Blicero's "politics"

[jbor]

>> Yes, I think so. He certainly craves transcendence. But I'm not so sure
> that
>> he is "gnostic", or that he ever truly believes himself to be a "god"; more
>> that his disciples and followers have sought to elevate him to godhead.
> 

on 25/2/03 1:36 PM, Scott Badger at lupine at ncia.net wrote:

> Well, I find "gnostic" to be about as slippery a term as entropy, so it's
> not unlikely that I'm way off the mark, but.....the desire to transcend what
> I think Blicero sees as a corrupt form and the secret/High knowledge of the
> rocket, within which Gottfried's sacrifice is carried out, is what suggested
> gnostic to me....on the face of it, at least....and while Gottfried's
> "sacrifice" might not be read as gnostic, if instead we read it as a
> "baptism", as I think Blicero sees it, then....

Gnosticism gets a bad rap in some of the criticism, essentially because it
isn't Christianity. There are still people living today who are Gnostics
(there is a large community of Sabian Mandaean refugees from Iraq in one of
the communities I work with), and they're not evil or demonic. They're nice
people.

But even so, I don't know that Blicero's conception of "good" and "evil"
breaks down neatly into a conflict between the spiritual realm and the
material world. I'm not even sure he embraces the categories of "good" and
"evil" in any straightforward way.

It's possible to see the launch as a fiery baptism, Rilkean, but I can also
see it as a funeral, a wedding, a rite of passage, and certainly as a
sacrifice, a travesty of the Crucifixion. It's like all rituals in one, the
ultimate. I get the impression that the fascination with Rilke's poetic
vision which dazzled the young Weissmann has worn off, is almost forgotten
by the latter days of the war.

And while the 00000 launch is documented as some sort of religious ritual,
or a melange of these, it's also a set of technical procedures which Blicero
is completing automatically and dispassionately. I think that in going
through the familiar routine in this way he's also suppressing whatever
emotions lie underneath. By not fitting an audio link back from the rocket
to the launch pad I think we are given yet another hint that "love" is one
of those suppressed emotions. To hear Gottfried's voice might have proven
too much.... Even with the bizarre bridal eroticism I can see great pathos
in that climactic scene on the Heath.

I guess my point is that it's the former members of Blicero's entourage, and
his followers -- like Enzian, Katje, Greta, Thanatz, the Dora homosexuals
etc -- who perpetuate the myth of his metamorphosis into a "god". And it's
the "chroniclers" in the text who set up all the Gnostic and Kabbalist
frames of reference and interpretation (not just with Blicero, but with
Slothrop as well). In 'The Clearing' (757-8), a narrative voice taunts
Blicero about what he "ought" to be feeling, and this (or another) narrator
tries to layer on the religious symbolism, but even here Blicero ends up
(feasibly, at least) as just a "top-grade launch officer", nothing more.

best