terror,paranoia,hilarity and calculated madness on the way to the transit of Venus- tone in chapters 456

[Mark Kohut]

To your point:

p. 39 "the emprise of Forces invisible yet possessing great Weight and
Speed, which contend in some Phantom realm......"

As in that build-up of 'forces' in AtD before WW1, TRP sees war as a
Force of its own. As Emerson was to write with broader meaning a
century later, "Things are in the Saddle and ride Mankind".

On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 4:36 PM, David Ewers <dsewers at comcast.net> wrote:
> Guernica didn't occur to me directly when I was reading, but now that you
> mention it I did get a 'Guernica Feeling'.
>
> Rambling of lessons more abstract...(or just difficult for me to effectively
> put into words):
> Again, to me this scene was filled with suggestions that the Affaire des
> Frégates was exactly that: an affair between two ships, with their
> respective personalities, proclivities, reputations etc. as prime movers...
> and the humans almost as components of rigging and guns.  It's as if we
> humans create the conditions (the machinery, and all its philosophical
> underpinnings...), but things have ways of taking on lives of their own (as
> in taking on board, while we build the ways?).
> And the Invisible Gamesters, are they (all, or all still) human?  Or am I
> just being paranoid?
>
> On Jan 25, 2015, at 9:25 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:
>
> just a couple more "associations' when one reads a genius.
>
> p.38. "the Ship's hoarse Shrieking, a great sea-animal in pain, the textures
> of its Cries nearly those of the human Voice when under great Stress"
>
> 'hoarse Shrieking of The SEAHORSE...i cannot be the only one who sees
> the screaming Guernica horse here, amiright? ....
>
> A--and if this is War--it is--and it brings the nearness of black
> Panic and bowel
> evacuation, we get a hint of shattered nerves, which had lots of names down
> to
> post-traumatic stress disorder. sometimes, way back, it was called, linked
> to
> Homesickness (in the West) as soldiers got hit far from home and
> wanted to go back.
> That Equator ceremony started as a marker for being for the first time
> so far from home.
>
> On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 7:44 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Dissolution, Noise, and Fear. Are these part of "the Lessons more abstract"
>
> the Rev 'went on to draw' from his Encounter with 'absolute black panic'.
>
>
> A Sum-up of the horrors of war
>
> as presented in fiction from, O, the Iliad (where it is also a Glory)
>
> and War & Peace
>
> and All Quiet on the Western Front and al the others I don't know and
>
> probably in a battle scene or
>
> three in O'Brian's Aubrey--Maturin series.
>
>
>
> I think science traveling by war machine, in your phrase, science an
>
> Enlightenment good, is a key Pynchon resonance/theme.
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 8:01 PM, David Ewers <dsewers at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> The other side of the coin (...this one works with the idea of the Line as
>
> another of Pynchon's War/Science-wrought projections "[o]f forces less
>
> visible...", I think...):
>
>
> That the question isn't why the l'Grand eventually split so much as why a
>
> scientific expedition would get so bloody in the literal first place.
>
> Maybe, just as Science was understood to travel by war machine, so it was
>
> considered to be part of the war machinery itself (even Mason and Dixon,
>
> running messages...).  After all, does it make sense for a wartime military
>
> to replace its guns with scientific equipment, if science isn't seen as a
>
> weapon?  Advantageous peace might be a military objective, but I can't
>
> imagine even Enlightenment generals working to replace the art of warfare
>
> with the art of surveying.
>
>
> The laissez-passer reminds me:  I was reading a bit about the HMS Seahorse
>
> that sailed during the 1760s.  It was damaged during a 1778 battle with a
>
> French squadron led by the le Brillant (maybe why the Seahorse bucked at the
>
> HMS Brilliant in M-&D-?).  The French squadron included the frigate Sartine.
>
> Two weeks after the battle the Seahorse captured Sartine, which subsequently
>
> became the HMS Sartine.
>
> Anyway, it got me thinking maybe the laissez-passer for scientists was for
>
> the same reasons we gave Nazi scientists jobs instead of death sentences:
>
> not because of how peaceful they are as people, but rather how useful they
>
> are as weapons, should they be captured.
>
>
> BTW, a young Horatio Nelson was assigned as midshipman to this very HMS
>
> Seahorse, through the influence of his uncle, Maurice Suckling.  Suppose
>
> Maurice is related to Darby?
>
>
>
>
> On Jan 23, 2015, at 3:11 PM, Monte Davis wrote:
>
>
> Maybe a bit too science-specific -- before "total war" came into fashion,
>
> many kinds of cross-border social and cultural links continued while the
>
> kings and princes marched around. (Passports didn't become routine until
>
> WWI, remember.) But the Enlightenment definitely boosted, as the Ranaissance
>
> had, the idea of scholarship -- and then science -- as above the fray.
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 5:06 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Clearly, it seems to me, Pynchon is "saying' that if combat, war,
>
> killing was turned aside because science.....then he is, at least,
>
> showing science as a hopeful thing out of the Enlightenment here in
>
> the late 1700s. England and France were the Western World
>
> at war so...................
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 4:58 PM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>
> Here's an account of a French Transit of Venus expedition that set sail
>
> shortly before the Seahorse expedition. Lots of similarities, in terms of
>
> being undergunned and over-cargoed:
>
>
> By and large, things did not go as well for the French expeditions.
>
> Alexandre-Gui Pingre left Paris on November 17, 1760, for his
>
> destination of the island of Rodrigues, viewing his forthcoming voyage
>
> with foreboding. This despite another remarkable novelty of the times.
>
> Although Britain and France were locked in bitter battle, the Academie
>
> Royale des Sciences had appealed directly to British authorities to
>
> grant
>
> Pingre a laissez-passer, a letter instructing all British naval and
>
> military
>
> personnel "not to molest his person or Effects upon any account, but to
>
> suffer him to proceed without delay or Interruption." This was indeed
>
> granted, although since sea battles tended to exchange gunfire first and
>
> civilities later, if at all, Pingre's misgivings were not misplaced.
>
> The transit party sailed on the Comte d'Argenson, a warship that found
>
> itself with less than half its normal complement of guns in order to
>
> extend its cargo capacity to that needed for the expedition. (There had
>
> been a heated dockside argument over the baggage, Pingre arguing
>
> furiously that seven or eight hundred pounds was not too much for an
>
> astronomer!) To the horror of all on board, a group of five British
>
> warships was sighted only one day out from port. To allow full play of
>
> its remaining guns, the ship's crew tore down the temporary cabins that
>
> had been erected for Pingre's companions, the latter and their
>
> belongings being flung unceremoniously into Pingre's cabin for the
>
> time being. Fortunately, though, a combination of suitable winds, the
>
> long winter night, and the captain's skills allowed the Comte to slip
>
> away unmolested, and everyone settled down to the remaining four
>
> months of their voyage.
>
>
> ttp://www.mdlpp.org/pdf/library/SeahorseMdTransitofVenus.pdf (posted
>
> previously)
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
>
> From: Monte Davis
>
>
> Subject: Re: terror,paranoia,hilarity and calculated madness on the way
>
> to the transit of Venus- tone in chapters 456
>
>
>
> A bell rang when I read this Pynchon passage in 1997: I was sure I'd
>
> read somewhere, long before, about Napoleon himself using the French
>
> captain's words, or very similar phrasing, w/r/t letting some expedition
>
> pass, returning some naturalist's specimen collection that had been
>
> captured, or the like. But I've never tracked it down, nor did it turn up in
>
> the 1997 or 2001 group readings here. (Nor do I know of any answer to your
>
> question about how the French captain would have known of M&D's presence,
>
> other than Pynchonian conspiracism about the the higher levels of Them, e.g.
>
> IG Farben,  Shell, GE et al. carrying on despite the distraction of WWII.)
>
> FWIW: In 1813, when Great Britain was at war with Napoleon's France,
>
> English scientist Humphry Davy traveled freely on the Continent and in Paris
>
> collected a prize and medal funded by Napoleon for the best work on
>
> galvanism. (While not common, such interactions were not unknown in other
>
> fields of scholarship as well as science.) Davy remarked to an associate:
>
> "But if the two countries or governments are at war, the men of science are
>
> not. That would, indeed be a civil war of the worst description: we should
>
> rather, through the instrumentality of the men of science soften the
>
> asperities of national hostility." Quoted in Gavin de Beer, The Sciences
>
> Were Never at War (1960).
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 11:10 AM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>
> Which brings up the question of why the l'Grand turned away. Was it
>
> really, as Smith (filtered through Cherrycoke) reported, "France is not at
>
> war with the sciences?" If so, how did they eventually figure out,
>
> mid-attack, that this was a scientific expedition? Was Smith able to get the
>
> letters of passage over to the other captain? Kind of seems there should
>
> have been some identifying marker - a sail with a sun and two crossed
>
> telescopes instead of the skull and bones? - to prevent attacks before they
>
> started.
>
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>
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