M&D - Chapter 16 - A personal tragedy, a divine comedy

[Johnny Marr]

Returning to this train of thought:

Is Mason an undiagnosed romantic? After all, surely romantics are the
corollary of the Age of Reason.

The lovelorn abandon in salute of Susaannah Peach is a little creepy in my
eyes -but devoted love can seem creepy and clingy if you don't think it's
tender and all consuming:

"He had visited her House when she wasn't there. He had enter'd her room.
He had knelt by her Bed and press'd his face to the Counterpane of Silk to
inhale what he could of her scent ... Waited to kidnap and unspeakably
mistreat beautiful young Silk Heiresses".

Poor CM - a man susceptible to getting carried away.

On Tue, Mar 24, 2015 at 1:20 AM, Johnny Marr <marrja at gmail.com> wrote:

> "Here is what Mason tells Dixon of how Rebekah and he first met. Not yet
> understanding the narrative lengths Mason will go to, to avoid betraying
> her, Dixon believes ev'ry word"
>
> We've established that M&D is a novel boasting a Russian Doll structure of
> unreliable narrators - Mason, Cherrycoke, TRP himself. Is it possible to
> have a reliable narrator in the first place? Especially when you're telling
> the story of how your heart broke and you lost the greatest love of your
> life.
>
> I also believe we've previously mentioned a link between Mason and Rebekah
> and Orpheus and Eurydice. Rereading the start of chapter 16 now brings to
> mind The Divine Comedy
>
> “Amor, ch'al cor gentile ratto s'apprende
> prese costui de la bella persona
> che mi fu tolta; e 'l modo ancor m'offende.
>
> Amor, che a nullo amato amar perdona,
> Mi prese del costui piacer sì forte,
> Che, come vedi, ancor non m'abbandona..."
>
> "Love, which quickly arrests the gentle heart,
> Seized him with my beautiful form
> That was taken from me, in a manner which still grieves me.
>
> Love, which pardons no beloved from loving,
> took me so strongly with delight in him
> That, as you see, it still abandons me not...”
>
>
> Mason's suffering from a similar heart shattering personal loss, and is
> undertaking a deep personal examination of what his lost love meant to him
> and how he can properly honour her memory.
>
> Like Dante, Mason soon realises “My course is set for an uncharted sea.”
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20150324/dbaea5bb/attachment.html>