the skrying of lot 49: holy epileptic w o r d

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

 ~~~ oedipa's quest is perhaps of metaphysical nature. the gloomy epiphanic 
 atmosphere in combination with the central reference to pentecost makes such a 
 reading possible. in chapter five oedipa wonders whether all the clues she 
 has managed to accumulate "were only some kind of compensation. to make up for 
 her having lost the direct, epileptic Word, the cry that might abolish the  
 night" (p. 81, picador). the cap is pynchon's, and this "word" with a capital  
 at the beginning is, very probably, not simply a profane term like 'zipper' or 
 'whirlpool' yet the authentic substantial LOGOS ( -- in greek philosophy, 
 take hera's clit, the basic reasonable structure of the world) which the gospel 
 of john identifies with the works and the incarnation of jesus the christ: "in 
 the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God ... 
 and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the  
 glory as the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth" (John 1:   
 1/14). this may explain the messianic connotations of pynchon's 'the cry that  
 might abolish the night', a formulation that would sound pathetic if it was  
 meant to refer just to a profane epileptic seizure in the scientific sense. 
 note also that the attribute "direct" pynchon uses in this passage is standing 
 in contrast to the 'indirectness' of oedipa's search and the underground post  
 system she wants to decode. the motif of epilepsy is introduced in the chapter 
 before, couple of pages after the second posthorn: "she could, at this stage of 
 things, recognize signals like that, as the epileptic is said to - an odour, 
 colour, pure piercing grace note sounding his seizure. afterwards it's only  
 this signal, really dross, this secular announcement, and never what is  
 revealed during the attack, that he remembers" (p. 66). (this last statement  
 is, from a 'clinical' point of view, largely but not quite correct: in case of 
 so called 'focal seizures', that thunderstorm only some parts of the brain, the 
 'aura' immediately turns into the attack itself; during this process there's  
 usually some consciousness left and - i tell you this for sure! - one can  
 experience full size vision with purgatory, angels and all ...) in a certain  
 sense, epilepsy works in this text of pynchon, somehow like paranoia, as a holy 
 dis-ease ("hiera nosos") that is potentially enabling the sufferer to get 
 intoxicated by the LOGOS and, thus, take a look behind the curtain. in this 
 function epilepsy also appears in dostojewski's "idiot" [1868/9]: the 
 beginning of the spasm sometimes brings a moment where the mind of the seeker 
 is inflamed by divine light and this gives him, and then also the russian 
 people in general, the power to resist western capitalism. in some of the notes 
 relating to the novel dostojewski calls myskin the duke of christ ... a-and 
 doesn't describe chapter 2 of "the acts of the apostles" the whitsun outpouring 
 of the holy ghost as kinda collective epileptic seizure? "and when the day of 
 pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place./ and 
 suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of rushing mighty wind, and it 
 filled all the house where they were sitting./ and there appeared unto them 
 cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them./ and they were 
 all filled with the holy ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the 
 spirit gave them utterance". in voodoo they call this being ridden by the 
 spirit. note that the (necessarily a-social) speaking in tongues in embedded  
 in the christian community context under one and the same roof ('all with one  
 accord in one place'). and so the individual freedom through direct contact 
 with the holy ghost goes hand in hand with the collective community work. 
 between easter and whitsun the moon goes up and down 49 times: the crying does 
 not only aim at the american heritage yet also at the fate of modern christian 
 culture worldwide. on the level of society  - and the novel's archaeology of   
 cali's midsixties underground makes is plausible that pynchon has special   
 interest in the "patchwork of minorities" (lyotard)- this might be the call for 
 a pluralistic (reform-socialist?) unification of the progressive forces. nice 
 try! you may say now, in his next novel pynchon's third sentence says that 
 "it is too late" and there you go ... however, norman o. brown, one of 
 pynchon's main sources when it comes to psycho-spiritual things, says in 
 chapter 15 of "love's body" [the back-translation from page 220 of the  
 german version is my own]: "in the freedom there's fusion. whitsun freedom, 
 whitsun fusion. speaking in tongues: many tongues, many meanings. the 
 babylonian confusion of speech gets counterbalanced by the pentecostal 
 amalgamation". the novel's last words, cyclically closing the text on a formal 
 level, remind the reader also of varo's girls "from cry to cry" (p. 12), of the 
 old man who's "crying again" (p. 87) and - you may understand this better now - 
 the butterfly's scream that might abolish the night ... on second sight CoL 49 
 is pynchon's most undetermined book ... messages are flying around everywhere: 
 it's up to you! 


 KFL +        

 ps. anybody for d. fowler's "epilepsy as metaphor in the crying of lot 49"?