AtDtDA(34): "What is It that is Born of Light?"

[Dave Monroe]

   "When it was Cyprian's turn, he knelt and whispered, 'What is it
that is born of light?'" (AtD, Pt. IV, p.959)


"a look of unaccustomed sorrow"

Why?


"our great enemies were the Hesychasts"

Hesychasm ... is an eremitic tradition of prayer in the Eastern
Orthodox Church, and some other Eastern Churches of the Byzantine
Rite, practised (Gk: ἡσυχάζω hesychazo: "to keep stillness") by the
Hesychast (Gr. Ἡσυχαστής hesychastes).

Based on Christ's injunction in the Gospel of Matthew to "go into your
closet to pray", Hesychasm in tradition has been the process of
retiring inward by ceasing to register the senses, in order to achieve
an experiential knowledge of God (see theoria)....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesychasts

About the year 1337 Hesychasm attracted the attention of a learned
member of the Orthodox Church, Barlaam, a Calabrian monk ...

Barlaam took exception to, as heretical and blasphemous, the doctrine
entertained by the Hesychasts as to the nature of the light, the
experience of which was said to be the goal of Hesychast practice. It
was maintained by the Hesychasts to be of divine origin and to be
identical to that light which had been manifested to Jesus' disciples
on Mount Tabor at the Transfiguration. This Barlaam held to be
polytheistic, inasmuch as it postulated two eternal substances, a
visible and an invisible God....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesychasts#Gregory_Palamas:_defender_of_Hesychasm

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_946-975#Page_959


"'What is it that was born of that light?'"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfiguration_of_Jesus


"'There came a cloud and overshadowed them'"

Luke 9:34

http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=KjvLuke.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=9&division=div1

August 6 is the Feast of the Transfiguration, the celebration of the
day when Jesus revealed his divinity to Peter, John, and James on the
top of Mount Tabor. (Matthew 17:2 and Mark 9:2.) It has been called
"the culminating point of His public life, as His baptism is its
starting point and His ascension its end." As an actual holiday, the
Feast of the Transfiguration had its origins in the forth century. It
is believed that it was substituted for an early pagan feast called
Vatavarh, or Roseflame, held in honor of Aphrodite. In an ironic
pairing typical of Gravity's Rainbow, this feast coincides with
another event on August 6, 1945: the dropping of the atomic bomb on
Hiroshima.

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_granalysis.html

Through the clever placement of ironic transformations and satirical
inversions, there are several focal points throughout the work where
two opposing images exist simultaneously, setting up an ironic
dissonance -- the fact that Hiroshima occurs on the Feast of the
Transfiguration, for example ...

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_grintro.html


omphalopsychoi

Main Entry: om·pha·los
Pronunciation: \ˈäm(p)-fə-ˌläs, -ləs\
Function: noun
Etymology: Greek, navel — more at navel
Date: 1855
: a central point : hub, focal point

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/omphali

Main Entry: psy·che
Pronunciation: \ˈsī-kē\
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin, from Greek psychē soul
Date: 1590
1capitalized : a princess loved by Cupid
2[Greek psychē] a: soul, personality <the nation's consumer psyche —
D. J. Kevles> b: mind 2

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/psyche

Hesychasts condemned as "having their souls in their navel."

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_946-975#Page_959