TMoP: Pattern

[Bekah]

I sent this but never saw it come up:


On Sep 29, 2008, at 6:34 AM, David Morris wrote:
> This is what I was thinking as I read it yesterday.
> Chapter 4 really stands out, and is worth reading more than once.
>
> On Sun, Sep 28, 2008 at 9:56 PM, Glenn Scheper
>>
>> "The white suit", Chapter 4 is a symbolic benchmark.
>>



Indeed,  and I feel the need to backtrack a bit to catch it.    
Chapter 4 is short but really sets up one major thread of the novel  
and adds to another.   Three of the main characters have been  
presented - Coetzee's Dostoevsky, the widowed landlady Anna  
Sergyevna,  and her daughter Matryona. (age - 12-14?)

When Matryona finds D. clutching Pavel's white suit in his hands,   
tears in his eyes,  D. is either trying to summon up his grief,  or  
somehow snatch Pavel back from the grave.    (There are lots of  
literary figures who do that - Manfred and Orpheus and others.)  -  
But were one of my children to suddenly die I'd probably hold their  
clothes tight in my hands and try to hold them close again that way.   
Could this be drawing on Coetzee's own experience?

The white - a symbol of purity?   - Knight in shining armor is more  
like it because  D. will tell Matryosha the story of Pavel's white  
suit which the historical Dostoevsky  wrote later in a somewhat  
different fashion for Stavrogin (as told by Shatov in Demons - (See  
"The Wise Serpent chapter in Demons.)

D.  stares at her with "what can only be nakedness" after which she  
"flees the room." ...   "he will not forget and may even one day  
rework into his writing."

And this,  I suppose,  may be Coetzee's fictionalization as to the  
origins of Stavrogin's confession  - the censored and separately  
published,  now appenixed,  section of Demons.   Dostoevsky has now  
taken on, to an extent,  the role he will write out as Stavrogin in  
"At Tikon's."     Stavrogin is the totally unforgettable character  
from Demons whose main section was censored but republished as  
"Stavrogin's Confession" or "At Tikon's"  and as an appendix in  
current versions.

In "At Tikon's"  Stavrogin says he was renting a room from a woman   
and her husband who had a daughter named Matryosha, about 14 years  
old.  The husband worked all day and the woman was in and out quite a  
lot due to her job of light sewing.  This left Stavrogin and  
Matryosha alone quite a lot - Matryosha cleaned for him and so  
forth.  Stavrogin is a fairly young man - Coetzee's Dostoevsky is in  
his late 40s.

Anna,  Matryosha's mother sews but her father and a brother are dead   
so D. and Anna share the experience of losing a child.  D. is seeking  
a bond,   seeking a release for grief.

There are some references to literature of the times,  Anna is  
familiar with the very popular "Poor Folk," one of Dostoevsky's early  
works.  I think Anna sees her life as being similar to that of the  
cousins in the story - very poor, abusive families, lots of death and  
so on.

D. wants to talk about Pavel.  She tells him a bit - he drank and had  
rough friends.  D. wants praises for Pavel now - he criticized him  
before about oversleeping.  He feels guilty and angry that Pavel has  
died - if he'd finished school,  "None of this would have happened."

"I am behaving like a character in a book."
(Sounds like the way Coetzee writes today.)

He has a vision of Pavel smiling at him in friendliness and  
forgiveness.   He cries.  And then Matryona appears again and stands  
before him wearing a white nightdresws, hair brushed out.  He can't  
help notice "the budding breasts."

"Through the last of his tears his gaze locks on hers.  In that  
instant something passes between them from which he flinches as  
though pierced by a red-hot wire."  and  her mother takes her to bed.