V2nd, C3

[Ian Livingston]

Sorry to be sketchy the last couple days. A series of impediments
arose which required my full attention and all the time in the
world....

So, to P. Aieul (oil, anyone?)....

This first Stencil of another perspective on an imagined situation in
an imagined history (any Linda Hutcheon fans out there? Are there some
earlier examples of "postmodern" historiographic metafictiction to
cite in relation to this chapter?) starts with yellow clouds
gathering. Why are the clouds yellow if it is a rainstorm? Anyone
familiar with that part of the world (beyond a Baedeker-awareness, I
mean)? The storm in slithers in on soundless wind, Porpentine awaits
Goodfellow under the watchful eyes of the French libertine passing as
a stand-in for local color at the cafe on Place Mohammed Ali. (As the
boxer was still a young brawler on the way into the ranks, I think
it's safe enough to say we are talking about "Muhammad Ali Pasha
al-Mas'ud ibn Agha (Arabic: محمد علي باشا‎) (Mehmet Ali Pasha in
Albanian; Muhammed Ali Paša in Bosnian; Kavalalı Mehmet Ali Paşa in
Turkish)[2]  (4 March 1769 – 2 August 1849) was an Albanian  who
became Wāli, and self-declared Khedive of Egypt and Sudan. Though not
a modern nationalist, he is regarded as the founder of modern Egypt
because of the dramatic reforms in the military, economic, and
cultural spheres that he instituted. The dynasty that he established
would rule Egypt and Sudan until the Egyptian Revolution of 1952."
Thank you, Wikipedia.) Ali's statue presides over the scene that
follows.

The details are all in the text, my question is how does this scene
work to "educate" the Stencil we come to know? Is is primary concern
to do with imagining something of how his father might have lived his
life in his last days, as the end of the introductory section might
incline us to think, or is it to do with Victoria Wren, who makes her
dramatic entry into the narrative here, by way of Goodfellow's
covetous excitement? What is most of concern to the narrative, here,
spy versus spy, or Stencil versus the mystery of V.?

Can anyone name the opera Porpentine performs? My knowledge of opera,
while far from disdainful in cast, is quite limited.

Is it Stencil or Aieul, or some other, who interjects on 65-6, "(How
many times had they stood this way: dwarfed horizontal and vertical by
any plaza or late afternoon? Could an argument from design be
predicated on that instant only, whtn the two must have been
displaceable, like minor chess pieces, anywhere across Europe's board.
Both of a color though one hanging back diagonal in deference to his
partner, both scanning any embassy's parquetry for signs of some dimly
sensed opposition--love, meal-ticket, object of political
assassination--any statue's face for a reassurance of self-agency and
perhaps, unhappily, self-humanity; might they be trying not to
remember that each square in Europe, however you cut it remains
inanimate after all?)" There is quite a lot in that interjection. I
think the psychological allusions to the importance of self, might be
of moment here? Emma? Any insights from Baldwin, perhaps? Piaget?
Jung?

To be continued....



-- 
"liber enim librum aperit."