Atdtda38: In hell, the way people reappear these days, 1077-1083 #1

[Paul Nightingale]

This is a lengthy section that begins with Dally in Paris, separated from
Kit, as at the end of 70.1. When Kit does reappear, down the page, there is,
straightaway, a distinction made between 'soldiering, or more like
engineering'. This is a reminder that, previously, he allowed himself to be
co-opted by Renzo's war-making (1070); here, he has left the war behind. As
the section begins, Dally also attempts to see the war as an episode now
concluded, while Policarpe insists on continuity since 1914 (1077). He
speaks of perception, firstly the '[i]llusion' of peace, and then seeing
Kit: he thinks he is mistaken here ('Hallucination, obviously'), but the
narrative promptly undercuts his certitude. For her part, Dally celebrates
'the blossoming city'; just as, a few pages later, the section will end with
post-war nightlife and 'music which cannot be marched to ...' etc (1083).
Policarpe is suspicious of 'peace and plenty' (1077); for him, this is still
Hell. But the section ending invokes 'nights [that] will be dark enough for
whatever visions must transpire across them, no longer to be broken into by
light displaced from Hell' (1083). Perhaps 'the difficulties' mentioned here
('no more productive of evil ...' etc) are an allusion to the way, earlier,
Kit's problem-solving was allowed to become a cover for war (just as, on
1072-1073, war against Austria had become a convenient cover for war against
the working class).

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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l