M & D Group Read. Cont.
Jochen Stremmel
jstremmel at gmail.com
Sat Jan 6 04:43:55 CST 2018
The Interpretation of Dreams, VI:
The attitude of the dream towards the category of antithesis and
contradiction is most striking. This category is unceremoniously neglected;
the word “No” does not seem to exist for the dream. Antitheses are with
peculiar preference reduced to unity or represented as one. The dream also
takes the liberty of representing any element whatever by its desired
opposite, so that it is at first impossible to tell about any element
capable of having an opposite, whether it is to be taken negatively or
positively, in the dream thoughts. 13
<http://www.bartleby.com/285/6.html#note6.13>
*Note 13. *From a work of K. Abel, *Der Gegensinn der Urworte,* 1884 (see
my review of it in the Bleuler-Freud *Jahrbuch,* II., 1910), I learned with
surprise a fact which is confirmed by other philologists, that the oldest
languages behaved in this regard quite like the dream. They originally had
only one word for both extremes in a series of qualities or activities
(strong—weak, old—young, far—near, to tie—to separate), and formed separate
designations for the two extremes only secondarily through slight
modifications of the common primitive word. Abel demonstrated these
relationships with rare exceptions in the old Egyptian, and he was able to
show distinct remnants of the same development in the Semitic and
Indo-Germanic languages. [back <http://www.bartleby.com/285/6.html#txt13>]
2018-01-05 23:28 GMT+01:00 David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>:
> I like the "cleaver" example. Multiple, and even sometimes seemingly
> opposite, word meanings are Pynchon's playground. His play with words
> become multifaceted plays of questions. I love that playground.
>
> David Morris
>
> On Fri, Jan 5, 2018 at 3:54 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Take a word like 'cleave'. it has two almost opposite meanings.
>>
>> This duality of meaning is akin to the ironic ambiguity, I'll now call
>> it, of meaning so evident throughout so much of M & D,
>> with the difference that BOTH meanings at once are usually intended.
>>
>> And it is not over individual words but over allusive phrases--the words
>> alluding to Matthew say: set piece scenes especially, one overt level going
>> on and another counter-force layer counterpointing, so to cutely
>> metaphorize.
>>
>> He did it most overtly with V herself by the end of V; he did it so
>> overtly with Blicero and the Rocket---
>> and not only there in each of these novels---and he showed us it as the
>> ambiguous mystery that ends Lot 49..
>>
>> But in Mason & Dixon TRP does it more throughout than in any other book,
>> I suggest.
>>
>>
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