vv: is stencil to benny like stephen to bloom?

[Lorentzen / Nicklaus]

> >                                         re: pynchon's anxiety of influence
> >
> >  in its internal construction the novel v resembles the novel ulysses
>  through 
> >  the male constellation (though in v this relation has, in contrary to
> >  ulysses, 
> >  no connotations of father- & sonship). like stephen, stencil is an
>  educated 
> >  person with ambitions. and bloom is, like benny, a profane man. in both
> >  books 
> >  the two men, though they meet, are most of the time seperated of each
>  other.
> >  in 
> >  both books this male constellation works as a primary integrating
>  structure.
>
>
>    "both are drifting on the sea, helplessly at the mercy of modern life's 
>     counter-streamings: - the average man staggering between shabby ambition 
>    
>     and gloomy frustration, the artist who is obsessed by the contradictions
>  of 
>     his own person and his special profession."
>  
>      (harry levin: james joyce [1960]; re-translation from the german
>  edition,  
>                                                                     p. 153) 
>
>  ps: in bloomian terms (harold that is), one could call pynchon's
>  way 
>           of dealing with the anxiety of influence in this special case: 
>           "kenosis" (see "the anxiety of influence" (1973], chapter 3).

     "w h e r e  i t,  t h e   p o e m  o f   t h e   f o r e r u n n e r, i s, 
     s h a l l   b e   m y   p o e m, this is the rational formula of every 
     strong poet, because the poetical father is absorbed into the id, and not 
     into the super-ego. the capable poet stands to his forerunner in a 
     relationship like eckhart (or emerson) to god; not as part of the creation, 
     but as the best part, the uncreated substance of the soul. in an abstract 
     view, the central problem for the one who comes later must be
     r e p e t i t i o n, because the repetition, which is dialectically raised 
     to a new creation, is the epheb's [?] way to excess, leading away from the 
     terrifying determination that one is only a copy or a replica."

                            (re-translation from page 71 of the german edition) 

 black---boar---diing: kfl