M&D straight lines and black holes

[Mark Kohut]

The black hole of Calcutta, which for some reason haunted me a bit in high
school when I first learned about it---became a cliched metaphor quickly
from me---
now also reminds me of the dark web after the existence of Bleeding Edge.

On Sat, Jan 13, 2018 at 12:08 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> M&D straight lines and black holes
>
> Interesting reference to the black hole of Calcutta, both in CH 11 and on
> page 665 in the lead up to the quote  Monte mentioned on page 666.  (Did
> this phrase also appear earlier in M&D?).  At least 3 layers I think: 1)
> the colonizer’s terror of brutal retribution by the colonized, 2)
> astrophysical black holes which point to fundamental mysteries that occupy
> us as we occupy them  and 3) dark spiritual energies, those desires that
> humans seem destined to watch and ‘share’ as they spiral out of control
> into genocidal or bio-cidal madness. .   On pg 666 Dixon wonders if the bad
> energies which the geomantic chinaman referred to as generated by the line
> and which seemed to put chickens to sleep was actually feeding the powers
> of the mechanical duck.   A pretty loaded conjecture  Do certain actions or
> anti-natural  forces put the timid or cowardly to sleep while energizing
> the frantic grasp of the machinery of  desire and ambition?  The odd thing
> is that it is the Duck who asks them not just to wonder , but to care.  Is
> caring enough to redirect a dangerous service, rendered honestly and
> without seeming violence, enough to change behavior?  Is Pynchon looking
> into the origins of this dark vortex to converse with the long dead
> surveyors  via duck or to converse with us?
>
> The incident that delivered this phrase, the black hole of Calcutta, into
> common use was not that far back in history for M&D . 1756 the British East
> India Company was driven out of  Calcutta by a local Bengali ruler and
> between 60 and 123 British captives died in a dungeon, which through
> reports by a survivor became known as the black hole of Calcutta.   By
> M&D’s time Calcutta was the capital of British India,.  The British called
> it the city of palaces. This dual role, black hole and city of palaces
> seems to epitomize the  dual mind of the colonizer.  Here is oriental
> splendor, but it must be brought under control, mapped and located in
> space, tranquilized with opium, made to ’do its bit for global trade’. To
> treat dark people as equals even after ending the slave trade seems rarely
> to enter the mind.
>
> The St Helena Chapter( 11),  takes a distinctly poetic turn on page 107.
> Despite the port-of-call-bawdiness the description is one of a lonely
> windswept island in open forboding seas, all distances vast under
> unfamiliar stars”, watched over by “the baleful thing”, sirius the dog
> star, yellow in the sky..
> P develops the idea that the sun seems to sink into darkness in the seas,
> and darkness becomes an anti-luminary and unnameable object in the solar
> system.  Later we get a riff on wives traveling through this bleakness to
> or from India hearing tales of the black hole of Calcutta.
>
>   A contemplation of inner and outer worlds to match any poet. Unsparingly
> dark,  light becomes  an island easily swallowed  into the depths, a ship
> that is sinkable. Perhaps that is where the thought might have gone. Until
> one goes beneath the surface, the ocean seems a desert.  But the meditation
> moves  to the gallows, that black hole for those who have crossed the wrong
> line, handmaid to slavery and trade, and we see that this meditation is
> preamble to Mason’s troubled memories of his wife’s  death and his
> subsequent debauch . But though Mason is not done grieving, Florinda
> changes his tune.  There is nothing like a public hanging to cheer one up,
> apparently, meeting old acquaintances and speculating on whether the hanged
> will have an erection as he heads to Calcutta.-
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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