MDDM Ch. 70 Higher Assembly

[Dave Monroe]

Talk about yr strange bedfellows ...

--- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
>
> I read "verminous" as the adjective from vermin
> also, referring to the men.
> The "Riband" is the Visto, isn't it?

"Here are the last Cadre, out in the uniterrupted
Visto,-- from a certain Height, oddly verminous upon
the pale Riband unfolding,--" (M&D, Ch. 70, p. 683)

I now see your and Doug's point here, "Cadre" "upon
the pale Riband," "Riband" = ribbon = "Visto," okay,
very good.  Haste making waste here as I rush to get
what little I've managed posted as quickly as
possible.  Still, that "verminous" (=, er, wormy)
nonetheless invokes "Lambton Worm," and even more
strongly now referring to that "Cadre," i.e. ...

"'... this great invisible Thing that comes crawling
Straight over their Lands, devouring all in its Path.'
   "'Well! of course it's a living creature, 'tis all
of us, temporarily collected into an Entity, whose
Labors none could do alone.'
   "'A tree-slaughtering Animal, with no purpose but
to continue creating forever a perfect Corridor over
the Land.  Its teeth of Steel,-- its Jaws, Axmen,--
its Life's Blood, Disbursement.  And what of its
intentions, beyond killing ev'rything due west of it?
do you know? I don't either.'" (M&D, Ch. 70, p. 678)

Cf. ...

"Everything in the area, including the vegetation,
stop what they're doing, and attend.  The Worm seems
quite hungry.

[...]

"Around it, a circle of Devastation appears, pale and
soil'd, which no one enters, and which the World must
keep shifting for, a little at a time, as it goes on
widening,--  the Worm each day venturing a little
further from its base, till at length the circle of
terror advances to include a direct view [cf. Visto]
of the Battlements of Lambton Castle itself ..." (M&D,
Ch. 60, p. 589)

Very good.  Line vs. circle.  And cf. as well ...

William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming" (1927)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity....

http://home.europa.com/~villon/SecondComing.html

http://people.cornell.edu/pages/mcw28/poems.htm#second%20coming

Main Entry: gyre 
Pronunciation: 'jI(-&)r
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin gyrus, from Greek gyros
Date: 1566
: a circular or spiral motion or form; especially : a
giant circular oceanic surface current

Main Entry: gyre
Function: intransitive verb
Inflected Form(s): gyred; gyr·ing
Etymology: Late Latin gyrare, from Latin gyrus
Date: 1593
: to move in a circle or spiral

http://m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary

Wallace Stevens, "Anecdote of the Jar" (1923)

I placed a jar in Tennessee, 
And round it was, upon a hill. 
It made the slovenly wilderness 
Surround that hill. 

The wilderness rose up to it, 
And sprawled around, no longer wild. 
The jar was round upon the ground 
And tall and of a port in air. 

It took dominion every where. 
The jar was gray and bare. 
It did not give of bird or bush, 
Like nothing else in Tennessee. 

http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/stevens-ancedote.html

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/stevens/jar.htm

> The interesting thing is that, circa 1767, there is
> nothing of human invention that would get one to a
> height where a group of men look like rats or
> insects ...

Or worms ...  
 
> ... and the Visto like a ribbon. Anachronism?
> Jesuit balloons? Transcendental flight à la Dixon
> and Emerson? God, or gods? Or is it that cosmic
> eye view again ... "the magick of Celestial
> Trigonometry" (96.7)?

Only a vantage point, and not necessarily a viewer, or
a means for him/her to reach said point, simply, "from
a certain Height."  This I vaguely recall as an
unnerving but not uncommon narrative sleight-of-hand
(or, at least, eye) in those Pynchonian texts, moments
which I suspect are deployed precisely in order to
Make some Point (e.g., "Cadre" = "verminous" = "Worm"
= ...?) ...

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