Back to Howth Castle and Environs

(The phrase occurs on page 3 of FW, which is of course actually the first page of the book -- if an ouroboros of a book can be said to have a first page.)

• back to → to turn one's back on something

• back to → to have one's back to something → when he sits up in bed HCE has his back to Howth

• back to → to arrive back at some place

• recirculation back: could there be an allusion to J.S.Bach's Ricercars from The Musical Offering? Joyce was acquainted with fugue and adopted it (to some extent) for Sirens chapter of Ulysses

• Bach: (German) stream → ALP as the river Liffey → just as this paragraph opened with an allusion to the watery element (riverrun), so it ends with another; interestingly, both have German overtones → see aquaface for more commentary

• Joyce's letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver of 15 November 1926: "Howth (pron Hoaeth) = Dan Hoved (head); Howth = an island for old geographers"

• HCE: a trigram that appears in countless phrases throughout FW, always embodying the book's male protagonist, if such he can be called

• Howth Castle: a castle in Howth
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• Howth Head (Irish Ceann Binn Éadair) is a headland north of Dublin City in the Republic of Ireland, near the towns of Sutton, Baldoyle and Portmarnock. Howth itself lies on the northern side. Originally an island, it is connected to the mainland via a narrow strip of land, or tombolo. Howth Head forms the northerly bound of the great crescent of Dublin Bay, corresponding to Killiney Head in the south. The earliest mention of the peninsula was on a map attributed to Claudius Ptolemey, where it was called Edri Deserta or in Greek Edrou Erēmos
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• and: the new Rose and O'Hanlon edition (FW2) replaces 'and' with '&'

• environs: the outskirts of a city; neighbourhood - note reference from The Encyclopædia Britannica (a key text for FW) Vol. VIII, 'Edinburgh', 937b: 'The views of the city and environs from the castle or any of the hills are very beautiful'

• oath: rhymes with Howth