VV(1) - Malta -6

[Otto Sell]

Fascinating sites, Dave ... the smell of wild thyme would be good for the
cold I have caught. Maybe imagination will do some placebo.

"Imagine paradise: no weapons; no war; not even a defensive wall for over a
thousand years."
http://www.otsf.org/atlantis.html

"On a good day, one can still sit on a sun-warmed stone near Mnajdra Temple
with only the wind in his ears. He can smell wild thyme and gaze at the
Mediterranean Sea as if nothing had changed in 5,000 years."
http://www.otsf.org/equinox.html

But this peaceful, dreamily feeling won't remain undisturbed:

"(...) in dream there are two worlds: the street and under the street. One
is the kingdom of death and one of life. And how can a poet live without
exploring the other kingdom, even if only as a kind of tourist? A poet feeds
on dream. If no convoys come what else is there to feed on?" (325)

Seems as if I found the text-piece where Fowler (p. 10) got his "Other
Kingdom" from. He claims that all of Pynchon's fiction is about this clash
between the two kingdoms.
Who is the poetic tourist in the kingdom of death? Orpheus, Rilke, Fausto,
the Group 37?
Orpheus had to go underground to get into the realm of death. Airwar turns
this upside down.

"Our poets write of nothing now but the rain of bombs from what was once
Heaven." (309)
Now the "subterranean home" (324) is the safe place.

Note how closely poetics and the hardships of war are brought to each other
("A poet feeds on dream. If no convoys come what else is there to feed
on?").

"Poetry had to be as hasty and rough as eating, sleep or sex. (...) put the
truth on record.
"Truth" I mean, in the sense of attainable accuracy. No metaphysics. Poetry
is not communication with Angels or with the "subconsious." It is
communication with the guts, genitals and five portals of sense. Nothing
more." (318)

A remarkable statement on art theory.

Lurking into the eleventh chapter of V. makes me think of some other things
too:

http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/Palms/3401/british.html
"During the Second World War Malta, being a British base, was heavily
targeted by both the Italians and the Germans. Especially Valletta and the
Three Cities suffered a lot. The war brought the British and the Maltese
closer to each other. On the 15th of April 1942 King George VI granted the
George Cross to the Maltese population, 'for gallantry'."

A look into the index of "Die Wehrmachtsberichte 1939-1945" (dtv reprint,
München 1985) reveals that Malta has been extremely heavily attacked for
more than one and a half year by the Luftwaffe between January 17, 1941 and
the end of October 1942, with a break from June to December 1941. From Dec.
7, 1941 (Pearl Harbor) to Oct. 29, 1942, there are just a few days missing
in the list of attacks.

According to those bare, propagandistic entries of  "Das Oberkommando der
Wehrmacht gibt bekannt" this island and especially La Valetta has been
terrorized especially between Dec. 22, 1941 - until the end of May 1942. The
bombings must have been really heavy, sometimes going on day and night.
Nov. and Dec. 1942 have each only one entry, in the whole year of 1943 there
has only been one attack at May 22, plus four between July 20-27.

We tend to forget places like these while knowing all about the terrors
cities like London, Antwerp, Hiroshima, Lübeck, Hamburg and Dresden have
suffered.

As Fausto II notes:
"Now the winter's gregale brings in bombers from the north;" (322)

We all know what the wind and the north stand for in Pynchon's fiction.

Otto

PS
"You don't need no weathermen to tell which way the wind blows"
(Bob Dylan - Subterranean Homesick Blues)