CoL49 group reading ch6 part 1 (6) - with help from Albert Rolls on sources

Sun Jul 28 20:10:28 UTC 2024

Big Question:  do you know how to read?

If you are following clues laid out by a fictoon author of character(s)
acting as detectives in a POSSIBLY of the EXISTENCE Of a bizarre and
complex political situation…

1. Do you have a strategy for “processing” the text presented by the author?

2.  Do you think the author had a strategy for laying out the clues that
you’re now following?

On Sun, Jul 28, 2024 at 3:17 AM Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
wrote:

> https://www.berfrois.com/2020/03/albert-rolls-pynchon-in-the-low-countries/
>
>
> “Blobb” inquired around about the Trystero organization, running into
> zipped mouths nearly every way he turned. But he was able to collect a few
> fragments. So, in the days following, was Oedipa. From obscure philatelic
> journals furnished her by Genghis Cohen, an ambiguous footnote in Motley’s
> Rise of the Dutch Republic, an 80-year-old pamphlet on the roots of modern
> anarchism, a book of sermons by Blobb’s brother Augustine also among
> Bortz’s Wharfingeriana, along with Blobb’s original clues, Oedipa was able
> to fit together this account of how the organization began: “
>
> - Blobb and his brother are obviously fictional.
> There’s some grist for speculation in the names “Diocletian” - Roman
> emperor from 284 to 305 who even has a persecution of Christians named
> after him - and “Augustine” which strongly connotes the Bishop of Hippo
> from 395 to 430, an era in which Christianity rose in ascendancy while the
> Roman Empire was disintegrating. As wealthy Britons, Blobb père et mère may
> have wanted to render unto both God and Caesar.
>
> - “Obscure philatelic journals furnished by Genghis Cohen” not evidently
> meant to be traceable
> (but indicative of yet more friendly contact with Cohen)
>
> -  “an ambiguous footnote in Motley’s _Rise of the Dutch Republic”
> According to Albert Rolls, Pynchon’s account departs from the main thrust
> of that extant book
>
>
> - “An 80-year-old pamphlet on the roots of anarchism” would put its
> publication at 1884. One could speculate but nothing stands out in my
> cursory search.
>
>
> Among the many points in Albert Rolls’s fine article,
> “The unrecognized source for Pynchon’s construction of that historical
> context seems to be Adrien de Meeüs’s *Histoire Belgique *(1928), which
> was published in an English translation as the *History of the Belgians* in
> 1962. Knowing Meeüs’s historical account not only helps explain some of
> the choices, as well as errors, Pynchon made but also helps one better
> characterize the Tristero’s place in history.”
>
>
> - trying to recap Oedipa’s account more succinctly than the text:
>
> 1577 - “In late December, Orange, de facto master of the Low Countries,
> entered Brussels in triumph, having been invited there by a Committee of
> Eighteen. This was a junta of Calvinist fanatics….”
>
> Rolls points out that Motley correctly placed the event in September 1577,
> but Pynchon used Meeüs’s incorrect date of December.
>
> Also, Motley states that the Committee of Eighteen included many Catholics,
> and “attributes Brussel’s invitation to Orange to the Estates General
> (3:171) rather than the Committee of Eighteen,”
>
>
> - for my purposes:
>
> The King of Spain, Phillip II, was trying to make the Low Countries more
> subservient
> He was an actual dude.
>
> William of Orange (and his armed forces), invited by influential
> Brusselaars, came to Brussels to lead the resistance
>
> For Oedipa’s & Pynchon’s purposes, this was a Calvinist and localized
> resistance to a Catholic and ultramontane monarch
>
> William of Orange was an actual dude.
>
> The Committee of Eighteen* displaced many functions of the Estates
> General*, disrupting the status quo by appointing new people to hold
> important positions
>
> * actual dudes
>
> Jan Hinckart, Lord of Ohain, became postmaster, & displaced “Leonard I,
> Baron of Taxis, Gentleman of the Emperor’s Privy Chamber and Baron of
> Buysinghen, the hereditary Grand Master of the Post for the Low Countries,
> and executor of the Thurn and Taxis monopoly.”
>
> Jan Hinckart was an actual dude.
> Ohain is a Belgian town and district.
>
>
> “At this point the founding figure enters the scene:
> Hernando Joaquín de Tristero y Calavera, perhaps a madman, perhaps an
> honest rebel, according to some only a con artist.”
>
> Tristero does not seem to be an actual dude.
> No references online except CoL49 ones.
>
> - Tristero claims to have been disinherited by Hinckart, whose cousin he
> claims to be
> - he claims to hail from the “Spanish and legitimate branch of the family”
> - his forces harry and harass the Hinckart post from 1577 to 1585
>
> - so Hinckart represents the Calvinist rebels
> - while Tristero represents a revanchist Catholic and monarchist faction
> - however, his fealty to Phillip II is nominal, or nil, or at least not
> mentioned
>
>
>
> - Alexander Farnese in 1585 took back control of the Low Countries and
> reinstated Leonard
> - Farnese was an actual dude, Duke of Parma in fact
> - but here he was acting in his capacity as a general of the Spanish Army
> - which of course answered to Phillip II
> - who Wikipedia says was a Habsburg
>
>
> - so that’s how Rudolph II, Holy Roman Emperor, got involved
> - miffed by all the Protestantism in “the Bohemian branch of [Leonard’s]
> family” Rudolph withdrew support of the postal monopoly
> - hard times for Thurn & Taxis
>
>
>
> - in essence, we are inserting into all this historical data an invented
> character
>
>
> Trending trends:
> - The Roman Catholic Church, not content with the moral high ground, sought
> influence thru armed might, investing “Holiness” in a temporal power
>
> - other entities went contrariwise, with temporal powers such as Henry VIII
> establishing by armed might a Church of their jurisdiction in order to
> claim a state-sanctioned moral high ground
>
>
>
> - meanwhile, Tristero, apparently a charismatic leader and strategist,
> foments rebellion, seeks and finds recruits, and envisions a larger network
>
> - rather than challenge all facets of the current power structures in the
> world, he confines his efforts to the postal sector
>
> - this is similar to later rebellions taking over radio and TV stations,
> but much slower
>
> - he doesn’t seem to link up with any kind of Catholic/monarchist network
>
> - but seeks sovereignty over “the communications sector”
>
> - “He began a sub rosa campaign of obstruction, terror and depredation
> along the Thurn and Taxis mail routes.”
>
> - this would seem to detach his claims from his original Holy Roman Empire
> affiliation
>
>
> What to make of all this?
> - harkening back to Diocletian & Augustine, where the names of the brothers
> refer back thru the centuries to a time when there was a clear distinction
> between Empire and Church, and their parents choice of names as recognizing
> both trends?
>
> are we supposed to see a similar distinction between William of Orange and
> Rudolph II, Catholicism and Calvinism, local leadership vs transnational
> hegemony?
>
> Where does Tristero fit?
> His presence is disruptive.
> His “…iconography [,] the muted post horn and a dead badger with its four
> feet in the air…” is catchy enough to remain viral for centuries.
> His program is personal, reactive -
> He doesn’t really fit in anywhere.
>
> Is Pynchon suggesting that a feeling of being cheated is the basis of
> Tristero - and that this feeling is prevalent enough to result in a lot of
> movements that never come to much in the grand scheme, but cause a lot of
> weirdness all over the place, throwing off enough discontent that it has
> never been extinguished?
>
> Oedipa herself is discontented. Is she so interested in the Tristero as a
> Platonic ideal of her own discontent?
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>