M&D - Chapter 11 - pp 107-108

[Johnny Marr]

Is the Other World a Hades reference? With Bekah as Mason's Eurydice?

No need to apologise, you're doing a grand job.

On Saturday, February 21, 2015, Becky Lindroos <bekker2 at icloud.com> wrote:

> Following my own unique 2 pages a day we’re up to Chapter 11, pages
> 107-108 -  sorry if it’s over-kill - my editing skills are close to nil.
> ****
>
> Page 107:
> ** Maskelyne is on St. Helena to observe Sirius in the constellation of
> Canis Major (the Great Dog).   Mason & Dixon were going to Bencoolen for
> the “inconstant” star of Mira in the constellation of (Cetus) the Whale.
>  The star Gamma is in the constellation Draco (Dragon)  at Greenwich for
> Englishmen.
>
> "Ev’ry Midnight the baleful thing is there, crossing directly overhead, -
> the Yellow Dog.  There inverted among the Wires, all but flowing.”   Yeah?
>
> "Wires, all but flowing” ???  Sounds a bit paranoid to me.  What are these
> wires -  the ship’s wires?  imaginary lines between points in a
> constellation? the lines used by astronomers?
>
>
> *** "A very small town clings to the edge of an interior that must be
> reckoned part of the 'Other World.'”  (? Other World?  Aliens?  Celestial?
> Etc?)
>
> “No change here is gradual…”
> A Pynchon motif....rapid change is not good, not natural. And, next line,
> distances should not be vast....life 'goes for nought”   (more later in
> book)
>
> “… the sea appears to lie <i> above the Island, <i - in book> -  as if
> suspended, and kept from falling fatally upon it, thro’ the operations of
> Mysterion impenetrable on the part of a Guardian . . . . As if in Payments
> credited against the Deluge, upon no sure Basis of Prediction, the great
> Sea-Rollers will rise, and come against the Island, - reaching higher than
> the Town with the Jacobite name, tho’ perhaps not quite to the ridgeline
> above it.”
>
> This is getting somewhat spooky -
>
>
> *****************************
> Page  108 -
>
> "a Company of Giant rob'd Beings, risen incalculably far away over the
> horizon"
> These robed figures at the edge of the world can be found in Gravity's
> Rainbow, on page 217, after Slothrop gets Sir Stephen Dodson-Truck drunk:
> But out at the horizon, out near the burnished edge of the world, who are
> these visitors standing...these robed figures
> http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_11:_105-115
>
> *****
> "Out upon Munden’s Point stand a pair of Gallows, simplified to
> Pen-strokes in the glare of this Ocean sky.  A Visitor may lounge in the
> Evening upon the Platform behind the Lines, and, as a Visitor to London
> might gaze at St . Paul’s, regard these more sinister forms in the failing
> North Light,— perhaps led to mediate upon Punishment,- or upon Commerce
> …for Commerce without Slavery is unthinkable,  whilst Slavery must ever
> include, as an essential Term, the gallows, - Slavery without the Gallows
> being as hollow and Waste a Proceeding, as a Crusade without the Cross.”
> ****
> (SEE next post for a wee bit of parsing or careful reading  which is what
> that paragraph needs more than annotating!)
>
> Fwiw,  I can find no verification of any gallows at St. Helena.  This is a
> good site about slavery there,  but no mention of gallows although gallows
> are very common in history and there were hangings in St. Helena.
> http://sainthelenaisland.info/slaves.htm
>
> Actually, the slaves in St. Helena were treated relatively well according
> to that site. However -
> "In 1679 rumours of an impending uprising by slaves led to the gruesome
> execution of three slaves and cruel punishment of many others - ghost
> stories still told on the island relate to these executions.”
>
> Can’t find further evidence of that incident,  but there are hangings
> mentioned in a book (1905)  by E.L. Jackson online at
>
> http://www.archive.org/stream/sthelenahistoric00jackrich/sthelenahistoric00jackrich_djvu.txt
>
> Munden Point is a place of interest on St. Helena -  an old British fort
> was there - photo:
> https://www.flickr.com/photos/davidstanleytravel/16511162565/
>
> ***********
> Slavery at St. Helena:
> "A census in 1723 recorded 1,110 people, including 610 slaves."
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Helena
>
> *****
> Visitors, especially women,  to St. Helena other than slaves - almost
> listed and compared to “Birds of Passage”:
> Convicts
> Young Wives,
> Company Perpetuals
> (such shuttles upon the loom of Trade as Mrs. Rollright - ah - what an
> apparently appropriate name)
> Mrs. Rollright - aka Florinda -
>
> Another narrator back-up to Mason and Florida at the hangings he attended
> following Rebekah’s death.
>
> "Wapping was also the site of 'Execution Dock', where pirates and other
> water-borne criminals faced execution by hanging from a gibbet constructed
> close to the low water mark. Their bodies would be left dangling until they
> had been submerged three times by the tide.[2]”
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wapping
>
> Lower-situated imitations of the Hellfire Club”
> Hell-Fire Club -  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellfire_Club  (of the
> times in England)
>
> Hangings on Tyburn - here we have the gallows - ended 1783
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyburn#Tyburn_gallows
>
> **
>
>
>
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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