V.V. (12) "But finally she released Weissmann ... "

[Judy]

Here's my take on this passage. I think Vera is an active participant in
whatever it is that's happening between her and Weissmann. She is "striking
his chest" and not fighting him off. And then, even though it is Weissmann
who is holding her by the hair and mouthing obscenities at her, she is the
one who is in control. By needing to hold her by the hair or "bind" her, he
is acknowledging her power. So then it is her who "releases him."  Also,
Mondaugen has already acknowledged her power over him so it wouldn't be a
leap to say that he sees her in the position of power.

While considering your question, I went through Thomas Moore's "Dark Eros:
The Imagination of Sadism" and came across something that made me think of
the whole setting of Mondaugen's story:

"An essay on Sade by Catherine Duncan and Francois Peraldi, "Discourse of
the Erotic - The Erotic in Discourse," [Meanjin Quarterly #33: 63] focuses
on Sade's text and on the "libertinage of reading." The reader participates,
these authors say, in the scenarios Sade depicts in relation to the text.
"It's not the tight-fitting trousers, nor the body they outline that are
erotic, but the deliberate slit made in the material which eroticizes by
offering to the view (the reader) what is still half-hidden." Peraldi goes
on to describe the reading of Sade highlighting what we should understand as
the anima of the text.[:]

At the centre of the erotic scene and space assigned to the orgy...there are
secret rooms, pits, abysses, catacombs, a hole, a yawning gap, where the
ultimate rites of the erotic action are performed. From those who descend
there, few but the libertine return. In those pits is played out the
Unnameable, for this hole metaphorizes a hole in the text. Brought to the
edge of the precipice, the text can say nothing more than that there is
nothing more to say. And there, where there is nothing more to say, in the
bottomless pit where the ultimate act takes place is Death. It's around this
empty centre, this pit, this silence of the text that all erotic writing
turns...Isn't what we call eroticism this vertiginous desire to be swallowed
up, the pull-back and the attraction toward the pit, toward Death, toward
the silence of writing?"

I don't have access to the whole essay, but wouldn't mind seeing it to
follow up on the connection I'm making.


----- Original Message -----
From: jbor <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Friday, March 23, 2001 1:42 PM
Subject: V.V. (12) "But finally she released Weissmann ... "


>
>       Soon, padding down a narrow, sloping corridor, he was brought to
>     attention by a mirror hung some twenty feet ahead, angled to reflect
>     the interior of a room around the next corner. Framed for him there
>     were Vera Meroving  and her lieutenant in profile, she striking at his
>     chest with what appeared to be a small riding crop, he twisting a
>     gloved hand into her hair and talking to her all the while, so
precisely
>     that the voyeur Mindaugen could lip-read each obscenity. The geometry
of
>     the corridors somehow baffled all sound: Mondaugen, with the queer
>     excitement he'd felt watching her at the window that morning, expected
>     captions explaining it all to flash on to the mirror. But she finally
>     released Weissmann; he reached out with the curiously gloved hand and
>     closed the door, and it was as if Mondaugen had dreamed them. (238)
>
> Q. Who's zooming who here?
>
> It seems like a posed s-m image in the mirror put on just for Kurt's
> benefit: Weissmann the attacker, Vera fighting him off with the whip. But
> Pynchon very deliberately places her in the position of control: she
> "released" him, rather than vice versa, even though he was holding her
hair.
> Maybe it's part of an act which Weissmann has set up, because he is then
the
> one who closes the door on Kurt's view.
>
> Q. What is the significance, if any, of the reversals of active and
passive
> participant in that final sentence?
>
> best
>
>
>