June 20 2010
FW 1:7:176 A List of Games
Chapter 7 of Book 1 of Finnegans Wake is all about Shem, the twin brother of Saun. Shem is known as the 'penman', and suffers much caricaturing as a debauched writer, no doubt in an extended twisted tribute to the author's own self-image. The early part of the this chapter shows Shem asking young boys and girls a riddle, which is: "when is a man not a man?" The resulting answer is, "when he is a ... sham."
Shem is a fun and interesting character, interpretable in a number of different directions. His name is the Hebrew word for "name", and I'm sure semioticians have written about him being a self-describing sign. Shem's main quality in this section is "lowness", with references to his appearance, tastes and behaviours and there's a sense of him being deservedly ridiculed. It turns out that his main problem is that Shem is "in his bardic memory low" - that he suffers from some kind of writer's block.
A second problem occurs when Shem is caught up in a brawl between two warring teams. I am still researching the detail which result in this "personal violence", and why a list of children's games is brought up. Some of those games are clearly rendered punfully, like "Heali Baboon and the Forky Theagues", and "Fickleyes and Futilears". The game listed which mentions boots is "Here's the Fat to graze the Priest's Boots", with "graze" instead of "grease". The inspiration came from an article about boot-polishing, as boot polish was said to be used in the city whereas country people apparently used goose fat. A popular ballad about greasing the priest's boots was noted and the gloss for this detail is available here.
Shem is a fun and interesting character, interpretable in a number of different directions. His name is the Hebrew word for "name", and I'm sure semioticians have written about him being a self-describing sign. Shem's main quality in this section is "lowness", with references to his appearance, tastes and behaviours and there's a sense of him being deservedly ridiculed. It turns out that his main problem is that Shem is "in his bardic memory low" - that he suffers from some kind of writer's block.
A second problem occurs when Shem is caught up in a brawl between two warring teams. I am still researching the detail which result in this "personal violence", and why a list of children's games is brought up. Some of those games are clearly rendered punfully, like "Heali Baboon and the Forky Theagues", and "Fickleyes and Futilears". The game listed which mentions boots is "Here's the Fat to graze the Priest's Boots", with "graze" instead of "grease". The inspiration came from an article about boot-polishing, as boot polish was said to be used in the city whereas country people apparently used goose fat. A popular ballad about greasing the priest's boots was noted and the gloss for this detail is available here.
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