Working on 'How beautiful upon the mountains Are the feet of him who brings good news'
"Ugly and futile: lean neck and tangled hair and a stain of ink, a snail’s bed. Yet someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart. But for her the race of the world would have trampled him underfoot, a squashed boneless snail. She had loved his weak watery blood drained from her own. Was that then real? The only true thing in life? His mother’s prostrate body the fiery Columbanus in holy zeal bestrode. She was no more: the trembling skeleton of a twig burnt in the fire, an odour of rosewood and wetted ashes. She had saved him from being trampled underfoot and had gone, scarcely having been. A poor soul gone to heaven: and on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red reek of rapine in his fur, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the earth, listened, scraped up the earth, listened, scraped and scraped."
Ulysses (that 'Good News'), Chapter 2: 'Nestor', P. 28, The 1922 Text
The word 'Foot' appears 139 times in Ulysses. 'Feet' appears 86 times. 'Terra Firma' is conspicuous by its absence. Call it 'the Diaspora', call it 'the Wild Geese', call it 'Exile', call it 'Footfalls'. It's the same difference.
"a trio of barbels from his megageg chin (sowman's son), the wrong shoulder higher than the right, all ears, an artificial tongue with a natural curl, not a foot to stand on, a handful of thumbs, a blind stomach, a deaf heart, a loose liver, two fifths of two buttocks, one gleetsteen avoirdupoider for him, a manroot of all evil"
'Finnegans Wake', P.230
Working on 'How beautiful upon the mountains Are the feet of him who brings good news'
"Ugly and futile: lean neck and tangled hair and a stain of ink, a snail’s bed. Yet someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart. But for her the race of the world would have trampled him underfoot, a squashed boneless snail. She had loved his weak watery blood drained from her own. Was that then real? The only true thing in life? His mother’s prostrate body the fiery Columbanus in holy zeal bestrode. She was no more: the trembling skeleton of a twig burnt in the fire, an odour of rosewood and wetted ashes. She had saved him from being trampled underfoot and had gone, scarcely having been. A poor soul gone to heaven: and on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red reek of rapine in his fur, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the earth, listened, scraped up the earth, listened, scraped and scraped."
Ulysses (that 'Good News'), Chapter 2: 'Nestor', P. 28, The 1922 Text
The word 'Foot' appears 139 times in Ulysses. 'Feet' appears 86 times. 'Terra Firma' is conspicuous by its absence. Call it 'the Diaspora', call it 'the Wild Geese', call it 'Exile', call it 'Footfalls'. It's the same difference.
"a trio of barbels from his megageg chin (sowman's son), the wrong shoulder higher than the right, all ears, an artificial tongue with a natural curl, not a foot to stand on, a handful of thumbs, a blind stomach, a deaf heart, a loose liver, two fifths of two buttocks, one gleetsteen avoirdupoider for him, a manroot of all evil"
'Finnegans Wake', P.230