GRGR(14) - Light & Dark (long)

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

I read the light and dark as a comment on Leibniz, which
does not disagree with what you say here really, but I
separate White light, from the perversion of Light--German
perversion of Leibniz and slave labor in Dora and America. 

TF

David Morris wrote:
> 
> >From: JL
> >
> >303.3 : ' Lakes of light, portages of darkness. '
> >  You could drown in the one while the other is a means of escape,
> >or perhaps entry.  More on Light & Dark later.
> 
> (Sorry if this is preempting you, JL.  Just taking a stab at this difficult
> symbolism.)
> 
> Under the mountain, images of light and dark predominate.  The typical
> safety zones in the passage above are reversed.  Light, for us is normally
> safety.  Darkness usually instills fear.  Under the mountain the opposite is
> true.
> ----------
> (299.25)  As darkness is mined  and transported from place to place like
> marble,  so the light bulb is the chisel that delivers it from its inertia
> and has become one of the great secret ikons of  the Humility, the
> multitudes who are passed over by God and History.  When the Dora prisoners
> went on their rampage, the light bulbs in the rocket works were the first to
> go:  before food [
] these breakable, socketless  ([
] -so, motherless too)
> images were what the “liberated” had to take
.
> ----------
> Darkness is a valuable commodity in this world, just as light is valuable in
> ours.  Light here below the mountain may be seen as energy spent to for the
> sake of collecting darkness, burning light who’s end  purpose is darkness.
> Death's perspective here: waiting for the burn-out of life.
> 
> The “liberated” at Dora, the survivors, here called the Humility are the
> passed over by God & History.  This pairing of God & History makes them
> synonymous.  Nobody, neither God nor man gives an F about these people.  The
> prisoners know their lives are as fragile and expendable as those light
> bulbs.  So they “liberate” these bulbs.  They must be kept from burning,
> preserved in the darkness.
> 
> One other note about this passage:  "As darkness is mined" recalls an
> earlier passage w/ the Loonies on Leave.  "Many are wearing sunglasses with
> black lenses and white rims, not so much to be fashionable as to suggest
> snow-blindness, the antisceptic white of the Clinic, perhaps even the
> darkness of the mind." (259.15)
> 
> Again here is the implication of white light causing burnout, of the eyes,
> and even the mind.  The source of that light here is "snow" (the place of
> death) and the "Clinic" (that place where something was done to baby
> Tyrone).  For Slothrop this white light brings foreboding because it is
> connected with the Forbidden Wing.  Further, that "Lightning Latch" comes to
> mind "the door that opens you."  Didn't somebody mention LSD in baby
> Tyrone's formula?
> 
> Here's where Tyrone almost makes it all connect, on that gnome-train ride:
> ----------
> (311.40)  For a minute or two nobody in here can see.  There is only the
> hurtling on, through amazing perfect whitenesss.  Whiteness without heat,
> and blind inertia:  Slothrop feels a terrible _familiarity_ here, a center
> he has been skirting, avoiding as long as he can remember - never has he
> been as close as now to the true momentum of his time:  faces and facts that
> have crowded his indenture to the Rocket, camouflage and distraction fall
> away for the white moment, the vain and blind tugging at his sleeve _it's
> important_..._please_..._look at us_...
> ----------
> 
> Whatever happened to Slothrop back then must have involved a bright blinding
> light: "whiteness without heat."  Light is not usually without heat.  Could
> the special insulation of Impolex-G be involved with this light?  Is
> Impolex-G transparent?
> 
> "Blind inertia" also recalls the light bulb chiselling darkness from its
> inertia....
> 
> Hmmm.
> David Morris
> 
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