NP Dante's Wind & Betrayal

[Terrance]

>From Dante's perspective, crimes of passion or desire are the least
abhorrent and consequently deserve minimal punishment in comparison to
what he believes are the more serious offenses. These sinners, the
carnal, the gluttonous, the hoarders and wasters, along with the
wrathful and sullen fall just below the virtuous pagans in Dante's hell.
In some way, they represent a loss of self control, of reason gone
amiss, as each plunges into a personal world of self indulgence. To
Dante, those that succumb to the pleasures of the 'will' deserve 
an eternity less painful than those who fall into emotional or
psychological despair. Yet, like the sins that constitute placement
deeper in the bowels of Hell, all
represent a punishment equal to or reflective of the sin as it existed
in life. For example, the carnal are banished to an eternity of being
whirled about by the wind (Dante) forever lusting after what they sought
in life. They reach for shadows that were once the bodies they desired.
However, in Hell the only thing they feel is the passion they lost.

http://www174.pair.com/mja/say.html

AND

Something Lost & Living in the Eternal Present

http://www.shu.ac.uk/emls/si-07/simpson.htm

http://www.mailorderpharmacy.cc/peace/manu/chapt2.html

http://www.quodlibet.net/altany-sacred.shtml

http://www.catholic.net/rcc/Periodicals/Faith/00MarApr/history.html

Questions: 

Is Maskelyne insane?  

How about the half-way-to-a-Hindoo Mr. Dixon? 

R tells Mason, "Look to the Earth. Belonging to her as I do, I know she
lives, and that here upon this volcano in the sea, close to the Forces
within, even you, Mopey, may learn of her, Tellurick Secrets you could
never guess." Is this living earth thing serious or is this just
something that has been showing up in Pynchon books since the short
stories? 

Maskelyne tells Mason  about the living earth too. 

Wicks writes a sermon about it.  

Dixon tries to teach Mason to sit still. 


There are poems by a Mr. Eliot about all this. Wonder if P read them? 

 But Mason is a restless soul. He can no more stand to sit in silence
than resist the wind. The wind, may, perhaps, in the future maybe, carry
his restless thoughts
and the words he dares not speak to ears he can't even imagine. Perhaps
the wind will carry conversations he might have had as  Dreams he could
have written down if he were keeping a journal of his dreams and if he
could (unlike Mondaugan at the end of his tale in V. perhaps) understand
the indigenous languages he was speaking and hearing while he slept. Of
course, if Mason is sharing the data of his dreams with Dixon, following
the practice of the dream people, well, his sleep and his dreams are not
on the Other Side or anything other than what passes for scientific
reality in the age of reason. 

What has become of poor Mr. Mason? Well, he lost his dear Rebekah for
starters. What else has he lost? Or what else has Wicks, perhaps only
for  moral and didactic purposes, for fictional ones-- spiritual and
gothic, added and subtracted from his passing?   

How wonderful is the marriage of Dixon and Mason. Ironic Repose. Dixon,
having been booted from Raby, now tells Mason to let it go...but Mason
can't let it go...he is haunted by his betrayal of R and he is afraid to
betray her further by confessing all to Dixon. Dixon, Mason contends,
lives in the Eternal Present. Did P get that phrase from Newton of
Eliade? 

Rebekah in the Dead Forest
There is a Verger in
the dog house
in the middle of a Daydream
She Got
to hissing like a snake's mouse
She knows Telluric transcendence
She Ain't no solitary
wind dance 
way down there
I swear I's ridin
on a  wind storm
spinin on my skull
on Vulcan's dance floor 
If you step a little softly 
you goin over to the other side
then you can get a little crazy
sit in silence at the transit
return to the crossroads
tell an epic from the bar stool
while you smoke opium and dagga  
way down there
Blow wind blow - blow me away here -
Blow wind blow 


PS anyone read Patell's book on Emerson and Pynchon?