TMoP - Chapter Two - The cemetery

[Richard Ryan]

I also have checked extensively and can find no evidence that it has a cemetery on it.  For hundreds of years the island was home to a manorial estate and private park - in the 20th century the Soviets opened the grounds to the public and turned the palace into a museum.  Today the palace and park are among the the city's major tourist attractions.

Coetzee often appears to be taking almost Joycean pains to recreate 19th century Petersburg, so if in fact there has never been a cemetery on Yelagin Island we might take it as one of his little jokes on his more historically obsessive readership (or at least a clue that we should take nothing in the novel too literally).  After all, none of the central events in TMoP actually happened, so it shouldn't be surprising that one of the first locations described doesn't exist.  Chapter Two is full of  tropes - the ferryman, the stricken dogs - that suggest Coetzee is invoking a mythical Land of the Dead, not an actual place.  



--- On Thu, 9/25/08, Bekah <Bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
From: Bekah <Bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net>
Subject: Re: TMoP - Chapter Two - The cemetery
To: "Richard Ryan" <richardryannyc at yahoo.com>
Cc: "Pynchon-L" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Date: Thursday, September 25, 2008, 10:03 AM

I thought I looked and looked and could find no evidence of a  
cemetery ever having been on Yelagin Island.   Anyone else?

Bekah

On Sep 24, 2008, at 7:40 PM, Richard Ryan wrote:

> "They take the little ferryboat to Yelagin Island, which he has not  
> visited for years.  But for the two old women in black, they are  
> the only passengers.  It is a cold, misty day.  As they approach, a  
> dog, grey and emaciated, begins to lope up and down the jetty,  
> whining eagerly.  The ferryman swings a boathook at it; it retreats  
> to a safe distance.  Isle of dogs, he thinks: are there packs of  
> them skulking among the trees, waiting for the mourners to leave  
> before they begin their digging?"
>
> To quote (from memory) William Carlos Williams's introduction to  
> HOWL: "Ladies and gentlemen, we are going through Hell."
>
> By page seven of TMoP, Coetzee has already deployed a set of  
> allusions which will continue to resonate throughout the book: to  
> Dante, to Rilke, and, of course, always and everywhere, to the  
> historical double of the book's fictional protagonist, Dostoevsky.
>
> The visit to the Land of the Dead in the second chapter - invoking  
> immediately so many classic visits to the Underworld (Orpheus,  
> Odysseus, Aeneas, Leopold Bloom....), and accompanied by all the  
> necessary signs (ferryman, dogs, widows) establishes a re-occuring  
> pattern in the novel: the Living in search of the Dead.
>
> I'd suggest we'll find, as the novel progresses, that TMoP is -  
> among other things, but perhaps pre-eminently - a mediation on  
> Necromancy, on way that the survivors attempt to resurrect the  
> people they've lost.
>
>

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