MDMD2: Metempsychosis

[Dave Monroe]

"'Isn't it worth looking ridiculous, at least to
investigate this English Dog, for its obvious bearing
upon metempsychosis if nought else,--'" (M&D, Ch. 3,
p. 19)

>From Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (Ed.
Holbrook Jackson.  New York: NYRB Books, 2001 [1621]),
Pt. 1, sec. 1, Mem. 2, Subs. 9, "Of the Rational
Soul," pp. 162-5 ...

   "In the precedent subsections I have anatomized
those inferior faculties of the soul; the rational
remaineth, 'a pleasant, but a doubtful subject' (as
one [Velcurio] terms it), and with the like brevity to
be discussed.  Many erroneous opinions are about the
essence and the original of it ....  The Pythagoreans
defend metempsychosis and palingensia, that souls go
from one body to another, epota prius Lethes unda
[after a draught of the waters of Lethe], as men into
wolves, bears, dogs, hogs, as they were inclined in
their lives, or participated in conditions ....
   "... Plato in Timaeo, and in his Phaedo (for aught
I can perceive), differs not much from this opinion,
that it was from God at first, and knew all, but being
enclosed in the body, it forgets, and learns anew,
which he calls reminiscentia [anamnesis], or
recalling, and that it was put into the body for a
punishment; and thence it goes into a beast's, or
man's, a appears by his pleasant fiction de sortitione
animarum [of the allotment of souls], lib. 10 de Rep.,
and after ten thousand years is to return into the
former body again...." (pp. 162-3)

See, that is, as well, Plato's Timaeus, Phaedo and
Book X of The Republic ...

http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html

http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedo.html

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

Does this, by the way, shed some light on why ...

"With no appetite for the giant Mutton Chop cooling in
front of him, Mason mopihly now wraps it and stows it
in his Coat [...] 'for the Learned Dog, rather,--
like, I don't know, perhaps a Bouquet sent to an
actress one admires" (M&D, Ch. 3, p. 19)

And why Dixon, at first responding ("a beat late") ...

"Practices vary, and one Man certainly my not comment
upon--" (ibid.)

Now realizes ...

"There is something else in progress,-- something
Mason cannot quite confide.  Happen he's lost someone
close? and recently enough to matter, aye,--' (p. 20)

And indeed he has ...

"Mason concludes (as he will confess months later to
Dixon) that it all has to do with Rebekah, his wife,
who died two years ago this February next.  Unable to
abandon her, Mason is nonetheless eager to be aboard a
ship, bound somwhere impossible,-- long Voyages by sea
being thought to help his condition, describ'd to him
as Hyperthrenia, or 'Excess in Mourning.'  Somehow the
Learned Dog has led him to presume there exist
safe-conduct Procedures for the realm of Death,-- that
through this dog-reveal'd Crone, he will be allow'd at
last to pass over, and find, an visit her, and come
back, his faith resurrected." (p. 25)

A la Orpheus?  And while I've yet to locate a source
for "hyperhrenia" (and have shamefully not consulted
the OED in doing so), or for "long Voyages by sea
being thought to help [t]his condition," do note
Richard Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (NY: NYRB
Books [much redundancy at either end there ...], 2001
[1621]), Pt. 2, Sec. 2, Mem. 3, on "Air Rectified"...

"... no better physic for a melancholy man than change
of air and variety of places, to travel abroad and see
fashions" (p. 67) ...

But, turning back to M&D, p. 20, with "Practices vary,
and one Man certianly may not comment upon--," What
... is Dixon saying?  See, perhaps ...

Dekkers, Midas.  Dearest Pet: On Bestiality.
   Trans. Paul Vincent.  New York: Verso, 1994.

If you want to, that is ...

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