Difference between revisions of "Offwall"
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+ | * '''of the wall''' → '''of the offwall ''' | ||
+ | ** [http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/JoyceColl/JoyceColl-idx?type=article&did=JOYCECOLL.HAYMANFIRSTDRFT.I0010&isize=L A first-draft version of Finnegans wake] | ||
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* '''awful''' | * '''awful''' | ||
Revision as of 01:37, 3 June 2008
- of the wall → of the offwall
- awful
- offal: Internal organs, entrails
- off the wall: zany, irreverent
- Humpty Dumpty: eponymous character of the popular Mother Goose nursery rhyme: "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall." → nursery rhymes are often told before bed, hence "retaled early in bed" → Humpty Dumpty has also been assumed to refer to King Richard III of England → see Humptyhillhead in the next line
- The Wall Street Crash → Wallstrait
Commentary
Humpty Dumpty: The egg (pre-birth), when sitting on the wall is in a kind of state of cosmic unity. The wall represents a boundary which by definition separates the world into duality (this side and that). Being at the position of the top of the wall therefore suggests a pre-dualistic existence (i.e. like Adam and Eve before their fall and the foetus before birth). Once the egg falls "offwall", it falls onto either this or that side – and nobody, not even all the king's horses and all the king's men, can figure out how to put it back together again (i.e. to achive cosmic unity).