AtDTDA: 19 Heart of Darkness, pt. 2 [525/556]

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

This section of the story—an art noveau Casino in an upscale Hotel in 
Ostend, the Gilded age at its zenith, a time when Belgium was an 
economic force to be reckoned with—is the Heart of Darkness for this 
novel. Perhaps King Leopold's despoilment of the Congo stands as the
heart of darkness in all of Pynchon's writings, the singular presentation
of a concept that flows through all his novels. This is the actual physical 
center of Pynchon's thickest, densest, longest and arguably weirdest novel.° 
The heart of darkness in all of Pynchon's writings is centered in Slavery, 
Colonialism, the impositions suffered by the residents of Africa and those 
places that produce 'colored people' and other culturally generated 
manifestations of 'the other'. Sometimes it's easy to lose the threads within
Pynchon's books, Lord knows he doesn't make it easy what with all his 
misdirection. But at the bottom of it all:

          "Ev'rywhere they've sent us,— the Cape, St. Helena, America,— 
          what's the Element common to all?"

          "Long Voyages by Sea," replies Mason, Blinking in Exhaustion by 
          now chronick. "Was there anything else?"

          "Slaves. Ev'ry day at the Cape, we lived with Slavery in our faces,
          —more of it at St. Helena,— and now here we are again, in 
          another Colony, this time having drawn them a Line between 
          their Slave-Keepers, and their Wage-Payers, as if doom'd to 
          re-encounter thro' the world this public Secret, this shameful 
          Core.... Pretending it to be ever somewhere else, with the Turks, 
          the Russians, the Companies, down there, down where it smells 
          like warm Brine and Gunpowder fumes, they're murdering and 
          dispossessing thousands untallied, the innocent of the World, 
          passing daily into Hands of Slave-owners and Torturers, but oh, 
          never in Holland, nor in England, that Garden of Fools...? Christ, 
          Mason."

          "Christ, what? What did I do?"

          "Huz. Didn't we take the King's money, as here we're taking it 
          again? whilst Slaves waited upon us, and neither one objected, 
          as little as we have here, in certain homes south of the Line,— 
          Where does it end? No matter where in it we go, shall we find all 
          the World Tyrants and Slaves? America was the one place we 
          should not have found them."

          "Yet we're not Slaves, after all,— we're Hirelings."

          "I don't trust this King, Mason.. I don't think anybody else does, 
          either. Tha saw Lord Ferrers take the Drop at Tyburn. They execute 
          their own. What may they be willing to do to huz?"

          Mason & Dixon, pgs. 692/693

Consider the epitaph that starts up "Against the Day": 

          "It's always night, or we wouldn't need light."

                            —Thelonious Monk

Note how our beloved author does not include Monk's middle name—
Sphere—though, of course, there's McClintic Sphere, that hybrid of several 
(probably mostly Ornette Coleman) daring jazz musicians taking out on wild 
tangents about the time V. was issued. Truth be told, Monk, with his Bartokian 
sense of harmony, was the first to head off on that excursion into the wilds, 
followed by Sun Ra, Ornette, 'Trane's last years, Archie Shepp, leading to a 
fusion and cross-pollination of a number of Avant-Garde musical movements, 
Classical, African, Funk and Rock included. This 'Jes Grew' issued forth a 
scream so profound, it's still reverberating:

          The foolish Wallflower Order hadn't learned a damned thing. 
          They thought that by fumigating the Place Congo in the 1890's 
          when people were doing the Bamboula the Chacta the Babouille 
          the Counjaille the Juba the Congo and the Voo Doo that this 
          would put an end to it. That it was merely a fad. But they did not 
          understand that the Jes Grew was an anti-plague. Some plagues 
          caused the body to waste away; Jes Grew enlivened the host. 
          Other plagues were accompanied by bad air (malaria). Jes Grew 
          victims said that the air was as clear as they had ever seen it 
          and there was the aroma of roses and perfumes which had never 
          before enticed their nostrils. Some plagues arise from 
          decomposing animals, but Jes Grew is electric as life and is 
          characterized by ebullience and ecstasy. Terrible plagues were 
          due to the wrath of God; but Jes Grew is the delight of the gods.

          Ishmael Reed: 'Mumbo Jumbo', un-paginated introduction.

Let's contemplate Monk's signature tune:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMmeNsmQaFw

         . . . .Bernie Hanighen added lyrics to the tune, and Monk had to 
         share composer's credit and royalties with him as well. . . .

http://tinyurl.com/ywhbft

                    It begins to tell,
          'round midnight, midnight.
          I do pretty well, till after sundown,
          Suppertime I'm feelin' sad;
          But it really gets bad,
          'round midnight.

          Memories always start 'round midnight
          Haven't got the heart to stand those memories,
          When my heart is still with you,
          And ol' midnight knows it, too.
          When a quarrel we had needs mending,
          Does it mean that our love is ending.
          Darlin' I need you, lately I find
          You're out of my heart,
          And I'm out of my mind.

          Let our hearts take wings'
          'round midnight, midnight
          Let the angels sing,
          for your returning.
          Till our love is safe and sound.
          And old midnight comes around.
          Feelin' sad,
          really gets bad
          Round, Round, Round Midnight

http://www.bluesforpeace.com/lyrics/round-midnight.htm

          Van Wijk exploded in a bitter fit of laughing. "You seem," he 
          finally drawled, "to be under certain delusions about the civil 
          service. History, the proverb says, is made at night. The 
          European civil servant normally sleeps at night. What waits 
          in his IN basket to confront him at nine in the morning is 
          history. He doesn't fight it, he tries to coexist with it."
          V., pg 246 [1]

Issues of slavery, race  and colonialism take up a rather large space in V.,
where it's always night and keeping cool while you're tuned in to the scene 
at times becomes downright impossible. That need to scream comes to the
fore as:

          At dawn she came in through the stained-glass window to tell 
          him that another Bondel had been executed, this time by 
          hanging.

                    "Come and see," she urged him. "In the garden."

                    "No, no." It had been a popular form of killing during the 
          Great Rebellion of 1904-07, when the Hereros and Hottentots, 
          who usually fought one another, staged a simultaneous but 
          uncoordinated rising against an incompetent German admin-
          istration. General Lothar von Trotha, having demonstrated to 
          Berlin during his Chinese and East African campaigns a certain 
          expertise at suppressing pigmented populations, was brought in 
          to deal with the Hereros. In August 1904, von Trotha issued his 
          "Vernichtungs Befehl," whereby the German forces were 
          ordered to exterminate systematically every Herero man, woman 
          and child they could find. He was about 80 per cent successful. 
          Out of the estimated 80,000 Hereros living in the territory in 1904, 
          an official German census taken seven years later set the Herero 
          population at only 15,130, this being a decrease of 64,870. 
          Similarly the Hottentots were reduced in the same period by 
          about 10,000, the Berg-Damaras by 17,000. Allowing for natural 
          causes during those unnatural years, von Trotha, who stayed for 
          only one of them, is reckoned to have done away with about 
          60,000 people. This is only 1 per cent of six million, but still 
          pretty good.

V., pgs. 258/259 [ibid.]

This is one of those cases where I've 'gotta take the author at his word.'
"Pretty good', eh? Now, 'six million', Charles Hollander has a few to say 
concerning that particular number and its significance in Pynchon, but 
assuming OBA's tongue is firmly in cheek here I'd say he's as slack-
jawed before an atrocity as he's ever gonna get. What Leopold II is up
to is buried innocently enough in all the distractions of the biggest fish 
story ever, but still manages to work itself into the local environment:

          Kit threaded his way out into the Grand Salon, wallpapered 
          in aniline teal and a bright but sour orange, to appearances 
          floral in theme, though few would insist on it, lit by hundreds 
          of modern-looking sconces, each quarter-shade of of 
          Congo ivory scraped thin as paper to let its electric bulb 
          shine through. . . .
          AtD, pg. 533

As usual in Pynchon, this is all 'hidden "innocently" ' enough in this casino,
a high art noveau expression of King Leopold II's wealth. . . . 

          Leopold much preferred to spend it, and his Congo rubber 
          profits, in Europe. For such a shrewd and ambitious man, 
          he was notably unimaginative in his tastes, and used his 
          vast new fortune in ways that would earn him a place less 
          in the history books than the guidebooks. A string of 
          monuments, new palace wings, museums, and pavilions 
          began going up all over Belgium. At his favorite seaside 
          resort, Ostend, Leopold poured millions of francs into a 
          promenade, several parks, and an elaborately turreted 
          gallery (decorated with eighty-five thousand geraniuims 
          for its opening) for the racetrack he frequented. . . .

          Adam Hochschild: 'King Leopold's Ghost'
          Mariner Books 1999, pg. 168

According to Adam Hochschild, King Leopold II was responsible for the 
deaths of ten million in the Congo.

Note that our beloved author's career started taking off around 1963,
how big a space issues around race take up in his novels and what was
going on in 1963. Perhaps it's a good time to look into "Civil Rights" 
issues and how they are explored/play out in Pynchon's work.

. . . .more to come. . . .

° : Go ahead, fire at will. . . .

1: Harper Perennial "Modern Classics" edition. 2005