TMoP - Chapter Two - The cemetery

[Bekah]

On Sep 25, 2008, at 11:20 PM, Lawrence Bryan wrote:

>
> Thank you this, Bekah, I think. Is there anything more we can say  
> about the book?

I hope so - my section starts on Sunday and I'll be working more from  
a comparison of Dostoevsky's life and times to that of the fictional  
D. with some references to "The Demons."

I would say more about that essay but I don't want to indulge in  
spoilers.  I just thought that the bit about the Yelagin Island  
particularly good - not necessarily definitive because it could  
define *any* island cemetery - the question of why Yelagin  still  
open.   Perhaps there are no island cemeteries in Petersburg or  
perhaps there is some other reason Coetzee chose the island of the  
rich and famous for his place of hell.   ?  Don't know.

Bekah





> I studied topology at the university. To moderate a section of this  
> book it would have been better to have spent my time studying  
> tropology.
>
> I sent  a request  off to the Russian consulate in San Francisco to  
> see if there ever was a cemetery on Yelagin. I doubt I'll even get  
> a reply.
>
> I was looking at my map of St. Petersburg to see if I could trace  
> the movements in the book. Alas the names are in Cyrillic in tiny  
> print. The first street mentioned in the book is not even labeled  
> on my map. There are four large islands at the mouth of the Neva  
> only one of which is named on my map. I used the Google translator  
> to see what Yelagin Island looked like. OCTPOD is island but the  
> named one wasn't Yelagin.
>
> Reminds me of seeing signs for PECTOPAHs here and there in  
> Petersburg. After spending sometime trying to pronounce Russian  
> words I realized with the "P" being like our "R", the "C" like our  
> "S" and the "H" like our "N", it was pronounced, more or less,  
> "RESTORAN". That explained why pictures with ads almost always had  
> bowls of borsht. I guess the island would be pronounced "YELAGIN  
> OSTROD".
>
> Lawrence
>
>
> On Sep 25, 2008, at 7:45 PM, Bekah wrote:
>
>> I certainly wasn't criticizing Coetzee for apparently   
>> fictionalizing a cemetery.  Rather,  now that I'm pretty well  
>> satisfied as to the fact Yelegin Island was probably never an  
>> actual cemetery in which Pavel might be fictionally buried,  I'm  
>> curious as to why Coetzee used it.
>>
>> One of the aristocratic families in "The Idiot" has a home on the  
>> island, it's mentioned in passing and that's as much as their is  
>> about Yelagin Island in the works of Dostoevsky.
>>
>> Yelagin Island is the turf of the aristocracy but they're  
>> certainly not dead or even dying in the mid 1860s.
>>
>> Yelagin is minor character in Gogol's "Dead Souls" but this seems  
>> unrelated.  very much alive.
>>
>> So that leaves the idea of an island surrounded by a river - the  
>> River Styx perhaps which is  the mythological  boundary between  
>> earth and hell - where D. seems to be.
>> Bingo (perhaps):
>>
>> From ON MOURNING:
>> THE TROPE OF LOOKING BACKWARDS
>> IN J. M. COETZEE’S THE MASTER OF PETERSBURG
>> http://tinyurl.com/3tch39
>>
>> "In the context of the novel, Yelagin Island, the island of the  
>> dead, plays the role of the place and space that sets off  
>> mourning. The river on the border of Petersburg separating the  
>> town from the cemetery on Yelagin Island literally and  
>> symbolically delimits/separates (the world of) the dead from (the  
>> world of) the living. Gillian Rose argues that mourning is  
>> impossible within the city walls, it can only take place outside  
>> the walls of the city. Rose also adds that without commemoration  
>> (the coming of) an ending is impossible (102).[9] Performing the  
>> act of mourning (that of lamentation and crying) is (made)  
>> possible for Dostoevsky outside the walls of Petersburg. This is  
>> where he gives free rein to his feelings. Lying upon the mound,  
>> crying, he observes himself and ironically remarks: “what a Jewish  
>> performance” (Coetzee 9). The river that Dostoevsky crosses with  
>> Anna and Matryona to get to the cemetary on Yelagin island alludes  
>> to the river Styx. With their symbolic crossing through the river,  
>> Dostoevsky, Anna and Matryona walk neither among the dead, nor  
>> among the living; their crossing takes place in an in-between  
>> space and is an in-between state like that of mourning,  
>> “belonging” to two worlds at the same time. Also, the image of the  
>> dogs on the island “skulking among the trees waiting for the  
>> mourners to leave before they begin their digging” (Coetzee 7)  
>> evokes the figure of Cerberus, the hound of Hades, the monstrous  
>> three-headed dog."
>>
>> There's a lot more about this aspect and the use of mythology in  
>> TMoP at that url.  From the second paragraph:
>>
>> "Reminiscences and traces of the myths of Daedalus, Penelope, and  
>> Orpheus are at play in the novel, informing Dostoevsky’s mourning  
>> and his “tale of Pavel.” These stories play a crucial role, as the  
>> fictional Dostoevsky himself remarks: “One by one, in fact, the  
>> old stories are coming back, stories he heard from his grandmother  
>> and did not know the meaning of, but stored up unwittingly like  
>> bones for the future. A great ossuary of stories from before  
>> history began, built up and tended by the people” (Coetzee 126,  
>> italics mine). The question to be answered then would be what the  
>> meaning of these stories is, why they are hidden behind the text  
>> and what their function is. I argue that these myths are there as  
>> subtexts to Dostoevsky’s mourning, their function being to aid the  
>> father’s work of mourning and help him embed the trauma of loss  
>> into stories."
>>
>>
>> Bekah
>>
>> On Sep 25, 2008, at 8:47 AM, Richard Ryan wrote:
>>
>>> 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.
>>> >
>>> >
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>