At the end of a passage on page 13, and after a list of both Jewish calendar months and Latin numbers, the final word is (Succoth.)--the parentheses are Joyce's, not mine. Two members agreed at our most recent meeting that this was a reference to the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, also known as the Feast of Ingathering or the Feast of Booths, although they disagreed about the pronunciation. But it caught my attention because a Jewish friend had recently mentioned that she and friends would be honoring Sukkot (there are many spellings, as it is a transliteration from another alphabet) , in which Jews around the world build temporary houses as part of the festival, by phone banking and canvassing to build a new House--of Representatives.
What is more immediately relevant to our Joyce group is that Sukkot this year actually starts tomorrow evening, September 23rd, at sunset. So we seem to be in a bit of synchronicity in our reading of the Wake at the moment. Of course, the real question is, can we ever not be?
But a word about different interpretations, both of spelling and other things. I've already mentioned that there is no one right spelling, except, I would guess, in the Hebrew alphabet. But the festival itself is two-pronged, and as my friend above suggests, also open to creative interpretation. It is a harvest festival, 'the feast of ingathering' mentioned in Exodus, as Wikipedia tells us. But it has a deeper religious significance, this time from Leviticus, where it is said to commemorate the Exodus and the dependence of Israel on the will of God.
The doubleness of the word, however, does not stop here. For the annotated Finnegans Wake website has this note:
Flood: Ireland, Its Saints and Scholars 10: 'King Niall of the Nine Hostages went on successive expeditions against the peoples of Gaul and Britain. Amongst the captives... was Succoth, a lad of sixteen... afterwards called Patricius, probably in allusion to his noble birth'.n to his noble birth'.
In other words, the person we would come to know as St. Patrick. A website called Electric Scotland claims him as a Scotsman, and calls him Succat or Succath, but also thinks it might place his birth near an estate in Scotland currently called Succoth. And there is indeed a later historical figure called
Ilay Campbell, Lord Succoth from the region:
And don't get me started on a more recent controversy as to whether St. Patrick was actually a slave or really a slave trader and tax collector. That might be a bridge too far even for this blog post.
Anyway, all this blather is basically just to reaffirm that there is never just one path through the Wake or one meaning, or even always one pronunciation.
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| Sukkah roofs by Yoninah |
What is more immediately relevant to our Joyce group is that Sukkot this year actually starts tomorrow evening, September 23rd, at sunset. So we seem to be in a bit of synchronicity in our reading of the Wake at the moment. Of course, the real question is, can we ever not be?
But a word about different interpretations, both of spelling and other things. I've already mentioned that there is no one right spelling, except, I would guess, in the Hebrew alphabet. But the festival itself is two-pronged, and as my friend above suggests, also open to creative interpretation. It is a harvest festival, 'the feast of ingathering' mentioned in Exodus, as Wikipedia tells us. But it has a deeper religious significance, this time from Leviticus, where it is said to commemorate the Exodus and the dependence of Israel on the will of God.
The doubleness of the word, however, does not stop here. For the annotated Finnegans Wake website has this note:
Flood: Ireland, Its Saints and Scholars 10: 'King Niall of the Nine Hostages went on successive expeditions against the peoples of Gaul and Britain. Amongst the captives... was Succoth, a lad of sixteen... afterwards called Patricius, probably in allusion to his noble birth'.n to his noble birth'.
In other words, the person we would come to know as St. Patrick. A website called Electric Scotland claims him as a Scotsman, and calls him Succat or Succath, but also thinks it might place his birth near an estate in Scotland currently called Succoth. And there is indeed a later historical figure called
Ilay Campbell, Lord Succoth from the region:
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| Portrait by David Martin-wikipedia |
And don't get me started on a more recent controversy as to whether St. Patrick was actually a slave or really a slave trader and tax collector. That might be a bridge too far even for this blog post.
Anyway, all this blather is basically just to reaffirm that there is never just one path through the Wake or one meaning, or even always one pronunciation.
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