CoL49 (d) Diocletian Bliobb

[Mark Kohut]

As that scholar of Jacobean tragic drama noted: Italy stands for all manner of vice in those plays then.

--- On Wed, 7/8/09, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
> Subject: CoL49 (d) Diocletian Bliobb
> To: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Wednesday, July 8, 2009, 6:52 PM
> "'Here,'producing one with a dark
> brown, peeling calf cover. 'I keep
> my Wharfinger-iana locked in here so the kids can't get at
> it. Charles
> could ask no end of questions I'm too young to cope with
> yet.' The
> book was titled An Account of the Singular Peregrinations
> of Dr
> Diocletian Blobb among the Italians, Illuminated with
> Exemplary Tales
> from the True History of That Outlandish And Fantastical
> Race.
>    "'Lucky for me,' said Bortz, 'Wharfinger,
> like Milton, kept a
> commonplace book, where he jotted down quotes and things
> from his
> reading. That's how we know about Blobb's
> Peregrinations.'"
> 
> [...]
> 
>    "'But why spare an insufferable ass like
> Diocletian Blobb?'
>    "'You can spot a mouth like that a mile
> off,' Bortz said.  'Even in
> the cold, even with your blood-lust up.  If I wanted
> word to get to
> England, to sort of pave the way, I should think he's
> perfect.
> Trystero enjoyed counter-evolution in those days. 
> Look at EEngland,
> the king about to lose his head.  A set-up.'" (Lot 49,
> Ch. 6, p. 158)
> 
> 
> From Charles Hollander, "Pynchon, JFK and the CIA: Magic
> Eye Views of
> The Crying of Lot 49," Pynchon Notes 40-41 (Spring-Fall
> 1997): 61-106:
> 
> But Lot 49 itself suggests the analogy between the crisis
> in
> mid-sixties America and a crisis in Roman history by giving
> us, late
> in the novel, Dr. Diocletian Blobb.  Why bring in this
> name after all
> that has gone on before?  Diocletian was a Roman
> emperor (284-305 CE)
> whose reign marked a change in government.  Under
> Diocletian, local
> autonomy disappered, the taxing system compulsorily tied
> the country
> people to the land, the Seante became weak and ineffective,
> the army
> grew much larger and stronger, and the mercantile class was
> taxed to
> the limit.  Diocletian established a military
> dictatorship.  With the
> dissolution of any semblance of republican government,
> there were no
> theoretical or practical checks on the emperor.  When
> Diocletian's
> scheme for price stabilization failed, the empire went into
> a long
> political and economic decline from which it never
> recovered.  Could
> Pynchon see the gap between wealthy insiders and what used
> to be
> called the American middle class ... (pp. 99-100)
> 
> From Bernhard Siegert, Relays: Literature as an Epoch of
> the Postal
> System (Trans. Kevin Repp.  Stanford, CA: Stanford UP,
> 1999), Ch. 1,
> "An Epoch of the Postal System," pp. 4-19:
> 
>    It was in this form that the Persian
> Empire came to the Romans.
> After Persian communications technology was adopted, first
> by the
> Seleucids and then by Alexander the Great, its Egyptian
> version
> finally provided Augustus with a model for the cursus
> publicus--that
> is, for a postal system that served to transmit the
> imperiums of
> imperial oraculums and military communications, as well as
> to
> transport high-level functionaries.  As the name
> itself indicates, the
> use of the cursus publicus was reserved exclusively for the
> emperor
> and the provincial givernors.  And even these officils
> had to present
> a certificate issued by the emperor or the praetorian
> prefect (later
> also by the magister officium) in order to gain access to
> the medium
> of the empire.  'People' did not communicate through
> teh potal system;
> on the contrary, the postal system communicated through
> people, who
> had to perform angarias, that is, compulsory services or
> liturgies for
> the maintenance of the postal system.  In order to
> curb extensive
> corruption in th imperial postal system, which always was
> tantamount
> to conspiracy against the empire, Diocletian created an
> imperial
> secret service, the scola agentum in rebus, and placed the
> postal
> administration under its authority.  Eventually, under
> Theodosius and
> Honorius, the use of the postal system by private persons
> was even
> punished by death.  Since the network of the cursus
> publicus was
> coextensive
> with the orbis terrarum, banishment to Pontus meant being
> transported
> beyond the limes of the world for Ovid.  While the
> Tristia are laments
> over the loss of postal connections, the Epistulae ex Ponto
> use the
> medium of literature to decry the catastrophe in the
> postal system.
>    "Postal systems are instrumenta
> regni."  (pp. 6-7)
> 
> Siegert, Bernhard.  Relais: Geschicke der Literatur
> als Epoche der Post,
>    1751-1913.  Berlin: Brinkmann und
> Bose, 1999.
> 
> ... and from Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the
> Roman Empire
> (6 vols., 1776-88) ...
> 
> The nine Books of Pontical Epistles, which Ovid composed
> during the
> seven first years of his melancholy exile, possess, besides
> the merit
> of elegance, a double value. They exhibit a picture of the
> human mind
> under very singular circumstances; and they contain many
> curious
> observations, which no Roman, except Ovid, could have had
> an
> opportunity of making.
> 
> Cited in ...
> 
> Richmond, John.  "The Latter Days of a Love Poet: Ovid
> in Exile."
> Classics Ireland, Vol. 2 (1995):  97-120.
> 
> http://www.ucd.ie/~classics/95/Richmond95.html
> 
> For Gibbon: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/pcraddoc/dfgib/dfbutlis.htm
> 
> From E.J. Kenney, "Introduction" to Ovid, Sorrows of an
> Exile (Trans.
> A.D. Melville.  New York: Oxford UP, 1995), pp.
> xiii-xxix ...
> 
> Ovid, banished in disgrace by his emperor at the age of 51
> ....   The
> duration of his exile was at the pleasure of Augustus, an
> ageing and
> irritable autocrat whom he had somehow managed to give
> bitter personal
> offence.  Hence, it would seem, the choice of a place
> of exile: ... a
> barbarized Greek colony on the       
>    farthest confines of the
> Roman dominion.  Tomius, now Constanta in Romania
> ....  In one respect
> Augustine's        sentence had been
> lenient: Ovid was not legally
> exiled but 'relegated', hence not deprived in property or
> citizenship.
>  Otherwise it meant the loss of everything that had made
> life worth
> living, the brilliant cosmopolitan society of Rome. 
> Ahead lay nothing
> but solitude, boredom, discomfort, and danger--a living
> death.
> 
> "What had Ovid done to deserve this?  The secret has
> been well kept,
> and all we know is what he chose to tell us in his
> poetry.  It is
> perhaps natural to assume that the real cause of the
> offence was what
> he calls his indiscretion (error), an involuntary
> involvement in some
> scandal intimately affecting the imperial house.  The
> other count
> against him, a poem (carmen), the Ars Amatoria, looks at
> first sight
> like a pretext ....  True, Ovid had in it administered
> more than one
> pinprick to official Augustan myths, but can Augustine
> really thought
> it so subversive of contemporary morals ... to deserve such
> draconian
> punishment?" (p. xiv)
> 
> >From Ovid, Tristia (A.D. 9-11) ...
> 
> Parve--nec invideo--sine me, liber, ibis in urbem,
>   ei mihi, quo domino non licet ire tuo!
> vade, sed incultus, qualem decet exulis esse;
>   infelix habitum temporis huius habe. (I.i.1-4)
> 
> [...]
> 
> cetera turba palam titulos ostendet apertos,
>   et sua detecta nomina fronte geret;
> tres procul obscura latitantes parte videbis,--
>   sic quoque, quod nemo nescit, amare docent.
> hos tu vel fugias, vel, si satis oris habebis,
>   Oedipodas facito Telegonsque voces.
> deque tribus, moneo, si qua est tibi cura parentis,
>   ne quemquam, quamvis ipse docebit, ames.
> (I.i.109-16)
> 
> That is ...
> 
> You'll go, my little book--I feel no envy--
>   Without me to the City where, alas,
> Your master may not go.  Go, but be shabby
>   As suits an exile's book.
> 
> [...]
> 
> The others will display their titles clearly,
>   Each name uncovered on the front above.
> Three, you'll see, hide far-off in a dark corner--
>   Even so they teach (what all know) how to love.
> These you will shun, or call them Oedipus or
>   Telegonus, if you can be so bold.
> And of these three, I warn, if you respect your
>   Parent, love none, though how to love he's told.
> 
> Latin courtesy of ...
> 
> Ovid. Tristia and Ex Ponto.  2nd ed., rev.
>    Trans. Arthur Leslie Wheeler.  Rev.
> G.P. Goold.
>    Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1996 [1988,
> 1924].
> 
> But I opted for the English trans. in ...
> 
> Ovid.  Sorrows of an Exile.  Trans.
>    A.D. Melville.  New York: Oxford UP,
> 1995.
> 
> Verse vs. prose.  See also online ...
> 
> http://www.gmu.edu/departments/fld/CLASSICS/ovid.tristia.html
> 
> http://www.fotomr.uni-marburg.de/ovidserv/Text/chp/ovid.tristia.html
> 
> But to continue ...
> 
> In the Loeb (Harvard) ed., it is noted of Oedipus and
> Telegonus (the son of Odysseus by Circe) that "Both
> were parricides, and so, like Ovid's book, destroyed
> the author of their being" (p. 11, n. 2).  The Oxford
> further notes that they were "(unwitting) parricides,"
> adding that, here, "Ovid's books are now figured as
> his children" (p. 118, n. 114).  And back to
> Hollander
> ...
> 
> "Was Pynchon, too, on the list of the proscribed?  We
> may never know.  He did sign a full-page anti-war ad,
> along with hundreds of other well-respected people
> opposed to the escalating war, in the New York Review
> of Books (15 Feb. 1969: 9).  Natalie Robins has
> documented that Thomas R. Pynchon, Jr., was on the
> FBI's Index, a list of people known to be unfriendly
> to governmnt policies on whom the FBI kept active
> dossiers.  Pynchon's name appears among hundreds of
> 'Writers, Editors, Agents, and Publishres Indexed by
> the FBI because they signed Civil Rights and/or
> Anti-war Protests during the 1960s" ([Robins, p.]
> 411).  Enemies lists, Chaos, Cointelpro, Shamrock,
> Minaret; mail openings, telephone taps, direct
> surveillance, breaking and enetring, and stealing
> files: it appeared American politics could get no
> worse.  Pynchon had already opted to live as a
> stranger in his own strange land." (Hollander, p. 63)
> 
> Citing:
> 
> Robins, Natalie.  Alien Ink: The FBI's War on
>    Freedom of Expression.  New York:
> Morrow, 1992.
>