First the creator, the ancient sower, weeping and groaning evacuated [his bowels] into his own hand drawing himself near, near the life-giving and all-powerful earth without any shame or sin, with the rainy-thing [his penis?] held up and with his belt taken off, with his buttocks naked so that they were born [probably an over correction using the subjunctive when not needed, in which case the intended meaning is ‘naked as when they were born’]. Then, unburdened of the black animal [his shit?], striking his own high class dung, which he called his own throw-down, at that time he put it, a thing which was respectful of his harshness [responsive to his blows?], into a jar; he pissed happily and with a honey [=smooth and rich] flow; he began a psalm:
“My tongue is the pen of a swiftly flowing scribe.” Singing in a loud voice, finally he made for himself an indelible heat-fixed ink out of foul dung mixed with the joy of the god Orion [semen?] that had been baked [then] exposed to cold.
I vaguely recall from Adams’ ‘Latin Sexual Vocabulary’ that words for urination can be used of ejaculation. I’d have to check though. If this is true, and the ‘joy of the god Orion’ is semen – he is a fertility god after all – I’d translate ‘mingo’ as ejaculate instead of urinate. In which case the agent of the passage masturbates while shitting and mixes the two products into his invisible ink. Otherwise he pisses while shitting to the same end.
‘Sese adpropinquans’ is very strained in my translation, relying on the unusual compounding of ‘ad’ to create an affinity with ‘ad terram’, an affinity admittedly weak due to the distance of the two phrases. I wonder if Joyce is drawing on English euphemisms like ‘He touched himself’ in which ‘himself’ refers to the penis, and then the phrase should be a bastardization of the literal ‘drawing near to himself [=his penis]’ that intends to mean ‘drawing himself [=his penis] near’.
The Latin is pretty good, only the uti + subjunctive is a full error. I imagine it is a deliberate one, making the passage sound like an ignorant person who overcorrects into a wrong usage – like someone who wants to sound extra polished and mistakenly uses ‘I’ instead of ‘me’.
The lack of clarity in the passage comes not from bad grammar or poor use of Latin, but rather a deliberate riddling tone. See all the places where I speculated in the brackets as to the meaning of riddling phrases.
The passage does not sound anything like normal Classical Latin, mostly because of all the compounding of prepositions and verbs. In that aspect it feels like ancient Greek. Perizomatis, in addition, is a Greek word. Encaustus is a Greek word adopted by Latin.
There are a few infidelities to Classical Latin by drawing on modern English usage of Latinate words. Melliflue is there because of the English word ‘mellifluous’ not because of Classical Latin usage. Sese adpropinquans, as noted above, could be an English figure rendered literally into Latin.
The passage creates a deliberate contrast of lofty/poetic language (‘sator, bombastic Lucretian-like use of compound adjectives and nouns – opifer, viviparam, cunctipotentam) with the earthy functions it describes. The laborious architecture of the sentences also lends it an overwrought bombastic quality. That plus the riddling tone makes it akin to Persius’ satires. In addition, several words that stick out because they were used by Horace, Juvenal and Petronius make me feel the passage has a strong connection to the Roman satiric tradition.