Thursday, April 21, 2022

Alan Moore's Jerusalem: Book 3: Vernall's Inquest: Round the Bend: Lines 1-2

Line 1: "A wake, Lucia gets up wi' the wry sing of de light."

Non-Lucy-Lips Version: "Awake, Lucia gets up with the rising of the light."
Lucia wakes up at dawn.

"A wake"
The language of this chapter, the language which Lucia Joyce speaks, is that of her father's language from Finnegans Wake.

"wry sing of de light"
Wry seems to modify "sing of de light" or "Song of Delight." Two possible meanings seem to leap out here. Possibly Lucia wakes up in a state of delight characterized by a subtle sense of humor concerning her current state of affairs. On the other hand, she may find disappointment in what her life, her "song of delight," has come to. Ending with the word "delight" gives the reader a hopeful and optimistic feeling towards Julia but the invocation of the word "wry" throws a scanner in the works. This first line needs more context.

The current context, though, is that we know Lucia Joyce is waking up in an asylum. So perhaps she's making the best of things? Or is in a state of mind which doesn't even take into account where her body has been locked away by concerned family and friends.

Line 2: "She is a puzzle, shore enearth, as all the Nurzis and the D'actors would afform, but nibber a cross word these days, deepindig on her mendication and on every workin' grimpill's progress."

Non-Lucy-Lips Version: "She is a puzzle, sure enough, as all the nurses and the doctors would affirm, but never a cross word these days, depending on her medication and on her progress based on how every pill is working."
The doctors and nurses are puzzled by Lucia but they never get angry at her, at least not recently, mostly depending on how well her medication is working.

"She is a puzzle"
Nothing strange here but a simple acknowledgment that the doctors and the nurses simply can't get a read on Lucia. This also allows for some play further down the sentence with "cross word".

"shore enearth"
The shore is next to the sea or the ocean. The earth is solid ground. Perhaps this is an acknowledgment that, at least currently, she's slightly tethered, grounded. But she remains on the shore and can slip out to sea at any moment, meaning lost in her delirium and madness.

"Nuzis and the D'actors"
Lucia's paranoia paints the nurses as Nazis imprisoning and harming and experimenting on her. While the doctors may as well be actors pretending to help her but actually keeping her imprisoned and medicated.

"afform, but nibber a cross word"
The slight altering of "affirm" to express some "form," probably Lucia's in that her form here is a puzzle which the doctors and nurses are trying to solve. In this particular metaphor, she is a crossword which they are attempting to solve with a "nib" or a pen. This means that whatever word they guess cannot be corrected if, in the future, they find it was mistaken. They put their beliefs and assumptions, expertise and experience, ahead of actually trying to correctly solve the puzzle of Lucia.

"deepindig"
Lucia is deeply dug in. Who she is and her personality, her traumas and inner problems, are hidden deep within her just as all of her inner thoughts and traumas are hidden in deep in the language she speaks. Only by digging through her "Lucy Lips" can one extract what she's really thinking.

"mendication"
The idea that her medication is meant to mend her with a hint at "mendicant," or a person, most likely of a religious order, who relies on sustenance from begging. Lucia's condition is much like a religious ecstasy and she relies on the charity and goodwill of those around her to keep her fed and safe from her own delirium.

"every workin' grimpill's progress."
John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress is one of the texts Alan Moore is in conversation with in Jerusalem. The rest of the title which is rarely given from A Pilgrim's Progress is "from This World to That Which is to Come." So the pilgrim is progressing from one world to the next, literally, in the book, from the material world to the spiritual world. It is the sole journey that matters to the religious pilgrim, how to navigate the journey while avoiding the pitfalls of this world, and Bunyan's book is an allegory for that journey. Here the work is hinted at but in Lucia Joyce's strange language. She, too, must be on a journey from one world to the next.

"workin' ... progress"
"Work in Progress" one of Alma's paintings in her art show depicting her brother's journey to the other world, his own Pilgrim's Progress. It's also a chapter title in Jerusalem (which makes sense since pretty much all the chapters in Jerusalem represent one of Alma's paintings in the show, as her show is a metaphor for Moore's book (just as Alma is a stand-in for Alan Moore)). Moore chose the phrase "Work in Progress" because it's also what James Joyce called Finnegans Wake as he was, you know, working on it.

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