What *did* Bakunin say?

[Michael Bailey]

Oedipa at Driblette's wake, the "younger brother's stricken, helpless
eulogy" does, now that I think about it, bring JFK to mind...

but, to grab a less ambitious handhold, "You know what a miracle is?
Not what Bakunin said....' (this of course is when Oedipa is talking
with Arrabal)

well, what *did* Bakunin say?

I found something here: http://amandaenuchols.wordpress.com/

her paper is interesting in its own right and I'm going to loaf at my
ease and invite my leisure while reading it, but there's a relevant
passage goodsearch.com turned up (goodsearch.com if you sign up with
them donates a penny per search you make to the charity of your
choice) -- which is this ----

es from two references in the novel to Mikhail Bakunin, the commonly
held “father” of Anarchist thought.  Bakunin is first mentioned in The
Crying of Lot 49  in chapter five, in reference to Bakunin’s miracle:
“You know what a miracle is.  Not what Bakunin said.”  (97)  The final
reference is in chapter six, where he is referred to as the conclusion
of the Tristero organization, “now reduced to handling anarchist
correspondence; . . . preparing them for the coming of M. Bakunin.”
(142-143)  The Bakunin “miracle” is best stated in the words of
Bakunin himself:

“And there this poor Divinity, degraded and half annihilated by its
fall, lies some thousands of centuries in this swoon, then awakens
slowly, in vain endeavouring (sic) to grasp some vague memory of
itself, and every move that it makes in this direction upon matter
becomes a creation, a new formation, a new miracle.” (God and the
State)

There is much, much more to Bakunin’s “miracle” than is stated in this
simple quote.  He states that history is a continuous fall, and that
Divinity, as history, is also continuously falling; therefore, the
rise from the fall creates new miracles simply by the action of its
rise from inert matter to active.  Pynchon’s narrative states that
Jesús Arrabal’s miracle is “another world’s intrusion into this one”
(97), whereas Bakunin’s miracle is ever-present in a single reality.
This is an interesting comparison in relation to Pynchon’s “false
leads” because Oedipa spends the vast majority of the novel pursuing
miracles that are ever-present in her own reality by trying to find
and connect meaning and purpose to everything she encounters.  She
ultimately disregards Arrabal’s “miracle” in favor of the “miracle” of
an Anarchist philosopher.  It then becomes ironic that Oedipa’s own
life and mental processes begin to be overrun with anarchy when they
become so overwhelmed with the interconnectedness of the world around
her.