crossing the barrier of Death

[SHUBHA GHOSH]

On Sat, 23 Aug 1997, William Karlin wrote:

> Hello again,
> 
>   Continuing with Mason/Rebekah, I was recently looking over some other
> reading of mine and came across passages that made me think about
> Masons's and Rebekah's communications with one another.
> 
>   First, from Kundera's _The Book of Laughter and Forgetting_, there's
> this:
> 
>      "No, he was wrong when he said that here sadness was only form
> without content!  No, no, her husband was still alive in that sadness, he
> was merely lost and she must go search for him!  Search the whole world
> for him!  Yes, yes!  At last she knew!  Whoever wishes to remember must
> not stay in one place, waiting for the memories to come of their own
> accord!  Memories are scattered all over the immense world, and it takes
> voyaging to find them and make them leave their refuge!"
> 
> 
>   This is Mason, no?  foax have mentioned previously how Mason is
> searching the heavens for signs of Rebekah (memories are scattered
> throughout the heavens and the earth...).  Mason's travels across the
> globe are more than his love of his work, more than the evasion of his
> family -- they are an active search for Rebekah.
>    This, the idea that he is actively trying to pull Rebekah back to him,
> should be contrasted to how I read most of R's visits:  she was coming
> back willingly to tell him something.  Perhaps the force of his memory,
> his searching, pulled her back?  But he eventually loses her, like
> Orpheus lost Eurydice (thinking of Rilke's "Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes")
> Just a thought.

Or like Leni Pokler in GR, forced to work on the rocket with the
enticement of seeing his daughter (who like Persephone) returns every
couple of months and leaves again.  is Rebekah the same Rebejak throughout
the novel or does she change as well, perhaps in subtle ways?

> 
>   But I also came across something that reminded me more of Rebekah
> coming back of her own accord with a message.  Here's that Rilke again
> from "Requiem for a Friend":
> 
>     "I have my dead, and I have let them go,
>      and was amazed to see them so contented,
>      so soon at home in being dead, so cheerful,
>      so unlike their reputation.  Only you
>      return; brush past me, loiter, try to knock
>      against something, so that the sound reveals
>      your presence.  [....]
> 
>      [....]
> 
>      "But no:  you're pleading.  This penetrates me, to
>       my very bones, and cuts at me like a saw.
>       The bitterest rebuke your ghost could bring me,
>       could scream to me, at night, when I withdraw
>       into my lungs, into my intestines,
>       into the last bare chamber of my heart,--
>       such bitterness would not chill me half so much
>       as this mute pleading.  What is it that you want?
>          Tell me, must I travel?  Did you leave
>       some Thing behind, some place, that cannot bear
>       your absense?"  [....]
> 
>    
> 
>   Well, she left Mason and the children behind.  Is there possibily
> anything else Rebekah wants to tell Mason, other than "move on" and "go
> see the chiildren?"  Not that there need be anything else...those messages
> are quite important on their own. 
> 
> 
> looking forward to comments/criticism,
> 
> cheers,
> 
>  will
>    
> 
>