BTZ42Read

[Protomen]

It's a bird!
It's a plane!
>but there is nothing to compare it to now. It is too late.


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: BTZ42Read
Local Time: 14 mars 2016 7:40 AM
UTC Time: 14 mars 2016 06:40
From: igrlivingston at gmail.com
To: pynchon-l at waste.org


“A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now…."

Okay, this is pure and simple association, but I must say the whole of Jung's dream plays out quite well with the opening section of GR. Further parallels as we go.





“The crucial dream anticipating my encounter with alchemy came around 1926: I was in the South Tyrol. It was wartime. I was on the Italian front and driving back from the front line with a little man, a peasant, in his horse-drawn wagon. All around us shells were exploding, and I knew we had to push on as quickly as possible, for it was very dangerous.


“We had to cross a bridge and then go through a tunnel whose vaulting had been partially destroyed by the shells." C G Jung, MDR, 203.





The Great Wars and the Depression between them left deep scars all across Europe. It wasn't just the soldiers who suffered nightmares in the aftermath. Jung's descent into the maelstrom led to his fascination with alchemy, which in turn influenced the work of Campbell, Eliade, and others. MDR was quite popular at about the time Pynchon was working on GR.





Any other associations folks can relate to this opening? I think it deserves all the color it elicits.
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