Six year coma

[Otto]

Thanks Mark,

some things are especially interesting about the rainbow (and Goethe who was
a poet and scientist at the same time):
1. the sun has to be in your back to see the rainbow at all ("So bliebe denn
die Sonne mir im Rücken"),
2. everybody sees his own, a different rainbow than the person next to you.
Apart from the catastrophic references the rainbow is a nice symbol for
"truth" because in reality there's no rainbow at all, it's only on your
retina and in your brain,
3. according to the Noah rainbow-reference & "GR": God promised never to
destroy life on earth again with a flood, but he did not speak of nuclear
fire (and the following nuclear winter):

12 And God said, "This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me
and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations
to come:
13 I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the
covenant between me and the earth.
14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the
clouds,
15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures
of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all
life.
16 Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember
the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind
on the earth."
17 So God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant I have established
between me and all life on the earth."
http://www.biblegateway.com/cgi-bin/bible

Dave, thanks for the Memling-triptych.

Otto

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Wright AIA" <mwaia at yahoo.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Friday, August 22, 2003 6:40 PM
Subject: Re: Six year coma


> And of course both have listened to some Dylan in their day:
>
> "...and though her eyes are fixed upon Noah's great Rain-bow
> she spends her time looking in to Desolation Row."
>
> That's is a swell song, ain't it?
>
> Rainbow frames the catastrophe like a proscenium arch --- deluge is
> implicit. Flotsam becomes jetsam, and all is wreckage and waste.
>
>
>
> --- Otto <ottosell at yahoo.de> wrote:
> > Not that novel, but I've read "Inversions" (1998) in German and have
> > quite
> > enjoyed it. Indeed, I too believe that Banks has read his Pynchon, in
> > the
> > second chapter of "Inversions" there's a reference to Goethe's remark
> > of
> > rainbows:
> >
> > "So bliebe denn die Sonne mir im Rücken.
> > Allein wie herrlich, diesem Sturm erspriessend,
> > Wölbt sich des bunten Bogens Wechseldauer,
> > Bald rein gezeichnet, bald in Luft zerfließend,
> > Umherverbreitend duftig kühle Schauer.
> > D e r spiegelt ab das menschliche Bestreben.
> > Ihm sinne nach, und du begreifst genauer:
> > Am farbigen Abglanz haben wir das Leben."
> > Goethe, Faust, II, Zeilen 4715, 4721-27
> >
> > But see how, rising from this turbulence,
> > the rainbow forms its changing-unchanged arch
> > . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> > .
> > Of human striving it's perfect symbol--
> > ponder this well to understand more clearly
> > that what we have as life is many-hued reflection.
> > (Faust, Part II, Act I)
> > http://www.sokagakkai.info/html3/pi_earth3/germany3.html
> >
> > Otto
> >