VV(20) - Veronica & Evan

[David Morris]

Veronica has a strong sense of "the notion of wraith or spiritual double" 
(199) which is said, maybe, to be "an inherited reservoir of primordial 
knowledge which shapes our actions and casual desires."  It is through this 
strong sense that she is able to transpose Christ onto a long line of 
surrogate husbands.  It is this perspective which also lets her see the 
Father and Son (Godlphin) as doubles and also lets her see herself and the 
Son as doubles.

Veronica’s surrogate Christ-husbands share with the doctrine of 
transubstantiation a literal taking of the metaphor from the mental into the 
physical realm.  This jump from mental construct to forced physicality is 
V.'s means to span the chasm between metaphor and reality.  This chasm is 
the heart of Fausto's Confessions.

Fausto's Confessions deal largely with his journey as a poet.  A large 
concern he must confront in the face of war's onslaught is his inherent 
escapism identified in the workings of the metaphors of poetry.  Imagination 
wants to take flight.  Survival requires the continual discipline and 
exhausting dreary of back-breaking work, with the occasional rush of 
near-death.  The luxury of imagination is thus banished.  Fausto thus 
becomes the automaton of war.  Fausto's exegesis is that of a Siege, V.'s 
stomping ground.

We have in these collective dualities a slippery matrix which a recurring 
structural characteristic of Pynchon's dialectics (feel free to elaborate or 
disagree.  That's the whole point of their slippery nature.):

Hothouse  v.  Street
The past  v.  The Future
Abstraction  v. Reality
Escapism  v.  Puritanism

At the end of _V._ a third option (from the twos above) is hinted at in the 
aspect of the paraclete, the "comforter,"  the decidedly feminine aspect of 
the Trinity.  This paraclete is Valletta, the place where time does not 
exist, where future and past, Father and Son, meld into a unity.

Here I run out of gas...

David Morris

_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com