VV(11): Soul-Transvestitism

[Dave Monroe]

"It did bring up, however, an interesting note of sexual ambiguity.  What a 
joke if at the end of this hunt he came face to face with  himself afflicted 
by a kind of soul-transvestitism.  How the Crew would laugh and laugh." (V., 
Ch. 8, Sec. iv, p. 226)

Ru Paul, anyone?  Or Geraldine (p. 218), for that matter ...

But seriously, folks ...

Tiresias, anyone?

T.S. Eliot, "The Waste-Land," Note to Line 218, "Tiresias, though blind, 
throbbing between two lives" ...

"Tiresias, although a mere spectator and not indeed a 'character,' is yet 
the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest. Just as the 
one-eyed merchant, seller of currants, melts into the Phoenician Sailor, and 
the latter is not wholly distinct from Ferdinand Prince of Naples, so all 
the women are one woman, and the two sexes meet in Tiresias. What Tiresias 
sees, in fact, is the substance of the poem."

http://eliotswasteland.tripod.com/

http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html

"Tiresias, although a mere spectator ..."

"Stencil fell outside the pattern.  Civil servant without rating, 
architect-by-necessity of intrigues and breathings-together, he should have 
been, like his father, inclined toward action.  But spent his days instead 
at a certain vegetation ..." (p. 225)

"... and not indeed a 'character' ..."

"he was quite purely He Who Looks for V. (and whatever impersonations that 
might involve)" (p. 226)

"... so all the women are one woman ..."

"To go along assuming that Victoria the girl tourist and Veronica the sewer 
rat were one in the same V. ..." (p. 226)

"... and the two sexes meet in Tiresias ..."

"What a joke if at the end of this hunt he came face to face with  himself 
afflicted by a kind of soul-transvestitism" (p. 226)

"What Tiresias sees, in fact, is the substance of the poem."

"this grand Gothic pile of inferences" (p. 226)

"the ultimate shape of his V.-structure" (ibid.)

"the inevitable looped trail" (ibid.)

"The whole passage from Ovid is of great anthropological interest," Eliot 
writes, but I'll just mention Ovid, Metamorphoses, IV, 316-38 and leave it 
at that.   But note as well Herbert Stencil's similarities to the indecisive 
crooner of certain Love Song ...

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"

[...]

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse

[...]

No!  I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.

"he should have been, like his Father, inclined toward action.  But he spent 
his days instead at a certain vegetation" (p. 225)

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/5616/prufrock.html

http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html

Paragon, parergon, argon ...


"metempsychosis" (p. 226)

... i.e., the transmigration of souls.  A long line of Pynchonian interests 
here, from the Orphic Mysteries through the Pythagoreans an Plato (e.g., the 
Myth of Er in Book X of The Republic) and the Neoplatonists through the 
Kabbalists, but not, emphatically, through Christianity.  See ...

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10234d.htm

http://www.bartleby.com/65/tr/transmig.html

http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.11.x.html

But note also that you can't spell "metempsychosis" without "psychosis," 
cf., again, Daniel Paul Schreber, see,  e.g. ...

Dugdale, John.  Thomas Pynchon: Allusive
   Parables of Power.  New York: St Martin's, 1990.

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