V-2nd - Chapter 11: Those kids

[alice wellintown]

The source is, of cource Moby-Dick.

It was a queer sort of place—a gable-ended old house, one side palsied
as it were, and leaning over sadly. It stood on a sharp bleak corner,
where that tempestuous wind Euroclydon kept up a worse howling than
ever it did about poor Paul's tossed craft. Euroclydon, nevertheless,
is a mighty pleasant zephyr to any one in-doors, with his feet on the
hob quietly toasting for bed. "In judging of that tempestuous wind
called Euroclydon," says an old writer—of whose works I possess the
only copy extant—"it maketh a marvellous difference, whether thou
lookest out at it from a glass window where the frost is all on the
outside, or whether thou observest it from that sashless window, where
the frost is on both sides, and of which the wight Death is the only
glazier." True enough, thought I, as this passage occurred to my
mind—old black-letter, thou reasonest well. Yes, these eyes are
windows, and this body of mine is the house. What a pity they didn't
stop up the chinks and the crannies though, and thrust in a little
lint here and there. But it's too late to make any improvements now.
The universe is finished; the copestone is on, and the chips were
carted off a million years ago. Poor Lazarus there, chattering his
teeth against the curbstone for his pillow, and shaking off his
tatters with his shiverings, he might plug up both ears with rags, and
put a corn-cob into his mouth, and yet that would not keep out the
tempestuous Euroclydon. Euroclydon! says old Dives, in his red silken
wrapper—(he had a redder one afterwards) pooh, pooh! What a fine
frosty night; how Orion glitters; what northern lights! Let them talk
of their oriental summer climes of everlasting conservatories; give me
the privilege of making my own summer with my own coals.
But what thinks Lazarus? Can he warm his blue hands by holding them up
to the grand northern lights? Would not Lazarus rather be in Sumatra
than here? Would he not far rather lay him down lengthwise along the
line of the equator; yea, ye gods! go down to the fiery pit itself, in
order to keep out this frost?
Now, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone before
the door of Dives, this is more wonderful than that an iceberg should
be moored to one of the Moluccas. Yet Dives himself, he too lives like
a Czar in an ice palace made of frozen sighs, and being a president of
a temperance society, he only drinks the tepid tears of orphans.
But no more of this blubbering …


On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 4:47 PM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
> Thanks for this, David.  This does seem the most likely source (I was sort of thinking New Testament "Let he who is without sin ..." sorts of scenarios, but it seems clear that part of Pynchon's intention is to pit the manufactured V. against the visceral, simple native Maltese culture and come out vanquished.  Searching around the net for more explications on sparagmos, couldn't find much.  It's ecstasy-based (the Maltese kids giggle a bit - does that count?), frenzied (the kids are more curious than frenzied), but it's the moral attitude towards what they do to V. that seems to most resemble sparagmos - there are no moral repercussions (guilt, punishment, etc.) for the kids.  Fausto, a Christian, rather than a bare-footed native, is the one who suffers from his own failure to intervene.  Is part of his suffering stemming from his realization that he's no longer a native, that he's to Anglicized and Catholic and modern to be able to experience the ecstasy of the mob?
>
> Laura
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
>>From: David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
>>Sent: Dec 6, 2010 9:22 AM
>>To: Bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net>
>>Cc: kelber at mindspring.com, pynchon-l at waste.org
>>Subject: Re: V-2nd - Chapter 11: Those kids
>>
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparagmos
>>
>>Sparagmos (Ancient Greek: σπαραγμός) refers to an ancient Dionysian
>>ritual in which a living animal, or sometimes even a human being,
>>would be sacrificed by being dismembered, by the tearing apart of
>>limbs from the body. Sparagmos was frequently followed by omophagia
>>(the eating of the raw flesh of the one dismembered). It is associated
>>with the Maenads or Bacchantes, followers of Dionysus, and the
>>Dionysian Mysteries.
>>
>>Examples of sparagmos appear in Euripides's play The Bacchae, which
>>concerns Dionysus and the Maenads. At one point guards sent to control
>>the Maenads witness them pulling a live bull to pieces with their
>>hands. Later, Dionysus lures his cousin, king Pentheus, into a forest
>>after he bans worship of the god where he was attacked by Maenads,
>>including his own mother Agave. The reference of his mother tearing
>>apart his limbs is sparagmos. Similarly, Medea is said to have killed
>>and dismembered her brother whilst fleeing with Jason and the stolen
>>fleece in order to delay their pursuers (who would be forced to
>>collect the remains of the prince). The Italian film director Pier
>>Paolo Pasolini staged a sparagmos ritual as part of a long sequence
>>near the beginning of his film Medea (1969), before dramatising the
>>episode in which Medea kills her brother in a similar way. In
>>Tennessee Williams's play Suddenly, Last Summer, Sebastian Venable is
>>killed in an episode of sparagmos and omophagia.
>>
>>According to some myths, Orpheus notably met this fate at the hands of
>>the Thracian women. Interpreting the ritual through the lens of the
>>Freudian Oedipus complex, Catherine Maxwell identifies sparagmos as a
>>form of castration, particularly in the case of Orpheus.[1]
>>
>>
>>
>>On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 8:14 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> V might be considered the Anti-Orpheus, who was most famously
>>> dismembered.  Orpheus figures prominently in GR as well...
>>>
>>> On Sun, Dec 5, 2010 at 7:09 PM, Bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote
>>>> V.'s metamorphosis is taken up far less subtly in the later historical episodes through the depiction of her "obsession with bodily incorporating little bits of inert matter" (488).   [...]   Ultimately, in her most shadowy guise of all, V. returns to Maim, where she appears during World War II as a mysterious figure known simply as the Bad Priest.   There the full extent of her obsession with replacing body parts with artificial ones is revealed when what's left of her dying body is effectively disassembled by a band of little children whose own insensitivity to suffering is of no small account.
>>>
>
>