Pynchon, Thomas (b. 1937)

Mason & Dixon

New York

Henry Holt Company

1997

"She occupies now an entirely new angular relation to Mercy, to those refusals, among the Living, to act on behalf of Death or its ev'ryday Coercions,--Wages too low to live upon, Laws written by Owners, Infantry, Bailiffs, Prison, Death's thousand Metaphors in the World,--as if, the instant of her passing over having acted as a Lens, the rays of her Soul have undergone moral Refraction."

Country Wife open and fair, City Wife a Creature of Smoke, Soot, Intrigue, Purposes unutter'd...her plainly visible Phantom attends Mason as if her were a Commissioner of Unfinish'd Business, representing Rebekah at her most vital and belov'd. Is this, like the Bread and the Wine, a kindness of the Almighty, sparing him a sight he could not have abided? What might that be, too merciless to bear? At times he believes he has almost seen black Fumes welling from the Surface of her Apparition, heard her Voice thickening to the timbres of the Beasts...the serpents of Hell, real and swift, lying just the other side of her Shadow...the smell of them in their long, cold Waiting.... He gazes, at such moments, feeling pleasurably helpless. She occupies now an entirely new angular relation to Mercy, to those refusals, among the Living, to act on behalf of Death or its ev'ryday Coercions,--Wages too low to live upon, Laws written by Owners, Infantry, Bailiffs, Prison, Death's thousand Metaphors in the World,--as if, the instant of her passing over having acted as a Lens, the rays of her Soul have undergone moral Refraction.
(pp. 171-2)

Optics::Lens Optics::Refraction Light::Ray

Reading

Pynchon, Thomas. Mason & Dixon. New York: Henry Holt Company, 1997.

11/08/2010