Mercy and grace and gravity

[Mark Kohut]

Yes. yes.yes.

A scholar from the sixties---seems this play came into its own from the
fifties thru then--
whose book I have just browsed the jacket and intro of, so far, argues
thus, basically: the play is a dialogic
argument, stark as syllogisms---when the language doesn't soar-- but just
bites and turns and bites again.
Perhaps the most idiosyncratic of his plays, so yeah, yeah....


On Fri, Jul 19, 2019 at 6:04 PM Gary Webb <gwebb8686 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I’ve always loved the Duke’s line in Act 3 Scene 1:
> “Be absolute for death; either death or life
> Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life:
> If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing
> That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art,
> Servile to all the skyey influences,
> That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st,
> Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death's fool;
> For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun
> And yet runn'st toward him still. Thou art not noble;
> For all the accommodations that thou bear'st
> Are nursed by baseness. Thou'rt by no means valiant;
> For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork
> Of a poor worm. Thy best of rest is sleep,
> And that thou oft provokest; yet grossly fear'st
> Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself;
> For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains
> That issue out of dust. Happy thou art not;
> For what thou hast not, still thou strivest to get,
> And what thou hast, forget'st. Thou art not certain;
> For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,
> After the moon. If thou art rich, thou'rt poor;
> For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows,
> Thou bear's thy heavy riches but a journey,
> And death unloads thee. Friend hast thou none;
> For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire,
> The mere effusion of thy proper loins,
> Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum,
> For ending thee no sooner. Thou hast nor youth nor age,
> But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep,
> Dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth
> Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms
> Of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich,
> Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty,
> To make thy riches pleasant. What's yet in this
> That bears the name of life? Yet in this life
> Lie hid moe thousand deaths: yet death we fear,
> That makes these odds all even.”
>
> Almost stoic... It reminds me of Rev. Cherrycoke’s intro on Chapter 4 in
> M&D: “Had it proved of any help that the Rev’d had tried to follow the
> advice of Epictetus, to keep before him every day death, exile, and loss,
> believing it a condition of his spiritual world as given.
>
> I also love the language... very stark and idiosyncratic, a vein Milton
> would soon inhabit...
>
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Jul 19, 2019, at 3:41 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> We know Shakey's Measure for Measure went deep enough into young Pynchon
> that he used a famous line from it for a story influenced/inspired? by it.
> What a play, as I reread and it was a youthful fave of mine too. What it
> means to be human, argues one reader. A study of evil, says another.
> Nihilistic, says Harold Bloom.
> A parable of Jesus' mysterious teachings, says another. So many readings of
> ambiguity that a famous passage is IN Empson's *Seven Types of Ambiguity. *
>
> And there is this: a linking of mercy and grace early. Act 2 scene 2.
> Isabella
> "Become them with one half so good a grace/ as mercy does", in her first
> pleading for her brother's life. I might argue P's grace resonates in these
> lines
>
> Angelo, whose blood is snow-broth until he desires the forbidden, who can
> spare her brother's life: Act 2 scene 4:
> ..."Yea, my gravity/ Wherein--let no man hear me--I take pride, "
>
> That is all.
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>
>