'our drawings on the line!'

'What's this about Finnegans Wake being illustrated?' I hear you ask. 'Isn't it an illustrated book to start with?!'

It is indeed. There are three illustrations, which all appear in the Studies chapter, where Shem, Shaun and Issy are having their lessons in the room above the Chapelizod pub.

The Euclid diagram from page 293

The technique here is a reproduction of a schoolboy's (and schoolgirl's) old classbook complete with marginalia by the twins, who change sides at half time, footnotes by the girl (who doesn't), a Euclid diagram, funny drawings etc. It was like that in Ur of the Chaldees too, I daresay' 

Joyce to Frank Budgen, July 1939
(Letters, I,406)

In Greek mythology 'Gaia', the earth, was the great mother, and geometry means 'measuring the earth'. So Joyce's geometry lesson is all about revealing ALP, the great mother in Finnegans Wake. The Euclid diagram represents her pubic triangle, which Shem tricks Shaun into drawing. He says, 'I'll make you to see figuratleavely the whome of your eternal geomater.' 296.36.  I'll make you see figuratively (plus fig leaf) the womb/home/who of your eternal mother (Gaia matêr: mother Earth plus geometry). The upper triangle represents ALP's apron, which the twins have lifted ('the maidsapron of our A.L.P.' 297.11). The lower triangle is her exposed  'muddy old triagonal delta' (297.24). Later it's called 'her bosky old delltangle' (465.03).

The image with two intersecting circles is called a Vesica Piscis (fish bladder), which was seen as a symbol of the womb in Eastern mysticism.

Here's Joyce's first sketch of it, from David Hayman's  A First Draft Version of Finnegans Wake.

The two 'funny drawings' appear at the very end of the chapter, drawn by Issy as footnotes to a count of ten above, which Joyce gives as 'Aun, Do, Tri, Car, Cush, Shay, Shockt, Ockt, Ni and Geg'. This is based on the Irish: aon, dó, trí, ceathar, cúig, sé, seacht, ocht, naoi, deich = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.

'THUMBTONOSERY'

Issy's gesture, with five digits (thumb and fingers) accompanies the footnote to 'Cush', standing for the number five in the count above. Elsewhere, Joyce gives us 'reechoable mirthpeals and general thumbtonosery' (253.28). 'The free of my hand to him!' is an offered slap.

This gesture is Issy's final verdict on the quarrelling twins and the whole lesson. This is also called 'cocking a snook', though nobody knows why.

This illustration is from 'On the Introduction of Pantomime into the English Language', Punch 17 July 1841 which is online here.  Jeroen Arendson says in his  'Indecent Fan Proposals' blog that the gesture was once called Queen Anne's Fan, and may mimic the spreading of a fan.

See also Mike Brubaker's TempaSenzaTempo blog where he shares a delightful French postcard from his collection of five female entertainers making the gesture. 

'SCHOOL AND CROSSBUNS'

Underneath, there's a pair of crossed bones, a memento mori, familiar from tombstones and the skull and crossbones on pirate flags.  This is a footnote to 'Geg' the number 10 in the list above, so the crossed bones can stand for the Roman numeral, X. John Gordon in his blog sees the crossed bones as 'one of the X's which which FW's letter always ends.' 

The bones here look like they've been nibbled at the top, maybe suggested by the line above 'Their feed begins'. Are the children eating their parents?  

'JOYCE NEEDED A GENUINE GIRL'S DRAWING'

I'd always imagined that these were drawn by Joyce. However, it turns out that they are a real girl's drawings, commissioned by James Joyce in Zurich!

The story is told by Fritz Senn:

'I think it was through Carola Giedion-Welcker that I once had a brief conversation with Hans von Curiel. He used to be the director of the Corso Theatre in Zurich, and Joyce may have paid him a tribute, at least Carola Giedion-Welcker told me so, in the Wake, where 'Hans the Curier' may figure as an avatar of Shaun the Post. What he told me, and it is worth passing on, is that Joyce called on him one night and requested a childish drawing to be put at the end of The Mime of Mick, Nick and the Maggies (sic); it is the marginal illustration at the bottom of page 308 in Finnegans Wake. Joyce needed a genuine girl's drawing, and it was done by Hans von Curiel's daughter, significantly named Lucia.' 

Joycean Murmoirs (2007). p48. 

(The Mime of Mick, Nick and the Maggies is actually the chapter before the one with the drawings). 

'Hans the Curier' can be found at 125.14

Joyce had already drawn his own version of these doodles, which is in his first draft, reprinted in the James Joyce Archive volume (53.281). He then got Lucia von Curiel to copy his pictures.

These drawings first appeared in transition 23 July 1935, where the final pages of the chapter looked like this.

The Nightletter, which comes before the drawings in Finnegans Wake, looks like a colophon here.

Two years later they were republished in Storiella as She is Sying by the Corvinus Press in 1937, which also has an initial letter drawn by Lucia Joyce. 

So this book begins and ends with drawings by two Lucias!

The colophon pays tribute to the first Lucia.

Why did Joyce need a genuine girl's drawing? I think it's for the same reason that he largely assembled Finnegans Wake out of phrases taken from other writings, and also accepted coincidence as a collaborator. Joyce's book was a collective undertaking, in which he saw himself as a channel rather than the author.

'Every dimmed letter in it is a copy and not a few of the silbils and wholly words....The last word in stolentelling!' Finnegans Wake, 424.32

'Really it is not I who am writing this crazy book,' Joyce told a party of friends. 'It is you, and you, and you, and that man over there, and that girl at the next table.'  

Eugene Jolas, 'My Friend James Joyce' in James Joyce: Two Decades of Criticism (ed Givens), 1948

'The book was indeed his life and he believed that he was entrapping some part of the essence of life within its pages....Joyce was not in his own opinion simply writing a book, he was also performing a work of magic.'

J.S.Atherton, The Books at the Wake