Coincidance - Principia Discordia

242 COINCIDANCE
space-time locale, , is also present. The events of FW all take place, as Joyce
tells us once, "at no spatial time."
FW also includes a sevenfold function for which Joyce provided no symbol
in his notebooks—unless it is some aspect of the mysterious S which seems
to combine the serpent in Genesis, the Cad in the park, all servants and
slaves, and the Norse-Danish invaders of Ireland (at least). The seven appear
often as the colors of Newton's prism:
a rudd yellan gruebleen Orangeman in his violet indigonation (page 23)
roserude... oragious... gelb... greem... blue... ind... Violet (page 113)
rhubarbarous maundarin yellagreen funkleblue windigut (page 171)
They also become, at times, the seven souls of Egyptian theology, the
seven chackras of kundalini yoga, the seven days of the week, etc. In
Chapter 9, based on children's games, they are seven girls named Rubyretta,
Arancia, Yilla, greeneriN, Boyblue, Odalesque and Waters. (The emphasis is
mine but the capitalization is Joyce's, to ensure that we do not miss the
delightful R A Y N B O W, which appears to be an unconscious elaboration
of the conscious mnemonic Roy G. Biv which all first-year physics students
memorize.) The rainbow, of course, brings us back to the Noah's flood
theme, because Jehovah put a rainbow in the sky, after killing most of
humanity off, as a promise that He would not be so rash in the future. But,
as Glasheen points out in her various Censuses to FW, there are also strong
suggestions of Mr. Willie Hughes, "the man of all hues," who was Oscar
Wilde's candidate for the mysterious homosexual lover, Mr. W.H., in
Shakespeare's sonnets.
It is curious but many of Joyce's variations on these seven RAYNBOW
girls or Newton's spectrum exfoliate into eight and conclude with the initials
LSD:
down right mean false sop lap sick dope (page 68)
Don't retch meat fat salt lard sinks down (page 260)
Leaving aside the LSD mystery for a while, I think the seven become
eight at times because Joyce has in mind the generation of the seven colors
out of white light in Newton's famous experiment, which can be illustrated
as follows in Joycean: