help re:V

[Bonnie Surfus (ENG)]

any interpretation of V. as a goddess figure is not at odds with a notion 
of V. as representative of destructive forces inthe 20th C.  I argue, 
with Robert Holton, that Pynchon is working to retrieve the sublime, 
restoring a "history" with all of its chaos, rendering the subjective 
history we know just that, a selective misinterpretation that obscures 
much.  Any reading of the Goddess includes knowledge of Her manifestation 
as both life giver and destroyer, healer and fearsome in Her ability to 
dispense the death sentence.  This element of the Judeo-Christian God is 
one most associated with Old Testament thought.  The Goddess never 
underwent such a revision and is a holistic representation of the 
life-death cycle.  Without the destructive element, she is incomplete.  
So--look at the women in _V. A Novel_.  They have what Profane 
laments--the power of animation and are thus associated with only one 
half of Her power, thus diminishing Her power by half.  There are 
glimpses of the destructive though.  Hanne (ah?) the barmaid and the 
trapezoid figure that she sees , one that later "had fissioned, and 
transferred like an overlay to each of her retinae" (91).  Later, "It was 
not love.  Hanne excused herself and left.  It  was not man/woman.  the 
stain was still with her.  What could she tell Lepsius tonight.  She had 
only the desire to remove his spectacles, snap and crush them, and watch 
him suffer.  How delightful it would be" (93).  Later, the play:
". . .Two men turn the corner by the allegorical statue of Tragedy.  
Their feet crush unicorns and peacocks that repeat diamond-fashion the 
entire length of the carpet.  The face of one is hardly to be 
distinguished beneath masses of white tissue which have obscured the 
features, and changed slightly the outlines of the face.  The other is 
fat.  They enter the box next to the one the man with the blue spectacles 
is in.  Light from outside, late summer light now falls through a single 
window, turning the statue and the figured carpet to a monochrome 
orange.  Shadows become more opaque.  The air between seems to thicken 
with an indeterminate color, though it is probably orange.  Then a girl 
in a flowered dress comes down the hall and enters the box occupied by 
the two men.  Minutes later she emerges, tears in her eyes and on her 
face.  The fat man follows.  They pass out of the field of vision.
 
The silence is total.  So there's no warning when the red-an-white-faced 
man comes through his cutains holding a drawn pistol.  The pistol 
smokes.  He enters the box. Soon he and the man with the blue spectacles, 
struggling, pitch through the curtains and fall to the carpet.  Their 
lower halves are still hidden by the curtains.  The man with the 
white-blotched face removes the blue spectacles; snaps them in two and 
drops them to the floor.  The other shuts his eyes tightly, tries to turn 
his head away from the light.

Another  has been standing at the end of the corridor.  From the vantage 
he appears only as a shadow; the window is behind him.  The man who 
removed the spectacles now crouches, forcing the prostrate one's head 
toward the light.  the man at the end of the corridor makes a small 
gesture with his right hand.  The crouching man looks that way and half 
rises.  A flame appears in the area of the other's right hand; another 
flame; another.  The flames are colored a brighter orange than the sun.

Vision must be the last to go.  There must also be a nearly imperceptible 
line between an eye that reflects and an eye that recieves.  

The half-crouched body collapses.  The face and its masses of white skin 
loom ever closer.  At rest the body is assumed exactly into the space of 
this vantage" (93-94.)

This is one of the bomb parables Judith Chambers has pointed out.  The 
associations between Hanne and the destructive Goddess seems clear, the 
foreknowledge, the orange, the trapezoid that repeats on the carpet 
(birds and other animals acted as manifestations of the Goddess; 
especially the bird.)  Graves' White Goddess is directly noted, early in 
the chapter (or the one before?)  I wonder about the white-tissued face 
as either a bomb-blast victim or the Goddess, possibly Hanne (she does 
take leave of the others earlier.)  

I've tried to get Judith to join the list so she could talk directly 
about her work.  She has been busy.  Hopefully, the book in which her 
work appears is now or will be out soon.

Maybe later, I can talk more about these associations.  

I argue that the books demonstrates a male-dominated history's inability 
to admit the Goddess.  She is thus rendered his possession, his art, his 
passion.  but She has no world or power of her own.  even Malta has been 
invaded, also in very telling terms in _V. A Novel_.  The accoutrements 
of Goddess worship are all tied up in the description Fausto gives; all 
rendered obsolete by the ultimate power he asserts, despite his posturing.

I have a paper on the topic waiting for review.  Hopefully you can read 
it someday.

bonnie