GRGR (15): Good & Evil (was Enzian...)

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

David Morris wrote:
> 
> >From: "Terrance F. Flaherty"
> >
> >
> >Haven't read Roth's American Pastoral, but it sounds like it
> >might be read along with Don DeLillo's MAO II?  I think
> >Rilke might help this discussion. Anyone interested in
> >talking about Blicero's reading of Rilke?
> 
> I would be, if I'd ever read Rilke (he says w/ a red face).  But by all
> means I'd like all second or third hand takes offered.
> 
> DM
> 
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In a letter dated January 23rd to author
     Annette Kolb, Rilke wrote:

         That which speaks to me about the humane, the
         overwhelming, and with an authorative calm that
         gets my full attention, are the figures of the
         young dead, and even more necessary, clean,
         inexhaustible: the loving. Through both those
         figures, the humaneness is blended into my heart,
         whether I want it or not. They appear within me,
         both with the clarity of a marionette (which is a
         cover assigned for the mission of conviction)
         and as completed types, so impossible to go
         beyond, that one could have written the natural
         history of their souls.


The Tenth Elegy is on line some place I'm sure, it may be
at  Tim Ware's web page? It is only four pages long,
although there are two versions. I will use Stephen
Mitchell's translation to English in my posts. I think we
have several people on this list that know Rilke and how
Pynchon incorporated him into his fiction in general much
better than I do, but I think it's important to get an idea
of why Pynchon uses Rilke in GR and to what purpose. I will
try to explain what I think is Blicero's reading of Rilke
and why this is important and relevant to our current
dissuasions.