WWII in GR

[jbor]

I think the envelope that monroe is trying to push is that unless you bow in
deference to the Holocaust pony he is flogging away at w/r/t *GR* then
somehow your own "political ... commitments" are on show like petticoats:
millison's "neo-Nazi" and "Holocaust-denier" slurs regurgitated in other
words. Bully boy tactics. Quite a fascist strategy, actually. Your previous
post was clear.

Pynchon characterises Weissmann's psychology as being deeply immersed in a
version of Rilkean art-apocalyptalism I believe: the artist exalted as the
mediator between nature and pure form. Whether or not the character
interprets or misinterprets Rilke's poetic vision I think that one point
Pynchon is making is that Rilke's spiritual melancholy and religious
mysticism are the basis of Blicero's beliefs and actions, that there is a
deeply-felt moral (?), or at least religious, integrity to what he is trying
to achieve. Remember too that with the 00000 he has set off on his own
tangent from Nazism, the Reich's failure imminent and obviously so by this
point, and that as a "Nazi" he has been little more than a bureaucrat, and
the captain of a rocket battery in those last months. The sacrifice of
Gottfried (his lover, his Son) is to be be his own soul's transcendence.

You're quite right about Blicero's death: if not a suicide he will be
killed. He is of no value to the Allies, for they have their own bureaucrats
and military commanders (eg Mossmoon, Sir Marcus, Pudding. They have their
own scientists too -- eg Pointsman and Mexico -- it's just that they're not
very good or reliably loyal to the program at hand! That's why the Allies're
all clamouring after von Braun, Narrisch, Pokler & co. after the war,
because of the demonstrable successes of the German rocket program. And,
indeed, Gottfried is the first man in space; quite a remarkable achievement!
But the lesson of the British scientific/ military/industrial conglomerate
depicted in the novel is that Pointsman does at some point wield
considerable influence over the direction of the Allied war effort. And so
we're taken back to the culpability thing again, but it's only by inference
or analogy with Pointy that Pokler's, or von Braun's, complicity or guilt
can be appointed in the text I think ...) Anyway, back to Blicero,
bureaucrats and military commanders were not an invention of the Nazis, and
their existence and prestige in the West has continued unabated (which is
what the Tarot reading is showing the reader imo) despite the atrocities of
the war for which they can be held morally responsible, or, *are*
responsible as far as *any* individual can be responsible for such things.

My question with Weissmann "the Nazi" in *GR* is: why Rilke? why not
Nietzsche? That's the stereotype isn't it? Those "evil Nazis" reconstructed
the "will to power" and the Ubermensch in their own image. I think that the
popularity of Rilke's poetry has not waned, was and is possibly still at a
new peak in *GR*'s and our own times, whereas the stigma of Nazism still
attaches to Nietzschean thought. But Blicero is not "evil" imo.

best

----------
>From: Paul Mackin <pmackin at clark.net>
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: WWII in GR
>Date: Sun, Aug 13, 2000, 12:26 AM
>

> Weissmann and his psychology seem, I
> believe, rather a deep mystery to us readers. And transferences
> of the type P wished to suggest had to be equally mysterious. vB was a
> rather pedestrian, aside from his technical proficiency, figure, not
> even a very good Nazi. Boring in other words. Hope it's clear I'm talking
> here about literary strategy not history. vB and a great many other
> circumstances can be and have been seen as plausible historic links--not
> necessarily merely instrumental ones with regard to missle development
> either. P by including vB prominently in the epigraph made use of
> this. But Weissmann, or his spirit since I believe the mortal himself is
> dead by the time postwar America rolls around, got top billing--when the
> high drama of the 00000 launching required, well, high drama.