C of L49...dual nature of Tristero/Trystero

[Ian Livingston]

I agree and add that in alchemy, as Jung discussed it, everything has
its opposite and the role of the master is to negotiate the union of
the opposites -- to hover, you could say, in the space between, where
neither is ascendant but both lie within the embrace of the alchemist.
 That seems to be the "gold" as Jung saw it....  or at least as I
do....

On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 2:44 PM, Mark Kohut<markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Laura writes, agreeing with someone:
> Yes, the dual nature of Tristero/Trystero is troubling.
>
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> I have been very troubled by it every reading. I want to 'reconcile' them somehow.
> Mendelsohn on accepting the demonic--I paraphrase--as TRPs "religious" answer might work.
>
> This reading, after reading some Eliade, and some Jung and more Eliot, I have 'accepted' this (for myself):
> TRP was seeing Tower America akin to one way he saw the History of War in GR: War might be a massive
> return of the Repressed Shadow unleashed in murderous fury. Repressed fathers killing their happier, youthful
> sons. Tower America from 50s to mid-sixties was ...repression (of preterite empathy), of more experience, of
> anarchic dancing, of a counterculture, etc.........
>
> A--and, I half-believe that TRP may have been accepting some kind of darkest Jungian Shadow into his deepening vision of whatever his understanding of human nature was becoming. As Eliot did in believing that some original sin was in human nature therefore evil was ineradicable fully-----which shaped his adult baptism.
>
> How do you write the next novella after such a vision of History as was "V."? Was History in V. so awful
> due to countries that could have acted differently---or was it because of human nature (as we knew it)?
> And is one level of C of L49, OBA's portrait of how the Artist goes deep and goes on?
>
> I link the dual nature of the Tristero loosely with the scenes with Vlado(?/) in Against the Day. Where Pynchon has
> some dark evil, again, blood revenge, be part of the otherwise organic community he seems to see positively. (And in
> the pampas grass sentences from GR, pointed out by some p-listers.) That is, that certain real 'evils' ARE THERE in any vision of a good community/society----and need to be dealt with to avoid the Returnj of the Repressed.
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