poetry, topologetics, red wine

[Hartwin Alfred Gebhardt]

DANL writes:

> On the matter of "print" and "language".
[...]
> I actually quite agree with 'arch' enemy John Mascaro's urging Gebhardt
> <<indeed>> to distinguish (not just in thought, as we are not telepathic,
> but in deed) the figures of "print" (one of many dialects) on the
> background of "language"

Is it a mere dialect, or is there some kind of necessary connection - 
a thought made sound made solid made deed all at once, hot-wired into 
our identity, somewhere, somewhen? Is this "the Urstoff of the 
primitive German, God's poorest and most panicked creature" (GR, 464)?

"[R]emember didn't you sneak away from camp to have a moment 
alone with What you felt stirring across the land ... it was the 
equinox ... green spring equal nights ... canyons are opening up, at the
bottoms are steaming fumaroles, steaming the tropical life there like 
greens in a pot, rank, dope-perfume, a hood of smell ... human 
consciousness, that poor cripple, that deformed and doomed thing, is 
about to be born. This is the World just before men. Too violently 
pitched alive in constant flow ever to be seen by men directly. They 
are meant only to look at it dead, in still strata, transputrefied to oil or 
coal. Alive, it was a threat; it was Titans, was an overspeaking of life so
clangorous and mad, such a green corona about Earth's body that some 
spoiler had to be brought in before it blew the creation apart. So we, the 
crippled keepers, were sent out to multiply, to have dominion. God's 
spoilers. Us. Counter-revolutionaries. It is our mission to promote 
death. The way we kill, the way we die, being unique among the Creatures. 
It was something we had to work on, historically and personally. To build 
from scratch up to its present status as reaction, nearly as strong as life, 
holding down the green uprising. But only nearly as strong. Only nearly, 
because of the defection rate. A few keep going over to the Titans every 
day..." (GR, 720).

>           (although his imputation that Gebhardt offers us
> "some equivalence" of the two is too strong). Pynchon presses on us more
> than ambivalence: DENOUNCING the "German mania for name-giving", the
> chemist's "diddling" with the language of hydrocarbon chains, u.s.w., at
> the same time lifting the language game to new elevations in his best
> prose.

Pynchon diddles the alphabet to sing a ditty, his ditty. So we sway 
with his rhythm as we sway with Rossini, but lovers get together in 
one, who is forgotten, and not <always> the other, whom we cannot forget. Is 
Pynchon the one who fuses the German mania with the love of life and 
the moment? Is he human, all too human?

> Or...DENOUNCING the <<printed>> (or wiped) manifestations of 'Shit, Money,
> and the Word', the translation of the oral Kirghiz tradition (Ah, saga! Oh,
> epic!) into the new alphabet, somethin' Turkic you upside the head!
> 
> It is our happy(?) obligation as practitioners of language to distinguish
> the figures of the named on the nameless background of creation. Or
> distinguish the figure of"figures" on the background of "background". But I
> suppose I had best leave that kind of play to them what invented it. (The
> elf with JD in his pocketses? JD hisself??) Or are painting and sculpture
> the untainted forms of litcrit?
[Untainted by what? Form, texture, colour, even thought? Or just 
print?]
> Bad writing ain't nearly as bad as imprecise thinking, when one considers
> the residues.

1. Imprecise thinking ain't nearly as bad as 2. precise thinking, IF the ionic 
bond is the residue of 2. But is it?

> Since we are not telepathic, we require language to communicate thought.

"Since language is not telepathic, it requires a larynx to communicate 
itself," it coughs.

> Mathematics is a language with no more failings than most.
> Topology ain't as pretty as poetry unless you look at it hole-istically.
> (Puns may not be poetry, but if Pynchon uses 'em, I guess they're OK, hm?)

More than OK, I say. They are the way, the way. The way it may have 
started (oh idle chatter). The panicked creature cannot stand the 
worlds so powerful, so it crafts the words so pityful.... A pun, 
indeed. And Pynchon works on....

> The best poetry arises from very precise thinking. So:
> 
> Imprecise thinking has holes in it.
> A jug (with a handle) is a hole with matter dangling from it.
> A jug with no handle leaves one juggling with no grasp of the matter.

A poet needs a jug with a hole in it to be full of red red wine.
A jug full of red wine the liquid of subversive anti-gravity, with no hole 
in it, has only matter dangling from it, and not even a bad poet.

> The imperious imp may have no closure on!

That is his secret weapon. No-one expects him to have any pockets, 
and yet he has.

hg
hag at iafrica.com