VV(13): Enters Weismann

[Karen Hudes]

Vera Meroving's name is mirror-like, close to a palindrome before the "ing,"
and with a suggestion of the word "mirror." Her name suggests a moving,
roving "v" that might pass through surfaces or reflections. 

Mondaugen's story also feels like something we're passing through to get to
the other side of V., with Eigenvalue's interruption almost at the book's
center.

The mirrors in the story have a yo-yo-like quality of bouncing one's vision
back to oneself.

----------
>From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
>To: Michel Ryckx <michel.ryckx at freebel.net>
>Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: VV(13): Enters Weismann
>Date: Mon, Apr 9, 2001, 5:54 PM
>

>
>      Soon, padding down a narrow, sloping corridor, he was brought to
>    attention by a mirror hung some twenty feet ahead, angled to reflect
>    the interior of a room around the next corner. Framed for him there
>    were Vera Meroving  and her lieutenant in profile, she striking at his
>    chest with what appeared to be a small riding crop, he twisting a
>    gloved hand into her hair and talking to her all the while, so precisely
>    that the voyeur Mindaugen could lip-read each obscenity. The geometry of
>    the corridors somehow baffled all sound: Mondaugen, with the queer
>    excitement he'd felt watching her at the window that morning, expected
>    captions explaining it all to flash on to the mirror. But she finally
>    released Weissmann; he reached out with the curiously gloved hand and
>    closed the door, and it was as if Mondaugen had dreamed them. (238)
>
>In this earlier scene when Kurt is watching them in the mirror Pynchon very
>deliberately places Vera in the position of control: she "released"
>Weissmann, rather than vice versa, and even though he is holding her by the
>hair. Maybe it's all part of an elaborate act which Weissmann has set up for
>Kurt's voyeuristic benefit, because Weissmann is then the one who closes the
>door on Kurt's view, but then again maybe it's not. The ambiguity is
>deliberate imo.
>
>best
>
>
>----------
>>From: Michel Ryckx <michel.ryckx at freebel.net>
>
>
>> 236.20 Vera Meroving, presented like an Amazone: 'jodhpurs and
>> army-shirt, smoking'.  In the background 'cries of pain lanced...'
>> (236.22).  Mondaugen notices her hands trembling (237.13)  A few moments
>> later, ...'Weissmann appeared in mufti from behind an
>> unwholesome-looking palm and pulled her by the hand, back into the
>> depths of the house'. (237.18-20)
>>
>> Note he 'pulled', and not 'took'.
>> 'From behind': was he watching them?
>>
>> That is the way Weissmann is introduced: in the middle of or just after
>> cries of pain, a woman trembling, she not knowing what it was like
>> outside
>> (237.12).
>>
>> 238.  Mondaugen sees the both of them through a mirror.  She, 'striking
>> at his chest with what appeared a riding crop' (238.4-5), he talking so
>> that 'the voyeur Mondaugen could lip-read each obscenity' (238.7).
>>
>> And why is Weissmann's hand 'curiously gloved'  (238.12)?
>>
>> Enters Weissmann amidst terror and pain.
>>
>> Michel.
>