Discussion opener for GRGR(4) (church and hospital)

[Paul Murphy]

Andrew writes:

>11) "a Victorian paraphrase of what once, long ago, resulted in Gothic
>    cathedrals [. . .] back to fright, to simple escape [. . .] the
>    Hospital of St Veronica of the True Image for Colonic and
>    Respiratory Diseases." (46.29) Oh boy, *V*eronica and that
>    *V*ictorian paraphrase. Anyone want to attempt to take this
>    paragraph apart?

Reading this paragraph last night, I must've gone over the sentence "They
are approaching..." to "chances for mercy that year" 5 or 6 times, just for
the sheer pleasure of it. Immediately it made me think of Proust, partly
due to the extraordinary, epic construction of the sentence, but largely
due to its content. I don't remember exactly where it is (and it would
probably take a full afternoon to wade through my notes), but at one point
in _A la recherche..._, Proust constructs an elaborate metaphor for
literature around the image of the Gothic cathedral, with its grandeur and
its inaccessible recesses and crannies. Taking the Proustian motif as a
point of departure, I read this sentence as a description firstly of a
process of secularization in architecture (from the "fashioning of suitable
confusions toward any apical God" to the hospital's "cruel network of
sensuous moments that could not be transcended"), with all of the attendent
questions concerning religion, society and power (how the doctors replace
the priests as figures of unimpeachable authority, how science supplants
faith, usw.).

Secondly, might we not have here a clearly self-reflexive 'meta-fictional'
statement about GR? The 'derangement of aim', the 'doubt as to the God's
actual locus'? Recall that for Proust, the 'locus' of the novel was the
self constructing the work of literature -- _A la recherche_ is structured
(at one level) as an 'egology' of the narrator. GR refuses even this
centering device (leaving the 'centrality' of Slothrop out of the
discussion for now); the "intentions of the builders" towards a "zenith"
are "bent" in the hospital's architecture, in the direction of the rubbish
and refuse of the city -- smoke, excrement, warrens, drive belts, rats and
flies; in short, in the direction of the preterite. At the very least, the
grandiose Proustian claims made on behalf of art's ability to redeem or
transcend are called into question here, but without necessarily
countermanding these claims; at the conclusion, "chances for mercy that
year" are mentioned...

Cheers,
Paul

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                             Paul Murphy
                       paul.murphy at utoronto.ca
                 ------------------------------------
          "Our life is often for stretches at a time a poetic
      improvisation, and one only has to have a bit of imagination
                     in order to sense it as such."
            -F. Nietzsche at 19, letter to mother and sister
              (cited in D.F. Krell, _Nietzsche: a Novel_)