Balthus

[Eric Rosenbloom]

Balthus was a protegé of Rainer Maria Rilke, an important poet to Thomas Ruggles
Pynchon.

(Another giant of 20th-century art, Charles Trenet, also died this
weekend but I can't see an immediate connection to Pynchon.)

One might compare Balthus's provocative paintings of young girls with
the relations in Gravity's Rainbow between Franz Pökler and his
"daughter" (conceived after watching Greta Erdmann in Alpdrücken) and
between Slothrop and Greta Erdmann's daughter, Bianca.

Balthus's paintings are not as provocative "in the flesh" -- they are
big, solid, the girls indeed untouchable, their innocence intact.
They are our virgin soul. But in Gravity's Rainbow they are violated in
the sad desperation this war has brought, the angels made flesh, the
flesh killed.

Monte plus vite ma coeur là-haut, vite . . .   (Charles Trenet, "Hop hop")

--
Eric R



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