on Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
mishe mishe
Discovered in p3:
nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac...
Humpty Dumpty says:
“Finnegans Wake is indeed full of mishmashes of multilingual words. German common noun Mische, equivalent to English mix, is packed into this portmanteau at first. The mix of God’s voice & Moses’s response is the main content of this package that Joyce borrowed from Exodus 3:4, which reads, “God called unto him out of the midst of the bush --- this bush was burning ---, and said, Moses, Moses (Hebrew: Moshe Moshe,) and he said, Here am I (Old Irish: Mishe Mishe.)” Exodus 2:10 says about the origin of the name Moses: “And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses: and she said, Because I drew him out of the water.” Furthermore, whether Joyce meant or not, mish is the condensed form for mission in slang & I have found mish in an Albanian dictionary by chance that means “flesh.” As you know, Genesis 2:23 says that Eve is bone of Adam’s bones & flesh of his flesh. Do you hear “me she me she” from this reduplication?”