VV(13): Enters Weismann

[Dave Monroe]

"D'Annunzio, therefore, intensifies the idea of
feminine superiority: woman represents the active
principle not only in giving pleasure, but also in the
ruling of the world.  The female is aggressive, the
male vacillating." 

Mario Praz, The Romantic Agony, 2nd ed., trans. Angus
Davidson (NY: Oxford UP, 1951 [1933]), Ch. IV, "La
Belle Dame Sans Merci," p. 264 ...

--- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
> 
> ----------
> >From: Michel Ryckx <michel.ryckx at freebel.net>
> 
> > 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)
> 
> Imo Foppl is way more creepy than Weissmann, and so
> is V herself. (Even
> Hedwig Vogelasang is quite creepy.)

Definitely ...
 
> I'd say that Weissmann is more like
> comic relief in _V._.

"The knob turned, the door opened and Weissmann,
draped in an ankle-length white dress with ruffled
neck, bodice and sleeves, circa 1904, tiptoed into the
room ...

"To which the intruder Weissmann, out of sight, added
still another, in falsetto, to a minor-keyed
Charleston ..."

"The transvestite lieutenant had parted his hair in
the middle and larded his eyelashes with mascara ..."
(V., Ch. 9, sec. iii, pp. 260-1)
 
> 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.

Does a "persona," "exempt the real person behind the
mask from taking responsibility for [his/her] words
and actions," or is it taken as providng such an
exemption?  And by whom?  Under what circumstances? 
To what degree?  And so forth.  These are asked, by
the way, as rhetorical questions, but they are
certainly worth attempting to anser in any given
situation ...


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