MDDM Ch. 62 Stig

[Terrance]

Doug Millison wrote:
> 
> >612.6-13 "In the Royal Library in Copenhagen lies an ancient Vellum
> >Manuscript, a gift from Bishop Brynjolf to Frederick the Third,
> >containing Tales of the first Northmen in America, of those long Winters
> >and the
> >dread Miracles that must come to pass before Spring....
> 
> Stig continues (attributed):  "the melancholy suggestion, that the 'new'
> Continent Europeans found, had been long attended, from its own ancient
> Days, by murder, slavery, and the poor fragments of a Magic irreparably
> broken."
> 
> I have  heard  this passage interpreted to mean that some pre-existing
> stain or taint has pre-disposed the land to murder and slavery -- something
> about the place itself was going to cause those horrors no matter who lived
> there. Rereading it now it seems to suggest that the murder and slavery
> were brought by "the first Northmen" and the "Magic irreparably broken"
> would be that of the original spirit of the land itself, or perhaps its
> indigenous inhabitants.  Stig as some sort of "Jacobite" might be worthy of
> our sympathy for the Pynchonian underdog pursuing a lost cause and victims
> of "imperialism" as jbor observes, but Pynchon also seems to suggest that
> Stig may be descended from those who brought murder and slavery to America,
> who broke the native magic -- if so, Pynchon has created another fine
> ambiguity here, undercutting reader expectations left and right.


If so...but this isn't how I read it at all. Now, how do I read it? 
Since you responded with a nice post I will too. But now I have to swim
a mile and see my little one off to Cali. 

> 
> Terrance (attributed):
> >seems that we can't know exactly or
> >definitively, it would amount to reading whip scars or reefers in GR
> 
> Yes, something like that.

Of course I failed to provide the textual support, but you know I have
it. 
I'll be back, 

T