Mountains, trees, rocks, and ships at sea (is also Re: GRGR(23): R =?ISO-8859-1?B?/A==?=gen

Sun Apr 2 01:04:22 CST 2000

"*We now come in sight of mythical Rügen off our starboard bow.* Its chalk
cliffs are brighter than the sky. There is mist in the firths, and among the
green oaks. Along the beaches drift pearl patches of fog." (527.5up)

Not so much a narrator as a tour guide, I think ("Slothrop feels like a
tourist" 290.20), but Slothrop's (and our) whole tour through this Zone
could indeed be a journey through the visionary paintings of Caspar David
Friedrich, as David alluded to, rather than through any real or imagined
Baltic land- or seascapes. The 'Chalk Cliffs at Rügen' is one of Friedrich's
famous works
http://sunsite.auc.dk/cgfa/friedric/p-friedrich11.htm
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Arc/5340/chalk.htm
and there are misty firths and beaches with pearl patches of fog, ships and
moonlit shores aplenty:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Museum/4782/cdfships.htm
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Museum/4782/cdfships2.htm
But Friedrich's native Pomeranian landscapes, a selection of which,
including 'Meadows near Greifswald'(1820) and 'The Watzmann' (1824), can be
seen at
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Museum/4782/cdflandscapes.htm
are much more than mere naturalistic portrayals, just as the picaresque
passage of our hapless (anti-)hero is not so simply some cheap satire or
slapstick Baedekerisation.

"Trees now--Slothrop's intensely alert to trees, finally." (552.3up) For
Friedrich the mystical experience of nature was such a central concern that
he even painted an unembellished landscape as an altarpiece. More overt,
however, is the magnificent oak in his Village Landscape in Morning Light¹,
or Solitary Tree¹ (1822/3)
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Museum/4782/VillageLandscapeintheMorningLightL
onelyTree1823.jpg
which shows a shepherd resting while his flock graze peacefully in the
pastoral landscape (This was painted as a companion piece to 'Moonrise Over
the Sea'):
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Museum/4782/MoonriseovertheSea1822.jpg
Death and resurrection are symbolised in The Tree of Crows¹ (1822)
http://sunsite.auc.dk/cgfa/friedric/p-friedrich2.htm
and there is also Oak Tree in the Snow¹ (1829), where the dead branch on
the ground resembles the crucified Christ:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Museum/4782/OakTreeintheSnowunknown.jpg
More of Friedrich¹s trees at:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Museum/4782/cdftrees.htm
As in these paintings, the vein of nature mysticism running through *GR* is
rarely ironicised: even the narrative recount of Felipe's "noontime
devotionals to the living presence of a certain rock back in the wasteland
of La Rioja" retains a very real poignancy. (612-3)
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Museum/4782/TheHeldsteinnearRathen1808.jpg
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Arc/5340/rockyg1.htm

The images of "moonlight, sunset glow, the ocean, the beach, snowy
landscapes, churchyards, bleak moors, forest torrents, rocky valleys and the
like" which proliferate in Friedrich's oeuvre are echoed in *GR*.
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Arc/5340/fried2.htm
Friedrich¹s 'Monument to Goethe' could almost be Jamf's tomb:
http://www.goodart.org/cfgothe.jpg
and there are parallels and inter-connections here between Goethe and Rilke,
both as inspirations and somehow lost or ever-elusive for all that, for each
artist. Friedrich's 'Owl on a Tombstone' (1836) reminds me of Geli's Wernher
perhaps
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Arc/5340/owltomb.htm
while the following passage from *GR* combines some of Friedrich's subjects
into a new  visualisation; the lovers, the ruins, the flight of birds as in
the 'Tree of Crows':
"Geli talks about her young man. They sit in her roofless room drinking a
pale wine known hereabouts as Nordhäuser Schattensaft. Overhead, black birds
with yellow beaks lace the sky, looping in the sunlight from their nests up
in the mountain castles and down in the city ruins." (290.21)
Friedrich's 'Morning in the Riesengebirge' similarly recalls the magical
morning when Slothrop and Geli cast their "God-shadows", the
"Brockengespenstphänomen ... confined to dawn's slender interface." (330-1)
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Museum/4782/MorningintheRiesengebirge1810.jpg
And, in 'Man and Woman Gazing at the Moon' (1830/35), the lovers stand
together by the rock of faith and stare at the waxing moon, a symbol of
Christ. There is a ridge of evergreens in the far distance to the right,
beyond the dead tree, symbolising the hope for salvation and rebirth.
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Arc/5340/manandwo.htm

Alongside the loftiness and visionary flights of German Romanticism (as
exemplified in Rilke, Friedrich, the Nazarenes, Schlegel, Schelling, Heine,
Wilhelm Wackenroder, Tiecke et. al., as in *GR*) there is often a
concomitant and competing, or consequential, impetus of pessimism and
absolute despair, a sense that such divinity as is perceived is ultimately
unattainable by flawed and worthless humanity. And so, with this
realisation, all human institutions and edifices are doomed to decay and
desolation, (or, as with Blicero and Enzian, such annihilation is embraced
and actively sought-after): "Charred, helpless latticework: what was wooden
now only settles, without strength. Green human shapes flash in the ruins."
(501.28)
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Museum/4782/AbbeyintheOakwood1810.jpg
Such revelations are often appallingly and bitterly (self-)mocking. The
"white image" of the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima in the newspaper fragment
conveys "the same coherence, the same hey-lookit-me smugness, as the Cross
does. It is not only  a sudden white genital onset in the sky--it is also,
perhaps a Tree . . . " (694.4)
I think that this despair is best exemplified in Friedrich's 'Sea of Ice',
also known as 'The Arctic Shipwreck', which may have been influenced by
accounts of William Parry's  polar expedition of 1819-20 in search of the
Northwest Passage
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/F/friedrich/sea_of_ice.jpg.html
and it is this image which could also represent the eventual fate of those
aboard the good ship *Anubis*, its human cargo a microcosm of the carnal
world: a ship of fools bearing ever "northwesterly, Kingdom-of-Deathward"
(673.4up), the "escape route" in reality a voyage straight into the "Herero
country of death" (706). In this image, too, is the truth Sir John Franklin
and Salomon Andrée must have found in "the polar silence".(589)

"The divine is everywhere", wrote Friedrich, "even in a grain of sand."
There's a "Soul in e'vry stone": even, Pynchon seems to be adding, in the
kif moirés and spilled jissom of out-and-out schlemihls like Slothrop.
http://www.goodart.org/cfaltar.jpg
Of this altarpiece Friedrich wrote that the rock was a symbol of unshakeable
faith, while the evergreen fir trees symbolized the eternal hope of mankind.
But Friedrich also realised that such interpretations depend inexorably upon
the viewer. Of another work he wrote: "On a bare stony seashore there
stands, raised on high, a cross--to those who see it as such, a consolation,
to those who do not simply a cross."

Is the baby smiling, or is it just gas? Which do you want it to be?
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Museum/4782/LandscapewithRainbow1810.jpg

best