Rocket(s) & Blasphemy.6

[Paul Mackin]

I always enjoy Terrance's posts and have no objection to the view that 
B's reading of R is flawed. Who could deny it? But this must stand
alongside the question of what would be a GOOD reading or a GOOD
application of this undeniably great poet. Applying Rilke to life is a
connundrum inside an enigma. Giving death its due is bound to play
havoc with life. And what Blicero or the Nazis do to Rilke is no
random exception or random misapplication--not in GR which above all is a
book of misapplications--nor in life under what we call the human
condition. One could go on and on concerning the contradiction contained
in R's insight that death is inherent in life and ignored at life's
peril while at the same time death is still death, the extinction of
and the absence  of life.  But Blicero, Rilke, and Pynchon are
not role models. They portray a condition not a solution. There is NO
solution, only a recognition. 

			P.

On Wed, 20 Sep 2000, Terrance F. Flaherty wrote:

> Blicero's reading of Rilke is so warped that he  takes his 
> mission as "transformation" of Earth into the Kingdom of
> Death. He longs, Weissmann longs, but he longs to part with
> humanity and nature. He will become the apotheosis of
> gnostic alchemy, a cult that seeks nothing less than a
> surrogate order that will dominate natural cycles through
> artifice and stasis. The term transformation, I'm sure,
> caused the hair on the back of those readers familiar enough
> with Rilke's use of this term back in 1973 that several
> early reviews of the novel claimed that the most important
> cultural figure in Gravity's Rainbow was Rainer Maria Rilke
> and that the book could be read as a serio-comic variation
> on Rilke's Duino Elegies and their German Romantic echoes in
> Nazi culture.  Weissmann's transformation is infrahuman,
> demonic, a Qlippoth in gnostic terms.  In fact, Enzian, who
> speculates that Blicero has become a "fabulous monster",
> explicitly connects his fate with the gnostic hierarchy.
> Enzian says, "If he is alive," he may have changed by now
> past our recognition. We could have driven under him in the
> sky today and never seen. Whatever happened at the end, he
> has transcended. Even if he's only dead. He's gone beyond
> his pain, his sin-driven deep into Their province, into
> control, synthesis and control [GR.660-61]. These terms
> (synthesis and control) are exactly those used by the ghost
> of Walter Rathenau to describe the gnostic principles that
> actually drive history, as opposed to surface illusions of
> cause and effect.  As an adherent to the Cartel, Blicero
> joins in encouraging the proliferation of "structures
> favoring Death." Look high, Death, death which is a
> pornography, Death which impersonates life. One of the
> reasons I insisted on the LSD as chemistry of METAPHYSICAL
> control, determinism during GRGR is that in GR the stakes
> are high. The Faustian Quest is for Earth's HOLY GRAIL, HER
> VIRGINITY and PROCREATIVE MYSTERY, and the Jive Ass
> Mother-Fucker's Formula for  SIN is Control  of the secrets
> in "the hearts of certain molecules" that will give them
> Power to synthesize an alternative to natural processes of
> Life itself  and to control the unfolding of all events,
> thus fulfilling the gnostic nightmare of stasis and
> omnipotence. It is this gnosis that has enabled Blicero to
> lose his last vestiges of moral responsibility in the
> transcendental labyrinths of control. The result of this
> divestiture is an aura of absolute and disembodied
> evil, of Qlippoth spirituality, that causes the band of
> homosexual prisoners-the "175'S" from the Dora camp-to
> choose Blicero as the head of an "invisible SS" that will
> carry beyond earthly bounds the principles of Nazi
> oppression: "He is the Zone's worst specter. He is
> malignant, he pervades the lengthening summer nights. Like a
> cankered root he is changing, growing toward winter, growing
> whiter, toward the idleness and the famine. ...His power is
> absolute. " 
> 
> Now that's on page 666! Transformation!
>