Blicero's "politics"

[Scott Badger]

Rob:
>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.


How about, "pure" and corrupt"?

>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.

Yes, yer' standard Pynchon bundle and twist - a twining.

>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.


I guess I see it more as a failure of that Rilkean vision, rather than a
waning.

>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.

But doesn't gnosticsm involve, not so much ritual, but the attainment of
some arcane knowledge?

>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.


That one-way link has always puzzled me.

>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.


Is it himself, or Gottfried, that Blicero hopes will achieve transcendence?

Scott Badger