V.V. (18) V. in Love

[jbor]

----------
>From: <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
>
> 
> After Lady V takes M to her loft, we get (p.439) this
>
> If we've not already guessed, "the woman" is, again the lady
> V. of Stencil's mad time-research. No one knew her name in
> Paris. Not only was she V., however, but also V. in love.
> Herbert Stencil was willing to let the key to his conspiracy
> have a few of the human passions.

Yes. However, the chapter is not being narrated by Stencil. He "was willing
to let" her "have a few of the human passions" because that is the way the
story was told to him by Porcepic, who was a direct witness of the
relationship and events.

>> Thus, it's not a question of Stencil merely "humanising" V. It is what she
>> has told Porcepic.
>
> And does what she has told him, what we have learned about
> her, that she is "the women" and the Lady V.  humanize her?
> I say no. Stencil adds this to the narrative and it is
> Stencil that lets the key to his conspiracy have human
> passion.

The ubiquitous "we" in the chapter is not Stencil speaking. Stencil "lets"
her have human passions because he had no other choice: for the simple fact
that she *did* have human passions! By her own admission. By Porcepic's
account. This is the chapter where we find out just how "human" V. really
was, how "disappointed they all would have been" if they knew what was
actually going on at the loft in Grenelle (408.17), about "the ironic
failure her life was moving toward" (410.29). It's quite plain in the text.

>
> Yes, the simile here is just as you say and the classical
> mythology is certainly important. However, although I think
> I know my classical myths, as you explicated it with
> Derrida, it  made no sense to me at all.

You might have been more specific (or honest) about what you are actually
having the problem with. The Classical myth I offered as pertinent to
Melanie was the story of Asclepios, Apollo's son. I did not "explicate it
with Derrida", which is your straw man, but with relevant references to the
chapter in _V._, Cotterell, Graves et. al.

I subsequently made a reference to the term "pharmakon". The relevant study
is Derrida's _Dissemination_ (1972, in English 1982), where he points up the
way that the text's language in Plato's _Phaedrus_ works against its
apparent intentions. His example is Plato's use of this term, meaning both
"poison" and "cure". Plato constructs a binary opposition where speech is
valorised over writing because of its supposed capacity to disclose "true
meaning", and he uses the term "pharmakon" (denoting "poison") to refer to
writing, which distorts such "true meaning". Plato envisages the only
curative component of writing being a subsidiary and inferior one, as the
record of speech, serving as a remedy for defective memory. But the
resonance of the term's multiple and contradictory meanings foils Plato's
aspiration to pure philosophical discourse, the traces of the other are
always already there, as Derrida demonstrates.

> But the Catholicism
> makes sense. Would you like to read my take on it?

I certainly won't hold my breath. On past experience all I'm likely to see
is more insults and empty bombast.

In fact, I'd prefer not to engage with you (or *any* of your personas,
including the ones you *don't* admit to) at all. Given a choice, that is.

>
> Not of Pynchon's work or his world view. Religion in his
> fiction.

Pynchon's work includes his fiction. Obviously. Totalising structures are
resisted therein.

best