Rainbow-Files: The Smart Sow

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

°°° The night before yesterday i heard an essay on the radio (DLF/Köln: 20.05-21.00)
every Pynchon reader worth her text could be interested in. "Die schlaue Sau:
Schweine in der Weltliteratur" was written by a guy named Rolf Kantzen and
first sent on DLR/Berlin in 1996. The only thing - big "only", actually - to 
criticize is that Thomas Pynchon and his burner "Gravity's Rainbow" do not get
mentioned ... Anyway, great radio piece I'll now tell you about, sampling in 
some Rainbow shades myself ... Oak tree with winter sun right before my window ...
"'Oh,' Katje groans, somewhere under a pile of their batistes and brocate, 
'Slothrop, you PIG.'/ 'Oink, oink, oink,' sez Slothrop cheerfully" (206) ...
On from Nordic creation myths over Homer and the Bible untill contemporary writers
like Hans Henny Jahnn or Thomas Mann the essay's textual sources are taken.
Mann observed that the human skin resembles much more the swine's one than that
of the chimpanzee ... While in occidental culture (and this goes for the Muslim 
world, too) pigs are considered to be unclean, many traditional cultures see 
swine as symbols of wealth and fertility ... "In a coastal town, near Wismar, 
as he's falling to sleep in a little park, they surround Slothrop and tell him
the story of Plechazunga, the Pig-Hero who, sometime back in the 10th century,
routed a Viking invasion, appearing suddenly out of a thunderbolt and chasing a
score of screaming Norsemen back into the sea. Every summer since then, a Thursday
has been set aside to celebrate the town's deliverance --- Thursday being named 
after Donar or Thor, the thunder-god, who sent down the giant pig (...) 'Be 
Plechazunga tomorrow.'/ 'Please.'/ Being a soft touch these days, Slothrop gives
in. They roust him up out of his grass bed and down to the city hall. In the 
basement are costumes and props for the Schweineheldfest --- shields, spears, 
horned helmets, shaggy animal skins, wooden Thor's hammers and ten-foot lightning
bolts covered with gold leaf. The pig costume is a little startling --- pink,
blue, yellow, bright sour colours, a German Expressionist pig, plush outside,
padded with straw inside. It seems to fit perfectly. Hmmm" (567f) ... A swine expert
from Schleswig-Holstein, who keeps hundreds of them on his farm and wrote several
books on the issue (most recently one about the 'myth' of the "Schweinemensch": 
you remember that Seinfeld episode where Kramer gives help to such a creature?), 
reported about the sexual individuality of swine: While polygamous in general, there 
are sows who always let only one and the same boar do it to them. Sodomy (sexual 
intercourse with animals) is another theme the essay shines a light on. And here 
Horaz (65-8 v. Chr.) gets quoted with the remarkable statement that there is nothing 
more lovable in the whole wide world than the sow's vulva ... Theoretically, Kantzen's 
radio essay is largely indebted to the Dialektik der Aufklärung by Adorno and 
Horkheimer ("Jedenfalls hat späterhin alle Zivilisation mit Vorliebe diejenigen
Schweine genannt, deren Trieb auf andere Lust sich besinnt als die von der 
Gesellschaft für ihre Zwecke sanktionierte"), especially their swinish deconstruction
of orthodox Freudian theory. "Nothing of psychoanalysis is true yet its exaggerations",
as Teddie wrote in "Minima Moralia", a position not too far away from Deleuze/Guattari
(- btw, anybody else reading "Qu'est-ce que la philosophie?"?) ... A-and songs, funny 
swine songs (not only) from the 1920s: "Herr Hauptmann, Herr Hauptmann: Was macht denn 
Ihre Frau?/ Sie kämmt sich nicht, sie wäscht sich nicht: Sie ist 'ne große Sau!" ...
In its intention to rehabilitate swine from their bad reputation in the west (and also
in Islam, as I may add), the essay puts forth the thesis that Humans Are vertical Swine
and/or Swine horizontal Humans ... I like that so I repeat it once more: Swine are
horizontal Humans, Humans vertical Swine ... Arno Schmidt dared to do a variation of 
John 1: 1-4, replacing the word "word" by the word "swine" ... "Am Anfang war das 
Schwein, und das Schwein war bei Gott, und das Schwein war Gott./ Dieses war am 
Anfang bei Gott./ Alle Dinge sind durch dasselbe geworden, und ohne das Schwein ist 
auch nicht eines geworden, das geworden ist./ In ihm war Leben, und das Leben war das
Licht für die Menschen" ... Amen! KFL + ... "He keeps to open country, sleeping when 
he's too tired to walk, straw and velvet insulating him from the cold. One morning he
wakes in a hollow between a stand of beech and a stream. It is sunrise and bitter cold,
and there seems to be a warm tongue licking roughly at his face. He is looking here into
the snout of another pig, very fat and pink pig. She grunts and smiles amiable, blinking
long eyelashes./ 'Wait. How about this?' He puts on the pig mask. She stares for a moment
then moves up to Slothrop and kisses him, snout-to-snout. Both of them are dripping with
dew. He follows her down to the stream (...) Soon they have begun to angle towards the
sea. The pig seems to know where she's going (...) A pig is jolly companion,/ Boar, sow,
barrow, or gilt ---/ A pig is a pal, who'll boost your morale,/ Though mountains may
topple and tilt./ When they've blackballed, bamboozled, and burned you,/ When they've
turned on you, Tory and Whig,/ Though you may be thrown over by Tabby or Rover,/ 
You'll never go wrong with a pig, a pig,/ You'll never go wrong with a pig!// (...)
a whole forest of Christmas trees, tinsel rippling in the wind, catching the starlight 
(...) Slothrop keeps waking to find the pig snuggled in a bed of pine needles, watching 
over him. (...) In the tinfoil light she's very sleek and convex, her bristles look 
smooth as down. Lustful thoughts come filtering into Slothrop's mind, little peculiarity 
here you know, hehheh, nothing he can't handle ... They fall asleep under the decorated
trees, the pig a wandering eastern magus, Slothrop in his costume a gaudy present 
waiting for morning and a child to claim him." (573ff) ***