That's some very dense reading, and I've never read Absalom, Absalom!, so please consider that as I attempt to summarize this passage. As you may wel understand, is a description of a character, Henry, and apparantly, his perspective on his sister's sexuality.
"Henry, the provincial, the clown almost, given to instinctive and violent action rather than to thinking, ratiocination..."
Henry is man who tends to act before he thinks. He is unsophisticaed and will respond emotionally before considering the consequences of his actions.
"...who may have been conscious that his fierce provincial’s pride in his sister’s virginity was a false quantity which must incorporate in itself an inability to endure in order to be precious, to exist, and so much depend upon its loss, absence, to have existed at all."
Henry may have been aware that his immature and unsophisticated pride in his sister's virginity was a foolish characteristic of his. What marks virginity as a precious quality is its inability to edure forever. It is expected that every girl will, at some point in her life, lose her virginity. Therefore, virginity must be lost in order for a virgin to be special.
"In fact, perhaps this is the pure and perfect incest: the brother realizing that the sister’s virginity must be destroyed in order to have existed at all, taking that virginity in the person of brother- in-law, the man whom he would be if he could become, metamorphose into, the lover, the husband; by whom he would be despoiled, choose for despoiler, if he could become, metamorphose into the sister, the mistress, the bride."
Henry then realizes that for him to take his sister's virginity himself would be a "pure and perfect incest" in his mind. Other than the fact that he would then take on the role of his brother-in-law, his sister's husband, I can't quite make sense of the rest of the passage.
Whew... I hope that helpd.
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