M&D CH 5 Notes

[Smoke Teff]

Apologies to those for whom the Plain Text solution hasn't solved the
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these out for whoever might find them interesting/useful, or for no
one.


CHAPTER 5



P. 42



“’’Twas all so out of the ordinary,’ Mason declares, ‘that it must
have been intended,--an act of Him so strange, His purposes unknown.’”



Unintelligibility, mystery, unlikeliness = design, = mystery



“Each had met the other’s Gaze for a slight moment before Duty again
claim’d them,--the Vapors rising from the Wounds of dying Sailors
smoothing out what was not essential for each to understand.”



The clarity of mortality and trauma. In fact each of them somewhat
possessed by them—delivered to each other. Repetition of the
steam-off-the-bodies thing from last chapter, as our astronomers get
newly close to one another.



Also the conflation of duty with mortality.



“The Candles tremble with the Vehemence of their Speech.”



Echoes of the sensitive flame.



“we should be happy to proceed to war upon any people”

Not exactly true, or not in a way we want to imagine our astronomers,
but then evil travels by channels reluctant, bureaucratic, linguistic,
deferential—avenues of complicitness





“’Technically no longer a Quaker, as they expell’d me[…]

“’But Quakers are a bit matier, the idea being to look for something
of God in ev’ryone…?’”





“Out in the hall they keep running into each other, Wraiths in night-clothes.”



Reminds me of the Qlippoth





p. 44



“’Of Forces less visible, I fear.’”



As ever.



“In what each is surpriz’d to note for the first time as a
companionable Silence, they prepare Pipes, find a Dish in the Cupboard
and a live Coal in the Fire, and light up.”



If evil can take many forms, so can communion—and smoking wouldn’t be
an uncommon means. Also, the ability to be silent with each other is
an important development, indicating an ever-increasing proximity (and
will be echoed later in Dixon teaching Mason about finding God the
Quaker way, in stillness and silence).



“Wrapt tightly, as within Vacuum-Hemispheres, lies the Unspoken,--the
concentration of Terror and death of but two afternoons ago,
transpir’d without one word, in brute Contempt for any language but
that of winds and masses, cries and blood.”



More about what can’t or oughtn’t be expressed in words.



“It seems not to belong in either of their lives. ‘Was there a mistake
in the Plan of the Day?’”



Echoes of Against the Day, here. Also, just two pages ago this kind of
mistake was taken for the hand of God. Is God the only Force less
visible working here?



“Did we get a piece of someone else’s History[…]”



Colliding histories and destinies. Also hints at some of the stuff
that will be explored in the missing eleven days.



“’Happen,’ Dixon contributes in turn, ‘we wer never meant at all to go
to Bencoolen—someone needed a couple of Martyrs, and we inconveniently
surviv’d…?”



Who needed martyrs, and for what?



Destiny as not the product but the negation of free will.





p. 45



“And what they cannot speak, some of it not yet, some of it never,
resumes breathless Sovereignty in the wax-lit Rooms.”



More unspeakability—do the things unsaid have their own unexplored
destinies, alternate future histories, etc?



“’Not even the courtesy,--Damme! Of a personal Reply,--‘tis rather the
final draft of some faceless committee. To my Heart’s Cry, my appeal
to Bradley for Guidance[…]’”



What has happened to Bradley? Mason’s betrayal by the man and family
Bradley will be explored more in about 150 pages after Bradley’s
death. What has turned Bradley away from him? Others, more powerful
than Bradley?



“’Bradley cannot write like this, even simple social notes give him
trouble. “…Whenever their circumstances, now uncertain and eventual,
shall happen to be reduced to Certainty.”’”



This is one of several mentions of possibility reducing to
certainty—lines (of potentiality, potential future histories)
singling. But the vocabulary is used by the narrator elsewhere, and by
(apparently fake) Bradley here. Who’s writing on Bradley’s behalf that
would conceive of time and possibility this way?



“’As if…there were no single Destiny,’ puzzles Mason, ‘bu rather a
choice among a great many possible ones, their number steadily
diminishing each time a Choice be made, till at last “reduc’d,” to the
events that do happen to us, as we pass among ‘em, thro’ Time
unredeemable,--much as a Lens, indeed, may receive all the Light from
some vast celestial Field of View, and reduce it to a single Point.”



Obvious resonance with Iceland Spar, and just a presentation of one
vision of fate, of time, of possibility vs eventuality, that will keep
being toyed with, presented and subverted, throughout the book
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l