Irish Studies Review

Vol. 19, No. 4, November 2011, 373386

Connoisseur of chiasmus: inversion and subversion in Finnegans Wake

Roy Benjamin*
Borough of Manhattan Community College, New York, USA
In this study I examine the trope of chiasmus as it appears in Finnegans Wake. I cover
such subjects as the relation between chiasmus and sexual inversion in the figures of
Vesta Tully, Lewis Carroll, and Jonathan Swift; the relation between chiasmus and
political subversion in the troubadours and the Tristan myth; the relation between
chiasmus and split personality in the story of Christine Beauchamp. Chiasmus, as it
appears in the Wake, is both a trope of war and a trope of reconciliation. The Wakean
formula Soms wholed, alls parted each part (some) will be made whole; each
whole (all) will be parted is a key to the Wakes dual tendency toward chaos and
cosmos. As a reconciler of opposites, chiasmus is able to accommodate and structure
these opposites in a chaosmos that is both entropic and evolutionary.
Keywords: chiasmus; inversion; reconciliation; narcissism; complementarity

Joyces many-sided neologism chaosmos (FW, 118.21), which unites the polar opposites
of chaos and cosmos, also names the rhetorical trope by which this unity is
accomplished: chiasmus.1 Named after the Greek letter chi which takes the form of an X,
chiasmus is the master trope of repetition and inversion. Such familiar motifs as division,
opposition, subversion, and reconciliation that loom so large in the Wake can all be seen as
variations on the ABBA pattern of this figure. Since chiasmus includes both a harmonising
tendency to establish unities in which two halves are exactly balanced,2 and a subversive
tendency to split the number one (Norrman, 5), it creates a dual disposition toward both
chaos and cosmos. A key expression of this idea in the Wake is the formula [s]oms
wholed, alls parted (FW, 563.31) or each part (some) will be made whole, while each
whole (all) will be parted. In this light, such opposing views as the modernist judgement
that the Wake is a study in universal reconstitution3 and the post-modernist claim that it
is not to be read according to a process of unification4 appear as two sides of the same
coined word. The Wake becomes an epic illustration of Stevens Connoisseur of Chaos5
a poem that uses the figure of chiasmus to illustrate how chaos and cosmos are mutually
dependent.
In this article I will be exploring some of the implications of this protean trope in the
Wake. As if illustrating Stephens remark that [t]here can be no reconciliation . . . if there
has not been a sundering (U, 9.397 8), chiasmus performs both operations. As the divider
of the self, it is associated with split personality and sexual inversion. As the inverter of
repressive social norms, it is a trope of liberation. Presenting each side with its mirrored
reflection, it promotes civil war. Reflecting the common origins of oppositions, it
reconciles conflict and promotes exchange. In keeping with its contradictory character,
chiasmus is the opposite of itself. Under its influence, what begins as the chaotic

*Email: RABenjamin@aol.com
ISSN 0967-0882 print/ISSN 1469-9303 online
q 2011 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09670882.2011.623456
http://www.tandfonline.com

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R. Benjamin

fragmentation of the monadic self ends in the pan-chiasmus of universal mutuality. If, as
H.G. Wells remarked, Joyces mind was obsessed by a monstrous system of contradictions,6 it is to be expected that he would find many uses for a figure that combined
the maximums of contradiction and complementary.
Norrman, in his study of chiasmus in Samuel Butler, lists a number of its
characteristics: it is composed of two halves that are each others mirror images
(Norrman, 6); it inverts the relation between left and right (Norrman, 11); it creates a
relationship that is strictly mutual in nature (Norrman, 26); its two halves are polarised
and reversed as in the case of the antipodes where spring is autumn and autumn spring
(Norrman, 28). Seizing on the fact that the word mutual is practically the mirrored
reversal of the word Autumn and the n in candle inverts the u in caudle, Joyce
manages to convey all of these meanings in a single tour de force: so bright as Mutua of
your mirror holds her candle to your caudle, lone lefthand likeless, sombring Autum of
your Spring (FW, 271.9 12). The passage is based partly on a passage in Lewis Carrolls
Sylvia and Bruno which describes the reciprocal love between a father and his daughter: it
was a pretty sight to see the mutual love with which the two facesone in the Spring of
Life, the other in its late Autumnwere gazing on each other.7 Needless to say, this
sentimental Victorian tableau masks a family romance that is not so innocent. HCE
appears to be defending himself against just such an unsavoury accusation when he argues
for the honours of our mewmew mutual daughters, credit me (FW, 36.22 3). While
arguing for the purity of his daughters, he also stutters out a confession of mutual guilt. As
Norris explains, Wakean events can reverse themselves so that we do not know if father
seduces daughter or daughter tempts father.8 In any case, the simultaneously dividing and
joining effect of chiasmus is a reflection of the double-bind of incestuous desire.
since primal made alter in garden of Idem (FW, 263.20 1)
Chiasmus as the trope of cross-coupling and inversion also lends itself to representations of
narcissism and gender reversal. Norrmans observations on the close relation between
chiastic inversion and narcissism (Norrman, 6 7) are anticipated by the Wakes formula
Nircississies are as the doaters of inversion (FW, 526.34 5). Some of the implications of
this phrase are illustrated a few lines up by the figure of Vesta Tilley a male
impersonator of [the] 1890s9 who appears as my Tarpeyan cousin, Vesta Tully, making
faces at her bach-spilled likeness in the brook (FW, 526.30 1). Vesta Tillys moment of
transformation came in a classic narcissistic scene when, bored with the limited roles which
were available to female actors at that time, she began to imitate in front of a mirror, the
male singers she had seen.10 Not long after, her given name Matilda Powles was
back-spelled through a chiasmic reversal into Vesta Tilley (her first name Matilda
becoming her last name Tilley). Since this transformation occurred under the approving
eye of her father, Maitland speculates that the desire of a father for his daughter, or of a
daughter for her father, can impel her to refuse her womanhood (Maitland, 55). While the
name Vesta suggests an intention to remain a virgin, Matilda Powles did, in fact, marry
later in life.
In the next paragraph, Matilda Powles middle name Alice is also back-spelled
into Secilas (FW, 526.35), the plural creating a bridge to another mirrored protagonist:
Lewis Carrolls Alice who went through the laughing classes (FW, 526.35 6). In this
context the substitution of doaters of inversion (FW, 526.35) for mother of invention
(note the change from singular to plural) suggests Carrolls relation to young girls
according to the theory that his oedipal love for his mother was never displaced, except in

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a typical Carroll fashion by reversal in which he insistently fell in love with little girls
who were young enough to be his daughters.11, 12 This kind of chiasmic sexual inversion
was, perhaps, a model that facilitated his inventiveness in the area of mathematical and
logical inversion. As the inverted White Knight says, the more head-downwards I am,
the more I keep inventing new things (Carroll, 223). In addition, the portmanteau
Nircississies, which combines narcissist and sister, accords with the idea that
Carrolls narcissism sprang partly from a primitive identification with his sisters
(Greenacre, 216).13 This conjecture is supported by the chiasmic reversal that created his
nom de plume Charles becoming Carroll and Lutwidge becoming Lewis in so
far as two of his sisters were named Louisa and Caroline (Greenacre, 216). In this respect,
the daughter he doated on can be said to be a sexually reversed image of himself (along the
same lines Greenacre maintains that Alice and the author are one (Greenacre, 216)).
Carrolls fixation on this inverted image corresponded to physical and mental
characteristics in himself in so far as, according to Isa Bowman, he had a curiously
womanish face,14 and, as Greenacre observes, he had much in his nature that suggests the
Victorian woman (Greenacre, 222 3). As Froula points out in her study on the doaters of
inversion, Carroll is a prime exemplar of [t]he interrelations among self-portraiture,
narcissistic desire, and the obsessive sex and gender crossings found in the Wake.15
Part of the word magic involved in chiastic thinking is the belief that inversions of
name can liberate the self from repressive identities. This is illustrated in Carrolls case in
so far as the witty, whimsical Lewis Carroll was the reverse of the stiff, humorless Charles
Lutwidge Dodgson. In the Wakes description of Secilas through their laughing classes
becoming poolermates in laker life (FW, 526.35 6), a reverse reversal is performed on
the name and identity Alice changing her from giggling schoolgirl into a self-mated
old maid (parlour maid). Eide maintains that the reference to Saint Cecelia a virgin
martyr who was commanded by God to remain single indicates Carrolls oscillating
responses to the sexuality of young girls.16 It can also indicate Carrolls dread that his preadolescent Alice would ever mature into sexually active woman a development that
would threaten his identity. His belief that the marriage bed which he envisioned as a
sort of torture chamber similar to Plaths comparison of the marriage bed to the rack and
the screw17 spelled the end of the laughter of the looking-glass world (cf.
Wonderlawns lost us for ever. Alis, alas, she broke the glass (FW, 270.20 1)) is
expressed at the beginning of Through the Looking Glass: Come, hearken then, ere voice
of dread, / With bitter tidings laden, / Shall summon to unwelcome bed / A melancholy
maiden! (Carroll, 123). Here, Carroll plays the part of God to Alices Saint Cecelia
warning that marriage is the end of happiness. In another sense, however, it was Carroll
himself who became a poolermate in laker life (FW, 526.36) mated to his own
inverted image and refusing sexual contact with mature women. Bowmans comment
that he was oldmaidishly prim (McHugh, 242) appears in the Wake as the phrase
altfrumpishly like (FW, 242.19).
The evil inherent in narcissistic inversion its solipsistic denial of life and love is
suggested by Issys footnote in the lessons chapter: O Evol, kool in the salg and ees how
Dozi pits what a drows er (FW, 262.F2) (a mirror image of the phrase, O love, look in the
glass . . . ). The aside is based partly on the chapter entitled Brunos Lessons from Sylvie
and Bruno Concluded. After Sylvie writes the letters E-V-I-L on the blackboard and
asks Bruno what he sees, he exclaims, Why, its LIVE, backwards! (Carroll, 478).
Greenacre comments that Bruno is on the brink of discovering that both EVIL and LIVE
are close to LOVE (Greenacre, 200). This may have been Carrolls belated recognition
that life lived backward is evil, or that the evil of loveless inversion could be reversed in an

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affirmation of life. In any case, in the last chapter of Sylvie and Bruno (entitled,
appropriately, Life Out of Death) Carroll uses chiasmus to change narcissistic isolation
into universal relatedness in the phrase SYLVIE WILL LOVE ALLALL WILL LOVE
SYLVIE (Carroll, 674). As Norrman points out, if we wish to imply reciprocity or
mutuality of loving we use chiasmus: Jack loves Jill, and Jill Jack (Norrman 2) a
testament to the many opposing uses of the trope. Joyce characteristically suggests both
narcissism and mutuality in his chiasmic tautology Love loves to love love (U, 12.1493).
sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathanjoe (FW, 3.12)
Norriss reference to a divided and reversed Jonathan Swift (Norris, 42) identifies him as
a personification of chiasmus. Swift was another of the Wakes doaters of inversion (FW,
526.35) whose invention as a writer was spurred by psychological inversion. Greenacre
notes that his Meditations upon a Broomstick shows a strong preoccupation with sexual
inversion (Greenacre, 37). His whimsical and melancholy description of the sapless
trunk which is now, at best, but the reverse of what it was, a tree turned upside down, the
branches on the earth, and the root in the air18 is a possible source of the washerwomans
complaint that [m]y branches lofty are taking root (FW, 213.13). In any case, when the
Wake alludes to a work entitled Since our brother Johnathan Signed the Pledge or the
Meditations of Two Young Spinsters (FW, 307.5 7), Swifts inverted meditation is
connected to his two Esthers (Johnson and Vanhomrigh). This triangle of mutual
frustration presents another variation on the Nircississies are as the doaters of inversion
(FW, 526.34 5) theme. Once again the word Nircississies implying a narcissistic
fixation upon a sister is relevant to the case of Swift who continually misstated the ages
of both women in order to approximate the age difference between himself and his sister
Jane (Greenacre, 42). Greenacres conjecture that the name Esther appealed to Swift
because of its similarity to the word sister (Greenacre, 106) is anticipated by the first
page of the Wake which refers to the two women as sosie sesthers (FW, 3.12). In
addition, the word sosie French for double, counterpart (McHugh, 3) suggests that
they were, in effect, inverted reflections of himself. While Carrolls inversion involved a
translation of himself into a little girl, Swifts more aggressive nature wanted to make
boys of both Stella and Vanessa (Greenacre, 94). In this, it seems, he had some success.
Vanessa was, in fact, said to resemble Swift in features (Greenacre, 42), and we can
interpret this resemblance as either the cause or effect of his narcissistic doating.
Swifts Cadenus and Vanessa represents the sexual inversion of both Swift and Esther
Vanhomrigh. Both of the title names are, in fact, inversions (Cadenus containing a split
and reversed variation on the first four letters of Decan (or Dean) and Vanessa being the
reverse of Esther Vanhomrigh). As the severe and demanding Dean, Swift wanted to
impress on his female pupils a chaste masculinity. As the inverted Cadenus he sees the
tables turned the two their stations change19 and he is compelled by Vanessas
greater knowledge of desire to assume the female part. Instead of being a passive female
schooled by an overbearing male, Vanessa will have her turn, to be / The tutor; and the
pupil, he (Swift, 1993, 40). On the other hand, the name Vanessa corresponds to the
inversion of Esther Vanhomrighs female nature. The poem narrates that after her birth,
Athena Mistakes Vanessa for a boy and gives her intellectual gifts For manly bosoms
chiefly fit (Swift, 1993, 24). Cadenus doating care which might cause some to mistake
him, as in the sentimental tableau from Sylvie and Bruno, for A father, and the nymph his
child (Swift, 1993, 33) was only, in fact, the masters secret joy / In school to hear the
finest boy (Swift, 1993, 33). All suggestions of sexual attraction are ruthlessly erased.

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In the Wake, Esther Vanhomrighs complaint to Swift about those killing, killing words of
yours (McHugh, 413) is linked to the poem that mercilessly inverts her (Hopsoloosely
kidding you are totether with your cadenus (FW, 413.27)) where the two are tethered
together in a mutual inversion.
On the first page of the Wake, the inversion of Swifts first name (nathanjoe (FW,
3.12)) refers to a poem of Esther Vanhomrighs that attempts to turn the tables. Though the
poem ends by praising its subject, it begins with what appears to be a murderous gesture
toward a rejecting lover (CUTT the name of the Man who his Mistress denyd20). The
margin informs us that the divided subject is the biblical Joseph, and the double meaning
of the word mistress reflects the doubleness of the subject. On the one hand, Joseph
denied the improper advances of his mistress in the sense of female head of a household.
On the other, Swift denied the desires of his mistress in the sense of a kept woman or
partner in an illicit affair. In any case, the first syllable of Joseph is be joined to the
Prophet who DAVID did Chide (Nathan), in such a way that that which deserves to be
first [be] put the last (the formula for chiasmus) giving us Nathanjoe (Swift, 1958, 715).
It is significant that both of these biblical figures opposed unlawful desires: Nathan
condemning David for his murderous lust for Bathsheba, and Joseph fleeing from
Potiphars predatory wife. As the Wake puts it, both Esthers had reason to be wroth with
twone nathanjoe (FW, 3.12) since the two in one Jonathan was both David and
Nathan, the amoral seducer being the inverse of the self-righteous accuser.
in tropadores and doublecressing twofold thruths (FW, 288.2 3)
In the figures of Carroll and Swift the struggle between unlawful love and unloving law
created a dual tendency toward chaos and cosmos. A similar drama of inverse opposites
historical rather than biographical appears in the story of the Troubadours. The Wake
associates them with the trope of chiasmus in its description of a process chanching letters
for them vice overse to bronze mottes and blending tschemes for em in tropadores and
doublecressing twofold thruths (FW, 288.1 3). Here, the chiasmic interchanging of
letters until they are reversed is connected to a double-crossing that both divides and
inverts in order to subvert binary oppositions (twofold truths). While the word tropadores
(dory daura: of gold) implies that chiasmus is a golden trope of alchemical virtues, the
phrase vice overse suggests that the customary positions of vice and virtue were
reversed in their verse. The Troubadours, according to such thinkers as Denis de
Rougemont and Paul Zweig, promoted a wayward liberation of eros from the repressive
burden of the Roman Church. As Zweig points out, their abject worship of the female (who
was situated in a position of male supremacy and addressed as my lord) was a daring
inversion of the religious spirit of the age.21 In terms of wordplay, the most famous of
these inversions analogous to Carrolls chiasmic doublet Evil-Live was the
celebration of Amor as the opposite of Roma. As Serrano points out, in the Troubadours
religion of love, the word Amor . . . was a code word which implied the subversion of all
that Rome represented.22 When the Wake inquires, [a]re you imitation Roma now or
Amor now. You have all our empathies, eh, Mr Trickpat (FW, 487.22 3), this inversion
of the holy city simultaneously inverts the apostle of Christianity in Ireland. When Patrick
is divided and reversed, he becomes a wily Irishman (Pat) using trickery to subvert the rule
of Rome.
The Troubadours also had enormous influence on variations of the Tristan and Isolde
legend a story that looms large in the Wake. Zweig observes that in Gottfried Von
Strassburgs telling the exotic threads of the Celtic legend are mingled with the more

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recent ideals of the Provencal court (Zweig, 69) in order to dramatise the subversion of
the old code of honour by the new religion of love. The relation of this story to the
Nircississies are as the doaters of inversion (FW, 526.34) theme (adding another
component to the word Nircississies the princess Isolde) can be gathered from de
Rougemonts observation that the unhappiness of the lovers originates in a false
reciprocity, which disguises a twin narcissism.23 This idea also appears in one of Joyces
notebooks which designated Isolde with the siglum of an upside-down T in order to
illustrate her relationship to Tristan as his partner and/or inverted reflection.24 In any
case, de Rougemont points out that in the mutual destruction of the two lovers the struggle
between passion and obstruction is inverted (de Rougemont, 46). Joyce describes this
process of inversion on page 486 of the Wake in a ritual that begins with the placing of an
initial T square of burial jade upright to your temple (FW, 486.15) and ends with the
declaration that I invert the initial of your tripartite and sign it sternly (FW, 486.27 8). In
between the two actions, the unhappiness of the lovers is emphasised by the question
[w]hat sound of tistress isoles my ear? (FW, 486.21).
Tristans cut, parted, and reversed name (recalling twone nathanjoe (FW, 3.12)
appears on the top of the same page in the progression Tantris, hattrick, tryst and parting
(FW, 486.7). Once again nominal inversion corresponds to psychological inversion; in this
case, a dual subject torn by a double allegiance, to Love and to his honor (Zweig, 73). In
Kristevan25 terms, the displacement of the imposed orders of symbolic law by the primary
processes of semiotic transgression have left their mark on the name itself. The passage
also refers to the episode in the story26 where the poisoned Tristan inverts his name in
order to hide his identity from Queen Isolde (mother of the protagonist Isolde, though in
some versions it is the protagonist herself: another mother daughter inversion). Since he
has killed her brother, the giant Morold, in single combat, she is bound by the laws of
honour to take revenge. When the ruse succeeds, however, she cures him of his poisoned
wound instead. The episode foreshadows the poisoning of lovers by the philter and their
erotic subversion of the laws of honour. In another section of the Wake, when Isolde is
referred to as that girl with the tan tress awn (FW, 480.3 4), the description of her
auburn hair is the inverse of Tristans name. Finally, when the Wake asks [d]o you can
their tantrist spellings (FW, 571.6 7), the reversed Tristan is found to be an agent of an
inverted eros as in the philosophy of Tantrism which conceives of enlightenment as an
arousal of sexual energy without orgasm. De Rougemont (115 17) draws a connection
between this sixth-century Hindu cult and the ninth-century cult of love of the Provencal
court that found its fullest expression in the Tristan myth. Since both are based on sexual
frustration rather than fulfilment, the Wake ends its ritual of the inverted T with a gesture
which is swift and still a vain essaying (FW, 486.26 7); in other words, another vain
attempt to achieve consummation by repeating the archetypical pattern which produced
the story of Swift and his sosie sesthers (FW, 3.12).
The double nature of Tristan both lawful subject and subversive lover is suggested
again through mirrored reversal in another section of the Wake which refers to him as a
[w]ehpen, luftcat revol (FW, 388.3). In other words, even in the midst of his adulterous
treachery to his uncle, he remains a dutiful nephew and a tactful lover (McHugh, 388).
As Zweig points out, even while cuckolding him Tristan tries to preserve the honor of his
uncle, King Mark (Zweig, 68). The inversion of this social tact, however, is a murderous
lust that seeks to displace the old man with his phallic weapon a lifted revolver.
Along the same lines, the honour-bound nephew is inverted into an ignoble figure
fairescapading in his natsirt (FW, 388.3), transforming Tristan into the nightshirt
of Parnell who supposedly used a fire-escape to avoid being caught in his affair with

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Kitty OShea. Though the truth of this story (told by OSheas servant at her divorce
trial27) has been disputed, its effects on Parnells political career were devastating. Like
Tristan, Parnell was divided between a code of love in which adultery was allowable, and a
code of honour in which it was not. Just as Roma destroyed Amor in the Albigensian
crusade, the moral violence of Rome, at least according to the emotionally charged
account of the story informing A Portraits Christmas dinner scene, destroyed the
adulterous Parnell. Meanwhile, the subversive lovers undermine the social hierarchy
turning Mark of Cornwall into his mirrored reversal: Kram of Llawnroc, ye gink guy,
kirked into yord (FW, 388.2). His fall follows the trajectory of the ballad-wounded HCE
who goes from King of the Castle to an outcast kicked about like a rotten old parsnip
(FW, 45.7 8). The chiasmic inversion which changes king to gink hobo slang for
[p]oor unfortunate (Bruns, 201) is also a reversal of a notable episode in hobo lore: the
plan of Jeff Davis, the so-called King of the Hoboes, to open a Hotel de Gink28 for hobo
royalty.
when desires Soldi, for asamples, backfronted (FW, 280.22 3)
In what may be an endless recursion, Tristan and Iseult not only double each other but
mirror each others doubleness. This is suggested in the mirrored reversal of Iseult which
produces the phrase Tuesy tumbles (FW, 388.4) where her chiasmic fall is seen as a
function of her dual nature (two-sy). One of Joyces main sources for presenting Issy as the
inversion of herself is Morton Princes book on Christine Beauchamp: The Dissociation of
Personality. Since Glasheen and Benstock have exhaustively analysed this connection,
I will confine myself to examining how allusions to Princes book appear in conjunction
with chiasmus in order to suggest sexual and psychological inversion. Probably the central
passages in this regard is the letter in the lessons chapter which is signed [w]ith best from
cinder Christinette if prints chumming, can be when desires Soldi, for asamples, backfronted (FW, 280.21 3). The back-fronted reversal which creates the name Soldi
changes Isolde into a variation on Sally as McHugh points out the most prominent
secondary personality (McHugh 280) of Miss Beauchamp who, herself, is inverted in the
phrase chumming, can be. Prince describes how his patient would often go into a trance
and write letters to herself, and adds that these trance letters are not at all like those of her
normal self.29 The Wake refers to these letters as [a] trancedone boyscript (FW, 374.3
4) an inversion of Boston transcript, since Boston is the setting of Princes book. Once
again, the Wakes chiasmic inversion corresponds to sexual inversion. The boyish Sally
who loved an out-door, breezy life; sports, amusements, physical activity is the opposite
of the lady-like Miss Beauchamp who is devoted to duty and study (Prince, 129). Sally
even tries to enforce this characteristic on Miss Beauchamp, expressing a plan to cut her
hair so that [s]he will look [like] a guy (Prince, 169) and in the Wake Issy carries out
this plan, painting a moustache on her alter-ego to make her a man (FW, 459.6).
The Wakes chiasmus Cross Criss. Kiss Cross (FW, 11.27) self-referentially
describes the criss-crossing pattern of the trope. In addition, it alludes to the system of
mutual frustration that keeps Christine Beauchamp in a state of continual agitation. The
sign of the kiss on a letter x is not only an iconic representation of chiasmus but also
reflects the conflict between an erotically inclined alter-ego and a repressive self. Prince
originally called Christines alter-ego Chris (Prince, 29) before the latter took the
name of Sally.30 This amoral personality not only takes great delight in crossing her other
self (at one point exulting, [w]ont she be cross (Prince, 55) after she has purposely
smoked cigarettes in order to leave an unpleasant aftertaste), but she often takes revenge

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after being crossed (breaking any of Christines promises which crossed her own
purposes (Prince, 131). The phrase also suggests that Chris is cross at her others devotion
to Christianity and in this regard the traditional connection between the cross of
Christianity and the trope of chiasmus is relevant. As Benstock observes, Sally wants to
cause Christine to suffer for her strong religious beliefs by making her say and do unChristian things31 and the cycle continues when Christine, in turn, repents for her
others impiety. One of these crossings literally occurs in a religious setting. When the
Boston transcript becomes a traumscrapt from Maston, Boss (FW, 623.36) the inversion
corresponds to a traumatic event which Miss Beauchamp suffers during Mass in a Boston
church. Like the self-righteous Shaun in the lessons chapter, Christine Beauchamp starts
out on the right hand side and after a blackout suddenly finds herself on the left hand
side of the church (Prince, 113). This incident, which appears in a chapter called Sally on
Top of the Heap, is one of many showing how Sally, at least initially, becomes boss. In
this light, the Wakes attempt to let every crisscouple be so crosscomplimentary (FW,
613.10 11) can be read as a chiasmic reconciliation of these warring selves in a
complementary rather than dominant/submissive relationship.
And each was wrought with his other (FW, 252.14)
Since chiasmus is the trope of both narcissism and opposition (Norrman, 5 7), it is
particularly suited to representations of a state of war involving the opposition of the self
to itself. Joyce exploits this aspect in Ulysses where Irish history is presented as a neverending cycle of violence perpetrated by the self upon its own chiasmic double: John
OLeary against Lear OJohnny, Lord Edward Fitzgerald against Lord Gerald
Fitzedward, The ODonoghue of The Glens against The Glens of The ODonoghue
(U, 15.4685 88). In the Wake this idea informs the endless bickering in which bullfolly
answered volleyball (FW, 157.7) where the orthodox (papal bull), colonial (John Bull)
Mookse and the heretical, rebellious Gripse are represented as chiasmic inversions of each
other. In another section, the figure is used to describe the ridiculous spectacle of bellicose
toy armies forever preparing for war with each other: Here say figurines billycoose
arming and mounting. Mounting and arming bellicose figurines see here (FW, 18.33 4).
As Riquelme points out, this state of endless aggression is associated with the furrowards,
bagawards (FW, 18.32) motion of boustrophedontic writing which, in its continual
inversion, imitates the back-and-forth movement of plowing.32 In so far as the end point
of one sequence becomes the starting point of another, we are given a graphic
representation of the self-perpetuating nature of cycles of violence in which, as the Wake
puts it, we have occasioning cause causing effects and affects occasionally recausing
altereffects (FW, 482.36 483.1).
According to Bruno (one of the centres of chiastic thought in the Wake), all such
starting points are relative to a shared substrate around which, to borrow de Mans
formula, the rotation of the chiasma take place.33 Because of this common substance
each opposite can serve as origin for the other in a continual rotating metamorphosis of
one into the other. Brunos formulation of this rule (One contrary is the principle or
starting-point of the other, and therefore transmutations are circular, because there is a
substrate, principle, term, continuation and concurrence of both34) is deeply embedded in
the Wakes rendition of the Nolanus theory which identities that substrate of apart from
hissheory where the Theophil swoors on principial he was the pointing start of his odiose
by comparison (FW, 163.24 26). The inversion which creates the phrase pointing start
also suggests the relativity of each point of origin in the never-ending cycle in which,

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381

as the Wake goes on to chiasmically phrase it, the one [is] the pictor of the other and the
omber the Skotia of the one (FW, 164.4 5). As McHugh points out, Brunos chiasmic
motto (In tristitia hilaris hilaritate tristis (in Sadness Cheerful, in Gaiety Sad) (McHugh,
21)) is the basis for a circular transmutation in the prankquean section which allows
Tristopher to become a luderman (FW, 21.30) and Hillary to become a tristian (FW,
22.17) a change signalled by the inversion of their respective names (Toughertrees
(FW, 22.24), Larryhill (FW, 22.19)). All of this is part of a more global characteristic
of chiastic structuring of literature that allows two characters [to] exchange roles and
positions (Norrman, 1).
Just as chiasmus can represent war of self against self, it can also produce the
coincidence of opposites (bringing cosmos out of chaos) by emphasising the common
identity of opposing groups. A related section of the Wake applies this principle to the
interrelating of Catholics and Protestants in Dublin. When the former, buried in Glasnevan
(also known as Prospect) cemetery (your ever-glass and even prospect (FW, 252.7 8),
and the latter buried in Mount Jerome in Harolds Cross (Saint Jerome of the Harlots
Curse (FW, 252.11) are told to Exchange, reverse (FW, 252.10) they illustrate how two
terms in a binary opposition are able to exchange or cross over, in a chiasmic reversal.35
In this case, there is not merely an exchange of roles but an intermingling of characteristics
until each was wrought with his other (FW, 252.14). This mutual intermixing results in
Latin-speaking Catholics giving thanks in German (Feeling dank (FW, 252.9) (G vielen
Dank: thank you (McHugh, 252)) and German Protestants giving thanks in Latin (Grassy
ass ago (FW, 252.13) (L Gratias ago: I give thanks (McHugh, 252)). That this cultural
blending is fundamental to the construction of a community is emphasised by the
subsequent description of the two as obscindgemeinded biekerers (FW, 252.16). As
McHugh (252) points out, obshchina is Russian, and [g]emeinde is German, for
community. In addition, the reference to Kiplings The Absent-minded Beggar
suggests a development from the solipsistic to the sociable. In Ulysses, Stephen sneeringly
applies this name to a French production of Hamlet discussed in a prose poem by
Mallarme where Hamlet appears reading the book of himself (U, 9.115). In the Wake,
however, this self-sufficient figure who scorns to look at any other36 is transformed into
two related figures who look uruseye each oxesother (FW, 252.16 17). Though the two
may bicker obscenely at each other, they at least recognise and, in some sense, are
identified with each other. It is notable that a number of modern studies of chiasmus
identify it as the trope of interrelation. While Critchley places his study of chiasmus and
deconstruction in the context of a demand that is placed upon us by the alterity of the
other person,37 Budic begins his study of cross-cultural chiasmus by noting our attempts
to know and be known by another.38
On the other hand, the phrase each was wrought with his other (FW, 252.14) a
reference to Cain being wroth with his brother before he kills him suggests the
difficulties of creating a community composed of murderous rivalries. Another form of
chiasmic inversion that Joyce uses to suggest the ordeal of oppositional interrelationships
is a crossing that changes AB CD into AD CB. One example is the reference to toomuch
of tolls and lottance of beggars (FW, 388.14 15) which inverts and combines Thomas
(A) a` Becket (B) and Laurence (C) OToole (D) into an approximation of Thomas (A)
OToole (D) and Laurence (C) a` Becket (B). These two have already appeared on the top
of page 5 of the Wake (FW, 5.3 4) as exemplars of social inequality: OToole rising by
giving his support to Henry II and Becket falling by opposing him. In the chiasmic crosscoupling it is suggested that this dual motion is actually part of a single entity a class
system divided into oppressor and oppressed where the idle rich supported by too many

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R. Benjamin

tolls (toomuch of tolls (FW, 388.14)) at the top of the scale are the inverse of the hordes
of impoverished beggars (lottance of beggars (FW, 388.15)) at the bottom.
Another example of the AB CD to AD CB cross-coupling is the invitation to [c]ompost
liffe in Dufblin by Pierce Egan with the baugh in Baughkley of Fino Ralli (FW, 447.234).
Here, two of the avatars of HCE (Pierce OReilly and Finnegan) are chiasmically inverted
into the two figures of Pierce Egan and Egan ORahilly. Two writers could hardly be more
opposed. While ORahilly was a poet who lamented the English conquest, Egan was an
apologist for English rule. In the Wake the point of comparison is the baugh in Baughkley
the bough of a tree that perhaps, as in Berkeleys famous tree in the forest, crashes unheard. In a
poem on the fall of the great families of Ireland, ORahilly presents the ruin of Ireland in
arborial terms: Her leaves have decayed, there is no vigour in her boughs.39 Pierce Egan, on
the other hand, presents the boughs of Ireland as blooming in gratitude because of a visit of
George IV to Dublin. In a particularly cloying bit of English propaganda, a poem in the
volume gushes Oh! Dear is the shamrock that decks thy green vales, / Oh! Dear the shillelagh,
whose branches ascend, / Wide-spreading its leaves towards the light gales / Conveying to
Ireland, KING, FATHER, and FRIEND.40 In the Wakes economy, the blooming shillelagh
of Dublin is nourished by the compost from the fallen trees from the native estates of the
country. This is part of the chiasmic interpenetration of Jno Citizen with Jas Pagan (FW,
447.22) or Citizen Shaun with Pagan Shem. It is also consistent with Joyces view of Irish
civilisation as a vast fabric, in which the most diverse elements are mingled41 and where
victim and victor, conquered and conqueror are blended until no one thread in the fabric
remains pure and virgin (Joyce, 1959, 165).
Boox and Coox, Amallagamated (FW, 308.L)
The difficulties of reconciling Shem and Shaun is emphasised in the phrase Brothers
Boathes, brothers Coathes, ye have swallen blooders oathes (FW, 325.25) where the
two rivals have both sworn to be blood brothers and swallowed each others blood. One
possible path to reconciliation is suggested in the reference to John Maddison Mortons
Box and Cox: A Romance of Real Life a one-act play that might be described as a
chiasmic farce (the title suggests a connection to Pierce Egan and his Real Life in Ireland
cited above). The two main characters unknowingly rent the same apartment a swindle
the landlady is able to pull off since Box works nights and Cox days. They only meet on
the stairway in passing, which leads Cox to chiasmically wonder about the individual who
is always coming up stairs when Im going down, and going down when Im coming
up.42 Box, in turn, inverts the inversion when he wonders who the individual is going
down stairs when Im coming up, and coming up stairs when Im going down (Morton, 7).
Even the thoughts of Box are informed by the confusing reversals of chiasmus and cause
him to wonder shall I take my nap before I swallow my breakfast, or shall I take my
breakfast before I swallow my nap (Morton, 7 8). The play follows the familiar pattern
of opposition leading to reconciliation. The scene in which the belligerent Box challenges,
Hark ye, sircan you fight and the peaceful Cox replies, No, sir (Morton, 12) is
replayed in the Wake as the question and answer: Did Box then try to shine his puss? No
but Cox did to shin the punman (FW, 517.17 18). After they improbably discover
that they are actually brothers, however, they vow to live together since the house is
big enough to hold us both (Morton, 24). This chiasmic reconciliation is referred to on
the top of page 325 where gosse and bosse (FW, 325.16) appear in the context of the
amalgamation of Shem and Shaun into the single entity of jonjemsums both
(FW, 325.17) a bottle of John Jamesons whisky which sums them up.

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383

This Wakes ubiquitous pattern that progresses from exchange of positions to

amalgamation of identities to reconciliation of oppositions is especially pronounced in the
lessons chapter. Though it is usually referred to as II.2, Weir notes that as the tenth chapter
or chapter X it bears the invisible mark of the crossed lines that is also the sign of
chiasmus.43 It is possible to envision a diagonal line beginning at the upper part of its
opening and ending on the lower part of its close. This is emphasised at the top of page 262
where we are given the following directions: This bridge is upper. / Cross (FW, 262.3 4).
On the one hand, these words direct us to a specific location in Dublin (Uppercross Barrony
in Chapelizod); on the other, they determine the trajectory of the marginally opposed
brothers who, as Joyce pointed out, will change sides at halftime (McHugh, 260). The
structure of chiasmus which, as Fordham points out, is in itself a bridge (Fordham, 47) not
only allows the brothers to cross over but also provides a connecting link which fuses
opposing characteristics, as we can gather from Shauns right-hand comment offering us a
PROBAPOSSIBLE PROLEGOMENA TO IDEAREAL HISTORY (FW, 262.R). This
promise is fulfilled at the end of the lessons chapter in the marginal note describing the
Balance of the factual by the theoric Boox and Coox, Amallagamated (FW, 308.L). Here,
the chiasmic play Box and Cox is associated with both the reconciliation of theory and
fact (or ideal with real) and the balanced amalgamation of the brothers (as Norrman points
out, [w]hat a chiasticist thus strives for is balance (Norrman, 11)). This marginal comment
appears next to the footnoted word Geg (FW, 308.14) which (to borrow Charles Peirces
terminology) is simultaneously a symbol (standing for the number ten), an icon
(illustrating the most architechtonic form of chiasmus, the aba pattern in which a central
entity is flanked by two symmetrical wings, as in Palladian architecture (Norrman, 21), and
an index pointing to the bottom of the page where we find a picture of a crossed spoon and
fork alongside the description of a skool and crossbuns (FW, 308, n. 2).
let every crisscouple be so crosscomplimentary (FW, 613.10 11)
While chiasmus is a destabilising trope in that it introduces division and opposition, it is a
trope of balance in so far as it strives to maintain a more or less settled state of equonomic
ecolube equalobe equalab equillibbrium (FW, 599.17 18). De Man emphasises the latter
aspect when he observes that one of its effects is to enable the reader to conceive of
properties that would normally be incompatible (such as inside/outside, before/after,
death/life, fiction/reality, silence/sound) as complementary (de Man, 40). That this is also
one of the central purposes of the Wake can be gathered from its directive to let every
crisscouple be so crosscomplimentary, little eggons, youlk and meelk, in a farbiger
pancosmos (FW, 613.10 12). Here, the expanding universe of the pan-chiasmus
integrates incompatible egos that are fragmented into yous and mes. In contrast to the
universe of the spectral mathematicians of A Portrait that become more colourless and
impalpable as it is projected outwards,44 this expansion increases kaleidoscopic
difference, as the word farbiger (G farbig: coloured (McHugh, 613)) suggests. In
addition, it is implied that each time the pan-chiasmus grows bigger, the elusive point of
equilibrium will have to be achieved anew. The schema that allows every crisscouple to
be crosscomplimentary (FW, 613.11) also anticipates Greimas chiasmically structured
semantic square that supplements the relation of contradiction with a relation of
complementarity.45 Along the same lines, Joyces exploitation of the sexual implications
of the word couple accords with Finemans alignment of the rhetorical potencies of
chiasmus with Puttenhams syneciosis which is translated as cross-coupler.46 The sexual
overtones of the phrase are used to show how the trope can take two contrary words and

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R. Benjamin

interbreed their meanings like a wolfe coupled with a mastiffe, and a fox with a hounde
(in Fineman, 37). All in all, Finemans description of the miscegenating mixture
(Fineman, 37) of chiasmic interbreeding is highly relevant to the Wakes chaosmos with its
mingling of [m]iscegenations on miscegenations (FW, 18.20).
To sum up, in so far as chiasmus splits identity into warring opposites it is an agent of
chaos; in so far as it resolves the conflicts of binaries it is an agent of cosmos. As such it is
central to the Wakean strategy of Zweispaltung as Fundemaintalish of Wiederherstellung
(FW, 296.L) or bifurcation as fundamental to reconstitution (McHugh, 296). The
enmities created by the injustice of the self against itself or against others, however, are not
easily appeased. As with so many things, Joyce appropriated the rituals and metaphors of
Christianity for his artistic purposes in confronting this problem. The chiasmic question
[w]as he vector victored of victim vexed? (FW, 490.1 2) presents the trope as a
reconciliation of the eternal opposition of victor and victim. As McHugh points out, the
phrase is taken from Augustines Confessions where it is maintained that Christ is both
victor and victim, and therefore victor for the reason that he is victim.47 We can interpret
this coincidence of opposites as either a solipsistic splitting of the self (like Stephens
Shakespeare who is both bawd and cuckold (U, 9.1021)) a condition that the Wake
associates with inversion, incest, and gender crossing or as a divine gathering of the
fragmented shards of identity into a higherdimissional selfless Allself (FW, 395.1 2).
Chiasmus is able to accommodate both possibilities in its simultaneously bifurcating and
unifying chaosmos of Alle (FW, 118.21).
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.

13.

Fordham, Lots of Fun at Finnegans Wake, 47. Further references will be cited parenthetically
in the text.
Norrman, Samuel Butler and the Meaning of Chiasmus, 11. Further references will be cited
parenthetically in the text.
Hart, Structure and Motif in Finnegans Wake, 45.
Attridge and Ferrer, Post-structuralist Joyce, 32.
Stevens, The Palm at the End of the Mind, 166 8.
Ellmann, James Joyce, 608.
Carroll, The Complete Works, 267.
Norris, The Decentered Universe of Finnegans Wake, 120.
McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake, 526. Further references will be cited parenthetically
in the text.
Maitland, Vesta Tilley, 18. Further references will be cited parenthetically in the text.
Greenacre, Swift and Carrol, 216. Further references will be cited parenthetically in the text.
Fordham (175 213), in his genetic study of the Nircississies theme, points out a similar
progression implicit in the description of a girl that was always mad gone on him
(FW, 526.26 7) in so far as Yeats, after being rejected by Maud Gonne, proposed to Mauds
daughter, Iseult (Fordham, 177) another inverted (and doated on) Issy. In the Wakes
version (or inversion), however, the idea of a man unmanfully infatuated by a woman is
exchanged for its reverse: a girl mad about a man (Fordham, 177). Cf. de Mans analysis of
two terms that exchange or cross over, in a chiasmic reversal (Greenblatt, 14).
The kind of psychoanalytical criticism that informs Greenacres study with its intent to
reveal the personality structure of the author by reading the symbols of the work has fallen
out of favour since it was written in the early 1950s. In addition, such innovations as the AntiOedipus of Deleuze and Guattari or Lacans distinction between the pre-Oedipal, maternal
stage of the pre-linguistic imaginary and the phallocentric stage of symbolic language
(Abrams, 252), have tended to make studies that concentrate solely on the Oedipal implications
of the symbolic appear dated. On the other hand, Greenacres skilful analysis of inversion,
narcissism, and incest in Carroll and Swift provides many useful approaches to the doaters of
inversion (FW, 526.3) theme that runs through the Wake.

Irish Studies Review

14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.

385

Bowman, Lewis Carroll as I Knew Him, 9.

Friedman, Joyce, 286.
Eide, Ethical Joyce, 132.
Plath, Ariel, 51.
Swift, A Tale of a Tub, The Battle of the Books and other Satires, 189. Further references will
be cited parenthetically in the text with date (1909).
Swift, Selected Poems, 40. Further references will be cited parenthetically in the text with date
(1993).
Swift, The Poems of Jonathan Swift, vol. II, 715. Further references will be cited
parenthetically in the text with date (1958).
Zweig, The Heresy of Self-love, 90. Further references will be cited parenthetically in the text.
Serrano, Nos, 73.
De Rougement, Love in the Western World, 52. Further references will be cited parenthetically
in the text.
Crispi and Slote, How Joyce Wrote Finnegans Wake, 17.
Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language, passim.
Von Strassburg, Tristan, 138 49.
Lyons, Charles Stewart Parnell, 239 41.
Bruns, Knights of the Road, 115.
Prince, The Dissociation of a Personality, 103. Further references will be cited parenthetically
in the text.
Glasheen in McCarthy, Critical Essays on James Joyces Finnegans Wake, 174.
Henke and Unkeless, Women in Joyce, 174.
Riquelme, Teller and Tale in Joyces Fiction, 16.
De Man, Allegories of Reading, 40.
McIntyre, Giordano Bruno, 177.
Greenblatt, Allegory and Representation, 14.
Gifford and Seidman, Notes for Joyce, 162.
Critchley, The Chiasmus, 91.
Budic and Iser, The Translatability of Cultures, 224.
Dinneen and ODonogue, The Poems of Egan ORahilly, 9.
Egan, Real Life in Ireland, 73.
Joyce, The Critical Writings, 165. Further references will be cited parenthetically in the text.
Morton, Box and Cox, 5. Further references will be cited parenthetically in the text.
Weir, James Joyce and the Art of Mediation, 197.
Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 191.
Greimas and Courtes, Semiotics and Language, 309.
Fineman, Shakespeares Perjured Eye, 72. Further references will be cited parenthetically in
the text.
Augustine, The Confessions of St. Augustine, 274.

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Copyright of Irish Studies Review is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to
multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users
may print, download, or email articles for individual use.