pynchon-l-digest V2 #1441

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

Paul Mackin wrote:
> 
> Why, thank you, Sir!
> 
>                         P.


My Dear Sirs & Madams, 

I begin with the due formality of which your "thank you
sir!," set me the example---otherwise, I should naturally
have begun with "My dear friends in cyberspace."

Slothrop///Rilke///Weissmann/Blicero

Slothrop approximates (How?)  Orpheus. 

A Rilkean Orpheus perhaps. 

Slothrop's "transcendence" may have something to do with the
"transformation" or  "metamorphoses" or "transcendence" of
Rilke's Orpheus. 

(Translations are worthless or simplifications, grossly
distorting the beauty of the language and the ideas of
Rilke. 

There are no "Good" or "Right" readings. 

Du aber, Göttlicher, du, bis zuletzt
noch Ertöner,
da ihn der Schwarm der verschmähten
Mänaden befiel,
hast ihr Gescrei übertönt mit Ordnung,
du Schöner,
aus den Zerstörenden stieg dein
erbauendes Spiel.

Keine war da, daß sie Haupt dir und
Leier zerstör',
wie sie auch rangen und rasten; und
alle die scharfen
Steine, die sie nach deinem Herzen
warfen,
wurden zu Sanftem an dir und begabt
mit Gehör.

Schließlich zerschlugen sie dich, von
der Rache gehetzt,
während dein Klang noch in Löwen
und Felsen verweilte
und in den Bäumen und Vögeln. Dort
singst du noch jetzt.

O du verlorener Gott! Du unendliche
Spur!
Nur weil dich reißend zuletzt die
Feindschaft verteilte,
sind wir die Hörenden jetzt und ein
Mund der Natur.

In R's  DE there is "transformation" that is  personified in
the figure of Orpheus in  SO. 

This transformation, I mean both the state of and the
process of, may have something to do with Slothrop's
dissolution and "transcendence. 

Maybe not. 

Parody. 

Maybe not. 

Comic. 

Maybe not. 

Tragic. 

Mabe not. 

If it is Parodic or  Ironic or  Comic, this may indicate
that some differences exist in TRP's and R's, Romanticism.  

Maybe not. (See my post on T.S. Eliot and TRP, some place in
the middle of GRGR. Yes, it was before I jumped out of a
window (no I didn't yell Geronimo, I yelled, SAVAGES!)  in
an expensive dress after reading about my dear Deleuze at
the NYPL.  

Perhaps Rilke is the Absolute Red Herring in GR.

Maybe not. 

Ambiguity. 

Maybe not.

If Ironic (the context appears to be Ironic), Slothrop's
dissolution it is hard to argue the ambiguity, red herring,
perhaps comedy. 

Maybe not.

The Irony seems to invite a Parodic reading. 

I think Edward Mendelson said that Slothop's dissoultion
summerizes the historical fate of literary modernism, or
something like that. 

Maybe not. 

Perhaps we can distinguish the "Classical Orpheus"  from
Rilke's idiosyncratic application/adaptation of Orpheus and
how his idiosyncrasies and TRP's, while idiosyncratic,
resonate Modern/PostModern "Epiphany." 

Maybe not (actually I've done this but it would be too much
work to post it here and have it torn apart, its gory visage
down the toilet sent, down the swift Hebrus to the Statan
Island shores. 

In the fragmented episodes, and elsewhere I suspect, TRP
demonstrates some knowledge of Milton. 

Maybe not. 

Where were ye, nymphs, when the remorseless deep 
    Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas? 
    For neither were ye playing on the steep 
    Where your bards, the famous Druids, lie, 
    Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high, 
    Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream. 
    Ay me! I fondly dream 
    'Had ye been there,' . . . for what could that have
done? 
    What could the muse herself that Orpheus bore, 
    The muse herself, for her enchanting son, 
    Whom universal nature did lament, 
    When, by the rout that made the hideous roar, 
    His gory visage down the stream was sent, 
    Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore? 
         
Alas! What boots it with uncessant care 
    To tend the homely slighted shephard's trade
.

Thankless & Muselessly Yours, 

Lycidas2


James Hanford has an essay ("The Pastoral Elegy and Milton's
Lycidas"
PMLA XXV, 1910) on classical and post-classical sources for
the poem.
It's reprinted in a book of his essays called _John Milton:
Poet and
Humanist_ (Western Reserve UP, 1966) and also in _Milton's
Lycidas: The
Tradition and the Poem (U. Missouri P., 1983). The main
renaissance
authors Hanford covers are Petrarch, Boccaccio, Sannazarro,
Ronsard, and
Spenser. _Milton's Lycidas_ also includes F. T. Prince's
essay, "The
Italian Element in Lycidas" (from _The Italian Element in
Milton's
Verse_, Oxford, 1954: 71-88). I think the Variorum
commentary on Milton
has notes other critical sources on this topic as well in
the volume that
covers Lycidas.