Coincidance - Principia Discordia

16 COINCIDANCE
saying "Earwicker" in Sidlesham. (How did Ham get in again?) Several times
in FW a speaker clears his throat by saying "Aham"—which is Sanskrit for "I
am" and brings us back to both Moses and Delphi, but "A ham," one of
Joyce's alternative spellings, also links back to the Ham-Bacon-Shakespeare
concidences.
However, we were talking about Lawrence Sterne and Tristram Shandy a
while back (and Tristram St. Lawrence who built Howth Castle). Tristram
is the Gaelic form of Tristan. In the legend of Tristan and Isolde, there are
two Isoldes ( )—Isolde the Fair and Isolde of the White Hands. This
makes a nice isomorphism with Swift and his two Esthers, and also with the
two Alices of Lewis Carroll, as we shall see later. Meanwhile, Isolde the Fair
was a native of Chapelizod, where FW is set; Chapelizod is corrupt Anglo-
Gaelic for Chapel of Isolde. When Joyce writes
Sir Tristram ... rearrived from North Armorica ...
he includes both Tristan and Isolde of the White Hands, who lived in
Armorica (northern France) and part of the name of the builder of Howth
Castle (Sir Tristram Armoricus de Saint Lawrence). Immediately following
is "laurens county's gorgios" which gives us the rest of the builder's name
(laurens, lawrence) and locates the other Dublin, which is in Lawrence
County, Georgia. If there are two Isoldes, two Esthers, two Dublins, we will
soon encounter other twins (Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Caster and
Pollux); on the Freudian ( ) level this refers to the two girls in the bushes of
Phoenix Park; on the Jungian level ( ) it refers to a basic polarity which (we
shall soon see) creates an isomorphism between FW and such diverse
systems as Cabala, I Ching and quantum physics.
But Swift, incidentally, had a pet name for Esther Johnson. He called her
Stella, which in Italian means "star" and links back to the Sterne (German,
star/glaucoma) symbolism, Joyce's eye problems and Tristram Shandy . . .
Shakespeare, Swift and Sterne, already in synchronistic mesh with FW,
all have S as the first letter of their names. Joyce named his autobiographical
hero Stephen Dedalus, which begins and ends with S. Ulysses begins with an
S ("Stately, plump Buck Mulligan...) and ends with an S ("yes I said yes I will
Yes") The letter S in Joyce's notes for FW symbolizes the serpent in Eden but
also stands for a mysterious figure, usually called Sanderson or Sigurson but
sometimes varying to Mahan and Behan and even to Pore Old Joe in the
Black Spiritual, who is both an aggressor (the Norse invaders of Ireland) and
a victim (the servants and slaves of all history). Only God and James Joyce
understand this mysterious S business, and Joyce is dead and God isn't telling.
Both incidents in Ear-wicker's nightmare—the one involving the 2 girls