passages from james joyce's finnegans wake

For example, French re-wrote Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms as Believe Me If All Those Funeral Charms as a jarvey desiring to run down ‘the Moore of Dublin’ as he drove his jaunting car past the inferior statue of ‘the man in the iron mourning cloak’ on College Green. It is from the more cheerful of these melodies that Lowry gets her most lyrical title 'Sounds of Manymirth on The Night’s Ear Ringing.'Īs she proves, Joyce was indeed very familiar with French’s parodies of numerous Moore’s melodies. As Joyce juxtaposes the reference with two of Moore’s melodies that was a real Eureka moment for Lowry. Percy French died suddenly of heart failure aged only 65 in the home of his cousin in Liverpool in January 1920 on the way back from what would be his final performance in Glasgow. The reference amazingly escaped all Joyceans in eight decades even the late Vivian Mercier. The overarching breakthrough was Lowry’s detection at a crucial page early in the 'Wake' of the passing of the giant Finnegan in Liverpool.

Clearly, Joyce had these booklets but disposed of all the evidence, fully living up to his declaration on leaving Dublin that he would use the ‘arms of silence, exile and cunning.’ French published a number of his 'Jarvey' stories as booklets in the “Rush Light” series in the 1890s and early in the 'Wake' Lowry found a reference to Finnegan’s “rush lit”. Numerous fragments of his songs and parodies saturate it too and Lowry adds an extra 12 song references to the 13 already detected. French’s other operas: 'The Knight of the Road,' 'Noah’s Ark,' and 'Freda and the Fairies,' his lectures on Napoleon, and his comic story on Cromwell also lace the 'Wake' and chime with its themes. Helen sometimes shares an identity with Anna Livia and she rescued a very bereft and doubly dejected French who fell passionately in love all over again and robustly reconstructed his life from the shipwreck of tragedy and personal loss and humiliation. How it chimes with the 'Wake' is that in its chorus, French met and fell in love with his second wife-to-be, Helen Sheldon. Lowry also found the French-Collisson opera 'Strongbow' in the 'Wake' and it too is heavily thematic: The opera was French’s first effort after the tragic death of his first wife, which dramatically flopped in 1892 and had to be taken off the stage when The Freeman’s Journal, where Joyce’s father had powerful connections, staged a protest outside the theatre. This structure is replicated in the 'Wake' where the hero has numerous pseudonyms and characters often share composite identities. French has a slew of pseudonyms in 'The Jarvey' and sometimes these pseudonyms are shared with other contributors especially the publisher RJ Mecredy for whom Joyce seems to have harboured a particular grudge.

Passages from james joyce's finnegans wake