V2nd, C3

[Joseph Tracy]

On Jul 20, 2010, at 1:56 PM, Ian Livingston wrote:

> Is it me, or does the opening of section v call to mind The Woman in
> the Dunes? There is something very Zen about the second paragraph. "It
> happens, nothing else." Resonates, too, with Waldetar's contemplation
> of the besouled and that which is not besouled.
>
> The descriptions of Gebrail's life and his milieu in the workday again
> call to mind Baldwin and the roles of self and society. For which,
> see:
>
> http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20522/20522-h/20522-h.htm#CHAPTER_IX
>
> Gebrail's private angst is a reflection of his community, his
> Feuerbachian and Nietzschean philosophy is shaped by the desert: "the
> city is only the desert in disguise;" and, the desert "has no voice.
> If the Koran were nothing, then Islam was nothing. Then Allah was a
> story and his Paradise wishful thinking;" "Nothing was coming. Nothing
> was already here;" he enjoys starless nights, "As if a great lie were
> finally to be exposed."  Oppose this sort thought to Waldetar's
> contemplation on the permanent residents of Baedeker land.
>
> He takes Porpentine to meet Goodfellow reminiscing the day's work with
> this fare as he visits apparently random places in the city. The
> Coptic girl is a loose end, yes? I don't recollect her appearance
> anywhere else. Just a glimpse of a pawn in the play.
>
> And the parting shot from Goodfellow reintroduces VW to events....
>
> These two sections feel to me like a descent into the structural nadir
> of events in this chapter. All the perspectives so far (Aieul, Yusef,
> Max, Waldetar, and Gebrail) are so lost in their introspections, they
> are unable to really process the role of the Europeans in their lives.

I have a different response. Not that they don't perceive the role or  
power of Europeans, but that they are unable to think of resistance  
as a route to a personally meaningful change.  Their cultural  
identity is steeped in 4000 years of imperial overlords, foreign and  
domestic. Gebrail's thought that Paradise is wishful thinking is more  
revolutionary than any bomb.
> As the Austrians (Lepsius) try to topple English favor (Sir Alastair
> Wren) by way assassination (first the train, next the opera), in order
> to gain the upper hand in Formosa, the locals aid them at the cost of
> their own autonomy, ultimately. Does this say something about all of
> us living under the rose, victims of our own daydreams? Are we not
> stencils? Our plowshares, as someone noticed, are made from
> instruments of death.
>
> As I wrote that line, the warplanes arrived overhead. They often
> practice maneuvers over Fort Hunter-Liggett, my nearest neighbor. We
> also hear the occasional mock battle, with 50-cal machine gun fire and
> all. We are a Buddhist retreat. Interesting resonances, that's all.
>
> And where is V. in these two sections? We know from his own words that
> Stencil is "he who pursues V.", but we are brought back here, I think,
> to Sidney's "not who, but what." Is Victoria an emblem leading us into
> and out of the heart of the cross, where all eight stations meet in
> empty blackness (starless nights)? Some of the monks here will go a
> round or three with me from time to time about the universal elements
> of world religions, and that centering on the ineffable at the heart
> of all our ruminations seems to me one of those universals. But then,
> I woke up at 3 a.m. this morning and realized that I have never
> understood anything. Must be reading too much Henry Adams.
>
> -- 
> "liber enim librum aperit."