VV(12): Her Left Eye

[Terrance]

David Morris wrote:
> 
> >From: Terrance
> >
> >Is this a Christian parable?
> >
> >I don't think so
> 
> Neither do I.
> 
> >but what does Mircea Eliade say about ritual nudity? Slothrop? Not
> >christian is it?
> 
> How does this question have any application or meaning in the present
> discussion if we're not dealing with a Christian parable?

We are not dealing with a Christian parable. Why not? What
are we dealing with? 

An anti-parable perhaps? 

At the end of Mondaugen's Story we get the answer. 

A Herero child named Sarah. She brings something into focus,
his perverse lust,  she is perhaps one reason "why he headed
inland to try to regain a little of the luxury and abundance
that had vanished (he feared) with von Trotha." 

Sarah is an interesting name. 

In the Old Testament she was originally named Sarai, but she
was given the new name
Sarah, meaning princess, directly by God, after she had
married Abraham. She became the mother of Isaac, and through
Isaac the grandmother of Jacob,
who God renamed Israel. Sarah is therefore one of the
ancestors of all of the Israelites, and of Jesus Christ. In
God's Own Words: 

"As for Sarai your wife, you are no longer to call her
Sarai. Her name will be Sarah. I will bless her and
will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so
that she will be the mother of nations. Kings of
peoples will come from her." (Genesis 17:15-16)

So Sarah, and I won't link the Catholic Encyclopedia or The
City Of God, but if you are 
not offended by all things christian, you can check it out,
is another name linking the women of Old and New Testament
(Eve, Sarah, Mary, Esther....) to the Herero.  

To make certain that we get the connection we get the sea as
pavement, "as for our Redeemer." This is an ironic allusion
to the New Testament, Mark and Matthew, where Jesus walk on 
da water, yes faith tell that it true, but Peter, the rock
sinks. No faith! Lots of parables in Matthew and Mark too,
can't remember but I think P alludes to these parables in
his short stories quite often. 

And Jesus walked upon the Sea, Peter the Rock is given two
massy keys of metals twain, the golden opes the iron shuts
amain--Isaiah. 

And we get the women pinned under the rail. Now, P' source
is an actual account, but I can't help but think that he has
his bible on the desk here as well. Anyway, the squall, cold
as Antarctica, came rushing across the water...north...
Congo...Bight of Benin...reflex...the rock...whatever it had
meant, was over. 

And he makes her kneel and steps on her neck, pushes her
under the sea and lets her up before she drowns,  and he
baptizes her. The sea was present before the earth, as in
Genesis 1, 2, "darkness was upon the the face of the deep.
And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."
Kinda like Jesus on the sea. Water is "fons et origo,"
"spring and origin," the reservoir of all possible things,
it precedes and supports all life, even stones, everything
in the creation. This is not christian, this is religion. In
any nay event, "immersion in the sea signifies regression to
the preformal, reincorporation into the undifferentiated
mode of pre-existence--Death and Rebirth (V's big problem!).
Water brings dissolution, fragmentation, followed by
rebirth, new life, and fertilization, multiplication of
life. So the Earth too is often flooded and reborn,
baptized. But the flood, because of the rainbow or whatever
heresy you prefer, is never extinction, but is a temporary
reincorporation into the indistinct, followed by new life,
new creation, a new Person, new health, fertility. The
water, "washes away sin," it  purifies and regenerates. So
Jesus walks on the sea, but first he must be submerged in
the river Jordon. The river Jordon is the river of Death, he
is buried and reborn a new man. The river Jordon is river of
the sea monster, Jesus must defeat the sea monster, he goes
to the desert too, yes, but here the sea monster is
specifically located in the the river Jordon (see Job). So
Jesus is the new man, the second Noah, the second Moses. And
of course the second Adam. And Adam was naked in paradise.
Nakedness, be it Slothrop's or Adam's is paradisal image,
the absence of garments is the absence of attrition, the
absence of Shame, the absence of Time. Shame? Time?
Attrition? What is this siege party for? "All ritual nudity
implies an atemporal model, a paradisal image." 

There is an essay I want to dig out, it addresses that long
sentence at the end here and I'll post more on Sarah. Is it
Hite? Damn, 

Some day my prince will come da da do de da da 
balada de da da da de do daaaaa
beeleeebadadodeedodeeedum....
 

see Mircea Eliade for the water symbolism, oh btw, the three
part universe, the heavens, earth, underworld of P's fiction
is not just an essential element in M-satire, as Braha and
others have demonstrated, it's clearly set out in The Sacred
and the Profane. as is Time and all sorts of other P things
like Centers and Zeros.