AtDtDA(34): The Convent

Tue Jun 24 14:40:27 CDT 2008

Reduced (by me) to this "essence" (or oversimplification).

the old heretics stream....the preterite.....W.A.S.T.E.....is a merging of East and West...
(might usm up much of TRPs "religious' envisioning here.............................

and an overcoming of dualisms...(such as the Manichean).........................

with all the Orpheus. Slothrup harmonic lines............................

--- On Tue, 6/24/08, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
Subject: AtDtDA(34): The Convent
To: "Pynchon List" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Date: Tuesday, June 24, 2008, 3:18 PM

"The convent belonged to a sect descended from ancient Bogomils who
did not embrace the Roman Church in 1650 with most of the other
Pavlikeni but chose instead to go underground...." (AtD, Pt. IV, p.
956)

Bogomils

Bogomilism (Bulgarian: Богомилство) is the Gnostic dualistic sect,
the
synthesis of Armenian Paulicianism and the Bulgarian Slavonic Church
reform movement, which emerged in Bulgaria between 927 and 970 and
spread into Byzantine Empire, Serbia, Bosnia, Italy and France....

[...]

The Bogomils were undoubtedly the connecting link between the
so-called heretical sects of the East and those of the West....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogomilism

Heretical sect in Balkans with doctrinal links to Cathars and
Albigensians. Bogomilismarose out of a combination of pre-Christian
Bulgarian gnosticism and a peasant reaction against oppression from
the institutional church and state. Essentially anarchist in outlook,
it holds that there is a duality in the creation of the world. Social
structures derive from Satan, an Angel (of Death ) and eldest child of
God, who was sent to Earth. Only things that spring from the human
soul are truly good. Therefore, the established church, state and all
social heirarchies are undermined. Bogomils refused to pay taxes, to
work, or to fight for the state. Anarchism with a theological bent,
Bogomilism was popular in Bulgaria and the Balkans from 950 to about
1396.

Much of what is known about the Bogomils comes from the antithetical
polemic with the "interesting" name Against the Heretics written not
by St. Cosmas, or Randolph St. Cosmo, but Presbyter Cosmas, also
refered to in some places as St. Cosmo (Kozma), a 10th century
Bulgarian church official.

Of further note, Bogomil propaganda followed "the mountain chains of
central Europe, starting from the Balkans and continuing along the
Carpathian Mountains, the Alps and the Pyrenees..." and so might be
called, The Light Over the Ranges."

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_946-975#Page_956

Pavlineki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulicianism

Sources differ on the meaning: (1) Bulgarian Catholics; (2) members of
a heretical sect with dualist (Manichean) doctrines influenced by
beliefs of the Bogomils. Also known as Paulicianism.

Something interesting is going on here. There are two different
meanings of the word Pavlikeni which pivot on the date TRP gives in
the text, 1650. Originally the Pavlikeni were synonomous with the
Bogomils.... Then in 1650 the Roman Church gathered them into its
fold....

[...]

The monastery Cyprian joins is pure Bogomil. It did not convert (sell
out?) to Rome in 1650, but continues its heresy.

[...]

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_946-975#Page_956

"underground"

Cf. ...

"... some secrets were given to the Gypsies to preserve against
centrifugal History, and some to the Kabbalists, the Templars, the
Rosicrucians ..." (GR, Pt. IV, p. 738)

"older, more nocturnal elements"

Against the day?

"the Thracian demigod Orpheus"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orpheus
http://www.pantheon.org/articles/o/orpheus.html

147; In Greek myth, the Thracian poet who could move even inanimate
things by his music. When his wife Eurydice died, he journeyed to the
underworld and so charmed Pluto that Eurydice was released on the
condition that Orpheus not look back to see if she was following him
when he led her out. He did and she immediately vanished. Thracian
women, enraged at Orpheus' prolonged grieving, tore him to pieces; See
also Eurydice ...

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/mason-dixon/alpha/o.html#orpheus

Eurydice

472; Eurydice, according to Greek myth, dies and goes to the
underworld (Hades). Her lover, Orpheus, goes to retrieve her. He is
told Eurydice can follow him back to the world of the living as long
as he doesn't look back while they are returning. Eventually overcome
with doubt as to whether or not she is still following him, he looks
back and thereby loses Eurydice forever; Orpheus Puts Down Harp, 754;

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/alpha/e.html#eurydice

Rainer Maria Rilke, The Sonnets to Orpheus (1922)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnets_to_Orpheus
http://www.polyamory.org/~howard/Poetry/orpheus_index.html
http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/?id=5&xid=2259&kapitel=1#gb_found
http://www.hunterarchive.com/fileS/Poetry/SonnetsToOrpheus.html

"his dismemberment"

Cf. ...

"There is also the story about Tyrone Slothrop, who was sent into the
Zone to be present at his own assembly perhaps, heavily paranoid
voices have whispered, his time's assembly and there ought to be a
punch line to it, but there isn't. The plan went wrong. He is being
broken down instead, and scattered. His cards have been laid down...
laid out and read, but they are the cards of a tanker and feeb: they
point only to a long and scuffling future, to mediocrity not only in
his life but also, heh, heh, in his chroniclers too..."  (GR, Pt. IV,
pp. 737-8)

"the Hebrus River, nowadays known as the Maritza"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrus

The Maritza or Maritsa flows west to east, draining Bulgaria between
the Stara Planina (Balkan range) and the Rhodopes, then turns south
and west to the Aegean Sea. The port at its mouth, in Greece, is
called Evros, a name derived from Hebrus.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_946-975#Page_956

"the Manichaean aspect"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaeanism
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09591a.htm

>From Brewer's: "Followers of Mani, who taught that the universe is
controlled by two antagonistic powers, light or goodness (identified
with God), and darkness, chaos, or evil. [...] One of Mani's claims
was that, though Christ had been sent into the world to restore it to
light and banish darkness, His apostles had perverted his doctrine,
and he, Mani, was sent as the Paraclete to restore it" (p.681); "who
see two rockets, good and evil, who speak together in the sacred
idiolalia of the Primal Twins" 727

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/alpha/m.html#manichean

"the unyielding doubleness of everything"

E.g., Bilocation

Cf. ...

http://books.google.com/books?id=PnjN3-pYkH4C

http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780060932138/The_Unbearable_Lightness_of_Being/index.aspx

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