Pynchon as propaganda

[Terrance]

s~Z wrote:
> 
> Section 'COUNTDOWN' (p.753) is a nice companion to 'STREETS' (from which the
> chaplain passage is taken).
> 
> "---it is also perhaps, a Tree. . . ."

Yeah, but I do find that the Existential ANGLE, while not supportable
with the chaplain passage is far more interesting. Contrary to what
Robert asserts, the Existential and Atheistic reading has been discussed
at great length here and in the critical literature. 

Nothingness is an important theme for Rilke too. 


During our theater/theatre discussion I noted that
  Consciousness, as Pynchon portrays it in GR anyway, is a
  kind of second falling-- postlapsarian Man on a quest to
  Salvation is imprisoned in his own consciousness:  Mind (and
  Mind is both Reason and Myth in GR) is cut off from the
  world and is thus incapable of relating to the world
  adequately or with any satisfaction and so with
  pornographies (Faustian Science mixed with corrupt ions of: 
  myth, mystery, magic, religious ritual, sacrament, oral
  community rites, holy grail,  a plethora of quests for
  "salvation" ) Man Narcissistically projects an Image of his
  Solipsistic imprisonment onto the world. Pynchon never tires
  of representing this narcissistic confinement, equating it
  with history (mirrors in V.) and extending it to Solipsistic
  history in GR (film). So Pointsman, the dogmatic Pavlovian,
  is haunted by "the sound of the V-1 and V-2, one the reverse
  of the other", because his spiritual mentor Pavlov
  considered this type of association, which is manifest in
  "irradiation" and "reciprocal induction", as the brain, in
  the mind of history. (GR.144) Weissmann is affected by this
  "pathology" since he holds on to a "Mirror-metaphysics."
  "Self -enchanted by what he imagined elegance, his bookish
  symmetries..." (GR.101) 

  In the Theatre/theater discussion I posted some stuff on how
  and why I think Pynchon attributes this "pathology" to 500
  years of metaphysics (although he also traces it back much
  further) and presents the historical and psychological
  "pathology" as the German sickness, but I said, 

  In a broader sense, these woes are caused by the human
  mind--the subjectivity, the inwardly trapped mind that has 
  separated what was once whole or unified so that human
  experiences have become antagonistic.    

  I included what I think are a few very important Rilke
  passages:  


  Creation sees itself with both eyes
  Open. Only our eyes are turned inwards,
  Walls of circumvallation,
  Against our own free beginning.
  What it is like outside, we only know from glimpsing
  The faces of animals. As soon as a child is born
  We turn and force him so that he sees
  All forms inside-out, not the real, that real
  That shapes the animal's face--free from death.
  Only we see it; free creation has its decline behind it
  And before it, only God. And when it goes, it goes
  Into eternity, as the fountains go.
  We have never, not even for a day,
  Looked into the world, into which the flowers
  Eternally open. The world always is,
  Not our narcissistic nothingness,
  But the pure, the open, that one breathes in and out,
  Always knowing and desiring. In stillness, children....

  This is fate: to be opposed
  And nothing more
  and always opposed....

  So who was it that turned us inwards, so that we,
  And all we make, assume the posture
  Of imminent departure? He stands upon the final rise,
  >From which he sees our spreading lowlands.
  He turns and stops and waits.
  And here we live and take our leave. (DE VIII)


  For a momentary sign, a reason for
  Opposition will be prepared--laboriously;
  We notice it because it is so meaningful
  To us. We do not know the contour
  Of feeling, only what facts it causes. (DE IV 9-18) 

  A god can do it. But will you tell me how
  a man can enter through the lyre's strings?
  Our mind is split. And at the shadowed crossing
  of heart-roads, there is no temple for Apollo. (SO I, III,
  1-4) (GR.625-626)

  The Toiletship is full of mirrors, they face each other,
  reflecting out "Into mirror space." In addition to
  re-working V.'s mirrored time, Pynchon is also re-working
  "Lowlands" here, organic house, moon, tilt of the earth,
  ship at sea, but here the ship is tilted at the angle of the
  earth (Fowler notes this I think), and it is built in a
  mandalaic form and surrounded obviously by the chaos of the
  sea. So we could see it as metaphor for the mind that cannot
  penetrate the amorphous world about it and so it projects a
  narcissistic one. The universe becomes a pornographic
  solipsistic mind. This is contrasted, I think, with Earth's
  magic mind, true return.