Weissman & Rilke

[jbor]

He who now wishes to be referred to as plain Jane:

snip
> Yes, you might go back and look at how Weissmann reads Rilke.

The character Weissmann would read Rilke in German I imagine. However,
Pynchon, Weissmann's creator, would have read Rilke in an English
translation (which one, I wonder?), if indeed at all, if the imperfect
command of German demonstrated in the text and remarked by several here is
anything to go by. So what we are looking at is how Pynchon constructs
Weissmann's readings of Rilke, and to what uses the character's affinity for
the Duino Elegies is being put, aren't we?

To be honest I don't see how a reader of the novel, particularly an
English-speaking reader, might be able to assert that there are right and
wrong readings of Rilke in the first place, let alone assume -- on the basis
of nil evidence in the text mind you -- that Pynchon wishes to characterise
Weissmann's readings of Rilke as wrong, or that he intended to portray
changes in the character's interpretations of the poems. If Weissmann's
readings are "wrong", where are the "right" readings which alert the reader
to this? These would be "right" readings of an admittedly 'difficult' German
poet which you are saying that Pynchon (who has read the poems in
translation mind you) presumes to possess, as opposed to the "wrong"
readings which he has fobbed off onto the character. Further, if Weissmann's
readings of Rilke change, how have these changes been flagged in the text?
And, what's the difference between a "transmogrification" and a
"transformation"?

I'd say that the evidence is being manufactured to affirm a stereotype which
Pynchon's text actually seems determined to resist. Why?

> He is a German who we  find in Sudest in 1922. Not a good place to be in
> Pynchon's novels. He is in "Love." With whom? With what? Why with "Empire"
> of course, and" poetry", and his "own arrogance" and that's not a virtuous
> combination in a Pynchon novel.
snip

He's neither a Nazi nor in Sudwest by choice. Why isn't it a good place to
be? What does that mean? It's not his fault that he's there is it? So, what
are the virtuous combinations? Who decides what is and isn't "virtuous"?
What's wrong with poetry? Is this the extent of Pynchon's characterisation
of Weissmann in Sudwest?