Osmosis & P's Gnostic Cosmoses

[Terrance]

Dave Monroe wrote:
> 
> Inetrestingly, that introspective gnostic drive seems--seems, although
> ...--diametrically opposed to the libidinal liberation espoused by the
> likes of Herbert Marcuse (Eros and Civilization) and, esp., Norman O.
> Brown (Life Against Death), both of whom were certainly influences not
> only on Pynchon by at LEAST the time of Gravity's Rainbow (Terrance?),
> but influential figures throughout those swinging free-love sixties as
> well.  But do take a look at Marcuse's reconsideration of such possibly
> wrteched excesses in his "Political Preface" in the 1966 republication
> of E & C (he also wrote an aftertword to Brown's Love's Body which I've
> yet to see which I'm under the impression might be of a similarly
> cautionary tenor), think that, esp. by the time of GR, esp. in the
> aftermath of those wretchedly excessive 60s (Vietnam, Altamont, all
> sorts of metonyms come to mind here), there might well be a similar
> reconsideration of all such "dissidences" going on in GR.  But what then
> to say of V.?  Well, we do have The Whole Sick Crew,  Foppl's party,
> Southwest Africa, and so forth ...


These analyses of the facts of the story remind me of that
short story by Borges, "Death And The Compass." Of course
that story also reminds me of the Religious themes that
infuse these tangled stories with a thematic energy that if
absent would surely bore and perhaps even frustrate the most
patient reader. Anyways, in V. we are in the Catholic world
and we could say that a Judaeo-Christian (please it's just a
term) Universe is unwinding from one of those Gyres of
Yeats--"Turning and turning...", from The Second Coming,  so
idiosyncratic esoteric that poem, we might think of one of
those historians or economists or mystics that have these
millennial cycles, and here we are, so POMO,  at the turn of
the century reading about Henry Adams and Victoria and
Robert Graves and I do wonder why V. is not a best seller,
who could have imagined that the Education would be, all of
sudden , on every college Sophomore's reading list, ain't
life Ironic and beautiful, but anyway, it seems that the
Virgin become Dynamo (Mary becomes V and V-2 and the Church
becomes TWSC)  has left the Groom (Christ) at the Alter and
when we consider this event in light of existentialist
despair (Eliot/Hemingway--Small Rain) it is possible to read
the little g gnostic without a doubt (all puns intended),
and gnostic and Modern and existential gnosticism and
literary gnosticism in the novel V. And what we get in P is
the incorporation of the Gnostic Universe. Why? Well to
fictionalize the nightmarish existence of Postmodern life.
And while what Paul says, that we simply keep on moving
(Slothrop for example or the League of Nations aboard the
Anubis in GR) can be rather frightening, it can also be very
liberating, in that even if nothing is connected
(Anti-paranoia not being a condition any of us can stand for
very long), even if the mighty clock maker or No Body's
Daddy in the Sky is as dead as Elvis or has has left the
building, there are always agreements to Control and make
Order and if that is an equally frightening notion, well
have a beer, blow into your Kazoo and remember Murphy's Law.
In Gnostic terms, in  contradistinction to the
Judeo-Christian tradition, which as Brother Vincent taught
me,  explains the existence of evil in the world by the Fall
of our Grand Parents, favored of heaven so highly, Lords of
the world but for one flaw, fatal flaw, fortunate fall,
mortal taste, free to fall,  all those sin and death and
devil tales (what has Slothrop got? I forgot but P took the
term very deliberately from Norman O. Brown--a Fatal Flaw?),
anyway, in the Gnostic system, evil is the product of a
disruption in the divine realm  and man, having once lived
in a heavenly abode (you can see why P was attracted to
Rilke's Angels and that Cartesian thingy for his GR too) was
thrown into an alien and   baneful world and there he was
condemned to live imprisoned in his mind (this is the case
in the Gnostic world in GR, solipsistic history an extension
of the narcissistic history of CL and the Fetishistic
history of V.) and his body,  all alone, to lead a solitary
life of utter despair, an anguished  existence. Now the idea
that a meaningful universe was created  by a rational Being
is found in Plato,  Timaeus, but although I have noted the
Neoplatonism of the Gnostic cosmogony (the disdain for the
material), in the Gnostic view Plato's meaningful and
rational world is turned upside down. You can see how this
too might appeal to TRP, but P keeps reversing the poles and
I think it's a mistake to read him as absolutely
anti-rational. Now if we considered a Gnostic systems of
cosmology, P takes a lot from Scholem, Isaac Luria for
example, and mixes them up to serve his purposes and he
alludes to other systems that indicate that even as early as
the Short Stories and V. he was read up in the complex
cosmic dramas, and what we find is that in these dramas
Plato's demiurge often becomes a blunderer who is ignorant
of the true Divinity's existence  Now, this material
creation, sometimes divided into seven of some other odd
number of  planetary spheres or transparent shells, each is
ruled over by archons or, according to what becomes in
Modern and Postmodern Literature, the "the cosmic
bureaucrats." These archons are all about Control and other
base matters like P&L. That's Profits AND Losses. Now
everyone wants tits like Barbie, I mean Anderson what's her
name and plastics is a very profitable business. Got to be
lots of Irony in all this and P loves Irony. 


I did not know that he wrote an Afterword to LB, not in my
copy, but anyway, something from Central Services...this has
not been a recording, this has not been a recording....

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/02/002brubach.htm