Re: CoL49 group reading - “calavera”

[Joseph Tracy]

Good insight . My check says Calavera does derive etymologically  from Calvary.  The place of the skull, rather than just Calva or skull. *  Tristero as a person wants to be identified as the disinherited and to draw others to a resistance of the disinherited. This had organizing appeal both religiously and politically: the just restoration of rightful inheritance.It has echoes in the sermon on the Mount : “woe unto you rich, blessed be ye poor; the meek shall inherit. A core message of calvary or at least the theology derived is that Jesus as spirit made flesh offers  the lost and all humans disinherited through sin a way  into divine  communion by offering himself in a redeeming act of sacrificial love.* In life this was conveyed through healing and sharing food and teaching non-violence   which is also a kind of loss for the benefit of others but also a bonding of friendship. The fact that in this reformation period of history and with this use of power it translates into wars and endless argument makes a large question about the sincerity of the various messengers who mostly seem little concerned with healing, reconciliation, and sharing, and very concerned with getting positions of power and wealth.( The more you search the links in this period the worse it seems to get, check out the 30 years war) 

Of course any literalism of the Tristero really is a shaggy dog story since it is pure fiction and there is no specific origin or conspiracy that is the origin of all other conspiracies unless you are willing to see the world as a battle between good and evil with a Devil conspiring in the fiery bowels of evilness cent-com. The thing that is weird is how dangerous that delusion is and how enticing in all its forms.  But because of that delusional thinking  and its role in human affairs, the tristero is also as real as it gets and this brief glance into European history and art, with all the intrigues and wars, is also a look into current events and the pure horror that humans are capable of. There is also a tendency for bigger and more comprehensive and effective conspiracies to dominate lesser conspiracies.( So far in human history conspiracies are as common as shit; they happen regularly, like imperial clockwork). OM will never resolve what has happened to her or explain with certainty what she has seen  but she has seen much that is profoundly real and threatening and she is permanently changed. 

There is a way to use comedy to puncture our delusions, but it gets used in the opposite direction too. To my thinking Pynchon tries to use comedy to get us to lighten up and ask questions  but also gives full weight to the tragic dangers  that follow when we don’t. Kind of shaggy doggish but with real teeth, or maybe even  shaggy hyena.


*In Mexico it can also mean playboy/libertine, perhaps because the root calva can also mean bald,  or a smooth nut or maybe because calvary implies penetration and the cross implies union. ( those are guesses).

**as far as I am concerned this kind of love has many examples and often costs loving and brave people their lives. These qualities and their opposite run through all communities and cultures. To challenge cruelty, murder and theft is often to set one’s tryst with Trystero.  The word seems to combine the  secret meeting, tryst, or triste( sad, or (Scots)an appointed place in hunting)   with stere or stero, meaning in Indo European something solid, hard, dimensional . We all face a meeting with death in our own secret space, few things are more solid, hard or multidimensional, and few things affect us more.  

I  know my constant responses to the good quality observations get wordy. I am caught up, for good or ill, in treating this novel like a Zen Koan by using writing to clarify my own response. My thoughts shift around and parts seem different as I read and re-read., but I want a record of where the search took me. 

 

> On Jul 29, 2024, at 1:15 AM, Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> To run with that a little -
> 
> Calavera as skull reminds me of cognate Calvary, ie Golgotha, the place of
> the skull, and of Jesus’s crucifixion, where the Roman soldiers acted as
> executors for His estate, casting lots for his garments
> 
> - Emperor Hadrian had a temple to Aphrodite built there or nearby
> 
> - Helena, Queen Mother of Emperor Constantine (“in hoc signo vinces”)
> claimed to have discovered the Ture Cross there
> 
> - Constantine had the Church of the Holy Sepulchre built there
> 
> - there is of course dissent as to the location
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Another cognate from great American Literature:
> 
> - “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” (1865) was Mark Twain’s
> first majorly successful story
> 
> From Wikipedia:
> “The narrator is sent by a friend to interview an old man, Simon Wheeler,
> who might know the location of an old acquaintance named Leonidas W.
> Smiley. Finding Simon at an old mining camp, the narrator asks him if he
> knows anything about Leonidas; Simon appears not to, and instead tells a
> story about *Jim*Smiley, a man who had visited the camp years earlier….
> 
> (Tale of two frogs ensues)
> 
> “At this point in the story, Simon excuses himself to go outside for a
> moment. The narrator realizes that Jim has no connection to Leonidas and
> gets up to leave, only to have Simon stop him at the door, offering to tell
> him about a yellow, one-eyed, stubby-tailed cow that Jim had owned. Rather
> than stay to hear another pointless story, the narrator excuses himself and
> leaves. He muses that his friend may have fabricated Leonidas as a pretext
> to trick him into listening to Simon's anecdotes.”
> 
> - Is The Tristero a shaggy dog story?
> - Bortz appears to be willing to add more anecdotes, tying it to the French
> Revolution etc
> 
> 
> 
> On Sun, Jul 28, 2024 at 3:57 PM Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> 
>> https://www.alexandani.com/blogs/the-wire/history-and-symbolism-of-the-calavera
>> 
>> 
>> Tristero’s surname means skull or skeleton, and can also refer to Day of
>> the Dead confections
>> 
>> 
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l