V.V.(12) 237.17: ' What was 1904 to these people? '

[jbor]

> 
> Is Pynchon suggesting that these are the means by which history repeats?
> Through the obsessions of individuals, rather than through general ignorance
> and the simple similarities of circumstance?

I don't know, but this sounds a little like Jacob Burckhardt (1818-97), a
Swiss historian who was enormously influential in the late c. 19th and early
c. 20th:

    The world of man is constantly acted on by exceptional individuals.
                  (_Reflections on History_ 1871, Allen & Unwin, p. 42)

Burckhardt's most famous work, _The Civilisation of the Renaissance in
Italy_ (publ. 1860), says of the Italian "political units" of the
quattrocento and after that "their existence was founded simply on their
power to maintain it":

      In them for the first time we detect the modern political spirit
    of Europe, surrendered freely to its own instincts, often displaying
    the worst features of an unbridled egotism, outraging every right, and
    killing every germ of a healthier culture. But, wherever this vicious
    tendency is overcome or in any way compensated, a new fact appears in
    history -- the State as the outcome of reflection and calculation, the
    State as a work of art. This new life displays itself in a hundred
    forms, both in the republican and the despotic States, and determines
    their inward constitution no less than their foreign policy.
                                            (London: Phaidon, p.2)

For Burckhardt, it is this "civilisation" which was the "mother of our own".

Q. Keeping in mind all those references to Italian statesman and
revolutionaries back in the Florence chapter, I wonder if Pynchon had ever
come across Burckhardt's book?


But, back to the novel, I get the impression that 1904 in Sudwest had a
pretty striking effect on all the Europeans who were present, if not for the
actual threat to life and livelihood posed by the Rebellion, then certainly
by their own capacity for inflicting cruelty and death on the rebels, and
their seeming complete remorselessness about it all (cf. Foppl's
matter-of-fact recount at 245.21).

There's a lot of talk about what constitutes a "siege" in this section, too:

Vera to Godolphin (about Foppl's party): "Non-military it may be, but a
false siege it is not."

Godolphin: "I have done believing in siege as anything more than military
technic. ... " ("technic"??)

And then, about "Port Arthur" in 1904, he sez: "It was siege in the great
tradition." (246-7)

Q. Is there something about "siege-mentality" which is going on here, in
terms of both Rebellions (1904 & the current one, 1922), but also vis à vis
the Depression in Munich which haunts Kurt's dreams?

"What was 1904 to these people?" I don't think Kurt (or the reader) has
anything more than a partial answer at this stage. Indeed, I'm not sure that
we're going to have much that is conclusive even by the end of the chapter.

best

----------
>From: JL <trailerman at cableinet.co.uk>


> perhaps it's in the *mechanism*...
>
>   246.32 (hugh to vera): ' your beloved 1904 '
>   247.9  (vera to hugh): ' [...] have given me my 1904 '
>   248.23 (vera to hugh): ' but the need, [...] what can fill that? '
>
> this is some kind of rathouse (Rathaus??) in which an *interpretation*
> of an historical event (as opposed to a direct experience or recollection)
> can strike such a personal chord, and inspire 'a certain ownership' (246.35).
> Those of a certain disposition can gravitate to it in space, if not in
> time, and its power is reinforced by contact with those similarly inclined,
> in such a hothouse.  Foppl & co. have indeed projected a world, as you would
> expect from 'the last gods on earth' (279.21).