GRGR(16) Some Questions

[David Morris]

>From: Peter Petto
>What is Tchitcherine's "moral [typo?] state"? 338.10 Does it exist at the 
>time he
>is scavenging the Zone? (It seems to be populated by the dead...students
>who have died under the wheels of carriages, and the like.)
>
>What are the perceptible hazards of love, of attachment? 338.18

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(338.10) [...] Tchitcherine's kind, a mortal State that will persist no 
longer that the individuals in it.  He is bound, in love and in bodily fear, 
to students who have died under the wheels of carriages, to eyes betrayed by 
nights without sleep and arms that have opened maniacally to death by 
absolute power.  He envies their loneliness, their willingness to go it 
alone [...] His own faithful network of frauleins around the zone is a 
compromise:  he knows there's too much comfort in it [...]
----------

Tchitcherine aligns himself with rebellion, the Heroic Individual.  His 
allegiance, honor, is to the martyr of a cause against "absolute power."  
The description of street violence and death at the hands of the [other] 
State was described earlier in Saschsa's (and maybe Leni's and Ilse's) death 
in the Street.  Pynchon resurrects this theme in VL, with Frenesi's fantasy 
of transcendence in that special time frame of street death/rebellion.  And 
with Weed it was called "pure action."  It is place beyond thinking where 
everything is right, perfect.

But Tchitcherine knows his way is that of compromise.  He loves his 
comforts: Women and Drugs.  He also works for The Order against the Free by 
way of stealing their language.  Where can he see himself as heroic?  Which 
"absolute power" has he pushed against?  It seems he has found his Cause in 
his War against his half-black-brother, Enzian.  Can he really believe that 
Enzian, not his own multitudes of fuck-ups, is what banished him to the 
Kighiz?

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(338.18)  But the perceptible hazards of love, of attachment, are still 
light enough for him to accept, when balanced against what he has to do.
----------

Tchitcherine could become enmeshed in the day-to-day world, bogged down by 
the attachments of love, but he remains aloof, barely remembering the women, 
because his other passion so outweighs that attraction.  He must destroy his 
shadow-self, his mirror-opposite, Enzian.  In some ways it seems an 
arbitrary quest.  He himself doesn't understand his reasons.  He's stopped 
trying to figure it out.  He's just going to follow this passion.

Could he have just latched onto a reason to exist by way of his own 
self-deluded Hero Quest?

Don't rightly know,
David Morris
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