M&D - Chapter 11 pp 105-106

Sat Feb 21 06:38:34 CST 2015

I'm taken with para 3 on page 107. 'A very small town..." etc. I'm
going to read it
in light of Pynchon's presentation of olde small village town(s) late
in AtD. With
Cyprian.

"No change here is gradual---events arrive suddenly."---the claim of modernity
from before it had that name. From the age of travel and adventure thru Now.

'All distances are vast".....when, in village life, all distances were
close (since
further distances were out of one's ken)....the global opening of the world.

"The Wind, brutal and pure, is there for its own reasons"---wha?..no
longer a divine wind
per that trope?...no longer part of the ecology of natural small scale
human life?

"and human life, any life, counts for close to nought".

"The Town has begun to climb into the Ravine behind it, and thus,
averaged overall,
to tilt toward the sea"----Human scale town-based life is moving into
a Ravine (the Void, as Becky asked?)
and ---don't you love that "averaged overall"--to the aforementioned
annotated sea...

Read the rest of the para under that semi-symbolic gloss...Rain,
within a "tilted" town,
is no longer the rain of P's early story, Hemingway's symbolic
rain.....able to be handled
in a stable human-scaled town....it now floods the houses, taking away
even the coffee pots
and leaving behind a shivering Dog....

no time to enjoy the sunsets...and oceanic creatures, all that pity
and terror, enter everyone's life...

P thinks even here that the coming future of the West can only be worse.......

I LOVE this paragraph.

On Fri, Feb 20, 2015 at 11:47 AM, Becky Lindroos <bekker2 at icloud.com> wrote:
> M&D - continuing observations (just my take): :
>
> Chapter 11 - Overview from Wikipedia
>
> "While the Reverend sails on to India, the Mercury makes port at the island of St. Helena, depicted as a surreal and desolate location. During an evening stroll that takes them within viewing distance of the island's gallows, Mason and Dixon encounter the Lady Florinda, with whom Mason had a brief tryst after the death of his wife. A flashback depicts their meeting a year before at the hanging of Lord Ferrers in London before the episode closes with the introduction of Florinda's fiance.”
>
> ******************************
> Page 105
> **  The St. Helena of old had been as a paradise," avers Euphrenia. "The Orange and Lemon Groves, the Coffee-Fields -“   **   She was never there but she mourns them and defends mourning them.
>
> ???  (At this time St. Helena was a part of the English East India Company and was known for its  “Infamous Port of Call” catering to the pleasures, “Misbehavior,”  of the transient sailors.)
>
> The issue of unreliable narrators all over - but there are many kinds - outright liars, naive, dim-witted, solipsistic,
>
>>> Euphrenia - I nothing found for a meaning,
> http://eleven.namespage.com/posts/euphrenia-woody  (stupid)
>
> And from Joseph earlier (thank you!) :
> Euphrenia was an ancient goddess in the region of Holland ( see wikipedia), she was often accompanied by a dog. Whether it was a talking dog appears lost to the mists of time, but one of the purposes of P's emphasis on Dutch history in M&D is the importance of Dutch role in Pennsylvania history.  Another interesting factoid along this LINE is that a century or so earlier Descartes moved to Holland to become a military officer and spent most of the rest of his life there.
> (I can’t find your reference but I believe you)
>
> Me again:
> And  we can take the name apart:
> “Eu-“    a combining form meaning “good,” “well,” occurring chiefly in words of Greek origin ( eupepsia); or “true,” and “genuine.”   Euphoria definition, a state of intense happiness and self-confidence:
>
> “Phren" (Ancient Greek: φρήν phrēn "mind", genitive: φρενός) is an Ancient Greek word for brain or mind. It is sometimes written later as "fren," and is found in the English languagewords schizophrenia, phrenitis, phrenic nerve, frenzy, frenetic.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phren
>
> and:
> Euphrenia, or, The test of love : a poem /
> By: Sharp, William, 1855-1905.
> Published: (1884)
> This is a novel in verse form with Cantos for chapters - 171 pages according to GoogleBooks.  There’s a lot about the sun and moon and so on.
>
> Well,  um … there were coffee-fields there in the 18th century, they disappeared for awhile, returned, disappeared and are now returning again:
> http://www.st-helena-coffee.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=48&Itemid=173&lang=en
>
> The only St. Helena oranges I know of are up in the St. Helena of Napa Valley in California.  (heh)
>
> ** What is Euphrenia’s source for that “paradise” bit?  She is certainly not a reliable source for any info - no more than Margaret Mitchell is a reliable source for the ante-bellum South.  But where do people get their history and where do historians get theirs?
>
> Besides - as the narrative goes on to describe,  St. Helena is a dreadful place - (but so,  likely as not,  was the ante-bellum South and Margaret Mitchell was not alive then. )  Anyway …
> ************
>
> **  Cherrycoke continues telling the family that he didn’t travel with M&D*  to St. Helena but rather went to India and past. So he missed both the island and Rev’d Maskelyine (another Rev’d fwiw - ).
> * And Laura was right here about the Rev C’s  destination being India - I forgot that- hadn’t got to it this time yet.)
>
> Anyway-  the question is-  how does Cherrycoke know what went on at St. Helena?  He says something about Maskelyne being there,  but doesn’t really answer the question.  (Did Cherrycoke ever even meet Maskelyne?)
>
> ** Reverend Dr. Maskelyne (Mask Line? - or Mescaline? -  and that was his real name!):
> http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Reverend_Nevil_Maskelyne
> Maskelyne was at St. Helena during the Transit of Venus as well as the parallax of Sirius, a star in the “whale" constellation.  (But Maskelyne is no Ahab.)    After his stint in St. Helena he was named the Astronomer Royal, a position he held from 1765 until his death in 1811.
>
> **  Rev C also notes that Maskelyne has published an “Almanack,” thereby
>
> “...doing his bit for global Trade.”
>
> Cherrycoke does not object to this except that Maskelyne’s work does not include the “Celestial.”  (What in the world does that mean?  -  no trading with the “Other Worldly”?  (and that will come up again)   - or he has provided no Celestial maps? -  (TRP is saving it up for AtD? - not really.)
>
> ** Cherrycoke dramatically smirks a holy little smirk and Uncle Lomax says:
> “Your halo blinds me,  Sir.  Aye, most Italian.”    (Anther Italian opera reference - ? or maybe Lomax is calling Cherrycoke a Papist? - maybe a combination.)
>
> I think Pynchon may be questioning secondary sources here because first there’s Euphrenia and now there’s Cherrycoke telling the story of M&D in St. Helena - and Rev. C wasn’t even there.  He implies he got his info from Maskelyne (who may be mad)  but only delivers very basic info about the man and the times along with some speculation.
>
> Actually,  this setup  might be staging Cherrycoke as “omniscient” narrator what with the beneficent smile and halo.  ??   (Another case of deliberate “who is the narrator” and “where/when does he live” ambiguity.)
>
> *****************************************
> p. 106:
> Now we have a true (to my mind) Pynchonian sentence:
>
> “The idea of making Port at St. Helena, is to keep to windward, get South-east of the Island, and let the Trade Winds carry you to the coast,- which you then follow general northward, till you come ‘round to the lee side, and on into the harbor of James’s  Town - where despite appearances of Shelter, the oceanic Waves continue to beat without ceasing, the Clamor wind-borne, up across the Lines and the Parade, all being reduced to Geometry and optical illusion, even what is waiting there all around, * what is never to be nam’d directly.” *   (my asterisks)
>
> **  So what is it that is  "never to be named directly”  - the darkness?  Darkness as "the Void?”  (See ATD also.)
>
> The sentence is used as the “fade-out” of family gathering to refocus in the gloom of St. Helena.
>
> This entire inner section of Chapter 11 is “dark" in many ways.   And the ominous “Darkness” affects Mason:
>
> “… what Mason sees from his first Nightfall there is Darkness *rising up* (italicized in the text) out of the sea, where all the carelessly bright day it has lain as in a state of slum ber … whilst at dawn.
>
>  “In the Astrology of this island, the Sun must be reckoned of less importance than Darkness incorporated as some integral, anti-luminary object, with its own motions, positions, and aspects,- Black Sheep of the family of Planets, neither to be sacrificed to Hades nor spoken of by Name…”
>
> ** And the story darkens,  deepens,  descends -  the language becomes dense and intense,  heavy with metaphor and longish sentences - almost Biblical one might say except that’s hard to define.  It feels like the opposite of the prior Cape section where life was sunny.  Here life is dark in many senses of the term.
>
> The narrator (whichever) zooms down on our heroes at St. Helena with:
> “Once ashore the Astronomers hear the Ocean everywhere, no Wall thick, nor Mind compos’d, nor Valley remote enough to lose it.”
>
> St. Helena - 1790 - drawing:
> - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Helena#mediaviewer/File:Thornton,_St_Helena.jpg
> A census in 1723 recorded 1,110 people, including 610 slaves.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Helena
>
> James’s Town:   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamestown,_Saint_Helena
> drawing from 1794: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamestown,_Saint_Helena#mediaviewer/File:Town_of_St_James,_Island_of_St_Helena_(1794).jpg
>
> Contemporary photo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamestown,_Saint_Helena#mediaviewer/File:Jamestown_Saint_Helena_port.jpg
>
>
> **A paralax is a kind of Trinity - a shape with three points -   (A Jesuit, a Corsican and a Chinaman)  - all moving -
> Mason, Dixon and Cherrycoke,  England, St. Helena and Benkoolan -
>
> And re Benkulen; (aka Fort Marlborough to the East India Co, during M&D's time.   On the West coast of Sumatra, approx half way between the equator and Krakatoa. According to J Keay in The Hon. Company "It was not a popular destination. Only the disgraced and the truly desperate found their way [there]." 41; 44; 47; 270-71
> http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=B
>
> Becky
> where it is very foggy
>
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
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