GRGR Symmetry or not symmetry

[jporter]

>jp
>> Slothrop on his back, the remains of Jamf somewhere below "only dead," and
>> Tchitcherine- as he lays looking- at the Kirghiz Light- unaware of a city
>> larger than Babylon a mile beneath him....

                                 {snip}
rj

>I think Slothrop continues to *find* answers; after about his first
>meeting with Geli he has stopped actively seeking them though, hasn't
>he? Whereas Tchitcherine remains resolute and self-centred throughout?
>Surely Slothrop's vision at 626.16 is affirmational, as opposed to
>Tchitchy's failure at 359.10. Tchitchy doesn't reach "his birth",
>whereas Slothrop experiences a spiritual rebirth? Later, Tchitchy will
>not recognise Enzian; while Slothrop gets a green pass to RealWorldland?

I don't like to comment on passages which we haven't gotten to yet in the
re-read, but I generally agree with you here. The potential symmetry break
between S & T is suggested to me by the fact that Slothrop finds a relief
of sorts when he discovers Jamf is only dead, while T, who is only alive
only by a majority vote of his internal organs, is left spiritually
unfulfilled after experiencing the light.

>Jamf's mortality is (or should be) liberating for Slothrop, isn't it?
>While that city beneath the desert mocks Tchitchy's quest?

Yes, that's what I was stammering on about. The passage concerning T's
plight in faraway Kirghiz reminds me of the traveller in Shelly's
OZYMANDIAS, who comes upon the stone remains:

"...My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

>And what of the rediscovery of his old Hohner: Orpheus and all that,
>being "closer to being a spiritual medium than he's been yet" (622.25:
>even though he might not "even know it")? His innocence in his quest for
>self? While by contrast Tchitchy's search for self is driven by revenge,
>the desire to rewrite his past and reclaim his destiny, forcibly wrest
>Control.

T is prototypically a left-sided Mason-like control phreak- the man in the
office. S, as has been noticed here before, is more the Dixonish- oblivious
of the forest for trees type- often encountered on the "other side the
tracks" in the right hemisphere : ) Still, the recognition of a once
possible symmetrical connection between the two, can induce nostalgia for a
time before syntax became so twisted- a freer time- before the hemlines
came down.

Slothrop is like a god of the river. His boner now a hohner has become a
euphroe for the river- Time's Harmonika. Has this new Alpheus sprung a
leak? It may not depend only on whether there are other universes out
there, but whether we can connect with them through imagination. Perhaps
music provides a key, by which scales can be bridged.

>
>Slothrop -- open mind, open heart (heck, *empty* on both counts most of
>the time) -- though he might not be an "avatar of the Gospel of Thomas"
>certainly experiences a vision of Oneness in keeping with the
>Rilkean/mystical/Gnostic traditions. I'd go so far as to say that it is
>a manifestation of immanence, and apotheosis and transcendence aren't
>too far wide of the mark as descriptors for what happens to Our Tyrone
>subsequently in the novel.

I'll trust your interpretations of Rilke, here.

>Of course, there's Slothrop's "scattering", his Tarot, the upside-down
>Hanged Man (and the deprecatory self-doubt of his "chronicler", which
>could equally be another ironic variable I guess), the sad estrangement
>from Bodine, his "Visitor", and his mooted "weird death", the wine rush,
>and the Occupation of Mingeborough ("It may be too late to get home"
>744.1 up) to come; which, now that I think about them, are pretty bleak
>outcomes after all I guess.

Again, I'm not sure if it is appropriate to begin Integrating just yet, the
official read being only 1/2 way home, and the list police might choose to
become active: "Off with their heads!" Although it is inviting.

>I'd always thought that perhaps Slothrop manages to get out of The
>System, to be one with us, "among the Humility" (742.5up); where the
>other (a)symmetrical rocket-sons -- Tchitch, Enzian and Gottfried -- do
>not. Perhaps I was wrong ... But the conditional tenses ("supposed to
>be", "would expect", "may") which circumscribe Tyrone's eventual fate
>still leave some room for hope, however slight.
>
>best

better left undefined with doubt intact.

jody