Wallhall

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  • Valhalla: in Norse mythology, the afterlife where those slain in battle feast, fight, and prepare for Ragnarok, or the end of the world, when they will fight on the side of Odin → this paragraph corresponds to Vico's third age, which is characterized by the institution of burial
  • Walhall: (German) German form of Valhalla; Wotan's fortress in Richard Wagner's operatic tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen
  • Wall hall → a gallery?
  • Pall Mall: a street in London
  • Vauxhall: a brand of motorcar.
  • wallhall: a city can be considered a giant "wall hall" that contains all the horrors in the following description


Commentary

"(what with the wallhall's horrors of rollsrights, carhacks, stonengens, kisstvanes, tramtrees, fargobawlers, autokinotons, hippohobbilies, streetfleets, tournintaxes, megaphoggs, circuses and wardsmoats and basilikerks and aeropagods and the hoyse and the jollybrool and the peeler in the coat and the mecklenburk bitch bite at his ear and the merlinburrow burrocks and his fore old porecourts, the bore the more, and his blightblack workingstacks at twelvepins a dozen and the noobibusses sleighding along Safetyfirst Street and the derryjellybies snooping around Tell-No-Tailors' Corner and the fumes and the hopes and the strupithump of his ville's indigenous romekeepers, homesweepers, domecreepers, thurum and thurum in fancymud murumd and all the uproor from all the aufroofs, a roof for may and a reef for hugh butt under his bridge suits tony)" — FW 005.30-006.07

This passage in parentheses seems to represent the various noises of morning rush-hour in Paris (where Joyce wrote FW) and Dublin (where the novel is set), as though the window or curtain (in Joyce's apartment in Paris and in HCE's bedroom in Dublin) is opened at this point, allowing the street noises to "invade" the narrative. It could also represent the noise of traffic in the streets of New York beneath the skyscraper Tim Finnegan is building when he falls from the ladder. The parenthesis occurs immediately after the mention of Eve's apples, and New York is the Big Apple!

This paragraph corresponds to Vico's third age, the democratic age of people and cities. This justifies the introduction of city noises. The third age is characterized by the institution of burial, so this parenthesis also contains numerous allusions to tombs and the afterlife.