Germany (was Re: 1945

[Slug]

jbor wrote:
> 
> 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? 

Yes! 



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? 

Yes!

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.

Right. 


> 
> 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

Indeed. I take responsibility for the much of the confusion
about terms--"gnosticism", "Gnosticism", "existential
gnosticism", "literary gnosticism"--here. Kai is quite right
to complain. As Boas once said, Boas, a "Colombian" if I
remember right, once said,  that ANY language is capable of
generating the terms to cover new ideas, when the need
occurs. Unfortunately, my conviction, my pedagogical
presumption (that tendency) was compromised and compromised
by my own method, my subversive strategies, my attempts at
humor to humor. I could make excuses: this cybermedium, this
distant and diverse audience, language/cultural diversity,
these paradoxical and contradictory texts, these
indeterminacy, but without these, I would have no business
here. 

Commenting on Balzac's Sarrasine Barthes says, we call any
readerly text a classic text. I call the Classic texts Great
(no quotes required), but I affirm the importance of the
reader, not as in Barthes, with a distinction between two
kinds of texts (readerly and writerly), but by affirming 
the reader's active participation. It is not that the
Classic text makes the reader passive or "intransitive",
it's not a matter of writerly texts or readerly texts, the
interpretation of some authority, some tradition, some
critic, some decree, the Postmodern text and the Modern text
are open, the reader is more active, but the difference is
not one of kind, but of degree.  

"Books are top be called for, and supplied, on the
assumption that the process of reading is not a half sleep,
but in highest sense, an exercise, a gymnast's struggle;
that the reader is to do something for himself, must be on
the alert, must himself or herself construct indeed the
poem, argument, history, metaphysical essay--the text
furnishes the hints, the clue, the start or framework." 
						Walt Whitman, Democratic Vistas