re MDDM 35 Christ and History

[Thomas Eckhardt]

Rob wrote:

 
> It does imply a subjunctive construction, however, Wicks isn't really
> framing the event as a possibility or hypothesis at all, and the indicative
> verbs and emphatic adverbial phrase ("undeniably so") exemplify the way that
> the Rev's language is shifting the Christian *belief* in Resurrection from
> the subjunctive to the declarative, the way that the original sense of the
> subjunctive mood is being consumed or absorbed. It's an "if ... then"
> construction, like a scientific proof, a causal chain. The elision is "If
> (we accept that) it is undeniably so that He rose ... ", 

Ok, sounds quite convincing. 

> and Wicks assumes
> that everyone does accept this, and thus marginalises anyone who doesn't,
> including Ethelmer, to whom the condescending lecture is addressed, and
> whose reply certainly receives equal weight in Pynchon's text:
> 
> "Including ev'ry Crusade, Inquisition, Sectarian War, the millions of lives,
> the seas of blood," comments Ethelmer. "What happen'd? He liked it so much
> being dead that He couldn't wait to come back and share it with ev'rybody
> else?" (76.3)

This last sentence is very funny, isn't it? Ethelmer somehow reminds me
of young Stephen Dedalus.

> Wicks does not respond to this, of course. Instead, it's Ives who tells
> Ethelmer to hold his tongue, and the young man is compelled to apologise
> over his passion for human justice.

I don't think that Ives and Cherrycoke share the same attitude
towards religion and/or history. Doesn't seem to fit in with the excerpt
from Christ and History, in which Cherrycoke definitely argues in favour
of "more than one version". Neither does it seem to fit in with his
character in
general, IMHO. But for now I put this forward only as a general
impression. As far as the passage under discussion is concerned, I find
this reading plausible and interesting.
 
> I don't know. Just before the snip that Sam cited we are told how Wicks's
> expression changes, the "lambent Spark in his Eyes [is] now but silver'd,
> cold Reflection" when he addresses Ethelmer's "Despair", and reframes it as
> Christian "Hope". 

Nope, it is Ethelmer's expression that changes.

> And he rather nastily gives Ethelmer the choice between
> "Savages" who "commemorate their great Hunts with Dancing", and "good"
> Christians who "Hunt for Christ", as the two (or binary) options. No wonder
> the boy gets annoyed with him.

"As Savages commemorate their great Hunts with Dancing, so History is
the Dance of our Hunt for Christ, and how we have far'd." 

I can't see where there's a choice involved. Neither do I think that
Cherrycoke is employing a nasty rhetorical strategy here. 

The simile, come to think of it, is quite remarkable: The dancing of the
"savages" is in commemoration of a succcessful hunt, and probably also
performed in the hope that future hunts will be as succesful as the
commemorated one. We may extend this to the second part of the simile, I
think: There has been, so to speak, at least one succesful hunt for
Christ taken place before. And ever since then the "civilized" Christian
world has been dancing a dance of commemoration, or remembrance, of that
singular event and its "secular consequences", in the hope this might
bring about Christ's second coming. Cherrycoke certainly depicts history
as a teleological process in this combination of simile and metaphor.
But the strange thing about the imagery he uses to do so is that Christ
as the telos of all actions of mankind is not described as "eternal
light", "eternal life" or some such, but as history's prey. A very
strange metaphor indeed - but hardly a lame one, given the reports we
have of how Christ's last stay on earth came to an end, and all the
atrocities committed under the sign of the cross.

B-but if Cherrycoke does agree with the concept of history as a
teleological process, why does he employ such a nasty metaphor?

Thanks, 
Thomas