TMOP: Chapter 7

[Bekah]

Slow Man!   (whew)

Bekah
answering her own question

On Oct 12, 2008, at 4:44 PM, Bekah wrote:

> On Oct 12, 2008, at 12:51 PM, Mark Kohut wrote:
>
>> Just a few obs after this so-thorough posting.
>>
>> In another novel, Coetzee has a woman who 'gives herself' out  
>> of....kindness? niceness?...moved by "pleading"? Seems thematic.
>
> Memory fails,  which novel?   They've mostly got sex in them but  
> not usually as a result of "kindness."   (That I remember.)   I'm  
> really curious!
>
>
> **
>
>>
>> D.'s remark on fathers/sons...so part of this book, Russia then  
>> [Turgenev's
>> book as Rich ahs remarked] and the "psychological/Freudian'  
>> perspective on History?
>
> I was wondering but I haven't read Turgenev so I can't say.
> **
>
>>
>> Old growing small...in Spirit? "Blessed are the poor in Spirit,  
>> for they shall inherit the Kingdom of God".  another perspective  
>> on 'too much wealth"..having too much Spirit?? [Cf. Demons as  
>> spiritual beings?]
>
> I think Dostoevsky thought of Demons as anti-spiritual - as  
> darkness is anti-light.   Demons could be spiritual beings only if   
> the term spiritual is meant in some non-religious sense.
>
> **
>
>> "joy breaking like a dawn" reminded me of Nietzsche and his  
>> Daybreak thematic similarity....but if so, it is Coetzee, not D.,  
>> slyly alluding, of course.
>
> Hmmm.... perhaps.  It's been a long time since I've looked at  
> Nietzsche.
>
> **
>>
>> I think Coetzee does want the possession theme of epilepsy to  
>> resonate (as you all probably do)...He, Coetzee, seems to be  
>> working with mutual back-and-forth resonances the notion of 'being  
>> possessed'...this is Dostevsky's way of understanding Nechaev (and  
>> group), and Coetzee's way of understanding D. ...?
>
> Well,  in Demons the revolutionaries are possessed by demons and  
> they do absolutely nothing of any import.  They are presented as  
> fumblers and bumblers as well as generally perverse and demented  
> people.  But it's because they're possessed by ideas which are  
> really demons abroad in the land (as Maximov discounts).   Ideas  
> can possess people and as such they are demons.
>
>
>
>>
>> Often jealousy starts when one's feelings (of budding love)  
>> starts. Is this
>> also happening (along with his writerly snooping for deeper truths)?
>
> But in Elizabeth Costello she's jealous of a really old flame's new  
> "love."
>
>
> Bekah
>
> *****
>
>>
>>
>> --- 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
>>
>>
>>
>
>