atddta 32:895/905 lunes, orbs of statutes

[Mark Kohut]

Cf. " a Face in Ev'ry Stone"
   
  Here is one off-the-cuff gloss:
  first "ceremonial urn" allows eyes and "radiant attention"......and is "ceremonial"
   
  Second allows only "shadows"...........the dark, shadow as darkness, hiding bad shit
  [this is a specific literary term, ya know...smile].............like the dark figures in P's work
   
  but the urn, a human container, allows radiance when fully seen...............(reminds me of
  the larger amount of "light" in AtD....than in V. and GR, say)
   
  I just speed-read a Pynchon Notes paper that argued that Pynchon was influenced by
  Thomas Browne, who wrote "The Urn Burial"....an English classic (which I once could NOT
  read, since I am not Prince Hamlet nor was meant to be.)

"grladams at teleport.com" <grladams at teleport.com> wrote:
  In sculpture, is there significance in whether the orbs of eyes have wedges
chiselled into them or not?

compare p. 895 first paragraph to p.905 second paragraph
"Spirit of Bimetallism, face correct as a face on a ceremonial urn,
garlanded, chiseled onto each iris a wedge of radiant attention aimed at
her right hand, which held suspended a symbolic sun and moon as Justice
holds her scales... like the other models, little chance, in the expression
she had assumed, of wistful regret for what she'd come to" 
vs
"Frieze creatures, upper-floor caryatid faces, mineral lonliness. Where
were any human eyes, let alone the blank lunes that served as eyes for
others of their kind, to be met across these perilous chasms? They must be
content to register the shadows that raced among the versatile diffractions
of soot....


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