SOS and Rilke

[jbor]

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

> I hear no reply to my comparison of the 175 with the
> Africans Sold On Suicide

They [the 175s] wouldn't have had "freedom" as such prior to their
internment and they probably recognised that they wouldn't get "freedom" as
such upon liberation: they no doubt recognised that the war wasn't about Gay
Rights at all. And so, they opt for segregation: they simply adopt the
tiered authority structure which was in place at Dora to regulate their own
community. Probably because it functioned efficiently. They attempt to set
up a little "utopia" of their own, just like the Herero Empty Ones or the
Argentine anarchists who have organised some sort of cosmopolitan
film/commune. But, as the narrative noted then:

     It isn't the strangest village in the Zone. Squalidozzi has come in out
   of his wanderings with tales of Palestinian units strayed all the way
   from Italy, who've settled down farther east and started up Hasidic
   communes, on the pattern of a century and a half ago. There are onetime
   company towns come under the fleet and jittery rule of Mercury, dedicated
   now to a single industry, mail delivery, eastward and back, in among the
   Soviets and out, 100 marks a letter. One village in Mecklenburg has been
   taken over by army dogs. ... (613-4)

In each case what it is is self-determination par excellence ("anarchy
...?"); all these mini-nations are doomed, of course (remember how Slothrop
"is as properly constituted a state as any other in the Zone these days" too
at 291.4); for *we* know what comes next. They don't, however, though the
portents are there (those Russian MPs and Polish guerillas at 668-9).

> or on Rilke.

[Weissmann] read Rilke. He read it to his lover, Enzian, in Sudwest: taught
him the language, the culture. [...] The scene at 99-101 is poignant.

> No bigotry there I
> guess.