When Does Innocence End?

[Otto Sell]

From: jbor <jbor at bigpond.com>
Sent: Thursday, September 14, 2000 2:53 PM
Subject: Re: When Does Innocence End?
> ----------
> Blasphemy is simply "impious or profane talk", isn't it? It is Enzian who
> has blasphemed, in Weissmann's eyes, by using the name of God for the
carnal
> act he wants to engage in. I don't think it's suggested anywhere in the
> novel that the members of the Rhenish Missionary Society were child
> molesters, or that Enzian had been raped as a child.

Then, what is the blasphemy of the missionaries. In which way have they
talked impious or profane?

>If he had it would
> certainly be something he'd recall, I would imagine. He is very self-aware
> and open, in his own self-analyses but also in conversation with Ombindi
and
> Katje.

Not necessarily, as many cases of molested children prove. Remember how
Wolfley's essay is entitled: Repression's Rainbow.

>The Missionaries had all returned to Europe by 1904 anyway, when the
> German soldiers moved in (315). Pynchon sets out the historical timeline
> pretty clearly.

No doubt about that.

>
> The "Christian sickness" (320) is the shame and guilt reflexes which the
> Rhenish Missionary Society "infected" the Herero with in the 1870s-1880s-
> 1890s, both there in Sudwest, and by exposing them "to cathedrals,
Wagnerian
> soirees, Jaeger underwear, trying to get them interested in their souls"
> when they brought some back to "the Metropolis" in Europe (315). I get the
> impression from this that the Missionaries were pious, pretentious,
prudish
> types: patronising but vaguely benevolent.
>
> The missionaries had taken some of the natives back with them as
"specimens
> of a possibly doomed race" (315); the Herero had started dying out
seemingly
> voluntarily a "generation earlier" than the German program of
> "extermination" begun in 1904. The early missionaries and colonists
noticed
> that "there *was* a tribal mind at work out here, and it had chosen to
> commit suicide". (317)
>

All true but in what relation to the question?

> > To come back to the topic-line "When Does Innocence End?":
> > "It began when Weissmann brought him to Europe: a discovery that love,
among
> > these men, once past  the simple feel and orgasming of it, had to do
with
> > masculine technologies, with contracts, with winning and loosing . .
"  -
> > and so on (GR 324).
>
> The "innocence" ended before Ombindi and Enzian were even born, I think:
>
>        Cynically, though, Ombindi has preached this (i.e. "tribal
suicide",
>      the "Final Zero") in the name of the old Tribal Unity, and it's a
>      weakness in his pitch all right -- it looks bad, looks like Ombindi's
>      trying to make believe the Christian sickness never touched us, when
>      everyone knows it has infected us all, some to death. Yes it is a
>      little bit jive of Ombindi here to look back toward an innocence he's
>      really only heard about, can't himself believe in -- the gathered
>      purity of opposites, the village built like a mandala [....] Ombindi,
>      self-conned as any Christian, praises and prophesies that era of
>      innocence he just missed living in, one of the last pockets of pre-
>      Christian Oneness left on the planet .... (320-1)
>
> Now, in the Zone, despite the faction-fighting going on amongst the
> Zone-Herero, Enzian and Ombindi have struck "a strange rapprochement":
>
>     The Eternal Center can easily be seen as the Final Zero. Names and
>     methods vary, but the movement toward stillness is the same. (319)
>
> Ombindi's Final Zero is tribal suicide, but what is the "Eternal Center"
> which Enzian aspires to for himself as the saviour of his people, "the
> journey without hysteresis" he wishes to enact for them? His mandala is
the
> Rocket; "magic" (321), and "a destiny he cannot see past this sinister
> cryptography of naming" are what drive him on (322). It's faith, but in
> what?
>
> The Schwarzkommando were a Nazi unit, right? And Enzian (because he was
> Weissmann's protege) became their leader? But now in the Zone after the
war
> they've turned feral. They're heading north, into their "country of
death",
> gathering bits of rocket to construct the 00001 in which Enzian is going
to
> sacrifice himself (just as Blicero sacrificed Gottfried). So, does Enzian
> believe his martyrisation to the Rocket will somehow save/redeem *his*
> people? How?
>
> The closing statements of the little q & a between Ombindi and Enzian are
> instructive (325). Enzian has ardently maintained faith in Blicero's
vision:
>
>       "Did you ever, in the street, see a man that you knew, in the
instant,
>      *must* be Jesus Christ -- not hoped he was, or caught some
resemblance
>      -- but *knew*. The Deliverer, returned and walking among the people,
>      just the way the old stories promised . . . "
>

"all your make-believe ceased to matter." (325)

What remains of a belief if we *know*? - nothing:
"a field of force that vanishes once the unknown becomes the known."
(Fowler, p. 13)

> Ombindi hits him with the line from Weber about the "routinisation of
> charisma", which I take to be a jab at the way Enzian has been currying
the
> loyalty of the Herero factions by playing the field of their various
> religious affiliations. And it seems to me Enzian is acting out the Jesus
> role, too, is still Weissmann's loyal protege. I can't see the difference
> between what he is trying to achieve with the 00001 and what Blicero did
> with the 00000. Shooting people off into space in rockets *does* seem
nutty,
> but I'm not quite sure if absolute annihilation is what either of them are
> trying to achieve, or maybe it is:
>
>      The history of the old Hereros is one of lost messages. It began
>      in mythical times when, when the sly hare who nests in the Moon
>      brought death among men, instead of the Moon's true message. The
>      true message has never come. Perhaps the rocket is meant to take
>      us there someday, and then the Moon will tell us its truth at last.
>      There are those down in the Erdschweinhohle, younger ones who've
>      only known white autumn-prone Europe, who believe Moon is their
>      destiny. But older ones can remember that Moon, like Ndjambi Karunga,
>      is both the bringer of evil and its avenger. . . . (322)
>
> The "avenger" of evil sounds a bit like that angry God of Revelation to
me.

Surely. "Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich." (Rilke, Erste Elegie). When you
turn "guardian angel" upside down you get "guardian executioner" (727) and
what else is said in the Revelation. When we really read the bible it's a
very unfair story, from the beginning to the end. Indeed "Christian
sickness."
Maybe Enzian's rocket is just the counterpart to the 00000 like the
Manicheans on p. 727 believe.
The primal twins were Abel and Cain - whose sacrifice, the first killed lamb
mentioned in the bible, had been refused. Blicero is sacrificing Gottfried.
>
> Like Gottfried, Enzian has faith -- perhaps blind faith -- in Blicero, and
> in the Rocket (cf. the little faux-parable from that Edelman "gospel" at
> 314-5). I don't think Enzian ever really rationalises what he is doing, or
> why; he is just *doing*, because he believes in the rightness of it. I
think
> the answer of what "it" is lies with Blicero.
>
> best
>

That last about Enzian goes for the most of us - makes him pretty human.
Very fine put all, great. I have the same questions about Enzian's motives
as you. Do you think Blicero has treated Enzian in another way, more
friendly, like a real lover, than Gottfried? The impressions I've got around
the "Kinderofen" is not that Gottfried is playing the "Axis Berlin-Rome"
(94) by his free and own will. Blicero shouts at him, quite typically for
the time and place and I remember how shivers ran down my spine reading this
for the first time, remembering my own experiences with "Militaries" here.

a nice weekend to y'all, gotta drive, with Dr. Dre on cd:
"It's the same shit all around the globe."
(should be added to the website Doug found)

Otto