antw.re: mddm (ch. 32): twins (rainbow-related)

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

yesterday i wrote ---

> see also pp. 757f of "gravity's rainbow"; though max & moritz may not be
  biological twins, they certainly do meet the cultural imago ~

  "'steuerung klar?' he asks the boy at the steering panel.
  'ist klar.' in the lights from the panel, max's face is hard, stubborn gold.
  'treibwerk klar?'
  'ist klar,' from moritz at the rocket motor panel. into the phone dangling
   at his neck, he tells the operation room, 'luftlage klar.'
  'schlüssel auf  s c h i e s s e n,' orders blicero." (757)


  note that the twin motiv appears here in combination with the constellation
  of senex & puer. <


& daraufhin Otto :

> While I agree with you on the twin imago concerning Max & Moritz, you'll
  have to explain to me the senex & puer-connection here.

  I've never read whole the essay on Senex & Puer by James Hillman, got only
  this short quote from an essay on GR, but it seems to be fitting to M&D too:

  "The senex makes order particularly through boundaries: your kingdom and
  mine; concious and unconscious; body and mind... . Boundary is necessary for
  properties and possessions, for territory and ownership... . The idea of a
  self, an enclosed and individual proprium, requires boundary and boundary is
  made by the senex."
  --Hillman: On Senex Consciousness, p. 151.

  (James Hillman, "Senex and Puer: An Aspect of the Historical and
  Psychological Present," _Eranos Jahrbuch_, 36 (1967); "On Senex
  Consciousness," _Spring_ (1970); und "Psychology: Monotheistic or
  Polytheistic," _Spring_ (1971), quoted by:
  Klaus Poenicke, "Die Rückkehr des Dionysos: Ordnung, Freiheit und Regression
  in Gravity's Rainbow," in: Gerhard Hoffmann (ed.), _Der zeitgenössische
  amerikanische Roman. Von der Moderne zur Postmoderne_, Wilhelm Fink Verlag,
  München 1988, pp. 259-276. <



                                           "to the incomprehensible only the 
                                           inner endeavors come close; these 
                                          alone get there, and be it only for 
                                         the duration of one second which       
                                        weighs more than all other things,than 
                                       time itself." ~~~ e.m. cioran, 1979 ~~~

with senex & puer i was referring to blicero and gottfried who - like the naked 
danceuse inside the birthday cake - gives the thing soul. right, "the flame is 
too bright for anyone to see gottfried inside, except now as an erotic category, 
hallucinated out of that blue violence, for purposes of self-arousal" (758). but 
the boy is nevertheless part of the constellation. isn't it interesting that 
this circle of male quadricity contains of two male couples who couldn't be more 
different? the twins, max & moritz, are so equal that you hardly can tell who is 
who: their relation is completely symmetric, or heterarchical. hierarchical i'd 
call the interaction of gottfried & blicero: there is no doubt who's on command, 
and one cannot mix them up. all together they are forming a kind of 
"techgnostical" cross:
  

                              blicero

                       max              moritz

                             gottfried


in the center, of course, the 'holy' rocket with all its shiny promises 
keeping the men at play... i can see much better now - last exit slothrop: the 
saint and his sow! - how the thanatoid technology is corrupting weissmann's 
love. a passage like "his eyes are too dangerously spaced beyond the words, 
stunned irreversibly away from real gottfried, away from the weak, the failed 
smells of real breath, by barriers stern and clear as ice, and hopeless as the 
one-way flow of european time ...." (724) leaves not too much room for 
interpretation. yet i still think blicero to be a tragic character. his 
involvement into the deadly system is, compared to pointman's, ambivalent and 
more complex. anyway, let's face it: i somehow stay corrected...  i'm also not 
sure whether the terminology of "senex & puer" is really appropriate here. but 
it's probably better than describing the relation as "oedipal", which appears 
misleading to me since weissmann and gottfried have a manifest sexual relation 
with each other and no mother/wife around. (katje was sister and daughter.) 
perhaps one could say that blicero works as an agent of the senex principle 
without wanting it. yet what kind of "puer" does gottfried make? anomical thirst 
for freedom?! not this boy. and then the whole thing isn't meant to be 
cyclical: "i want to break out---to leave this cycle of infection and death" 
(724), goes blicero, dealing with one of the book's central issues. when he is 
saying "fathers are carriers of the virus of death, and sons are the infected 
..." (723) i must think also of young tyrone sold by his daddy for scientific 
experiments and all... is it possible that weissmann's "rocket-gnosticism" is, 
at the same time, nourishing the deadly development  a n d  evoking the chance 
of redemption? where there is danger, hölderlin says, there the saving also 
grows. if "there is time" (760)and "a soul in ev'ry stone", this next moment 
might be the window through which the savior climbs in ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ 

happy weekend to all you members from the democratic order of gravitational 
rainbows! kai ~~~ what? nah, tom, it was you who spiced the soup with an whole 
ounce...