V-2nd - Chapter 11: Those kids

[alice wellintown]

The mob, the kids, are Catholic too. The kids mock the Bad Priest, the
bombs have made rocks of them all. But Fausto can't let old Lazarus
die alone like some Bartleby in the Tombs cause Grace is in the Wind
and Fausto has if not hope or faith, love, and the Greatest of these,
is Love/Charity. Ah Agape! Ah Paola!

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.
>>>
>
>