Back to V., MB's structure post cont.

[John Bailey]

Well, I never knew Vheissu mightn't have been an original P invention.
There ya go.

Nice point about the Lost Places in Pynchon's novels (should include
Lemuria too).

Vheissu, in V. and in Andrea's utopia, seems to fit pretty closely to
Pynchon's idea of the Hothouse, the closed system that requires
increasing expenditures of energy to keep stable. A fool's paradise or
fiction whose real attainment would be too destructive. Vheissu ends
up quite a sinister and monstrous trap in V. (and weren't there a few
more references in the earlier versions? I think I read that in Fast
Learner).

Same with Shambala and Lemuria - these magical places off the map are
kind of scary and more like torpor than enlightenment.

But what of pre-M&D America? The regret and loss in Mason & Dixon
seems pretty genuine.

Vineland doesn't really offer a Great Lost Place but provides
something similar in the family gathering at the end, stripped back of
the entropic fantasy, as if anarchist miracles shouldn't be sought in
closed-off, inaccessible faraway communities but can be magicked
together, slowly, right here at home.


On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 6:34 AM, Robin Landseadel
<robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:
> On Sep 2, 2010, at 1:29 PM, Robin Landseadel wrote:
>
>> I think the Universal Binding Ingredient, the one that did not /could not
>> sink in [for me] previously is Vheissu.
>
> This little posting was lifted from the PynchonWiki for "V."
>
>        Vheissu
>        From The Modern Word (an excellent website for postmodern
>        literature):
>        Lesbare und lesenswerthe Bemerkungen über das Land
>        Ukkbar in Klein-Asien
>        Johann Valentin Andreä Strassburg, Lazarus Zetzner, 1641.
>
>        A very rare work of which only seven original copies survive,
>        this fictional travelogue was written by J. V. Andreä, the
>        purported author of Chymische Hochzeit Christiani
>        Rosencreuzand "accidental" founder of the Rosicrucian
>        movement. Author of several works involving imaginary
>        communities and mystico-Christian utopias, including the
>        Reipublicae Christianopolitanae Descriptio, Bemerkungen was
>        an expansion of ideas first expressed in the Christianopolis,
>        now projected onto an abstract philosophical country situated
>        within the borders of present-day Iraq. While certainly of interest
>        to Borges scholars and modern Rosicrucians,Bemerkungen is
>        most notorious for its chapter on the ideal community of
>        Vheissu, the major inspiration behind the infamous Zweite
>        Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft. Better known to history as the
>        Commune of Prague, the ZFG was an isolated group of
>        philosophers, Rosicrucians, and Lutheran radicals who
>        attempted to recreate the ideals of Vheissu by establishing a
>        closed community outside Prague in 1773. Their experiment
>        was a disaster, ending two years later in a spiral of cannibalism,
>        violent orgies, and mass suicide. (For further details, see
>        "Rosiges Glühen, Blutiges Kreuz," by Kristoph Gross, Der
>        Annalen Metakarus, 1934, pp. 345-78; or "The Prague
>        Commune and its Influence on DeSade's The 120 Days of
>        Sodom," by Josephine Pinto, Lingua Franca, Vol 10/No. 3, April
>        2000, pp. 22-25.)
>
> http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Vheissu