175s

[Terrance]

jbor wrote:
> 
> As I understood it, Paragraph 175 predates the Nazis by a generation or two
> at least. Of course, we're talking about fictional 175s in a novel, but it
> seems that the critical commonplace about fictional representations
> referring to sociological, anthropological or historical actaulities seems
> to have miraculously come into play again.

David Morris provided a very useful link, I re-posted it.

Yes, you are correct. 

My post was not in conflict with this historical fact. 

As pertains to the critical commonplace and the
extra-textuals, be
these sociological, anthropological,  historical, poetical,
I don't know how to address this objection except to say
that it's a critical issue and not a matter of miracles or
play. Some take this approach others do not. I tend to
favor critical approaches that acknowledge the primacy of
the text under consideration. This is one of the reasons I
participate here. Moreover, this is one of the reasons I
read and respond to your posts. 

> 
> Blicero is openly homosexual throughout his career, in Sudwest, at
> Nordhausen, and while commander of the rocket battery (see eg. 95.31,
> 404.15, 352.21). If that wasn't one of things that the SS guards at Dora
> were "whispering" about I'd be extremely surprised. The choice of Blicero as
> the 175s' top god *surely* has something to do with his homosexuality: what
> other connection between them is there?

There is no evidence in the text that the SS guards were
whispering about Blicero's homosexuality. There is evidence
of what they were whispering about and why they were
whispering. 

They were whispering because they were afraid of him. And
the narrator tells us that their fear had nothing to do with
Weissman personally (certainly his sexual orientation
qualifies as personal). 

"What the 175s heard from the real SS guards there was
enough to elevate Weissmann on the spot--they, his own
brother-elite, *didn't know* (P's italics) what this man was
up to." 

As you noted Weissmann was openly homosexual. So the SS
guards, it's seems safe to say, were not whispering about
his sex life or anything personal about the man. What ever
it was that they were whispering about, it  was something
they did not quite understand and were very afraid of. It
was something very Powerful and Mysterious. It was the time,
the desperate time, a time that gave him power so that HE
could  now move through the Mittlewerke  as if he owned
it. He not only owned it, he possessed it.

And what did he Possess? 

GR.302

"That is one meaning of the shape...rune...yew tree..." 

DEATH! 

Note that  Weisenburger says P has made a mistake here or
has
twisted this out of Graves or his other sources  to make
something fit. The Yew tree is not symbolic if Death, but P
changes it and this is very important clue, because when P
does this is most often not an oversight or error but
indicative of some import that he wants the reader to
understand. Trees are one of P's favorite religious symbols,
be it the cross, or Puritan song, or Zoyd's daughter's
epiphany. Here, the Yew tree is Death and if we trace out
the trees in GR we will have an interesting pattern.  

Remember that the nazi architects have a method 
of finding hidden centers, inertias unknown
as if monoliths had been left for him in the twilight, left
behind by some corrupted idea of "Civilization," in which
eagles cast in concrete stand ten meters high at the corners
of the stadiums where the people, a corrupted idea of "the
People" are gathering, in which birds do not fly, in which
imaginary centers far down inside the solid fatality of
stone are thought of not as "heart," "plexus,"
"consciousness," (the voice speaking here grows more
ironic,  closer to tears that are not all theatre, as the
list goes
on...)

This is what Blicero possesses. He is the God of Nazi Death
worship and this   is his Church and Rocket is his mighty
two handed engine
(sword)  at the door, ready to smite once, only once and
smite no more. see Milton's Lycidas

What do these tears tell us about the irony of this text? 



Sanctuary," "dream of motion," "cyst of the eternal
present," or "Gravity's gray eminence among the councils of
the living stone." No, as none of these, but instead a point
in space, a point hung precise as the point where burning
must end, never launched, never to fall. And what is the
specific shape whose center of gravity is the
Brennschluss Point? [GR.302]

There is ONLY one. Why it's the parabola of course, that
ominous curve described  by the Rocket's dialectic ( a nasty
word in GR) with gravity.
To locate this image of death,  death's shape,
with its critical death point, where, by the way, Orphism
would locate the "heart" of the living stone is to engage in
a gnostic pornography, a  usurpation, a "mythic surrogating
that is also a blasphemy. This Zero-Ground Zero, this Unholy
Center, defined here as not-plexus, not-consciousness,
not-eternal present is not simply negation, not mere
denials of spiritual medium, not simply a return to some
existential neutrality but rather the pornographic and 
plastic codex of the malignant (Blicero  GR.666) 
inspiriting that "grows towards
winter from the process of extinction beyond the Zero. This
is a  their "religion." So in this we can see
that the connection, the  concrete eagles that emblematize
the Reich come also to represent a stone "fatality" that is
not only motionless but inimical to motion, just as the
corrupted "Civilization" goes beyond mindless barbarism in
systematically subverting
the human communion. Sounds like a place Blicero longs for,
pines for,   wants to break out for.

 The Nazi ideology of the Zero finds its avatar  in Blicero.
(see Eddins)  


 The Mittlewerke is the place but it is the *time* that is
granting him absolute power, total Control. Giving him a
power different from that of Auschwitz or Buchenwald. 
Seeing that his own "brother elite" didn't know* what he
was up to the 175s elevated Weissmann on the spot and when
they formed their phantom  SS hierarchy they put Blicero at
the absolute top. They did this because of what they
inferred to be the Rocket Structure. How did they know what
the Rocket Structure was when it  was concealed behind an
uncrossable wall. "Weissmann/Blicero's presence crossed the
wall...dreams." 

This is for me, one of the saddest moments in GR. What do
you think the Bishop is bringing to Blicero?   
 


> 
> It is Thanatz who is advocating "sado-Anarchism" at 737.15, not the 175s.

You are correct Sir. 


> Their society is anything but anarchist! 

Exactly, it's just the opposite. Anarchy would be outside
the Realm of Blicero. 

I find it enormously ironic, not to
> mention odd, that the Nazi-collaborator and pederast Thanatz is being
> invoked as a narrator whose perspective is in alignment with the author's,
> in order to support a totally idiosyncratic reading of Pynchon's supposed
> Catholicism. 

You misread me Robert. This would be more than enormously
ironic, it would be manifestly fantastic. It would be a
*Miracle* if anyone believed such a totally idiosyncratic
reading, even if it were their own. 


Want to discuss Thanatz and his ploy? The rest of the
chapter? Or Blicero's other lovers?