0426
PARTISAN REVIEW
us that the first Kingdom was the Family. The Father was the King.
Boucal
(bouacaill) is the Irish word for boy. It is fitting that
Vasily is the Father, that a Buckley is the Son.
As
for the nationalities: all through
Finnegans Wake,
the Irish
race is used as the Archetypical Race. The Irish thought their sires,
such as the Picts and the Milesians, once lived in Scythia. The steppes
of Scythia lay in the present Russia.
The general? He's Vasily. Basil, basal. He is the Universal Man.
He's the whole Community. In other words--the general.
He's the priest, the k,ing, Frazer's royal priest, who, in his ap–
pointed time, is slain by his successor. We also begin to notice some of
Frazer's apparatus. On p. 349, we read of the mistletoe which the
golden sickle cuts. On p. 360, Joyce shows us a golden sickle.
What of the Crimean War? The
Crimea
is the place of the
Crime, of Freud's primeval crime. That of
Totem and Taboo.
That
of the Parricidal Son.
The Crimean War revolved around the Siege of Sevastopol. On
p. 338, the scene is quickly placed. Butt says, "Sea vaast a pooL"
Sevastopol.
The text, at this point, has a number of Hindu terms, such as
Buddha, Karma, Krishna, hiding under the distortion. With this as
a guide, we see that "Sea vaast a" is the same as
Sivaista- the
ad–
jectival form of Siva. Sevastopol is Siva's pool. And, since his color is
black, it is a Black Pool.
Now, Dublin is composed of two Gaelic words.
Dubh
is black;
lin
is pool. Dublin is- a Black Pool.
Sevastopol is Dublin.
One of the better-known engagements at the Battle of Sevastopol
was the one at Balaclava. Back in its early days, before it had the
name of Dublin, Dublin was Baile atha Cliath, which is pronounced
Balaclee-e.
What occurs in Balaclava happens back in Balaclee-e. What
occurs in the Crimea is committed back in Dublin.
The Archetypical Crime has to happen, specifically, in the
Archetypical Place. For Joyce, this is Dublin. But, on a different level,
Dublin is a particular place. In it, a particular man owns a particular
pub.
