AtDTDA: 19, The Discreet Charm of Second-Order Simulacra [527]

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

          " . . . .They are as savage and degenerate as Europeans. 
          Nor is it a matter of simple numbers, for here in Belgium 
          is the highest population density in the world , and no one 
          can much be taken by suprise in that regard. No . . . ."
          pg. 527          

          If we were able to take as the finest allegory of simulation 
          the Borges tale where the cartographers of the Empire 
          draw up a map so detailed that it ends up exactly covering 
          the territory (but where, with the decline of the Empire this map 
          becomes frayed and finally ruined, a few shreds still discernible 
          in the deserts - the metaphysical beauty of this ruined abstraction, 
          bearing witness to an imperial pride and rotting like a carcass, 
          returning to the substance of the soil, rather as an aging double 
          ends up being confused with the real thing), this fable would then 
          have come full circle for us, and now has nothing but the discrete 
          charm of second-order simulacra.
          Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings

          ". . . .we create this, I think—project it from the co-conscious, from 
          out of the ooze of hallucination being mapped onto continually by 
          the unremitting and unremittable hell of our dominion down there. 
          Each time a member of the Force Publique strikes a rubber worker, 
          or even speaks the simplest insult, the tidal forces intensify, the 
          digue of self-contradiction grows even weaker." pg. 527

          5. An Atlas Belonging to Orpheus

          Bound in a battered and burnt, enamelled-green tin cover, 
          this atlas is divided into two sections. Section One is full of large 
          maps of the travel and usage of music in the classical world. 
          Section Two is full of maps of Hell. It was used when Orpheus 
          journeyed into the Underworld to find Eurydice, and the maps, 
          as a consequence, are scorched and charred by Hellfire and 
          marked with the teeth-bites of Cerberus. When the 
          atlas is opened, the maps bubble with pitch. Avalanches of hot, 
          loose gravel and molten sand fall out of the book to scorch the 
          library floor.

http://petergreenaway.co.uk/prospero.htm

          From: Pynchon’s Inferno
          by Charles Hollander

          Pynchon’s writings have much in common with Jonathan Swift’s and 
          Dante Alighieri’s. Both these men were involved in the politics of 
          their day. Dante was eventually banished from Florence, having 
          thrown his lot in with the losing political gang, the White Guelphs. 
          While in exile Dante wrote his Divine Comedy, in which we are 
          given a structure leading us down to hell, up through purgatory, 
          and finally into heaven. Along the way we meet mythical and 
          historical figures who allegorically stand for various religious 
          doctrines and dogmas.

          At the same time, many of these figures recognizably mimic living 
          figures of the day, the winners of the political conflict. Under the 
          camouflage of his most lofty poetry, his most theological writings, 
          Dante was sticking it to many of his contemporaries. Throughout 
          the nine circles of Hell stand real historical figures indicted as 
          panderers and seducers, evil counselors, falsifiers, traitors, 
          murderers.

http://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/inferno.htm