TMOP: Chapter 7

[Bekah]

A part of the mood swings goes with epilepsy.

http://www.epilepsy.org.au/Moods_Behaviour_and_Epilepsy.asp

Bekah

On Oct 9, 2008, at 8:10 PM, Richard Ryan wrote:

> Another excellent gloss (to use Mark's apt term) Bekah - and,  
> again, I'm struck by D's almost - well, not almost, very! - bi- 
> polar temperament.  The constant oscillations between asceticism  
> and hedonism, elation and despondency, aggression and submission  
> (the list could go on) are yet another underlying tension we want  
> to keep an eye on....
>
> --- On Thu, 10/9/08, Bekah <Bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> From: Bekah <Bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net>
> Subject: TMOP: Chapter 7
> To: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Thursday, October 9, 2008, 10:40 PM
>
> Matryona
>
> [Page 66 -   D. doesn't return from the island to the house with  
> Anna and Matryona.  He wanders, declines a card game at the inn.
>
> (he's switched obsessions perhaps?)
>
> [ And he feels lonely.  Aware that he  may be wearing out his  
> welcome with Anna.  Aware that he is growing physically older -  
> aware of haemorrhoids - dry skin, dental plates.
>
> *Dostoevsky really had dentures, hemorrhoids but perhaps not so  
> early.]
>
> **********
>
> [ Page 67 -  He wonders what Matryona thinks about this "spectacle  
> of decay."    He flinches at the idea of being an object of pity,   
> remembering Anna's comment "You were pleading." (Line 7) (from pg  
> 59) and D. turns to Pavel, kneeling against the bed.  "... tries to  
> find his way to Yelagin Island and to Pavel in his cold grave."  ]
>
> * There's an abundance of self-pity here  but he's  also really in  
> deep turmoil.  As has been said,  this is total fiction - in  
> Dostoevsky's life, Pavel outlived his step-father and Yelagin  
> Island has never been a cemetery.
>
> http://www.encspb.ru/en/article.php?kod=2804008886
>
> Mentions "a Finnish-Swedish cemetery at Elagin (Aptekarsky) Island  
> (abolished in 1756)."   - That's only missing the "Y" and I think  
> they're the same place. Many, many other cemeteries listed at the  
> above site.  "In 1738, the Synod affirmed five places where burials  
> were to take place, of which only the cemetery on Vasilievsky  
> Island has survived. "  Mostly cemetery plots were free and located  
> near the churches. http://www.encspb.ru/en/article.php? 
> kod=2804010103 (but I can't find the source for the info.)   
> Meanwhile, Elagin/Yelagin Island has no church actually on it.   ???
>
> View on Yelegin Island
> http://www.oilpaintinghk.com/art/oil_paintings_24317.html
> http://www.nlr.ru/petersburg/spbpcards/photos/lo000000377_1_m.jpg
>
> [line  14  "The father faded copy of the son.  How can he expect a  
> woman who beheld the son in the pride of his days to look with  
> favour on the father?"]
>
> * That is such an incredible line.   To me it describes this whole  
> part of the plot.  D. is trying to become son but he is only a weak  
> version and a copy at that.  He's comparing his manliness and life- 
> force with that of Pavel's.
>
> [line 17 -  Remembering the quote of a fellow-prisoner in Siberia -  
> " ' Why are we given old age, brothers? So that we can grow small  
> again, small enough to crawl through the eye of a needle.' Peasant  
> wisdom." ]
>
> * It was in Siberia that Dostoevsky experienced his life-changing  
> conversion to Russian Orthodox Christianity - he was disgusted by  
> the class hatred, the  filth and lack of moral fiber of the  
> peasants he came in contact with there but was mightily impressed  
> by their spirituality.
> http://www.dartmouth.edu/~karamazo/bio04.html
>
> * The eye of the needle is from Matthew 19: 23 - 26 and Mark 10:25
> http://biblecc.com/matthew/19-24.htm
> http://bible.cc/mark/10-25.htm
>
> The reference probably means that old men grow very humble.  In the  
> Biblical references it refers to wealth and possibly to  Needle's  
> Eye,  one of many gates into Jerusalem, which is so small  only an  
> unencumbered camel on its knees can pass through - any excess  
> wealth (treasure boxes) can't fit.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_a_needle
>
>
> [line 23  He wakes the next day full of life.  He feels resurrected  
> and wants to shout  "Christ is risen!"  And he wants to dance with  
> Anna and Matryona and painted eggs. ]
>
> * This is October,  not spring,  but October is not really cold in  
> St. Petersburg (mid 40s  F. for a high) and there isn't much rain  
> then.   hat has brought this sudden lift of spirits about?  (Grief  
> is a mysterious process, there are moments or days of joy  
> interspersed with the heavy gloom.)
>
> * One of Dostoevsky's Siberian spiritual experiences occurred at  
> Easter.
> From  http://neurophilosophy.wordpress.com/2007/04/16/diagnosing- 
> dostoyevskys-epilepsy/   :
>> On Easter night, during his exile in Siberia, Dostoyevsky was  
>> visited by an old friend, to whom he described the almost  
>> prophetic vision he had experienced during the aura preceding one  
>> of his attacks:
>>
>> The air was filled with a big noise and I tried to move. I felt  
>> the heaven was going down upon the earth, and that it had engulfed  
>> me. I have really touched God. He came into me myself; yes, God  
>> exists, I cried, You all, healthy people, have no idea what joy  
>> that joy is which we epileptics experience the second before a  
>> seizure. Mahomet, in his Koran, said he had seen Paradise and had  
>> gone into it. All these stupid clever men are quite sure that he  
>> was a liar and a charlatan. But no, he did not lie, he really had  
>> been in Paradise during an attack of epilepsy; he was a victim of  
>> this disease as I am. I do not know whether this joy lasts for  
>> seconds or hours or months, but believe me, I would not exchange  
>> it for all the delights of this world.
>>
>
> *****************
>
> [page 68  But this "...joy breaking like a dawn"  lasts only an  
> instant.  An "anti-sun" appears and the word "omen" crosses his  
> mind to reveal the idea that there will be 'an eclipse;  joy shines  
> out only to reveal what the annihilation of joy will be like. ' " ]
>
> * This uplift of spirits often precedes a seizure - see my next post -
>
> [ D fears this and the accompanying shame so he leaves the house to  
> deal with it privately.  In the dark staircase there is a loud cry  
> but although the neighbors wake up,  D. doesn't hear it.  ]
>
>  "Dostoevsky was affected by physical and mental disturbances  
> following a seizure (This is also called the 'post-ictal 'state) It  
> took him up to one week to recover fully.  His chief complaint was  
> that his 'head did not clear up' for several days and symptoms  
> included, "heaviness and even pain in the head, disorders of the  
> nerves, nervous laugh and mystical depression"
>
> http://www.charge.org.uk/htmlsite/dost.shtml
>
> * Did D. yell?  I suppose so.
>
> ***********
> [ Page 69 He wakes from the seizure in darkness.]
>
> * This whole page is a great description of a seizure - or so it  
> seems to me.  Includes the idea of falling into yourself.
>
> Epilepsy:
>> The word epilepsy is derived from the Greek epilepsia, which in  
>> turn can be broken into epi- (upon) and lepsis (to take hold of,  
>> or seizure)[35] In the past, epilepsy was associated with  
>> religious experiences and even demonic possession. In ancient  
>> times, epilepsy was known as the "Sacred Disease" because people  
>> thought that epileptic seizures were a form of attack by demons,  
>> or that the visions experienced by persons with epilepsy were sent  
>> by the gods. Among animist Hmong families, for example, epilepsy  
>> was understood as an attack by an evil spirit, but the affected  
>> person could become revered as a shaman through these otherworldly  
>> experiences.[36]
>>
>> However, in most cultures, persons with epilepsy have been  
>> stigmatized, shunned, or even imprisoned; in the Salpêtrière, the  
>> birthplace of modern neurology, Jean-Martin Charcot found people  
>> with epilepsy side-by-side with the mentally retarded, those with  
>> chronic syphilis, and the criminally insane. In Tanzania to this  
>> day, as with other parts of Africa, epilepsy is associated with  
>> possession by evil spirits, witchcraft, or poisoning and is  
>> believed by many to be contagious.[37] In ancient Rome, epilepsy  
>> was known as the Morbus Comitialis ('disease of the assembly  
>> hall') and was seen as a curse from the gods.
>>
>> Stigma continues to this day, in both the public and private  
>> spheres, but polls suggest it is generally decreasing with time,  
>> at least in the developed world; Hippocrates remarked that  
>> epilepsy would cease to be considered divine the day it was  
>> understood.[38]
>>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epilepsy
>
> *  Although the idea that these fits were evidence of "possession  
> by demons"  was pretty well dropped in the 17th century,  epilepsy  
> was not studied medically until the late 19th century.  This would  
> have been unknown by Dostoevsky and his crowd and they probably  
> still called it the "falling sickness" as in Europe during the  
> Middle Ages - (and other cultures even today - See "The Spirit  
> Catches You and You Fall Down" by Anne Fadiman - her best work,  
> imho ).
> http://www.epilepsy.com/epilepsy/history
> http://library.thinkquest.org/J001619/history.html    ]
>
>
> * In  Demons, Kirilov  has a kind of frontal lobe epilepsy and in  
> The Brothers Karamazov Sverdyakov is so afflicted.   Prince Myshkin  
> in the Idiot has it including one seizure induced by looking at  
> Holbein's painting "The Dead Christ."
> http://www.abcgallery.com/H/holbein/holbein8.html
>
> **********
>
> [ page 70 - D. walks through the snow and hides until he is sure  
> Anna and her daughter have gone out.  Then he goes back to the  
> house, washes up pretty thoroughly and then snoops around her  
> house.  He finds a picture of Anna's deceased husband and  
> "deliberately smudges the glass, leaving his thumbprint over the  
> face of the dead man."
>
> * snooping and  jealousy?  Is he looking for evidence of Pavel or  
> something else?  Whatever he can find, perhaps.
>
> *****************
>
>  [ page 71 He enjoys sneaking and spying,  "a weakness that he has  
> associated till now with a refusal to accept limits to what he is  
> permitted to know, with the reading of forbidden books, and thus  
> with his vocation.  Today ... he is in thrall to a spirit of petty  
> evil ... gives him a voluptuous quiver of pleasure."  ]
>
> * Writing is associated with snooping?   (Yes, I've always thought  
> so.)
>
> *  D. is presented as going from ecstasy to terror to a voluptuous  
> quiver of pleasure" within the space of a single morning.   
> Dostoevsky was emotionally unstable,  especially in his later  
> years.  Can't have been an easy life what with the the childhood  
> violence, gambling,  religion,  epilepsy and other things .  ]
>
> [  D.  dons Pavel's white suit and checking the mirror "sees only a  
> seedy imposture and, beyond that, something surreptitious and  
> obscene, something that belongs behind the locked doors and  
> curtained windows of rooms where men in wigs and skirts bare their  
> rumps to be flogged."
>
> [Yup, he probably looks pretty bad and imo, he's setting himself up  
> for more perversity there. ]
>
> [  He lies down and feels like he's falling into blackness again.   
> When he wakes he has "lost all sense of who he is."  He thinks it's  
> a dream but then the reality hits him.]
>
> * The reality is that Pavel is dead and D. is wearing the deceased  
> son's clothes and lying on the deceased boy's bed - possibly in  
> order to become Pavel.
>
> ********
>
> [ Page 72    Matryona comes in and thinks D is ill.   He tells her  
> the story of Pavel's white suit. ]
>
> *  This story is generally similar to the one which Peter  
> Verkhovensky cooks up to assuage Stavrogin's mother in Demons.  One  
> difference is that Stavrogin actually marries  the crippled and  
> feeble-minded Marya Timofeyevna. - Book 1,  Chapter 5,  Parts V-  
> VII  Marya's brother was a drunkard who beat her.
>
> *  D. likens Maria (Marya in Demons)  to a dog or a horse - she  
> doesn't know any better than to take the abuse whatever abuse is  
> handed her.
>
> [  Coetzee does have a thing for animals, especially dogs - see  
> Disgrace especially. ]
>
> ********
>
> [  Page 73  *  Matryona is horrified  and D. forces totally brutal  
> Russian ideas on the good, naive, young Matryovna.
>
> * This is pretty extreme emotional violence done to a young girl.   
> Coetzee portrays D. as quite a brute.
>
> D. finishes the story of Marya Lebyatkin (Lebyadkin in Demons),  a  
> variation of the as yet unwritten story of Stavrogin's courtship  
> and marriage.   (Of course,  Pavel didn't marry Maria as Stavrogin  
> married Marya.  I'm not sure if this makes Pavel a bit of a cad or  
> not.
>
> [ Page 74  * - Matryona wiggles and puts her thumb in her mouth!
>
> The effects of such brutality - Matryona is regressing.
>
> Does D present the story of Pavel and the white suit to make Pavel  
> look very "chivalrous;"  I'm not sure I buy that - it's kind of  
> caddish for Pavel to lead Maria on like that even if D. totally  
> invented the story.   *  The "Demons" story of Stavrogin and Marya  
> is quite different - (go read it).
>
> But why the white suit - Coetzee's D. didn't invent that and it  
> doesn't seem to go with Pavel's station in his Petersburg life.   
> (Btw, what was Pavel's situation?)   Were white suits popular in  
> Europe ca. 1860?   Mark Twain famously had one.  The War and Peace  
> movies always seem to have a guy in a white suit.   ???
>
> Who knows why the fictional Pavel had the white suit?   I doubt it  
> was as D. told it - I know the whole thing is fiction but this  
> little story from D.'s mouth seems to go beyond D's usual  
> unreliablity  and  Coetzee's D. is very unreliable - he's between  
> reality and fantasy - perhaps between life and death.
>
>
>
> * Matryona asks why Pavel killed himself and reveals that her  
> mother (Anna) thinks Pavel killed himself.
>
>
>
> **********
>
> [ Page 75  D. suggests that one cannot succeed at suicide, only God  
> has power over life and death.
>
>  This is another reference to "Demons" where Krillov (Krylov?) is  
> going to commit suicide in order have the kind of "free will" which  
> goes against God - the  power over life and death - he wants to  
> become God.
>
> [ D. goes on to explain that Pavel was giving God an ultimatum of  
> sorts,  "If you love me you will save me" and betting that God  
> would.  But God didn't.  "Perhaps God does not like to be tempted."  
> or "Perhaps God does not hear very well."  ]
>
> * And here's D. and Dostoevsky (and
>
> [ D. motions to Matryona to sit on the bed and puts his arm around  
> her.  "He can feel her trembling. He strokes her hair, her temples." ]
>
> **********
>
> [ Page 76.   Finally Matryona balls her fists and sobs freely. ]
>
> * again,  like a small child,
>
> [ Matryona "Why did he have to die?"   D.   wants to say he didn't  
> die, that he's here,  "I am he."   But he cannot.]
>
> *  the man is drifting seriously out of reality - he is starting to  
> believe he is Pavel but still knows this is not really true, it  
> would scare Matryona -  why doesn't he say it?   He's playing more  
> than one  dangerous game.
>
> [   "If only the seed could have been taken out of the body, even a  
> single seed, and given a home."  And he thinks of the Hindu Shiva's  
> seed being drawn out of his dead body.]
>
>  http://www.bhagavadgitausa.com.cnchost.com/KALI.h9.jpg
>
> * If D. is Pavel,  then can he impregnate Matryona?  (is this what  
> his thoughts are driving at?)
>
>
>
> [Now D. imagines Matryona "in her ecstasy."   and then,  "of a  
> baby, dead, buried in an iron coffin beneath the snow-piled  
> earth..."  and he stops the "violation," although "she might as  
> well be sprawled out naked."  ]
>
> * He takes the ideas as far as he can take them - a baby dead and  
> buried - theirs?  And he suddenly abandons the idea of seducing  
> Matryona.
>
> [ "She is prostituting the Virgin" as the men who visit child  
> prostitutes say.  They see something maidenly beneath the garish  
> paint and it outrages them, they need to go so far as to put that  
> child's life in danger." ]
>
> Another incredibly compelling visual.
>
> ******
> [page 77  But D.'s  "vision, the fit, the rictus of the  
> imagination, passes."]
>
> * interesting variation of terms;  is this vision a seizure of  
> sorts?   Has there been an opening of the imagination?  Are there  
> other sorts of visions?
>
> * and is D. cannibalizing the lives of his loved ones for stories?
>
> [ Matryona asks about making a shrine in the room  but D. demurs -  
> he is only staying a short time but his mourning for Pavel will go  
> on forever. And he may also mourn Matyona forever, but it may be  
> only a bit too soon to tell.  ]
>
> ************
>
> [Page 78  Matryona asks to light a candle for Pavel and keep it  
> burning.  "So he won't be in the dark."   She does this and then  
> "returns to the bed and rests her head on his arm."  ... "He can  
> feel the soft young bones fold, one over another, as a bird's wing  
> folds." ]
>
> Yes, Mr. D.  she is so very vulnerable,  crushable - don't go there.
>
>
>
> Bekah
>
>
>
>
>