Back to AtD; 'a brief moment of certitude' p.950

[Paul Mackin]

On 8/23/2012 4:52 PM, rich wrote:
> sounds like mumbo jumbo to me. exactly how is cyprian an ideal
> man--all mr enlightenment, gonna live with the other nuns while the
> rest of humanity continues on with its death dance. so he conquered
> buggery and all sorts. what next. obviously, become a nun and be like
> pico iyer hanging with the dahlia lama and let everyone else know how
> wonderful enlightenment is.
>
> i hate this romantic crap

Cyprian among other things is a sex addict, mostly of the masochist 
variety.  But he is losing his desirability. He no longer sees desire in 
the eyes of potential abusers.  His decision to enter the Thracian 
convent can easily  be interpreted as having mixed motivation.  It's not 
so very long a journey from mortification of the flesh (putting flesh to 
death) to masochism.  The undergarment composed of the hair of the 
novice's  shaved head adds strong fortification.

Pynchon is good at mixed motivation--it's why we (I) love him. Cyprian's 
destination is  a reprise of Las Viudas de Cristo in M&D.   When we 
remember that delicious description of the cilice, we see Cyprian as a 
widow of desire.

P




>
> On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 4:40 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>> "Brief moment of certitude" from some "familiarity" of countless previous
>> experiences, "brought back from an exterior darkness."
>>
>> Sounds to me like an archetypal memory.  Jung, mythology...
>>
>> On Thursday, August 23, 2012, Mark Kohut wrote:
>>> p.950 If Cyprian is some kind of new ideal man, new ideal man-woman so to
>>> speak, and in some way
>>> he is a new ideal person, fer sure, right? (not THE ideal but an ideal/)
>>> then he exists in some new uncertain
>>> transvaluation of all values, yes?.....some new relativity (as simple
>>> metpahor) of relationships?
>>>
>>> and then he is handed Ljubica...."Cyprian] took her warily, her lightness
>>> fitting so easily after all into his hands,
>>> nearly tugging him off the floor"----don't you love that? -- how does
>>> lightness tug? except in the pull of
>>> father-like love?.....
>>>
>>> "But more than that, the familiarity, as if this had already happened
>>> countless times before. He wouldn't dare
>>> say it out loud. But, somehow, here was a brief moment of certitude,
>>> brought back from an exterior darkness,
>>> as if to fill a space he could not have defined before this......."
>>>
>>> in this book of satirizing almost everything, where all the religious
>>> stuff seems to lead to no clear religious
>>> acceptance---but to an embracing of Mystery as the religion we might
>>> believe in----here is
>>>
>>> CERTITUDE.....holding a new person. One meaning of life is new life?