| Forum Home | Forum Topics |

Topic: McCarthy's Western Novels
Thread: Young Blasarius yonder?

Total messages for all days: 10

Young Blasarius yonder?	russell	2/4/1999
In the scene where the fortune tellers are handing out cards around the campfire, the judge is asked who gets the next card. he replies, pointing his finger (p.94 in vintage paperback edition, 3/4 through chapter 7) Young Blasarius yonder, he said. Como? El joven. El joven, whispered the juggler. I just caught this the last time i read the book. Is this the only reference to the kid's name? I can't see it as anything else, unless it's some spanish slang I've never heard. It makes sense that the judge knows his name, because he knows everyone's name. He refers to Toadvine as "Louis" before he buys Toadvine's hat from him. Louis, he said. How much will you take for that hat.

Young Blasarius yonder?	John V	2/4/1999
I think Sepich talks about it in his book (Notes on Blood Meridian) as well. According to Sepich, the blaze in Blasarius or some latin root thing in the name means incendiary. Calling the kid an incendiary, the judge was literally refering to the kid's participation in burning down the hotel in Nacogdoches, as well as perhaps foreshadowing his later accusations against the kid that he "broke with the body of which [he] was pledged a part and poisoned it in all its enterprise", i.e., that he was a treacherous incendiary who "shaped events along such a calamitous course" as resulted in the massacre at the river-crossing.

Young Blasarius yonder?	John W.	2/8/1999
Blasarius, according to Henry Campbell Black's Black's Law Dictionary, is an archaic word for incendiary (page 216 in the revised 4th edition). Incendiary (page 903 same edition) is a person guilty of arson. Black's dictionary was one of the few I could find blasarius listed in. Sepich's argument seems based on these two definitions. If I am not mistaken (it has been a while since I looked up the word) blasarius was an actual term used by the court in cases of arson. I've always read this as the judge's wit. However, it is interesting to me that the judge knows everyone's name and catalogues all he can in his notebook, but the kid's name eludes him, forcing him to "name him" based on an earlier action. It may even have been this action that convinced the judge that the kid could become a member of the community of scalpers.

Young Blasarius yonder?	Ken	2/26/2003
...And "Blasarius" stayed out with the seventh edition of Black's: this procrastinator finally got around to looking it up! Did Sepich write a more complete etymology of the word, discuss the word further, offer an explanation why the Judge chooses to use this particular archaic term? Since I do not have the book, perhaps someone could look it up and post it. But I have my hunches (Surprise!): Let's assume "Blasarius" is derived from "blaze", a reasonable assumption, but I would like to know Sepich's argument or evidence. Etymologically, "blaze" is akin to "bald", which evokes Holden, and the link is more transparent when considering that "bald" has the archaic meaning of "shining" and the contemporary meaning of "hairless", while complementarily "blaze" denotes "fire" as well as "white spot on forehead". Both "blaze" and "bald" are derived from the Old English "bael", meaning "fire" (the operative element in BM, of course). Thus, those looking for the stem in Italic (Latin) instead of Germanic or Celtic would be looking in the right tree but the wrong branch. The Indo-European root word is "bhel-", which has a multitude of meanings, including "shine". Furthermore, though I have not found a source to confirm this claim (in other words, I am lazy, I may be wrong, but I am imaginative), it is possible that "bhel-" is akin to "Belenus", the Celtic god whose name means "shining", and who is equated with Apollo, the Greek god of light, the sun, etc. (If this is the case, then for me it would resonate with my posts about Apollo and the sun and McCarthy's novels.) Also, "Beli Mawr" is the Welsh equivalent who the Welsh believe was the progenitor of early British royalty; "Beltaine" is the fire festival on or around May Day named in honor of Belenus observed by the Druids. ("Baal" is the Phoenician sun god, but its relation to Belenus is believed to be coincidental etymologically, and connected only poetically. The Punic "Baal" is possibly akin to the Hebrew "Ba'al", meaning "master", as in "Baal-zebub" or "Beelzebub", literally "lord of the flies".) Heathen fire festivals such as Beltaine evoke the Epilogue of BM. Here is a description of a Welsh Beltaine ritual: “The fire was done in this way. Nine men would turn their pockets inside out, and see that every piece of money and all metals were off their persons. Then the men went into the nearest woods, and collected sticks of nine different kinds of trees. These were carried to the spot where the fire had to be built. There a circle was cut in the sod, and the sticks were set crosswise. All around the circle the people stood and watched the proceedings. One of the men would then take two bits of oak, and rub them together until a flame was kindled. This was applied to the sticks, and soon a large fire was made." (The Golden Bough by Sir James George Frazer, 1922, Chapter 62.4 - "The Beltane Fires") Back to "bhel-": The root word is the source to quite a few words significant to BM and McCarthy, so perhaps many of the associations are simply due to statistical abundance. I pick three here: "blood", for obvious reasons, no explanation necessary; "baleine", meaning "whale", for Moby-Dick-BM conspiracy theorists; and "bleach" and related words for "white", for Gravity's Rainbow-BM conspiracy theorists. By Blazes Boylan, there you have it, folks, a "bhel-" family portrait: Belenus, Beltaine, Beli, bael, bald, blaze, Blasarius, blood! The world grows hot, the heathen rage. Hell's bhels, indeed. -Ken, intuitive etymologist

Young Blasarius yonder?	Ken	4/23/2003
I came across in a big dictionary (something like "Webster's International ...") the word "blas" (yet another word derived from "bhel-") which means "a supposed emanation from stars", which would resonate with the appellation "Blasarius", with the opening of BM, and with a "Gnostic" reading of BM.

Young Blasarius yonder?	Richard L.	4/23/2003
Either way, if one takes the Black's Law definition of Blasarius upthread or the "bhel," it still fits with the many other gnostic references in Blood Meridian. There are a number of references peppered thoughout the book of the exile, including on page 244: The men's eyes glowing red as coals when they turned, as "the flames sawed in the wind and the embers paled and deepened and paled and deepened like the bloodbeat of some living thing..." And the fire contains "something of the men themselves inasmuch as they are less without it and divided from their origins and are exiles. For each fire is all fires." The exile fire fallen from God.

Young Blasarius yonder?	JVH	4/23/2003
I think the "Gnostic" interpretation, at least in the impoverishing Doughterian form in which it is currently being promulgated, can only do injustice to the complexity of thought that gave birth to the novel. I mean think about it--are we really supposed to buy that the ultimate lesson or meaning of Blood Meridian is that we are all just "bits of holy fire fallen from God?" It seems to me that recourse to such a lacklustre interpretive strategy accomplishes nothing other than mistaking a radar tracking station for an old Spanish mission. In other words, ahem, it seems to force the proletarian energy of McCarthy's thought into the service of what must ultimately be understood as a conservative, capitalist ideology! The "gnostic" notion of exile (promulgated here) tends asymptotically towards an absolute break between man qua man and (irrevocably fallen, material) nature. Emanation is absolute deterioration: its arrow moves in one direction only (tragically away from the pleroma). This vegetable world in which man is exiled is a mistake, and materiality (i.e., everything that positively is) becomes a cause for infinite disdain. Such an imaginary relationship to the real conditions of existence produces the legitimation of infinite exploitation of natural "resources" on the one hand and the slavish acceptance of such a state of affairs on the other. "Well," the resigned gnostic says, "even though things suck here on this killing planet, there's another world coming that'll make up for all the bullshit. All I have to do is wait things out." Death means the return home of the exile: and thus an immense death drive, an immense will to nothingness is unleashed by the gnostic's delusory sense of alienation (a drive and a will that the overweening gnostic mouse that is our capitalist culture now seems past the point of return of being able to reign back in). Given the way McCarthy lets "Nature" absorb his human characters, such that kinships can be established between not only men and fire but also men and rocks, it therefore seems to me that the orthodox concept of exile (at least in its more esoteric senses) provides a better launching point into his thinking than the Doughterian "gnostic" concept. A certain Judaic conception of exile (and the fall and original sin) is expressed in the notion of the "isolation of the Shekinah," in which a part of the totality of the Sephiroth is separated and taken for the whole. This is a figure rich with signifying potentialities which space disallows me to get into, but for one thing it certainly can be made to go a long way in describing the ways our spectacular society "gnostically" functions in endlessly separating and differentiating not only between humanity and nature, but also between one subject (be it collective like a nation or individual like a consumer) and another. Suffice it to say what the orthodox concept of exile allows is for a return here and now. The cut branch can be immediately restored to the tree. The kinship between a man and a rock can be reestablished. And death is not the agency that makes such restitutions happen, but rather the agency that makes their happening impossible. But even the orthodox concept of exile seems ultimately insufficient, unless placed in a larger theoretical context. For neither the gnostic nor the orthodox approach can grasp McCarthy's notion of exile (or a given being's division from its origins) in anything but negative terms. But there is a positive, emancipatory sense to the notion as well. Why else would the judge refuse to be divided back into his origins? What emerges from the sum of original parts is a whole wholly different from them. Some people have mentioned the applicability of complexity theory to McCarthy's work. Well, emergence theory is a branch of that larger body that seems especially fit for application here. With such matters must the coming criticism concern itself, lest it consign itself in advance to irrelevance. So let's take our Hummers and plow over the bones of the dead!

Young Blasarius yonder?	Ken	5/6/2003
Add "Ballard" to the "bhel-" family, as "Ballard" and "bald" share the same meaning and etymology. Related: Blood, Blasarius, Bald (Holden), Blevins [possibly], Ballard.

Young Blasarius yonder?	Glass	3/27/2010
"The tomb which addresses him who reads the verses." (Michelangelo explaining a 'Speaking Tomb') Been studying the Death in Arcady theme and will speculate that joven/Blasarius (BM 94) might be derived from the prophecy in Virgil's Eclogues IV: Assume thy greatness, for the time draws nigh, Dear child of gods, great progeny of Jove! There are some distinct parallels between the Fourth "Messianic" Eclogue and Blood Meridian, beginning with McCarthy's "See the child" opening sentence and many of the words, phrases and imagery that follow on the novel's first page (dark turned fields/earth untilled; darker woods beyond that harbor/Yet shall their lurk, and so on and so forth). Harold Mattingly wrote some interesting comments on the Fourth Eclogue that perhaps inform some of the themes in BM: "The Fourth Eclogue is based on a Sibylline oracle, perhaps an official one. A child is to be born, and, with him, a New Age of Gold. With the growth of the "nascens puer" the New Age itself will rise to its maturity. That the child is, in some sense, at least, imaginary and ideal can hardly be denied. Eduard Norden has demonstrated this side of the case in a book of extraordinary interest and rich suggestion. From this point of view the question of the identity has no meaning at all or, at most, no great importance. Norden himself thinks of the child of the Sun-God (cf. Pl. 9a) or of Eternity." Perhaps this ties neatly into what other critics have noted with the suggestion that Blasarius is linked to fire, most notably John Sepich. McCarthy's kid is indeed born as fire falls from the heavens and he's also shown stoking the fire in the family cabin. Virgil's child in the Fourth Ecologue is sent down from heaven (some translations of it include a reference to fire, I believe). Mattingly notes that a new dawn of hope was promised "for the night had been dark and now at length some light seemed to appear." Another critic wrote that the Fourth Eclogue "reaches out to imagine a golden age ushered in by the birth of a boy heralded as the 'great increase of Jove'." Now the last age by Cumae's Sibyl sung Has come and gone, and the majestic roll Of circling centuries begins anew: Justice returns, returns old Saturn's reign, With a new breed of men sent down from heaven. Only do thou, at the boy's birth in whom The iron shall cease, the golden race arise, (Virgil) In the Fifth Eclogue, the Tomb in Arcadia makes its first appearance in literature, according to Erwin Panofsky in his classic 1936 essay, Poussin and the Elegaic Tradition. Resonating with Uncle Ather's pit in The Orchard Keeper, Virgil wrote: 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.'" We know Daphnis is entombed here. In later versions of the Arcadian Tomb theme, namely in Poussin's two paintings, we are unsure of its pastoral occupant(s) as Arcadian shepherds and shepherdesses ponder the thing inside, elliptically parallel to the men standing outside the jakes in Fort Griffin (and many readers of BM). Enter Judge Holden's shotgun (and Guercino and Poussin) with its inscription Et in Arcadia Ego and Tobin's highly allusive comment that while he'd never heard of someone referencing the classics to name their weapon, he did know of a gun named Hark From The Tombs. While the Tomb in Arcadia was born in literature and the genius of Virgil, the inscription on Holden's gun originated in a painting. "Guercino produced the first pictoral rendering of the Death in Arcady theme -- and it is in this picture that we first encounter the phrase Et in Arcadia Ego...which is not classical and does not seem to appear in literature before it made its appearance in Guercino's picture." (Panofsky) Et in Arcadia Ego by Guercino. I'll add a few additional notes that I hope will tie more of this together, and also elaborate a bit more on connections between the judge's gun and the ending of The Road. Peter

Young Blasarius yonder?	Glass	3/28/2010
Thanks, Aden. .............................. Goats and buggery: Charges and countercharges in Virgil's Third Eclogue and McCarthy's Blood Meridian. "Not three weeks before this he was run out of Fort Smith Arkansas for having congress with a goat." (BM 7) There is the hint of a Virgilian subtext in the judge's accusation against the Reverend Green. From the Third Eclogue: (Verg.3.8 novimus et qui te transversa tuentibus hircis [we know who did what to you when even the goats looked on in disgust] In Pipes of Pan, Thomas K. Hubbard comments on this implication of sexual deviance by Menalcas, who is accused of impropriety in the sacred precinct by the older Damoetas. "Menalcas' youth makes him still a pederastic minion in Damoetas' eyes, passive, effeminate, and excessive in his sexual urges," Hubbard writes, adding that "Menalcas was a passive love object of older men." (70) Menalcas countercharges Damoetas with theft. The Rev. Green calls Holden the Devil. The two shepherds bicker back and forth for awhile before deciding to participate in a singing contest. An intriguing discussion ensues about the stakes that should be wagered -- the two men, we learn, each are in possession of two splendid beechwood cups that have been inscribed with astronomy references by Alcimedon, the most accomplished craftsman of the day and also referred to in literature as a sailor who wanted to carry off the infant Dionysus, but was turned into a dolphin instead. The carved, embellished wood goblets within the pastoral setting anticipate the carvings and Arcadia inscription on Judge Holden's shotgun, and perhaps also the carved handle of the axe that would kill Glanton. The references to astronomy on the shepherds' cups offer some allusiveness to the many celestial descriptors in BM. More interesting, perhaps, these four cups might also anticipate the "four of cups" leitmotif in Blood Meridian. Damoetas' two cups are seamlessly joined at the handles with twining acanthus, perhaps anticipating Judge Holden's panama hat "that had been spliced together from two such lesser hats by such painstaking work that the joinery did scarcely show at all." (169) Back in the pasture the wager of the cups is discarded in favor of playing -- singing -- for a heifer. Virgil's two shepherds are joined in the idyll by a judge -- the sea deity Palaemon who will decide which man is the best singer, sort of an American Idol in Arcadia situation. The young Menalcas is more than game for the contest, which he refers to as no "trifling matter." And he's not afraid -- "I'll not shrink from any judge," he says. Yeah, he aint nothin. The contest ends in a tie, the judge being unable to pick a winner. Some critics contend that this lack of a resolution means that the dissonance and animosities revealed in Arcadia between the shepherds will continue unresolved into the future, perhaps consonant with Tobin's comment about the Arcadia inscription on Holden's gun -- "A reference to the lethal in it." Peter

If you'd like to reply to this thread, we encourage you to login so you can post messages. If you are not a member of the community, you can register now.

| Forum Home | Forum Topics |