M & D Group Read (cont.)

[Mark Kohut]

Ah, yes....

and I have just learned that the punishment of the Lustful, in Canto V of
the Inferno, consists of being whirled about forever in a dark, stormy
wind.

On Sun, Feb 11, 2018 at 4:05 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> In GR the Wind is also very prominent, especially in Spiritualist
> context.  I'm sure everyone knows that spirit and wind and breath are very
> close cousins.  Wind is a force felt, but unseen (unless smoak or fog are
> present).
>
> David Morris
>
> On Sun, Feb 11, 2018 at 12:28 PM Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> It feels thus far like the wind is often a multifaceted force that offers
>> some real (but ultimately mysterious/nebulous in origins, intentions)
>> influence in the world through & of the actions of humans.
>>
>> The wind is the unknown, the constant source of chaos and uncertainty, at
>> various times head-on resistance or sail-boosting force.
>>
>> I would say some of my strongest conceptions of the wind in P are formed
>> around the idea of the sensitive flame in GR—sometimes we don’t see or even
>> feel the wind, only it’s effects on other things/people, some of which/whom
>> are more consciously receptive to it and influenced by it than others.
>>
>> P makes it his own higher power. It has the real-world influence that is
>> missing in the deistic God, without much of the anthropomorphizable
>> authorship or intentions of the older monotheistic/Abrahamic God.
>>
>> Plus, the Wind conflates with, eg, the Fog and the Smoak and the Clouds
>> in interesting ways. The Fog relates the wind to the material continuity of
>> the water cycle that P evokes in M&D, GR, elsewhere. It is a global system,
>> and any one measure of its activity and impact is by definition reductive.
>> Sometimes it reveals (even if it reveals an inner madness after the Smoak
>> clears), sometimes it obfuscates, sometimes it simply moves and changes.
>> The constant-because-always-changing river in/of the sky.
>>
>> > On Feb 11, 2018, at 5:19 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > Smoak keeps noticing the wind in M & D. Real thing to notice.
>> >
>> > Some thoughts. It is often a symbol for the divine, a divine presence,
>> God speaking to Job out of the whirlwind, say.
>> > But that can't be, can it?, too operative here---unless the general
>> windiness sorta can contain the notion of the religious 'freedoms',
>> > the need for, circulating all over the Western world of the time,
>> especially in the founding of America.?
>> >
>> > But closer to basic meanings I think of the phrase, 'the winds of
>> change" which fits M & D fully, no?
>> >
>> > And, in other readings I have been remind of the moral struggle in a
>> late James novel, The Golden Bowl, in which the two
>> > main protagonists' struggle is metaphorized as 'beating against the
>> wind" also reminding of the against the current metaphor of
>> > The Great Gatsby, which we know is alluded to in M & D.
>> >
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20180212/a532fa91/attachment.html>