MDMD (10) Summary 2

[Otto]

MDMD (10) Summary 2 (96-102)

The Mason & Dixon part opens very unspecified with "Somebody somewhere in
the world" (96.21) quoting a fragment of Sappho and being immediately called
to order with the remark that this is sunrise and not sunset:

"O Hesperus, -- you bring back all that the bright day scatter'd,
-- you bring in the sheep and the goat,
-- you bring the Child back to her mother."
(96.25-27)

There are a lot of different translations but none of them seems to be the
one Pynchon has used (see special post Sappho 2).

"Hesperus" as the evening star of course is only one "aspect" of Venus and
the Sappho-fragment only shows that in ancient times people were unaware
about Hesperus and the morning star "Phosphorus" being the same celestial
body. So from his "modern" 18th century point of view the one who quotes
Sappho isn't totally wrong.

We are told that this kind of "odd behaviour" (97.1) appears everywhere
among the astronomers watching the transit. What's so odd about it?
Scientists getting emotional?
Again we are told by the narrator (97.15-21) what has been explained already
to Els, Greet and Jet (Chap. 9, 92-93) by Mason and by Cherrycoke to his
audience (95.28-34), plus the information that transits of Venus always
occur pairwise separated by a timespan of eight years and that astronomers
only get a chance to watch the transit roughly every 105-113 years:
"as if the Creation's Dark Engineer had purposedly arrange'd the Intervalls
thus, to provoke a certain Instruction, upon the limits to human grandeur
impos'd by Mortality." (97.22-24)

There is a remarkable change in the behaviour of the host families shortly
before the transit. The normally "stolid" (97.29) Boers are getting busy
while the astronomers who should be excited "seem unnaturally calm" (97.27),
"Dutch Ado about nothing" (97.28) as Mason, referencing to Shakespeare,
remarks.
http://chemicool.com/Shakespeare/much_ado/
http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=A33732
I don't want to judge if this is an "awful pun" as John Bailey wrote, but if
it is one it's one on awful people. The German translation changes this to
"Lauter fliegende Holländer" (p. 133, "Flying Dutchmen"), which isn't much
better, see:
http://www.venus-transit.de/text/MasonDixon.html

The night before the transit one of our heroes is able to find sleep, "and
one is not" (98.4), but the evidences, drops of *ketjap* and a wine-glass,
don't make clear who it was. Maybe both.

The Dutch seem to be even more friendly to their slaves, but this won't
last:
"Any fear that things might ever change is abated. Masters and Mistresses
resume the abuse of their slaves" (101.28-29), or as Mason earlier remarks:
"At least they're back to normal  over there (...) For a while, I puzzl'd,--
had the Town undergone some abrupt Conversion? Had I, without knowing it?"
(100.16-18).

Mason & Dixon are leaving the Cape early October, "when Capt. Harrold, of
the *Mercury* finds a lapse in the Weather workable enough to embark the
Astronomers, and take them to St. Helena in." (99.14-16)

Part three misses and I haven't got the time to do it, so I leave it to the
group.

Otto