So, how idlers’ wind turning pages on pages, an innocens with anaclete play popeye antipop, the leaves of the living in the boke of the deeds, annals of themselves timing the cycles of events grand and national, bring fassilwise to pass how.

This short, dense paragraph acts as a preface, explaining how the story of history gets told. It describes the chaotic, almost accidental process by which the events of the past are recorded and revealed.

The paragraph suggests that history isn’t a clear, straightforward narrative. Instead, it’s like a book left open, its pages turned by an “idlers’ wind” of chance, rumor, and idle talk.

Within this book, an eternal conflict plays out: an innocens with anaclete play popeye antipop. This is a game of Pope versus Antipope, a struggle between legitimate authority and its rebellious rival. This represents the core conflict between the two brothers, the pope-like Shaun and the heretical Shem.

This “book of deeds” (boke of the deeds), which contains the lives (leaves of the living) and actions of everyone, records the great cycles of history. The whole process works to bring fassilwise to pass how. It brings the story to light in a “fossil-wise” manner—slowly, fragmentarily, like an ancient fossil being carefully unearthed.

In essence, this passage tells us that the story we are about to hear is not a direct account but a reconstruction, pieced together from the echoes of an eternal conflict, found in the dusty, wind-blown pages of history.

08/08/2025, P.13.32, to be continued.