Review of the two mounds

• Review: This and the following paragraphs may be a description of a military review in the Phoenix Park, attended by the citizenry of Dublin, including HCE and his family; the military band would then be responsible for the musical allusions which abound in these paragraphs

• rear view → of HCE's two buttocks → cf. when you think you ketch sight of a hind in the previous paragraph

• Revue des deux mondes: (French) Review of the Two Worlds, a major French literary review → File:Book.PNG as both landscape (in which HCE is interred) and letter (in which HCE is described)

• two mounds → ALP's breasts → preceding references to women's clothing ("in their swishawish satins and their taffetaffe tights"), this and the word himples seem to refer to two breasts and nipples; this reference immediately follows images of a woman feeding someone (tending a fire with a bellows and making eggs). or alternatively after a description of semen dripping on her breasts after fellatio
  • cf. also the lyrics of La tentation de Saint Antoine (1947) by Werner Egk, composed after French tunes and verses from the 18. century: VI. Dans un détour // Sur un sopha // Une diablesse en falbala, // Aus regards fripons // Découvroit deux jolis monts Ronds (VI. On a sofa // A she-devil in furbelows // With a cheeky gaze // Uncouvered two pretty round Mounds). This tune is said to be originally composed by Charles Simon Favart. It is also contained in Le Porte-feuille d'un homme de gout, ou: L'Esprit de nos meilleurs poëtes, tome II, Paris, 1765, p. 213, author here: Michel-Jean Sedaine
  • The theme "Temptation of St. Anthony" has also been adopted by Gustave Flaubert in 1874. A movie has been produced on its basis by Georges Méliès in 1898. The plot runs as follows: Anthony the Great's devotions in a cave are disrupted by the sudden appearance of a young maiden who he banishes and returns to his prayer book. Two maidens then appear either side of him only to be quickly banished. The saint kisses a skull relic only for it to transform into a third woman, who is rejoined by the others to form encircle him before vanishing. The saint kneels before an image of Christ on the cross only for this to transform into one of the maidens. He is finally saved by the appearance of an angel who returns all to normal. www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhEb11XRiCM

• two mounds: HCE and ALP side-by-side in bed

Commentary

Given the usage of such terms as mudmound to refer to Porter's (or HCE's or the dreamer's, or whoever you want to say's) body, lying asleep, I'm tempted to also view this as a reference just to Porter and his wife (or HCE and ALP or whoever's) sleeping bodies, in much the same way as in the end of the book, they are both described (in the four positions of love-making described there). But here, as only a passing reference.

But, the Porter scene is a silent movie the dreamer imagines himself watching with his family in the cinema! An alternative opinion is that the dreamer is alone in bed, a widower (ALP's closing speech at the end of the book comprises her last words as she dies), who only imagines or dreams that he is sharing the bed with his wife.