RC in TRP WAS RE: Hitler's Pope

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

Very good! Excellent point. I think Doug would agree with
this? We need to consider the history of the Jesuits. AND
with Pynchon, I think it always wise to look at the history
of subjects as they have been treated in literature. We know
that TRP loves the Russian novelist, Dostoevsky. Pynchon,
great "theft" that he is, steals from the Brothers K in V. 


"I said that yesterday at dinner on purpose to tease you and
I saw
your eyes glow. But now I've no objection to discussing with
you,
and I say so very seriously. I want to be friends with you,
Alyosha,
for I have no friends and want to try it. Well, only fancy,
perhaps
I too accept God," laughed Ivan; "that's a surprise for you,
isn't
it?"

    "Yes of course, if you are not joking now."

    "Joking? I was told at the elder's yesterday that I was
joking.


You know, dear boy, there was an old sinner in the
eighteenth
century who declared that, if there were no God, he would
have to be
invented. S'il n'existait pas Dieu, il faudrait l'inventer.
And man
has actually invented God. And what's strange, what would be
marvellous, is not that God should really exist; the marvel
is that
such an idea, the idea of the necessity of God, could enter
the head
of such a savage, vicious beast as man. So holy it is, so
touching, so
wise and so great a credit it does to man. As for me, I've
long
resolved not to think whether man created God or God man.
And I
won't go through all the axioms laid down by Russian boys on
that
subject, all derived from European hypotheses; for what's a
hypothesis
there is an axiom with the Russian boy, and not only with
the boys but
with their teachers too, for our Russian professors are
often just the
same boys themselves. And so I omit all the hypotheses. For
what are
we aiming at now? I am trying to explain as quickly as
possible my
essential nature, that is what manner of man I am, what I
believe
in, and for what I hope, that's it, isn't it? And therefore
I tell you
that I accept God simply. 


"Why, it's all nonsense, Alyosha. It's only a senseless poem
of
a senseless student, who could never write two lines of
verse. Why
do you take it so seriously? Surely you don't suppose I am
going
straight off to the Jesuits, to join the men who are
correcting His
work?

That's not the idea of it in the Orthodox Church.... That's
Rome,
and not even the whole of Rome, it's false-those are the
worst of
the Catholics the Inquisitors, the Jesuits!... And there
could not
be such a fantastic creature as your Inquisitor. What are
these sins
of mankind they take on themselves? Who are these keepers of
the
mystery who have taken some curse upon themselves for the
happiness of
mankind? When have they been seen? We know the Jesuits, they
are
spoken ill of, but surely they are not what you describe?
They are not
that at all, not at all.... They are simply the Romish army
for the
earthly sovereignty of the world in the future, with the
Pontiff of
Rome for Emperor... that's their ideal, but there's no sort
of mystery
or lofty melancholy about it.... It's simple lust of power,
of
filthy earthly gain, of domination-something like a
universal
serfdom with them as masters-that's all they stand for. They
don't
even believe in God perhaps. Your suffering Inquisitor is a
mere
fantasy."

"Joined whom, what clever people?" cried Alyosha, completely
carried away. "They have no such great cleverness and no
mysteries and
secrets.... Perhaps nothing but Atheism, that's all their
secret. Your
Inquisitor does not believe in God, that's his secret!"

At last you have guessed it. It's perfectly true, it's true
that that's the whole secret







Mitchell R Coffey wrote:
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Doug Millison <millison at online-journalist.com> at Internet
> > Sent: Thursday, September 30, 1999 1:18 PM
> > To: pynchon-l at waste.org at INTERNET
> > Subject: RC in TRP WAS RE: Hitler's Pope
> [SNIP]
> 
> > TRP is rather rough on the Catholic church in M&D -- the Jesuits are
> > bad guys, aren't they?
> [snip]
> 
> Yet note that one of the most "anti-Jesuitical" passages turns out to be a
> passage from "The Ghastly Fop", that blends into the "real" action, which
> thenceforth is never quite as "real" again, that...
> 
> My take was that the Jesuit passages were [1] send-ups of the then-contemporary
> Protestant paranoid conspiracy mongering aimed at that order, and [2] meant to
> amuse because we tend to assume that paranoid conspiracy mongering is a new
> phenomenon.
> 
> Mitchell Coffey
> ___________________________________________________________________
> 
> Glendower: "At my nativity
>                    The font of heaven was full of fiery shapes,
>                    Of burning cressents, and at my birth
>                    The frame and huge foundation of the earth
>                    Shaked like a coward!"
> 
> Hotspur:    "Why, so it would have done at the same season
>                    If your mother's cat had but kittened, though yourself
>                    Had never been born.
>                    ...
> 
> Glendower: "I can call spirits from the vasty deep!"
> 
> Hotspur:     "Why, so can I, or so can any man;
>                     But will they come when you do call for them?"
> 
>                   - Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part One, III, i