Back to AtD. Music of the Spheres-- Not

[Mark Kohut]

Yes, for you and others I am always going to be criticized or sometimes 
slammed for trying to suss out Pynchon's values in the text---which is all I mean
by 'approves of'....we ALL(?) AGREE on many of the accepted themes as values yet with some
new ones I bring up, the whole conception is said to be off.....maybe but I don't thnk so..
I'll more easily believe it is difficult specific new value-finding that is disgreed with but, again, maybe not
 
......writers do have values that their works shine forth often....Pynchon
more than most (Although his 'values' are multiform not simplistic, and not that easy to see
sometimes and willfully, purposely ambiguous often........but, contra Wood, full of meaning.
 
Yet,I will hack along.....some will not follow, lots might disagree with the premise, others
with the conclusions........but as I once wrote there are five lines in Titus Andronicus which
scholars/readers/performers still differ widely on after 400 years and it is not even Measure for Measure
...........SO IT GOES
 
That's why great writers are like life too.....
 
I remember many plisters commented on the section in ATD in which P went out of his way to
distinguish the historical Germany from the Deep Germany of the Volk....and I also remember and posted during this reading
stuff about P seeming to put forward an argument for the way an olde Balkan village and its traditions
handled itself, including its darknesses, its Jungian shadow life handled communally. With Danilo and Cyprian.
All as a human set of values he was pointing to.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

________________________________
 From: Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net>
To: pynchon-l at waste.org 
Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2012 12:40 PM
Subject: Re: Back to AtD. Music of the Spheres-- Not
  

On 7/25/2012 8:19 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:
 
OK, all you plister musicians and the rest who know music better'n me, which oughta be about 
>all of you, or at least you know what you like as the saying goes and which might be apt as 
>the guide for me to be wild in speculation about the next bit in AtD......p.940...... 
>
>p. 940.Lydian vs. Phyrgian modes.....Altho other medieval modes are represented, the Lydian is 
>absent in Balkan villages now...."the interval which our awkwardly unflatted B makes with 
>F was known to the ancients as 'the devil in the music'..... 
>
>"they tend to favor the so-called Phrygian mode, quite common thru the region.".....[attribute[d] to 
>Pythagoras, and may be traceable all the way back to Orpheus himself"......."In view, added Yashmeen, 
>of the similarity if not identity, between Pythagorean and Orphic teachings"... 
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lydian_mode 
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrygian_mode 
>
>http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pythagoras/ 
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphism_%28religion) 
>
>My gloss, one level of possible meaning, I say: TRP values the ancient wisdom of folk tradition(s) in general, 
>even making sure we understand he respects the Volk of Deep Germany as he slashes Germans and their modern history 
>in his works, so here, as the Balkans build to War, they have lost the medieval Lydian mode wherein the devil was  
>"in the music', known and tangible (as God was to them) but then, the devil went underground [see below and elsewhere] and reemerged 
>in the abstract....I am taken with TRP giving Yashmeen the connection between the Phrygian mode and Pythagoras, often 
>called the first mathematician and "Orphic teachings" [unverifiable says wikpedia] which I will read to the disagreement of 
>many as another slam at mathematics as an abstraction from 'real life', the folk life of all of us  
>& also here another linking 
>of the abstraction of religious beliefs [Orphism as example] with the other abstractions--the day-lit fictions-- punctured in AtD.    
It sounds like the volk are still observing the taboo against the
    unflatted B in the scale starting on F.  So, to build your case,
    won't you have to defend this superstitious behavior?  In the eyes
    of Pynchon?  Need some clarification.

IMHO it's not a good idea to try to decide what Pynchon approves of
    and doesn't.  Not an absolute rule of course.

The whole scene does serve the purpose of getting Y and her party
    invited along on the expedition to Thrace.

P


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>http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/please-allow-me-to-introduce-myself/ 
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>http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/please-allow-me-to-introduce-myself/   
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