An Apology to my Invective (was: A small Invective criticized)

[Saurio]

-----Mensaje original-----
De: Michel Ryckx <michel.ryckx at freebel.net>
Para: 'pynchon-l at waste.org' <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Fecha: Miércoles 24 de Mayo de 2000 6:15 PM
Asunto: Re: A small Invective criticized


>To mr(s?) Saurio.
The correct way to address me is "Holy Master of the Universe" but mr. will
do fine too.

>I just read your 'Invective' and think it very dishonest.
No, sorry, it is not.
It could be wrong.
It could be written hurriedly.
It could be stupid.
It could be unworthy of reading.
It could be something even I don´t agree 100% with
But it is not a fly-tit dishonest.

>Having read your small invective, I cannot do otherwise than giving you
some remarks for I think an >invective (and I read a few in Latin at school)
is a very funny, though difficult genre that has to be >written without
emotions getting in the way.

Yep, ok, I guess it is, maybe I also read some when I studied rethorics
styles, but in the title it was just a word used hurriedly before clicking
the "send" button and in (i guess) the everyday meaning.
Unless my entire knowledge of the english language is absolutely wrong, when
somebody "apologizes" is not making an speech in defense of somebody else
but asking for forgiveness.


Anyway, if you read that post of mine very well (and I think you did) you
surely had noticed that it end with this phrase:
"Anyway, this is something I´m writing quickly, without the care it requires
and in a language that´s not my own. Sorry."

I´m not apologizing (he, he, he), but explaining a fact: what I wrote was
written without the professional care it requires and in a language that´s
not my own, so many times I had to put "aproximate" words for my real
thoughts.
This doesn´t make me innocent of any guilt, of course, and I take the blame
of all my faults.

I will go on getting in knee-deep misunderstandings:
>The first 'industrial war' as you call it was when the first automatic guns
were used.  This was a major >invention and produced in large factories.
That war was the American Civil War, half a century before >WW I.  The
Crimean War saw the first trenches.  And the Boer War at the turn of the
century >introduced concentration camps, a British invention (by the way,
Baden Powell played a major role in >that one). The difference with WW I is
the scale.

See? Maybe there´s a "language-biassed" noise. I know that WWI wasn´t the
first war in the Industrial Era (it began in 1750, I guess, with Manchester
looms and so), not the first in using factory-made weapons. What I was
saying (and you say it so) is that WWI was the first War done in Industrial
Magnitude.
This is not something I personally say or believe, is something more or less
said by many intellectuals and historians from the whole world and the whole
pollitical spectrum. I derived all the listers to a Ernst Jünger text.
Unfortunately I don´t know how it is called in English, I guess it is "The
Total Movilization", translating literally the spanish title.

>It's a very strange idea (though wide-spread) that gas chambers are the
ultimate form of rationalism, >thus condemning rationalism as wrong.
Rationalism in itself has no value, it is just a way of using it >that makes
it right or wrong.  It is not because I fell off my bike three weeks ago
that I will never again >step on it.  The ambiguity of things, and not 'good
things turning into evil' is, I think, one of the main >themes in mr.
Pynchon's work: a thing is neutral, its use not.

Again, you are saying more or less the same what I was saying. Except for
that "Rationalism in itself has no value". It has, by positioning itself
outside good and evil. Get it? It think it is better than good, so better it
is free of any moral value, that is absolutely neutral.
You justify with the bike example (i rather prefer the hammer one). These
are technical objects, concrete things. Rational thinking (or any thinking)
is neither concrete nor technical, is an object that lives in the human
mind, and human minds are not "objective" medium.
(this is a hard topic to explain, I should have to use Merleau-Ponty right
now and since I am having a difficult time with a essay i´m writing about
him in spanish - essay I should be writing instead of this mail, blame me! -
I don´t dare to summon Monsieur Maurice in english, apologies (he, he) for
my cowardice)

I apology (it´s not funny anymore, Saurio!) for bringing up something I
can´t sustain without going into something longer and deeper than I feel
like too.
In another posts I promise to explain a belief I had about the wounds
Modernity received in the XX century, more reflections about M&D, some of
the concepts I sketched in this post and other stupidities that use to grow
in my mind.

Don´t take me too serious. I´m just a jester that sometimes believes he is a
philosopher.

**********************************************************
                              SAURIO
                     saurio at cvtci.com.ar
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
EL MARAVILLOSO MUNDO DE SAURIO:
            http://www.geocities.com/saurio.geo
LA IDEA FIJA (Revista bastante literaria):
            http://www.geocities.com/laideafija
**********************************************************