GR translation: a sermon on vanity

[Mark Kohut]

"Vanity, vanity, all is vanity"...Ecclesiastes 


From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 6:29 AM
Subject: Re: GR translation: a sermon on vanity

Itz another ambiguous allusion; first to the rocket-text, and
specifically to Solomon, wisest of men, who searches under the sun,
and here, though he has wisdom, he sees through a Minister's Black
Veil, for all is vanity, is nothing, still here he may find joy and
even, as in Melville's Try-works, follow the path of the catskill
eagle, but that path to joy and to wisdom is also the path of woe,
even to madness, for all under the sun is vanity, is nothing, is high
and low, life and death indivisible. Are you going to Vanity Fair? A
pilgrim's parable, an American allegory. The idea is perfectly
described by Bradstreet in her poem,

No pleasant tale shall 'ere be told,
Nor things recounted done of old.
No Candle 'ere shall shine in Thee,
Nor bridegroom's voice ere heard shall bee.
In silence ever shalt thou lye;
Adieu, Adeiu; All's vanity.

The bridegroom is Christ.

And by Melville in Moby-Dick:

Nevertheless the sun hides not Virginia's Dismal Swamp, nor Rome's
accursed Campagna, nor wide Sahara, nor all the millions of miles of
deserts and of griefs beneath the moon. The sun hides not the ocean,
which is the dark side of this earth, and which is two thirds of this
earth. So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow
in him, that mortal man cannot be true -- not true, or undeveloped.
With books the same. The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and
the truest of all books is Solomon's, and Ecclesiastes is the fine
hammered steel of woe. 'All is vanity'. ALL. This wilful world hath
not got hold of unchristian Solomon's wisdom yet. But he who dodges
hospitals and jails, and walks fast crossing grave- yards, and would
rather talk of operas than hell; calls Cowper, Young, Pascal,
Rousseau, poor devils all of sick men; and throughout a care-free
lifetime swears by Rabelais as passing wise, and therefore jolly; --
not that man is fitted to sit down on tomb-stones, and break the green
damp mould with unfathomably wondrous Solomon.

  But even Solomon, he says, 'the man that wandereth out of the way
of understanding shall remain' (i. e. even while living) 'in the
congregation of the dead'. Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it
invert thee, deaden thee; as for the time it did me.

There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And
there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into
the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible
in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge,
that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the
mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even
though they soar.


But Moma, that's where the fun is.
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