MDMD & M-D & Grief and Insanity

[Jasper Fidget]

Ah, a beautiful passage!--and the first in many posts that makes sense to
me.  There is more persuasion in the diction of Melville than in all the
yammering of---never mind.  Thank you.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Terrance" <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2001 4:19 PM
Subject: Re: MDMD & M-D & Grief and Insanity


> Melville was born on Pearl street, but a few blocks from
> what is now being called "Ground Zero."
>
> ...but there is a woe that is madness.
>
>  Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never
> dream with
> thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass;
> accept the
> first hint of the hitching tiller; believe not the
> artificial fire,
> when its redness makes all things look ghastly. To-morrow,
> in the
> natural sun, the skies will be bright; those who glared like
> devils in
> the forking flames, the morn will show in far other, at
> least gentler,
> relief; the glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true lamp-
> all others
> but liars!
>   Nevertheless the sun hides not Virginia's Dismal Swamp,
> nor Rome's
> accursed Campagna, nor wide Sahara, nor all the millions of
> miles of
> deserts and of griefs beneath the moon. The sun hides not
> the ocean,
> which is the dark side of this earth, and which is two
> thirds of
> this earth. So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of
> joy than
> sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true- not true, or
> undeveloped. With books the same. The truest of all men was
> the Man of
> Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon's, and
> Ecclesiastes is
> the fine hammered steel of woe. "All is vanity." ALL. This
> wilful
> world hath not got hold of unchristian Solomon's wisdom yet.
> But he
> who dodges hospitals and jails, and walks fast crossing
> graveyards,
> and would rather talk of operas than hell; calls Cowper,
> Young,
> Pascal, Rousseau, poor devils all of sick men; and
> throughout a
> care-free lifetime swears by Rabelais as passing wise, and
> therefore
> jolly;- not that man is fitted to sit down on tomb-stones,
> and break
> the green damp mould with unfathomably wondrous Solomon.
>   But even Solomon, he says, "the man that wandereth out of
> the way of
> understanding shall remain" (i.e. even while living) "in the
> congregation of the dead." Give not thyself up, then, to
> fire, lest it
> invert thee, deaden thee; as for the time it did me. There
> is a wisdom
> that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there
> is a
> Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into
> the
> blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become
> invisible in
> the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the
> gorge, that
> gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop
> the
> mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the
> plain, even
> though they soar.
>