GRGR(30) - Blackness

[David Morris]

Katje is unprepared for Enzian’s “blackness,” which is strange for someone 
who’s history is as one of Blicero’s “children.”   But then Katje never 
really gave herself to the game.  As Enzian puts it, Katje was meant to 
survive.  She has always adjusted herself, her act, to the demands of the 
power structure, but never “become” her role, always maintaining “herself” 
at a distance.

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(661.23)	Understand it isn’t _his_ blackness, but her own – inadmissible 
darkness she is making believe for the moment is Enzian’s, something beyond 
even the center of Pan’s grove, something not pastoral at all, but of the 
city, a set of ways in which the natural forces are turned aside, stepped 
down, rectified or bled to the ground and come out very like the malignant 
death:  the Qlippolth that Weissman has “transcended,” souls whose journey 
across was so bad they lost all their kindness back in the blue lighting […]
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Katje is on a mission to find Slothrop, but in the process she must face 
_her own_ blackness.  Enzian’s  nature really has nothing to do with _this_ 
blackness.  He is only a place for Katje’s projections to occur.  As an 
“inadmissible darkness” this blackness would be a form of the Jungian 
“shadow,” but there is more to this darkness than that.

Katje is familiar with Pan’s grove (familiar as in “been there, done that”), 
which is a place of darkness in its own right.  Pan’s grove is in the thick 
dark growth beyond the white marble paths.  It is a “natural” darkness, 
which entices and provokes frenzy, but it is not ultimately a “sinful” 
darkness.  Again in Jungian terms, to synthesize that darkness is supposed 
to be good for the soul.

But this blackness is darker and unnatural, man-made and a perversion of the 
natural, and as such it is evil.  A key to understanding is provided by 
Enzian:  “He’s gone beyond _his_ pain, _his_ sin – driven deeper into Their 
province, into control, synthesis and control, further than [we, who have 
not transcended ]” (661.1)  Greta described Blicero as having moved into a 
new land, transformed himself into a new creature, like a werewolf (although 
that’s too natural an image).  He has become a monster, but not of the dumb 
movie-kind.  He has become a fully conscious monster (Neitzsche’ Superman?).

So, this blackness (which Blicero has transcended and which hounds Katje) is 
define by pain and sin, and it is transcended by control and synthesis.  
Enzian also tells us in this segment that “the Blicero I loved was a very 
young man, in love with empire, poetry, his own arrogance.  Those all must 
have been important to me once.” (690.11)  If Enzian in some way represents 
this blackness, it may be that the “empire” that young Blicero loved was 
also the sin he needed to transcend (Remember the “Empire” which is fully 
explicated way back in the “War’s evensong” segment?).    Blicero would have 
incorporated this sin to become “beyond sin.”  Through control he would have 
self-transformed into a guiltless (though fully evil) state.  And the act 
which consummates this transformation is his sacrifice-launching of the 
“Son,” whereby King Blicero fully embraces his evil role.

Katje, on the other hand,  is in search of Slothrop, and is thus required to 
face (even as she tries to avoid) this blackness, which she was unprepared 
to do.  Enzian offers her a easy out, “All you _have_ to do is tag along 
with us, and wait till he shows up again.  Why bother yourself with the 
rest?”  “The rest” would mean to come to terms with this blackness, which 
Katje knows she should do, and she rephrases it as “Don’t I have to know 
_why_ he’s out here, what I did to him, for Them?”  This line again recalls 
an earlier question of Blicero’s, “What did I make of him?” (100.12)  By 
these two questions GR brings us full circle.

David Morris

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