the holocaust in TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

[Protomen]

Old dictionaries have a more general "whole destruction by fire" meaning (so by extension disaster?) appear at least at the beginning of the 20th century, good enough for Woolf.
Ironically enough, isn't it easy to imagine an antipagan or antisemitic root to that usage... especially if it was much older but unrecorded


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: the holocaust in TO THE LIGHTHOUSE
Local Time: 1 décembre 2016 6:28 PM
UTC Time: 1 décembre 2016 17:28
From: mark.kohut at gmail.com
To: Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com>
kelber at mindspring.com <kelber at mindspring.com>, pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>


I must look up OED or Webster's Third meanings of the word since I did know of the above yet
neither seem to apply in To The Lighthouse....(although I will recheck to see if I missed #2 as the meaning)



On Thu, Dec 1, 2016 at 12:02 PM, Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com> wrote:



Given when the line was written (by Donald Ogden Stewart) it's probably the second meaning:

noun
1 destruction or slaughter on a mass scale, especially caused by fire or nuclear war: a nuclear holocaust | the threat of imminent holocaust.
• (the Holocaust) the mass murder of Jews under the German Nazi regime during the period 1941–45. More than 6 million European Jews, as well as members of other persecuted groups, such as gypsies and homosexuals, were murdered at concentration camps such as Auschwitz.
2 historical a Jewish sacrificial offering that is burned completely on an altar.
and not so jarring.





2016-12-01 17:31 GMT+01:00 kelber at mindspring.com <kelber at mindspring.com>:


It calls to mind The Philadelphia Story (1940 ), where a drunken Jimmy Stewart gushes romantically to Katherine Hepburn that when he looks in her eyes he sees "... holocausts ...". Always jarring, given when the line was spoken.

Laura



Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE DROID


Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:


published in 1927, Ms Woolf has a character who thinks
dramatically, shall we say, use this word to describe a
major disaster that does not happen regarding her husband
and a situation....."not a holocaust" she says to herself.....

Where it also does not contain the burning/ burnt offering
major meaning of the word long before the historic Holocaust
but is used as Pynchon does in GR, I believe. (along with the
established 'burning' meaning but not directly alluding to the Holocaust,
I also think I remember, without looking anything up. )
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20161201/a8e27e3c/attachment.html>