The Gnostic Pynchon

[Lorentzen / Nicklaus]

Dave Monroe schrieb:

> I haven't gotten around to Dwight Eddins' The Gnostic Pynchon yet, but ...
>  Eric
> Vogelin's Science, Politics and Gnosticism was, I believe first published ca.
> 1968, and could presumably have been a source for Pynchon, at least in time
>  for
> Gravity's Rainbow.  However, I've not seen it come up much, if at all, in the
> critical literature.  I've just subscribed to this list, so I don't know if
> it's been mentioned, but I believe the general consensus has been that
> Pynchon's source for most things gnostic was likely Hans Jonas's seminal The
> Gnostic Religion, first published in English, I believe, in 1963--at any rate,
> that seems the source for most commentators, and I recall that I came by it
>  via
> some bit of Pynchoniana or another.


  "philosophy comes from the loving of being; it is the loving longing of human 
   beings, to recognize the order of being and to tune in to that. gnosis wants 
   domination over the being; to get command on the being the gnostic constructs 
   his system. the system is a gnostic thinking pattern, not a philosophical 
   one." 
                      (eric voegelin: science, politics and gnosticism)

   
   well, at least he's got the guts to exclude a lot of modern german    
   philosophers - from hegel to schmitz - from his notion of philosophy. but    
   this does not make his concept of gnosticism true ... let's hear an expert or 
   two on that. 


   here comes peter "menschenpark" sloterdijk:

   "... for decades this author (voegelin) has, with the manic energy of an     
   inaccurate inquisition, denunciated everything as "gnostic mass movement"    
   which tried to get along without the blessings of aristotle and aquinus: 
   'progressivism, positivism, marxism, psychoanalysis, communism, fascism and 
   national socialism' (science, politics and gnosticism, p. 83). voegelin's 
   acquaitance of the authentic gnostic writings, however, can hardly be shown. 
   it seems that the twentieth century has brought to the charismatic political 
   scientist a general hysterical itching ..." (die wahre irrlehre)       


   and giovanni filoramo adds:

   "indeed, there is a danger of losing all contact with the historical reality 
   of the object of research. the term 'gnosis', in many of these cases, instead 
   of evoking a concrete historical world with its fears and anxieties, hopes 
   and promises of salvation, conjures up rather the lifeless phantasm of gnosis 
   as a universal category of the human spirit, an 'eternal' form of knowledge, 
   a universal label, an empty box refilled with different contents hurriedly 
   pushed onto the intellectual market by cultural fashions." (a history of 
   gnosticism)
   

   the last man i want to quote her now is not really an expert (- and his    
   books, as was mentioned on this list before, can be read best in times of    
   high school), but he nevertheless has a good observation to offer now and    
   then:

   "anti-gnosticism was in the early 1960s among conservatives an almost 
    chronical theme, which once even appeared in a leading article in  t i m e.
    (...) for an extrem chistian pessimist as voegelin is everybody who tries to 
    be happy - or to make other people happy - dangerously close to the 
    heterodoxy of gnosticism. in this sense i am completely for 'a 
    visible-making of the ultimate things', if possible already next tuesday!"

                       (r.a. wilson: the illuminati papers)       



   & a final quote which brings us back to gr:

          "two powers dominate the universe: light and gravity."
 
 so sez simone weil.



                               be seeing you next tuesday: kfl



> Now, my understanding is that Pynchon, indeed, came from a New England
> Protestant, even Puritan, background, although his Catholic mother raised him
> as a Catholic (hence perhaps the relationship between chronology in Gravity's
> Rainbow and the Liturgical calendar, as noted by Steven Weisenberger in his
> introduction to his A "Gravity's Rainbow" Companion).  And I've no doubt about
> his interest in, use (and abuse) of gnosticism--indeed, heterodox and/or
> heretical Christianities in general--in Gravity's Rainbow (and it seems to me
> his interest in Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies might be realted, but ...),
> but what I find interesting is his rather ... counter-gnostic emphasis on the
> body, on the corporeal, on the vulgar, on that "lower material bodily strata"
> (Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World) which, in its kenotic (Bakhtin
> again?) emphasis on Incarnation vs. (as with the gnostics) Resurrection, on
> this vs. the other, an other world (see, for example, Peter Brown, The Body
>  and
> Society: Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity), on, perhaps, the
>  Preterite
> vs. the Elect.  Pynchon as, Pynchon a gnostic?  If not hardly, then, well,
>  with
> difficulty, Pynchon's Christian background being complicated, indeed.  Indeed,
> perhaps Pynchon, like Vogelin, recognizes a certain gnosticism in modernity,
> postmodernity, even (see Harold Bloom, Omens of Millenium, as well as Mark
> Edmundson, Nightmare on Main Street: Angels, Sadomasochism and the Culture of
> Gothic), in contemporary (at least) science, and is making it a point of
> critique.  Anybody recall if Alfred North Whitehead had anything to say about
> this in Science and the Modern World, which was definitely a source for
> Pynchon?  Any comments?  Examples? Lines to follow?  Let me know ...