GRGR(17) Hauptstufe (380.18) and jelly

[rj]

tf
> Compare this with the serendipitious/sychronistic naming of
> Slothrop in the current chapters. Can't get the archives to
> work, but in there are some comments I posted a while back
> on naming, roots and Hillman. Names can create patterns of
> association, of meaning. Enzian's naming, association,  of
> Blicero--whiteman--with all the whiteness, of the cathedrals
> of death dealing europe, the white visitation and the
> bleaching terror we see in the current chapters and so on,
> which is again repeated as Pattern and the subversion of
> Pattern in that same passage at the end of the
> novel--"Brenschluss it can't be this
> soon...ultrawhite...bleaching...Blicker, Bleicherode,
> Bleacher, Blicero..."

Yes, I can see that this sort of symbolism is operating with Pynchon's
names (even Geli --> Angel fits this pattern). I was getting at the same
thing with the scuffling and schlepping Slothrop is doing about the
place until he becomes the Rocket, man. 

Remember also that Weissmann gives Enzian his name, from Rilke (101.21,
though Weissmann also gives Enzian "birth", or rebirth, in a sense, as
the Schwarzkommander we know and and love so well, so this mightn't be a
contingent factor at all.) And it is Enzian himself who embellishes it
into some sort of apostolic nomen I think (Enzian of Bleicheröde
314.8up). And who is it that makes the name change from Weissmann -->
Blicero (white/wise man --> he who bleaches/erases/obliterates), are we
ever told this? 

What I don't see is Blicero (or Geli, or Slothrop, or Katje, or Pudding)
as a referent to a particular historical personage. Even in the sequence
Terrance directs us back to at 236-244 there's Werner von Braun again,
arm in a sling, a member of Mr P's cast *in his own right*.

You've got to keep a hold on other names here though too: The White
Visitation, for example. I don't think it's systematic. But I guess
that's what you're saying. And there is a certain oxymoronic
onamatapoiec abreactive anthropomorphic jouissance in the idea of Geli
(jelly) actually tripping.

best