hierarchitectitiptitoploftical

Here's an extraordinary word, invented by James Joyce in November 1926 when he was writing the opening chapter of Finnegans Wake. It first appeared as an addition to the text.

The capital R shows where the addition was to go.

Here's the word integrated into Joyce's fair copy, dated 29 November 1926

It's an adjective describing the tower built by Tim Finnegan, the drunken hodcarrier and masterbuilder.  At this stage, it's made up of 'hi(gh)', 'hierarch' (Greek for high priest), 'architect' and 'toploftical'.

'Toploftical' sounds like a Joyce invention but it's a real English word, in the OED:

Joyce had already used this word in his 1923 Tristan and isolde sketch, where the operatic hero cries  'with grand passion from his toploftical voicebox'

Here's how the word looked when transition published 'Opening Pages of a Work in Progress' in April 1927

Eleven years later, in 1938, when Joyce was working on the page proofs for Finnegans Wake, he added five letters to his word, changing 'titop' to 'titiptitop'.

hierarchitectitiptitoploftical

What this change does is to add instability, perhaps representing the drunken Tim Finnegan losing his balance before he topples with a crash. Or perhaps the building itself swaying before falling. There's Finnegan's stammer too 'titi...ti' and 'tip' recalls his 'tippling way' in the song.

I recommend reading the word aloud, while rising – and sway from side to side when you reach 'titiptitop'!

It's fitting that in the published text, this toploftical word appears at the very top of page 5, and that Faber's typesetters destabilised it even more by breaking it into two so that it falls down the page.

'This is a good word on which to practise. Note the way in which it combines the words 'hierarchy', 'architect', 'tipsy,' and 'toplofty', climbing up and up, beyond every expectation, like a skyscraper'

Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson, A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, 1944

Here's the whole sentence:

'Oftwhile balbulous, mithre ahead, with goodly trowel in grasp and ivoroiled overalls which he habitacularly fondseed, like Haroun Childeric Eggeberth he would caligulate by multiplicables the alltitude and malltitude until he seesaw by neatlight of the liquor wheretwin ’twas born, his roundhead staple of other days to rise in undress maisonry upstanded (joygrantit!), a waalworth of a skyerscape of most eyeful hoyth entowerly, erigenating from next to nothing and celescalating the himals and all, hierarchitectitiptitoploftical, with a burning bush abob off its baubletop and with larrons o’toolers clittering up and tombles a’buckets clottering down.'

'Oftwhile balbulous'

Often drunk (bibulous, from Latin 'bibere' to drink) stammering ('balbulus') and like Balbus, a wall builder in Heatley and Kingdon's Gradatim, An Easy Latin Translation Book for Beginners, (1882) .

Generations of Latin students remembered Balbus.

'And behind the door of one of the closets there was a drawing in red pencil of a bearded man in a Roman dress with a brick in each hand and underneath was the name of the drawing: Balbus was building a wall. 

Some fellow had drawn it there for a cod. It had a funny face but it was very like a man with a beard.'

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

'Freddy's power of stating in Latin that Balbus built a wall and that Gaul was divided into three parts did not carry with it the slightest knowledge of accounts or business'

Shaw, Pygmalion

'mithre ahead, with goodly trowel in grasp'

A mitre is a bishop's hat and a joint used in building. His trowel is for bricklaying.

'with goodly trowel in grasp and ivoroiled overalls which he habitacularly fondseed'

Fweet here finds penis (trowel in grasp), condom (ivory oiled overal) and sperm (seed).
habitacularly - 'habitaculum' is Latin for dwelling. 

'like Haroun Childeric Eggeberth'

HCE's initials, but now this man of 'hod cement and edifices' has assumed a regal name fitting his toploftical notions. Haroun al-Rashid is the caliph of the Arabian Nights. The Franks had two kings called Childeric, and there were several Anglo-Saxon kings called Egbert.  The egg is also there for Humpty Dumpty.

Signet ring of Childeric I of the Salian Franks

'he would caligulate by multiplicables the alltitude and malltitude until he seesaw by neatlight of the liquor wheretwin ’twas born, his roundhead staple of other days to rise in undress maisonry upstanded'

He would calculate the height of his tower until he could see it by the light of his liquor i.e. in a drunken vision. This reminds me of Shane MacGowan's line in 'London You're a Lady': 'Your architects were madmen, your builders sane but drunk'.

He would 'caligulate' i.e. like Caligula, the deranged Roman emperor. In 1924, while researching the life of St Patrick, Joyce read the Rev William Canon Fleming's  Boulogne-sur-Mer: St Patrick's Native Town, 1907, which has this picture of a lighthouse built there by Caligula.

'On top of Caligula's tower there was a lighthouse for the guidance of vessels at sea.'

Rev William Canon Fleming, Boulogne Sur Mer: St Patrick's Natine Town, 1907

'a waalworth of a skyerscape'

The Woolworth tower in New York built in 1913 with Tim Finnegan's wall. On fwread we were talking about the New York origins of Finnegan who, in the original song, lived on Walker Street in Manhattan.  Marcin Kedzior commented:

'Well that explains when Finnegan is mentioned on the first page as a wallstrait (wall street) and on page 4 the waalworth of a skyerscape, unmistakable reference to the "Gothic Revival" Woolworth building. Actually, this is the most notable "gothic skyscraper" I can think of except the Chicago Tribune building that came later.  During most of the early writing of FW, Woolworth was the tallest building in the world and was dubbed "The Cathedral of Commerce" deliciously mingling the sacred and profane. Woolworth is an 11 minute walk from Walker St., and Wall St. in a straight line. (Waalworth is an exact midpoint between Walker St. and Wall St.)'

The building was designed by Cass Gilbert and included gargoyles with a comic carving of the architect like a medieval mason holding his building.

Joyce loved Gothic architecture:

'I remember once standing in the gardens beside Notre-Dame and looking up at its roofs, their amazing complication — plane overlapping plane, angle countering angle, the numerous traversing gutters and roundels. In comparison, classical buildings always seem to me to be over-simple and lacking in mystery. Indeed, one of the most interesting things about present-day thought in my opinion is its return to medievalism....There is an old church I know of in Les Halles, a black foliated building with flying buttresses spread out like the legs of a spider, and as you walk past it you see the huge cobwebs hanging in its crevices, and more than anything else I know of it reminds me of my own writings, so that I feel that if I had lived in the fourteenth or fifteenth century I should have been much more appreciated'
 

Arthur Power,  Conversations with James Joyce.  
 
I learned from the OED that, until the 1880s, the word 'skyscraper' was used for comic effect, describing tall people, stories, hats, horses and people riding penny farthings. From the 1880s, when the first skyscrapers were built, the architectural meaning took over.

It may be 'skyerscape' because Finnegan's tower has a fire escape, like the one in Hove where Charles Stewart Parnell made a hasty escape when Kitty O'Shea's husband unexpectedly arrived (cf 'fuyerescaper!' 228.09 'fairescapading in his natsirt.' 388.03).

Also building a tower is an attempt to escape into the sky.

The tower in Mary Ellen Bute's Passages from Finnegans Wake

'most eyeful hoyth entowerly'

awful height entirely, Howth (the fallen Finnegan's 'humptyhillhead' 3.20), and the Eiffel Tower, which dominated the Seventh Arrondissement where Joyce lived. 

He found the 'eyeful' joke in Anita Loos's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which he read while lying on the sofa for three days shortly before writing this:

'we rode around and we saw Paris and we saw how devine it really is. I mean the Eyefull Tower is devine and it is much more educational than the London Tower, because you can not even see the London Tower if you happen to be two blocks away. But when a girl looks at the Eyefull Tower she really knows she is looking at something, So I suppose that is the real historical reason why they call it the Eyefull Tower.'
 
'erigenating from next to nothing'

Latin 'erigens': raising, building, erecting, arousing
John Scotus Erigena, whose name means Irish-born (from 'Eriu' - Ireland). He wrote, 'The infinite essence of God, which may indeed be described as nihilum (nothing) is that from which all is created, from which all proceeds or emanates'
nervi erigentes: nerves involved in the erection of the penis

'celescalating'

Joyce originally wrote 'celesclating', another addition to the text.

In the fair copy the word looked like this.

The typist read this as 'alesclslating', written with an l and a c superimposed - something Joyce was just eccentric enough to do.

The transition typesetters interpreted this as 'alesclslating'.  Joyce might have passed this, given his willingness to accept chance as a collaborator – the word now included alcohol. But he corrected it to  'celescalating' when he revised the proofs. It suggests an escalator, going up to the heavens (caeli and celestial)

Here's a lovely suggestion from @EmojiUlysses on Twitter.

This reminded me of Tristan singing from his 'toploftical voicebox' to Isolde.

'celescalating the himals and all'

The tower is escalating the Himalayas, mountains that seem to scrape the sky. Perhaps Joyce was thinking of the hubris of climbing earth's highest mountain. In June 1924, three years before he wrote this, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine fell to their deaths while trying to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

Finnegan's aim is to reach the heavens, like the builders of the Tower of Babel

'They said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.  Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world.'

Genesis 11

One of three pictures of the tower by Peter Breughel the Elder

The tower is supposed to have been inspired by a ziggurat, the first human attempt to reach the sky - a reaction against the flat plains of Mesopotamia and a ladder for the god who lived on top. In paintings, the model chosen was often the Colosseum in Rome.

'with a burning bush abob off its baubletop'

Both the Eiffel Tower and the Woolworth Building had beacons on top, like Caligula's lighthouse in Boulogne, which had a real fire kept burning on top.

Even with his bad eysight, Joyce would have seen the Eiffel Tower's light.

 

When the Woolworth building was opened in 1913 the whole structure was dramatically lit up. 

from the excellent Bowery Boys Podcast

The light is a burning bush because God spoke to Moses from one, and also because of the ceremony of 'topping out', placing a tree or wreath on top of a newly finished building.

Topping out in Oslo in 1959. Leif Ørnelund Oslo Museum

One model for 'Bygmester Finnegan' (04.08) is Ibsen's 'Bygmester Solness', which includes a description of a topping out ceremony.

HILDA.Then you climbed right up the scaffolding, straight to the very top; and you had a great wreath with you; and you hung that wreath right away up on the weather-vane.
SOLNESS.
[Curtly interrupting.] I always did that in those days. It is an old custom.
HILDA.It was so wonderfully thrilling to stand below and look up at you. Fancy, if he should fall over! He—the master builder himself! 

Despite his fear of heights, Solness, goaded by Hilda, climbs the tower and falls to his death at the end.

An evergreen bush was also used as a sign hung outside medieval inns. 

'with larrons o’toolers clittering up and tombles a’buckets clottering down.'

These are the builders noisily clambering up and down on the scaffolding with their buckets and tools.  They are also two saints.  Laurence O'Toole is the patron saint of Dublin - one of the three saints in the stained glass windows in the final book. In Finnegans Wake, he is often paired with Beckett. While Thomas fell from favour with Henry II and was murdered, Laurence became a trusted servant of the king. So Laurence is rising and Thomas is falling.

Mosaic of St Laurence O’Toole, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh.

Later, the saints appear as building contractors working on a tomb for HCE:

'while the contractors Messrs T. A. Birkett and L. O. Tuohalls were made invulnerably venerable'  77.01

The martyrdom of St Thomas a Becket