Apropos of some of our gender talk here: Marilyn French reads Pynchon(!?) ..not really

[alice wellintown]

O thou that with surpassing Glory crownd,
Look'st from thy sole Dominion like the God
Of this new World; at whose sight all the Starrs
Hide thir diminisht heads; to thee I call, [ 35 ]
But with no friendly voice, and add thy name
O Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams
That bring to my remembrance from what state
I fell, how glorious once above thy Spheare;
Till Pride and worse Ambition threw me down [ 40 ]
Warring in Heav'n against Heav'ns matchless King:
Ah wherefore! he deservd no such return
>From me, whom he created what I was
In that bright eminence, and with his good
Upbraided none; nor was his service hard. [ 45 ]
What could be less then to afford him praise,
The easiest recompence, and pay him thanks,
How due! yet all his good prov'd ill in me,
And wrought but malice; lifted up so high
I sdeind subjection, and thought one step higher [ 50 ]
Would set me highest, and in a moment quit
The debt immense of endless gratitude,
So burthensome, still paying, still to ow;
Forgetful what from him I still receivd,
And understood not that a grateful mind [ 55 ]
By owing owes not, but still pays, at once
Indebted and dischargd; what burden then?
O had his powerful Destiny ordaind
Me some inferiour Angel, I had stood
Then happie; no unbounded hope had rais'd [ 60 ]
Ambition. Yet why not? som other Power
As great might have aspir'd, and me though mean
Drawn to his part; but other Powers as great
Fell not, but stand unshak'n, from within
Or from without, to all temptations arm'd. [ 65 ]
Hadst thou the same free Will and Power to stand?
Thou hadst: whom hast thou then or what to accuse,
But Heav'ns free Love dealt equally to all?
Be then his Love accurst, since love or hate,
To me alike, it deals eternal woe. [ 70 ]
Nay curs'd be thou; since against his thy will
Chose freely what it now so justly rues.
Me miserable! which way shall I flie
Infinite wrauth, and infinite despaire?
Which way I flie is Hell; my self am Hell; [ 75 ]
And in the lowest deep a lower deep
Still threatning to devour me opens wide,
To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heav'n.


On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 12:53 AM, alice wellintown
<alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> Young Pynchon is an anxious thief; the buddy line, in Moby-Dick terms,
> "the Monkey Rope", that binds like an &,  Dixon to Mason and both to
> the rails, or to the mast, if the river boat of Confidence Man delight
> thee more, is a cogged circle that fits and fixes all wheels, turns,
> turns, turns toward Wiggleworth's Day of Doom. The Puritan Pynchon, is
> a dark romantic; his ancestry full of heretics; he is an Ahab, a
> Pyncheon, and like Milton's Satan who, when he sees the Sun, curses it
> and Heaven Lost, when arrived in Paradise, or any of Shakespeare's
> tragic villian-heros, but the seasons they go round and round as
> Emerson's circles.
> Circles
> from Essays: First Series (1841)
> by
> Ralph Waldo Emerson
> Nature centres into balls,
> And her proud ephemerals,
> Fast to surface and outside,
> Scan the profile of the sphere;
> Knew they what that signified,
> A new genesis were here.
>
> ESSAY X _Circles_
>
>
>
> Sunset
>
>
> The cabin; by the stern windows; Ahab sitting alone, and gazing out.
>
> I leave a white and turbid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, where'er I
> sail. The envious billows sidelong swell to whelm my track; let them;
> but first I pass.
>
> Yonder, by ever-brimming goblet's rim, the warm waves blush like wine.
> The gold brow plumbs the blue. The diver sun- slow dived from noon-
> goes down; my soul mounts up! she wearies with her endless hill. Is,
> then, the crown too heavy that I wear? this Iron Crown of Lombardy.
> Yet is it bright with many a gem; I the wearer, see not its far
> flashings; but darkly feel that I wear that, that dazzlingly
> confounds. 'Tis iron- that I know- not gold. 'Tis split, too- that I
> feel; the jagged edge galls me so, my brain seems to beat against the
> solid metal; aye, steel skull, mine; the sort that needs no helmet in
> the most brain-battering fight!
>
> Dry heat upon my brow? Oh! time was, when as the sunrise nobly spurred
> me, so the sunset soothed. No more. This lovely light, it lights not
> me; all loveliness is anguish to me, since I can ne'er enjoy. Gifted
> with the high perception, I lack the low, enjoying power; damned, most
> subtly and most malignantly! damned in the midst of Paradise! Good
> night-good night! (waving his hand, he moves from the window.)
>
> 'Twas not so hard a task. I thought to find one stubborn, at the
> least; but my one cogged circle fits into all their various wheels,
> and they revolve. Or, if you will, like so many ant-hills of powder,
> they all stand before me; and I their match. Oh, hard! that to fire
> others, the match itself must needs be wasting! What I've dared, I've
> willed; and what I've willed, I'll do! They think me mad- Starbuck
> does; but I'm demoniac, I am madness maddened! That wild madness
> that's only calm to comprehend itself! The prophecy was that I should
> be dismembered; and- Aye! I lost this leg. I now prophesy that I will
> dismember my dismemberer. Now, then, be the prophet and the fulfiller
> one. That's more than ye, ye great gods, ever were. I laugh and hoot
> at ye, ye cricket-players, ye pugilists, ye deaf Burkes and blinded
> Bendigoes! I will not say as schoolboys do to bullies- Take some one
> of your own size; don't pommel me! No, ye've knocked me down, and I am
> up again; but ye have run and hidden. Come forth from behind your
> cotton bags! I have no long gun to reach ye. Come, Ahab's compliments
> to ye; come and see if ye can swerve me. Swerve me? ye cannot swerve
> me, else ye swerve yourselves! man has ye there. Swerve me? The path
> to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is
> grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of
> mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush! Naught's an
> obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way!
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 9:00 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Marilyn French was a novelist and second-wave feminist theorist
>> of 70s and beyond. She wrote "The Women's Room" and
>>
>> "Shakespeare's Division of Experience" from which I get this stuff:
>>
>> "Works concerned with the masculine principle..are linear and transcendent..
>> that is, the narrative progresses chronologically and the protagonist has a
>> specific worldly goal"....
>>
>> "Literature concerned with the feminine principle is circular and eternal: it
>> juggles time
>> or ignores it. It presents incidents which have no apparent causal (rational)
>> connections.
>> ["You're going to want cause and effect..."--GR...]  Cause and effect and
>> chronology may
>> be entirely suspended in favor of psychological, emotional, associational links.
>> "
>> Feminine works are not mainly concerned with progress towards a goal, but with
>> depiction of
>> the texture of life, its quality. They focus on interior experience....and are
>> synthetic rather than
>> analytic in their thinking. ......
>>
>> "There is [often] no cosmic order...even power-in-the-world is largely
>> nullified. Power may be
>> evaded, mocked, parodied or converted...
>>
>> In addition, "feminine" worlds [in Literature] are essentially anarchic."
>>
>> Discuss among yourselves in realtion to Pynchon's works...
>>
>>
>>
>>
>