Wozzek and GR

[Dan Schmidt]

 Origenes at aol.com writes:

| Hello foax I'm new to the list plus I'm a brand new Pynchon fan. I'm
| just now finishing up GR. I have to admit I'm using the Companion as
| a crutch but have found a few things it has left out. The end of
| part 4, episode 3, when the Colonel from Kenosha is getting his
| haircut and gets his throat slashed, is a near perfect recreation of
| a scene from Wozzek, the opera by Alban Berg.

(Wozzeck, actually.)  I think you're confusing a couple of scenes from
Wozzeck together; the scene you describe doesn't occur in either the
opera or Buechner's original play (which the opera was based on).

| There is one reference earlier to Wozzek (scratching my head, Where
| did I put that Post-it?).

Someone's voice (I forget who) is compared to that of the captain
(Hauptmann) from Wozzeck, who shrieks and falsettos a lot.  Note that
Wiseenburger gets this wrong in the Companion.

| There are a couple of correspondences. I can't find my copy of the
| libretto so I apologize for any errors.

No problem :)

| In Wozzek a private slashes his officer's throat while giving him a
| shave. The officer before this happens has a nice long song full of
| dark metaphysics and how he's ready to die and all.

The only person that Wozzeck kills is his wife, Marie.  The captain
does have a monologue (interrupted only by Wozzeck's occasional
"Jawohl, Herr Hauptmann") in Act I Scene i that's filled with sort of
a frenzied melancholy; this may be what you're thinking of.

| There are probably similarities to the Colonel's rambling
| thoughts. The private has been driven insane by many pressures, one
| of them being the sadistic treatment by a doctor who uses him as a
| guniea pig (hmmm... where have I heard that before?).

Yup, this part is accurate.

-- 
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