M&D - Chapter 10 / pp 102-103

[David Ewers]

On Feb 19, 2015, at 11:07 AM, Becky Lindroos 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) 
> 
Yes; also telescopes as tools of conversion; like the Cross and Bible in the New World (making the Dutch colonials the savages...).

In a world where Whitening is the name of the game, M-&D-'s  telescopes show purest, Whitest Venus turn Black.  It would be no wonder she called them frightful, then.
Did they spring a tiny leak in the white ship's hull? 

> And Mason and Dixon leave for St. Helena quietly - only Bonk, the police official, to say good-bye.  
> 
To further torture the connection between religious and energy conversions: I think the fact that M-&D- become personas non grata after the Transit has a lot to do with the frames of mind created (necessitated?) by Colonial slave societies; that is, to see humans in terms of their potential - as in their useful quantity of energy, convertible to money.  Johanna thinking about her babies (oh, the potential!...)  In the case of M-&D-, before the Transit they were the picture of potential, but once they'd performed their miracle/trick/heresy (once they'd served their purpose) they were disposed of, discarded from these people's minds.

> 
> Tenebræ suggests,  “T'was Love for the Planet Herself.”   (Yeah?  love for Earth? love for Venus? - I’d suggest for Earth.)   
> 

Both seems a safe bet.  

> ******************
> 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?  

She seems to be quite fond of those old harem days, at least in retrospect.  The Cherrycokes are adventurish types.  Performers too.  

> **  “… 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/?list=pynchon-l

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