Latencias interoculares

In his Mythologies, Roland Barthes asserts that 'cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals .. . ' (95) In recent news footage recording the celebration of one hundred years of automobility, an 1 886 automobile is to be seen driving up the aisle of an Anglican cathedral. The church was holding a special service to honour the motor-car - an event which raised a storm of protest culminating in a woman removing all her clothing at the altar whilst railing bitterly against the presence of a 'machine of death in the house of God' . 1 1 1 The event serves as confirmation of a primal impulse to worship or even deify the machine - and, of course, as a sign that there are also those who vehemently oppose the glorification of the technical world. However, whilst the Anglicans stopped just short of canonising the car, Eastern cultures are prepared to go further. In traditional Chinese funeral ceremonies, for example, an integral part of the committal calls for the burning of paper representations of those obj ects said to enhance the afterlife of the deceased. Produced by highly skilled funerary suppliers, model automobiles are commonly committed to the pyre with life-size paper sports cars much admired. As noted

earlier, the Chinese have a long history of automobility and would appear to see the motor-car as an ultimate sign of ascendancy.

Motor-car architecture itself establishes these profound connections between worldly freedoms and metaphysical agencies. Sachs observes that the classical shapes of car radiators suggest the facades of the great Greek temples and considers the formality of automotive design a kind of liturgical response to the uplifting spirit

that inheres in the very notion of automobility. 1 12 Psychologist

Anthony Greeley also presents an argument for the spiritual dimension of the motor-car when he points out that 'No suppliant more eagerly await[ s] a revelation from an oracle than does the automobile worshipper await the first rumours about new models.' (Greeley in

Marsh & Collet: 6) Marsh and Collet themselves observe that 'a

modem motor-show carries all the trappings ... of a religious festival' in that it has colours, lights, priests (salesmen), priestesses (fashion models), a ritual, and, most importantly, a liturgy. (ibid)

Advertising in popular magazines and newspapers in the early twentieth century also established the link between automobility and religious experience. An advertisement for Daimler which appeared in

a 1 9 1 1 edition of The Times of India began with the headline

'MOTORING-IN-EXCELSIS' whilst other manufacturers boasted of the heavenly experiences afforded drivers of their machines. Literary representations of the worshipped automobile begin, of course, with

Grahame' s The Wind in the Willows where, having sighted his first

motor-car, Toad of Toad Hall falls into a state of religious rapture: 'They found him in a sort of a trance ... He breathed short, his face wore a placid, satisfied expression, and at intervals he faintly murmured "Poop-poop! "' (27-28) Whilst these halting utterances of the Toad amount to the vocal genuflection of the religious convert, D. H. Lawrence distances himself from his narrative to observe, ex-cathedra, that the motor-car has become a modem god, supplanting faith in original deities.

In his The Plumed Serpent, for example, Lawrence observes that for Mexicans there is 'one hope, one faith, one destiny: to ride in a camion, to own a car. ' ( 1 03) However, it is, as we might expect, Scott

Fitzgerald who makes the most of religious paradigms in his representation of the automobile. Not surprisingly, flight imagery underpins his endeavour in this respect. In 'The Diamond', for instance, literature' s most extravagant dream-machine undergoes an extraordinary ascension. Like some sort of Deus ex machina, it is raised, by four immense cables attached to the hubs of its j ewelled wheels, onto a private road. Fitzgerald's parody of the Christian faith in this story is very well documented by Matthew Bruccoli and others, and so here it is enough to acknowledge the parody of Christ's ascensiOn; faith in a god being replaced by the deification of the machine.

One of the most heavenly cars in English literature is, of course, Gatsby' s Rolls-Royce. Described as a 'circus wagon' by Tom Buchanan, the car inevitably implies social triumphs but the antagonist's disparaging description does suggest alternative agencies. It is therefore appropriate that the car, much like its owner, is something of a paradox. To begin with, its paintwork is ambiguous. Nick tells us that the Rolls-Royce is cream coloured whilst Wilson insists that a big yellow car ran down his wife. 1 13 Another observer tells us that the death car is green, and another that it is white.

1 14

In fact, they are all right. Like Gatsby himself, the car suggests one thing at one time and another at another, the machine eliciting a multitude of impressions. From about the mid nineteen-tens, Rolls-Royce did paint some Silver Ghosts a rather uncertain cream-yellow and, as might be seen in the illustration at centre, the lacquer also betrays a greenish hue. 1 15 But quite apart from reflecting the fact that its owner too is variously perceived, the car signposts a certain, ill-defmed yet profound metaphysical yearning.

That Fitzgerald exploits the symbolism of colours is scarcely in doubt and whilst readers are well advised to exercise caution when tempted to pedantically and slavishly ascribe fixed significance to them, the meaning of yellow is nonetheless clear: it is the colour of aspiration; a sign of the outer life; an emblem of dreams and agencies. Where the yellow is faded, as it is on the bonnet of Jim Powell's old wreck in 'Dice' or on the exterior of George Wilson's garage in Gatsby or on the 'murky yellow cars of the Chicago, Milwaulkee and St. Paul railroad'

in the same novel, we may safely assume a substantially compromised agency is being implied. ( 1 66) But where the yellow is bright there might we fmd cardinal drives in operation.

One of The Great Gatsby 's most striking (though seldom commented upon) images, is that of the bright yellow trolley which the hero once saw racing through open, green, spring fields. 1 16 It is a sign of hope; an emblem of agency in a world which offers, in the mind of the hero, few, if any, limitations. The cream-yellow Rolls-Royce, with its green leather interior, means much the same thing and is indeed a palpable manifestation of Gatsby's will to conquer the unconquerable: to turn the clock back to an ideal foretime. 1 17 Whilst the vehicle's bucolic associations have been and will be explored elsewhere, there can be no doubt that the car communicates its owner' s metaphysical endeavours and transcendental preoccupations, if not his conquests. 1 18 And in so doing, the car suggests the hero's agent worth since one's value as a human being may be 'measured' in direct proportion to the morality or sublimity of one's motivations. 1 19

Although one may then see Gatsby's Silver Ghost as a gaudy creation of enterprise that dooms us to death, it must also be viewed in the same light as Cody's yacht: as a symbol of the highest endeavour; as an emblem of dreams; as a sign of ' all the beauty and glamour in the world. ' (96) Whilst most readings of the novel emphasise Gatsby's mistake of putting material artefacts ahead of the imperatives of the human heart, few note his ultimate detachment from these very obj ects: ' . . . he stared around at his possessions in a dazed way .. . none of it was any longer real.' 120 (88) This alienated, spectatorial stance of the hero from the affairs of the real world is most deftly foregrounded in chapter three where he stands, a figure of 'complete isolation' on the porch of his mansion, physically· elevated from the scene of violent motor confusion in his garden. (56) On one hand object and on the other abstraction, Gatsby' s magnificent Rolls-Royce then is an index of the hero's real world conquests, but sign too of his will to achieve greater horizons. However, although not of the world, Gatsby is nonetheless in it and so, in the end, though a profoundly innocent victim of the foul dust that travels in the wake of dreams, Gatsby's strivings for a not-so-

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h h' fr h 121

However, Gatsby arranges his life as though he doesn't particularly care for the world, his heavenly obj ects merely things upon which he might proj ect and focus his romantic agency. That his car is described as a 'circus wagon' also points to such metaphysical endeavour. As 'circus master' and performer (one of Gatsby' s progenitors i s Petronius's Trimalchio) Gatsby i s inevitably defmed by his automobile, a machine which Brian Way declares is ' . . . not so much a means of transport as a theatrical gesture' - one commensurate with the hero's 'non-stop theatrical performance' . 122 (Way in Bloom: 1 02) Leo Marx writes that Gatsby has about him a 'gratifying sense of a dream about to be consummated' and emblematising this is the hero's dream car - one of many obj ects in the novel which bespeak Gatsby' s attempt to locate, i n the real world, the stuff o f unutterable visions. 123 (L. Marx: PA : 77) A panoply of colours and shapes, his Rolls-Royce is 'gorgeous', an adj ective applied to the hero himself when Nick tells us that he has 'something gorgeous about him. '(8) It is, moreover, said to be 'splendid' , whilst, just a little later, Nick speaks of its owner' s 'purposeless splendour. ' (7 6)

As circus wagon, moreover, Gatsby's car is an enchanted obj ect; an eminently suitable symbol for a man who lives an ' enchanted life.' ( 64) In addition, the machine makes a substantial contribution to Fitzgerald' s comedy of the excess in that, as everyone knows, those cars employed by clowns at circuses appear to adhere to a set ·Of physical laws that have nothing whatever to do with those governing real world events. In this sense, all circus wagons defy mastery in the same way that Gatsby himself might be said to defy all attempts at definition. We have already examined the suggestion that the hero' s car seems destined to fl y and this together with its extraordinary paint­ work, its plethora of optional extras, and its fair-ground inspired three­ noted horn makes the machine a comic construct entirely befitting a circus setting. Like Daisy's white roadster, a machine that ironically bespeaks innocence and purity, Gatsby's machine is a trick; a bright theatrical gesture that belies sinister meanings to be revealed and considered elsewhere. It is no accident, then, that Gatsby offers to drive Nick to Coney Island, the site of one of the world's greatest amusement parks - now ironically fallen onto bad times. In context

though, what better site for one of the great actors who turns his own home into a veritable circus: a blaze of 'spectroscopic gaiety' with 'several hundred feet of canvas' and 'coloured lights' ?124

To be sure, other cars appear as circus wagons too, most notably the coupe which a drunk laughably and ridiculously suggests should be driven out of a ditch outside the hero' s mansion - despite the fact that the machine is minus one of its wheels. And nor may one easily ignore the comic excess of the dozens of parping, caterwauling horns of the motorists queued up behind this spectacle. Whilst undoubtedly underlining themes of illusion and destruction then, these cars, and some (but by no means all) of the incidents surrounding them, nonetheless point toward the magnificence of life's theatre: the dream of triumph over nature; the urge for personal liberation; the 'creative passion' itself. 125 (92) This is why Nick Carraway is so drawn to Gatsby: because the hero and his enchanted objects point to a gorgeousness which lies beyond the stars; a gorgeousness which relieves the narrator of his own limited horizons.

Chief among Gatsby' s collection of enchanted obj ects, then, is his Rolls-Royce and implied in its colour and its architecture (note the wing-like fenders) is a sense of a certain straining toward othemess; heaven, if you like. In this connection, Robert Long calls Gatsby' s Rolls a ' sun-car' . 126 It is an apt description. After all, the machine' s ' labyrinth o f windshields .. . [mirror] a dozen suns' and light, from its shimmering body, is ' scattered .. . through half Astoria. ' (63, 66) Moreover, the hero himself is referred to a 'patron of recurrent light' and would appear to have a fmancial interest in the Swastika Holding Company, the symbol of which has heliocentric connections.127 (86) Although Gatsby's greatest trick - to 'fix things the way they were before' - fails miserably, his time and space conquering motor-car stands, at one of its many levels of significance, as a material sign of such admirable aspirations. Through it, as Emest Lockridge suggests, the hero triumphs over earth and air - victories that point to greater triumphs sti11. 128 And in all of these respects we must be careful not to read Gatsby as an uncompromising criticism of our commercial drives, though to be sure excoriation of materialism is to the fore as Fitzgerald urges us to rediscover the organic unity of an ideal foretime. It is this

paradox which Gatsby's motor-car seems to underscore m so many ways.

In document Análisis avanzado de señales de potenciales evocados multifocales aplicados al diagnóstico de neuropatías ópticas (página 153-163)