Subject
Fw: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3495 Pale Fire Canto 4
From
Date
Body
----- Original Message -----
From: "pynchon-l-digest" <owner-pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
Sent: Monday, August 18, 2003 1:45 PM
Subject: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3495
>
> pynchon-l-digest Monday, August 18 2003 Volume 02 : Number
3495
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2003 16:46:17 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <jasper@hatguild.org>
> Subject: NPPF: C.17: aka Jack Degree
>
> "Jack Degree or Jacques de Grey": degree (Anglo Saxon "graПa"):
>
> Jack-in-the-Green: the Green Man, a woodland spirit often rendered in a
> frame of leaves who is ceremonially put to death during the Pagan Beltane
> festival (May 1) to celebrate the coming of Spring. His execution is said
> to release the spirit of summer. Now also: "A chimney sweep enclosed in a
> framework of boughs, carried in Mayday processions" (Webster's).
>
> http://website.lineone.net/~dominicow/green_man_folklore.htm
>
> An intersection between Pagan and Christian (a border zone, as with the
> color grey): of the Green Men decorating Gloucester Cathedral: "Perhaps he
> reminds us of our interconnectedness with nature and the greening power of
> trees and plants. [...] The Green Man probably arrived in the Christian
> Church as a part of a general sense of Spirit in Nature, an inheritance
from
> the Pagan past, an inheritance which was doubtless more subconscious than
> deliberate."
>
> http://www.gloucestercathedral.uk.com/2001/greenman.asp
>
> See also "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight":
> http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/c/cme/cme-idx?type=header&idno=Gawain (Middle
> English edited by J.R.R. Tolkein)
>
> http://alliteration.net/Pearl.htm (modern translation by Paul Deane)
>
> Implies the (abundant) Celtic and Anglo Jack legends and tales ("Jack the
> Giant Killer", "Jack and the Beanstalk"), concerned mainly with a
trickster
> protagonist who beats someone stronger through cunning (but who may not
> always live happily ever after). There's even one branch ("Jack and
Molly",
> _Jack Tales_) localized to Appalachia.
>
>
http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/youth/fantasy/TheBlueFairyBook/
> chap39.html
>
> http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0328jack.html
>
> http://www.mwg.org/production/websites/jacktales/who/
>
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0395669510/qid=1061236132
>
> Jack is also a name associated with various villains, including
> Jack-the-Lad, "the nickname of Jack Sheppard, an 18th-century thief [...]
> (a) a young troublemaker; (b) a working-class hero; (c) a wanted
criminal."
> (OED); and Jack-the-Ripper. Also a general villain of nature: Jack Frost.
> (We'll see Gradus assume the role of several historical and fictional
> villains before finally becoming Jack Grey.)
>
> Jack: "A thing which saves human labour; a device, a tool." (OED)
>
> Jack-of-the-Clock: A figure of a man which strikes the bell on the outside
> of a clock. (OED)
>
> Jack-at-a-pinch. (a) One called upon to take the place of another in an
> emergency. (b) An itinerant parson who conducts an occasional service for
a
> fee. (Webster's Revised)
>
> Everyman-Jack: colloq. each and every person. (OED)
>
> Jack-of-all-trades: one who can turn his hand to any kind of work.
> (Webster's Revised)
>
> Jack-in-a-box: A child's toy, consisting of a box, out of which, when the
> lid is raised, a figure springs. (Webster's)
>
> Jack-in-office: an insolent fellow in authority. --Wolcott. (Webster's)
>
> Jack-o'-Lantern comes from an old Irish legend about a man who won a pact
> with the devil which kept him from going to hell, but who was too wicked
to
> get into heaven, so was doomed to wander the marshes for eternity,
swinging
> a ghostly lantern.
>
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_o_lantern
>
>
> - -=Jasper Fidget=-
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2003 16:46:24 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <jasper@hatguild.org>
> Subject: NPPF: C.17: aka Ravus, Ravenstone, and d'Argus
>
> "Ravus": suggests Poe's "The Raven", which bird of ill-omen may be read as
a
> manifestation of the poet's madness generated by his despair over the loss
> of his lover. Gradus might be read as a manifestation of Botkin's madness
> generated by his despair over the loss of his homeland.
>
> Cheirogaleus ravus, a species of lemur: the "large iron-grey Dwarf Lemur."
> Does this link Gradus to Sybil in the form of a tree-dwelling prosimian
> primate? Yeah, I guess not.
>
> http://www.primate.wisc.edu/pin/factsheets/cheirogaleus_ravus.html
>
> http://www.pbs.org/edens/madagascar/creature2.htm
>
> Also Sistrurus ravus, a species of rattlesnake (the "pigmy" rattlesnake).
>
>
> "Ravenstone": A village in Buckinghamshire County, UK, a region that once
> formed a border area between the Anglo Saxon and Viking kingdoms (again,
the
> Vikings forming the geographical and historical glue for many of the
novel's
> references) and site of a castle built to fight off the invading Danes in
> the 10th century; birthplace of William Penn (who founded Pennsylvania,
> Philadelphia, and Bucks County PA) and G. K. Chesterton; also the location
> of "Milton's Cottage", where Milton composed _Paradise Lost_, and the
> village of Ivinghoe, from which Sir Walter Scott drew inspiration for his
> novel _Ivanhoe_.
>
> http://www.buckscc.gov.uk/about/history.htm
>
> "The name Ravenstone derives from the persons name of 'HrФfn' or 'Hrafn'
> (Old Scandinavian name or possibly Old English) + the old English 'tun',
and
> means 'HrФfn's, or Hrafn's, farm'.
>
> http://met.open.ac.uk/genuki/big/eng/BKM/Ravenstone/Index.html
>
>
> Suggests E.G. Ravenstein (1834-1913), an explorer, geographer, naturalist,
> and historian. Author of the _Laws of Migration_ (1885), which Laws
> include:
>
> Long distance migrations favor big cities [like Copenhagen, Geneva, Nice]
> Most migrants are adults 20-45 years [like Gradus, Kinbote]
> Most migration proceeds step-by-step [like Zembla -> Copenhagen -> Geneva]
> Each migration flow produces counterflow [...]
> Large towns grow more by migration [especially college towns?]
>
> http://www.bemidjistate.edu/geography/migration.htm
>
>
http://www.emory.edu/COLLEGE/ECON/faculty/curran/Adobe%20Files/Ravenstein188
> 9.pdf
>
>
> "d'Argus": suggests "the arc" as well as "dark", but also Argus was the
name
> of Odysseus' dog, the only one to recognize him on his return to Ithaca.
> Ithaca of course is the name of the town where Cornell University is
> located, and Gradus is the only one to explicitly recognize Kinbote's true
> identity there.
>
> Also the Argus Butterfly of the family Nymphalidae (in French the Papillon
> d'Argus?).
>
> Also there was apparently a camera called Argus Model D manufactured
> 1939-1940, which evolved into the Argus Model K. Probably grasping here,
> but an interesting coincidence anyway.
>
> http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/7008/argus_d/
>
>
> - -=Jasper Fidget=-
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2003 16:46:40 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <jasper@hatguild.org>
> Subject: NPPF: C.17: Gradus ad Parnassum
>
> _Gradus ad Parnassum_ (the first Gradus?), "A step to Parnassus; aid in
> writing Latin poetry; a work on Latin verse-making containing rules and
> examples."
>
> http://www.sacklunch.net/Latin/G/gradusadParnassum.html
>
> "Steps to Parnassus"; in Greek mythology Parnassus was the mountain
dwelling
> of the gods. A composer, having climbed Parnassus, would, according to the
> metaphor, have achieved a perfect compositional technique.
>
> http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~tas3/glossary.html
>
> From Webster's Revised:
>
> "\Gra"dus\, n. [From L. gradus ad Parnassum a step to Parnassus.] A
> dictionary of prosody, designed as an aid in writing Greek or Latin
poetry."
>
> http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=gradus
>
> From OED:
>
> "[Latin = step(s) in Gradus ad Parnassum 'Step(s) to Parnassus', the title
> of a manual of Latin prosody. Cf. VULGUS noun2.] Hist. A manual of
> classical prosody used in schools to help in writing Greek and Latin
verse."
>
>
> [Excuse me while I spiral out for a few minutes:]
> _Gradus ad Parnassum_ concerns advancement (in steps) to the Home of
Poetry
> (and gods), to a final arrival in art. Gradus acts out this movement
> between two fixed points (as with 181 and 1881, the bordered or book-ended
> lemniscate or fixed Cassinian oval), between origin and destination,
between
> waking and sleeping. The final long sentence to Note to Line 17 (p 78)
has
> Gradus as part of the poetic texture of daily life, "riding past in a
rhyme"
> and "moving up with his valise on the escalator of the pentameter" and so
> on, "falling asleep as the poet lays down his pen for the night." Gradus
is
> generated into life through the poem, lives in its lines, and must sleep
> when the act of the poem's creation pauses. Gradus only lives when John
> Shade writes; there is a parallelism to Gradus moving and the poem
expanding
> (for example on July 5, as Shade begins Canto 2, Gradus leaves Zembla for
> Western Europe), the time it takes Shade to fill the space of his index
> cards paralleled to the time Gradus consumes to travel geographically
(Time
> and Space paralleled), and on July 21, as the poem is finished, Gradus has
> no where left to travel -- and so has finally arrived.
>
> This business with sleeping and awaking might be worth pursuing. In
sleep,
> Shade's spirit is free of the inexorable approach of death (qua Gradus),
for
> time has stopped and spatial movement has paused. Line 101: "No free man
> needs a God; but was I free?" The numeral 101 is linked to being trapped
in
> time and the need for escape due to awareness of death in life.
Wakefulness
> / consciousness is a prison from which sleep grants a brief release, as
> described in the stanza at 873-886: Shade is divided into a waking half
and
> a sleeping half -- forming either a somnambulant whole or a split dream
> consciousness -- until the two halves recognize one another and the
complete
> original being is returned to wakefulness. The dream half of Shade is his
> "free" "spirit" (876), which moves around outside in the "reflected sky"
> zone of Shade's lawn (line 4 -- note that 4 is half of 8, half infinity, a
> decidedly angular numeral). Line 880-881 has: "And then I realized that
> *this* half too / Was fast asleep; both laughed and I awoke"; in
connection
> with the 8s, 0s, and 1s (of course!), the spirit-half within the infinity
of
> dreams has a realization (880: lemniscate activity of the spirit returning
> to consciousness, to the zero, unknown, death -- the realization), and
wakes
> up (881: crashing into the wall, barrier, window, posited end of life).
>
> "Mirages, miracles, midsummer morn" (886): if 8 is the lemniscate of
> infinity, then 6 is the arc that leads to it. Or the arc that leads to
> death? Or maybe I should have quit while I was ahead.
>
>
> - -=Jasper Fidget=-
>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of pynchon-l-digest V2 #3495
> ********************************
From: "pynchon-l-digest" <owner-pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
Sent: Monday, August 18, 2003 1:45 PM
Subject: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3495
>
> pynchon-l-digest Monday, August 18 2003 Volume 02 : Number
3495
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2003 16:46:17 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <jasper@hatguild.org>
> Subject: NPPF: C.17: aka Jack Degree
>
> "Jack Degree or Jacques de Grey": degree (Anglo Saxon "graПa"):
>
> Jack-in-the-Green: the Green Man, a woodland spirit often rendered in a
> frame of leaves who is ceremonially put to death during the Pagan Beltane
> festival (May 1) to celebrate the coming of Spring. His execution is said
> to release the spirit of summer. Now also: "A chimney sweep enclosed in a
> framework of boughs, carried in Mayday processions" (Webster's).
>
> http://website.lineone.net/~dominicow/green_man_folklore.htm
>
> An intersection between Pagan and Christian (a border zone, as with the
> color grey): of the Green Men decorating Gloucester Cathedral: "Perhaps he
> reminds us of our interconnectedness with nature and the greening power of
> trees and plants. [...] The Green Man probably arrived in the Christian
> Church as a part of a general sense of Spirit in Nature, an inheritance
from
> the Pagan past, an inheritance which was doubtless more subconscious than
> deliberate."
>
> http://www.gloucestercathedral.uk.com/2001/greenman.asp
>
> See also "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight":
> http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/c/cme/cme-idx?type=header&idno=Gawain (Middle
> English edited by J.R.R. Tolkein)
>
> http://alliteration.net/Pearl.htm (modern translation by Paul Deane)
>
> Implies the (abundant) Celtic and Anglo Jack legends and tales ("Jack the
> Giant Killer", "Jack and the Beanstalk"), concerned mainly with a
trickster
> protagonist who beats someone stronger through cunning (but who may not
> always live happily ever after). There's even one branch ("Jack and
Molly",
> _Jack Tales_) localized to Appalachia.
>
>
http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/youth/fantasy/TheBlueFairyBook/
> chap39.html
>
> http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0328jack.html
>
> http://www.mwg.org/production/websites/jacktales/who/
>
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0395669510/qid=1061236132
>
> Jack is also a name associated with various villains, including
> Jack-the-Lad, "the nickname of Jack Sheppard, an 18th-century thief [...]
> (a) a young troublemaker; (b) a working-class hero; (c) a wanted
criminal."
> (OED); and Jack-the-Ripper. Also a general villain of nature: Jack Frost.
> (We'll see Gradus assume the role of several historical and fictional
> villains before finally becoming Jack Grey.)
>
> Jack: "A thing which saves human labour; a device, a tool." (OED)
>
> Jack-of-the-Clock: A figure of a man which strikes the bell on the outside
> of a clock. (OED)
>
> Jack-at-a-pinch. (a) One called upon to take the place of another in an
> emergency. (b) An itinerant parson who conducts an occasional service for
a
> fee. (Webster's Revised)
>
> Everyman-Jack: colloq. each and every person. (OED)
>
> Jack-of-all-trades: one who can turn his hand to any kind of work.
> (Webster's Revised)
>
> Jack-in-a-box: A child's toy, consisting of a box, out of which, when the
> lid is raised, a figure springs. (Webster's)
>
> Jack-in-office: an insolent fellow in authority. --Wolcott. (Webster's)
>
> Jack-o'-Lantern comes from an old Irish legend about a man who won a pact
> with the devil which kept him from going to hell, but who was too wicked
to
> get into heaven, so was doomed to wander the marshes for eternity,
swinging
> a ghostly lantern.
>
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_o_lantern
>
>
> - -=Jasper Fidget=-
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2003 16:46:24 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <jasper@hatguild.org>
> Subject: NPPF: C.17: aka Ravus, Ravenstone, and d'Argus
>
> "Ravus": suggests Poe's "The Raven", which bird of ill-omen may be read as
a
> manifestation of the poet's madness generated by his despair over the loss
> of his lover. Gradus might be read as a manifestation of Botkin's madness
> generated by his despair over the loss of his homeland.
>
> Cheirogaleus ravus, a species of lemur: the "large iron-grey Dwarf Lemur."
> Does this link Gradus to Sybil in the form of a tree-dwelling prosimian
> primate? Yeah, I guess not.
>
> http://www.primate.wisc.edu/pin/factsheets/cheirogaleus_ravus.html
>
> http://www.pbs.org/edens/madagascar/creature2.htm
>
> Also Sistrurus ravus, a species of rattlesnake (the "pigmy" rattlesnake).
>
>
> "Ravenstone": A village in Buckinghamshire County, UK, a region that once
> formed a border area between the Anglo Saxon and Viking kingdoms (again,
the
> Vikings forming the geographical and historical glue for many of the
novel's
> references) and site of a castle built to fight off the invading Danes in
> the 10th century; birthplace of William Penn (who founded Pennsylvania,
> Philadelphia, and Bucks County PA) and G. K. Chesterton; also the location
> of "Milton's Cottage", where Milton composed _Paradise Lost_, and the
> village of Ivinghoe, from which Sir Walter Scott drew inspiration for his
> novel _Ivanhoe_.
>
> http://www.buckscc.gov.uk/about/history.htm
>
> "The name Ravenstone derives from the persons name of 'HrФfn' or 'Hrafn'
> (Old Scandinavian name or possibly Old English) + the old English 'tun',
and
> means 'HrФfn's, or Hrafn's, farm'.
>
> http://met.open.ac.uk/genuki/big/eng/BKM/Ravenstone/Index.html
>
>
> Suggests E.G. Ravenstein (1834-1913), an explorer, geographer, naturalist,
> and historian. Author of the _Laws of Migration_ (1885), which Laws
> include:
>
> Long distance migrations favor big cities [like Copenhagen, Geneva, Nice]
> Most migrants are adults 20-45 years [like Gradus, Kinbote]
> Most migration proceeds step-by-step [like Zembla -> Copenhagen -> Geneva]
> Each migration flow produces counterflow [...]
> Large towns grow more by migration [especially college towns?]
>
> http://www.bemidjistate.edu/geography/migration.htm
>
>
http://www.emory.edu/COLLEGE/ECON/faculty/curran/Adobe%20Files/Ravenstein188
> 9.pdf
>
>
> "d'Argus": suggests "the arc" as well as "dark", but also Argus was the
name
> of Odysseus' dog, the only one to recognize him on his return to Ithaca.
> Ithaca of course is the name of the town where Cornell University is
> located, and Gradus is the only one to explicitly recognize Kinbote's true
> identity there.
>
> Also the Argus Butterfly of the family Nymphalidae (in French the Papillon
> d'Argus?).
>
> Also there was apparently a camera called Argus Model D manufactured
> 1939-1940, which evolved into the Argus Model K. Probably grasping here,
> but an interesting coincidence anyway.
>
> http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/7008/argus_d/
>
>
> - -=Jasper Fidget=-
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2003 16:46:40 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <jasper@hatguild.org>
> Subject: NPPF: C.17: Gradus ad Parnassum
>
> _Gradus ad Parnassum_ (the first Gradus?), "A step to Parnassus; aid in
> writing Latin poetry; a work on Latin verse-making containing rules and
> examples."
>
> http://www.sacklunch.net/Latin/G/gradusadParnassum.html
>
> "Steps to Parnassus"; in Greek mythology Parnassus was the mountain
dwelling
> of the gods. A composer, having climbed Parnassus, would, according to the
> metaphor, have achieved a perfect compositional technique.
>
> http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~tas3/glossary.html
>
> From Webster's Revised:
>
> "\Gra"dus\, n. [From L. gradus ad Parnassum a step to Parnassus.] A
> dictionary of prosody, designed as an aid in writing Greek or Latin
poetry."
>
> http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=gradus
>
> From OED:
>
> "[Latin = step(s) in Gradus ad Parnassum 'Step(s) to Parnassus', the title
> of a manual of Latin prosody. Cf. VULGUS noun2.] Hist. A manual of
> classical prosody used in schools to help in writing Greek and Latin
verse."
>
>
> [Excuse me while I spiral out for a few minutes:]
> _Gradus ad Parnassum_ concerns advancement (in steps) to the Home of
Poetry
> (and gods), to a final arrival in art. Gradus acts out this movement
> between two fixed points (as with 181 and 1881, the bordered or book-ended
> lemniscate or fixed Cassinian oval), between origin and destination,
between
> waking and sleeping. The final long sentence to Note to Line 17 (p 78)
has
> Gradus as part of the poetic texture of daily life, "riding past in a
rhyme"
> and "moving up with his valise on the escalator of the pentameter" and so
> on, "falling asleep as the poet lays down his pen for the night." Gradus
is
> generated into life through the poem, lives in its lines, and must sleep
> when the act of the poem's creation pauses. Gradus only lives when John
> Shade writes; there is a parallelism to Gradus moving and the poem
expanding
> (for example on July 5, as Shade begins Canto 2, Gradus leaves Zembla for
> Western Europe), the time it takes Shade to fill the space of his index
> cards paralleled to the time Gradus consumes to travel geographically
(Time
> and Space paralleled), and on July 21, as the poem is finished, Gradus has
> no where left to travel -- and so has finally arrived.
>
> This business with sleeping and awaking might be worth pursuing. In
sleep,
> Shade's spirit is free of the inexorable approach of death (qua Gradus),
for
> time has stopped and spatial movement has paused. Line 101: "No free man
> needs a God; but was I free?" The numeral 101 is linked to being trapped
in
> time and the need for escape due to awareness of death in life.
Wakefulness
> / consciousness is a prison from which sleep grants a brief release, as
> described in the stanza at 873-886: Shade is divided into a waking half
and
> a sleeping half -- forming either a somnambulant whole or a split dream
> consciousness -- until the two halves recognize one another and the
complete
> original being is returned to wakefulness. The dream half of Shade is his
> "free" "spirit" (876), which moves around outside in the "reflected sky"
> zone of Shade's lawn (line 4 -- note that 4 is half of 8, half infinity, a
> decidedly angular numeral). Line 880-881 has: "And then I realized that
> *this* half too / Was fast asleep; both laughed and I awoke"; in
connection
> with the 8s, 0s, and 1s (of course!), the spirit-half within the infinity
of
> dreams has a realization (880: lemniscate activity of the spirit returning
> to consciousness, to the zero, unknown, death -- the realization), and
wakes
> up (881: crashing into the wall, barrier, window, posited end of life).
>
> "Mirages, miracles, midsummer morn" (886): if 8 is the lemniscate of
> infinity, then 6 is the arc that leads to it. Or the arc that leads to
> death? Or maybe I should have quit while I was ahead.
>
>
> - -=Jasper Fidget=-
>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of pynchon-l-digest V2 #3495
> ********************************