Rilke, GR connections

[Nathan Walters]

Brian,

If you haven't already (pardon me if you've already used this resource),
check out Steve Weisenburger's _A Gravity's Rainbow Companion_. He notes a
number of Rilke references in _GR_, and the direct quotations might better
help you contextualize some of the implied references you muse on in your
post. If one is not handy, see _GR_: 98.1-2, 98.7, 99.34-35, 101.23-26,
341.18-19, 413.15-16, 431.36 (_Duino Elegies_ [iirc, most? all? are from 9
and 10]); 97.17-18, 622.19-21 (_Sonnets to Orpheus_). [All page numbers
keyed to the Viking.]

Weisenburger writes (263): "With his harp [Slothrop] is Orpheus, the
dismembered Greek god. He embodies the acceptance of pain in Rilke's
_Sonnets to Orpheus_, with their climatic expression of being and
flux--`To the rushing water I speak: I am.'"

And from _GR_ (622.22-26): "It is still possible, even this far out of it, to
find and make audible the spirits of lost harpmen. Whacking the water out of
his harmonica, reeds singing against his leg, picking up the single blues
at bar 1 of this morning's segment, Slothrop, just suckin' on his harp, is
closer to being a spiritual medium than he's been yet, and he doesn't even
know it."

The final clause seems to me, at least, to echo "First Elegy," 1.22:
"Weisst du's noch nicht?:	"Don't you know *yet*?"

Best, Nathan