SLSL: 'Low-lands' Nerissa & Hyacinth (over the hill & far away)

[Henry Secularpeturbations]

--- Paul Mackin <paul.mackin at verizon.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> Over the river and through the woods
> To grandmother's house we go.
> The horse knows the way
> To carry the sleigh
> Though the bright and drifting snow . . . .
> 
> Across the river and into the trees--supposedly the
> last words of
> General Stonewall Jackson
> 
> Also name of minor novel of Hemingway--very poorly
> receive by the
> critics in 1950 but some love it.


But Flange doesn't cross the river into the trees.
Even if he did,  his wife tells him to go "over the
hill and far away." 


Now, I guess I could connect that photograph of the
Hindenburg going up in flames to the Led Zeppelin
song, "Over The Hill And Far Away" but its the
fairy/gypsy connection that makes more sense to me.
Only problem is, young Tom messed it up. 

Literary theft, indeed. We've got Hemingway and Eliot
and so on, but it's obvious that young Tom took his
story from Washington Irving. It's obvious that he
returns to Rip in Vineland and there he gets it right.
What does he fuck up in Low-Lands? 

Here is the tale: 

http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~daniel/amlit/rvw/rvwtext.html

After Rip gets away from his wife he does go into the
woods.  

"Poor Rip was at last reduced almost to despair; and
his only alternative, to escape from the labor of the
farm and clamor of his wife, was to take gun in hand
and stroll away into the woods." 

AND 

In a long ramble of the kind on a fine autumnal day,
Rip had unconsciously scrambled to one of the
highest parts of the Kaatskill mountains. He was after
his favorite sport of squirrel shooting, and the still
solitudes had echoed and reechoed with the reports of
his gun. Panting and fatigued, he threw himself,
late in the afternoon, on a green knoll, covered with
mountain herbage, that crowned the brow of a
precipice. From an opening between the trees he could
overlook all the lower country for many a mile
of rich woodland. 

OK, now what does he see? 

He saw at a distance the lordly Hudson, far, far below
him, moving on its silent but
majestic course, with the reflection of a purple
cloud, or the sail of a lagging bark, here and there
sleeping on its glassy bosom, and at last losing
itself in the blue highlands. 

Ah! Yes, the majestic, purple, the fading away of the
MONARCHY into the blue. 

Pynchon plays around with some goofey sea stories and
Bolingbroke's tale. 

And when Rip looks in the other direction he sees, 

On the other side he looked down into a deep mountain
glen, wild, lonely, and shagged, the bottom filled
with fragments from the impending cliffs, and scarcely
lighted by the reflected rays of the setting sun.

Ah, American MOBility. 

As he was about to descend, he heard a voice from a
distance, hallooing, "Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van
Winkle!" He looked round, but could see nothing but a
crow winging its solitary flight across the
mountain. He thought his fancy must have deceived him,
and turned again to descend, when he heard
the same cry ring through the still evening air; "Rip
Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!"

On nearer approach he was still more surprised at the
singularity of the stranger's appearance. He was
a short square-built old fellow, with thick bushy
hair, and a grizzled beard. His dress was of the
antique
Dutch fashion...Passing through the ravine, they came
to a hollow, like a small amphitheatre, surrounded by
perpendicular precipices, over the brinks of which
impending trees shot their branches, so that you only
caught glimpses of the azure sky and the bright
evening cloud. ...  heir visages, too, were peculiar:
one had a large beard, broad face, and small piggish
eyes: the
face of another seemed to consist entirely of nose,
and was surmounted by a white sugar-loaf hat, set
off with a little red cock's tail. They all had
beards, of various shapes and colors. ... 




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