GRGR(9): Welcome

[David Morris]

>From: "Terrance F. Flaherty"
>
>Pynchon layers the characters with roles--like film cameos,
>for example in the first two chapters of Part II we see
>slothrop and katje in various roles. Some read katje as
>simply a venus/aphrodite/...
>

She is not "simply," but she IS very _overtly_, Venus.

>Here is part of an off-list discussion concerning slothrop
>as Tannhauser and katje as venus.
>

I proposed Slothrop as Bacchus, which might bear some parallels w/ 
Tannhauser, But I am very ignorant of Opera in general.

>I don't agree with this. She plays several roles and
>slothrop plays several roles just in the first two chapters
>of Part II. Why limit Katje to venus? I don't see it. Just
>follow the costumes and we see slothrop and katje in several
>roles.

Has any one proposed limits?  However, I do maintain that most of her 
costumes you mention below refer to Venus.

>She must have come from the sea, yes, but she is in black,
>frail girl-- Katje we have met.

Well, ideally she should be naked, but that comes later.  But hasn't she 
gone blonde for this role?

>Later she will dress in sea-green, medici with tiara, then white pelisse 
>with ostrich
>plumes, spice,--balerrina, then she is born again, rises,
>white skin with dark ventral side

Later on the dresses, but this "ventral" is a fish (also animal belly, I 
know) reference:
Main Entry: ventral
Function: noun
Date: 1834
: a ventral part (as a scale or fin)

>Katje has a
>closet filled with props, clothes, and when she invites him
>up for a little rocket rolling, she is in a Medici gown
>sea-green and tiara (this is not simply a Venus costume).

The references to Venus are many here.  The dress color, of course.  The 
patron of the Uffizi Museum, from whence "the Birth of Venus" is stolen in 
_V_ was built by the Medici clan, as was the painting commissioned by them.  
Also, remember that torso-only statue of Venus?:  "The Medici Venus" seen 
at:
http://www.giustgallery.com/63.htm

Also check out Barbie/Venus at:
http://www.hausfrauenseite.de/index.shtml?http://hausfrauenseite.de/barbie.html

>But, when Slothrop goes to her room she is dressed in white
>pilesse, with white ostrich plumes and new snow, and spice,
>hardly a costume for a Mediterranean goddess. She "re-forms,"
>she "evaporates" to other parts of the room and when she
>removes the white garments she is still whiter beneath
>it--"she rises, born again," a white "ballerina."

The rising (as out of water) is her "born again" (again that Boticelli 
painting, "Birth of...) w/ "whiter than white" skin, again as in the 
painting.  The pile of white sequins [sea-kwins? ;)] I read as the sea-foam 
sperm which spawned her.

Not that all this "limits" Katje to Venus...


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