The revolutionaries of May

[Robert Jackson]

On 28/07/2009, at 2:07 AM, János Székely wrote:

> Rob:
>
> As a native I can testify that the three "Eis-Heiligen" plus Sophie
> plus Urban (May 25) are  not specifically Polish. In GR you can find
> the German term (as it relates to southeast Germany)but we have them
> in Hungary too and as far as I remember the late Igor Zabel from
> Slovenia also mentioned them as an element of folk meteorology. They
> denote a quirk in Central European Continental climate, i.e. frequent
> mid-May morning frosts after several warm weeks (deep in the flowering
> period) that you don't have elsewhere.
>
> On the other hand, I have never met any texts that called the Warsaw
> Ghetto fighters "revolutionaries". It was an act of wartime resistance
> rather than something intended as a social revolution.
>
> János


Hi János

The trusty Wikipedia blurb on the Ice Saints has it that:

"The Ice Saints is the name given to St. Mamertus, St. Pancras, and  
St. Servatus in Hungarian, German, Austrian, and Swiss folklore. They  
are so named because their feast days fall on the days of May 11, May  
12, and May 13 respectively. The period from May 12 to May 15 was  
noted to bring a brief spell of colder weather in the Northern  
Hemisphere under the Julian Calendar. With the change to the Gregorian  
Calendar, however, the equivalent days would be May 19-May 22."

And then it describes the three holy days, followed by "die kalte  
Sophia", which Pynchon refers to at the beginning of 'In the Zone', as  
being specifically Polish:

"In Poland, the Ice Saints are St. Pancras, St. Servatus and St.  
Boniface; St. Boniface's feast day falling on May 14. The trio are  
known collectively as the 'cold gardeners', the three days culminating  
in 'Zimna Zośka' (Cold Sophia's), the feast day of St. Sophia which  
falls on May 15."

>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_Saints

And the Wikpedia entry also refers to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising as  
the "the largest single revolt by the Jews during the Holocaust." NB  
the use of the word "revolt". The Jewish resistance fighters in Warsaw  
had the support of the Polish Home Army and the Communist People's  
Guard.

>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_ghetto_uprising

In that first paragraph in Part 3 where he refers to "the  
revolutionaries of May", Pynchon specifies a context: "In certain  
years, especially War years"; which is why I went looking for  
something that fit the bill.

1968 wasn't a "War year", and I think that "revolutionaries" is an apt  
enough term for fighters in the Ghetto Uprising, which was a extremely  
significant social and historical event of the "War years", and which  
just happened to be put down by a Nazi "rear guard". According to  
Wikipedia, the "suppression of the uprising officially ended on May  
16, 1943."

Whatever one might think of Wikipedia, the info is generally sourced  
from somewhere; in just the same way that the historical detail in GR  
is sourced from somewhere.

Part 3 of GR has Slothrop wandering through "the Zone", and up to the  
Baltic on the border of Poland.

I think there is perhaps a resonance in the phrase "the  
revolutionaries of May" with les Evenements in Paris '68, and the  
opening paragraph is certainly metaphorical. But the textual details,  
and subsequent events and settings in Part 3, certainly seem to  
support a WWII context for the opening.

It was an interesting and new connection that you had made which made  
me go back to the text and check out the details and look for  
potential historical referents. They're generally there to be found.  
As well as being "historiographical metafiction", GR is also very much  
a postmodernist take on the traditional "historical novel".

all best


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