MDDM Ch. 70 Interdiction

[jbor]

on 18/8/02 10:47 PM, Terrance at lycidas2 at earthlink.net wrote:

> 
> Why **invisible** Thing? The Lambton worm is not invisible either.
> 
> Where does Dixon get the idea from? Invisible?

I think what upsets or frightens the Native Americans (or, at least, what
the narrator, or Dixon, infer) is the Visto, the absence of trees. The
"invisible Thing" is the Visto, as if it was a living entity.

    "Alas," replies the Son of the Forest, " ... your great Road through
    the Trees .... You move like wood borers inside a Post inside a great
    House .... " (677.24-28; cf. the way the party is described as
    "oddly verminous upon the pale Riband unfolding" at 683.25)

    On November 5th, two things happen,-- the Visto is completed, and the
    Indians depart,-- as if, as long as a Tree remain'd, so might they.
                                                        (681.32)

Once the Visto has been cleared it becomes an "invisible Thing", itself an
entity or spirit-being of some sort, to the Indians, I think is the point
Dixon is making.

One connection with the Lambton Worm scene is in the use of the motif of the
sum of parts making up a separate whole. The European men trekking back all
together along the Line, seen from a height and a particular point of view
(Zhang's, the Indians', posterity's ... ?), seem to turn into a giant worm
("verminous"). This is a sort of reversal or variation on the theme of the
"Worm's reported ability, even hack'd into separate pieces by conventional
sword-work, to reassemble itself and fight on." (592.18)

There is probably also a connection with Felípe the Torpedo back at Lord
Lepton's, Zhang's "Dragon or *Shan* within" (542.15), as well as those
common and/or garden dragons which John Lambton would have preferred to
slay, as well as, perhaps, with Mr Ice prompting Mason to try his hand at
catching one of the Ghost-fish, "two sets of fins each side and a Tail like
a Dragon's" (660), too.

best