VV(18): "Tourists"

[David Morris]

Thanks David.

This text is the perfect accompaniment to this chapter and the Tourist 
theme.  Continual movement hastened by dissatisfaction with the present and 
a need to be entertained by the sights of the next location are at the heart 
of the Tourist world of V.  The concept of Time is also thus evoked by the 
need for the next thing.  This is why when V. falls in love she leaves the 
realm of Tourism "now suddenly found herself excommunicated: bounced 
unceremoniously into the null-time of human love"

V. has found contentment, and thus has lost her need to move on and her 
perception of Time.  "His description of them is a well-composed and ageless 
still-life of love at one of its many extremes."  This description is apt.  
For V. Time has stood still.  The present is enough.

David Morris

>From: Dave Monroe
>
>"This is a curious country, populated only by a breed called 'tourists.'  
>Its landscape is one of inanimate monuments and buildings ..." (V., Ch, 14, 
>Sec. ii, p.408)
>
>From Charles Baudelaire, "Anywhere out of this world"
>
>"It seems to me that I would alawys be better off where I am not, and this 
>question of moving is one I discuss incessantly with my soul ...
>[...]
>"Not a word.  My soul, could it be dead? "'Have you then come to the point 
>of such torpor, paralysis, that you are not happy except in your pain?  If 
>so, let us flee towards countries that are analogous to Death.  [...]
>    "Finally, my soul explodes, and wisely cries to me: 'Anywhere!  
>Anywhere!  Only let it be out of this world."
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