VV(13): Enters Weismann

[jbor]

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>From: Michel Ryckx <michel.ryckx at freebel.net>
>

> There is.  I thought to have made it clear that the atmosphere --spherics, if
you
> like-- in which Vera, upon meeting Mondaugen, is introduced, was accompanied
by
> pain at 236.22.  I did not say that Weissmann was causing pain.  But there is
pain
> 'lanced' and it is a background noise. Then, when Weissmann is coming to get
her,
> he does not do it in a gentle way, as may be expected from a 'companion'
(236.30).

Yes, everywhere Mondaugen goes in Foppl's villa there are acoustic and
residual visual hints of the torture and death which is being inflicted on
the Bondelswaartz by Foppl. It's interesting also that Weissmann is
introduced as "her companion" (236.30), and not she as his; again, he is
placed in the subordinate role (I take this to mean that she was the invited
guest, and had brought him along with her as a type of decorative
appurtenance, another part of her "costume"). And, apart from that stylised
s & m tableau between Vera and Weissmann -- which seems to have been set up
to tantalise the voyeur and where the "pain" is a mere mockery, not real at
all -- and in which the narrative (or Kurt) clearly reports that "she
finally released Weissmann" (238.11), Weissmann doesn't really seem to be
much connected with the pain or torture in the sequence at all. Most of the
time he seems to be hiding behind things or prancing around secretly in
costumes and party dresses stealing oscillograph rolls and playing the spy.

Later, when Vera tells Godolphin that "Lieutenant Weissmann and Herr Foppl
have given me my 1904" (247.9) it again seems obvious that she has been
using Weissmann to play out some of Foppl's stories. Weissmann surely hadn't
been around in 1904, so how else could he "have given" her it?

> I really can't see anything comic-like at all in the introduction of
Weissmann.  Do
> you want to say: as in comics?

No, he's more of a buffoon, or boob, as David mentioned. Kurt doesn't even
seem to be taking him seriously: "It's for receiving only, stupid", he says
at (251.28)

> As on the differences between the rather superficial appearance of Weissmann
in
> this novel, or the much more elaborate one in Gravity's Rainbow', I have no
doubts
> that they are the same persona.  But I will maintain that both their
appearances is
> accompanied by pain.  Would 'sinister' be the right word, describing them in
both
> novels?

Imo Foppl is way more creepy than Weissmann, and so is V herself. (Even
Hedwig Vogelasang is quite creepy.) I'd say that Weissmann is more like
comic relief in _V._.

And, I'd make a distinction between a "persona", which derives from the
Latin word for "mask" and which characters in a novel might adopt and
discard at will, and the actual person. In _V._, when the party guests dress
up as if it was 1904 they are putting on personas, just as when all the
inhabitants of Munich put on their Fasching masks and engage in all that
debauchery. V herself (if we accept that she is a single, continuous
identity) adopts a series of personas throughout the novel. A persona is
something which is quite separate from the real "character" or identity of
the person, and indeed, of the way an author constructs a characterisation
in a novel. A persona is a false identity, one which exempts the real person
behind the mask from taking responsibility for their words and actions.

best