Blicero / christ myth

[rj]

?> > B-but, I don' hear anyone saying Pilate loved Christ... Or do 
> > you see Blicero as corresponding to The Father? In which case, who's 
> > playing Pilate?
> 
> Pynchon.

Bitter reflection that. 
No, the Germans lost the war, so Pilate would have been on the other
side, wouldn't he? Some (Allied) Imperial prelate from London. (That ol'
Pirate's (ap)Prentice, perhaps?)

*****

But this is not nearly as "diverting" as the suggestion that

?> that sly old Wernher vonBraun [...] is the Holy Spirt still among
us

Well, no, I'd say it's perhaps something a little more Rilkean (97.17):
not a 'real life name' at all. I really do want to hear Terrance's ideas
on this.

Speaking of he > whom we are told to expect we can
> find if we will only seek him in the corporate board rooms of America:

"The King of Cups, crowning [Weissmann's] hopes, ... the fair
intellectual-king. If you're wondering where he's gone, look among the
successful academics, the Presidential advisers, the token intellectuals
who sit on boards of directors. He is almost surely there. Look high,
not low." (749.9)

Chuckie, perhaps? (Though noone's mentioned Judas yet.)

As I take it, the admonition here, to "Look high", refers to the
whereabouts of these King of Cups-types in the postwar Western corporate
"meritocracies" and political "democracies", not Blicero himself. This
is not Blicero's card, a card which represents what Blicero is. It is
the card of his (ultimately unfulfilled) aspirations. It is the card
which represents what he could or would have become, (and what *is* to
come for Blicero was always "the World", and in his case "The Oven",
rather than any transcendent metaphysical state. And he knows it. And
this is *his* tragedy.) The Reich's failure and Blicero's death at war's
end are inevitabilities, as both he and Gottfried realise (721.25);
obvious to Blicero since at least mid-late 1944 at least (97.29, 98-99).
Gottfried's death is also certain. And so, by preparing Gottfried's
"Escape" in this manner Blicero is actually averting the boy's earthly
execution, and thereby sidestepping the Christian myth altogether, the
whole cycle of corruption and degradation; creating a new myth, a new
martyr:

> It is not death -- murder, suicide, extinction, genocide etc -- but
> transcendence which Blicero seeks through and for Gottfried: "a promise,
> a prophecy, of Escape." (758.5up) It is his [Blicero's] gift and his [Blicero's] sacrifice. 

The King of Cups, in my deck, is tagged as follows: "Laborious husband.
Honest person. Businessman." Nothing if not ironic, that.

> LOL!
Let one live?
One.

> Gone Fishing
Ditto