Coincidance - Principia Discordia

22 COINCIDANCE
also curious that Vico was contemporary with Swift, and William Butler
Yeats believed Swift invented the same historical theory as Vico independently.)
The "tauftauf" in "tauftauf thuartpeatrick" also links to Vico as John
the Baptist (Giambattista) because "taufen" in German means to baptize,
while the stuttering effect of "tau ... tau... thua" suggests both Parnell and
Lewis Carroil, who were both stutterers. Similar stuttering runs through
the book, always linked with masturbation anxiety, as is explicit in the
"Stuttering Hand" on page 4.
Vico believed that language, along with religion, was inspired by thunder,
the first "words" being attempts to "talk" to the terrifying Thing in the sky
that he claims frightened primitive humanity into forming magical circles
and tribes.
Thunder strikes ten times during FW. The linkage here is thunder-Vicovicus-Eirweiker-Earwicker.
Like Joyce himself, Vico had a morbid fear of thunder, induced by some
childhood trauma. Vico's trauma is unknown; Joyce's was a governess who
told him thunder was the sign God was about to strike a sinner with
lightning. (When asked once how a man of such moral courage could be
afraid of thunder, Joyce replied drily, "You were not raised an Irish Catholic."
Vico was raised, like Bruno, a Neapolitan Catholic.)
Like Finnegan in the ballad, Vico once fell off a ladder, was pronounced
dead, and startled his mourners by sitting up in his coffin. Even more like
Finnegan, when he finally did die, Vico had a funeral service of appalling
violence, as his admirers and detractors got into a brawl which turned into a
riot. (They were disputing whether he was a heretic and should or should
not be buried in a sanctified Catholic cemetery.)
Like Joyce, Vico believed that poetry arose out of creative etymology
("incorrect etymology," in Academese). Like Joyce—and also like Whorf and
Korzybski—Vico believed a radical change in language could alter our
perceived reality-tunnels. (Is that happening yet, dear reader?)
All through the long night of FW, the 50ish Earwicker struggles against
the young Cad, King Mark battles to get Isolde back from the young
Tristan, Finn Mac Cool pursues his bride Graunia and her young lover
Dermot, and Ibsen's Master Builder (sometimes almost a masturbator in
Joyce's "siamixed twoatalk") struggles against the younger architects who
are replacing him. Vico, who had a long legal battle with his own son, said
before Freud that revolutions were rebellions of sons against fathers, and
his historical dialectic influenced Hegel and Marx.
Nineteen years before beginning FW, Joyce taught school in Dalkey,
County Dublin, which has a Vico Road. Seventeen years before FW, Joyce
taught in Trieste, which has a Via Giambattista Vico.