848
PARTISAN REVIEW
In both inventions, castration, as we see, is represented by putting
out eyes: the son's eyes in the myth, the mother's eyes in the tale.
It is just the fact that, here, the female totem is ocularly castrated,
which made it possible for us to retrace the path from the mother's
castration to her rephallization and, thereby, to understand at last
the latent significance, wish-phantasy and talion-phantasy combined,
which hanging the mother represents in the sons' minds.
g
" ... I could not," Pluto's murderer confesses at the point where
we stopped-the outline of a cat having miraculously appeared on
the wall-"rid myself of the phantasm of the cat"-which need not
surprise us now we understand that it represents an immense mother–
figure. The mother, however, refuses to be banished from the son's
life, even in death.
As
we shall see, she returns yet again from Pluto's
realm, summoned by the son's ineradicable longing.
"During this period," he continues, "there came back into my
spirit a half-sentiment that seemed, but was not, remorse."-It was
primarily, we should say, longing.
"I went so far as to regret the loss of the animal, and to look about
me, among the vile haunts which I now habitually frequented, for
another pet of the same species, and of somewhat similar appearance,
with which to supply its place."
Thus, the suggestion of longing is confirmed.
Now the second act of the tragedy opens, its central figure being
the second cat.
"One night as I sat, half stupefied, in a den of more than infamy, my
attention was suddenly drawn to some black object, reposing upon
the head of one of the immense hogsheads of Gin, or of Rum, which
constituted the chief furniture of the apartment. .. .
It
was a black
cat-a very large one-fully as large as Pluto, and closely resembling
him in every respect but one. Pluto had not a white hair upon any
portion of his body; but this cat had a large, although indefinite
splotch of white, covering nearl y the whole region of the breast."
A splotch, we should say, representing milk, both by its color and
position. A splotch, in fact, of that symbolic whiteness, though here
no more than a mark on the breast, whi ch covered the whole of the
body of the strange
T ekeli-li
discovered by Arthur Gordon Pym.
As
