BLACK HOLES OF SELF-CANCELLATION.

Comments

1. beth says

   June 30, 2003 at 3:22 pm

   Oh, my. As someone who is usually quite willing to wade through all those Shakespearian speeches, it’s becoming ever clearer that one of these days I’m going to have to overcome my Joyce-block and read both Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake. Now, why is it OK with me to have to sort through the annotations to Shakespeare, and not to Joyce? Is it that I think in a modern writer it’s pretentious to write that way on purpose?
2. John Cowan says

   December 18, 2013 at 6:08 pm

   My dad, being both legal philosopher and Waker, worked heavily on the Law Lecture passage, which is really two different lectures, one on canon law (from the passage you quote down through “Has he hegemony and shall she submit? Translate a lax, you breed a bradaun”, and the second on civil law, from “In the goods of Cape and Chattertone, deceased” (which is the title) down through “Will you, won’t you, pango with Pepigi? Not for Nancy, how dare you do!” Curiously, the first lecture sounds salacious but isn’t, whereas the second lecture sounds innocent but is loaded with sexual references, hence the “And whew whewwhew whew” at the end. As a small example, the case Hal Kilbride v Una Bellina refers to Henry VIII and his “terrible habit of changing his wife”.

   We have, by the way, heard of these people before under their Latinized disguises: Honuphrius = Humphrey, HCE; Anita = Anna Livia, ALP; Eugenius and Jeremias = Shem and Shaun; Felicia = Izzy: all of them in one family (“consanguineous to the lowest degree”).
3. languagehat says

   December 18, 2013 at 6:18 pm

   Have you been saving up all these comments for a decade, keeping them in a file somewhere against that hoped-for moment when all the doors would swing wide?
4. John Cowan says

   December 18, 2013 at 10:00 pm

   No, but I’m on vacation and I’ve been spending a lot of it reading old LH posts. I’ve gone back to mid-2012 and now I’m rereading the ones you opened then for the tenth anniversary to see if I have more to say, now that they aren’t hopelessly cluttered with spam.
5. languagehat says

   December 19, 2013 at 8:42 am

   Ah, well then I’m glad your vacation coincided with the grand opening! It’s a real delight to revisit these old threads.
6. John Cowan says

   March 24, 2015 at 10:23 am

   Here’s the full text of the canon law lecture (FW 572-73, reparagraphed):

   Let us consider.

   The procurator Interrogarius Mealterum presends us this proposer.

   Honuphrius is a concupiscent exservicemajor who makes dishonest propositions to all. He is considered to have committed, invoking droit d’oreiller, simple infidelities with Felicia, a virgin, and to be practising for unnatural coits with Eugenius and Jeremias, two or three philadelphians. Honophrius, Felicia, Eugenius and Jeremias are consanguineous to the lowest degree.

   Anita, the wife of Honophrius, has been told by her tirewoman, Fortissa, that Honuphrius has blasphemously confessed under voluntary chastisement that he has instructed his slave, Mauritius, to urge Magravius, a commercial, emulous of Honuphrius, to solicit the chastity of Anita.

   Anita is informed by some illegitimate children of Fortissa with Mauritius (the supposition is Ware’s) that Gillia, the schismatical wife of Magravius, is visited clandestinely by Barnabas, the advocate of Honuphrius, an immoral person who has been corrupted by Jeremias. Gillia, (a cooler blend, D’Alton insists) ex equo with Poppea, Arancita, Clara, Marinuzza, Indra and Iodina, has been tenderly debauched (in Halliday’s view), by Honuphrius, and Magravius knows from spies that Anita has formerly committed double sacrilege with Michael, vulgo Cerularius, a perpetual curate, who wishes to seduce Eugenius.

   Magravius threatens to have Anita molested by Sulla, an orthodox savage (and leader of a band of twelve mercenaries, the Sullivani), who desires to procure Felicia for Gregorius, Leo, Vitellius and Macdugalius, four excavators, if she will not yield to him and also deceive Honuphrius by rendering conjugal duty when demanded. Anita who claims to have discovered incestuous temptations from Jeremias and Eugenius would yield to the lewdness of Honuphrius to appease the savagery of Sulla and the mercernariness of the twelve Sullivani, and (as Gilbert at first suggested), to save the virginity of Felicia for Magravius when converted by Michael after the death of Gillia, but she fears that, by allowing his marital rights she may cause reprehensible conduct between Eugenius and Jeremias.

   Michael, who has formerly debauched Anita, dispenses her from yielding to Honuphrius who pretends publicly to possess his conjunct in thirtynine several manners (turpiter! affirm ex cathedris Gerontes Cambronses) for carnal hygiene whenever he has rendered himself impotent to consummate by subdolence. Anita is disturbed but Michael comminates that he will reserve her case tomorrow for the ordinary Guglielmus even if she should practise a pious fraud during affrication which, from experience, she knows (according to Wadding), to be leading to nullity.

   Fortissa, however, is encouraged by Gregorius, Leo, Viteilius, and Magdugalius, reunitedly, to warn Anita by describing the strong chastisements of Honuphrius and the depravities (turpissimas!) of Canicula, the deceased wife of Mauritius, with Sulla, the simoniac, who is abnegand and repents. Has he hegemony and shall she submit?

   Translate a lax, you breed a bradaun.

   Note that Honuphrius is HCE (note his initials in the first few words) and so Anita is ALP. Felicia is their daughter Issy, and Eugenius and Jeremias are their sons Shem and Shaun (and perhaps their shadowy third son Jeff, cf. Shem, Ham, and Japhet). We know this because they are said to be consanguineous to the lowest (first) degree. Gerontes Cambrenses are the twelve old men who are at once the jury and the speakers of the mot de Cambronne (viz. merde) mixed up with Geraldus Cambrensis, whereas Gregorius, Leo, Vitellius and Macdugalius are the Four Masters.
7. languagehat says

   March 24, 2015 at 10:50 am

   Very useful, thanks! But why do you consider “Translate a lax, you breed a bradaun” part of the passage? (I know “lax” and “bradaun” both mean “salmon,” but that doesn’t shed much light.)
8. John Cowan says

   March 24, 2015 at 11:43 am

   I can’t be sure, of course. But “In the goods …” seems pretty clearly to be the title of the following civil-law case.
9. languagehat says

   March 24, 2015 at 2:18 pm

   True, but I would treat the “bradaun” line as a transitional passage, because it breaks from the ostentatiously normal/formal language that is the defining feature of the canon law lecture.
10. John Cowan says

    March 19, 2020 at 9:59 am

    And here’s the civil law lecture (again reparagraphed):

    In the goods of Cape and Chattertone, deceased.

    This, layreaders and gentilemen, is perhaps the commonest of all cases arising out of umbrella history in connection with the wood industries in our courts of litigation. D’Oyly Owens holds (though Finn Magnusson of himself holds also) that so long as there is a joint deposit account in the two names a mutual obligation is posited.

    Owens cites Brerfuchs and Warren, a foreign firm, since disseized, registered as Tangos, Limited, for the sale of certain proprietary articles. The action, which was at the instance of the trustee of the Heathen Church Emergency fund, suing by its trustee, a resigned civil servant, for the payment of tithes due, was heard by Judge Doyle and also by a common jury. No question arose as to the debt for which vouchers spoke volumes.

    The defence alleged that payment had been made effective. The fund trustee, one Jucundus Fecundus Xero Pecundus Coppercheap, counterclaimed that payment was invalid, having been tendered to creditor under cover of a crossed cheque, signed in the ordinary course, in the name of Wieldhelm, hurls cross, voucher copy provided, and drawn by the senior partner only by whom the lodgment of the specie had been effected but in their joint names.

    The bank particularised the National Misery (now almost entirely in the hands of the four chief bondholders for value in Tangos, Limited), declined to pay the draft, though there were ample reserves to meet the liability, whereupon the trusty Coppercheap negotiated it for and on behalf of the fund of the thing to a client of his, a notary, from whom, on consideration, he received in exchange legal relief as between trusthee and bethrust, with thanks.

    Since then the cheque, a good washable pink, embossed D you D no 11 hundred and thirty 2, good for the figure and face, had been circulating in the country for over thirtynine years among holders of Pango stock, a rival concern, though not one demonetised farthing had ever spun or fluctuated across the counter in the semblance of hard coin or liquid cash.

    The jury (a sour dozen of stout fellows all of whom were curiously named after Doyles) naturally disagreed, jointly and severally, and the belligerent judge, disagreeing with the allied jurors’ disagreement, went outside his jurisfiction altogether and ordered a garnishee attachment to the neutral firm.

    No mandamus could locate the depleted Whilom Breyfawkes as he had entered into an ancient moratorium, dating back to the times of the early barters, and only the junior partner Barren could be found, who entered an appearance and turned up, add woman in, among the male jurors, an obsolete turfwoman originally from the proletarian class with still a good title to her sexname of Ann Doyle, 2 Coppinger’s Cottages, the Doyle Country.

    Doyle (Ann), upon a notice of motion and after service of the motion by interlocutory injunction, having regretfully left the juryboxers, protested cheerfully on the stand in a long jurymiad in re corset checks, delivered in Doylish, that she had often, in supply to brusk demands rising almost to bollion point, discounted Mr Brakeforth’s first of all in exchange at nine months from date without issue and, to be strictly literal, unbottled in corrubberation a current account of how she had been made at sight for services rendered the payee-drawee of unwashable blank assignations, sometimes pinkwilliams (laughter) but more often of the crème-de-citron, vair émail paoncoque or marshmallow series, which she, as bearer, used to endorse, adhesively, to her various payers-drawers who in most cases were identified by the timber papers as wellknown tetigists of the city and suburban.

    The witness, at her own request, asked if she might and wrought something between the sheets of music paper which she had accompanied herself with for the occasion and, this having been handed up for the bench to look at in camera, Coppinger’s doll, as she was called (annias, MackErse’s Dar, the adopted child), then proposed to jerrykin and jureens and every jim, jock and jarry in that little green courtinghousie for her satisfaction and as a whole act of settlement to reamalgamate herself, tomorrow perforce, in pardonership with the permanent suing fond trustee, Monsignore Pepigi, under the new style of Will Breakfast and Sparrem, as, when all his cognisances had been estreated, he seemed to proffer the steadiest interest towards her, but this prepoposal was ruled out on appeal by Judge Jeremy Doyler who, reserving judgment in a matter of courts and reversing the findings of the lower correctional, found, beyond doubt of treason, fending the dissassents of the pickpackpanel, twelve as upright judaces as ever let down their thoms, and, occupante extremum scabie, handed down to the jury of the Liffey that, as a matter of tact, the woman they gave as free was born into contractual incapacity (the Calif of Man v the Eaudelusk Company) when, how and where Mamy’s Mancipium Act did not apply and therefore held supremely that, as no property in law can exist in a corpse (Hal Kilbride v Una Bellina), Pepigi’s pact was pure piffle (loud laughter) and Wharrem could whistle for the rhino.

    Will you, won’t you, pango with Pepigi? Not for, Nancy, how dare you do! And whew whewwhew whew.

    The “certain proprietary articles” are condoms; a “crossed cheque” is one that cannot be cashed but must be deposited to the account of the payee (but in this case it’s clearly a pair of panties); “between thrustee and bethrust” needs no commentary. “Tango” and “Pango” are the Anglican and Catholic churches, with much play on the principal parts tango, tangere, tetigi, tactum ‘touch, grasp, arrive at, attain to’ and pango, pangere, pepigi, pactum ‘fasten, sink, force in, plant, beget, compose, write, tell about, agree on, promise’ (note the good old IE reduplicative perfect).

    I like how the witness is a Doyle, the judge is a Doyle, and the jury is a Doyle, but the appellate judge is a Doyler. “Nine months from date” and “corrubberation” are good too.