The revolutionaries of May

[János Székely]

Hi Robert,

this begins to takes the shape of a fascinating reception-theory
problem for me, something I had to think over (and over again) while
translating GR.

>From my POW (not in the Wikipedia sense) the English article on the
Ice Saints is particularly slipshod for the single reason that the
phenomenon is not a real-life experience in English-speaking
countries. E.g., St. Mamertius is unknown in Hungary, it's the regular
Pancrace, Servatius, Boniface here; there is no evidence of such folk
tradition from the era preceding the Gregorian calendar; no-one has
noticed any delay, while there is a separate saint for late May
frosts, St. Urban (May 25), to whom quite a few of chapels are
dedicated in wine-growing regions. The "delay" in Switzerland may be
due to the fact that they simply adopted the tradition from lower
south German and Austrian regions, while they themselves simply don't
have such a problem, as the vegetation period begins a bit later.
(Sudden cold fronts are common throughout the year; the reasons why
the Ice Saints are noted is not meteorological but agricultural in
nature as buds and flowers can freeze when cold air from the northwest
invades Central European low-pressure areas. Switzerland is cooler in
general and not really in the way.)

The point is that for me (and the hypothetical Central European
reader) the Ice Saints are not a matter of learning but a part of real
life, something we get accustomed to from childhood, a kind of
atmospheric counter-revolution after weeks of walking around without
overcoats among trees (and vines) in blossom. Something that you
instinctively attribute to arbitrary ill-will, which is such a regular
feature of "war years".

best,

János


2009/7/28 Rob Jackson <jbor at bigpond.com>:
> Just cleaning up the formatting of this post and resetting the "plain text"
> function. I think that those accents in Janos's name make my email program
> switch over to rich text (not Janos's fault, of course).
>
> And I do agree with Paul about the beauty of the imagery in that opening
> paragraph of Part 3 and the way it serves as a figurative or symbolic
> rendition of the war's end which "we", characters and readers alike, are
> about to experience.
>
> best wishes
>
>
> Date: Tue, 28 Jul 2009 04:25:17 +1000
> From: Robert Jackson <jbor at bigpond.com>
> Subject: Re: The revolutionaries of May
>
> On 28/07/2009, at 2:07 AM, J=C3=A1nos Sz=C3=A9kely 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.
>>
>> J=C3=A1nos
>
>
> Hi Janos
>
> 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', 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 Zo=C5=9Bka'
> (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." 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
>