Rilke in Gaddis's _TR_ and Pynchon's _GR_

[Nathan Walters]

Folks,

I'm cross-posting this to both the Gaddis- and the Pynchon-Lists, for
reasons that ought to become clear, though this will make it fairly
impossible for anyone who does not sub to both to follow the extent of
this conversation (if it's deemed interesting enough to become that on
either). However, I would suppose Pynchon fans might be curious about his
possible influences beyond what is said in _Slow Learner_, and I know the
subject as to whether TRP has read WG has come up on the Gaddis-list
several times.

For G-listers, I stumbled onto this as a poster to the Pynchon-list was
reading Rilke, and noted that he recalled overtones from said poet in
Pynchon's work. Well, I pulled out Steven Weisenburger's _A Gravity's
Rainbow Companion_ to find all the Rilke references in _Gravity's Rainbow_
that Weisenburger located, then, recalling Gaddis's heavy use of Rilke, I
became curious and pulled out Moore. Both Pynchon and Gaddis cite the same
two poems, but this is hardly a coincidence since they are considered
Rilke's greatest.

BUT, lo and behold, while Gaddis heavily incorporates _Duino Elegies_
throughout _The Recognitions_, he makes only one reference to _Sonnets of
Orpheus_ -- *on page 622* -- where in one of the book's party scenes,
several characters make the discovery that Max has plagiarized Rilke in a
recent publication. And *page 622* is one of two references to _Sonnets_
in _GR_.

>From _TR_, p622:

"--Ask [Max] to show you his _Sonnette an Orpheus_, you'd love it."

In _TR_, Gaddis also quotes from _Duino Elegies_ on that page:

_TR_, p622.44: "--Max Rilke. `Weisst du's noch nicht?' [Don't you know
*yet*?] . . . Anselm howled".

This bit of Rilke echoes, for me, the end of this passage:

_GR_, p622.17-26: "Like that Rilke prophesied,

	And though Earthliness forget you,
	To the stilled Earth say: I flow.
	To the rushing water speak: I am.

   It is possible, even this far out of it, to find and make possible 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."

Don't you know yet? Doesn't even know it? Anyone?

Page 622 is the only mutual reference to both books. But how about that
what is definitely common here is _Sonnets_? Especially considering that
it's the one less frequently used -- just twice by TRP and once by Gaddis?

I know that TRP paid very close attention to the pagination of _GR_ both
in its writing and when it went to press -- I recall reading that some
significant number that corresponded to a physicist's theory on something
or other appeared on that number's corresponding page. Can someone on the
Pynchon-list help me with this?

Moreover, in _TR_, Moore notes that Gaddis refers to Rilke on *eight*
different pages. Likewise, in _GR_ (according to Weisenburger), Pynchon
refers to Rilke on *eight* different pages. (This does not account for
multiple references on individual pages, which might not add up exactly.)

The first Rilke reference in _GR_ is on page 97 -- this is the only other
_Sonnets_ reference SW notes in _GR_. Now *this* very well could be my
imagination, but there is an interesting discussion going on atop page 97
of _TR_; beginning on p96 of _TR_, Esther and Wyatt talk about a bridge he
designed which she's seen in a magazine:

  --Look at it, he said, --do you see the way it seems to come out and
meet itself, does it? He held his hands up in a nervous bridge, fingertips
barely touching, the piece of string still hung from one of them. --Does
it look that way to you? that sense of movement in stillness, that . . .
tension still at rest and still . . . do you know that Arab saying, "The
arch never sleeps"? . . .
				[p 97]
  --Yes, it is dynamic. Wyatt, you, why can't you . . . Then her eyes,
meeting his, seemed that abruptly to empty their enthusiasm from his face
and his voice.
  --It's all derivative, the design, he said.

Maybe I'm just looking at this too hard (I once smoked too much weed and
thought I'd "figured out" _Pale Fire_), but Wyatt's bridge suggests, to
me, a rainbow. All in all, however, I don't think that this is all
coincidence. Rilke on eight pages in each? The commonality on 622? If
Pynchon did want to nod at Gaddis, this would be a clever way to do it
considering the talk of plagiarism on 622 in _TR_ -- not to mention the
poem Esme "writes" on page 277.

Here's the index entries from Moore and Weisenburger for Rilke:

_TR_: 91, 577; _Duino Elegies_, 277, 455, 577, 620, 622, 636, 956;
_Sonnets to Orpheus_, 622

_GR_: _Duino Elegies_, 98, 99, 101, 341, 413, 431; _Sonnets to Orpheus_,
97, 622.

And of course it's apropos and fairly funny that Weisenburger admits he
ripped off Moore's concept for his own -- and just as handy -- volume. I'd
be interested to hear any thoughts.

Nathan