AtD In Which Lew learns how to define himself

[Mark Kohut]

Hotel Esthonia, ancient village values (ala later in AtD in Europe)--a courtyard within a courtyard, as good as it gets and
a positive trope in Pynchon---which, at least as a garden or single courtyard goes back to Shakespeare and 
Spenser (and probably Chaucer and Medieval writers in the Western tradition for all I know....and I'll bet
it is in many Eastern writers.....courtyards are civilization)

And where Lew, Protestant, learns the Protestant Ethic gives no insight into life's personal meanings. There is NO connection between
deeds (sins)and penance (for those deeds); penance and (any kind of) redemption...yet one does penance because it is one's
destiny.      Is that part of your reading?

Estonia is a city where West and East meet sez wikipedia or another...sorta like Malta.....very like later in ATD..........
so Lew learns Some Buddhist-like lessons.....'remembrance stick'/ stick of compassion (as it is called) ; waiting on servants; living 
frugally in a simple monk-like cell. His penance, 'which would happen anyway"

He learns that penance is one's destiny but that he "keeps bouncing free"....so he is undefined by his penance therefore
maybe most thematically telling: penance, (atonement--'remorse without an object'; self-suffering: performing good deeds compassionately is what defines us? )

P.S. can't help but think of the Rilke summary I posted no tlong ago...in which he, too, moved out of the Western\
Christian belief tradition yet came to believe that suffering was necessary and therefore a good in life. A way to eat Death daily, so to speak.
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