V.V.(9) Vheissu

[jbor]

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>From: "Otto Sell" <o.sell at telda.net>
>

> The way it is reached (168) and what Godolphin tells Victoria about it fits
> very much to 19th-century romantic and idealized ideas about "The East"
> (170), Rice-Burroughs or Rider Haggard, where you can escape from the
> establishment (156), looking for the "Black Venus" and let down your pants
> (170-71). Of course, as Michael wrote, Joseph Conrad is someone we think of
> too because he was one of those who was *not* romanticizing the way
> Europeans lived out their "Heart of Darkness" but saw (and told) what
> colonialism really was about.

Of course, Conrad's narrator, Marlow ( ... and thus Conrad?) holds on to
that same imperialist presumption that European = "civilised" while African
= "primitive". The jungle and its natives are a darkness for Charlie --
"monstrous and unearthly, inscrutable" -- their civilisation is a phenomenon
which he cannot understand and which he does not even attempt to recognise
or describe in terms of a legitimate society or culture.

The (arrogant) falsity of the binary opposition (i.e. civilised v.
primitive) is what is revealed in Vheissu to Pynchon's narrator, Godolphin
(and thus to us by Pynchon? ... and perhaps it is something which poor mad
old Kurtz saw as well, that undisclosed "horror" -- though Charlie never
makes the connection ... does Conrad?), and this is precisely what he is so
distressed by. The Vheissuvians are in fact always *one step ahead* of
Godolphin (and "Western civilisation"), culturally, intellectually, in their
relationship to the environment et. al., and this is what is so terrifying
to old Hugh.

Just as Pynchon's aesthetic is postmodern his ethics are distinctly
postcolonial -- there is a marked difference to Conrad on both counts imo.

I actually like Heikki R's connection of the name with

> the Lappish, or better, Sami word 'viessu', 'mountain
> hospice'

that Michael quoted in his original notes on this section. It is certainly
located in a mountainous region, and it was explicitly a recuperative
experience which Hugh sought when he signed on for the Vheissu expedition.
The way that the narrative recount of the expedition is framed in the text I
think that it's impossible to read the description of Vheissu except in the
context of what happened in Khartoum, what Godolphin witnessed there.

best