Situation

[Terrance]

Sidney Stencil, on the scene in Florence in 1899, ponders
the working of his "theory" :

Oh, The Situation. The bloody Situation. In his more
philosophical moments he would wonder about this abstract
entity The Situation, its idea, the details of its 
mechanism. He remembers times when whole embassies full of
personnel had simply run amok and gibbering in the streets
when confronted with a Situation which refused to make sense
no matter who looked at it, or from what angle. He had
decided long ago that no Situation had any objective
reality: it only existed in the
minds of those who happened to be in on it at any specific
moment. Since these
several minds tended to form a sum total or complex more
mongrel than homogeneous, The Situation must necessarily
appear to a single observer much like a diagram in four
dimensions in only three. Hence the success or failure of
any diplomatic issue must vary directly with the degree of
rapport achieved by the team confronting it. This had led to
the near obsession with teamwork which had inspired his
colleagues to dub him Soft-shoe Sidney, on the assumption
that he was at his best in front of a chorus line. But it
was a neat theory, and he was in love with it.

The only consolation that he drew from the present chaos was
that his theory managed to explain it. 

Sidney creates a structure that imposes order on otherwise
exasperatingly random events. 

How else can one respond? 

Of course the catch is that it is not "real " and only
permits private meanings and interpretations. 

Herbet's desire to discover what V. is "as his legacy from
his father" leads him to make connections that Eigenvalue 
suspects may be spurious.

Stencil, then, highlights the two problems we have been
discussing here: 

1.  the problems inherent in discerning reality.

2.  the problems inherent in  interpreting reality. 

As the "century's child" Herbert Stencil embodies a search
for meaning and identity which is tangentially diverted from
its final goal by fear of actually reaching that goal.

His father was in love with his own theory (Mother--Birth.
ReBirth), it made sense of chaos (Death). 

Stencil is in love with his Father's theory, but as the
"centuries child" (Adams) he is in love with chaos,  the
Situation, his own Death and quest for history.  

Though Stencil is ostensibly seeking V. and knowledge of how
his father died, he finds neither and leaves Malta without
gaining the insight the experience might have offered him.

Sidney, his death,  felt "like a sacrificial virgin." He
dies at sea, the element of Astarte, Aphrodite, and Venus.

Stencil's search is motivated by information about V.
contained in Sidney's diary--text. 

Florence, 1899: 

"There is more behind and inside V. than any of us has
suspected. Not who, but  what she is." 

This  change from "who" (Mother and Virgin) to "what"
parallels V.'s change from human to non human and mechanical
(Dynamo). 

Herbert is a motherless child. 

V. may very well be his mother, a fact he never tries to
ascertain.

As his mother she would have brought him into the world and
given him what only a Mother can give...what Herbert
lacks...purpose...meaning...love...

In searching for V., Stencil finds some kind of purpose
guides his life:

Finding her: what then? only that the love there was to
Stencil had become directed entirely inward, toward this
acquired sense
of animateness. Having found this he could hardly release
it, it was too dear. To sustain it he  had to
hunt V.; but if he should find her, where else would there
be to go but back into half consciousness? He tried not to
think, therefore, about any end to the search. Approach and
avoid. 

Ironically, Stencil's "sense of animateness," Mother, is
supported by the search for inanimateness and Death.

So, although he may acquire some knowledge of V., he cannot
arrive at certain and complete knowledge because it would be
his annihilation.

Stencil becomes the extension of his overactive imagination
nurtured by a desire for identity. He cannot establish his
identity in his own right and therefore becomes "He Who
Looks For V." 

We read his sorting out the splitting of his personality in
episodes: his search based on imaginative embellishments of
the few parts of self and knowledge he has of Self--V. and
his Father's text. 

If the coincidences are real then Stencil has never
encountered history at all, but something more appalling. 

The Vheissu plot is not clearly described. 

It is a  rather vague episode and seems to  suggests that
events are opaque and cannot be understood fully. History
appears to be  as Vheissu and the "Birth of
Venus," gaudy surfaces covering nothing. 

See St. Giles. 

Riddled Chains of DNA and History, Chance, Coincidence,
Chaos...

Is there in history, in Evolution perhaps, some process
inevitable, something/someone mischievous behind the
curtain, in the folds, under the surface, something
Natural or unNatural--SuperNatural beneath Natural
Selection? 

Sir Ronald Fisher said, "Natural selection is a mechanism
for generating an exceedingly high degree of
improbability." 

What coincidence, what chaos, what chance. 

Fragmented texts, records, fossilizations, stencilizations.
And how do we with history, with story, with investigation,
with classification, discern the difference between mere
coincidence and important causation, test the hypothesis of
cause and effect? 

>From Chaucer's Parliament of Foules we read: 

For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne's day 
Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate.