Germany (was Re: 1945

[jbor]

Terrance,

Just another thought on the "Dynastic succession" thing and references to
that "German mania for subdividing" (448), elsewhere given a distinct
religious overtone in the passage in _GR_ at 391:

     ... the German mania for name-giving, dividing the Creation finer
     and finer, analyzing, setting namer more closely apart from named ...

Mightn't the references here be to Lutheranism -- the Reformation,
Enlightenment, that whole project of rationalisation that was going on for
hundreds of years, loyalty to the Word of the Text etc (and indeed, the Holy
Roman Empire before it) -- rather than to something which only began to
surface in Europe in the latter part of the c 19th? It seems to me that the
Gnostic sects and faiths were all about an opposite sort of reaction: gnosis
(rather than "analysis"); myth, magic and mysticism; immanence and the
"light within" etc. It was the opponents of Gnosticism (eg. Ireneaus,
Tertullian and St Hippolytus) who were pointing to the Words on The Page
(and ripping quite a few of the pages out when they needed to) and shaking
their heads a lot, wasn't it? And, certainly "gnosticism" or "Gnosticism"
could never be referred to as a 'national' religion, of either Prussia or
any of the Germanic states pre-Unification, nor of Kaiser Bill's gig, nor
Weimar, nor even 1933-45.

Of course, with the specifically German brand of Christianity, there were
corresponding legacies from Calvinism (Protestantism ... the Puritans) and
all of the other strands; each of these at various times launching on very
similarly-styled "Crusades", fuelled by fervent self-righteousness, laying
waste to whole populations of "pagans" in colonial (and other) outposts
across the globe in the process. It might be interesting to compare what
Pynchon has to say about the Knights of Malta in _V._ later on I think.

best


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>>From: <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
>>

>> 391,
>
> ???
>
>
>> 426 (where the gnostics and Germans are equated)
>
> ??? (Pokler's "poor harassed German soul"???)
>
>>  448,
>
> the "German mania for subdividing" again??? How does the Toiletship refer to
> the Holocaust?
>



~~~
    "By 1945, the factory system - which, more than
     any piece of machinery, was the real and major
     result of the Industrial Revolution - had been
     extended to include the Manhattan Project, the
     German long-range rocket program and the death
     camps, such as Auschwitz.It has taken no major
     gift of prophecy to see how these three curves
      of development might plausibly converge, and
                before too long. ... "
                                 (T. Pynchon, 1984)
                                                    ~~~