CyranoRox
VEEK
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Registered: 05-2006
Location: a garret over a moonlit street
Posts: 617
Karma: 44 (+44/-0)
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Valerie's letter
the letter has been on my mind. What a strange tale it is, what a strange move she makes.
"you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and your neighbor as yourself"
She fulfills this, perhaps, in a way no one in the story could see until the very end. V is simply and literally her neighbor. Her splendid, overflowing, glorious, unexpected love is directed first to him, whoever he might be, besides The Man in Room V.
Her train of thought is not obvious; after the bio, the 'last inch' image. What, though, does she have in mind? There is no indication that the Larkhill captors are seeking information from her - she is not keeping a secret. Her crime has been love of a sort not allowed; her last inch is the freedom to choose love. In that terrible place, in the expectation of death, she chooses, on the barest of grounds, common humanity, to love the man in the next cell.
So V found the last inch of himself in his rejection of hate, in the thing that 'happened to' him, as it happened to Evey: the experience of freedom, in the mode of charity. I say charity, because it is love without qualification in the characteristics of the object; love granted for being, merely; love of the absolute, unknown, Other, in perfect freedom and utter poverty; the transcendant spring of human nature stripped of all inessentials, cut down indeed to the last inch of being.
But for V, the resolution of hatred solved the negative side; from then, he, freed of hatred, pursued Justice. He seemed a little mad, a cold perfection, a hard purpose, an angelic, inorganic intention on a fixed course.
And then Evey, sweet/tough, inarticulate, angry, needy, proud and shimmering, catches his heart. As much as he says, "I, while liviing, by the power of truth have conquered the Universe", he says, via Valerie, "I love you with all...my...heart". And who is the lover of this beggar bride, who is the man hung next to this thief of love, this good thief - well, you have to look at my other posts.
Last edited by CyranoRox, 10/20/2008, 8:19 pm
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