grgr (34): "the tower" (747)

[Otto Sell]

----- Original Message -----
From: Paul Mackin <pmackin at clark.net>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Friday, August 25, 2000 3:00 PM
Subject: Re: grgr (34): "the tower" (747)


>
>
> On Thu, 24 Aug 2000, Mark Wright AIA wrote:
>
> > That's what I'm after, as many meanings as people want to throw out for
> > consideration.  I thought that since the Tarot gloss Otto brought in
> > was so illuminating, for me anyway, of a hopeful interpretation of
> > something rather bleak sounding, the same Tarot source might the soul
> > of someone other than preterite me to that stone over there....
> >
> > It wounds my sense of decorum to think that P might have just thought
> > something sounded cool and rilly, like, deep and all, and just stuck it
> > in because because.  On the other hand it works like that, doesn't it.
> > What do I know, I'm only bitch-slappin
> >
> > Mark
>
>
> Jules Siegel in a post to the p-list I think sort of accused P of doing
> something like picking up material he thought sounded good without regard
> to specific meaning. 'Course Jules was a little careless at times.
>
> By the way, did Otto ever clarify his translation? It seemed to me
> that the same word used in German to refer to 'the Mighty' was also
> used to refer to 'the Elect.' In English this would never work. Not in
> theology either where the mighty are not necessarily the elect (even
> though in Protestantism worldly success in sometimes taken as a
> sign of election)--because as everyone knows it is harder for a rich
> man to attain heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.
>
> Just asking.
>
> P.
>

I think that the following post from David Simpson gives an appropriate
answer:

>Pynchon writes with an acute awareness of previous literature and
especially of
>distinguished prior uses of a word or symbol very much in mind. Hence his
>"tower" is almost certain to recollect a wide range of  earlier literary
>"towers," from the Bible and Milton to Browning and Yeats. He probably has
in
>mind something like Tower = Babel = the Rocket = Technology = Western
>Civilization. Other possible associations include churches and castles
(hence
>the Church and the Ruling classes), observatories and watchtowers (= Vision
=
>Imagination and Poetry (as in Yeats) = Metaphysics or Apocalypse) and
towers as
>places of seclusion and captivity (cf. Lot 49).

I could have called them "Boston Brahmins" too!
Thanks David

Otto