VV(1) - The Inanimate & some Qabalistic skylarking

[The Great Quail]

David Morris makes some excellent points; let me throw my hat into 
the ring with some morning thoughts. (Unpolished as they are.)

>----------
>(26.14) (inanimate objects could do what they wanted.  Not what they 
>wanted because things do not want; only men.  but things do what 
>they do, and that is why Profane was pissing at the sun.)
>----------

I know this is leaping ahead a bit, but it may be significant to look 
for the upcoming bit in Gebrail's scene:

---------
(Pg. 83) The man, he, runs one night out to where the wall was, 
begins to toss imaginary rocks about, curses Allah, then begs for 
forgiveness from the Prophet, then urinates on the desert, hoping to 
insult what cannot be insulted.
---------

The sun and the desert, both inanimate, which can "do what they 
wanted." However, as another character will soon remark (Waldetar, 
pg. 78), "Events between soul and soul are not God's province: they 
are under the influence of either Fortune or virtue."

I think this is an important insight into the nature of the tensions 
and relationships between the Inanimate and the Animate so fully 
explored in "V." Those who are Animate, or "alive," are possessed by 
V[!]irtue, (meaning virtue in a Platonic sense, not virtue as in a 
William Bennett sense; which is to say the extension of their 
character and conscious traits and not merely "moral living," 
whatever that means) and are subject to Fortune -- luck, chance, 
coincidence, happenstance, etc. Fixed in an emotional world, they 
rely on human feelings such as love, forgiveness, and mercy to 
protect and shelter them from the inanimate, whether the desert, 
Slothrop's world of treacherous objects, or "thingifying/thingified" 
people. Perhaps Benny is such a schlemihl because he is so Animate, 
so subject to both chance and the virtues of others. (Whether he sees 
it or not, such as with Fina.) He needs forgiveness and mercy and 
various other traits he cannot receive from the Inanimate.....

>With Profane it seems that the division between himself and the 
>world around him is _Self V. Inanimate_.  But he is the 
>self-acknowledged "Yo-Yo," animated by another's volition.  He may 
>be projecting his own powerlessness onto the world around him, 
>hoping to retain the illusion of his own volition.

Of course, as David remarks, Benny is perhaps *too* subject to the 
will of others; perhaps this is why he is portrayed as a "schlemihl" 
and not some humanist hero. I think the idea of "illusion of 
volition" is important in all Pynchon's works, a component in the 
construction of his infamous Paranoias.

"V." presents a spectrum of people along the road to succumbing to 
Inanimation; even the montage of "tertiary" characters in Chapter 3 
can be easily grouped inside a complex field which has several 
factors, including colonial exploitation, religion, philosophy, and 
position in a hierarchy of servitude.

If the schlemihl is at the preterite bottom of this pyramid (an 
inverted V?), what is at the top? What is the logical extension of 
Rachel's auto-erotic fixation and various characters identifying with 
the Inanimate?  What lies behind the Inanimate? Is it truly the 
God/Allah of "V."? Which would be a distant, cold, and fairly 
unconnected Deity, if you listen to the characters and not the Divine 
PR campaign known as religion. Is God the summation of the Inanimate, 
which is to almost say an uncaring, unfeeling, blind Universe? And if 
that is so, how can we humans react against this? How can we even 
show contempt? By pissing (a very "animal" response heavy with 
obvious symbolism) on symbols of this vast, mechanical power such as 
the sun or the desert? It may be useful to recall that Roger Mexico 
also expressed his human contempt at the Inanimate by pissing all 
over Their dinner....

This leads me to wonder about the universe of "V." in a Qabbalistic 
sense. (I am about to go *way* off the deep end here. Feel free to 
ignore me; this hypothesis is shaky at best, but may nevertheless 
interest a few people.)

At one end, a blind mechanistic Inanimate God; at the other end 
Malkuth, the world, prison of the Shekinah. What seems to be missing 
is the mediating harmony of Tiphareth; the sephirah of equilibrium 
which is often symbolized as the Seal of Solomon, or a "star of 
David": An upward and downward triangle juxtaposed. (It is also 
symbolized by truncated pyramid, the rosy cross, and -- hear this, 
Mr. Profane -- the Sun!) Some mystic traditions state that this is a 
Pentecostal symbol, the downward triangle representing God flaming to 
earth, the upward of course standing for us; this nexus is the 
balance of the Tree of Life, the Christ force, the communion with the 
divine. (And of course Crowley finds it a symbol for mutual Oral Sex. 
Well, you know.) Also of interest, Tiphareth is directly on the 
vertical path between Godhead and the "fallen" world of Malkuth; with 
only Yesod, Maya, the "veil of illusion" separating the lowest 
Malkuth from the sun of Tiphareth....

V. is a book about searching, about the quest for something -- often 
represented by an almost mystical female. This quest is often subject 
to illusion, and is permeated by the sense of a loss, of the animate 
becoming inanimate. If it's a quest for completion, we must accept 
that a sense of loss is already there: the splintered vessels of 
creation and all that, a common Pynchonian/Qabbalistic theme. In my 
less lucid moments I have wondered if this quest for V. is indeed the 
quest for the missing half of Tiphareth, the flaming presence of God, 
the divine connection that animates our souls of the Malkuth and 
assures us that the Bride, the Shekinah, Sophia, whatever -- will be 
reunited, and the Universe will be healed, or completed. Our Edenic 
loss will be redeemed. It may be notable that some traditions of 
Judaic Qabalism insist that it is OUR responsibility as humans to 
bring about Tikkun, or this union with the Divine, this universal 
healing. We accomplish this by our actions, by love, mercy, and 
understanding....

--Quail
-- 
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The Great Quail, Keeper of the Libyrinth:
http://www.TheModernWord.com

Do you want to see what human eyes have never seen? Look at the moon.
Do you want to hear what ears have never heard? Listen to the bird's cry.
Do you want to touch what hands have never touched? Touch the earth.
Verily I say that God is about to create the world.
       --J.L. Borges