mddm (ch. 72): dixon, slaves, horses & nietzsche

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

 [since the following mail might be easy to misunderstand, let me say, first of 
 all, that there's of course a huge and, in a certain sense, crucial difference 
 between the enslavement and abuse of human beings and the mistreating of  
 domesticated animals. so the following comparison has its limits. please keep  
 this in mind while you go on reading!]    


 myself - and for kirsten it's the same - i could never read chapter 72 of m&d 
 without thinking of nietzsche's last gesture. the day he went crazy, the third 
 of january 1889, friedrich nietzsche left his flat in turin (italy): on the 
 piazza carlo alberto he observed how a driver hit his cab-horse really hard. 
 nietzsche started to cry and tried to protect the poor creature by embracing it 
 ... full of compassion he experiences a complete crack-up and thus starts his 
 very own journey across the abyss ... in a way you can recognize this as his 
 last work ... for nietzsche there was nothing left to think ... this crazy love 
 happening was the window-jump of his lifetime ... an ethical gesture, so to 
 speak ... since this is one of the most popular scenes from the history of 
 philosophy i can, actually, not imagine that pynchon did not have it in mind 
 when he was writing the chapter. "the driver's whip is an evil thing" 
 (696). there are certainly differences: dixon's protest is much more risky and 
 brings real freedom to some. it's not only a spiritual gesture but a political 
 action. and so "mason at last comes to admire dixon for his bravery" (698).  
 however, the nietzsche ref - & i stay with the thesis that pynchon here  
 alludes to nietzsche by intention - suggests to the suggestible reader that we 
 do not witness a classical political action here. it's more what you simply  
 have to do though it's clear that evil will continue till the last judgement  
 ... "what's a man of conscience to do? it's frustrating. his voice breaks" 
 (699). so let's have a look how horses appear in this chapter: when the 
 (scandalous) commodification of human beings gets expressed by the neighboring 
 drinker's talk about a horse auction, we read: "dixon vibrated his eye-balls 
 for a while. 'that's it? slaves and horses?'" (697). here the parallel is, for 
 good reasons, rejected by our hero. yet the next mention of horses - same page: 
 couple of lines below - places the animals next to "women violated". and after 
 his courageous deed the dixon dude returns "to the stable where their horses   
 wait. 'eeh, rebel [sic!kfl], old gal, ah'm pleas'd to see your face...?' dixon 
 has brought a small apple from a  fruitmonger's barrow, but the horse dives 
 anyway beneath the giant flaps over his coat pockets and goes in to inspect, 
 lest something should have been overlook'd" (699). co-creatures among 
 themselves ... anyone for levinas' "ethics of face"? kai, overeducated flea    
 ~~~ ps: in "kann keine trauer sein" the poet gottfried benn writes about  
 nietzsche's eternal night after the breakdown: " ... in weimar lagen die großen 
 schwarzen augen/nietzsches auf einem weißen kissen/bis zum letzten blick -/ 
 alles gerümpel jetzt oder gar nicht mehr vorhanden,/unbestimmbar, wesenlos,/im 
 schmerzlos ewigen zerfall" ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~