Hitchens Wake

I was working on an essay about Finnegans Wake with which I was going to reopen this blog last night when I read about Hitchens' death, and as I slept, I dreamed of his wake. When I woke, the bare bones of this poem (?) were in my head:

"Ere goes Chris Hitchens, arse solid man, two thumbs to his mind and eight fingers to his mouth. Terribly burned with ashen faggot, another nail in a gauguin, he stood on bothsides of selfabuse, for the bodies but against the Head. I hope to see him glorified in this afterlife, fighting stilllife the corpus of his Mother Theresa."

For those who need to know: "Ere goes" is "here goes" and "there goes, as in "there but for the grace of God go I," but it is also "therefore", since death is a logical progression of life, and Kurt Vonnegut's "so it goes."

"Arse solid man" is a pun on Finnegans Wake's line about Haveth Childers Everywhere as an "erse solid man," meaning a good Celtic man as well as being formerly a body (as Hitch was born in Scotland and, like HCE, is now only thoughts and memories). The "arse solid" means, of course, "hardass" or "a real ass", which is who Hitch was.

"Two thumbs to his mind" suggests his mind being both evolved and trusting in evolution, while "eight fingers to his mouth" references his proclivity for typing as well as suggesting whistleblowing (two fingers in the mouth is normal, so eight fingers means a lot of it?).

I am a little hesitant about the line "terribly burned with ashen faggot," and posted it on facebook as only "badly burned," but I feel that it works more than it doesn't. The "terribly burned" suggests not just cigarettes and chemotherapy, but also being burned at the stake (Portrait of the Artist has Stephen say that astronomer Giordano Bruno was "terribly burned" by the Church), not to mention burning in Hell. He does this "with ashen faggot," primarily referring to cigarettes but also to Hitch being angry ("burned") with Christian traditions, such as the "ashen faggot" of English Christmases, and to the even worse Christian tradition of thinking that gay people and atheists will burn in hell.

People refer to cigarettes, the thing which killed Hitch, as "another nail in the coffin," and every death is a nail in some coffin or other. I changed it to "gauguin" to (a) suggest the connection between "coffin" and "coughing," but also (b) for the impressionist painter Paul Gauguin and his work "The Yellow Christ."

The line "he stood on bothsides of selfabuse, for the bodies but against the Head," isn't all that cryptic for those who know Hitch's life. He was for smoking, drinking, and masturbation (self-abuse of the body), but against circumcision and religion (abuse of the head). Being "for the bodies but against the Head" also suggests being for the working man, as Hitch had socialist leanings, and being for materialism and against the divine Godhead (a term for the Holy Trinity, not the actual head of God).

The last line is probably the easiest- I hope to see him, not in Heaven with a glorified (perfected) body, but on earth remembered for the good he did ("glorified in this afterlife"). "Fighting stilllife" means I hope to see him remembered as he lived, a fighter for change ("fighting stilllife" could also mean "against a heaven where nothing changes and nothing dies," but I didn't realize it could be read that way until after I wrote it).

Finally, the last bit has something wonderfully Joycean going on. It has to do with Mother Theresa, who Hitch hated ("She was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty...She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction ") , and with Christianity, which has outlived Hitch. However, he can only fight "his" version of Teresa, as the real Theresa was known only to herself, and there are subtexts of both fighting his Mother (like Stephen Daedalus) and of living on through his children (like Haveth Childers Everywhere in Finnegans Wake), the bodies of their mothers, which, like the Wake itself, brings us full circle.