Continuing my American-spectator-in-Ireland, wandering psychogeographical exploration of Finnegans Wake and relevant sites, jumping around the map of Dublin and the Emerald Isle, recalling my time staying there a few years back.
In part two I mentioned that the earliest settlement of Dublin involved two adjacent towns, Dubh Linn, and Atha Cliath. Having recently done a close reading of the Nightlessons chapter (II.2) of the Wake where the bicircular diagram appears, I've become convinced the diagram is, on one level, a reference to the doublin' bi-circular dual-town Dublin origins, a map of ancient Dublin. See more about this here and here.
"Vieus Von DVbLIn" (FW 293)
vieux = old Dublin
{Views of Dublin}
(circle diagram as map of old Dublin )
"Vieus Von DVbLIn" (FW 293.13)
early-Viking Dublin
{if interpreting this line as a chronogram the roman numerals V+V+D+V+L+I add up to 566 which is half of the Wake's recurrent 1132, also indicating Dublin circa 566 AD, the Viking era}
Dublin as a town began with the Norse Vikings who invaded and set up a settlement at Dubh Linn. There were already small Gaelic settlements in the area around the Liffey estuary. Atha Cliath was the adjacent settlement where the wickerwork bridge crossed the river Liffey. The name Dubh Linn is old Irish. The Vikings rendered it in old Norse as Dyflin or Dyfflin, which pops up in Finnegans Wake a few times as "in Dyfflinarsky" (13.22) and "in Dyfflinsborg" (582.21).
The river now known as the River Poddle used to form a pool or a confluence of waters where it met the Liffey River, this pool was known as Dubh Linn which means Black Pool. This body of water historically fed into a protective moat around Dublin Castle. In present day, there is a subterranean network of rivers formed by the confluence of these waters, which runs underneath Dublin Castle.
"mind the poddle!" FW 208.30
See the River Dodder in FW. The Dodder River, Poddle River and the Grand Canal are the remnants of this confluence. "Polycarp pool, the pool of Innalavia" FW 600.04
After this confluence pool was closed off by established embankments of artificial development, the area now known as Temple Bar would frequently breach the sea-walls and flood. This overflowing of the riverbanks seems to be what's taking place when the formatting of the text mutates in the middle of Nightlessons II.2, when the left & right marginal notes disappear and the middle column of text overtakes or floods the page (FW 287-292) and becomes "Floods Area" on FW 289.28.
Besides the modern-day remnants of this confluence of waters in underground networks of rivers, there was also a relatively recent (2018) discovery of a 13th century columnar tower uncovered in an underground excavation near the River Liffey, it's called Isolde's Tower. Read more about Isolde's Tower here.
Joyce in a 1924 letter to Harriet Weaver describing his latest work: "Some of the words at the beginning are hybrid Danish-English. Dublin is a city founded by Vikings." The Norse Vikings had established the city but then after the Anglo-Norman invasion of the 12th century led by Strongbow "from bank of call to echobank, by dint of strongbow" (FW 547.31), the Norse community was pushed out to the north side of the river. The Norse community went "from bank of call to echobank" from one riverbank to the other, settling in the northwest of city center an area that became known as the Town of Ostmen (meaning Eastmen) and later Ostmannstown, today called Oxmantown. Variations on this neighborhood Oxmantown appear throughout FW. "Olaf's on the rise and Ivor's on the lift and Sitric's place's between them" (FW 12.31-32). According to Fweet, these three streets named after Vikings are Olaf Road, Ivar Street, and Sitric Place, all near one another in the northbank side of Dublin.
Joyce had spent the first decade of his life living in the south side of Dublin, in Bray, and then in Blackrock, but around when he was 11 years old Joyce's father began facing financial issues, and the family moved to the north side of the river in 1893. They lived in Drumcondra ("Draumcondra's Dreamcountry" FW 293) and later on North Richmond Street which is not only used a setting for the story "Araby" and is mentioned by Stephen in Ulysses, it also appears in FW in a list of Joyce's past addresses, "12 Norse Richmound" on FW 420. Many sites on the north side of the Liffey are noteworthy for Joyce research. The James Joyce Center is on North Great George St. where they preserve the door of the building that once stood at number 7 Eccles St, the home of Leopold Bloom in Ulysses. The house at 7 Eccles St was where Joyce's friend once lived, it is also on the north side of town but that whole block has been turned into a hospital, actually it's the same hospital Bloom mentions in Ulysses: "The Mater Misericordiae. Eccles street. My house down there." Years later the Mater Misericordiae hospital expanded and swallowed up the Bloom house. (Read more about visiting Joyce's Dublin addresses in this Guardian piece.)
One afternoon when I was staying in Dublin, I explored the north side, and walked around the Stoneybatter neighborhood on the outskirts of the east entrance to Phoenix Park. Stoneybatter the name means Stony Road, as this area used to be a rocky thoroughfare leading from the countryside into the city. Stoneybatter today is a diverse neighborhood with a substantial Brazilian population. I was at a Brazilian cafe in Stoneybatter once when I ate delicious pão de queijo. Encountered numerous street art murals around Stoneybatter, a place that appears in FW as:
"stoney badder" FW 242.23"Staneybatter" FW 291.11"stony battered" FW 553.29
In Ulysses, the "Cyclops" episode opens:
"I was just passing the time of day … at the corner of Arbour hill there and be damned but a bloody sweep came along and he near drove his gear into my eye. I turned around to let him have the weight of my tongue when who should I see dodging along Stony Batter only Joe Hynes."
When I was in Stoneybatter, I walked along Arbour Hill Road, a street which also pops up in FW a few times. In FW there are multiple allusions to an old site in Arbour Hill Rd area known as Scaldbrother's Hole, it was the hiding place of a notorious thief, Scaldbrother, who would plunder victims and then escape into a subterranean network of caves he knew how to navigate well enough to evade capture. Scald, from the Norse word for poet. See more here, and Glasheen's Third Census of FW mentions:
Scaldbrother—Mm Staples [Hugh Staples, scholar] says that a curious subterranean building in Oxmantown (part of Dublin) is named "Scaldbrother's Hole" after a notorious thief who inhabited it. Scald is a Scandinavian poet. 223.19.[More here.]
...walking further west along Arbour Hill Road the road makes a ninety-degree turn and curves to the south towards the Liffey ("backtowards motherwaters" FW 84.30). If you continue on that road southward you will come to a park which today contains the Anna Livia statue, formerly located on the Liffey itself but moved to this small park perched over a pond. Locals call it "the floozy in the jacuzzi." When I went to see the Anna Livia statue there were three Irish gents snugly seated together on a bench, enjoying a smoke. Just a park in Dublin with a statue of a river goddess from Joyce's night-novel and a trio of Dublin guys being dudes.
(Floozie in the jacuzzi and the three Irishmen.)
Then I was walking westward along Parkgate Street towards Phoenix Park…. Joyce makes specific mention, in Ulysses and FW, of the Phoenix Park murderers having their last drink at a pub on Parkgate Street. Also, located on Parkgate Street is the Nancy Hands pub, named for the first female pub owner in Dublin and in Ireland (link). The Nancy Hands pub is mentioned several times in Finnegans Wake. I enjoyed a pint there one afternoon, and I appreciated the atmosphere of the old place, it felt cozy and historic, and the pub was filled with families, grandparents, grandkids, generations gathering together there for lunch and pints. Just next door to the Nancy Hands pub I noticed a sign for a realtor named Finnegan Menton. A nice little coincidence to see the signs of the Nancy Hands beer garden featured in Finnegans Wake adjacent to a local Irish Finnegan's sign, but this is Finnegans World.
(Read more about this pub at Peter Chrisp's blog.)
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| Nancy Hands pub and Finnegan sign. |
The pub chapter of FW (II.3) ends with a sailing off of a ship, "So sailed the stout ship Nansy Hans. From Liff away." (FW 382.27) Walking out of the Nancy Hands pub you would turn right and walk westward to go over to the entrance to Phoenix Park. There's a hotel right near the entrance, Phoenix Park Hotel, which isn't specifically mentioned in the Wake but felt significant because the book centers around an inn or hotel, which is also a pub. "Finn's Hotel Fiord" (330.24) More about that shortly.
A passage on FW 564 describes the entrance to Phoenix Park:
Finn his park has been much the admiration of all the stranger ones, grekish and romanos, who arrive to here. The straight road down the centre (see relief map) bisexes the park which is said to be the largest of his kind in the world. On the right prominence confronts you the handsome vinesregent's lodge while, turning to the other supreme piece of cheeks, exactly opposite, you are confounded by the equally handsome chief sacristary's residence. Around is a little amiably tufted and man is cheered when he bewonders through the boskage how the nature in all frisko is enlivened by gentlemen's seats. FW 564.08-17
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| Sign at entrance to Phoenix Park. |
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| Wellington Monument (Phoenix Park) |
The Willingdone monument in real life was interesting to behold, the four sides each featured their own weathered copper frieze depicting battles, and the sides of the shaft of the obelisk itself featured, in faintly visible faded golden lettering, the names of battles from Wellington's career. There you see the "Pyrenees" and "Monkaseer" etc. One of the friezes displays the scene from the Battle of Waterloo.
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| Waterloo frieze on Wellington Monument. |
On the Wellington monument in FW, the Joyce scholar Andrew Gibson writes:
The monument was not just a tribute to the 'Iron Duke'. It was also an assertion of British imperial triumph within the Irish capital. Here [in FW], however, Wellington's name functions as a vortex attracting miscellaneous allusions to warfare with which he had no connection [...]. Part of the comic point is to deface the references to Wellington's actual victories that adorn the monument itself.
(p. 162, James Joyce Critical Lives)
That Joyce defaces the Wellington Monument throughout the many allusions in FW is a helpful point. And there are so many references to it, starting with the Willingdone Museyroom scene but then appearing over and over in so many mutating forms. Toward the end of the book, the monument is invoked in a mix of Sanskrit language (perhaps a postcolonial response to British imperialism in India?) with "vellumtomes muniment, Arans Duhkha" (FW 595.22). Can't neglect to also mention the sexual shame aspect, the erotic undercurrent of many of the references to the phallic "Zenith Part" (FW 494.13) in Phoenix Park. In the Wake "the sphinxish pairc" FW 324.07 becomes an Edenic riddle, where some shameful event of a sexual nature is rumored to have occurred. My Dublin guide did mention to me that even nowadays the local Irish teenagers meet in the park for furtive encounters since the Catholic families tend to be pretty tight-knit and uptight households. Gotta find a place to fulfill those desires. Phoenix Park is huge, easy to get lost in. There are many deer in Phoenix Park, it's a vast green space spanning many miles. Phoenix Park is more than double the size of Central Park in Manhattan. It's like a dense dark forest at night, you could see why a primal Wakean scene is a mysterious dream encounter in the park at night.
A couple of Finnegans Wake-connected pubs flank the outer edges of the park, the most significant one being the Mullingar House in the village of Chapelizod. Joyce's father John Stanislaus Joyce had frequented the Mullingar House when he once worked as a clerk nearby. Lucia Joyce wrote to Frank Budgen in 1933 confirming the central location in Finnegans Wake when she mentioned that, "The principal bistro he [James Joyce] says is the Mullingar Inn" of which the main character is the landlord, HCE the innkeeper. The principal bistro, great phrase. There was a bowling green in the backyard of the Mullingar Inn where Joyce's father John Joyce once had a moment of glory, according to the scholar John Gordon (blog): "His prowess as a bowler, on show on the bowling green in the inn's back yard, was noted in a June 20, 1876 item in The Irish Times."
I visited the pub now called the Mullingar House in Chapelizod once and enjoyed a pint. It's a 20-minute ride on the bus from Dublin city center. Mullingar House is decidedly not a tourist spot, it's a pub frequented by locals. It wasn't crowded when I was there, and even though there are multiple commemorations of the place's significance to Joyce and Finnegans Wake, there was no indication any person cared much about the connection. You can see, though, a placard above the front entrance touts it as "Home of All Characters and Elements in James Joyce's novel Finnegans Wake." I can't help but wonder if there's some reference there to the recurring initials HCE from the Wake in that phrase "Home of all Characters and Elements."
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| Joyce plaque in Mullingar House pub. |
As I mentioned, the pub hugs the edge of Phoenix Park. Looking at the map I noticed there is a prehistoric dolmen, a megalithic burial site, located in Phoenix Park spatially in the vicinity of the Mullingar House pub (less than 1,000 feet or 300 meters away). A line from FW mentions "Finmark's Howe" (FW 553) where howe is a tumulus or prehistoric burial mound. Many megaliths and tombs appear in the Wake. Whatever significance the Mullingar House may have initially had for Joyce in his life is perhaps less important at this point. For him to have centered the wide Wakean universe on that place, the literary weight it holds now from its placement at the heart of such a phantasmagorical hypertextual construction of thermonuclear poetry as the Wake, that alone gives it immense weight and shadow significance, more than eight decades after the book's publication. Joyce's final novel is sometimes said (by its most ardent acolytes) to contain everything in the universe, therefore that sign above the entrance really says it all, "Home of All Characters and Elements in James Joyce's novel Finnegans Wake." That place is a fulcrum of the universe. (More info on Mullingar pub here and here.)
Across the park to the north, on the opposite side of Phoenix Park in the Castleknock neighborhood there is an old turnstile gateway in the stone wall of the park leading directly to a beer garden at an old tavern called the Hole in the Wall. This pub appears in Finnegans Wake, too. It's another pub for the locals, not a touristy spot. It sits outside the city center in the local streets. This place has also been known as the Black Horse Tavern in the past and it too was even called Nancy Hands pub at one point. I examined an old photo of this place in a prior post on the significance of the portal in the Wake's symbology. The wall and the gate next to the tavern are all very much the same today as they were more than a century ago. (See more about this pub at my post "Beyond the Portal".)
"A glass of Danu U'Dunnell's foamous olde Dobbelin ayle." (FW 7)
Wake pubs:
-Nancy Hands (Stoneybatter)
-Hole in the Wall (Castleknock)
-Mullingar Inn (Chapelizod) [center of the whole thingamagog]
The Mullingar pub might be the principal bistro but the Wake also conflates all these pubs. When the lines on the opening page mention "their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the park" that seems to conflate Castleknock and Chapelizod, both places with pubs along the park edges, and both have an "upturnpikepointandplace"---whereas the Chapelizod pub is next to a turnpike road, the Castleknock pub has a turnstile gate. The pubs stand in for each other and for all pubs. Joyce does the same with hotels in FW, where Finn's Hotel could be the principal inn, but it's conflated with other Dublin hotels, "the unguest hostel in Saint Scholarland." (FW 135.19) Just as Dublin is conflated with and becomes a double for all cities in the world.
* * *
As I've mentioned before, Dublin in the Wake is not just the setting for a story, it's much more than that. I'm not sure there's any other piece of literature which celebrates a city in so much depth and detail as this (including Ulysses), not just in a descriptive way, the names of Dublin locales form the fabric of the text. Once you learn the names of places you'll notice they are embedded on every page like gravel on a street.
A particularly rich example is the section known as Haveth Childers Everywhere (FW 532-554) where the main character HCE, the master builder, speaking in the first-person, describes the designing and constructing of Dublin. What stands out "from lacksleap up to liffsloup" (FW 547) is not just the lack of sleep in "lacksleap" it's also referring to going from Leixlip (west of Dublin) over to the Liffey's Loopline Bridge (train bridge, which is still there). When HCE mentions how he "ranked rothgardes round wrathmindsers" (FW 541) that invokes the districts of Rathgar and Rathmine in the south part of Dublin.
Another line here is worth venturing into for a moment:
"I richmounded the rainelag in my bathtub of roundwood" (FW 542)
That's Richmond Hill in Rathmines, and Ranelagh another district in the south part of Dublin city, and then Roundwood which is a village in County Wicklow just outside of Dublin where there is a reservoir ("bathtub of roundwood"). I went out to Roundwood once for a short stay, it's in a beautiful green valley in the region of Glendalough, with scenes of mountains and valleys that were carved in the glacial period. The green hills are wavy and serene.
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| Glendalough "In yonder valley, too, stays mountain sprite." FW 564.26 |
Roundwood is the name of the village, Glendalough is the valley, and the reservoir itself is called the Vartry. All of these places are named repeatedly in Finnegans Wake. Vartry water and the Roundwood reservoir are also invoked in Ulysses:
on his expressed desire for some beverage to drink Mr Bloom in view of the hour it was and there being no pump of Vartry water available for their ablutions let alone drinking purposes
[from Eumaeus chapter]
...
Did it flow? Yes. From Roundwood reservoir in county Wicklow…
[from Ithaca chapter]
Driving through the area I also noted the name of the Sugarloaf Mountains which also appear in Ulysses and in FW: "would ondulate her shookerloft hat" (FW 243.28)
* * *
Let's circle back into County Dublin proper…
On a trip back in June 2022, I was staying at the Royal Marine Hotel in the neighborhood of Dun Laoghaire, right on the coast overlooking Dublin Bay with Howth Head looming on the horizon. This is a historic hotel, and yes it is mentioned in the Wake as "ye olde marine hotel" (FW 30.16).
One stop away on the DART train headed south from Dun Laoghaire will take you to Sandycove, where the Joyce Tower and museum is located. I visited the Joyce Tower, otherwise known as Martello Tower number 11, in late June of 2022. I was actually there visiting the tower at the same time as the Joyce blogger Peter Chrisp and his wife and we all hung out for an afternoon.
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| Sandycove, Dublin |
I was amazed with the Sandycove Martello Tower. A resonant space, it felt like a giant stone seashell echoing the nearby roaring waves of the scenic rocky seacoast, a poignant Joycean shrine. Ideal omphalos for Ulysses. What stood out to me being inside the tower space where Joyce, and his friends Gogarty and Trench would've stayed for a few historic nights in September of 1904, was the realization that Joyce stayed there because he was otherwise basically homeless, but then he had fled in fear after Gogarty fired a shot from a revolver near his head when he was sleeping. Being in that resonant echoey interior of the stone tower space it was noticeable how that revolver blast must've scared the living shit out of the young Joyce. I could feel that there.
The stone sea shell fort by the sea also contains a library of Joyce-related books and a collection of artifacts. Included in that batch of materials was a letter Joyce wrote to Gogarty in the summer of 1904 and signed "Stephen Dedalus." I remember one of the things that struck me among the artifacts was a trunk that had belonged to Joyce. It seemed like that thing must've been important for the itinerant author, lugging around notes, scraps, vital books, papers, notebooks in trunkfuls, in a trusty archive, like this was his version of the internet. This was his version of Dropbox or a data storage cloud. A portable storehouse of his important stuff, which he must've lugged around in his many travels and different homes. Joyce once wrote a letter to a friend asking him to retrieve a briefcase filled with notes and ship it to him: "In this briefcase I have lodged the written symbols of the languid sparks which flashed at times across my soul." (see p. 277 of Selected Letters, ed. Ellmann)
You can see the trunk at the Joyce Tower's excellent website here: https://joycetower.ie/collection/artefacts/jtaa_0085-james-joyces-cabin-trunk-c
Joyce's wallet is there too. I like that custom crafted symbol of the golden triangle with the initials JJ in the middle. Pretty incredible to see.
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| credit to JoyceTower.ie |
Also in the Joyce tower, among many interesting documents and artifacts encased in glass there was a piece of paper with Joyce's handwritten drafts for lines in FW, an original manuscript. Check it out:
All of these lines ended up in the final text of Finnegans Wake. You can see Joyce was drafting out lines, words, different versions of a passage on a piece of stationery from Shakespeare and Co. The paper is undated (just says "May") but this would've been when he was drafting the Shaun chapters so it was likely May of 1924 in Paris. Looking at Joyce's letters I think I confirmed: June 1924 in a letter to Harriet Weaver, Joyce quotes these lines in a letter sent from Victoria Palace Hotel where Joyce was living at the time (V.P.H. the cryptic letters are mentioned multiple times in FW, it must've been a place where Joyce was especially productive in his working on the Wake).
Here's what Joyce wrote on the sheet and where this material ended up in the published book:
"with half a glance of Irish friskey from under
the shag of his parallel brows" (appears on FW 470.32-33)
"my soamheis brother" (FW 452.22)
[you can practically see Joyce chewing on and crafting this phrase---so-am-he-is brother while making a pun on Siamese twins, he mentions this in 27 June 1924 letter to HSW]"amstophere" (FW 452.01)"walk while you have the night for morn, light breakfast bringer, morroweth whereon every past shall full fost sleep" (FW 473.23-4) [these are the closing lines of book III.2]
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I have moved to Dublin to have it out with you,majestic Shade, You whom I read so wellso many years ago,did I read your lesson right? did I see throughyour phases to the real? your heaven, your helldid I enquire properly into?- John Berryman, Dream Songs #312
These lines quoted from the poet John Berryman from his Dream Songs are often interpreted by critics to be about Yeats. On the other hand, this is likely regarding Joyce, as the esteemed Joyce scholar Katherine Ebury has written an insightful article detailing the many Joyce references in the Dream Songs and Berryman's deep interest in Joyce, including when the poet embarked on his own voyage to Dublin where he paid a visit to the Joyce Tower in Sandycove, bringing along a photographer who captured the scene (see the article for pics and more info).
The spectator in Dublin encounters not one Martello Tower but several along the coast, like stone sentinels. They are all numbered. See Martello towers in greater Dublin area. An old, mossy, medieval sentinel tower stands on the island off of Howth called Ireland's Eye. I was really struck by the appearance of that tower on Ireland's Eye, especially as glimpsed from the Howth Castle area.
That one on Ireland's Eye is designated Martello tower number 3 North. Built in 1803 or 1804 to ward off Napoleonic invasion. Beyond the famous Joyce tower at Sandycove in the south, further down the coast is the Martello Ten tower in Dalkey. Owned by a friend and supporter of this blog, Martello Ten is an incredible historical site, I once had the privilege of getting to spend a few days there. The Joyce Sandycove tower is visible from atop Martello Ten. The Sandycove tower is the omphalos naval point in Ulysses, and I've now come to think of the Martello Ten in Dalkey as Wake Tower, dedicated to Joyce's even grander ode to Dublin and Ireland.
From the Martello Ten in Dalkey you can see out across the water to Dalkey Island which also has a Martello tower looking back, along with the ruins of an old monastery, a glimpse across centuries. The Dalkey Island tower is Martello Tower number 9. I don't often see Dalkey Island mentioned as must-visit spot on a tour of Dublin, but it's definitely one of my favorite places I encountered. The little island has wild goats, and you're provided with a fantastic view of the Vico Road across the water.
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| Martello Tower on Dalkey Island. |
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"Treetown Castle under Lynne. Rivapool? Hod a brieck on it! But its piers eerie, its span spooky, its toll but a till, its parapets all peripateting." (FW 266.04)
"Eblinn" (FW 264.15)
"A phantom city" (FW 264.19)
"Libnud" (FW 600.11)
* * *
"Each day, and each hour of the day, he thought of Ireland."
- Philippe Soupault describing his friend Joyce
In part 2, I had been trying to figure out why Joyce stayed away from Ireland for so long, never returning again after the summer of 1912, and yet constantly thinking about, writing about, talking about Ireland, seemingly.
And now I realize more and more that he could not go back, he would absolutely have been in danger if he went back. See my post about Evil Days and the friends of Joyce's who were killed during the violence of the Irish War for Independence. After 1922 and the establishment of the Irish Free State, Joyce still wouldn't go back to Ireland because he felt under threat for the scandalousness of his famous book Ulysses and how it depicted Ireland, maybe the nationalists might've considered him not loyal enough to the cause. On top of that, it was in 1922 when Nora brought the children to Ireland and they got caught in a cross-fire shootout.
A letter from Joyce to T.S. Eliot (the publisher of Finnegans Wake in the UK) recounts that violent incident of 1922 and serves as a good coda to this exploration of Joyce and his connection to Dublin.
JJ letter to TS Eliot Jan 1, 1932I have been through a bad time telephoning and wiring to Dublin about my father. To my great grief he died on Tuesday. He had an intense love for me and it adds to my grief and remorse that I did not go to Dublin to see him for so many years. I kept him constantly under the illusion that I would come and was always in correspondence with him but an instinct which I believed in held me back from going, much as I longed to. Dubliners was banned there in 1912 on the advice of a person who was assuring me at the time of his great friendship. When my wife and children went there in 1922, against my wish, they had to flee for their lives, lying flat on the floor of a railway carriage while rival parties shot at each other across their heads [...] I did not feel myself safe and my wife and son opposed my going.
More than 90 years after that letter was written, I'm grateful for the safe and welcoming city that Dublin is today and for the time I got to spend there exploring the city's rich culture and history and the endless elements and connections with Joyce's art and life.
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To be continued, beyond Dyoublong...
