M&D/HoD

[alfredjprufrock at club-internet.fr]

it was before they needed a pretext. before redemption. no "idea"
needed. and surely, as Cpt. Willard would say about Col. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, "there
[was] no method" either. The idea mentioned by Marlow is a pretense. In
HoD Kurtz tells Marlow: ‘Of course you must take care of the motives -
right motives - always.’(internet source, sorry...in the 3d chapter, on the
steamboat) You make your own redemption.

i don't know if this was mentioned on the list earlier and if it was
i'm sorry but the fog scene when dixon is sailing on a keel with the
geordies (243) is very reminiscent of the fog scene in HoD. i don't really know what to make of it though.
"Or is this a
particular and strong message concerning America, meant not for
[Dixon] but for someone else, that he may only have got in the way
of?" (245.9-10)

did you talk about this earlier? what did you make of it?
the  darkness here is the coal-blackened faces of the keelmen,
mistaken for indians, strikers "sentenced to the Gallows, though 'twas
later said they were transported to America" (244). are they the
ghosts Stig tells Patience about, awaiting in America? is the message
meant for Marlow, that there is no redeeming idea, that the darkness
starts at home, and that this is revealed in this scene, in showing
"some America no traveler's account as yet describ'd, because as yet
none has return'd [...]"(244-245)? This America being a projection, a
"transportation" of the ghosts of old Europe?

O> Another thing -- Stig on the Vikings:
O> "Rogues and Projectors and Fugitives, they went without pretext. No Christ,
O> no Grail, no expectation beyond Day's Turning (...)." (634.13-15)

O> Since I first read them (in German) these lines always have reminded me of
O> Conrad's Marlow, saying the exact opposite:
O> "The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those
O> who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is
O> not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the
O> idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an
O> idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea - something you can set up, and
O> bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to . . ." (HoD)
O> http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0009&msg=49394

O> Otto

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-- 
Best regards,
 alfredjprufrock                            mailto:alfredjprufrock at club-internet.fr