Hite

[Terrance]

> 
> NB that Hite contends that it is "the narrator", and *not* Blicero, who
> invokes that "alluring synthesis". And, rather than the opposite, which is
> your (so far unsupported) contention, Hite's note 37 about Rilke's Tenth
> Elegy seems to me to imply that she sees Blicero's reading of Rilke as
> accurate.

[Let's put it all back together: 

Hite says, and you quoted: ]


One index of the narrator's protean capacity to enter into
the motives and desires of the characters is the way that
Blicero, the Nazi, sadist, sexual pervert, nihilist, and
murderer, emerges
as disconcertingly comprehensible and almost tragic. [ ... ]

 [almost tragic, but not tragic, to be almost tragic here,
as I read Hite, is not like almost "going all the way,"  but
rather like almost being pregnant, in other words, not
tragic, and certainly not heroic, and clearly no Pynchon
Badass.
and I quoted the rest to complete the paragraph, 
Hite continues: ]


Blicero kills his paramour and symbolic son, Gottfried
(whose name, "the peace of God," is heavily ironic), out of
intense loathing for the natural world. 

[Paramour or catamite,  Gottfried is a boy who has sex with
a man. 
Note: Hite says, Blicero kills  his paramour, boy-lover if
you prefer, "out of intense loathing for the natural world",
this is obviously correct. 
He is hardly a Badass or a hero or the most venerated
character in the book. 
She describes him accurately, as a "Nazi, sadist, sexual
pervert, nihilist, and murderer." But most importantly, it
is his loathing of the Natural World that motivates him to
murder.]  

Hite continues: 


By invoking an alluring synthesis of Greek and Hebrew
mythology, German  idealism, and Kabbalized technology, the
narrator is able to
communicate both this loathing and the extent to which it
permeated Western civilization: 

[yes, she says the narrator, but of course she is still in
the same  paragraph that began with,   " One index of the
narrator's protean capacity to enter into
the motives and desires of the characters is the way that
Blicero, the Nazi, sadist, sexual pervert, nihilist, and
murderer, emerges
as disconcertingly comprehensible and almost tragic," so
your suggestion that this is the narrator here doesn't help
me understand your position. 
Hite continues:] 


"Want the change," Rilke said, "O be inspired by the flame!"
To laurel, to nightingale, to wind...wanting it, to be
taken, to embrace, to fall toward the flame growing to fill
all the senses and...not to love because it was no longer
possible to act...but to be helplessly in a condition of
love....(p.96; Pynchon's ellipses 

here there is a note #37

This is what the notes says, 

"For Rilke this total surrender is a a precondition for
recognizing the seamless
continuity between life and death, self and world. In the
last stanza of his Tenth Elegy, Blicero's favorite poem, he
celebrates the cataclysmic inversion of values that turns
self- abnegation and even death into triumph. The imagery
transposes easily into the context of rocket metaphysics: 

And we, who have always thought
of happiness climbing, would feel
the emotion that almost startles
when happiness fails.
(Duino Elegies, P. 85) Trans. J.B. Leishman and Stephen
Spender, NY, 1939

[now, I only suggested that members read the note, because I
want be sure I don't give it all away, it's that progressive
pedagogy again sorry, but I did not want to imply, in fact I
implied nothing at all,  that the note would address the
question of Blicero's "misreading" of Rilke, an issue I
think  is best tabled for the moment, and I have asked that
we table it, however, this is a very important note because
one of things Hite is up to in this book is showing us how
imagery, how myth and metaphysics, including Rilke's and
those associated with providential history, are easily
transposed into rocket metaphysics, and "rocket" history, 
of course, this is the subject of Dwight Edddins' *Gnostic
Pynchon*] 


> 
> But, don't worry, I've got a recall notice posted on _The Gnostic Pynchon_
> at the library as well.
> 
> best

Excellent!