AtDtDA(34): Born of Light

Tue Jun 24 07:16:48 CDT 2008

Forecast: "Dark. And it will continue dark through the night"....G. Carlin's existential weatherman,
Al sleet....

--- On Mon, 6/23/08, kelber at mindspring.com <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:

From: kelber at mindspring.com <kelber at mindspring.com>
Subject: Re: AtDtDA(34): Born of Light
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Date: Monday, June 23, 2008, 10:42 PM

TRP plays with the differences/similarities between light and enlightment.  The
Interdikt is a frightful, light-activated weapon.  Light is terrible/awesome as
in a nuclear blast, "shock and awe" bombing lighting up the sky, the
rockets' red glare, etc.  "Born of light," Cyprian describes the
weapon, as if suddenly enlightened.  A few pages down the line, seeking
guidance from Father Ponko, on his way to becoming a Bride of the Night, he
asks:  "What is born of the light?" Is he asking about the Interdikt
and/or enlightenment?  Ponko (p. 960):  "Nobody can withstand pure light,
let alone see it."  This is GR's Kirghiz Light all over again,
destructive/awesome/spiritual/godlike.  Kind of makes me rethink the opening
quote from T. Monk:  "It's always night, or we wouldn't need
light."  Maybe we're meant to be reassured that it's always night?

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
>
>   "'Born of light,' said Cyprian, as if about to understand
>something." (AtD, Pt. IV, p. 953)
>
>
>"a sort of enlarged casemate"
>
>A casemate is a fortified gun emplacement or armored structure from
>which guns are fired....
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casemate
>
>
>Phosgene
>
>Phosgene is the chemical compound with the formula Cl2CO. This
>colourless gas gained infamy as a chemical weapon during World War I,
>but it is also a valued industrial reagent and building block in
>organic synthesis....
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosgene
>
>Facts about Phosgene
>
>http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/phosgene/basics/facts.asp
>
>On a Gaseous Compound of Carbonic Oxide and Chlorine
>
>http://web.lemoyne.edu/~giunta/jdavy.html
>
>
>"'Born of light'"
>
>Main Entry: phos·gene
>Pronunciation: \ˈfäz-ˌjēn\
>Function: noun
>Etymology: Greek phōs light + -genēs born, produced — more at fancy,
>-gen; from its originally having been obtained by the action of
>sunlight
>Date: 1812
>
>: a colorless gas COCl2 of unpleasant odor that is a severe
>respiratory irritant that has been used in chemical warfare
>
>http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/phosgene
>
>
>"as if about to understand something"
>
>Cf., e.g., ...
>
>"Oedipa settled back, to await the crying of lot 49."
>
>http://www.innternet.de/~peter.patti/thomaspynchon-thecryingoflot49.htm
>
>
>motoros
>
>Cyclist, biker, referring here to Mihaly Vamos.
>
>http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_946-975#Page_953
>
>
>"'We learned it is light here which is really the destructive
agent'"
>
>Hence "against the day"?  However ...
>
>Thematic, of course, when non-natural light is created.... studies
>back to 'city illumination'. Cf. Telluride chapter.
>
>http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_946-975#Page_953
>
>
>"early studies of city illumination"
>
>Schivelbusch, Wolfgang.  Disenchanted Night:
>   The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century.
>   Trans. Angela Davies.  Berkeley: U of California P, 1988.
>
>http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/2328.php
>
>It is a cardinal error to believe that, of "Surrealist
experiences",
>we know only the religious ecstasies or the ecstasies of drugs. The
>opium of the people, Lenin called religion, and brought the two things
>closer together than the Surrealists could have liked. I shall refer
>later to the bitter, passionate revolt against Catholicism in which
>Rimbaud, Lautreamont, and Apollinaire brought Surrealism into the
>world. But the true creative overcoming of religious illumination
>certainly does not lie in narcotics. It resides in a profane
>illumination,  a materialistic, anthropological inspiration, to which
>hashish, opium, or whatever else can give an introductory lesson. (But
>a dangerous one; and the religious lesson is stricter.) ...
>
>[...]
>
>The collective is a body, too. And the physis that is being organized
>for it in technology can, through all its political and factual
>reality, only be produced in that image sphere to which profane
>illumination initiates us. Only when in technology body and image so
>interpenetrate that all revolutionary tension becomes bodily
>collective innervation, and all the bodily innervations of the
>collective become revolutionary discharge, has reality transcended
>itself to the extent demanded by the Communist Manifesto. For the
>moment, only the Surrealists have understood its present commands.
>They exchange, to a man, the play of human features for the face of an
>alarm clock that in each minute rings for sixty seconds.
>
>--Walter Benjamin, "The Last Snapshot of the European
Intelligentsia" (1929)
>
>http://www.generation-online.org/c/fcsurrealism.htm
>
>Profane illumination
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profane_illumination
>
>
>"the Aether"
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminiferous_ether
>http://www.mountainman.com.au/aetherqr.htm
>
>Lord Rayleigh and Sir Oliver Lodge, "The Aether of Space" (1908)
>
>http://www.keelynet.com/osborn/rey7.htm
>
>The New Student's Reference Work (1914)
>
>http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_New_Student%27s_Reference_Work/Ether
>
>
>"light pressure"
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_pressure
>http://www.u.arizona.edu/~lilley98/
>
>
>"'to project it as a stream of destructive energy'"
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser
>http://www.howstuffworks.com/laser.htm
>
>
>"'Fear in lethal form'"
>
>This is strongly reminiscent of the "Panic fear" (p. 151)
unleashed by
>the Vormance Expedition's digging up of the buried alien - the
>"incendiary Figure."
>
>http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_946-975#Page_953
>http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_149-170#Page_151
>
>
>"'A great cascade of blindness and terror ripping straight across
the
>heart of the Balkan Peninsula'"
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I
>
>
>"Like nothing that has ever happened"
>
>Vs. ...
>
>"It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to
now."
>(GR, Pt. I, p. 3)
>
>
>"'More damned code'"
>
>Talk about yr reader-response ...
>
>
>Shipka
>
>A very small village in Bulgaria's Central Balkan Mountains, near a
>mountain pass of strategic importance, which connects northern
>Bulgaria to Upper Thrace (East Rumelia). It was the site of a battle
>between the Russian army and the Ottoman Turks in 1877.
>
>Sok szerencsét
>
>Hungarian: good luck.
>
>.http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_946-975#Page_953
>
>
>"the 'straight dope'"
>
>http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_946-975#Page_953
>
>
>"a vast roar of light"
>
>Cf. ...
>
>"A screaming comes across the sky." (GR, Pt. I, p. 3)
>
>"MB DRO ROSHI" (GR, Pt.II, p. 693)
>

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