VV(15) Chapter 11, pp.304-346 (2) The Confessions

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Confessions quote a lot from the journals written in his youth.  Like 
Stencil, he refers to himself in the third person.  He sees himself as an 
evolution of four personas. He is a colonized personality, traumatized by 
war.  
 
I am using J. Kerry Grant’s Companion to V. as a (somewhat) convenient guide 
to some obscure references by TRP.  He refers us to Fausto’s meticulous 
description of the physical orientation of the room in which he is writing as 
“strongly reminiscent of the opening of [Alain Robbe-Grillet’s] La Jalousie, 
while the stain on the ceiling may recall a similar stain in ‘La Chambre 
Secrête.’”  This may be a subject for some discussion.  
 
Fausto is part of the “Generation of ’37, a tiny literary movement 
consisting of the three poets Maijstral, Maratt and Dnubietna.  Pynchon’s 
mention of the trends in Maltese poetry being derivative of Shakespeare and 
T. S. Eliot appear to be quiteaccurate, according to Peter S. Inglott, who 
cites some examples of the period in “The Faustus of Malta:  Fact and Fiction 
in Pynchon’s V.” in E. Mendelson (ed.), _Pynchon, Malta and 
Wittgenstein_.39-54. Mgarr, Malta:  Malta UniversityPress, 1994.
 
Like most colonized intellectuals, Fausto I sees himself as“a new sort of 
being, a dual man,”  torn between his Maltese soul and his British intellect.
 
Dnubietna:  The name means “our sins” in Maltese
 
Elena Xemxi: Elena=Helen (Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus – “Is this the face that 
launch’d a thousand ships…?”  Xemxi means “sunny”in Maltese.
 
Auberges:  The auberges of Malta were the lodges built for the various 
different nationalities of the Knights of St. John.  Page 327,Harper’s 
Perennial Classics 1999; p. 307, Perennial Fiction Library, 1986 &J. B. 
Lippincott, 2nd edition, 1963; p. 286, Bantam.
 
Mt. Ruwenzori & the reference to “our linguistic brothers, the Bantu”:  
Ruwenzori is actually a range of mountains bordering on the Republic of the 
Congo & Uganda.  The reference to the Bantu is puzzling,because Maltese & 
Bantu do not have any philological relationship. (pp.327, 307, 287)
 
St. Giles Fair was held in the English city of Winchester from the twelfth 
through the nineteenth centuries.  (pp. 327, 307, 287)
 
“Missierna li-inti fis-smewwiet, jitqaddes ismek….”   Maltese: Our Father, 
which art in heaven…. 
 
In the frame-work of a love story, Fausto and Elena have the child, Paola.  
The mysterious bad priest advises Elena to abort the child, who is conceived 
out of wedlock.  
 
The bad priest turns out to be Vera Meroving as she is dismantled like an 
inanimate object by the war-hardened children of Malta.  She carries the 
ivory comb in her hair and bears the false eye with the tiny clock.
 
Herbert Stencil, reading the confessions, resolves reluctantly to travel to 
Valletta.
 
Critics and essayists cited by Grant point to allusions to Robbe-Grillet, 
Sartre and Wittgenstein.  Further room for discussion.
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