The copyist
- copyist: Shem the Penman, who writes the letter (File:Book.PNG) to his mother ALP’s dictation
Commentary
It should be remembered that when we emerged from the watercloset at the end of the Battle of Waterloo sequence (FW 010.25), our attention was drawn to the Hen, Biddy Doran, who was scavenging on the kitchen midden (or rubbish tip) in the backyard of HCE's tavern. In FW, this midden represents the buried past; its archaeological strata are like the leaves of a book that may be read by the enlightened. HCE's story is just one of those buried in the midden. Thus the midden is merely another form of File:Book.PNG, the siglum Joyce used in his manuscript to denote any "container of HCE" (e.g. Finnegans Wake itself, ALP's letter, the coffin in which HCE is later buried, Dublin, the bed in HCE and ALP's bedroom, and ultimately the Flagpatch quilt (Page 559) under which HCE sleeps, etc.).
Another manuscript which represents FW is the Book of Kells, and a key-work for FW is The Book of Kells, Described by Sir Edward Sullivan, Bart., and Illustrated with Twenty-Four Plates in Colour, 2nd edition, Studio Press (London, Paris, New York, 1920). In this work, Sullivan notes that the manuscript is incomplete: "I think, too, that we can almost see ... the very place where [the original artist] was hurried from his work ... The interruption of so very simple a feature of the work seems to tell a tale of perhaps even tragic significance." (p. 11). Joyce seems to be suggesting reasons for this interruption when he remarks that the copyist must have fled with his scroll. The billy flood rose or an elk charged him, or he was struck by lightning, or interrupted by a Dane knocking on his door.
