001.2 - Finnegan, erse solid man

We are using the 1999 Penguin Classics edition of Finnegans Wake, with an introduction by John Bishop.

We’ll be starting on page 3, from 'of a once wallstraight' -> 'since devlinsfirst loved livvy'

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The Great Fall: A Body in Pieces Across Dublin

After the thunderword’s climax—a linguistic explosion that shakes the very foundations of time—we find ourselves spinning forward, caught in the ever-revolving cycle of history’s rises and collapses. The fall of Finnegan is already written, but Joyce doesn’t give us just one fall—he gives us all of them.

First listed, Wall Street (wallstrait) crumbles—a modern Babel collapsing under its own weight. Then, oldparr—a man who defied time itself—succumbs to the inevitable. Finally, Finnegan and Humpty Dumpty take their great tumble, their stories fusing into one mythic catastrophe, their shattered remains scattered across the city of Dublin.

This is no gentle descent, no slow parachute landing—or “pftjschute” as Joyce would have it. It’s a hard crash, a body smashing against the earth. Humptyhillhead—his fractured skull—rolls westward, searching for his tumptytumtoes (fe fi fo fum!), tumbling toward the upturnpikepointandplace—the winding roads of Dublin, where history’s wreckage collects.

The crash site? Phoenix Park. The “knock out” at the park (Met her once in the park. In the dark. What a lark, (Ulysses)’s edge, near Knockmaroon Gate.

And what remains? Oranges rusting upon the green.

A final resting place. A graveyard of memory. The spoiled fruit—like Humpty’s broken yolk, like Finnegan’s corpse—left behind, dissolving into time. History’s leftovers, abandoned as the world moves on.

This dismemberment echoes Osiris, Dionysus, and Irish myth, where bodies are cut up and spread across the land. Joyce turns Dublin into a graveyard of fallen figures, where Finnegan/Humpty’s body parts become the city itself.

Who is 'oldparr'?

Old Parr refers to Thomas Parr (1483?–1635), a legendary Englishman who supposedly lived to be 152 years old. He became a symbol of extreme longevity and was later buried in Westminster Abbey, making him a figure of both endurance and eventual collapse.

This suggests that Old Parr’s legend has been sung and retold through Christian (Christen) ballads, folklore, and oral tradition.

This passage is a microcosm of the Wakean cycle:

• Rise (longevity, legend, endurance)

• Fall (death, burial, the inevitable decline)

• Rebirth (his story being retold “down through all Christen minstrelsy”)

Like Finnegan, Old Parr lives on in the telling of his fall—a key idea in Joyce’s ever-repeating cycle of history, myth, and language.

A Love That Outlasts Time: “Since Devlinsfirst Loved Livvy”

And then, amid all this wreckage, this decay, a single line shines through:

“Where the oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since devlinsfirst loved Livvy.”

For all its sorrow, this line carries an aching beauty.

Dublin first loved the Liffey.

This is the story of a city and its river, the land and the water, forever entwined. A marriage that predates memory itself, flowing backward to Anna Livia Plurabelle, the great feminine force of time and water.

This love is not just old—it is eternal. It reaches back to the beginning of time, and it carries forward, whispering through the streets, rippling through the river’s currents. Even as history rusts, even as oranges decay upon the green, this love remains.

The city holds its river, the river moves through the city, and Joyce, ever the cartographer of myth and memory, gives us this moment as both an end and a beginning.

A love story, wrapped in time, carried forward like the river itself.

Final Thought

Like Finnegan, like Old Parr, like all things in Joyce’s Wake, we fall, we rise, we are retold. The cycle does not end—it only loops back, swirling, tumbling, waiting to be read again.

History rusts. Love flows. Dublin endures.

References:

Westminster Abbey. “Thomas Parr.” Last modified February 13,2025. https://www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-commemorations/commemorations/thomas-parr

Finnegans Wake Extensible Elucidation Treasury (fWEEK). “Book I, Chapter 1.” Accessed Feb 13, 2025. https://www.finwake.com/1024chapter1/fw01.htm