GRGR Finale: Death and the City

[jbor]

----------
>From: lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de (Lorentzen / Nicklaus)
>

snip
> & weissmann is surely confronting
>  himself with the big d in a very radical & brave way ...

Yes, much of the novel, like any good product of The Romantic Imagination,
is concerned with Death, and in particular cultural, religious and
individual attempts to come to terms with Death. I agree with Kai that
Pynchon's own perspective on It in the novel is at least enigmatic, if not
altogether absent -- deliberately so in fact. (And, further, that *any*
"translation" of *any* text is bound to be in part or wholly dependent on
*interpretation*, and thus ersatz -- "Nachdichtungen" rather than truly
Ubersetzung -- especially so when the original is one taken from a different
language and culture and as highly-charged and metaphysically-oriented as
Rilke's songs and sonnets are.)

In terms of Japanese culture it isn't Samurai or Zen codes, of course, but
that of the kamikaze (quite stoic, if not indeed Stoic, I'd say, from
Jeremy's post) which Pynchon fixes on as another exemplar:

   Hi wa Ri ni katazu,
      Ri wa Ho ni katazu,
         Ho wa Ken ni katazu,
            Ken wa Ten ni katazu,

         [...]

      Injustice cannot conquer Principle,
      Principle cannot conquer Law,
      Law cannot conquer Power,
      Power cannot conquer Heaven.
                              (696)

"Komikal" though they may be to the generation which, like the Kenosha Kid,
thought 'Hogan's Heroes' was an amusing and appropriate source of cultural
nourishment for its children, their ability to overcome the "natural"
aversion to personal death presents the same dilemma for the
Western/Christian mindset which Enzian and the Herero Empty Ones, or Blicero
and Gottfried, or Rilke's songs to death -- any willing and joyful embrace
of suicide and personal oblivion, in fact -- does. And, of course, what
cannot be understood must be overwhelmed, appropriated, diminished in some
way, or tamed and, if this is not possible, destroyed. By force if
necessary. It is the colonising reflex, an instinct of political ideologies
as much as of lit-crit manifestoists (and discussion-list pretenders it
seems). Enzian is no saviour, Blicero is no devil, and Rilke is no Christian
mystic (Pynchon even less so) imo. They are just men, like Slothrop -- with
certain roles, certain authority, certain talents -- coming to grips with
Death.

I don't think Pynchon ... at least, *I* don't come away from the novel
thinking that Blicero's futile grasp at transcendence (through Love, Faith,
Sacrifice) is any more hare-brained than that of "the Christian God", on
which it is modelled, or Enzian's, or Slothrop's creative paranoia, or those
secular moviegoing Americans/Westerners -- i.e. the "old fans", us, the
reader, and Pynchon too: "(haven't *we*?)" my emph. -- sitting complacently
in that Orpheus Theatre at novel's end totally oblivious to Its imminent and
inevitable approach by virtue of our daily immersions in the "mindless
pleasures" of living such as masturbation, inter-personal contact,
hymn-singing, or any other of the human scrabblings (and scribblings) after
some panacea or avoidance which are depicted (and which the text itself also
embodies).

best