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From: "pynchon-l-digest" <owner-pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
To: <pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2003 12:00 AM
Subject: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3465
>
> pynchon-l-digest Tuesday, August 5 2003 Volume 02 : Number
3465
>
>
>
> RE: NPPF: Canto Three: Chron & Analysis Pt 1 of 2
> NPPF: Canto Three: Poe's Pym
> NPPF: Canto Three: More Poe
> NPPF - The Big G
> New Edition of M&D
> NPPF: Canto Three: Some Notes (1)
> NPPF: Canto Three: Some Notes (2)
> Re: Canto Three: The French stuff.. and yew trees
> NPPF: Canto Three: more odds and ends
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2003 15:51:03 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <jasper@hatguild.org>
> Subject: RE: NPPF: Canto Three: Chron & Analysis Pt 1 of 2
>
> > Behalf Of David Morris
> >
> > --- "Vincent A. Maeder" <vmaeder@cyhc-law.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > His first engagement is with IPH at the behest of President McAber.
> >
> > Although I've used the term a number of times already describing the
poem,
> > I
> > hadn't noticed IPH's president's name until now.
> >
> > macabre.
> >
> > Main Entry: ma7ca7bre
> > Pronunciation: m&-'kdb; -'kd-br&, -b&r; -'kdbr&
> > Function: adjective
> > Etymology: French, from (danse) macabre dance of death, from Middle
French
> > (danse de) Macabri
> > Date: 1889
> > 1 : having death as a subject : comprising or including a personalized
> > representation of death
> > 2 : dwelling on the gruesome
> > 3 : tending to produce horror in a beholder
> > synonym see GHASTLY
>
> Also perhaps the character Wilkins Micawber from Dickens' _David
> Copperfield_, who is certain that "something will turn up" to save him
from
> his financial difficulties, and who flirts with suicide. Also the word
> "aber" in McAber is German for "but" (just saying is all).
>
> Jasper
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2003 16:25:05 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <jasper@hatguild.org>
> Subject: NPPF: Canto Three: Poe's Pym
>
> ln 707: "Against the dark, a tall white fountain played."
>
> Poe's _The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym_ (1837) is his only novel and,
> according to Borges, his greatest work. It concerns in part a voyage to
the
> South Pole, the discovery of a strange land where the rocks of a chasm are
> the shapes of words hinting at arcane mysteries (patterns of nature
leading
> to higher truths), and ending at another, solely white land where a giant
> white cataract falls from the sky and pours into a milky sea. This
fountain
> from the sky offers only a dead ending instead of the revelation and
> salvation hoped for by the crew: Pym's journal ends as the ship enters the
> cataract and they meet "a shrouded human figure, very far larger in its
> proportions than any dweller among men"; but also symbolizes creative
> imagination and the source of all art, especially the white paper of
> literary art.
>
> Pym's journal is followed by a "Note", which forms a brief commentary on
the
> text, and reveals the entire thing to be a hoax: according to the editor
of
> the "Note", the words engraved in the chasm of the strange land
"constitute
> an Ethiopian verbal root--the root ... 'To be shady'" (Poe, 244). Shady
> indeed, for as Daniel Wells comments, "when we assemble a map of the
entire
> chasm from Pym's own diagrams, the secret of [the island] reveals itself"
to
> be Poe's own name (in mirror form naturally). "This communication is
> between Poe and his special readership," writes Wells, "who must connect
the
> figures in written script before the meaning emerges. One must glimpse the
> total picture from a perspective outside and above the action, something
> which the characters within the Narrative and its 'Editor' fail to do.
When
> the connection is made, and it glares at us in its stark simplicity, the
> aesthetic distance between author and work disappears; Poe signs his name,
> as it were, to his island, and the fiction of the separate existences of
Pym
> and Peters (and the 'Editor') collapses like the landscape itself in the
> previous episode." (Wells, "Engraved Within the Hills", _Poe Studies_,
vol
> X, no. 1, 1977).
>
> http://bau2.uibk.ac.at/sg/poe/works/a_g_pym/toc.html
> http://www.eapoe.org/pstudies/ps1970/p1977102.htm
>
> Jasper
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2003 16:30:31 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <jasper@hatguild.org>
> Subject: NPPF: Canto Three: More Poe
>
> Poe's "Alone" (1830) has some similarities to Shade's poem, especially
> Cantos One and Three, and includes both a fountain and a mountain:
>
> From childhood's hour I have not been
> As others were; I have not seen
> As others saw; I could not bring
> My passions from a common spring.
> From the same source I have not taken
> My sorrow; I could not awaken
> My heart to joy at the same tone;
> And all I loved, I loved alone.
> Then-in my childhood, in the dawn
> Of a most stormy life-was drawn
> From every depth of good and ill
> The mystery which binds me still:
> From the torrent, or the fountain,
> From the red cliff of the mountain,
> From the sun that round me rolled
> In its autumn tint of gold,
> From the lightning in the sky
> As it passed me flying by,
> From the thunder and the storm,
> And the cloud that took the form
> (When the rest of Heaven was blue)
> Of a demon in my view.
>
> http://eserver.org/books/poe/alone.html
>
> ###
>
> Poe's "To One in Paradise" (1834) has a fountain and a Dim Gulf:
>
> Thou wast all that to me, love,
> For which my soul did pine-
> A green isle in the sea, love,
> A fountain and a shrine,
> All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
> And all the flowers were mine.
>
> Ah, dream too bright to last!
> Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
> But to be overcast!
> A voice from out the Future cries,
> "On! on!"-but o'er the Past
> (Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
> Mute, motionless, aghast!
>
> For, alas! alas! me
> The light of Life is o'er!
> "No more-no more-no more-"
> (Such language holds the solemn sea
> To the sands upon the shore)
> Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree
> Or the stricken eagle soar!
>
> And all my days are trances,
> And all my nightly dreams
> Are where thy grey eye glances,
> And where thy footstep gleams-
> In what ethereal dances,
> By what eternal streams.
>
> http://eserver.org/books/poe/to_one_in_paradise.html
>
> This poem is included in Poe's story "The Assignation" (1834), which
> concerns in part a drowned child with a beautiful mother:
>
> "A child, slipping from the arms of its own mother, had fallen from an
upper
> window of the lofty structure into the deep and dim canal. The quiet
waters
> had closed placidly over their victim; and, although my own gondola was
the
> only one in sight, many a stout swimmer, already in the stream, was
seeking
> in vain upon the surface, the treasure which was to be found, alas! only
> within the abyss. Upon the broad black marble flagstones at the entrance
of
> the palace, and a few steps above the water, stood a figure which none who
> then saw can have ever since forgotten. It was the Marchesa
Aphrodite --the
> adoration of all Venice --the gayest of the gay --the most lovely where
all
> were beautiful --but still the young wife of the old and intriguing
Mentoni,
> and the mother of that fair child, her first and only one, who now deep
> beneath the murky water, was thinking in bitterness of heart upon her
sweet
> caresses, and exhausting its little life in struggles to call upon her
> name."
>
> http://eserver.org/books/poe/assignation.html
>
> "'The Visionary' (Godey's Lady's Book, January 1834; revised as 'The
> Assignation,' Broadway Journal , 7 June 1845) was Poe's first story to
> appear in a national monthly with a wide circulation. As one of the Folio
> Club tales it had been assigned to 'Mr. Convolvulus Gondola, a young
> gentleman who had travelled a good deal.' Due, in part, to its inflated
> bathos, it has been regarded as a lampoon of Byronic passion or as a
parody
> of Thomas More. Neither of those views reckons with Poe's preference for
the
> visionary hero, the classical, Hellenic heroine, the conventional villain,
> the symbolic rescue, the arabesque apartment, the love poem written in
> London, the painting of the Marchesa Aphrodite, or the final suicide pact.
> W. H. Auden's comment on Poe's style as 'operatic' suggests that these
stock
> elements, coupled with the overwrought diction, may, within the narrator's
> maturing perception, comprise a psychodrama of the self's quest for
origins,
> for identity, and for unity. So considered, it has been read as a paradigm
> of Poe's own search for a lost unity of the primal self." (Carlson,
> _Dictionary of Literary Biography_ Volume 74, 1988)
>
> Jasper
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2003 13:56:49 -0700 (PDT)
> From: David Morris <fqmorris@yahoo.com>
> Subject: NPPF - The Big G
>
> 549: ⌠While snubbing gods including the big G,■
>
> Why would this be a logical starting point for exploration into the
> ⌠hereafter?■ If the intent was not to be partisan, that still wouldn▓t
rule
> out some ⌠G■ or another. Kinbote▓s comments on the subject and his
reported
> conversation with Shade on the subject show K at his most lucid and
insightful.
> IPH▓s offhand rejection of God ignores Aquinas, which is at the heart of
K▓s
> argument w/ Shade (although he attempts to quote Augustine). ((BTW, I▓m
just
> barely conversant with these guys)). It is very interesting that the
> possibilities IPH tries to prepare the newly minted ghost for do parallel
the
> kind of afterlife K reasons is likely if there were no God-the-Designer.
It is
> a torrent of currents and spiral eddies, a chaotic mix of ethereal forces
> without order.
>
> http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/a/aquinas.htm
> Thomas Aquinas:
> ⌠The greatest work of Thomas was the Summa and it is the fullest
presentation
> of his views. [┘]This follows from the fivefold proof for the existence of
God;
> namely, there must be a first mover, unmoved, a first cause in the chain
of
> causes, an absolutely necessary being, an absolutely perfect being, and a
> rational designer.■
>
> Augustine:
> ⌠In [Christian Doctrine] Augustine then states the essentials of Christian
> belief in God, with a most important preamble: God is ineffable, that is,
we
> can say nothing truly meaningful about one who transcends the categories
of
> human language.■
>
> I believe one of Aquinas▓ major points is that since God is unknowable by
human
> means, ⌠Revelation■ is absolutely required, which means GOD has to do the
> unveiling of himself, not the other way around.
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2003 17:43:03 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <jasper@hatguild.org>
> Subject: NPPF: Canto Three: Some Notes (1)
>
> ln 531-532: "the trail of silver slime / Snails leave or flagstones": a
> misprint? Is this different in other editions?
>
> ln 596: see 231 for K's variant including "Tanagra dusk"
>
> ln 601-: "We'll think of matters only known to us-" etc: has a resonance
of
> Marvell's "To his Coy Mistress". Marvell is mentioned on line 678.
>
> http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/marvell/coy.htm
>
> Maybe also Eliot's "A Game of Chess" from the Waste Land (see below):
"'What
> shall we ever do?'"
>
> ln 609-614: see 234 for K's variant
>
> ln 627-630: K chooses these lines in particular to be replaced by the
> Tanagra dusk variant (p. 231)
>
> ln 627: "Starover Blue": see ln 189: "College astronomer Starover Blue"
>
> ln 629: see 237 for variant
>
> ln 651: "In the dark garden by the shagbark tree." see ln 990
>
> ln 656-661: "I hate that wind! Let's play some chess.' 'All right.'" etc:
a
> parody of Eliot's "A Game of Chess", part II of "The Waste Land":
>
> "What is that noise?"
> The wind under the door.
> "What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?"
> Nothing again nothing.
> "Do
> "You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
> "Nothing?"
>
> I remember
> Those are pearls that were his eyes.
> "Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?"
> But
> O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag--
> It's so elegant
> So intelligent
> "What shall I do now? What shall I do?"
> I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
> "With my hair down, so. What shall we do to-morrow?
> "What shall we ever do?"
> The hot water at ten.
> And if it rains, a closed car at four.
> And we shall play a game of chess,
> Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.
>
> http://www.web-books.com/Classics/Poetry/Anthology/Eliot/Waste_2.htm
>
> The wind is howling while the characters talk -- mirror images and love
> eroded. These characters are NOT Shade and Sybil!
>
> ln 662-664: "Who rides so late in the night and the wind?" etc. "Pale
Fire"
> is interpolated here with Goethe's "Der ErlkЖnig" (1782). Especially
given
> the previous several verses, one is compelled to put quotes around the
> quoted lines and continue the Waste Land-ish conversation, or perhaps
start
> a new one between Shade and Goethe (or with Goethe's poem anyway):
>
> G: "Who rides so late in the night and the wind?" (ln 1)
> S: It is the writer's grief. It is the wild March wind.
> G: "It is the father with his child." (ln 2)
>
> The boy in Goethe's poem is transposed into a girl (Male->Lass in word
golf,
> as with K's gender switching in the Timon quote (pg 80) and elsewhere).
>
> That Goethe is quoted so earnestly while Eliot is parodied, I think says
> something about Shade's opinion about both of these authors.
>
> http://www.fln.vcu.edu/goethe/erl_dict.html (this is really cool btw:
> translations on the fly)
>
> ln 671-672: "_The Untamed Seahorse_": see Browning's "My Last Duchess":
> "Notice Neptune, though, / Taming a sea-horse"
>
> http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem288.html
>
> Jasper
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2003 17:44:28 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <jasper@hatguild.org>
> Subject: NPPF: Canto Three: Some Notes (2)
>
> ln 680: "Lolita swept from Florida to Maine": summer and autumn of 1958
when
> the bestseller lists included _Lolita_.
>
> ln 682: "Lang made your portrait. And one night I died": Boyd notes that
VN
> admired the "incomparably beautiful" drawings of butterflies by a person
> named Lang (_Speak Memory_, 122).
>
> ln 690: "Stood up and pointed with his pipe at me": as at VN's father in
> Germany, aiming for another. Shade's death parallels that of VN senior's.
> See also line 732-734.
>
> ln 691-693: "And then it happened -- the attack, the trance": compare to
> Shade's fits from ln 140
>
> ln 704-705: "A system of cells interlinked within / Cells interlinked
within
> cells interlinked": another spiral, here surrounding the fountain...
>
> ln 707: "Against the dark, a tall white fountain played.": See the note on
> Poe's Pym. See also line 758. In King Alfred's "Boethius", a fountain
> represents the promise of life.
>
> Oh! truly blessed a man would be
> Here in all things, had he the power to see
> The bright and spotless heavenly stream,
> That grand fountain of every good;
> And if from himself he might hurl away
> The swart mist, his spirit's darkness.
>
>
http://beowulf.engl.uky.edu/~kiernan/ENG720/SdgTrans/SedgefieldMetersTrans.h
> tm
>
> ln 739: "The quiddity": "The inherent nature or essence of a person or
> thing; that which constitutes a person or thing" (OED). Makes me think of
> Joyce of course.
>
> ln 767: "Jim Coates": Perhaps the father in the movie _Old Yeller_ (1957),
> who has the line, "Now and then, for no good reason, life will haul off
and
> knock a man flat."
>
> Probably not the intention, but this is another baseball player, debuted
in
> 1956 and played mainly for the Yankees.
>
> http://www.baseball-reference.com/c/coateji01.shtml
>
> ln 782-784: "Blue", "Mon Blon", "Matterhorn": all mountains, forecasting
ln
> 801: "_Mountain_, not _fountain_. The majestic touch"
>
> ln 806-815: "But all at once it dawned on me that _this_ / Was the real
> point, the contrapuntal theme:" etc.
>
> If one buys the Shadean theory, this verse may be the moment of Kinbote's
> creation, the "contrapuntal theme" indicating the Shade-Kinbote
> Poem-Commentary fugue. "Just this: not text but texture": the feel
instead
> of the fact, the way life feels, its palpable reality, and the patterns in
> it, the web of sense, plexed artistry. Shade creates the texture that
> allows him to gesture beyond life by creating a web with strands stuck
> partly to the poem and partly to the Commentary.
>
> "Playing a game of worlds, promoting pawns / To ivory unicorns and ebon
> fauns" (ln 819-820): From the chessboard universe to the fairy tale --
> multiple wor[l]ds -- an infinite progress of patterns pointing to
infinity:
> patterns in seasons (Shade dies in summer, poem begins in winter),
physical
> universes to atoms, patterns within patterns and so on, infinite varieties
> of life and art and nature, promise of continuation beyond death. The
book
> mimics these infinite patterns and attempts to show how they may be
> interpreted.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2003 23:52:17 +0100
> From: "James Kyllo" <jkyllo@clara.net>
> Subject: Re: Canto Three: The French stuff.. and yew trees
>
> Canto 3 starts with a couple of multilingual puns
>
> line 501
>
> L'if - The yew tree in French.
>
> "lifeless tree" Every part of the yew save The red aril surrounding the
> seed is poisonous. And yet, Europe's oldest tree is The Fortingall Yew
Tree
> in Glen Lyon, Perthshire, Scotland, estimated as being between 3,000 and
> 5,000 years old. Christian scholars have associated it with Christ as
'the
> tree of the cross' or with the theme of resurrection. However, the
evidence
> is now overwhelming that the Yew was the archetype of "The Tree of Life"
to
> people all over Europe eons before Christ was born. Before churches were
> built, the Yew itself was 'the Church', the sacred tree or grove, a
gateway
> to the Otherworld, where the Ancestors are. The idea of the Yew as a
gateway
> is reinforced by the fact that all older Yews form hollow trunks, which
can
> be seen as an entrance to the Otherworld. One of the many extra ordinary
> qualities of the Yew is its ability to rejuvenate itself and there are
many
> reports of old haggard and injured yews which decennia later suddenly
decide
> to resurrect themselves and begin sprouting again and put on new growth
>
>
> much of this edited from http://www.the-tree.org.uk/ more there
>
>
> line 502
>
> Last words attributed to Rabelais:
>
> "Je m'en vais chercher un grand peut-etre; tirez le rideau, la farce est
> jouee"
> I'm going looking for the great perhaps. Draw the curtain, the farce is
> over.
>
> line 618 - Le grand nИant (the big nothing)
>
> from Victor Hugo's "A celle qui est restИe en France "
>
> "Cherche au moins la poussiХre immense, si tu veux
> MЙler de la poussiХre Ю tes sombres cheveux,
> Et regarde, en dehors de ton propre martyre,
> Le grand nИant, si c'est le nИant qui t'attire!
> Sois tout Ю ces soleils oЫ tu remonteras!
> Laisse lЮ ton vil coin de terre. Tends les bras,
> O proscrit de l'azur, vers les astres patries!"
>
> or as Babelfish would have it:
>
> "Seek at least immense dust, if you want
> To mingle with dust with your dark hair,
> And looks at, apart from your own martyrdom,
> Great nothing, if it is nothing which attracts you!
> Would be all with these suns where you will go up!
> There leave your cheap ground corner. Tighten the arms,
> O proscribed of the azure, towards the stars fatherlands! "
>
> Azure! and further to that big nothing, another metaphysical poet, John
> Wilmot, Earl of Rochester wrote "Upon Nothing"
>
> the first lines of which are:
>
> "Nothing!, thou Elder Brother ev'n to Shade,
> Thou hadst a being ere the World was made, "
>
>
> best
>
> James
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2003 00:01:12 +0100
> From: "James Kyllo" <jkyllo@clara.net>
> Subject: NPPF: Canto Three: more odds and ends
>
> line 580 "impenetrable haze" a Lolita reference?
>
> line 616 "nebulae dilating" that'll be that "dilating star" back at line
> 432
>
> line 625 "Grabermann" Grab = grave in German
>
> line 642 "all is allowed" more comonly translated (in my experience)
> "everything is permitted"
>
> line 681 "shahs married" It's 1959. The Shah of Iran married Farah Diba
on
> 21st December. Don't know where he gets the plural from though
>
>
> best
>
> James
>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of pynchon-l-digest V2 #3465
From: "pynchon-l-digest" <owner-pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
To: <pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2003 12:00 AM
Subject: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3465
>
> pynchon-l-digest Tuesday, August 5 2003 Volume 02 : Number
3465
>
>
>
> RE: NPPF: Canto Three: Chron & Analysis Pt 1 of 2
> NPPF: Canto Three: Poe's Pym
> NPPF: Canto Three: More Poe
> NPPF - The Big G
> New Edition of M&D
> NPPF: Canto Three: Some Notes (1)
> NPPF: Canto Three: Some Notes (2)
> Re: Canto Three: The French stuff.. and yew trees
> NPPF: Canto Three: more odds and ends
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2003 15:51:03 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <jasper@hatguild.org>
> Subject: RE: NPPF: Canto Three: Chron & Analysis Pt 1 of 2
>
> > Behalf Of David Morris
> >
> > --- "Vincent A. Maeder" <vmaeder@cyhc-law.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > His first engagement is with IPH at the behest of President McAber.
> >
> > Although I've used the term a number of times already describing the
poem,
> > I
> > hadn't noticed IPH's president's name until now.
> >
> > macabre.
> >
> > Main Entry: ma7ca7bre
> > Pronunciation: m&-'kdb; -'kd-br&, -b&r; -'kdbr&
> > Function: adjective
> > Etymology: French, from (danse) macabre dance of death, from Middle
French
> > (danse de) Macabri
> > Date: 1889
> > 1 : having death as a subject : comprising or including a personalized
> > representation of death
> > 2 : dwelling on the gruesome
> > 3 : tending to produce horror in a beholder
> > synonym see GHASTLY
>
> Also perhaps the character Wilkins Micawber from Dickens' _David
> Copperfield_, who is certain that "something will turn up" to save him
from
> his financial difficulties, and who flirts with suicide. Also the word
> "aber" in McAber is German for "but" (just saying is all).
>
> Jasper
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2003 16:25:05 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <jasper@hatguild.org>
> Subject: NPPF: Canto Three: Poe's Pym
>
> ln 707: "Against the dark, a tall white fountain played."
>
> Poe's _The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym_ (1837) is his only novel and,
> according to Borges, his greatest work. It concerns in part a voyage to
the
> South Pole, the discovery of a strange land where the rocks of a chasm are
> the shapes of words hinting at arcane mysteries (patterns of nature
leading
> to higher truths), and ending at another, solely white land where a giant
> white cataract falls from the sky and pours into a milky sea. This
fountain
> from the sky offers only a dead ending instead of the revelation and
> salvation hoped for by the crew: Pym's journal ends as the ship enters the
> cataract and they meet "a shrouded human figure, very far larger in its
> proportions than any dweller among men"; but also symbolizes creative
> imagination and the source of all art, especially the white paper of
> literary art.
>
> Pym's journal is followed by a "Note", which forms a brief commentary on
the
> text, and reveals the entire thing to be a hoax: according to the editor
of
> the "Note", the words engraved in the chasm of the strange land
"constitute
> an Ethiopian verbal root--the root ... 'To be shady'" (Poe, 244). Shady
> indeed, for as Daniel Wells comments, "when we assemble a map of the
entire
> chasm from Pym's own diagrams, the secret of [the island] reveals itself"
to
> be Poe's own name (in mirror form naturally). "This communication is
> between Poe and his special readership," writes Wells, "who must connect
the
> figures in written script before the meaning emerges. One must glimpse the
> total picture from a perspective outside and above the action, something
> which the characters within the Narrative and its 'Editor' fail to do.
When
> the connection is made, and it glares at us in its stark simplicity, the
> aesthetic distance between author and work disappears; Poe signs his name,
> as it were, to his island, and the fiction of the separate existences of
Pym
> and Peters (and the 'Editor') collapses like the landscape itself in the
> previous episode." (Wells, "Engraved Within the Hills", _Poe Studies_,
vol
> X, no. 1, 1977).
>
> http://bau2.uibk.ac.at/sg/poe/works/a_g_pym/toc.html
> http://www.eapoe.org/pstudies/ps1970/p1977102.htm
>
> Jasper
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2003 16:30:31 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <jasper@hatguild.org>
> Subject: NPPF: Canto Three: More Poe
>
> Poe's "Alone" (1830) has some similarities to Shade's poem, especially
> Cantos One and Three, and includes both a fountain and a mountain:
>
> From childhood's hour I have not been
> As others were; I have not seen
> As others saw; I could not bring
> My passions from a common spring.
> From the same source I have not taken
> My sorrow; I could not awaken
> My heart to joy at the same tone;
> And all I loved, I loved alone.
> Then-in my childhood, in the dawn
> Of a most stormy life-was drawn
> From every depth of good and ill
> The mystery which binds me still:
> From the torrent, or the fountain,
> From the red cliff of the mountain,
> From the sun that round me rolled
> In its autumn tint of gold,
> From the lightning in the sky
> As it passed me flying by,
> From the thunder and the storm,
> And the cloud that took the form
> (When the rest of Heaven was blue)
> Of a demon in my view.
>
> http://eserver.org/books/poe/alone.html
>
> ###
>
> Poe's "To One in Paradise" (1834) has a fountain and a Dim Gulf:
>
> Thou wast all that to me, love,
> For which my soul did pine-
> A green isle in the sea, love,
> A fountain and a shrine,
> All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
> And all the flowers were mine.
>
> Ah, dream too bright to last!
> Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
> But to be overcast!
> A voice from out the Future cries,
> "On! on!"-but o'er the Past
> (Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
> Mute, motionless, aghast!
>
> For, alas! alas! me
> The light of Life is o'er!
> "No more-no more-no more-"
> (Such language holds the solemn sea
> To the sands upon the shore)
> Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree
> Or the stricken eagle soar!
>
> And all my days are trances,
> And all my nightly dreams
> Are where thy grey eye glances,
> And where thy footstep gleams-
> In what ethereal dances,
> By what eternal streams.
>
> http://eserver.org/books/poe/to_one_in_paradise.html
>
> This poem is included in Poe's story "The Assignation" (1834), which
> concerns in part a drowned child with a beautiful mother:
>
> "A child, slipping from the arms of its own mother, had fallen from an
upper
> window of the lofty structure into the deep and dim canal. The quiet
waters
> had closed placidly over their victim; and, although my own gondola was
the
> only one in sight, many a stout swimmer, already in the stream, was
seeking
> in vain upon the surface, the treasure which was to be found, alas! only
> within the abyss. Upon the broad black marble flagstones at the entrance
of
> the palace, and a few steps above the water, stood a figure which none who
> then saw can have ever since forgotten. It was the Marchesa
Aphrodite --the
> adoration of all Venice --the gayest of the gay --the most lovely where
all
> were beautiful --but still the young wife of the old and intriguing
Mentoni,
> and the mother of that fair child, her first and only one, who now deep
> beneath the murky water, was thinking in bitterness of heart upon her
sweet
> caresses, and exhausting its little life in struggles to call upon her
> name."
>
> http://eserver.org/books/poe/assignation.html
>
> "'The Visionary' (Godey's Lady's Book, January 1834; revised as 'The
> Assignation,' Broadway Journal , 7 June 1845) was Poe's first story to
> appear in a national monthly with a wide circulation. As one of the Folio
> Club tales it had been assigned to 'Mr. Convolvulus Gondola, a young
> gentleman who had travelled a good deal.' Due, in part, to its inflated
> bathos, it has been regarded as a lampoon of Byronic passion or as a
parody
> of Thomas More. Neither of those views reckons with Poe's preference for
the
> visionary hero, the classical, Hellenic heroine, the conventional villain,
> the symbolic rescue, the arabesque apartment, the love poem written in
> London, the painting of the Marchesa Aphrodite, or the final suicide pact.
> W. H. Auden's comment on Poe's style as 'operatic' suggests that these
stock
> elements, coupled with the overwrought diction, may, within the narrator's
> maturing perception, comprise a psychodrama of the self's quest for
origins,
> for identity, and for unity. So considered, it has been read as a paradigm
> of Poe's own search for a lost unity of the primal self." (Carlson,
> _Dictionary of Literary Biography_ Volume 74, 1988)
>
> Jasper
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2003 13:56:49 -0700 (PDT)
> From: David Morris <fqmorris@yahoo.com>
> Subject: NPPF - The Big G
>
> 549: ⌠While snubbing gods including the big G,■
>
> Why would this be a logical starting point for exploration into the
> ⌠hereafter?■ If the intent was not to be partisan, that still wouldn▓t
rule
> out some ⌠G■ or another. Kinbote▓s comments on the subject and his
reported
> conversation with Shade on the subject show K at his most lucid and
insightful.
> IPH▓s offhand rejection of God ignores Aquinas, which is at the heart of
K▓s
> argument w/ Shade (although he attempts to quote Augustine). ((BTW, I▓m
just
> barely conversant with these guys)). It is very interesting that the
> possibilities IPH tries to prepare the newly minted ghost for do parallel
the
> kind of afterlife K reasons is likely if there were no God-the-Designer.
It is
> a torrent of currents and spiral eddies, a chaotic mix of ethereal forces
> without order.
>
> http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/a/aquinas.htm
> Thomas Aquinas:
> ⌠The greatest work of Thomas was the Summa and it is the fullest
presentation
> of his views. [┘]This follows from the fivefold proof for the existence of
God;
> namely, there must be a first mover, unmoved, a first cause in the chain
of
> causes, an absolutely necessary being, an absolutely perfect being, and a
> rational designer.■
>
> Augustine:
> ⌠In [Christian Doctrine] Augustine then states the essentials of Christian
> belief in God, with a most important preamble: God is ineffable, that is,
we
> can say nothing truly meaningful about one who transcends the categories
of
> human language.■
>
> I believe one of Aquinas▓ major points is that since God is unknowable by
human
> means, ⌠Revelation■ is absolutely required, which means GOD has to do the
> unveiling of himself, not the other way around.
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2003 17:43:03 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <jasper@hatguild.org>
> Subject: NPPF: Canto Three: Some Notes (1)
>
> ln 531-532: "the trail of silver slime / Snails leave or flagstones": a
> misprint? Is this different in other editions?
>
> ln 596: see 231 for K's variant including "Tanagra dusk"
>
> ln 601-: "We'll think of matters only known to us-" etc: has a resonance
of
> Marvell's "To his Coy Mistress". Marvell is mentioned on line 678.
>
> http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/marvell/coy.htm
>
> Maybe also Eliot's "A Game of Chess" from the Waste Land (see below):
"'What
> shall we ever do?'"
>
> ln 609-614: see 234 for K's variant
>
> ln 627-630: K chooses these lines in particular to be replaced by the
> Tanagra dusk variant (p. 231)
>
> ln 627: "Starover Blue": see ln 189: "College astronomer Starover Blue"
>
> ln 629: see 237 for variant
>
> ln 651: "In the dark garden by the shagbark tree." see ln 990
>
> ln 656-661: "I hate that wind! Let's play some chess.' 'All right.'" etc:
a
> parody of Eliot's "A Game of Chess", part II of "The Waste Land":
>
> "What is that noise?"
> The wind under the door.
> "What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?"
> Nothing again nothing.
> "Do
> "You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
> "Nothing?"
>
> I remember
> Those are pearls that were his eyes.
> "Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?"
> But
> O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag--
> It's so elegant
> So intelligent
> "What shall I do now? What shall I do?"
> I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
> "With my hair down, so. What shall we do to-morrow?
> "What shall we ever do?"
> The hot water at ten.
> And if it rains, a closed car at four.
> And we shall play a game of chess,
> Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.
>
> http://www.web-books.com/Classics/Poetry/Anthology/Eliot/Waste_2.htm
>
> The wind is howling while the characters talk -- mirror images and love
> eroded. These characters are NOT Shade and Sybil!
>
> ln 662-664: "Who rides so late in the night and the wind?" etc. "Pale
Fire"
> is interpolated here with Goethe's "Der ErlkЖnig" (1782). Especially
given
> the previous several verses, one is compelled to put quotes around the
> quoted lines and continue the Waste Land-ish conversation, or perhaps
start
> a new one between Shade and Goethe (or with Goethe's poem anyway):
>
> G: "Who rides so late in the night and the wind?" (ln 1)
> S: It is the writer's grief. It is the wild March wind.
> G: "It is the father with his child." (ln 2)
>
> The boy in Goethe's poem is transposed into a girl (Male->Lass in word
golf,
> as with K's gender switching in the Timon quote (pg 80) and elsewhere).
>
> That Goethe is quoted so earnestly while Eliot is parodied, I think says
> something about Shade's opinion about both of these authors.
>
> http://www.fln.vcu.edu/goethe/erl_dict.html (this is really cool btw:
> translations on the fly)
>
> ln 671-672: "_The Untamed Seahorse_": see Browning's "My Last Duchess":
> "Notice Neptune, though, / Taming a sea-horse"
>
> http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem288.html
>
> Jasper
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2003 17:44:28 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <jasper@hatguild.org>
> Subject: NPPF: Canto Three: Some Notes (2)
>
> ln 680: "Lolita swept from Florida to Maine": summer and autumn of 1958
when
> the bestseller lists included _Lolita_.
>
> ln 682: "Lang made your portrait. And one night I died": Boyd notes that
VN
> admired the "incomparably beautiful" drawings of butterflies by a person
> named Lang (_Speak Memory_, 122).
>
> ln 690: "Stood up and pointed with his pipe at me": as at VN's father in
> Germany, aiming for another. Shade's death parallels that of VN senior's.
> See also line 732-734.
>
> ln 691-693: "And then it happened -- the attack, the trance": compare to
> Shade's fits from ln 140
>
> ln 704-705: "A system of cells interlinked within / Cells interlinked
within
> cells interlinked": another spiral, here surrounding the fountain...
>
> ln 707: "Against the dark, a tall white fountain played.": See the note on
> Poe's Pym. See also line 758. In King Alfred's "Boethius", a fountain
> represents the promise of life.
>
> Oh! truly blessed a man would be
> Here in all things, had he the power to see
> The bright and spotless heavenly stream,
> That grand fountain of every good;
> And if from himself he might hurl away
> The swart mist, his spirit's darkness.
>
>
http://beowulf.engl.uky.edu/~kiernan/ENG720/SdgTrans/SedgefieldMetersTrans.h
> tm
>
> ln 739: "The quiddity": "The inherent nature or essence of a person or
> thing; that which constitutes a person or thing" (OED). Makes me think of
> Joyce of course.
>
> ln 767: "Jim Coates": Perhaps the father in the movie _Old Yeller_ (1957),
> who has the line, "Now and then, for no good reason, life will haul off
and
> knock a man flat."
>
> Probably not the intention, but this is another baseball player, debuted
in
> 1956 and played mainly for the Yankees.
>
> http://www.baseball-reference.com/c/coateji01.shtml
>
> ln 782-784: "Blue", "Mon Blon", "Matterhorn": all mountains, forecasting
ln
> 801: "_Mountain_, not _fountain_. The majestic touch"
>
> ln 806-815: "But all at once it dawned on me that _this_ / Was the real
> point, the contrapuntal theme:" etc.
>
> If one buys the Shadean theory, this verse may be the moment of Kinbote's
> creation, the "contrapuntal theme" indicating the Shade-Kinbote
> Poem-Commentary fugue. "Just this: not text but texture": the feel
instead
> of the fact, the way life feels, its palpable reality, and the patterns in
> it, the web of sense, plexed artistry. Shade creates the texture that
> allows him to gesture beyond life by creating a web with strands stuck
> partly to the poem and partly to the Commentary.
>
> "Playing a game of worlds, promoting pawns / To ivory unicorns and ebon
> fauns" (ln 819-820): From the chessboard universe to the fairy tale --
> multiple wor[l]ds -- an infinite progress of patterns pointing to
infinity:
> patterns in seasons (Shade dies in summer, poem begins in winter),
physical
> universes to atoms, patterns within patterns and so on, infinite varieties
> of life and art and nature, promise of continuation beyond death. The
book
> mimics these infinite patterns and attempts to show how they may be
> interpreted.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2003 23:52:17 +0100
> From: "James Kyllo" <jkyllo@clara.net>
> Subject: Re: Canto Three: The French stuff.. and yew trees
>
> Canto 3 starts with a couple of multilingual puns
>
> line 501
>
> L'if - The yew tree in French.
>
> "lifeless tree" Every part of the yew save The red aril surrounding the
> seed is poisonous. And yet, Europe's oldest tree is The Fortingall Yew
Tree
> in Glen Lyon, Perthshire, Scotland, estimated as being between 3,000 and
> 5,000 years old. Christian scholars have associated it with Christ as
'the
> tree of the cross' or with the theme of resurrection. However, the
evidence
> is now overwhelming that the Yew was the archetype of "The Tree of Life"
to
> people all over Europe eons before Christ was born. Before churches were
> built, the Yew itself was 'the Church', the sacred tree or grove, a
gateway
> to the Otherworld, where the Ancestors are. The idea of the Yew as a
gateway
> is reinforced by the fact that all older Yews form hollow trunks, which
can
> be seen as an entrance to the Otherworld. One of the many extra ordinary
> qualities of the Yew is its ability to rejuvenate itself and there are
many
> reports of old haggard and injured yews which decennia later suddenly
decide
> to resurrect themselves and begin sprouting again and put on new growth
>
>
> much of this edited from http://www.the-tree.org.uk/ more there
>
>
> line 502
>
> Last words attributed to Rabelais:
>
> "Je m'en vais chercher un grand peut-etre; tirez le rideau, la farce est
> jouee"
> I'm going looking for the great perhaps. Draw the curtain, the farce is
> over.
>
> line 618 - Le grand nИant (the big nothing)
>
> from Victor Hugo's "A celle qui est restИe en France "
>
> "Cherche au moins la poussiХre immense, si tu veux
> MЙler de la poussiХre Ю tes sombres cheveux,
> Et regarde, en dehors de ton propre martyre,
> Le grand nИant, si c'est le nИant qui t'attire!
> Sois tout Ю ces soleils oЫ tu remonteras!
> Laisse lЮ ton vil coin de terre. Tends les bras,
> O proscrit de l'azur, vers les astres patries!"
>
> or as Babelfish would have it:
>
> "Seek at least immense dust, if you want
> To mingle with dust with your dark hair,
> And looks at, apart from your own martyrdom,
> Great nothing, if it is nothing which attracts you!
> Would be all with these suns where you will go up!
> There leave your cheap ground corner. Tighten the arms,
> O proscribed of the azure, towards the stars fatherlands! "
>
> Azure! and further to that big nothing, another metaphysical poet, John
> Wilmot, Earl of Rochester wrote "Upon Nothing"
>
> the first lines of which are:
>
> "Nothing!, thou Elder Brother ev'n to Shade,
> Thou hadst a being ere the World was made, "
>
>
> best
>
> James
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2003 00:01:12 +0100
> From: "James Kyllo" <jkyllo@clara.net>
> Subject: NPPF: Canto Three: more odds and ends
>
> line 580 "impenetrable haze" a Lolita reference?
>
> line 616 "nebulae dilating" that'll be that "dilating star" back at line
> 432
>
> line 625 "Grabermann" Grab = grave in German
>
> line 642 "all is allowed" more comonly translated (in my experience)
> "everything is permitted"
>
> line 681 "shahs married" It's 1959. The Shah of Iran married Farah Diba
on
> 21st December. Don't know where he gets the plural from though
>
>
> best
>
> James
>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of pynchon-l-digest V2 #3465