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From: "pynchon-l-digest" <owner-pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
To: <pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 14, 2003 11:53 AM
Subject: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3604
>
> pynchon-l-digest Tuesday, October 14 2003 Volume 02 : Number
3604
>
>
>
> Re: NPPF: Notes Line 286
> Re: NPPF: Notes Line 286
> Re: NPPF: Notes Line 286
> Re: VLVL 98-103
> Re: NPPF: Notes Line 286
> RE: NPPF: Notes Line 286
> Re: VLVL 98-103
> NPPF: Some Notes for p. 171-174
> RE: NPPF: Notes Line 286
> RE: NPPF: Summary Line 286
> RE: NPPF: Notes Line 286
> RE: NPPF: Summary Line 347
> RE: NPPF: Summary Line 347
> On Belief
> RE: NPPF: Notes Line 286
> NPPF: Humming as You Pack
> VLVL(7) Vocabulary
> DeLillo in New Yorker
> Re: TRP on The Simpsons
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 13:56:41 +0300 (EEST)
> From: Heikki Raudaskoski <hraudask@sun3.oulu.fi>
> Subject: Re: NPPF: Notes Line 286
>
> Well, there is a tomb in Virgil's fifth eclogue, that much
> is true, but you cannot find the words "et in Arcadia ego"
> anywhere in the poem. The shepherd Mopsus sings to shepherd
> Menalcas in #5, lamenting Daphnis's death:
> ........................
> From the Gutenberg site [translator not announced):
>
> 'Now, O ye shepherds, strew the ground with leaves,
> And o'er the fountains draw a shady veil-
> So Daphnis to his memory bids be done-
> And rear a tomb, and write thereon this verse:
> 'I, Daphnis in the woods, from hence in fame
> Am to the stars exalted, guardian once
> Of a fair flock, myself more fair than they.'
> ftp://sailor.gutenberg.org/pub/gutenberg/etext95/bucoe10.txt
> .........................
> Originally:
>
> Spargite humum foliis, inducite fontibus umbras,
> pastores, mandat fieri sibi talia Daphnis;
> et tumulum facite, et tumulo superaddite carmen:
> DAPHNIS EGO IN SILVIS HINC VSQUE AD SIDERA NOTVS
> FORMONSI PECORIS CVSTOS FORMONSIOR IPSE.
> ftp://sailor.gutenberg.org/pub/gutenberg/etext95/bucol10.txt
> .....................................
>
> The shepherds are requested to "rear a tomb" - they don't
> find a tomb in the poem.
>
> It is my impression that the phrase "Et in Arcadia Ego" was
> introduced much much later. Anyone?
>
> Well, Death does loom in Virgil's Arcady, after all, but,
> unlike in the "Bengt Ekerot / Maria CasarХs Film Festival"
> (GR 755), is given no lines of Its own.
>
>
> Heikki
>
> P.S. The topic brings to mind Stoppard's wonderful, thermodynamic
> Arcadia. The phrase in question is not left untouched by TS...
>
>
> On Mon, 13 Oct 2003, Mary Krimmel wrote:
>
> > At 07:39 PM 10/13/03 -0400, Paul Mackin wrote:
> > ...
> > >In Latin it's Et in Arcadia ego Virgil
> > >
> > >
> > >Also the name of a Poussin painting. (shepherds discovering a tomb)
> >
> > Can you or anyone tell us the context of Virgil's use of that phrase? Or
> > tell us what work it is found in? Was Virgil quoting someone else?
> >
> > I have understood (from I don't know what sources) that the words are or
> > were inscribed on a tombstone and that they are the earliest known
written
> > Latin; is that correct? The Poussin painting suggests the tombstone, but
> > which came first - the fact or generally accepted idea of the tomb, or
the
> > painting?
> >
> > Why does there never seem to be any doubt that the "ego" of the phrase
is
> > Death? Even if there is no doubt that it was carved on a tombstone, that
> > seems to me to be no reason to conclude definitely that Death is the
speaker.
> >
> > Also, I have understood (again, no back-up) that Arcady has the
reputation
> > of being an idyllic Eden-like spot; is that correct? I.e., does it have
> > such a reputation? If so, and if Death is the speaker, the phrase makes
a
> > poignant point. But it looks to me as though it's often interpreted in
> > order to suggest the point, without any real justification.
> >
> > Mary Krimmel
> >
> >
> >
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: 14 Oct 2003 08:34:31 -0400
> From: Paul Mackin <paul.mackin@verizon.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF: Notes Line 286
>
> On Tue, 2003-10-14 at 06:56, Heikki Raudaskoski wrote:
> >
> >
> > Well, there is a tomb in Virgil's fifth eclogue, that much
> > is true, but you cannot find the words "et in Arcadia ego"
> > anywhere in the poem. The shepherd Mopsus sings to shepherd
> > Menalcas in #5, lamenting Daphnis's death:
>
>
> I also looked in vain for it. The Latin sentence is usually mentioned
> in connection with the paintings in the Louvre and only then is the
> source of the name said to be one of the eclogues.
>
> Also there's a famous essay by that name. I forget the author. Will try
> to look it up.
>
> P.
> > .......................
> > >From the Gutenberg site [translator not announced):
> >
> > 'Now, O ye shepherds, strew the ground with leaves,
> > And o'er the fountains draw a shady veil-
> > So Daphnis to his memory bids be done-
> > And rear a tomb, and write thereon this verse:
> > 'I, Daphnis in the woods, from hence in fame
> > Am to the stars exalted, guardian once
> > Of a fair flock, myself more fair than they.'
> > ftp://sailor.gutenberg.org/pub/gutenberg/etext95/bucoe10.txt
> > ........................
> > Originally:
> >
> > Spargite humum foliis, inducite fontibus umbras,
> > pastores, mandat fieri sibi talia Daphnis;
> > et tumulum facite, et tumulo superaddite carmen:
> > DAPHNIS EGO IN SILVIS HINC VSQUE AD SIDERA NOTVS
> > FORMONSI PECORIS CVSTOS FORMONSIOR IPSE.
> > ftp://sailor.gutenberg.org/pub/gutenberg/etext95/bucol10.txt
> > ....................................
> >
> > The shepherds are requested to "rear a tomb" - they don't
> > find a tomb in the poem.
> >
> > It is my impression that the phrase "Et in Arcadia Ego" was
> > introduced much much later. Anyone?
>
>
> this seem likely. Perhaps Virgil's Greek source had a phrase that might
> have been translated into Latin in that way. (though not by Virgil)
>
>
> >
> > Well, Death does loom in Virgil's Arcady, after all, but,
> > unlike in the "Bengt Ekerot / Maria CasarХs Film Festival"
> > (GR 755), is given no lines of Its own.
>
>
> Death loomed in another Arcadia (Santa Anita Racetrack) yesterday with
> the death of Bill Shoemaker at 72.
>
>
> >
> >
> > Heikki
> >
> > P.S. The topic brings to mind Stoppard's wonderful, thermodynamic
> > Arcadia. The phrase in question is not left untouched by TS...
> >
> >
> > On Mon, 13 Oct 2003, Mary Krimmel wrote:
> >
> > > At 07:39 PM 10/13/03 -0400, Paul Mackin wrote:
> > > ...
> > > >In Latin it's Et in Arcadia ego Virgil
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >Also the name of a Poussin painting. (shepherds discovering a tomb)
> > >
> > > Can you or anyone tell us the context of Virgil's use of that phrase?
Or
> > > tell us what work it is found in? Was Virgil quoting someone else?
> > >
> > > I have understood (from I don't know what sources) that the words are
or
> > > were inscribed on a tombstone and that they are the earliest known
written
> > > Latin; is that correct? The Poussin painting suggests the tombstone,
but
> > > which came first - the fact or generally accepted idea of the tomb, or
the
> > > painting?
> > >
> > > Why does there never seem to be any doubt that the "ego" of the phrase
is
> > > Death? Even if there is no doubt that it was carved on a tombstone,
that
> > > seems to me to be no reason to conclude definitely that Death is the
speaker.
> > >
> > > Also, I have understood (again, no back-up) that Arcady has the
reputation
> > > of being an idyllic Eden-like spot; is that correct? I.e., does it
have
> > > such a reputation? If so, and if Death is the speaker, the phrase
makes a
> > > poignant point. But it looks to me as though it's often interpreted in
> > > order to suggest the point, without any real justification.
> > >
> > > Mary Krimmel
> > >
> > >
> > >
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 09:19:41 -0400
> From: Terrance <lycidas2@earthlink.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF: Notes Line 286
>
> >Will try to look it up.
>
> Erwin Panofsky?
>
> http://www.skidmore.edu/academics/english/bgoldens/RANDALL.htm
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 09:50:38 -0400
> From: Terrance <lycidas2@earthlink.net>
> Subject: Re: VLVL 98-103
>
> > (A good question might be, if writing and reading arise from the mirror,
> > what does this mirror reflect? Where comes the light?)
>
> All the shapes that have been reflected there--Pyncheon himself, and his
> many descendants, some in the garb of antique boyhood, and others in the
> bloom of feminine beauty or manly prime, or sadness with the wrinkles of
> frosty age. had we the secrets of that mirror, we would gladly sit down
> before it, and transfer its revelations to our page with a mesmeric
> process we could make its interior region all alive with the departed
> Pyncheons; not as they had shown themselves to the world nor in their
> better and happier hours, but as doing over again some deed of sin, or
> in the crisis of life's bitterest sorrow.
>
>
> VL is not as good as V., but it's much better.
>
> How did the Romance writers, how does Hawthorne
> for example, incorporate the static, stunning exactitude of
> photo art into the gothic elements of American Romance and
> comment on psychology/history? Mirror, mirror on the wall,
> carrying on a trope used in classical and medieval Romances,
> the American Romance relied on pictorial devices to question
> the relationship between life and art, original and
> imitation, subject and image. One would think that the
> stunning exactitude of such a medium would seem to render it
> anathema to a genre steeped in a gothic tradition, but,
> early views of daguerreotype endowed the medium with magical
> powers, making of its verisimilitude a magic realism.
> Early in his career Pynchon begins using TV and radio and
> film, mixing them with dreams to destabilize assumptions of
> what is "reality" and developing his history/psychology
> themes. Now, while it makes sense that Pynchon should turn
> to film which emerged and flourished in America, the land of
> conquest of space and time, an art appropriate to the
> democratic New World, an art more dependent on the marriage
> of art and technology than any before it, an art vastly
> public, an art that took light as its medium, light that
> most elusive, most transient, most ephemeral of all
> phenomena. It makes sense that Pynchon, growing up when he
> did and setting his fiction in the 40s, 60s and 70s would
> take us to the movies and bring TV into our homes. The
> "movies" (the word itself is dated 1912) was said to have
> the power of "making us walk more confidently on the
> precarious ground of imagination." However, those sprockets
> on the page in GR are not found in V.. We find a member of
> the sick crew wired to a TV between a dream and a waking
> state. We find characters like GR's Franz ("Franz loved
> films but this was how he watched them, nodding in and out
> of sleep.") In "The Secret Integration," written between V.
> and CL, Pynchon mixes dreams and radio as he had in V., and
> yes in CL we find an old man that mixes dreams, Porky Pig
> cartoons and History, and Pynchon carries the planetarium
> motif from V. to CL as a major structuring technique, but in
> V. and "TSI" and CL Pynchon does not use film as it is used
> in GR. V. uses the literary precursor of pictorials (photos,
> paintings, drawings etc.) the MIRROR. The mirror and the
> clock, not film, is what Pynchon uses in V.. So Melanie's
> personality of narcissistic reflection and voyeuristic
> relationship with V (hall of mirrors/sex roles) is worked
> out in GR by Katje and her solipsistic cameraman's
> (pornographic sex roles) pleasure as the personality of
> pretense. Kurt Mondaugen has a cameo role back in the same
> section in which Franz sleeps and watches movies in GR. In
> V., Mondaugen become a voyeur, dependent upon images
> reflected in mirrors and he enters "mirror-time in the
> south-west Protectorate," where history is nostalgically
> reflected--the history of genocide (1904). What happens to
> Mondaugen is that his dreams ("the dreams of a voyeur can
> never be his own")take on the history/psychology of the
> novel. Pynchon has him get sick first, a technique he will
> later use in "TSI" where the very sick Mr. McAfee will
> recount his history in much the same manner as the radio
> fragments that filter in the boy's dreams. During his
> illness (scurvy, ick, the sick skin of V. ice) he is visited
> by images of genocidal brutality, the overflow of Fopp''s
> infected memory and fancy. He is also visited by our dear
> friend Weissman, reflected in a mirror, who tells him that
> he is able to interpret the sferics as "Die Welt ist Alles
> Was der Fall ist." The mirror has magic, mystical power in
> V. and with the clock it forms part of the overall structure
> of V.. I think Pynchon use of mirrors, radio, sferics in V.
> is rooted in literature and his use of film develops from
> his use of these others. "
>
> "Everyone's gone to the Baseball, now we're alone at last."
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: 14 Oct 2003 10:21:43 -0400
> From: Paul Mackin <paul.mackin@verizon.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF: Notes Line 286
>
> On Tue, 2003-10-14 at 09:19, Terrance wrote:
> > >Will try to look it up.
> >
> > Erwin Panofsky?
> >
> > http://www.skidmore.edu/academics/english/bgoldens/RANDALL.htm
>
> Thanks.
>
> P
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 10:32:42 -0400
> From: "Scott Badger" <lupine@ncia.net>
> Subject: RE: NPPF: Notes Line 286
>
> Mary:
> > Why does there never seem to be any doubt that the "ego" of the phrase
is
> > Death? Even if there is no doubt that it was carved on a tombstone, that
> > seems to me to be no reason to conclude definitely that Death is
> > the speaker.
>
> As I mentioned in the notes, there is an alternate version, erroneously
> quoted in a _Pale Fire_ Cliff-like notes, attributed to Dementia (chained
to
> her gray column), which is suggestive of both Kinbote and Jack Grey. I
also
> found this same version at
> http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~laa16/prevexams/Makeup_Final_1997.htm
.
> Does anyone know the source?
>
> Scott Badger
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 10:54:53 -0400
> From: Terrance <lycidas2@earthlink.net>
> Subject: Re: VLVL 98-103
>
> > Prairie and DL discover their common link; Prairie tells DL about Brock
> > Vond's reappearance on the scene, and DL begins to tell Prairie the
story
> > of her mother. The story assumes the form of a fiction--DL realizes that
> > "whatever story [she] told this kid must not, maybe could never, be the
> > story she knew" (101); fittingly, the "kid" who dreads and hungers for
the
> > truth (99) will be lied to--although her refusal of the status ("kid")
> > shifts DL's fiction into truth-telling. Prairie asserts herself bluntly:
> > "... you want to hear mine before you'll tell me yours" (101), the quid
> > pro quo of sexual exploration.
>
> Zoyd says, "Keep'em legs together teen bimbo."
>
> And Prairie turns with the business end of that hair brush pointed at DL
> who is standing just a little too close for comfort, "a little too
> close, tall and fair, wearing a green party dress that might have gone
> with her hair but not with the way she carried herself, athletic, even
> warriorlike, watching the girl in a weirdly familiar way, as if she were
> about to continue a conversation."
>
> With her ex-lover, Frenesi.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 11:17:28 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <fakename@verizon.net>
> Subject: NPPF: Some Notes for p. 171-174
>
> Trying to catch up after a brief flirtation with a different obsession....
>
> p. 171
> "Irondell"
>
> Hirondelle is French for swallow (another bird that is, from the family
> Hirundinidae). The name "swallow" comes (by way of the Old Saxon swala)
> from the Old Norse "svale," which sort of means "cheer up," and which a
bird
> of this sort (according to Danish folklore) cried to Christ while on the
> cross. The swallow is the harbinger of summer, and (according to English
> folklore) said to be good luck if it flies into your home. Another common
> superstition held by farmers is that disturbing a swallow's nest will
result
> in a poor harvest (Kinbote should have heeded that one).
>
> The proximity to the King Alfred reference suggests another of the King's
> translations: in Bede's _Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation_,
one
> of King Eadwine's counselors, in reference to the old religion, describes
> life as a swallow (or sparrow depending on translation) that flies into a
> house from a winter's storm through one door and then back out through
> another, living only for the "twinkling of an eye and a moment of time"
and
> unaware of "what goes before or what comes after."
>
> http://www.yorku.ca/inpar/Bede_Miller.pdf
> http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/bede-book2.html
>
> In that same work, the word Swallow turns up in reference to the river
where
> the bishop Paulinus baptized the people of the Deira province.
>
>
> p. 171
> "Canadian stock"
>
> The Canadian Zone of Appalachia (see p. 169).
>
>
> p. 171-172
>
> "she used to call me 'an elephantine tick; a king-sized botfly; a macaco
> worm; the monstrous parasite of a genius'."
>
> King-sized botfly linking Kinbote to Botkin, as well as a tick and a
> parasite. The macaco worm is the parasitic larva of the South American
> botfly. The Index has under Botkin: "king-bot, maggot of extinct fly that
> once bred in mammoths and is thought to have hastened their phylogenetic
> end."
>
>
> p. 172
> "/Van/homrigh, /Es/ther"
>
> Esther Vanhomrigh (1690-1723), who was infatuated with Swift, but who
> rejected her. She was said to have died of a broken heart. Swift called
> her Vanessa; and the quote on p. 172 is from Swift's "Cadenus and Vanessa"
> (1713), in which he describes his feelings for her (excerpted):
>
> The goddess thus pronounced her doom,
> When, lo, Vanessa in her bloom,
> Advanced like Atalanta's star,
> But rarely seen, and seen from far:
> In a new world with caution stepped,
> Watched all the company she kept,
> Well knowing from the books she read
> What dangerous paths young virgins tread;
>
> http://www.hertford.ox.ac.uk/alumni/swift.htm
> http://www.literatureclassics.com/etexts/476/6746/
>
> See also "Vanessa Van Ness," the "fat, powdered" mother of Annabel Leigh
in
> _Lolita_.
>
>
> p. 172
> "[A] recognizable figure of [The Red Admiral] is borne in the escutcheon
of
> The Dukes of Payn"
>
> Charles' wife Disa is the Duchess of Payn (see p. 173). Thus a link
between
> Disa and Esther Vanhomrigh, casting Charles as Jonathan Swift (I can hear
> him rolling in his grave), reinforced on p. 173: "I notice a whiff of
Swift
> in some of my notes."
>
>
> p. 172
> "Michaelmas Daisies"
>
> /Aster novi-belgii/, introduced to Britain from North America in the early
> 1700's. "They continue blooming until autumn and provide late-flying
> butterflies such as peacocks and small tortoiseshells with a good source
of
> nectar."
>
> Sept. 29th is "St. Michaelmas Day." This saint was the "warrior saint of
> all angels."
>
> http://www.uksafari.com/michaelmas.htm
>
>
> p. 173
> "/fou rire/"
>
> Impish (or insane) laughter.
>
>
> p. 173
> "rough alderkings who burned for boys"
>
> Add to the set of alder references (p. 116, etc). Alderking = ErlkЖnig; I
> suppose "burn[ing] for boys" is one way of reading Goethe's poem....
>
>
> p. 173
> "wanted him to do what an earlier and even more reluctant Charles had
done:
> take a night off and lawfully engender an heir"
>
> Charles II of England never managed to produce a "lawful" heir, causing a
> multitude of problems toward the end of the 17th century.
>
>
> p. 173
> "He saw nineteen-year-old Disa for the first time [...] at a masked ball"
>
> Romeo and Juliet.
>
>
> p. 173
> "She had come in male dress, as a Tirolese boy"
>
> Explaining why Charles was interested in the first place. The Zemblan
> gender swapping persists with "two guardsmen disguised as flowergirls" in
> the same paragraph.
>
> p. 173
> "fackeltanz"
>
> German: "torch dance"
>
> Note the proximity of "fireworks" and "pale upturned faces"
>
>
> p. 173-174
> "He procrastinated for almost two years but [...] finally gave in [to
> marriage]."
>
> I find it interesting that there is no mention of any courtship, much like
> in the biographies of kings where they are suddenly wed to some princess
of
> another nation. But see p. 174 where Kinbote refers to Shade's
> "embarrassing intimacies."
>
>
> p. 174
> "smug alderkings"
>
> Add *another* alder reference. In connection with the previous one, it
> seems the alderkings are Charles' buddies, with whom he "burns for boys"
> (perhaps the Zemblan equivalent of "chasing skirts"?).
>
>
> p. 174
> "I like my name: Shade, /Ombre/, almost "man" / In Spanish . . ."
>
> Another _Lolita_ reference: Ombre = HH. (I may have posted this before.)
> Shade in Latin is "umbra", close to "Humbert", as is "hombre", Spanish for
> man.
>
> "Ombre" is also a 17th century card game.
>
>
> Jasper Fidget
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: 14 Oct 2003 11:25:41 -0400
> From: Paul Mackin <paul.mackin@verizon.net>
> Subject: RE: NPPF: Notes Line 286
>
> On Tue, 2003-10-14 at 10:32, Scott Badger wrote:
> > Mary:
> > > Why does there never seem to be any doubt that the "ego" of the phrase
is
> > > Death? Even if there is no doubt that it was carved on a tombstone,
that
> > > seems to me to be no reason to conclude definitely that Death is
> > > the speaker.
> >
> > As I mentioned in the notes, there is an alternate version, erroneously
> > quoted in a _Pale Fire_ Cliff-like notes, attributed to Dementia
(chained to
> > her gray column), which is suggestive of both Kinbote and Jack Grey. I
also
> > found this same version at
> >
http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~laa16/prevexams/Makeup_Final_1997.htm .
> > Does anyone know the source?
>
>
> I meant to ask you about this earlier.
>
> Another mention of "Even in Arcadia am I" occurs in the commentary on
> Line 629. (this is the one quoted in the Harvard examination and I
> assume in the Cliff-like notes)
>
> Kinbote takes off not from the line itself but from a line K says Shade
> had written in but struck out namely "The madman's fate."
>
> I am still thinking about Mary's question.
>
> P.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 12:04:32 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <fakename@verizon.net>
> Subject: RE: NPPF: Summary Line 286
>
> > From: owner-pynchon-l@waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l@waste.org] On
> > Behalf Of Scott Badger
> >
>
> > >
> > > One more notable aspect of this commentary is Kinbote's tenderness for
> > > Bretwit - an unlikely attraction that parallels the relationship
> > > between Shade and Kinbote. He describes Bretwit as "sickly" and
> > > "featureless", a "pallid gland", and, intellectually, a dolt. But
> > > Kinbote then expresses a sense of profound connection between
> > > them, "a symbol of valor and self-abnegation", that veers towards
> > > some sexual attraction, "I could have spanked the dear man".
> > >
> > >
>
> Yes, it's interesting that Kinbote has this history of attraction for
> unattractive men who possess an inner beauty, much as K wants people to
see
> himself (or lacking beauty, at least heredity).
>
> "Oswin Bretwit" is another reference to Merry Old England and Bede's
> Ecclesiastical History:
>
> "Bretwalda" means Lord of all the Britains, sort of the king of all the
> kings of the Isle. The title was first assigned to Egbert in the
> Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as "the eighth king that was Bretwalda." Looking up
> the other seven in Bede, the seventh one is Oswy, who shared dominion of
the
> nation with another king... Oswin. Their kingdoms were divided by the
river
> Humber (yes), and Oswy, wanting all of the toys, assembled an army and
> eventually "foully slew" Oswin, becoming therefore Bretwalda.
>
> Oswin is described by Bede as "of a goodly countenance, and tall of
stature,
> pleasant in discourse, and courteous in behaviour; and bountiful to all,
> gentle and simple alike; so that he was beloved by all men for the royal
> dignity of his mind and appearance and actions, and men of the highest
rank
> came from almost all provinces to serve him."
>
> Compare to Kinbote's characterization of Bretwit as "courage [allied] with
> integrity, kindness, dignity, and what can be euphemistically called
> endearing naОvetИ" (p. 177).
>
> Bede tells the story of a beautiful horse Oswin had given a Bishop Aidan
"to
> use either in crossing rivers, or in performing a journey upon any urgent
> necessity," but the Bishop, who was used to walking, gave the horse to a
> beggar. "What did you mean, my lord Bishop" said Oswin later, "by giving
> the poor man that royal horse, which it was fitting that you should have
for
> your own use? Had not we many other horses of less value, or things of
> other sorts, which would have been good enough to give to the poor,
instead
> of giving that horse, which I had chosen and set apart for your own use?"
> To which the Bishop replied, "What do you say, O king? Is that son of a
mare
> more dear to you than that son of God?" The King thought about that for a
> while, then "ungirt his sword, and gave it to a servant, and hastened to
the
> Bishop and fell down at his feet, beseeching him to forgive him; 'For from
> this time forward,' said he, 'I will never speak any more of this, nor
will
> I judge of what or how much of our money you shall give to the sons of
> God.'" The Bishop comforted the King, but then grew sad, saying to one of
> his priests, "I know [...] that the king will not live long; for I never
> before saw a humble king; whence I perceive that he will soon be snatched
> out of this life, because this nation is not worthy of such a ruler." It
> was not long after that Oswy killed Oswin, and "the bishop▓s gloomy
> foreboding was fulfilled."
>
> http://28.1911encyclopedia.org/B/BR/BRETWALDA.htm
> http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bede/history.v.iii.xiv.html
>
> Jasper Fidget
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 12:15:59 -0400
> From: "Scott Badger" <lupine@ncia.net>
> Subject: RE: NPPF: Notes Line 286
>
> Paul:
> >Another mention of "Even in Arcadia am I" occurs in the commentary on
> >Line 629. (this is the one quoted in the Harvard examination and I
> >assume in the Cliff-like notes)
>
> (slap!!) Yes. Thanks. The Harvard exam quote is stripped of any specific
> references (Zembla, New Wye) so as not to make it too easy for the
> kiddies...
>
> Scott
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 13:09:53 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <fakename@verizon.net>
> Subject: RE: NPPF: Summary Line 347
>
> > From: owner-pynchon-l@waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l@waste.org] On
> > Behalf Of Scott Badger
>
> > Kinbote ends his account of Hetzner with a description of his favorite,
> > umm,
> > watering hole. "Here Papa pisses." remarks H's son. An act that carries
> > with
> > it the obvious territorial connotations, consistent with the several
> > canine
> > references in this passage, but also, I think, binds him to the
immediate
> > landscape as texture - a temporal and physical present repeatedly
renewed,
> > turned-over, and lacking the abstract text of historians, poets and
> > prophets. But in the end, the course of history washes Hetzner away;
>
>
> Also, "Here Papa pisses" is a reference to Browning's dramatic poem "Pippa
> Passes," (1843) which the poet conceived while walking through Dulwich
wood.
>
> http://www.sm.rim.or.jp/~osawa/AGG/poetry/pippa-passes.html
>
> William Sharp, in his _Life of Robert Browning_, writes, "In that same
wood
> beyond Dulwich to which allusion has already been made, the germinal
motive
> of 'Pippa Passes' flashed upon the poet. No wonder this resort was for
long
> one of his sacred places, and that he lamented its disappearance as
> fervently as Ruskin bewailed the encroachment of the ocean of bricks and
> mortar upon the wooded privacies of Denmark Hill."
>
>
http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/hst/biography/LifeofBrowning/ch
> ap5.html
>
> Boyd writes, "Just as obscure Pippa passes by characters whose lives she
> affects without her ever meaning to -- including a sculptor whose art she
> redirects -- so the outwardly unprepossessing Hentzner proves an
inspiration
> to John Shade when the self-important Kinbote, the incognito king, cannot
> stir his fancy" (_Magic of Artistic Discovery_, p. 88).
>
> Pippa Passes is also eponymous for a town in Kentucky, home of Alice Lloyd
> College, whose slogan is "Providing Leadership for Appalachia."
>
> http://www.alc.edu/
>
> Jasper Fidget
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 13:33:22 -0400
> From: "Scott Badger" <lupine@ncia.net>
> Subject: RE: NPPF: Summary Line 347
>
> Jasper:
> > Also, "Here Papa pisses" is a reference to Browning's dramatic poem
"Pippa
> > Passes," (1843) which the poet conceived while walking through
> > Dulwich wood.
>
> A marrowsky, of course...Thanks Jasper.
>
> Scott
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 10:35:55 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Dave Monroe <monrovius@yahoo.com>
> Subject: On Belief
>
> From Slavoj Zizek, On Belief (London and New York:
> Routledge, 2001),Ch. 1, 'Against the Digital Heresy,"
> pp. 6-55 ...
>
> "What about the magic moments when, all of a sudden,
> people are no longer afraid, when they become aware
> that, ultimately, to quote the well-known words, they
> have nothing to fear but the fear itself, that the
> hypnotizing authority of their masters is the
> 'reflexive determination' (Hegel) of their own
> submissive attitude towards them?
> "It was Pascal who pointed out that poeple do not
> treat a certain person as a king because he is a
> king--it is rtaher that this certian person appears as
> a king because people treat him as one.
> Psychoanalysis doesn't seem to allow for such magic
> ruptures which momentarily break the inexorable chain
> of tragic necessity: within its scope, every rebellion
> against authority is ultimately self-defeating; it
> ends up in the return of the repressed authority in
> the guise of guilt or self-destructive impulses. On
> the other hand, psychoanalysts rightly focus on the
> catastrophic consequences of the radical evolutionary
> endeavors: the overthrowing of the ancien regime
> brought about even harsher forms of totlitarian
> domination.... It's the old story of the
> revolutionary fools versus the conservative knaves.
> [ellipses in text]
> 'So where does all this leave us? ...." (pp. 16-7)
>
> "(3) Seminar XVII (1969-1970) on the four discourses
> is ALacan's response to the events of 1968 [...].
> Lacan's interest is focused on the passages from teh
> discourse of the Master to the discourse of University
> as the hegemonic discourse in contemporary society.
> No wonder that teh revolt was located in the
> universities: as such, it merely signalled the shift
> to the new forms of domination in which the scientific
> discourse serves to legitimize the relations of
> domination. Lacn's underlying premise is thus again
> skeptically conservative--Lacan's diagnosis is best
> captures by his famous retort to the student
> revolutionaries: 'As hysterics, you demand a new
> master. You will, get it!
>
> "(4) Finally, Seminar XX provides the libidinal
> economy of today's postmodern, post-revoluutionary,
> 'society of consumption' ..."
>
> [...]
>
> "the logic of this succession is thus clear enough: we
> start with the stable symbolic Order; we proceed to
> the heroic suicidal attempts to break out of it; when
> the Order itself seems threatened, we provide the
> matrix of permutations which accounts for how the
> revolt itself is just the operator of the passage from
> one to another form of the social link; finally, we
> confront the society in which the revolt itslef is
> rendered eaningless, since, in it, transgression
> itself is not only recuperated, but directly solicited
> by the sytem as the evry form of its reporoduction.
> To put it in hegel's terms, the 'truth' of the
> student's transgressive revolt against the
> Establishment is the emergence of a new establishment
> in which transgression is part of teh game, solicited
> by the gadgets which organize our life as the
> permanent dealing with excesses.
> "Is, then, Lacan's ultimate result a conservative
> resignation, a kind of cloure, or does this approach
> allow for a radical social change? The first thing to
> take note of is that the preceding paradigms do not
> simply disappear in those which follow--they persist,
> casting a shadow on them...." (pp. 30-1)
>
> "The media constantly bombards us with the need to
> abandon the 'old paradigms': if we are to survive, we
> have to change our most fundamental notions of what
> constitutes personal identity, society, environment,
> etc. New Age wisdom claims that we are entering a new
> 'post-human' era; postmodern political thought tells
> us that we are entering post-industrial societies
> [...]. The Third Way ideology and political practice
> is effectively THE model of this defeatof this
> inability to recognize how the New is here to enable
> the Old to survive. Against this temptaion, one
> should rather follow the unsurpassed model of Pascal
> and ask the difficult question: how are we to remain
> faithful to the Old in the new conditions? ONLY in
> this way can we generate something effectively
> new...." (pp. 32-3)
>
> Let me know ...
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
> http://shopping.yahoo.com
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: 14 Oct 2003 13:43:44 -0400
> From: Paul Mackin <paul.mackin@verizon.net>
> Subject: RE: NPPF: Notes Line 286
>
> > > Mary:
> > > > Why does there never seem to be any doubt that the "ego" of the
phrase is
> > > > Death? Even if there is no doubt that it was carved on a tombstone,
that
> > > > seems to me to be no reason to conclude definitely that Death is
> > > > the speaker.
>
>
>
>
> Terrance pointed out this paper concerned with death tropes and Randall
> Jarrell and which discusses Erwin Panofsky's ideas on the meaning of Et
> in Arcadia ego
>
> http://www.skidmore.edu/academics/english/bgoldens/RANDALL.htm
>
> Put very sketchily, Panofsky says the phrase does not come from
> antiquity but is supposed to have been suggested by Pope Clement IX (a
> poet himself) when he commissioned a painting by Guercino in which the
> words appear on a scroll issuing from a death's head on a tomb in
> Arcadia. According to Panofsky, correct Latin requires that ego be the
> subject of the sentence. Therefore Death is the speaker.
>
> The Guercino painting pre-dated that of Poussin.
>
> The essay gives a lot more of interest on this subject including
> Virgil's place in the story. Good reading.
>
>
>
> P.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 10:48:21 -0700
> From: "Keith McMullen" <keithsz@concentric.net>
> Subject: NPPF: Humming as You Pack
>
> Perhaps Sybil was humming Fred Ahlert's "Poor Little G String" as she
> packed. Or maybe "Life Is A Song."
>
> Album Title: Life Is A Song - The Songs of Fred Ahlert
> Lyrics by: Joe Young
> Music by: Fred Ahlert (1892-1953)
>
> Life is a song, let's sing it together.
> Let's take our hearts and dip them in rhyme,
> Let's learn the words, let's learn the music together,
> hoping the song lasts for a long, long time.
>
> Life is a song that goes on forever.
> Love's old refrain can never go wrong.
> Let's strike the note Mendelssohn wrote concerning spring weather,
> Let's sing together and make life a song.
>
> Don't be afraid of the future
> All of our plans will come through
> How can they fail with love on our side
> They'll never fail, we won't be denied
> All the world's a symphony, for you , for me.
>
> Life is a song, let's sing it together.
> Let's take our hearts and dip them in rhyme,
> Let's learn the words, let's learn the music together,
> hoping the song lasts for a long, long time.
>
> Life is a song that goes on forever.
> Love's old refrain can never go wrong.
> Let's strike the note Mendelssohn wrote concerning spring weather,
> Let's sing it together and make life a song.
>
From: "pynchon-l-digest" <owner-pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
To: <pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 14, 2003 11:53 AM
Subject: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3604
>
> pynchon-l-digest Tuesday, October 14 2003 Volume 02 : Number
3604
>
>
>
> Re: NPPF: Notes Line 286
> Re: NPPF: Notes Line 286
> Re: NPPF: Notes Line 286
> Re: VLVL 98-103
> Re: NPPF: Notes Line 286
> RE: NPPF: Notes Line 286
> Re: VLVL 98-103
> NPPF: Some Notes for p. 171-174
> RE: NPPF: Notes Line 286
> RE: NPPF: Summary Line 286
> RE: NPPF: Notes Line 286
> RE: NPPF: Summary Line 347
> RE: NPPF: Summary Line 347
> On Belief
> RE: NPPF: Notes Line 286
> NPPF: Humming as You Pack
> VLVL(7) Vocabulary
> DeLillo in New Yorker
> Re: TRP on The Simpsons
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 13:56:41 +0300 (EEST)
> From: Heikki Raudaskoski <hraudask@sun3.oulu.fi>
> Subject: Re: NPPF: Notes Line 286
>
> Well, there is a tomb in Virgil's fifth eclogue, that much
> is true, but you cannot find the words "et in Arcadia ego"
> anywhere in the poem. The shepherd Mopsus sings to shepherd
> Menalcas in #5, lamenting Daphnis's death:
> ........................
> From the Gutenberg site [translator not announced):
>
> 'Now, O ye shepherds, strew the ground with leaves,
> And o'er the fountains draw a shady veil-
> So Daphnis to his memory bids be done-
> And rear a tomb, and write thereon this verse:
> 'I, Daphnis in the woods, from hence in fame
> Am to the stars exalted, guardian once
> Of a fair flock, myself more fair than they.'
> ftp://sailor.gutenberg.org/pub/gutenberg/etext95/bucoe10.txt
> .........................
> Originally:
>
> Spargite humum foliis, inducite fontibus umbras,
> pastores, mandat fieri sibi talia Daphnis;
> et tumulum facite, et tumulo superaddite carmen:
> DAPHNIS EGO IN SILVIS HINC VSQUE AD SIDERA NOTVS
> FORMONSI PECORIS CVSTOS FORMONSIOR IPSE.
> ftp://sailor.gutenberg.org/pub/gutenberg/etext95/bucol10.txt
> .....................................
>
> The shepherds are requested to "rear a tomb" - they don't
> find a tomb in the poem.
>
> It is my impression that the phrase "Et in Arcadia Ego" was
> introduced much much later. Anyone?
>
> Well, Death does loom in Virgil's Arcady, after all, but,
> unlike in the "Bengt Ekerot / Maria CasarХs Film Festival"
> (GR 755), is given no lines of Its own.
>
>
> Heikki
>
> P.S. The topic brings to mind Stoppard's wonderful, thermodynamic
> Arcadia. The phrase in question is not left untouched by TS...
>
>
> On Mon, 13 Oct 2003, Mary Krimmel wrote:
>
> > At 07:39 PM 10/13/03 -0400, Paul Mackin wrote:
> > ...
> > >In Latin it's Et in Arcadia ego Virgil
> > >
> > >
> > >Also the name of a Poussin painting. (shepherds discovering a tomb)
> >
> > Can you or anyone tell us the context of Virgil's use of that phrase? Or
> > tell us what work it is found in? Was Virgil quoting someone else?
> >
> > I have understood (from I don't know what sources) that the words are or
> > were inscribed on a tombstone and that they are the earliest known
written
> > Latin; is that correct? The Poussin painting suggests the tombstone, but
> > which came first - the fact or generally accepted idea of the tomb, or
the
> > painting?
> >
> > Why does there never seem to be any doubt that the "ego" of the phrase
is
> > Death? Even if there is no doubt that it was carved on a tombstone, that
> > seems to me to be no reason to conclude definitely that Death is the
speaker.
> >
> > Also, I have understood (again, no back-up) that Arcady has the
reputation
> > of being an idyllic Eden-like spot; is that correct? I.e., does it have
> > such a reputation? If so, and if Death is the speaker, the phrase makes
a
> > poignant point. But it looks to me as though it's often interpreted in
> > order to suggest the point, without any real justification.
> >
> > Mary Krimmel
> >
> >
> >
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: 14 Oct 2003 08:34:31 -0400
> From: Paul Mackin <paul.mackin@verizon.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF: Notes Line 286
>
> On Tue, 2003-10-14 at 06:56, Heikki Raudaskoski wrote:
> >
> >
> > Well, there is a tomb in Virgil's fifth eclogue, that much
> > is true, but you cannot find the words "et in Arcadia ego"
> > anywhere in the poem. The shepherd Mopsus sings to shepherd
> > Menalcas in #5, lamenting Daphnis's death:
>
>
> I also looked in vain for it. The Latin sentence is usually mentioned
> in connection with the paintings in the Louvre and only then is the
> source of the name said to be one of the eclogues.
>
> Also there's a famous essay by that name. I forget the author. Will try
> to look it up.
>
> P.
> > .......................
> > >From the Gutenberg site [translator not announced):
> >
> > 'Now, O ye shepherds, strew the ground with leaves,
> > And o'er the fountains draw a shady veil-
> > So Daphnis to his memory bids be done-
> > And rear a tomb, and write thereon this verse:
> > 'I, Daphnis in the woods, from hence in fame
> > Am to the stars exalted, guardian once
> > Of a fair flock, myself more fair than they.'
> > ftp://sailor.gutenberg.org/pub/gutenberg/etext95/bucoe10.txt
> > ........................
> > Originally:
> >
> > Spargite humum foliis, inducite fontibus umbras,
> > pastores, mandat fieri sibi talia Daphnis;
> > et tumulum facite, et tumulo superaddite carmen:
> > DAPHNIS EGO IN SILVIS HINC VSQUE AD SIDERA NOTVS
> > FORMONSI PECORIS CVSTOS FORMONSIOR IPSE.
> > ftp://sailor.gutenberg.org/pub/gutenberg/etext95/bucol10.txt
> > ....................................
> >
> > The shepherds are requested to "rear a tomb" - they don't
> > find a tomb in the poem.
> >
> > It is my impression that the phrase "Et in Arcadia Ego" was
> > introduced much much later. Anyone?
>
>
> this seem likely. Perhaps Virgil's Greek source had a phrase that might
> have been translated into Latin in that way. (though not by Virgil)
>
>
> >
> > Well, Death does loom in Virgil's Arcady, after all, but,
> > unlike in the "Bengt Ekerot / Maria CasarХs Film Festival"
> > (GR 755), is given no lines of Its own.
>
>
> Death loomed in another Arcadia (Santa Anita Racetrack) yesterday with
> the death of Bill Shoemaker at 72.
>
>
> >
> >
> > Heikki
> >
> > P.S. The topic brings to mind Stoppard's wonderful, thermodynamic
> > Arcadia. The phrase in question is not left untouched by TS...
> >
> >
> > On Mon, 13 Oct 2003, Mary Krimmel wrote:
> >
> > > At 07:39 PM 10/13/03 -0400, Paul Mackin wrote:
> > > ...
> > > >In Latin it's Et in Arcadia ego Virgil
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >Also the name of a Poussin painting. (shepherds discovering a tomb)
> > >
> > > Can you or anyone tell us the context of Virgil's use of that phrase?
Or
> > > tell us what work it is found in? Was Virgil quoting someone else?
> > >
> > > I have understood (from I don't know what sources) that the words are
or
> > > were inscribed on a tombstone and that they are the earliest known
written
> > > Latin; is that correct? The Poussin painting suggests the tombstone,
but
> > > which came first - the fact or generally accepted idea of the tomb, or
the
> > > painting?
> > >
> > > Why does there never seem to be any doubt that the "ego" of the phrase
is
> > > Death? Even if there is no doubt that it was carved on a tombstone,
that
> > > seems to me to be no reason to conclude definitely that Death is the
speaker.
> > >
> > > Also, I have understood (again, no back-up) that Arcady has the
reputation
> > > of being an idyllic Eden-like spot; is that correct? I.e., does it
have
> > > such a reputation? If so, and if Death is the speaker, the phrase
makes a
> > > poignant point. But it looks to me as though it's often interpreted in
> > > order to suggest the point, without any real justification.
> > >
> > > Mary Krimmel
> > >
> > >
> > >
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 09:19:41 -0400
> From: Terrance <lycidas2@earthlink.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF: Notes Line 286
>
> >Will try to look it up.
>
> Erwin Panofsky?
>
> http://www.skidmore.edu/academics/english/bgoldens/RANDALL.htm
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 09:50:38 -0400
> From: Terrance <lycidas2@earthlink.net>
> Subject: Re: VLVL 98-103
>
> > (A good question might be, if writing and reading arise from the mirror,
> > what does this mirror reflect? Where comes the light?)
>
> All the shapes that have been reflected there--Pyncheon himself, and his
> many descendants, some in the garb of antique boyhood, and others in the
> bloom of feminine beauty or manly prime, or sadness with the wrinkles of
> frosty age. had we the secrets of that mirror, we would gladly sit down
> before it, and transfer its revelations to our page with a mesmeric
> process we could make its interior region all alive with the departed
> Pyncheons; not as they had shown themselves to the world nor in their
> better and happier hours, but as doing over again some deed of sin, or
> in the crisis of life's bitterest sorrow.
>
>
> VL is not as good as V., but it's much better.
>
> How did the Romance writers, how does Hawthorne
> for example, incorporate the static, stunning exactitude of
> photo art into the gothic elements of American Romance and
> comment on psychology/history? Mirror, mirror on the wall,
> carrying on a trope used in classical and medieval Romances,
> the American Romance relied on pictorial devices to question
> the relationship between life and art, original and
> imitation, subject and image. One would think that the
> stunning exactitude of such a medium would seem to render it
> anathema to a genre steeped in a gothic tradition, but,
> early views of daguerreotype endowed the medium with magical
> powers, making of its verisimilitude a magic realism.
> Early in his career Pynchon begins using TV and radio and
> film, mixing them with dreams to destabilize assumptions of
> what is "reality" and developing his history/psychology
> themes. Now, while it makes sense that Pynchon should turn
> to film which emerged and flourished in America, the land of
> conquest of space and time, an art appropriate to the
> democratic New World, an art more dependent on the marriage
> of art and technology than any before it, an art vastly
> public, an art that took light as its medium, light that
> most elusive, most transient, most ephemeral of all
> phenomena. It makes sense that Pynchon, growing up when he
> did and setting his fiction in the 40s, 60s and 70s would
> take us to the movies and bring TV into our homes. The
> "movies" (the word itself is dated 1912) was said to have
> the power of "making us walk more confidently on the
> precarious ground of imagination." However, those sprockets
> on the page in GR are not found in V.. We find a member of
> the sick crew wired to a TV between a dream and a waking
> state. We find characters like GR's Franz ("Franz loved
> films but this was how he watched them, nodding in and out
> of sleep.") In "The Secret Integration," written between V.
> and CL, Pynchon mixes dreams and radio as he had in V., and
> yes in CL we find an old man that mixes dreams, Porky Pig
> cartoons and History, and Pynchon carries the planetarium
> motif from V. to CL as a major structuring technique, but in
> V. and "TSI" and CL Pynchon does not use film as it is used
> in GR. V. uses the literary precursor of pictorials (photos,
> paintings, drawings etc.) the MIRROR. The mirror and the
> clock, not film, is what Pynchon uses in V.. So Melanie's
> personality of narcissistic reflection and voyeuristic
> relationship with V (hall of mirrors/sex roles) is worked
> out in GR by Katje and her solipsistic cameraman's
> (pornographic sex roles) pleasure as the personality of
> pretense. Kurt Mondaugen has a cameo role back in the same
> section in which Franz sleeps and watches movies in GR. In
> V., Mondaugen become a voyeur, dependent upon images
> reflected in mirrors and he enters "mirror-time in the
> south-west Protectorate," where history is nostalgically
> reflected--the history of genocide (1904). What happens to
> Mondaugen is that his dreams ("the dreams of a voyeur can
> never be his own")take on the history/psychology of the
> novel. Pynchon has him get sick first, a technique he will
> later use in "TSI" where the very sick Mr. McAfee will
> recount his history in much the same manner as the radio
> fragments that filter in the boy's dreams. During his
> illness (scurvy, ick, the sick skin of V. ice) he is visited
> by images of genocidal brutality, the overflow of Fopp''s
> infected memory and fancy. He is also visited by our dear
> friend Weissman, reflected in a mirror, who tells him that
> he is able to interpret the sferics as "Die Welt ist Alles
> Was der Fall ist." The mirror has magic, mystical power in
> V. and with the clock it forms part of the overall structure
> of V.. I think Pynchon use of mirrors, radio, sferics in V.
> is rooted in literature and his use of film develops from
> his use of these others. "
>
> "Everyone's gone to the Baseball, now we're alone at last."
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: 14 Oct 2003 10:21:43 -0400
> From: Paul Mackin <paul.mackin@verizon.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF: Notes Line 286
>
> On Tue, 2003-10-14 at 09:19, Terrance wrote:
> > >Will try to look it up.
> >
> > Erwin Panofsky?
> >
> > http://www.skidmore.edu/academics/english/bgoldens/RANDALL.htm
>
> Thanks.
>
> P
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 10:32:42 -0400
> From: "Scott Badger" <lupine@ncia.net>
> Subject: RE: NPPF: Notes Line 286
>
> Mary:
> > Why does there never seem to be any doubt that the "ego" of the phrase
is
> > Death? Even if there is no doubt that it was carved on a tombstone, that
> > seems to me to be no reason to conclude definitely that Death is
> > the speaker.
>
> As I mentioned in the notes, there is an alternate version, erroneously
> quoted in a _Pale Fire_ Cliff-like notes, attributed to Dementia (chained
to
> her gray column), which is suggestive of both Kinbote and Jack Grey. I
also
> found this same version at
> http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~laa16/prevexams/Makeup_Final_1997.htm
.
> Does anyone know the source?
>
> Scott Badger
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 10:54:53 -0400
> From: Terrance <lycidas2@earthlink.net>
> Subject: Re: VLVL 98-103
>
> > Prairie and DL discover their common link; Prairie tells DL about Brock
> > Vond's reappearance on the scene, and DL begins to tell Prairie the
story
> > of her mother. The story assumes the form of a fiction--DL realizes that
> > "whatever story [she] told this kid must not, maybe could never, be the
> > story she knew" (101); fittingly, the "kid" who dreads and hungers for
the
> > truth (99) will be lied to--although her refusal of the status ("kid")
> > shifts DL's fiction into truth-telling. Prairie asserts herself bluntly:
> > "... you want to hear mine before you'll tell me yours" (101), the quid
> > pro quo of sexual exploration.
>
> Zoyd says, "Keep'em legs together teen bimbo."
>
> And Prairie turns with the business end of that hair brush pointed at DL
> who is standing just a little too close for comfort, "a little too
> close, tall and fair, wearing a green party dress that might have gone
> with her hair but not with the way she carried herself, athletic, even
> warriorlike, watching the girl in a weirdly familiar way, as if she were
> about to continue a conversation."
>
> With her ex-lover, Frenesi.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 11:17:28 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <fakename@verizon.net>
> Subject: NPPF: Some Notes for p. 171-174
>
> Trying to catch up after a brief flirtation with a different obsession....
>
> p. 171
> "Irondell"
>
> Hirondelle is French for swallow (another bird that is, from the family
> Hirundinidae). The name "swallow" comes (by way of the Old Saxon swala)
> from the Old Norse "svale," which sort of means "cheer up," and which a
bird
> of this sort (according to Danish folklore) cried to Christ while on the
> cross. The swallow is the harbinger of summer, and (according to English
> folklore) said to be good luck if it flies into your home. Another common
> superstition held by farmers is that disturbing a swallow's nest will
result
> in a poor harvest (Kinbote should have heeded that one).
>
> The proximity to the King Alfred reference suggests another of the King's
> translations: in Bede's _Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation_,
one
> of King Eadwine's counselors, in reference to the old religion, describes
> life as a swallow (or sparrow depending on translation) that flies into a
> house from a winter's storm through one door and then back out through
> another, living only for the "twinkling of an eye and a moment of time"
and
> unaware of "what goes before or what comes after."
>
> http://www.yorku.ca/inpar/Bede_Miller.pdf
> http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/bede-book2.html
>
> In that same work, the word Swallow turns up in reference to the river
where
> the bishop Paulinus baptized the people of the Deira province.
>
>
> p. 171
> "Canadian stock"
>
> The Canadian Zone of Appalachia (see p. 169).
>
>
> p. 171-172
>
> "she used to call me 'an elephantine tick; a king-sized botfly; a macaco
> worm; the monstrous parasite of a genius'."
>
> King-sized botfly linking Kinbote to Botkin, as well as a tick and a
> parasite. The macaco worm is the parasitic larva of the South American
> botfly. The Index has under Botkin: "king-bot, maggot of extinct fly that
> once bred in mammoths and is thought to have hastened their phylogenetic
> end."
>
>
> p. 172
> "/Van/homrigh, /Es/ther"
>
> Esther Vanhomrigh (1690-1723), who was infatuated with Swift, but who
> rejected her. She was said to have died of a broken heart. Swift called
> her Vanessa; and the quote on p. 172 is from Swift's "Cadenus and Vanessa"
> (1713), in which he describes his feelings for her (excerpted):
>
> The goddess thus pronounced her doom,
> When, lo, Vanessa in her bloom,
> Advanced like Atalanta's star,
> But rarely seen, and seen from far:
> In a new world with caution stepped,
> Watched all the company she kept,
> Well knowing from the books she read
> What dangerous paths young virgins tread;
>
> http://www.hertford.ox.ac.uk/alumni/swift.htm
> http://www.literatureclassics.com/etexts/476/6746/
>
> See also "Vanessa Van Ness," the "fat, powdered" mother of Annabel Leigh
in
> _Lolita_.
>
>
> p. 172
> "[A] recognizable figure of [The Red Admiral] is borne in the escutcheon
of
> The Dukes of Payn"
>
> Charles' wife Disa is the Duchess of Payn (see p. 173). Thus a link
between
> Disa and Esther Vanhomrigh, casting Charles as Jonathan Swift (I can hear
> him rolling in his grave), reinforced on p. 173: "I notice a whiff of
Swift
> in some of my notes."
>
>
> p. 172
> "Michaelmas Daisies"
>
> /Aster novi-belgii/, introduced to Britain from North America in the early
> 1700's. "They continue blooming until autumn and provide late-flying
> butterflies such as peacocks and small tortoiseshells with a good source
of
> nectar."
>
> Sept. 29th is "St. Michaelmas Day." This saint was the "warrior saint of
> all angels."
>
> http://www.uksafari.com/michaelmas.htm
>
>
> p. 173
> "/fou rire/"
>
> Impish (or insane) laughter.
>
>
> p. 173
> "rough alderkings who burned for boys"
>
> Add to the set of alder references (p. 116, etc). Alderking = ErlkЖnig; I
> suppose "burn[ing] for boys" is one way of reading Goethe's poem....
>
>
> p. 173
> "wanted him to do what an earlier and even more reluctant Charles had
done:
> take a night off and lawfully engender an heir"
>
> Charles II of England never managed to produce a "lawful" heir, causing a
> multitude of problems toward the end of the 17th century.
>
>
> p. 173
> "He saw nineteen-year-old Disa for the first time [...] at a masked ball"
>
> Romeo and Juliet.
>
>
> p. 173
> "She had come in male dress, as a Tirolese boy"
>
> Explaining why Charles was interested in the first place. The Zemblan
> gender swapping persists with "two guardsmen disguised as flowergirls" in
> the same paragraph.
>
> p. 173
> "fackeltanz"
>
> German: "torch dance"
>
> Note the proximity of "fireworks" and "pale upturned faces"
>
>
> p. 173-174
> "He procrastinated for almost two years but [...] finally gave in [to
> marriage]."
>
> I find it interesting that there is no mention of any courtship, much like
> in the biographies of kings where they are suddenly wed to some princess
of
> another nation. But see p. 174 where Kinbote refers to Shade's
> "embarrassing intimacies."
>
>
> p. 174
> "smug alderkings"
>
> Add *another* alder reference. In connection with the previous one, it
> seems the alderkings are Charles' buddies, with whom he "burns for boys"
> (perhaps the Zemblan equivalent of "chasing skirts"?).
>
>
> p. 174
> "I like my name: Shade, /Ombre/, almost "man" / In Spanish . . ."
>
> Another _Lolita_ reference: Ombre = HH. (I may have posted this before.)
> Shade in Latin is "umbra", close to "Humbert", as is "hombre", Spanish for
> man.
>
> "Ombre" is also a 17th century card game.
>
>
> Jasper Fidget
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: 14 Oct 2003 11:25:41 -0400
> From: Paul Mackin <paul.mackin@verizon.net>
> Subject: RE: NPPF: Notes Line 286
>
> On Tue, 2003-10-14 at 10:32, Scott Badger wrote:
> > Mary:
> > > Why does there never seem to be any doubt that the "ego" of the phrase
is
> > > Death? Even if there is no doubt that it was carved on a tombstone,
that
> > > seems to me to be no reason to conclude definitely that Death is
> > > the speaker.
> >
> > As I mentioned in the notes, there is an alternate version, erroneously
> > quoted in a _Pale Fire_ Cliff-like notes, attributed to Dementia
(chained to
> > her gray column), which is suggestive of both Kinbote and Jack Grey. I
also
> > found this same version at
> >
http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~laa16/prevexams/Makeup_Final_1997.htm .
> > Does anyone know the source?
>
>
> I meant to ask you about this earlier.
>
> Another mention of "Even in Arcadia am I" occurs in the commentary on
> Line 629. (this is the one quoted in the Harvard examination and I
> assume in the Cliff-like notes)
>
> Kinbote takes off not from the line itself but from a line K says Shade
> had written in but struck out namely "The madman's fate."
>
> I am still thinking about Mary's question.
>
> P.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 12:04:32 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <fakename@verizon.net>
> Subject: RE: NPPF: Summary Line 286
>
> > From: owner-pynchon-l@waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l@waste.org] On
> > Behalf Of Scott Badger
> >
>
> > >
> > > One more notable aspect of this commentary is Kinbote's tenderness for
> > > Bretwit - an unlikely attraction that parallels the relationship
> > > between Shade and Kinbote. He describes Bretwit as "sickly" and
> > > "featureless", a "pallid gland", and, intellectually, a dolt. But
> > > Kinbote then expresses a sense of profound connection between
> > > them, "a symbol of valor and self-abnegation", that veers towards
> > > some sexual attraction, "I could have spanked the dear man".
> > >
> > >
>
> Yes, it's interesting that Kinbote has this history of attraction for
> unattractive men who possess an inner beauty, much as K wants people to
see
> himself (or lacking beauty, at least heredity).
>
> "Oswin Bretwit" is another reference to Merry Old England and Bede's
> Ecclesiastical History:
>
> "Bretwalda" means Lord of all the Britains, sort of the king of all the
> kings of the Isle. The title was first assigned to Egbert in the
> Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as "the eighth king that was Bretwalda." Looking up
> the other seven in Bede, the seventh one is Oswy, who shared dominion of
the
> nation with another king... Oswin. Their kingdoms were divided by the
river
> Humber (yes), and Oswy, wanting all of the toys, assembled an army and
> eventually "foully slew" Oswin, becoming therefore Bretwalda.
>
> Oswin is described by Bede as "of a goodly countenance, and tall of
stature,
> pleasant in discourse, and courteous in behaviour; and bountiful to all,
> gentle and simple alike; so that he was beloved by all men for the royal
> dignity of his mind and appearance and actions, and men of the highest
rank
> came from almost all provinces to serve him."
>
> Compare to Kinbote's characterization of Bretwit as "courage [allied] with
> integrity, kindness, dignity, and what can be euphemistically called
> endearing naОvetИ" (p. 177).
>
> Bede tells the story of a beautiful horse Oswin had given a Bishop Aidan
"to
> use either in crossing rivers, or in performing a journey upon any urgent
> necessity," but the Bishop, who was used to walking, gave the horse to a
> beggar. "What did you mean, my lord Bishop" said Oswin later, "by giving
> the poor man that royal horse, which it was fitting that you should have
for
> your own use? Had not we many other horses of less value, or things of
> other sorts, which would have been good enough to give to the poor,
instead
> of giving that horse, which I had chosen and set apart for your own use?"
> To which the Bishop replied, "What do you say, O king? Is that son of a
mare
> more dear to you than that son of God?" The King thought about that for a
> while, then "ungirt his sword, and gave it to a servant, and hastened to
the
> Bishop and fell down at his feet, beseeching him to forgive him; 'For from
> this time forward,' said he, 'I will never speak any more of this, nor
will
> I judge of what or how much of our money you shall give to the sons of
> God.'" The Bishop comforted the King, but then grew sad, saying to one of
> his priests, "I know [...] that the king will not live long; for I never
> before saw a humble king; whence I perceive that he will soon be snatched
> out of this life, because this nation is not worthy of such a ruler." It
> was not long after that Oswy killed Oswin, and "the bishop▓s gloomy
> foreboding was fulfilled."
>
> http://28.1911encyclopedia.org/B/BR/BRETWALDA.htm
> http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bede/history.v.iii.xiv.html
>
> Jasper Fidget
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 12:15:59 -0400
> From: "Scott Badger" <lupine@ncia.net>
> Subject: RE: NPPF: Notes Line 286
>
> Paul:
> >Another mention of "Even in Arcadia am I" occurs in the commentary on
> >Line 629. (this is the one quoted in the Harvard examination and I
> >assume in the Cliff-like notes)
>
> (slap!!) Yes. Thanks. The Harvard exam quote is stripped of any specific
> references (Zembla, New Wye) so as not to make it too easy for the
> kiddies...
>
> Scott
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 13:09:53 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <fakename@verizon.net>
> Subject: RE: NPPF: Summary Line 347
>
> > From: owner-pynchon-l@waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l@waste.org] On
> > Behalf Of Scott Badger
>
> > Kinbote ends his account of Hetzner with a description of his favorite,
> > umm,
> > watering hole. "Here Papa pisses." remarks H's son. An act that carries
> > with
> > it the obvious territorial connotations, consistent with the several
> > canine
> > references in this passage, but also, I think, binds him to the
immediate
> > landscape as texture - a temporal and physical present repeatedly
renewed,
> > turned-over, and lacking the abstract text of historians, poets and
> > prophets. But in the end, the course of history washes Hetzner away;
>
>
> Also, "Here Papa pisses" is a reference to Browning's dramatic poem "Pippa
> Passes," (1843) which the poet conceived while walking through Dulwich
wood.
>
> http://www.sm.rim.or.jp/~osawa/AGG/poetry/pippa-passes.html
>
> William Sharp, in his _Life of Robert Browning_, writes, "In that same
wood
> beyond Dulwich to which allusion has already been made, the germinal
motive
> of 'Pippa Passes' flashed upon the poet. No wonder this resort was for
long
> one of his sacred places, and that he lamented its disappearance as
> fervently as Ruskin bewailed the encroachment of the ocean of bricks and
> mortar upon the wooded privacies of Denmark Hill."
>
>
http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/hst/biography/LifeofBrowning/ch
> ap5.html
>
> Boyd writes, "Just as obscure Pippa passes by characters whose lives she
> affects without her ever meaning to -- including a sculptor whose art she
> redirects -- so the outwardly unprepossessing Hentzner proves an
inspiration
> to John Shade when the self-important Kinbote, the incognito king, cannot
> stir his fancy" (_Magic of Artistic Discovery_, p. 88).
>
> Pippa Passes is also eponymous for a town in Kentucky, home of Alice Lloyd
> College, whose slogan is "Providing Leadership for Appalachia."
>
> http://www.alc.edu/
>
> Jasper Fidget
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 13:33:22 -0400
> From: "Scott Badger" <lupine@ncia.net>
> Subject: RE: NPPF: Summary Line 347
>
> Jasper:
> > Also, "Here Papa pisses" is a reference to Browning's dramatic poem
"Pippa
> > Passes," (1843) which the poet conceived while walking through
> > Dulwich wood.
>
> A marrowsky, of course...Thanks Jasper.
>
> Scott
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 10:35:55 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Dave Monroe <monrovius@yahoo.com>
> Subject: On Belief
>
> From Slavoj Zizek, On Belief (London and New York:
> Routledge, 2001),Ch. 1, 'Against the Digital Heresy,"
> pp. 6-55 ...
>
> "What about the magic moments when, all of a sudden,
> people are no longer afraid, when they become aware
> that, ultimately, to quote the well-known words, they
> have nothing to fear but the fear itself, that the
> hypnotizing authority of their masters is the
> 'reflexive determination' (Hegel) of their own
> submissive attitude towards them?
> "It was Pascal who pointed out that poeple do not
> treat a certain person as a king because he is a
> king--it is rtaher that this certian person appears as
> a king because people treat him as one.
> Psychoanalysis doesn't seem to allow for such magic
> ruptures which momentarily break the inexorable chain
> of tragic necessity: within its scope, every rebellion
> against authority is ultimately self-defeating; it
> ends up in the return of the repressed authority in
> the guise of guilt or self-destructive impulses. On
> the other hand, psychoanalysts rightly focus on the
> catastrophic consequences of the radical evolutionary
> endeavors: the overthrowing of the ancien regime
> brought about even harsher forms of totlitarian
> domination.... It's the old story of the
> revolutionary fools versus the conservative knaves.
> [ellipses in text]
> 'So where does all this leave us? ...." (pp. 16-7)
>
> "(3) Seminar XVII (1969-1970) on the four discourses
> is ALacan's response to the events of 1968 [...].
> Lacan's interest is focused on the passages from teh
> discourse of the Master to the discourse of University
> as the hegemonic discourse in contemporary society.
> No wonder that teh revolt was located in the
> universities: as such, it merely signalled the shift
> to the new forms of domination in which the scientific
> discourse serves to legitimize the relations of
> domination. Lacn's underlying premise is thus again
> skeptically conservative--Lacan's diagnosis is best
> captures by his famous retort to the student
> revolutionaries: 'As hysterics, you demand a new
> master. You will, get it!
>
> "(4) Finally, Seminar XX provides the libidinal
> economy of today's postmodern, post-revoluutionary,
> 'society of consumption' ..."
>
> [...]
>
> "the logic of this succession is thus clear enough: we
> start with the stable symbolic Order; we proceed to
> the heroic suicidal attempts to break out of it; when
> the Order itself seems threatened, we provide the
> matrix of permutations which accounts for how the
> revolt itself is just the operator of the passage from
> one to another form of the social link; finally, we
> confront the society in which the revolt itslef is
> rendered eaningless, since, in it, transgression
> itself is not only recuperated, but directly solicited
> by the sytem as the evry form of its reporoduction.
> To put it in hegel's terms, the 'truth' of the
> student's transgressive revolt against the
> Establishment is the emergence of a new establishment
> in which transgression is part of teh game, solicited
> by the gadgets which organize our life as the
> permanent dealing with excesses.
> "Is, then, Lacan's ultimate result a conservative
> resignation, a kind of cloure, or does this approach
> allow for a radical social change? The first thing to
> take note of is that the preceding paradigms do not
> simply disappear in those which follow--they persist,
> casting a shadow on them...." (pp. 30-1)
>
> "The media constantly bombards us with the need to
> abandon the 'old paradigms': if we are to survive, we
> have to change our most fundamental notions of what
> constitutes personal identity, society, environment,
> etc. New Age wisdom claims that we are entering a new
> 'post-human' era; postmodern political thought tells
> us that we are entering post-industrial societies
> [...]. The Third Way ideology and political practice
> is effectively THE model of this defeatof this
> inability to recognize how the New is here to enable
> the Old to survive. Against this temptaion, one
> should rather follow the unsurpassed model of Pascal
> and ask the difficult question: how are we to remain
> faithful to the Old in the new conditions? ONLY in
> this way can we generate something effectively
> new...." (pp. 32-3)
>
> Let me know ...
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
> http://shopping.yahoo.com
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: 14 Oct 2003 13:43:44 -0400
> From: Paul Mackin <paul.mackin@verizon.net>
> Subject: RE: NPPF: Notes Line 286
>
> > > Mary:
> > > > Why does there never seem to be any doubt that the "ego" of the
phrase is
> > > > Death? Even if there is no doubt that it was carved on a tombstone,
that
> > > > seems to me to be no reason to conclude definitely that Death is
> > > > the speaker.
>
>
>
>
> Terrance pointed out this paper concerned with death tropes and Randall
> Jarrell and which discusses Erwin Panofsky's ideas on the meaning of Et
> in Arcadia ego
>
> http://www.skidmore.edu/academics/english/bgoldens/RANDALL.htm
>
> Put very sketchily, Panofsky says the phrase does not come from
> antiquity but is supposed to have been suggested by Pope Clement IX (a
> poet himself) when he commissioned a painting by Guercino in which the
> words appear on a scroll issuing from a death's head on a tomb in
> Arcadia. According to Panofsky, correct Latin requires that ego be the
> subject of the sentence. Therefore Death is the speaker.
>
> The Guercino painting pre-dated that of Poussin.
>
> The essay gives a lot more of interest on this subject including
> Virgil's place in the story. Good reading.
>
>
>
> P.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 10:48:21 -0700
> From: "Keith McMullen" <keithsz@concentric.net>
> Subject: NPPF: Humming as You Pack
>
> Perhaps Sybil was humming Fred Ahlert's "Poor Little G String" as she
> packed. Or maybe "Life Is A Song."
>
> Album Title: Life Is A Song - The Songs of Fred Ahlert
> Lyrics by: Joe Young
> Music by: Fred Ahlert (1892-1953)
>
> Life is a song, let's sing it together.
> Let's take our hearts and dip them in rhyme,
> Let's learn the words, let's learn the music together,
> hoping the song lasts for a long, long time.
>
> Life is a song that goes on forever.
> Love's old refrain can never go wrong.
> Let's strike the note Mendelssohn wrote concerning spring weather,
> Let's sing together and make life a song.
>
> Don't be afraid of the future
> All of our plans will come through
> How can they fail with love on our side
> They'll never fail, we won't be denied
> All the world's a symphony, for you , for me.
>
> Life is a song, let's sing it together.
> Let's take our hearts and dip them in rhyme,
> Let's learn the words, let's learn the music together,
> hoping the song lasts for a long, long time.
>
> Life is a song that goes on forever.
> Love's old refrain can never go wrong.
> Let's strike the note Mendelssohn wrote concerning spring weather,
> Let's sing it together and make life a song.
>