Subject
Fwdthe mulberry bush,
and perhaps the walrus (Lucette & posthumous frenzy?)
and perhaps the walrus (Lucette & posthumous frenzy?)
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----- Forwarded message from naiman@socrates.berkeley.edu -----
Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2005 17:19:54 -0800
From: Eric Naiman <naiman@socrates.berkeley.edu>
From Eric Naiman:
In light of the earlier discussion of the mulberry soap, it is worth
noticing its last usage in the novel:
A boxwood-lined path, presided over by a nostalgic-looking sempervirent
sequoia (which American visitors mistook for a "Lebanese cedar"-if they
remarked it at all) took them to the absurdly misnamed rue du Mûrier, where
a princely paulownia ("mulberry tree!" snorted Ada), standing in state on
its incongruous terrace above a public W.C., was shedding generously its
heart-shaped dark green leaves, but retained enough foliage to cast
arabesques of shadow onto the south side of its trunk.
We should definitely read this passage in keeping with Brian Boyd's reading
of III.8 -- to note the presence of Lucette that seems to be ignored by the
adulterous lovers. He points to the grebes with crests seen a few pages
later as evidence of Lucette's continued existence in the text. This
passage, with its reference to the mulberry and the W.C. seems to refer to
that earlier bathing passage, and we should note the generous leaf-dropping
that Boyd sees as a Lucette marker elsewhere in the book. Note, too, that
Lucette -- or Van? -- gives this passage a shimmer of indecency evident
once we see the reference to the earlier passage. (boxwood-lined path,
l-eban-ese cedar, the mulberry "standing in state" (as was the soap -- see
also the bawdy Malrow passage on 377 where Van is cursing "the condition
in which the image of the four embers of a vixen's cross had not solidly
put him": "One of the synonyms of "condition" is "state," and the
adjective "human" may be construed as "manly" etc.
I wonder about passages like this whether they might not show that Lucette
has been unable to overcome her Ophelian frenzy in death. If she is
responsible for that phallic walrus -- as Boyd suggested in his recent post
-- and she is still obsessed with mulberries standing in state, is her
generous "blessing" of Van and Ada's reunin at Mon Trou as comforting an
ending as it might once have seemed. Or might her "blessing" of Van and
Ada's reunion be even more disturbing -- is she not ever-present, a kind of
necessary third, observing the lovers just as she did earlier as a child.
If we accept the notion that Lucette's ghost -- or else -- going back to
what Van tells the dying Phillip -- pieces of Lucette -- bless or haunt the
period after her death (including the writing of the entire manuscript)
don't we have to see the novel as stating emphatically that yes, there is
lust after death, a kind of disembodied existence where we will only have
words to play with and will suffer the hell(?) of being continually aroused?
----- End forwarded message -----
EDNOTE: From the ever fertile mind of Eric Naiman. Malrow (Malraux) indeed! The
mulberry tie-in is intriguing and merits investigation. Cf. those ginko leaves.