V-2nd - Chapter 11: Those kids

[alice wellintown]

The Bad Priest is treated like Jesus, the kids mock her and call for a
sermon. The description of the encounter with the mob is an obvious
parody of the execution and rejection of Jesus. But she is not Jesus;
she is a woman. So, the irony turns. Why have they sacrificed and
rejected her? As priest, as woman, as human?




On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 8:12 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> yeah, yeah....one can do a perspective of P's attitude to Catholcism
> as the Virgin's agape....as Malta's closer to origin Catholicism vs V.
> decadent distance from it.....the upside-down Alice-in-W distortion of
> Western Catholicsim since the Virgin lived--in the Middle Ages....
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
> To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Mon, December 6, 2010 7:58:20 PM
> Subject: Re: V-2nd - Chapter 11: Those kids
>
> 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.
>>>>
>>
>>
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