'Mr Joyce has a Cloacal Obsession'.

'Mr. Joyce has a cloacal obsession. He would bring back into the general picture of life aspects which modern drainage and modern decorum have taken out of ordinary intercourse and conversation.' 

H.G.Wells, review of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, The New Republic, 10 March 1917 

'Cloacal obsession!' said Joyce. 'Why it's Wells's countrymen who build water-closets wherever they go.'

Frank Budgen, James Joyce and the Making of Uysses, 1934

'Cloacal' comes from the Latin cloaca (sewer).  

H.G.Wells had a point though. Joyce did describe himself as the sewer of Literary Dublin in his 1904 poem, 'The Holy Office':

But all these men of whom I speak
Make me the sewer of their clique.
That they may dream their dreamy dreams
I carry off their filthy streams....
Thus I relieve their timid arses,
Perform my office of Katharsis.

(Katharsis is a Greek word for a purge, accelerating defecation)

He also named his first volume of poetry, Chamber Music, after the tinkling sound of urine in a chamber pot ('Chamber music. Could make a pun on that', thinks Bloom).

It's hard now to think of A Portrait as very cloacal, but there's a bedwetting scene on the opening page ('When you wet the bed first it is warm then it gets cold'). It seems so innocent now, but it was daringly new in 1916.

Wells would also have been thinking of scenes like this:

...he found in himself no instinctive repugnance to bad odours whether they were the odours of the outdoor world, such as those of dung or tar, or the odours of his own person among which he had made many curious comparisons and experiments. He found in the end that the only odour against which his sense of smell revolted was a certain stale fishy stink like that of long-standing urine

Wells wrote about this cloacal obession a year before Joyce came up with the most famous bowel movement in literature – Leopold Bloom's in Ulysses:

...he allowed his bowels to ease themselves quietly as he read, reading still patiently, that slight constipation of yesterday quite gone. Hope it's not too big to bring on piles again. No, just right. So. Ah....He read on, seating calm above his own rising smell.

I think Joyce was the first writer to allow a character to defecate since Swift in Gulliver's Travels in the 1720s.

There's a memorable bowel movement in Finnegans Wake too. It takes place on page 185 in chapter 7, the attack on Shem the Penman (James Joyce) by his respectable and prudish brother, Shaun the Post. 

The story begins with the 1912 destruction of Dubliners, by Joyce's publisher, George Roberts, of Maunsel and Company, and his printer, John Falconer. 

'when Robber and Mumsell, the pulpic dictators, on the nudgment of their legal advisers, Messrs Codex and Podex, and under his own benefiction of their pastor Father Flammeus Falconer, boycotted him of all muttonsuet candles and romeruled stationery for any purpose, he winged away on a wildgoup’s chase across the kathartic ocean and made synthetic ink and sensitive paper for his own end out of his wit’s waste'

Deprived of any outlet for his writing, Shem makes ink out of his own dung and urine, and uses it to write his masterpieces 'over every square inch of the only foolscap available, his own body'.

To spare the reader's blushes, Shaun tells us that he'll be explaining how Shem made this ink in Latin. The story will be 'cloaked up' (a play on cloaca):

Let manner and matter of this for these our sporting times be cloaked up in the language of blushfed porporates that an Anglican ordinal, not reading his own rude dunsky tunga, may ever behold the brand of scarlet on the brow of her of Babylon and feel not the pink one in his own damned cheek. 

Joyce is hitting back here at The Sporting Times, subtitled 'The Pink 'Un', which published a hilarious attack on Ulysses in 1922 (on April Fools Day).  The snooty reviewer, 'Aramis', said that the book 'appears to have been written by a perverted lunatic who has made a speciality of the literature of the latrine....The main contents of the book are enough to make a Hottentot sick'.

The pink colour of the cover suggested to Joyce that the paper itself was blushing. Here's a photo of the blushing paper from the 2004 Ulysses centenary exhibition at the University of Buffalo.

This kind of headline was good for publicity, and Sylvia Beach displayed the poster on the wall of Shakespeare and Sons.

Here's Shem's bowel movement, on page 185 of the Wake:

Primum opifex, altus prosator, ad terram viviparam et cuncti-potentem sine ullo pudore nec venia, suscepto pluviali atque discinctis perizomatis, natibus nudis uti nati fuissent, sese adpropinquans, flens et gemens, in manum suam evacuavit (highly prosy, crap in his hand, sorry!), postea, animale nigro exoneratus, classicum pulsans, stercus proprium, quod appellavit deiectiones suas, in vas olim honorabile tristitiae posuit, eodem sub invocatione fratrorum gemino-rum Medardi et Godardi laete ac melliflue minxit, psalmum qui incipit: Lingua mea calamus scribae velociter scribentis: magna voce cantitans (did a piss, says he was dejected, asks to be exonerated), demum ex stercore turpi cum divi Orionis iucunditate mixto, cocto, frigorique exposito, encaustum sibi fecit indelibile (faked O’Ryan’s, the indelible ink). 

Here's a translaton (combined from those given in Roland McHugh's Annotations, by Robert S Boyle in The James Joyce Quarterly, and on reddit by an anonymous Latin scholar):

First, the artist, the high first-sower/high prose writer pulled himself towards the life-giving and all-powerful earth without any shame or pardon/permission,  and pulling up his raincoat/chasuble and unbuttoning his trousers, his buttocks naked as they were born, crying and moaning, evacuated his bowels into his hand (highly prosy, crap in his hand, sorry!), then, relieved of the black animal, he sounded the trumpet and placed his own dung, which he called his dejections, into an urn once used as an honoured mark of sadness, and under the invocation of the twin brothers Medard and Godard pissed cheerfully and mellifluously therein, whilst singing with a great voice the psalm which begins, "My tongue is the pen of a scribe writing swiftly (did a piss, says he was dejected, asks to be exonerated), finally, from that foul dung mixed with the cheerfulness of the divine Orion/ urine, baked and then exposed to the cold, he made for himself an indelible ink (faked O’Ryan’s, the indelible ink).

First the artist, the high first sower

'Altus Prosator' is the opening line of a 7th century Hiberno-Latin hymn attributed to Saint Columba. It means 'high first-sower', and is an invented title for God. This is typical of the linguistic inventiveness of Hiberno-Latin.  

Altus prosator, vetustus
dierum et ingenitus
erat absque origine
primordii et crepidine
est et erit in sæcula
sæculorum infinita

(High creator, Ancient of Days, and unbegotten, who was without origin at the beginning and foundation, who was and shall be in infinite ages of age)

The hymn is also 'abecedarian', with each verse beginning with a successive letter of the alphabet.

But, since the Renaissance, 'prosator' has also meant prose writer.  Imagine how delighted Joyce must have been to find a Latin title for God that also meant this!

'The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork...'

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

McHugh translates 'altus prosator' as 'the eminent writer'.  Shaun in his parenthesis translates it as 'highly prosy'.  Robert S Boyle's version is 'the old Father', which brings in a nice echo of the final lines of A Portrait, which Stephen addresses to his namesake, Daedalus:

'Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.'

Danis Rose and John O'Hanlon, in the Digital Archive's chicken guide, translate the phrase as 'In the beginning the master magician and arch-artificer'.

pulling up his raincoat

The Latin 'pluviale' was originally a gown worn as a rain covering. Later it was applied to an ecclesiastical chasuble, worn by a priest when celebrating Mass. 

The twin brothers Medard and Godard 

These two were French saints. According to Roman Catholic Martyrology, they were born on the same day, made bishops on the same day, and they died on the same day. Medard was a saint responsible for weather and rain (and so invoked to help Shem piss?)

foul dung mixed with the cheerfulness of the divine Orion

Orion = Shem's urine. Orion was born after Zeus, Poseidon and Hermes urinated on a bull-hide and buried it in the earth to give King Hyrieus a son. Orion's name may be from ourios (urine). 'Orina' is also Latin for urine.
Shem's dung, which he creates while crying and moaning, represents his dejections/ suffering. His urine (the divine Orion) stands for his joys in creation. The artist needs both to create perhaps.
While pissing he joyfully sings the opening of Psalm 45, "My tongue is the pen of a scribe writing swiftly."
 

TRANSMUTATION

 

Joyce often described his role as an artist as someone who transmutes matter. From his Catholic background, he took the priest at Mass as his model. In A Portrait, Stephen Dedalus describes himself as 'a priest of the eternal imagination transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everliving life.'

In Finnegans Wake, Joyce uses the alchemist as well as the priest as the transmuter. The Latin description of mixing dung and urine in an urn, and baking and cooling it, is alchemical. Alchemists believed that the basic ingredient for creating the Philosopher's Stone could be dung. Read Agnieszka Rec's excellent blog post, 'Dung? Alchemy is full of it':

'The philosopher Morienus described the starting material of the Philosophers’ Stone as “of cheap price and found everywhere” and “trodden underfoot.”  Medieval alchemists took that description literally and used the manure found all over their streets.'

In the wonderful passage that follows the Latin, Shem, described as 'the first till last alshemist', produces the ink like a squid from his own unheavenly body:

'when the call comes, he shall produce nichthemerically from his unheavenly body a no uncertain quantity of obscene matter not protected by copriright in the United Stars of Ourania or bedeed and bedood and bedang and bedung to him, with this double dye, brought to blood heat, gallic acid on iron ore, through the bowels of his misery, flashly, aithly, nastily, appropriately, this Esuan Menschavik and the first till last alshemist wrote over every square inch of the only foolscap available, his own body, till by its corrosive sublimation one continuous present tense integument slowly unfolded all marryvoising moodmoulded cyclewheeling history (thereby, he said, reflecting from his own individual person life unlivable, transaccidentated through the slow fires of consciousness into a dividual chaos, perilous, potent, common to allflesh, human only, mortal) but with each word that would not pass away the squidself which he had squirtscreened from the crystalline world waned chagreenold and doriangrayer in its dudhud.'

The 'quantity of obscene matter not protected by copriright in the United Stars of Ourania' is Ulysses, which was pirated in the USA by Samuel Roth's Two Worlds Monthly. 
Copriright has Greek copros = dung.

The 'continuous present tense integument slowly unfolded all marryvoising moodmoulded cyclewheeling history' is Finnegans Wake.

'with each word that would not pass away the squidself which he had squirtscreened from the crystalline world waned chagreenold and doriangrayer in its dudhud.'

This is the cost to Joyce of transforming his life into art. Green and grey are the colours of Joyce's glaucoma and cataracts. His words live, but his squidself wanes, like the increasingly revolting picture of Dorian Gray.

Ivan Albright's ortrait of Dorian Grey from the 1945 film

You can have fun working out what it all means using the notes given here in fweet.

 

Edgar Quinet in Finnegans Wake

'Today, as in the days of Pliny and Columella, the hyacinth disports in Gaul, the periwinkle in Illyria, the daisy on the ruins of Numantia; and while around them the cities have changed masters and names, while some have ceased to exist, while the civilisations have collided with one another and shattered, their peaceful generations have passed through the ages, and have come up to us, one following the other, fresh and cheerful as on the days of the battles'

That's a sentence from the French historian Edgar Quinet (1803-75), which Joyce gives in the original French on page 281 of the Wake. It's the only undistorted quotation in the whole book. 

The Wake's Quinet page is above, beautifully decorated by Susie Lopez, with the French text in the blue of the Mediterranean Sea. Susie has written about her lovely Wake illustrations for the Literary Hub.

Quinet's tomb in Montparnasse

Joyce loved this sentence so much that he would recite it from memory.

'He recited a page from Quinet, which satisfied him completely, a description on which he embroidered for several pages in 'Work in Progress': the whole atmosphere of the Mediterranean is in it, he said, its ports, its flowers, the azure sky, the sun on the sea. In that passage he felt at home.'

Jacques Mercanton, 'The Hours of James Joyce', 1963 (reprinted in Portaits of the Artist in Exile p 239)

In 1953, the Irish tenor John Sullivan told Richard Ellmann that Joyce astounded him one day by reciting the sentence to him while they were walking by Montparnasse cemetery, along the Boulevard Edgar Quinet. Quinet lies buried here. 

 
THE DAYS OF PLINY AND COLUMELLA

Pliny the Elder

Joyce summed up the sentence in a letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver: 'E.Q. says that the wild flowers on the ruins of Carthage, Numancia etc have survived the political rises and falls of Empires' (Let I: 295). Quinet uses classical Rome as the example of empire. Pliny the Elder and Columella were the great Roman writers on nature: Pliny wrote a massive Natural History and Columella wrote books on Agriculture and Trees. Numantia was a city in Spain whose inhabitants committed suicide rather than surrender to the Romans. Illyria, in the western Balkans, was also conquered by Rome.

Columella

Joyce said he 'felt at home' in this sentence. He shared Quinet's detached view of history, eternally repeating the same events. Ellmann tells us that, when Samuel Beckett spoke of Nazi persecution of the Jews, Joyce pointed out that there had been similar persecutions before. In later life, says Ellmann, Beckett 'thought this ability to contemplate with telescopic eye Joyce's most impressive characteristic, and quoted four lines from Pope's 'Essay on Man' to illustrate:

Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,
Atoms of sytems into ruin hurled,
And now a bubble burst, and now a world.'  (Ellmann p.709)

METCHNIKOFF

Léon Metchnikoff  (1838-88)

In The Books at the Wake, J.S.Atherton identified the source of the quotation as Quinet's Introduction à La Philosophie de l'Histoire de l'Humanité. Clive Hart spotted six misquotations in Joyce's text, and suggested that this was 'almost certainly due to faulty memory'. But Inge Landuyt discovered that Joyce's source was not Quinet's original but Léon Metchnikoff's La Civilisation et les Grands Fleuves Historiques (1889). Joyce follows Metchnikoff 's misquotations of the text ('au temps de Pline' instead of 'aux jours de Pline' and 'entrées' instead of 'rentrées').

Metchnikoff was a social scientist, who wrote about the impact of the environment on history – in particular the role of great rivers in shaping early civilizations. Joyce read his book in early 1924, when he was gathering research for his own river chapter, Anna Livia Plurabelle. You can read Ingeborg Landuyt and Geert Lernout's article about Joyce's uses of Metchnikoff here, in Genetic Joyce Studies. 

I've also found Metchnikoff's book online. Here's the page where Joyce found Quinet's sentence.

THE BOUTS OF HEBEAR AND HAIRYMAN

In 1926, two years after finding the sentence, Joyce wrote the opening chapter of the Wake, which is a panoramic view of the prehistory of Dublin.  This was the perfect place to include Quinet's sentence, and so he reshaped it and made it Irish:

'Thus, too, for donkey's years. Since the bouts of Hebear and Hairyman the cornflowers have been staying at Ballymun, the duskrose has choosed out Goatstown's hedges, twolips have pressed togatherthem by sweet Rush, townland of twinedlights,  the whitethorn and the redthorn have fairygeyed the mayvalleys of Knockmaroon, and, though for rings round them, during a chiliad of perihelygangs, the Formoreans have brittled the tooath of the Danes and the Oxman has been pestered by the Firebugs and the Joynts have thrown up jerrybuilding to the Kevanses and Little on the Green is childsfather to the City (Year! Year! And laughtears!), these paxsealing buttonholes have quadrilled across the centuries and whiff now whafft to us, fresh and made-of-all-smiles as, on the eve of Killallwho.' 14.35

Though Joyce's reworkings of Quinet are called parodies, I prefer Clive Hart's description of them as 'free translations into various dialects of 'Djoytsch''. In rewriting Quinet here, Joyce changed the setting from classical antiquity to Dublin. Rush, Knockmaroon, Goatstown, Ballymun and Little Green Market are all places in and around Dublin.

In Pliny and Columella, he saw his warring twins, Shem and Shaun. He also made Quinet's flowers female temptresses - seizing on the contrast between masculine and feminine forces in Quinet's sentence. Wars and cities, 'which change masters' are masculine. The peaceful flowers are feminine in the French ('la jacinthe...la pervenche...la marguerite'). Girls are often flowers in Finnegans Wake. 

'And they still nowanights and by nights of yore do all all bold floras of the field to their shyfaun lovers say only: Cull me ere I wilt to thee! and, but a little later: Pluck me whilst I blush! Well may they wilt, marry, and profusedly blush, be troth.' 15.19

'the bouts of Hebear and Hairyman'

The battles of he-bear and the hairy man (Esau?) and Heber and Heremon – the Irish equivalents of Romulus and Remus. The Irish traced their race back to Milesius of Spain, whose sons, Heber and Heremon were the first kings of the Gaels, ruling jointly until Heremon killed Heber. 

'twolips have pressed togatherthem by sweet Rush'

Kisses and tulips. The village of Rush, on the coast fifteen miles north of Dublin, is famous for its tulip fields. cf 'tulipbeds of Rush below' 526.06. Here's a video of the Rush tulipbeds from Fingal County Council.

'during a chiliad of perihelygangs' 

A thousand years. A chiliad is a group of a thousand, and it also includes the first war epic, the Iliad.  'perihelygangs'  going (gangs) around (peri) the sun (Helios), and so years. Hely in the Wake might suggest the Irish Governor General and enemy of Parnell, Tim Healy (Ireland is called 'Healiopolis' at 24.18).  It's a phrase suggestive of war and violence (gangs).

'the Formoreans have brittled the tooath of the Danes and the Oxman has been pestered by the Firebugs'

The Formoreans and the Tuatha de Danaan were two rival supernatural Irish races.  After being defeated by the Milesians, the Tuatha de Danaan retreated underground to become the aos sí (fairies). Also the tooth of the Danes, invaders who founded Dublin. The Danes called themselves Ostmen (men from the east), which became corrupted to Oxmen. So Dublin has an Oxmantown, the area north of the Liffey where the Danes were exiled at the time of the Anglo-Norman invasion. The Firbolgs were another legendary Irish race, conquered by the Tuatha de Danaan but allowed to settle in Connacht.

'and the Joynts have thrown up jerrybuilding to the Kevanses'

The Giants have thrown up jerry buildings. All our cities are 'jerry built', because the buildings will crumble in time, or be burned down ('firebugs' are arsonists). Shem and Shaun are also often called Jerry and Kevin

'these paxsealing buttonholes have quadrilled across the centuries'

Joyce takes Quinet's 'peaceful generations have passed through the ages...one following the other, fresh and cheerful' and creates a processional dance by the flowers, worn as buttonholes. Paxsealing - sealing peace. The alternation of peace and war.  In the marginal note next to the French text on page 281, Joyce wrote, 'BELLUM-PAX-BELLUM'.

'the eve of Killallwho'

Joyce's version of Quinet's 'days of battles'. King Brian Boru, who defeated the Danes at the Battle of Clontarf had his stronghold at Killaloe. 'Kill all who' – the dead of Clontarf included Brian Boru, his son Murchad, his grandson Toirdelbach, King Máel Mórda of Leinster and the Viking leaders Sigurd of Orkney and Brodir of Man.

Scarlet pimpernels growing in the pot on Quinet's tomb

This version is echoed in the history section of the children's lessons chapter, written in 1935;

'From the butts of Heber and Heremon, nolens volens, brood our pansies, brune in brume.' 271.19

THE FIRST VERSION

Here's the first draft of the sentence, written in pencil by Joyce in late 1926, from the Garland Press James Joyce Archive.

Joyce originally wrote 'the times of Hebear and Hairyman', then 'the high old times' before deciding on 'bouts'; 'townland of twinedlights' was originally 'the place for twilights', then 'twinlights'; 'during a chiliad of perihelygangs' began as 'during a hundred thousand yeargangs'; 'valleys' became 'mayvalleys'; 'jerrybuilding' was originally 'wallmaking'; 'the eve of Kallallwho' was 'the day of combat', corrected to 'the day of Killallwhoo' (though Joyce then lost the extra o).

Here's Joyce's fair (!) copy of November 1926. The only additions here are the parenthesis '('Year. year. laughtears!)' and 'whaft' added to 'whift'.

Here's Joyce's second reworking of Quinet's sentence, from the Hen chapter, written in 1927. Here he's taken just the structure of the sentence and applied it to new subjects, the passing on of the Letter and the brewing of tea and alcohol:

Since nozzy Nanette tripped palmyways with Highho Harry there’s a spurtfire turf a’kind o’kindling when oft as the souff souff blows her peaties up and a claypot wet for thee, my Sitys, and talkatalka tell Tibbs has eve: and whathough (revilous ife proving aye the death of ronaldses when winpower wine has bucked the kick on poor won man) billiousness has been billiousness during milliums of millenions and our mixed racings have been giving two hoots or three jeers for the grape, vine and brew and Pieter’s in Nieuw Amsteldam and Paoli’s where the poules go and rum smelt his end for him and he dined off sooth american (it would give one the frier even were one a normal Kettlelicker) this oldworld epistola of their weatherings and their marryings and their buryings and their natural selections has combled tumbled down to us fersch and made-at-all-hours like an ould cup on tay. 

117.16-30

Joyce's third version was written in 1930 for the children's games chapter, where Issy's girl companions appear as dancing flowers ('THE FLORAS' 220.03), celebrating the victory of Shaun over Shem. Like the first version, there's a Dublin setting, and the whole is an extension of 'these paxsealing buttonholes have quadrilled across the centuries' from the first version:

Since the days of Roamaloose and Rehmoose the pavanos have been strident through their struts of Chapelldiseut, the vaulsies have meed and youdled through the purly ooze of Ballybough, many a mismy cloudy has tripped taintily along that hercourt strayed reelway and the rigadoons have held ragtimed revels on the platauplain of Grangegorman; and, though since then sterlings and guineas have been replaced by brooks and lions and some progress has been made on stilts and the races have come and gone and Thyme, that chef of seasoners, has made his usual astewte use of endadjustables and whatnot willbe isnor was, those danceadeils and cancanzanies have come stimmering down for our begayment through the bedeafdom of po's taeorns, the obcecity of pa's teapucs, as lithe and limbfree limber as when momie mummed at ma. 

236.19-32

Here there are more dance references (pavane, waltz, Miss McCloud's reel, rigadooon, cancan). The theme of the chapter is the rivalry of Shem and Shaun, and so here we have two other warring twins, Romulus and Remus. 

'when momie mummed at ma'

The dances have come down to us, as lithe and limber as when Momus,  god of satire and mockery, made fun of Mars, god of war. Dryden's 'Song of Momus to Mars' mocks the war god, and the pointlessness of warfare:

 

 Joyce explained this one to Harriet Shaw Weaver:

'...The girl angels sing a hymn of liberation round Shawn. The page enclosed is still another version of a beautiful sentence from Edgar Quinet which I already refashioned in Transition part one beginning since the days of Hiber and Hairyman etc. E.Q. says that the wild flowers on the ruins of Carthage Numancia etc. have survived the political rises and downfall of Empires. In this case the wild flowers are the lilts of children.'

To HSW, 22 November 1930

Joyce returned to Quinet in 1937, when he decided to include the original quotation in the children's lessons chapter, on page 281.  The text here has been supplied by Issy, but the twins, still quarrelling, are oblivious to Quinet's truth.

The fourth use of Quinet, furthest from the original, comes at the end of the Joyce's war story of Buckley and the Russian general.  This was written in early 1938:

'When old the wormd was a gadden and Anthea first unfoiled her limbs wanderloot was the way the wood wagged where opter and apter were samuraised twimbs. They had their mutthering ivies and their murdhering idies and their mouldhering iries in that muskat grove but there’ll be bright plinnyflowers in Calomella’s cool bowers when the magpyre’s babble towers scorching and screeching from the ravenindove.'

354.22-36

The final use of Quinet was one of the last pieces of Finnegans Wake to be composed, in November 1938. Joyce wrote it when he was tying together the opening and closing chapters. It has a place of honour, introducing Anna Livia Plurabelle's letter, delivered at last, and her final monologue. The passage is a sort of summary of the book. It's very dense, but look out for the days of Pliny and Columella, and the flowers la jacinthe, la pervenche and la marguerite:

'Our wholemole millwheeling vicociclometer, a tetradomational gazebocroticon (the “Mamma Lujah” known to every schoolboy scandaller, be he Matty, Marky, Lukey or John-a-Donk), autokinatonetically preprovided with a clappercoupling smeltingworks exprogressive process, (for the farmer, his son and their homely codes, known as eggburst, eggblend, eggburial and hatch-as-hatch can) receives through a portal vein the dialytically separated elements of precedent decomposition for the verypetpurpose of subsequent recombination so that the heroticisms, catastrophes and eccentricities transmitted by the ancient legacy of the past, type by tope, letter from litter, word at ward, with sendence of sundance,since the days of Plooney and Columcellas when Giacinta, Pervenche and Margaret swayed over the all-too-ghoulish and illyrical and innumantic in our mutter nation all, anastomosically assimilated and preteridentified paraidiotically, in fact, the sameold gamebold adomic structure of our Finnius the old One, as highly charged with electrons as hophazards can effective it, may be there for you, Cockalooralooraloomenos, when cup, platter and pot come piping hot, as sure as herself pits hen to paper and there's scribings scrawled on eggs.'  61427-615.10

The best thing written about Joyce's uses of Quinet is Clive Hart's article in Structure and Motif in Finnegans Wake, which you can read online here.  Here he reveals that 'Mr Frank Budgen insists that Joyce detested flowers'!

I visited Quinet's grave in June 2018

I've always loved Joyce's first reworking of Qunet in the opening chapter. When Derek Pyle of Waywords and Meansigns asked me to read a passage, this was the bit I chose.

From Mary Ellen Bute's film of the Wake