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

[Mark Kohut]

REFINEMENT....P sees war as a Force of its own after we've created it...

On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 5:31 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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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