M & D Deep Duck Motrix

[David Mugmon]

Ahh, ride the air.  Thanks!  They may be referring to the cruel practice of
the "short drop" that I recently encountered while researching Dick Turpin
(Pg. 9).

....Some of those who had laughed and joked with him were gathered that
Saturday in the Blue Boar tavern, where his body was laid out after it had
been cut down from the scaffold; a few of them had been appointed by Turpin
to secure his corpse, which they did by burying it deep in the churchyard
the next day. At 3 a.m. on the Tuesday, however, the body was found to have
been dug up, presumably to be sold for dissection. A mob gathered and
reclaimed it, carrying it through the streets ‘in a sort of triumph’, and
reburied it in a coffin filled with lime to ensure its rapid decomposition.
Within a few days, a broadside ballad was published called ‘Turpin’s Rant’,
a song which survived into the last century as a folksong, ‘Turpin Hero’,
the chorus of which is: ‘For I’m the hero, the Turpin hero, I am the great
Dick Turpin Ho.’ ‘Turpin Hero’ is the source of Joyce’s title for the
forerunner to *Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man*, ‘Stephen Hero’.

 The practice of medical students taking corpses for research is briefly
described a few pages later in M & D.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n03/david-wootton/the-road-is-still-open


Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 12, 2015, at 4:23 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:


Euphrosyne - great connection! Have never read any of that stuff.


Mason's lines are "did you see them ride the air at Tyburn?" That

description of a hanging has always stuck with me. The notion of the

condemned, kicking corpse-in-the-making described as riding some

invisible beast... chilling.


And I think Mason's attempt to imitate the Durham accent is

deliberately meant to be bad, as I can't parse it convincingly,

either.


On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 11:17 AM, David Mugmon <dmugmon at gmail.com> wrote:


I've been following the bouncing ball here for years.  I don't participate

because it would be a bit like showing up at an intellectual Gunfight at the

OK Corral with a cap gun.  I've loved reading the craziness over here for

years though.


I've read M & D a couple of times and in my mind it's Pynchon's greatest

work.  I've really enjoyed the discussion so far, from ampersands to

Cherrycoke.


In regards to Dixon laughing without the "Motrix of honest Mirth", I have

the definition of Motrix in the margin of my copy as a "female instigator".

The Greek goddess who brings forth mirth is Euphrosyne.


This deity can be famously found in Milton's poem, L'Allegro.


But come thou goddess fair and free,

In heav'n yclep'd Euphrosyne,


.......The speaker orders Melancholy from his life, telling it to find a

dwelling place among the Cimmerians—people who live in a land of unending

darkness. At the same time, he invites a goddess of joy, Euphrosyne, to

bring him mirth on the dawning of a new spring day as the song of the lark

and the din of a rooster chase the last of the darkness away.


.......John Milton's "L'Allegro" is a lyric poem centering on the joy of

taking part in the delights of a spring day, including those provided by

nature in a pastoral setting and those provided by the theater in an urban

setting. The title is an Italian word that originally meant "the cheerful

man." The poem was published in London in 1645 as part of a collection,The

Poems of John Milton, Both English and Latin. It is a companion piece to "Il

Penseroso," a lyric poem centering on sober, contemplative living that

courts melancholy rather than joy. The poems use similar metric and rhyme

schemes.


http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides8/lallegro.html


Il Penseroso and L'Allegro...  The melancholy man and the cheerful man?


On another note...


I have a question re the text in the current section that I've never been

able to decipher.  Mason asks Dixon, "Come, Sir - What's the first thing

they'll ask when you get back to County Durham? Eh?  'Did ye see them rahde

the Eeahr at Taahburn?' (Pg. 15)


Taahburn = Tyburn?


I just can't cut thru Mason's mock Durham dialect.  I've read it out loud,

asked others and I can't make sense of it.  What in the hell will they ask

Dixon when he returns home?



On Jan 11, 2015, at 3:48 PM, David Ewers <dsewers at comcast.net> wrote:


Maybe 'vis motrix' (Newton's force acting upon a body "proportional to the

motion which it produces in a given time"; or motivating force), but

omitting the 'vis' (maybe redundant, not as neat?...)?  I read it as meaning

something like his eyes weren't participating in his smile.


On Jan 11, 2015, at 12:14 PM, Mark Kohut wrote:




https://books.google.com/books?id=_yPWAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA130&lpg=PA130&dq=vis+motrix+definition&source=bl&ots=mQ4yVNu4Pz&sig=OULbkV51vtYiTNMuqWu8cPSkDWs&hl=en&sa=X&ei=kgWzVN6VCo61ogTxgoLwBw&ved=0CDIQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=vis%20motrix%20definition&f=false


p. 15. All:  define and riff on 'the Motrix of Mirth'


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