"The first week in April ... " Re: 175s

[jbor]

----------
>From: Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
>

> 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.

Except that a couple of weeks ago you were hectoring other listers about the
difference between "interpreting a novel" and "making a social commentary, a
moral argument ... or value judgement" etc. Which is just what you seem to
want to do now. So, there's a distinct double standard at work in your modus
operandi. (When I pointed this out before you started up with the insults
and false accusations.)

> 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.

Well, there is also a lot of whispering about Weissmann's male "protegés"
(eg. 404.17: the scientists at the Versuchsanstalt call Enzian "Weissmann's
monster ... behind his back"). Recall that Blicero is noted by Pokler as
only "one of several gray eminences around the rocket field" (401.6) early
on at Nordhausen. But right near the end of the war as the Allies are poised
to overrun the rocket plant and Dora ("The first week in April with American
units supposed to be arriving at any moment ... " 432.9), Weissmann "could
now move through the Mittelwerke as if he owned it."(666.4 up) What inspires
the awe and fear of the Dora SS guards at this "time so desperate" is the
fact that Blicero seems not to care about the incumbent defeat, or his own
escape. What he is single-minded about completing at this time is his *own*
project, the construction of the 00000, not the Nazi utopia.

Weissmann knows the war is lost: he signs Pokler's final furlough form, in
an that unprecedented act of kindness or of honouring their bargain, with
the words "after hostilities end". (432.19) With the 00000 he is off on a
(quasi-religious) frolic of his own: it has absolutely nothing to do with
the (already failed) Nazi conquest of the globe.

best