MDDM Chapter 45: Angels (p.451)

[jbor]

Otto's original post raised some good issues about the text. It seems a
shame that the points he made are, yet again, being hijacked.

I think that Wicks is making up tales about Angels here to try to dupe young
Nathe. The existence of the miraculous duck has certainly taken the wind out
of Wicks's sails, and so he needs to find some way to take over the
discussion again in order to nullify "the Duck's Influence in the Camp" and
make the Christianity that he's preaching seem more interesting to the men.
I like the way that Dixon gets annoyed with Wicks's condescension towards
the two Axmen, sternly posing the question about sin at 451.17. Wicks's
overly defensive response, again, doesn't engage at all with the topic
(angels sinning, the duck) or the implicit criticism of his rhetorical
tactics that Dixon is making.

Brian McHale has a good chapter on Angelology (or something like that) in
one of his books on postmodernism - the second one, _Constructing
Postmodernism_, I think.

best



> on 8/4/02 5:36 AM, Otto at o.sell at telda.net wrote:
> 
>> Young Nathe McClean, who has fallen in love for a milkmaid and seems to
>> think 'God must have sent me an Angel', a very popular phrase in popular
>> music by the way, asks RC at the end of the chapter:
>> 
>> "tho' we know the Duck has been transform'd by Love, what of the Angels,--
>> that is, may they...um..."
>> "Aye, they do that, Lad, and they drink and smoke, and dance and gamble
>> withal. That ev'ryone knew that." (451.5-8)
>> 
>> No, this was new to me and I dare to question if it's official Christian
>> doctrine, or:
>> 
>> "Some might even define an Angel as a Being who's powerful enough not to be
>> destroy'd by Desire in all its true and terrible Dimensions. Why,-- a drop
>> of their Porter? 'twould kill the hardiest drinker among ye,-- they smoke
>> Substances whose most distant Scent would asphyxiate us, (...)" (451.8-12)
>> 
>> "true and terrible Dimensions" reminds me of the Rilke-quote, the opening of
>> the First Elegy quoted in one of the earliest GR-reviews:
>> 
>> "Who, if I screamed, would hear me among the angelic orders?
>> And even if one of them suddenly pressed me against his heart,
>> I would fade in the strength of his stronger existence.
>> For Beauty is nothing but the beginning of Terror
>> that we're still just able to bear, and why we adore it
>> is because it serenely disdains to destroy us."
>> (R. M. Rilke, Duino Elegies)
>> http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-rainbow.html
>> 
>> Not merely a reference too but somehow elaborated, twitched, set contrary to
>> sins "up there", where they are, as we learn, no sins at all:
>> 
>> "And who's to say that Human sin, down here, may not arise from this very
>> inadequacy of ours, this failure of Scale, before the sovereign commands of
>> Desire,--" (451.15-17)
>> 
>> What kind of view of "Sin" is this?
>> 
>> Otto
>> 
>> 
>>