GR and M&D related: telluric forces

[Lycidas at worldnet.att.net]

Thomas Eckhardt wrote:
> 
> Terrance wrote:
> 
> >"America was a gift from
> >the invisible powers, a way of returning." (GR.722)
> 
> Weissmann's perspective. He goes on: "But Europe refused it." Weissmann
> articulates what one might call the New World theme: the age-old European
> dream of being born again in some New Eden, an Earthly Paradise (or to find
> the "Realms of Prester John", Fountain of Youth etc.) exempt of history.
> This is the central theme of American, and I don't mean just US-American,
> literature to the present day, isn't it? From this root spring all the other
> grand images of America: noble savages; innocent nature and the garden; the
> Americans as new Adams (probably Eves also, but this part of the story tends
> to go unmentioned) etc. and their related counterparts: the ignoble savages,
> the hideous wilderness which have to be overcome in order to build that
> "City upon a Hill", yet again a paradise, albeit won by conquering nature,
> not by returning to it. 

Lots of book on this subject, HISTORY AS APOCALYPSE by
Thomas J.J. Altizer is one I recommend:

http://www.sunypress.edu/sunyp/backads/html/altizerhistory.html

Melville is not mentioned in this review, but Altizer takes
up Melville and a few 20th century Americans in a chapter on
American
fiction and eschatology.  

Following up on jbor's post, here is an Altizer essay that
goes right to the heart of Pynchon's self-conscious
questers. 

http://home.apu.edu/~CTRF/articles/1997_articles/altizer.html




In M&D this New World or American theme becomes the
> central thematic concern, though in which way exactly remains to be
> determined. "Return" seems to be the central term here, implying the hope
> that some cyclical vision of man and nature may yet be true: When Mason and
> Dixon return "us'd-broken" (755), their only hope is, as Mason puts it, to
> "count upon that failure to re-arrive perfectly, to be seen in all the rest
> of Creation..." (755) A similar passage can be found on 630, where Captain
> Zhang mentions "Experiences of that failure of perfect Return, that haunts
> all for whom time elapses". Related statements can be found all over the
> book. This seems to be about linear and cyclical time, History and myth,
> memory based on facts and memory as imagination. Between these binary
> oppositions it takes Mason and Dixon less than a week to run the line
> through somebody's house, their wigs askew...

Cyclical and linear time and history, the "kinder universe"
and the "gnostic universe" in Pynchon's GR are the focus of
Charles Hohmann's *Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow* and
Hohmann's gnostic reading is answered by Dwight Eddins in
his *Gnostic Pynchon*

Both books unfortunately are out of print. 

Hohmann's reading of GR and Rilke is outstanding.  Having VL
and M&D, both books were published before M&D, I contend
that
Eddins' "orphic naturalism" reply (though I know some
complain about his (G,g,Xg)nostic stencil) to Hohmann is a
correct reading of
Pynchon's religious dialectic.  


Blake never abandoned his American Vision even after history
turned against him. The irony of John Milton's view of 
America was not lost on Blake. 


"What numbers of faithful and free-born Englishmen and good
Christians have been constrained to forsake their dear
dearest home, their friends and kindred, whom nothing but
the wide ocean and the savage deserts of America could hide
and shelter from the fury of the bishops! O, if we could but
see the shape of our dear mother England, as poets are wont
to give a personal form to what they please, how would she
appear, think ye, but in a mourning weed, with ashes upon
her head, and tears  abundantly flowing from her eyes, to
behold so many of her children exposed at once and thrust
from things of dearest necessity, because their conscience
could not assent to things which the bishops thought
indifferent? Let the
astrologer be dismayed at the portentous blaze of comets and
impressions in the air, as foretelling troubles and changes
to states; I shall believe there cannot be a more ill-boding
sign to a nation (God turn the omen from us!) than when the
inhabitants, to avoid insufferable grievances at home, are
enforced by heaps to forsake their native country.

                                        John Milton


I know thee, I have found thee, & I will not let thee go;
Thou art the image of God who dwells in darkness of Africa;
And thou art fall'n to give me life in regions of dark
death. On my American plains I feel the struggling
afflictions Endur'd by roots that writhe their arms into the
nether deep: I see a serpent in Canada, who courts me to his
love;
In Mexico an Eagle, and a Lion in Peru; I see a Whale in the
South-sea, drinking my soul away. O what limb rending pains
I feel. thy fire & my frost single in howling pains, in
furrows by thy lightnings
rent; This is eternal death; and this the torment long
foretold.

                                William Blake