Summary of the Ondt and the Gracehoper, III.1 -- 414.15-419.08.

This is Shaun's story, though as Shem presents it (just as the
Justius/Mercius dialogue is Shem as Shaun presents him (more or less, since
finally it seems awfully much as if Shem just wins, making the same
tolerance argument the Gracehoper makes here, though that one is in moral
terms and this one in artistic terms: both say 'both of us are necessary',
our brown mummy comes to both of us, space and time are equally essential
and interpenetrating).) So what we're seeing is Shem presenting Shaun in
the worst possible light, by having him tell a story which is a model of
lack of charity (not so different from I.6 and the proof that he wouldn't
save Shem's soul on a bet).

414.16¶: asked for a song, Shaun apologizes (with a word saying he'll
allegorize), he'd rather spin (and 'Spinoza') a fable (cough cough -- a
thunderword) to his 'dear little brothers in Christ', like Portrait.: it
will be a Grimm's fable (as it is) but also Esau and Jacob [Esau, "hairy",
hunter, first of the twins, Jacob, "supplanter", born clutching brother's
heel, farmer {cf Abel and Cain, hunter and farmer}). Shem is Jacob, Shaun
is Esau.)

414.21¶: the Gracehoper was always jigging happily along making music and
"ungraceful" (and unreturned, it seems, see 417.18ff where the Ondt has
them all, as Shaun always does, cf. 92.13ff) sexual overtures to other
insects . He would maliciously give a Viconian hard time to the bee,
cursing for what was supposed to be her amusement till she was "puce"
(flea) for shame, and furnish her with stockings at his cottage, "groped
up" [not sure of the grammar]. Or, if he was having funny funerals (funeral
reels) with Father Time with his nymphs wheedling him and ALP scratching
his wingcase, (and she's defined in a parenthesis as the chemical
composition of the body: the whole and the all, the wheel and the vortex of
theWild Man of Borneo), and with tambourines and songs revolving around
him, attended by a mother and daughter boxing match and sozzlers singing
songs like Finnegan's Wake [sentence ends, no 'then' for the 'if' clause,
though somehow it may echo the "or, if not," at .24 in the preceding
sentence]. For if science (or silence) can "mute uns nought" ['teach us
nothing', somehow] about the Great Somebody perhaps cowboy singers can sing
us something about the nobodies who "ring his panch", his paunch [the fleas
around his middle business, 12.34-5] -- i.e., song can teach us about
ourselves, the only thing worth knowing.] A high old time for the whole day
free; thunder and lightning for everybody, for Cronos (and Chronos, time)
is overthrown and people keep on keeping on. Everything is above ground, so
[through music, I think] we all, Shem or Shaun, kill time.

415.25¶: the Ondt says gracious me and (with lots of Egyptian imagery)
bless my soul, what a trifle this is: "Pou" and other bug names. What a
spectacle for the gods, he says, and not being a summer fool (a butterfly)
he was making silly faces at himself in the window (W. Lewis) of his house
"no no and no" (cf 414.34, the G's house "a thing like no thing", explained
by someone as 'a mere nothing'). He decided not to come to the party at
that flea's, for he's not on the social list (ant a social insect), nor to
his burial, as long as there's a tail on a cat (put in Egyptian theological
language). So he safely locks up his goods (his egg-layer, in fact) and
prays 'may he not piss on me, or pile pigshit on me: Elysian fields for
me!, as long as Beppy's realm shall fluorish so shall I. As high as Hapi's
vengeance shall fluorish my hatred will too (will "hurrish", for the last
man flogged through d's streets). [he is different from the Mookse mostly
in the degree of his hardness and anger, what "Ondt" means -- the Mookse
was more complacent.]

416.03¶: the Ondt was a tall hill-like fellow, very solemn. When he wasn't
making spaces in his psyche (making jokes) he was very German-looking, but
when he was making spaces in his ikey (being clever) he was even more
wiseGermanlooking. Now when the sillyBilly G had jingled through love and
death, drinking and whoring, he fell sick and poor and didn't know where to
find food for his body or a hospice (like Hosty, 40.36). Dry beetle! Spent
drone! Bare grasshopper! The whole world was empty -- not one kopek to buy
beebread. What a plight! He was contrite, and said he was "heartily hungry"
(i.e., heartily sorry, the act of contrition).

[I wonder why no new paragraph at 436.08: maybe just because it would be
too short before it, but it needs it]

416.21¶: [he was so hungry] he had eaten all the furniture and time
(lustres, years, months, centuries) and was gluttonously voracious with
time in eternity -- not so "dusty" (meagre) an accomplishment for a little
mite. But when Christmas was on the branches, off he went from his house
"Thing like no thing". He strolled around and around, till the bee in his
bonnet and nits in his hair made him think he was standing on his head in
Tasmania. Had he come and gone from the dead and made his way back from the
maggots three times? Had he come to heaven/harbour or gone to hell with the
pope? The June snows were like hailstones, and tornedos in Polynesia,
blasting tiles off the roofs and generally playing Ragnorokr with an
uproar: "horror, grasshopper" he chirped.

417.03¶: so the Gracehoper, who knew a little entomology/etymology, didn't
ask leave or licence but threw himself in the Vico [threw himself on the
mercy of the cycles? I think this is about the vulnerability of time as
against the pompous certainties of space], then and there, asking himself
dizzily the Prankquean question in the form "would his aluck alight or boss
of both appease", and the next time he met the Ondt he'd be lucky not to
see a world of difference [which he promptly sees]: behold the Ondt,
spatial on the W.C. throne, in his slippers, as self-satisfied as a Brit
foxhunter, smoking his Hosana/Havana cigar [like HCE -- 53.26] full of
himself and his comfortable philosophy of Plato and Confucius and Aristotle
(a plate of monkeynuts), with all the bugs the Gracehoper had made his
unreturned overtures to biting his legs and blowing cosy up his underwear
(cf. 414.25). As buggy/intimate as could be, and the poor G cries "Jesus
wept" etc., consumed with jealousy and at his wit's end.

417.24¶: now the Ondt, that perfect host [this has to be ironic,
considering what's said next] was making big jokes [space jokes], pissing
all over him and making him itch, in his blissful state surrounded by
houris, whom he chases and tickles and tackles and itches too [it doesn't
seem to their very great pleasure]. No grasshopper ever danced it with more
devilry: the image of the Gracehoper with his head in the mud, after his
useless three days, without any hope and in despair, was too much for the
Ondt's gravitas. Let him [he seems now to say] be the itching Lord Ardilaun
with his parisites peeling off, I'll be Lord Iveagh with the high fees, the
"Crackasider" (the one who makes people laugh). The foul phoney fool wrote,
but Count McCormack makes the 'melody that mints the money': for the
greater glory of pounds shillings and pence. "A darkener of the threshold"
[the Gracehoper is]. Is he Horus? No, he wants to capsize the ant-boat,
seeking (unrewardedly) a ride to heaven from the Lord of loaves and life,
Osiris. So be it [that is: this is the way it is] -- you fast but
spendthrift one, receive my wisdom. And that's the last word.

418.09: the poem: [the point of view is the Gracehoper's, now, though it
starts with a narrator telling how the Ondt reacts]. The Ondt was pleased
and laughed ("larved") so hard the Gracehoper thought he'd beshit himself
(or displace his jaw). Weeping, the Gracehoper says he forgives him
[Fargnolli and Gillespie say it isn't clear for what, but surely it's for
his being such a creep and having so little charity], for the sake of those
he has in his keeping, the other bugs: he says teach polkas to Flea and
Louse, finds sweets for Bee, and make sure Little Wasp (Vespa too, match)
has fat ones to heat (sting?). He goes on to say since he played the piper
now he has to pay the Count (McCormack), having like Mohammed to go to the
mountain (say good evening to it). Anybody can like it or lump it, as long
as "what flies be a full 'un" (i.e., I think, as long as life is lived
fully) -- I couldn't be an ant (or 'more groggy') if beetles propelled me.
[but] I accept your reproof, like a gift horse, for being saved is what I
have to pay for spending my substance myself: after all, can old whores get
any kisses if their old bollocks forsake them, or your arse itch if the
flea doesn't wake you up? A place to love, a time to embarrass it -- these
are the twin terms that define the ordinary man. Hasn't the North wind
winged itself to go South since we have been moths in the farthest away
drawbridge, and hasn't Wyndham Lewis's Western man looked to the East for
his audience and his story's end? [That is, this continues the idea of
there being twin incompatible ideas both of which are necessary]. We are,
the two of us, Wastenot (the Ondt) and Want (me, the Gracehoper), forever,
till Nola goes flying and Bruno browneyes turn blue. Before those gadflies
quit bothering you, the Mookse, and turn to me the Gripes, space must
contract and time run away (elope) -- so accept my tactics, and just as I
take the long view you've expressed and see through your eyes (your
"farlook"), so you should come my direction for healing of your own. [at
this point seems to change direction and start saying ok, you're better
than I am... on the way to the 'but' at the end] My part looks and points
unbroken forward, while your whole is abroad with symbols of everything
[this is about space and time again, I think, how both are necessary]. My
invisible (or laughable) universe you'd hardly find to have much either
right out front or with so much still behind [that is, you wouldn't find
what I have to offer either obvious or subtly rending its goodness later].
Your feats (and feet) are enormous and you are huge [in space], (and may
the Graces send you some sense as well), your genus is worldwide and your
command of space is sublime -- but Holy St Martin why can't you beat time?
[i.e., he's just acknowledged that the Ondt runs everything -- except that
there remain the "time" values and he can't beat those with his space,
which is to say he can't keep the beat.