GR and M&D related: telluric forces

[Thomas Eckhardt]

Terrance wrote:

>"America was a gift from
>the invisible powers, a way of returning." (GR.722)

Weissmann's perspective. He goes on: "But Europe refused it." Weissmann
articulates what one might call the New World theme: the age-old European
dream of being born again in some New Eden, an Earthly Paradise (or to find
the "Realms of Prester John", Fountain of Youth etc.) exempt of history.
This is the central theme of American, and I don't mean just US-American,
literature to the present day, isn't it? From this root spring all the other
grand images of America: noble savages; innocent nature and the garden; the
Americans as new Adams (probably Eves also, but this part of the story tends
to go unmentioned) etc. and their related counterparts: the ignoble savages,
the hideous wilderness which have to be overcome in order to build that
"City upon a Hill", yet again a paradise, albeit won by conquering nature,
not by returning to it. In M&D this New World or American theme becomes the
central thematic concern, though in which way exactly remains to be
determined. "Return" seems to be the central term here, implying the hope
that some cyclical vision of man and nature may yet be true: When Mason and
Dixon return "us'd-broken" (755), their only hope is, as Mason puts it, to
"count upon that failure to re-arrive perfectly, to be seen in all the rest
of Creation..." (755) A similar passage can be found on 630, where Captain
Zhang mentions "Experiences of that failure of perfect Return, that haunts
all for whom time elapses". Related statements can be found all over the
book. This seems to be about linear and cyclical time, History and myth,
memory based on facts and memory as imagination. Between these binary
oppositions it takes Mason and Dixon less than a week to run the line
through somebody's house, their wigs askew...

I believe somebody on the list recommended "The Machine in the Garden" by
Leo Marx some time ago. Thanks a lot.

Thomas

			
                   		
		"Time, cum, sand, and surf,
		 these are the building blocks of life"

 		 Silver Jews