AtDtDA(34):

[Mark Kohut]

Nyx is one source of the positive valences to "It's always night OR...".............??
 
Existence itself is sourced in Nyx?......................................
And Nyx as the mother of Sleep and Death means those are a part of existence itself (so to speak)? "Good because existence itself has to be or we got nothin' at all?
 
And, as Laura remarks, light worries a good guy like Cyprian because he fears, as throughout Pynchon, what is supposed to be unalloyed Good---light----often isn't........
 
I will say again that perhaps the real dichotomy with night and light is natural vs. man-made?......when we humans "make light", it is not always a Good.....maybe in Pynchon's total vision it is almost always a Bad?.................remember and connect to electric streetlights from V. pervasively thru "Against the Day"???/

--- On Fri, 7/4/08, kelber at mindspring.com <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:

From: kelber at mindspring.com <kelber at mindspring.com>
Subject: Re: AtDtDA(34):
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Date: Friday, July 4, 2008, 12:08 PM

Nyx seems to be derived from the Egyptian goddess Nut:

"Her name means Night. Some of the titles of Nut were Coverer of the Sky,
She Who Protects, Mistress of All, and She Who Holds a Thousand Souls ... Nut
was the goddess of the sky and all heavenly bodies, a symbol of resurrection
and rebirth. According to the Egyptians, the heavenly bodies—such as the
sun—would be swallowed, traverse the inside of her belly through the night,
and be reborn out of her uterus at dawn."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nut_(goddess)

In Cyprian's "What is born of the light?"  there's an
implication that the answer might involve evil or destruction (phosgene, for
example).  What is born of the night (Nut) is benevolent, life-affirming.

Laura

>From: Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>


>"the Greeks called her Νυξ"
>
>NYX was the goddess of the night, one of the ancient Protogenoi
>(first-born elemental gods)....
>
>http://www.theoi.com/Protogenos/Nyx.html
>
>The fragments of Orphic cosmogonies given by Eudemos, and Plato, and
>Lydus do not quite agree, but at least Night, Oceanus, and Thetys are
>elementary beings, and the first of them in order of existence was
>probably Night....
>
>http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04405c.htm
>
>In Greek mythology, Nyx (Νύξ, Nox in Roman translation) was the
>primordial goddess of the night. A shadowy figure, Night stood at or
>near the beginning of creation, and was the mother of personified gods
>such as Sleep and Death. Her appearances in mythology are sparse, but
>reveal her as a figure of exceptional power....
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyx_(mythology)
>
>Night took on an even more important role in several fragmentary poems
>attributed to Orpheus. In them, Night, rather than Chaos, is the first
>principle. Night occupies a cave or adyton, in which she gives
>oracles. Kronos - who is chained within, asleep and drunk on honey -
>dreams and prophesies. Outside the cave, Adrastea clashes cymbals and
>beats upon her tympanon, moving the entire universe in an ecstatic
>dance to the rhythm of Nyx's chanting. Phanes - the strange,
>monstrous, hermaphrodite Orphic demiurge - was the child or father of
>Nyx.
>
>Night is also the first principle in the opening chorus of
>Aristophanes's Birds, which may be Orphic in inspiration....
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyx_(mythology)#Other_Greek_texts
>
>http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/William-Adolphe_Bouguereau_%281825-1905%29_-_La_Nuit_%281883%29.jpg
>
>Vs. ...
>
>http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_946-975#Page_959
>


      
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