Pynchon's Winding Stair

[Joseph Tracy]

soulful  writing from alice and complementary thoughts from Otto

On Nov 28, 2009, at 10:03 AM, alice wellintown wrote:

> We have cycled over from everything is connected ("paranoia") to
> nothing is connected ("anti-paranoia").
>
> Remember Tantivy tries to convince Slothrop that "operational
> paranoia" can be useful, "especially in combat...you know PRETEND
> something like that."
>
> Should one pretend that a Rocket is aimed at one's head, one's mind.
> Would that do any good?
>
> And what if a Rocket is really is aimed at one's head?
Of course we have all grown up with this, but  I think many have  
forgotten how perilous this position is and how similarly unnecessary  
and dangerous  is our collective vulnerability to resource wars and  
eco destruction.  IV is an unflattering picture of how oblivious  
people can be in the face of great and ugly changes that threaten  
them as long as the bread and circuses, sex drugs and r&r continue.  
But It is hard for me not hear the ringing of a wake up call and the  
delineation of a specific historic turning point that resonates  
powerfully with current events  Pynchon aside, I think there is a  
drug in your list of evasive actions(to escape, to Transcend, to  
Return, to Deny, to Repress, to Imbibe some Higher Window view of the  
Truth , or to otherwise come to terms with paranoid existence and  
with the big D or Death.) That drug is the most common among the  
educated and the philosophical and it frequently disguises itself  
with token protest, but it is simply passivity. The easiest thing to  
do is negate personal responsibility by blaming the other or  
accepting the" inevitability" of self destruction.  There is no  
cleverness in this position other than a protection of ones' safe  
status within your niche in the reich.
But many take that position as "realistic" or inescapable.
I take the position that we can wake up and collectively demand and  
find a living way. That the reason "They" put so much effort into  
repression and lies and into the mythology and practice of war is  
because they fear such an awakening so often hinted at and attempted  
and to varying degrees enacted in the post colonial revolutions and  
the humane socialism  that emerged out of the great European wars or  
in Canada.
> As Yeats, or rather, as the Self sez to the Soul in "The WInding
> Stair,";  "What's the good of an escape / if honor find him in the
> wintry blast?"
As a line in Proverbs says " better is a dinner of herbs, where love is"
or as Yeats continues

When such as I cast out remorse
So great a sweetness flows into the breast
We must laugh and we must sing,
We are blest by everything,
Everything we look upon is blest.

>
> So we have several forms of Paranoia at work. The trick, it seems, is
> to find a center, or a way to cope with "paranoia" (the
> connections), the vast, differentiated, experiences of war, of
> "peace", of Orwellian "War is Peace" of life's flips and flops, but
> Pynchon's
> characters can't abide such vicissitude. There are bandwidth problems.
> There are too many personalities of pretense. Too many "mindless
> pleasures" that infect
> them, causing solipsistic views of (his)tory and me-story.
>
>
> They try to escape, to Transcend, to Return, to Deny, to Repress, to
> Imbibe some Higher Window view of the Truth , or to otherwise come to
> terms with paranoid existence and with the big D or Death.
>
> But all their attempts are but perversions of science or the occult or
> cult or religion, and usually a blending or conflation of the
> scientific and the occult.
>
> The Winding Stair
>
> My Soul. I summon to the winding ancient stair;
> Set all your mind upon the steep ascent,
> Upon the broken, crumbling battlement,
> Upon the breathless starlit air,
> 'Upon the star that marks the hidden pole;
> Fix every wandering thought upon
> That quarter where all thought is done:
> Who can distinguish darkness from the soul
>
> My Self. The consecretes blade upon my knees
> Is Sato's ancient blade, still as it was,
> Still razor-keen, still like a looking-glass
> Unspotted by the centuries;
> That flowering, silken, old embroidery, torn
>> From some court-lady's dress and round
> The wodden scabbard bound and wound
> Can, tattered, still protect, faded adorn
>
> My Soul. Why should the imagination of a man
> Long past his prime remember things that are
> Emblematical of love and war?
> Think of ancestral night that can,
> If but imagination scorn the earth
> And intellect is wandering
> To this and that and t'other thing,
> Deliver from the crime of death and birth.
>
> My Self. Montashigi, third of his family, fashioned it
> Five hundred years ago, about it lie
> Flowers from I know not what embroidery -
> Heart's purple - and all these I set
> For emblems of the day against the tower
> Emblematical of the night,
> And claim as by a soldier's right
> A charter to commit the crime once more.
>
> My Soul. Such fullness in that quarter overflows
> And falls into the basin of the mind
> That man is stricken deaf and dumb and blind,
> For intellect no longer knows
> Is from the Ought, or knower from the Known -
> That is to say, ascends to Heaven;
> Only the dead can be forgiven;
> But when I think of that my tongue's a stone.
>
> II
>
> My Self. A living man is blind and drinks his drop.
> What matter if the ditches are impure?
> What matter if I live it all once more?
> Endure that toil of growing up;
> The ignominy of boyhood; the distress
> Of boyhood changing into man;
> The unfinished man and his pain
> Brought face to face with his own clumsiness;
>
> The finished man among his enemies? -
> How in the name of Heaven can he escape
> That defiling and disfigured shape
> The mirror of malicious eyes
> Casts upon his eyes until at last
> He thinks that shape must be his shape?
> And what's the good of an escape
> If honour find him in the wintry blast?
>
> I am content to live it all again
> And yet again, if it be life to pitch
> Into the frog-spawn of a blind man's ditch,
> A blind man battering blind men;
> Or into that most fecund ditch of all,
> The folly that man does
> Or must suffer, if he woos
> A proud woman not kindred of his soul.
>
> I am content to follow to its source
> Every event in action or in thought;
> Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!
> When such as I cast out remorse
> So great a sweetness flows into the breast
> We must laugh and we must sing,
> We are blest by everything,
> Everything we look upon is blest.
>
>
>
>
> Pointsman and Blicero are excellent of example of this perverse
> blending of science and cult.
> Both are, as are most of P's characters, on a quest.
>
> What they are looking for is lost.
>
> Henry Adams & the Moderns flushed it all down into the Waste.
>
> In the Waste stumble about oblivious to this fact, so they are
> constantly with keys without locks or locks without keys.