M&D - Chapter 10 / pp 102-103

[Mark Kohut]

"All history must converge to Opera in the Italian Style"

That's it. That's what we know when we think we know history. P is
always saying.


A--and, the main players are 'controlled' by others and
everyday life is always different.

On Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 2:07 PM, Becky Lindroos <bekker2 at icloud.com> wrote:
> closing up Chapter 10 -  (and there is so much more than the surface I've scratched at -  as well as what it all means -like -  what is Pynchon saying about the narrative of history?
>
> p 102:  And as a retort to M and D: -   "I warn'd you all," Mrs. De Bosch lilts, triumphant, "did I not, ev'ryone. Nor should I be much surpriz'd, if those frightful Instruments they brought, have serv'd quite another Purpose here."    -
> What kind of purpose does she have in mind?  Is science,  even telescopes, now the work of the devil in the minds of the Dutch Calvinists?  Is this an anti-Galileo thing? (lol)
>
> And Mason and Dixon leave for St. Helena quietly - only Bonk, the police official, to say good-bye.
>
> Cherrycoke breaks into his narrator role (much like a teacher might) and asks why Mason & Dixon left home at all: (and I suspect Pynchon used a lack of proper punctuation here to mess with the narrative).
>
> "What made them leave home and set sail upon dangerous seas,  determining where upon the Globe they must go was not, -  Pace any Astrologists in the Room, - the Heavenly Event by itself, but rather that unchaining Assembly of Human Needs of which Venus, at the instant of going dark, is the Prime Object, - including the Royal Society's need for the Solar Parallax, - but what of the Astronomer's own Desires, which may have been less philosophical."
>
> If the first comma is replaced with a period,  the whole thing makes somewhat more sense.
>
> Tenebræ suggests,  "T'was Love for the Planet Herself."   (Yeah?  love for Earth? love for Venus? - I'd suggest for Earth.)
>
> ******************
> P. 103
> Then Euphrenia reveals that she has had quite a past, too - a Turkish Harem, Barbary Pirates, Ramadan, coming to Pittsburg, presumably with Cherrycoke.  -  Was she a part of the whites sold into slavery?
>
> **  "... twas Inconvenience which provided the recurring Motrix (feminine machine) of Euphrenia's adventures among the Turks..."
> It's the Inconvenience again,  Fender-Belly Bodine's ship, the H.M.S. Inconvenience page 28 and also in Against the Day (2006).
>
> ** So she picks up her oboe and begins her own little musical accompaniment to Cherrycoke's tale.  She apparently plays bits of operatic pieces by Ditters Von Dittersdorf - an actual Viennese composer of the times.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Ditters_von_Dittersdorf
> She plays "I Gluttoni"  from Scammozetta  (which is only mentioned on the M&D Wiki -I can't find it elsewhere).
>
> So visualize this - the film is Cherrycoke telling us the story of Mason & Dixon as a little 18th century Italian light comedy operetta with sound-track.  (And it gets better).
>
> And this is is an excellent little review on the H-net site - I'm putting it here because it relates to the Italian opera bit although it quotes from later pages:
> http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=1186
>
> "All history must converge to Opera in the Italian Style," Pynchon suggests (p. 706). But "History is not Chronology, ... nor is it Remembrance" (p. 349). History is composed of a thousand histories, a vast variety of stories necessary to connect us to all of our potential. It is precisely here that students of American culture, particularly popular culture, help fulfill that essential role, taking up "Part of the Common Duty of Remembering" (p. 695).
>
>
> ****
>
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l