FINNEGANS WAKE

James Joyce

riverrun - the course which a river shapes and follows through the landscape + The Letter:
Reverend (letter start) + (Egyptian hieroglyphic) = 'rn' or 'ren' - name + Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, Kubla Khan: "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure-dome decree: / Where
Alph, the sacred river, ran / Through caverns measureless to man / Down to a sunless sea."
(poem was composed one night after Coleridge experienced an opium influenced dream. Upon
waking, he set about writing lines of poetry that came to him from the dream until he was
interrupted. The poem could not be completed according to its original 200–300 line plan as
the interruption caused him to forget the lines: "though he still retained some vague and dim
recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten
scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a
stream into which a stone had been cast, but, alas! without the after restoration of the
latter").

Eve and Adam 'Church of the Immaculate Conception', also known as Adam and Eve's, is
located on Merchants Quay, Dublin (Franciscans secretly said Mass in the Adam and Eve
Tavern, where the popular name of the present church comes from) + "Old as they were, her
aunts also did their share. Julia, though she was quite grey, was still the leading soprano in
Adam and Eve's, and Kate, being too feeble to go about much, gave music lessons to beginners
on the old square piano in the back room." (The Dead); Miss Kate and Miss Julia, based on
Joyce's grand aunts, the Misses Flynn who, as their great-nephew put it, 'trilled and warbled in
a Dublin church up to the age of seventy'. This was the ancient Franciscan church on the south
quays popularly known as Adam and Eve's (from Biography by Peter Costello).

swerve - an abrupt change of direction, an erratic deflection from an intended course.

bend – curve

bay - a body of water partially enclosed by land but with a wide mouth, affording access to the
sea + Dublin Bay.

commodious - roomy and comfortable + Commodus - Roman Emperor from 180 to 192. The
son of Marcus Aurelius, he is often considered to have been one of the worst Roman
Emperors, and his reign brought to a close the era of the 'five good emperors'. He had a twin
brother, Antoninus, who died when he was about four years old, and a sister Lucilla who was
implicated in plots to overthrow him.

vicus (l) - village, hamlet; row of houses, quarter of a city + Giambattista Vico + vicious circle -
situation in which a cause produces a result that itself produces the original cause → "The
world of objects and solidity is a way of making our passage on earth convenient. It is only a
description that was created to help us. Each of us, or rather our reason, forgets that the
description is only a description, and thus we entrap the totality of ourselves in a vicious circle
from which we rarely emerge in our lifetime." (Carlos Castaneda: Tales of Power).

recirculation - a renewed or fresh circulation.

Howth - promontory and peninsula on the northern side of Dublin bay.

environs - surroundings, outskirts + FDV (First Draft Version): brings us to Howth Castle &
Environs!