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

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

You're absolutely right. In "Psychologie und Alchemie" [1944; here quoted
after the first edition of the Studienausgabe from 1975], Carl Gustav Jung
writes: "Das Böse will ebensosehr erwogen sein wie das Gute; denn Gut und
Böse sind schließlich nichts als ideelle Verlängerungen und Abstraktionen
des Handelns, welche beide zur HELL-DUNKLEN ERSCHEINUNG DES LEBENS
[my emphasis.kfl] gehören. Es gibt ja schließlich kein Gutes, aus
dem nichts Übles, und kein Übel, aus dem nicht Gutes hervorgehen
könnte./ Die Konfrontation mit der dunklen Hälfte der Persönlichkeit,
mit dem 'Schatten', ergibt sich von selbst in jeder einigermaßen
gründlichen Behandlung. Dieses Problem ist so wichtig wie das
der Sünde in der Kirche. (...) Und sowenig man Christus anklagt,
dass er mit dem Bösen fraternisiere, sowenig sollte man sich den
Vorwurf machen, dass die Liebe zum Sünder, der man selber ist,
ein Freundschaftspakt mit dem Bösen sei." (p.47) Your shadow 
knows!

kfl

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> Date: Sun, 21 Jun 2009 15:15:50 -0700
> Subject: Re: C of L49...dual nature of Tristero/Trystero
> From: igrlivingston at gmail.com
> To: markekohut at yahoo.com
> CC: pynchon-l at waste.org
>
> 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 wrote:
>>
>> Laura writes, agreeing with someone:
>> Yes, the dual nature of Tristero/Trystero is troubling.
>>
>>
>> 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 [...]
>>