TCoL49 - relevance - from lithub.com

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

Although we've gone through Eddins & Voegelin debates since a former 
millennium again and again, it might not be completely without value to 
emphasize the basic problem of that approach.

"Voegelin's writings could be regarded as silly were it not for their 
strong impact within and beyond his own field of political science." 
(Richard Smith: The Modern Relevance of Gnosticism)

"Despite Eddins' many interpretative insights into the novel [GR], his 
use of 'gnosticism' as an explanatory model runs completely against the 
grain of the actual religious Gnostics of the secondary century and the 
historical tradition of commentary on them." (Jeffrey Lamar Howard: 
Heretical Reading: Freedom as Question and Process in Postmodern 
American Novel and Technological Pedagogy)

Neither Voegelin nor Eddins did study the ancient Gnostic sources, their 
use of the terms gnosis respectively gnostic - for Voegelin 
progressivism, positivism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, communism, fascism 
and national socialism are all "gnostic mass movements" ... -  is mere 
labeling! It has nothing to do with science, it's polemics. From a 
phenomenological perspective there is no clear cut distinction between 
Orphism and gnosticism. One could even say that Orphism, about which 
relatively little is known, is an older sibling of gnosticism. Actually 
there's a debate In religious studies whether Orphism did influence 
gnosticism. If so then via Platonism.

"Pynchon, Dick, and Nabokov embrace the Gnostic 'heresy' rather than 
condemning it because of their countercultural allegiance to the 
critique of prevailing 'orthodoxies' and their powerful commitment to 
freedom. (...) In Pynchon's novel /Gravity's Rainbow/, a counterforce of 
Gnostic rebels attempts to subvert the evils of an archontic, 
technocratic power elite." (Jeffrey Lamar Howard: Heretical Reading: 
Freedom as Question and Process in Postmodern American Novel and 
Technological Pedagogy)

Instead of condemning gnosis, Pynchon, although truly sympathizing with 
the gnostic fight against orthodoxy, makes the post war cult - "Dear 
Mom, I put a couple of people in Hell today ... ---Fragment, thought to 
be from the /Gospel of Thomas/ (Oxyrhynchus papyrus number classified)" 
(GR, p. 537, Picador/Viking) - which was growing around the Nag Hammadi 
scriptures an object of his satire.

But there are also the definitely non-satiric references to the gnostic 
worship of Cain (p. 429) and, especially important, Judas Iscariot (p. 
556). Here the gnostic reference stands in for human dignity: "Suppose 
the Slothropite heresy had had time to consolidate and prosper? Might 
there have been fewer crimes in the name of Jesus, and more mercy in the 
name of Judas Iscariot?" Maybe.

Since Howard also writes about PKD: One of the most impressive documents 
of 'postmodern gnosis' I know is the Appendix from /VALIS/ called 
/Tractates Cryptica Scriptura/. In the Library of America edition it's 
pp. 386-398. You may check this out!

P.S. Hans Jonas started his gnosis studies with a dissertation under 
Heidegger whose /Being and Time/ term 'thrownness' (Geworfenheit) is 
doubtlessly of gnostic origin.


On 08.07.2016 18:55, Monte Davis wrote:
> I was paraphrasing and hyper-simplifying. I'd looked for an Eddins 
> passage to quote, but he doesn't extract well -- partly at the 
> sentence/paragraph level because of his style, but also because he 
> passes old and (comparatively) familiar concepts of gnostic & Orphic 
> through a fascinating but VERY idiosyncratic modern reading before 
> applying them to Pynchon
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Voegelin
>
> But you certainly got the drift: that like Rilke, P works very hard to 
> embody both the seductive appeal *and* the terror of every candidate 
> Answer. Slothrop can't end up either crushed like Orwell's Winston 
> Smith OR triumphant, as redeeming hero leading a Counterforce. 
> Instead, he dissolves back into the world.
>
> Campbell: "My friend [Indologist - art historian] Heinrich Zimmer used 
> to say, 'The best things can't be told,' because they transcend 
> thought; 'The second best are misunderstood,' because those are the 
> thoughts that are supposed to refer to that which can't be thought 
> about, and one gets stuck in the thoughts; 'The third best are what we 
> talk about.' ”
>
> On Fri, Jul 8, 2016 at 12:24 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net 
> <mailto:brook7 at sover.net>> wrote:
>
>
>     > On Jul 8, 2016, at 9:51 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
>     quoting Dwight Eddin’s or commenting on his ideas?
>     >
>     > GR is one long metaxic ping-pong between those poles, a 760-page
>     system of words proving (like Rilke proves) that no system of
>     words will deliver the Word we think we want.
>
>     Or perhaps GR is asking  whether these are not irreconcilably
>     disconnected poles, renuciation vs embrace, but simply polarities
>     of the same global energy flow, both doors to each other and the
>     whole. The ping pong game becomes a necessary discipline to avoid
>     getting  stuck with a falses sense of self , a false sense of the
>     meaning and comprehensibility of the game.
>
>      My own feeling is that part of the genius of Pynchon is to leave
>     the reader to sort it out, but only after several rounds of
>     serious internal ping pong. Also he shows how very elegant and
>     poetic ideas can illuminate madness and cruelty. Which implies
>     that just having a beautiful, powerful scientific or poetic vision
>     is not enough to liberate one from theft, abuse, hatred and murder.
>
>
>     -
>     Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
>

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