GRGR(3) Pointsman (also Re. Gnostic Pynchon)

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

David Morris wrote:

> Rich R. Wrote:
> >To use a phrase Dwight Eddins in the Gnostic Pynchon uses,
> >Slothrop could represent the apeironic-wing of gnosticism,
> >that strain of anti-paranoia, existentialism, where nothing
> >is connected nothing.
>
> This list contiually forces me to go to the dictionary, as well as other
> sources, to try to follow along, but WTF (What the Fuck) is "apeironic"?
> Not in any dictionary I've got.  "Irony," I unnerstand, sorta.  "Ape?"
> Prefix, meaning?

APEIRON
INTRO.14 Eddins ‘Gnostic Pynchon (1990). _

Ok, Richard could not have found a more difficult term in the whole book.

While discussing the flaws in the “current critical concensus” (1990) on the
“epistemological quests” in Pynchon, Eddins states:

Another gnosticising factor is present, ironically, in the mere existence of the
epistemological question. To suffer the constant anxiety that mysterious powers
may be manipulating human life is to be de facto, haunted by demiurgic
phantasms, and thus to suffer the oppression that characterizes cabalistic
gnosticism, even while the question of its basis in reality remains open. Even
if a habitual “middle” (see my note) appears---e.g., Roger’s sustaining intimacy
with Jessica in Gravity’s Rainbow—it is quickly crushed by the churnings of
metaphysical force fields that are either indifferent or hostile to human
constructs. In the very act of privileging moments of communion, Pynchon reminds
us of their fragility and transience in the face of massive dehumanizing forced.

Note: The “middle” is the way out of the Gnostic Trap, critics have all sorts of
avenues out of this dead end zone: Euben, in another fine study, for example,
draws on Greek drama for his “middle term.” Eddins complains that the “current
critical consensus” and in particular, the “postmodern secularity” of such
readings “does violence to the complex religious dialectic that serves as the
fictions metastructure.”

If there is a solution, a way out of the gnostic trap, it involves locating a
metaphysic of religious potentiality in which these moments can be grounded, and
then obtruding this metaphysic as a benevolent term into the malign dialectic
that dominates the cosmos of Pynchon’s fiction.

He then explains the paradoxical rebellion against Gnosticism and HERE WE GO
NOW, brings Eric Voegelin into his exposition.

To be human is, for Voegelin, to occupy a middle ground between the poles of
raw, undifferentiated natural process and perfectly refined spirituality.
Adopting (and adapting) Platonic terminology, Voegelin refers to these extremes
respectively, as APEIRON {“the indeterminate”} and nous {i.e., “divine
intellection”}, while the middle ground is the metaxy, the In-Between (see  my
note ). Nous is associated with the transcendental ground of values embodied in
such concepts as the Judaeo-Christian God or the Platonic Good-in both cases, a
mysterious and inaccessible Beyond in which psychic participation is nonetheless
possible  for man. This participation takes the form of asking what Voegelin
calls “The Question.” According to Eugene Webb,
this is “a term for the tension
of existence in its aspect of a questioning unrest seeking not simply particular
truth as such: ‘not just any question but the quest concerning the mysterious
ground of all being.

Note: The world of Pynchon’s fiction, according to Eddins, as he applies
Voegelin, “operates as a radical perversion of a humanizing metaxy.” For
example, in V. it would involve Stencil’s quest for Henty Adams’ Virgin—now a
dynamo of life denying force or the dialectic between Oedipa and Tristero or the
quest for the rocket in GR. In each case, Eddins maintains, “the sense of cosmic
well-being dependent upon the metaxic tension between the pure immanence of the
apeiron and the pure transcendence of nous is shattered by attempts to destroy
or usurp this transcendental status.

Hope this helps, feel free to ask for clarification on any thing I may have
muddled.


>
>
> Terrance F. Flaherty:
> >Eddin's claims that a "religious dialectic structures the novel."
> >111.2 It is marked by mystical and supernatural manifestations on
> >both sides, by the presence of fanatical devotees, and by a drive
> >for nothing less than metaphysical dominance. The stakes are for far
> >more than physical or ethical control; they represent finally the right
> >to define ultimate reality and to decide what the individual's
> >relation to this reality is to be. Pynchon locates at the heart of
> >nature the mystical concept of a living, conscious Earth, from which
> >all blessings flow and to which Gravity recalls these dispensations in a
> >benevolent cycle of renewal. The religious response evoked by a full
> >realization of this phenomenon is a variety of Orpheism that leans heavily
> >upon the assumptions of Rainer maria Rilke's poetry in its identification
> >with natural process and its assimilation of life and death into a unifying
> >lyric of praise.
> >
> >Eddins is a wild ride, beginning and ending (talk about reading backwards
> and
> >forwards)  with a quote from Harold Bloom, 'Pynchon is a Gnosis without
> >transcendence,' and offers, "but it is a gnosis haunted by the possibility
> >therof--both positively and negatively--and by a characteristically
> modernist
> >nostalgia for a quality of human consciousness that a logos beyond human
> agency
> >seems once to have empowered."
>
> Wow!  This sounds like a must-read.  Eddins sounds like my kinda guy.

Simply outstanding! What some of these critics can bring to a text.

Terrance