Weissmann/Blicero

[jbor]

----------
>From: Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
>

> When you extrapolated, and won't elaborate on your
> extrapolation, suggesting that the reason for Blicero's
> slide was in some way due to his open homosexuality

Well, no, this isn't true. I said I was extrapolating, that there was no
textual evidence to connect the two phenomena. But I asked how *you* account
for Blicero's slide.

> I said: There freedom is a
> banishment not because they are homosexuals.

... but because they are ... what?

> But you keep cutting my posts and
> frustrating the debate, cutting this last sentence out and
> calling me on bigotry.

I said it sounds like bigotry to me to characterise homosexuality as a form
of deviance and a sign and/or symptom of some sexual urge-to-death. Maybe
you mean to do this, maybe you don't. I'm still unclear. I don't believe
that this is what Pynchon is doing in the novel.

> If they are questions about me and your accusations of
> bigotry, I'm sorry, I don't want to  discuss it with you.

I'm tired of being slandered as a "name-caller", Terrance. Please desist.

My questions were these:

1) And, what about that other glimpse of Weissmann at this time, there at
the end of Pokler's story: that handwritten note on the final furlough form
(432.16), and the act of personal kindness beyond any notion or call of
"duty" which *it* discloses?

2) But, the slide (i.e. Blicero's) *is* there. So, what do *you* make of it?

3) Is "the need to be imprisoned, controlled" a pertinent characteristic of
homosexuality, in your opinion, then?

4) It might be interesting to consider the significance
of the inverted commas around that word "liberation" in the text (665.3up),
however. (i.e. Have you considered this? What do you make of it?)

5) Why are they (the 175s) any different from any other "liberated"
prisoner, except for that homosexual label with which they have been
numbered, and by which they can be identified as a discrete group in the
text?

*******

>> > "WHo else COULD the 175s have
>> > chosen..." Sounds like they didn't have a chose, doesn't it,
>>
>> No, it sounds like a rhetorical question to me.
>
> OK, a rhetorical question implying what?

No, a rhetorical question as opposed to an insinuation that they had no
choice.

>>
>> > and besides they "choose" him "for their very highest
>> > oppressor." Oppressor?
>>
>> oppress vb ... 3. to lie heavy on (the mind, imagination, etc.) ...
>>                                               [Collins]
>
> The context does not support this connotation.  Tell me to
> fuck off again, it's OK,
> but this is lame obfuscation.

No, it's a dictionary definition, not a "connotation". Are you saying I'm a
lame obfuscator? Isn't this what you've determined to be "name-calling"?

>> > How can he be a model of their
>> > humanity and their "chosen" highest oppressor?
>>
>> A benevolent despot, perhaps? A father-god?
>
> A father Imago,  perhaps? Yes, I think I posted several long
> posts on Blicero and Father Imago, I'll dig them up.

OK, whatever you want. I'm sure I would have looked at them already.

snip

(I snip to save bandwidth, btw, no other motive.)

> My argument is that they have taken him as their oppressor
> in "liberated" banishment  not simply because of what they
> hear from the SS guards, he was  openly homosexual, but
> because "Weissmann/Blicero's presence crossed the wall,
> warping, shivering into the fetid bunkrooms, with the same
> reach toward another shape as words trying to make their way
> through dreams." GR.666

My argument is that his *presence* had "crossed the wall" precisely
*because* of the fear of the SS guards. Weissmann's "presence" in Dora was
symbolic rather than actual: it was reified in the guards' fear, their
suppressed whisperings. What this "presence" represented for these prisoners
was an authority beyond the SS command, beyond the oppression they
experienced in the labour camp. Though the guards stopped talking when the
prisoners were near, they caught the name, could still sense the fear, and
so constructed an image of this leader: this was their "reach toward another
shape as words trying to make their way through dreams." I submit that the
175s recognised his as an authority which was both "absolute" (i.e.
god-like: one which could override or "transcend" the political authority of
the regime, the immediate cruelty of their SS guards), and benevolent (and
the only logical connection I can see for that premise is that he is openly
homosexual, and that this had been part of his "presence", or legend, which
had seeped "through the wall" -- I read this phrase as a metaphor because
Weissmann was *literally* a mid-ranking officer at the Mittelwerke while the
prisoners were in Dora). This is why, imo, "the name has found its way this
far east" to their encampment at Police, or thereabouts.