V--2nd how about that ending, eh?

[Ian Livingston]

'Course, my notions of directing the self into the unconscious are all
tinged with positive associations. As Ed Kowalzyc says, "What you
don't need is darkness, baby / What you don't know could set you
free." I have the inescapably Jungian inclination here to see Benny
and Brenda as the King and Queen, i.e., the newly hermaphroditic self,
venturing into the unknown, into the sea of night, the surrounding
dark, and all that jive, where the unknown awaits the light of (solar
and lunar) consciousness. I know I harp too much on Pynchon's
resonances with Jungian symbolism, but, man, scenes like this just beg
Jungian readings.

On Fri, Mar 4, 2011 at 12:14 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I like all the attendant readings that this embodies, Ian's, Michael B.'s but
>
> I haveta ask: they run 'toward the edge of Malta"...not into it..and to the
> [sea] beyond....
>
> If all that good stuff is true, are Benny and Brenda not up to it in V.?
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
> To: Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
> Cc: Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>; Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>;
> pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>; braden.andrews at gmail.com
> Sent: Fri, March 4, 2011 3:04:04 PM
> Subject: Re: V--2nd how about that ending, eh?
>
>>>> "Presently, sudden and in silence, all illumination in Valletta, houselight and
>>>>streetlight, was extinguished. Profane and Brenda ["whom he'd met yesterday"]
>>>>continued to run through the abruptly absolute night, momentum alone carrying
>>>>them toward the edge of Malta, and the Mediterranean beyond."
>>
>>On Fri, Mar 4, 2011 at 11:27 AM, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> Right, well, aren't night (darkness) and the sea two principle archetypes of
>>the unknown/unconscious?
>
> The novel V. is very much grounded in archetypes. And the island Malta
> is a central archetypal, spiritual ground, literally the site of the
> oldest (matriarchal) surviving temples on the planet.  It is almost
> literally, and very much symbolically,  the navel of the planet.
>
> The "character," V, is a modern (but also very old (incubus, golem))
> archetype, a counter-archetype of the Virgin.  So Ian's observation, I
> think, is right to the point.  Brenda and Profane's leap might be seen
> as a nihilistic act, but I don't think it is.  It seems a much more
> euphoric act, hopeful, not desolate.  And I think the fact that they
> leap together, archetypal spouses, emphasizes their movement forward
> into a more "rooted" into the most basic and sacred realms of
> consciousness.
>
> David Morris
>
>
>
>
>



-- 
"Psyche pasa athantos." --Plato