TMoP - Chapter Three - Pavel

[Bekah]

Interesting use of the turtle metaphor - an amphibian.  It's  
mentioned again on the next page, 18,  with  "From his turtle-throat  
he gives a last cry, which seems to him more like a bark..."    And  
it will come up again later in a couple places.

Turtles have no voice (the little sound is air escaping from their  
lungs) - neither do the dead.  One of Coetzee's regular themes is to  
give voice to those without a voice,  Michael K,  Friday and the  
woman in Foe,  animals in his latest works,  are virtually voiceless.

Btw,  Orpheus' lyre (used to get Eurydice back from the dead) was  
made from the shell of a tortoise but it made beautiful music.  So  
too the pen of Dostoevsky and Coetzee.

Bekah

On Sep 28, 2008, at 3:04 AM, Richard Ryan wrote:

> "During the night a dream comes to him.  He is swimming  
> underwater.  The light is blue and dim.  He banks and glides  
> easily, gracefully; his hat seems to have gone, but in his black  
> suit he feels like a turtle, a great old turtle...."
>
> "Pavel is lying on his back.  His eyes are closed.  His hair,  
> wafted by the current, is as soft as a baby's...."
>
>
> In the third chapter of TMoP we find Dostoevsky's quest - if that's  
> the right word for it - to learn the truth about his dead stepson  
> intensifying; after a dinner with Anna and Matryona that is laced  
> with erotic undercurrents (the interplay between sex and death is  
> one of the book's ongoing themes), D. has a dream in which,  
> transformed into a giant turtle, he finds Pavel's body resting at  
> the bottom of a weed clogged lake.  The encounter, with its  
> dimensions of magical metamorphosis,  brings Pavel vividly before  
> us for the first time, without resolving any of the mystery  
> surrounding his death, or in any way clarifying its circumstances.   
> It also allows us to witness D. trying to dream Pavel back to life,  
> and to sense that the father is, perhaps without fully realizing  
> it, beginning to deploy his considerable creative and imaginative  
> powers in his efforts to understand Pavel's death.