I wanted to write up at least a little something about the page or so we did ponder, particularly the long paragraph that lies on page 234. This paragraph, which begins, "But, Sin Showpanza.." is littered with at least three sets of references, namely to Don Quixote and crew, the life of the Buddha, and Lewis Carroll. Thanks to Roland McHugh's Annotations to Finnegans Wake, we picked up on quite a few of the Lewis Caroll ones--"Loose curls", "The sweetest smile that ever a man wore," and a couple of reference to another of his girls, Isa Bowman. I was looking for the word ladder that is supposed to always accompany talk of Carroll today, but except for the "ripidarapidarpad" of the little girls running around Chuff faster and faster, I didn't spot it.
What's interested me most in my reading today, though, was this life of Buddha aspect of the paragraph. I found a really interesting article by someone named Eishiro Ito called "How Did Buddhism Influence James Joyce and Kenji Miyazawa?" which you can find HERE . Among other things, he talks about this paragraph in particular, with it's references to Siddhartha's mother, Maya, his father-in-law Dandapani and the dream of the six tusked elephant, when she conceived Siddhartha, who would be the 'seventh Buddha'.
This is kind of what I can piece together from all these sources whirling around in my head. Sin Showpanza, in one sense is without panza, or belly, and Don Quixote without Sancho Panza is a man without the earthly desires that would make him whole. The next part of the sentence, "could anybroddy which walked this world with eyes whiteopen" apparently refers to Buddha walking the world after his enlightenment, and then remaining immobile with eyes wide open. In Ito's interpretation, though, this makes Buddha a Shaun/Chuff/Stanislaus character--who, along with St. Kevin, who also features in this paragraph, one of the "cold-to-women sainted men". Buddha immobile after enlightenment is something like Chuff, standing in the middle of the rapidly whirling girls, immune (or is he?) to their charms. He is the golden boy. Or the white, green and golden boy, standing like the Irish flag in their midst. In our terms, the boy scout.
Glugg is not a boy scout, whatever else he is.
What's interested me most in my reading today, though, was this life of Buddha aspect of the paragraph. I found a really interesting article by someone named Eishiro Ito called "How Did Buddhism Influence James Joyce and Kenji Miyazawa?" which you can find HERE . Among other things, he talks about this paragraph in particular, with it's references to Siddhartha's mother, Maya, his father-in-law Dandapani and the dream of the six tusked elephant, when she conceived Siddhartha, who would be the 'seventh Buddha'.
This is kind of what I can piece together from all these sources whirling around in my head. Sin Showpanza, in one sense is without panza, or belly, and Don Quixote without Sancho Panza is a man without the earthly desires that would make him whole. The next part of the sentence, "could anybroddy which walked this world with eyes whiteopen" apparently refers to Buddha walking the world after his enlightenment, and then remaining immobile with eyes wide open. In Ito's interpretation, though, this makes Buddha a Shaun/Chuff/Stanislaus character--who, along with St. Kevin, who also features in this paragraph, one of the "cold-to-women sainted men". Buddha immobile after enlightenment is something like Chuff, standing in the middle of the rapidly whirling girls, immune (or is he?) to their charms. He is the golden boy. Or the white, green and golden boy, standing like the Irish flag in their midst. In our terms, the boy scout.
Glugg is not a boy scout, whatever else he is.
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Love the literary density of this passage, where Ibsen, Carroll and Quixote cohabitate in the form of Chuff. It's not only the Buddha and the Christian liturgy that get thrown into the mix: the restored FW has "hajjiography," suggesting the "pigrim prinkips" may be facing East.
ReplyDeleteI think "lusspillerindernees" is a classic Joycemanteau word, combining the concepts of farce (Lustpiel, German), cattle (Rinder, German: even in Scottish, "cou" is an endearment), actresses (skuespillerindernes, Danish), and pilgrims once again (les pelerins, French).
And I never got the capital-M meaning of the quaint adage "Andure the enjurious till imbetther rer" until I found out ("We know you like Latin") that in the monastic slang known as Bog Latin, "anduire, anduiriu, imbethrar" means yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
Hope you're having a happy holiday!
Nice additional notes on the passage, Steve. I am still wondering why Eishiro Ito italicized lusspillerindernees as another reference to Buddhism in his article, but I haven't been able to parse it.
ReplyDeleteLove that yesterday, today and tomorrow bit.