Copellia

[David Morris]

Please explicate re Bluebeard. He is a rich murderer of his many wives. He
has a castle. He gains a vow of obedience from his bride that she breaks.
Does he deserve his justice? That is my question.

David Morris

On Wednesday, January 1, 2014, Martha Rooster-Singh wrote:

> In the great author's latest novel he sends his brave protagonist out to
> Montauk  where, in the middle of protected wildlife sanctuaries, in and
> around, and even under Camp Hero, Gabriel Ice has a castle under
> construction.  As she makes her way down a confidential space that resists
> analysis, her antennas, now stiff with the hairspray that Oedipa never put
> on or took off, are filled with radio traffic, numerals and NATO phonetic
> letters. More Mondaugen's sferics? The ghosts of murdered Africans? A
> poetry he can't comprehend. Not literally. Grover with his ham radio? The
> cries of his robot boy, the Black boy Carl Barrington, constructed from the
> car parts and junk that the society wastes and piles in the junk yard, the
> garbage tossed on the lawns to terrorize the childless Black couple, the
> Jazz man's nightmares and the the desperate schemes of the boys who try to
> save themselves from the bomb plots and fallout shelters their  parents
> have given them. Here, Maxine is a double fallout shelter. One, the Cold
> War shelter, now a tourist attraction, MAD in the new frontier, the other,
> Ice's Castle under construction. Privacy for the billionaire plutocrat
> welcoming the Void.
>
>  page 193
>
> P drops the clue: Bluebeard's Castle. Not a tip of the cap to Kurt
> Vonnegut here, but an Opera.  So the psycho-sexual journey.
>
> The other opera, always connected with this one, has to do with a wooden
> prince, made of flesh, made wood, then flesh again.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wooden_Prince
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 31, 2013 at 10:59 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com<javascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 'sundayjb at gmail.com');>
> > wrote:
>
>> I'm always interested by how damn often in the human (at least
>> western) imagination we imagine our creations will rebel against us
>> eventually. Robots, especially - it's as if we're sure they'll try to
>> kill us all as soon as they're smart enough to think like us. Really
>> neurotic of humans to project that onto something that doesn't even
>> exist yet, I reckon.
>>
>> Has extra connotations for the US, given that it's a creation that did
>> (successfully) rebel against its creator.
>>
>> On Wed, Jan 1, 2014 at 2:55 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com<javascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 'fqmorris at gmail.com');>>
>> wrote:
>> > I guess the most important aspect of all of this neo-human engineering
>> is
>> > that deus ex machina. Even so benign a being as Slothrup might cost you
>> your
>> > balls.  The Creation often confounds The Creator, but only because of
>> the
>> > Creator's willfulness.  This is also the story of Faust:  willful self
>> > creation via artificial means.  Both the same cautionary tale.
>> >
>> > David Morris
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > On Tuesday, December 31, 2013, David Morris wrote:
>> >>
>> >> P knows his Freud, and he knows opera.  He is well versed in automata
>> and
>> >> Frankenstein, as well as the golem,  He hasn't done clones yet...
>> >>
>> >> Clone Returns Home (2008)
>> >>
>> >>
>> http://variety.com/2008/film/reviews/the-clone-returns-home-2-1200472620/
>> >>
>> >> Trailer:
>> >> HKAIFF 2009 - 複製人懷鄉曲 The Clone Returns Home - trailer
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> On Tuesday, December 31, 2013, John Bailey wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>> Yeah, Coppelia is based on ETA Hoffmann's short story The Sandman,
>> >>> which was the major text Freud used to explore his theory of The
>> >>> Uncanny (and good stuff on voyeurism and castration). Very influential
>> >>> story and essay. Dunno if P read either but I've never been able to
>> >>> read V. without seeing them everywhere in the novel. V is the human
>> >>> who transforms themselves into an object, and makes real the horror
>> >>> implicit in the ballet (it's more obvious in the story, which doesn't
>> >>> have a happy ending.)
>> >>>
>> >>> On Wed, Jan 1, 2014 at 9:12 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com<javascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 'fqmorris at gmail.com');>>
>> wrote:
>> >>> > Watching the movie Tetro, a scene from the ballet Copellia, the
>> broken
>> >>> > doll,
>> >>> > is portrayed. I'd never heard anyone mention the ballet in V. In
>> light
>> >>> > of
>> >>> > Copellia, which seems so obvious to be its reference.
>> >>> >
>> >>> >  http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copp%C3%A9lia
>> >>> >
>> >>> > Coppélia concerns an inventor, Dr Coppelius, who has made a
>> life-size
>> >>> > dancing doll. It is so lifelike that Franz, a village swain, becomes
>> >>> > infatuated with it and sets aside his true heart's desire,
>> Swanhilde.
>> >>> > She
>> >>> > shows him his folly by dressing as the doll, pretending to make it
>> come
>> >>> > to
>> >>> > life and ultimately saving him from an untimely end at the hands of
>> the
>> >>> > inventor.
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>
>
>
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