Gravity's Rainbow - Part 3 - Chapter 29: Inhabiting the Inorganic
Analysis of Gravity's Rainbow, Part 3 - Chapter 29: Pökler Recalling Jamf, German Expressionist Cinema, Si-N
Back in 1.19, when Franz Pökler found Kurt Mondaugen at a rocket testing site, we learned that Pökler was a one-time student of Laszlo Jamf. Now with Slothrop knowing Pökler’s connection with Jamf and Imipolex G, the 00000, and the Schwarzgerät, he is finally able to hear a first-person account of at least some of the story between them all.
Among his many digressions, Pökler revealed to Slothrop that near the end of his life, Jamf developed a hatred for the covalent bond and a love for the ionic. The covalent bond is the literal sharing of one or more electrons between atoms. For instance, in water, two hydrogen (H) atoms share their valence electron with the single oxygen (O) atom, binding them together (H2O). However, the ionic bond is a much more ‘permanent’ bond in which the "electrons are not shared but captured" (577). This occurs in many minerals such as salt where the sodium (Na) atom fully seizes a valence electron from a chlorine (Cl) atom, thus making not a molecule, but an ionic compound. And despite the fact that an electron is fully stolen, the two atoms are entirely bound together.
Jamf, being a progenitor of the current era which Slothrop is a part of (and which we are still a part of), lived according to this ideology and conducted his experiments and himself in a manner congruent with it: the philosophy of the lion, "not [the] Bolshevik or [the] Jew" (577). The Elite do not ‘share’; there are no compromises and no good will between classes. But despite this fact, that which steals and that which is stolen from are near permanently bound together. The sodium will always take, the chlorine will always relent and give, and they will be intertwined eternally. This is where the interests of Jamf lie, whether that be applicable to his experiments on young Tyrone Slothrop, his development in various drugs such as Oneirine, or his high place among corporations such as IG Farben and its many branches.
Jamf’s obsession with power and his hatred toward anything hinting at socialism (unless that be National Socialism) rubbed off on his students, Pökler included, as the ideology of many professors tends to do. So Pökler, perhaps not even realizing that this philosophy has imparted a piece of itself into himself, began observing and living according to its doctrine. For instance, upon watching Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), instead of coming away with the intended message, he misinterpreted it as Hitler likely did (given this was, ironically, one of Hitler’s favorite films). Instead of seeing the technology and power-driven world represented in the film — one run by the hard and exploited labor of an unseen people below the city — he viewed it as one in which the head of the state and the workers of the state (the Elite and the Preterite) worked hand in hand in order to create a ‘utopia.’ In reality, the film was an advocation for the breaking down of class barriers to create an actual metropolis, not one which could only be viewed as such by those working in the high towers. To transfer the analogy back to the real world, a world run by readily shared electrons — covalent bonds — not by those that are stolen — ionic bonds. Pökler likely did not even see that these ‘bonds’ — which could represent labor, wealth, peace, or anything of that sort — were stolen from the unseen class. He may have viewed it wrongly as a shared prosperity: one in which someone did have to give something up to contribute to the betterment of a utopia.
Pökler, a lover of this style of German expressionist cinema, also views and attempts to analyze various other films by Lang, from the two-part Die Nibelungen films and his Doktor Mabuse film also featuring Klein-Rogge. And whatever it was that set his mind to interpretations of utter goodness in the various power structures represented within these films, the reality of the fact was that a more accurate representation would be something akin to Käthe Kollwitz’s sketch of Death holding a woman from behind, or the scene of rape within Lang’s Doktor Mabuse: the reading of this being "the male embodiment of a technologique that embraced power not for its social uses but for just those chances of surrender, personal and dark surrender, to the Void, to delicious and screaming collapse" (578). This technology that we have embraced, whether it be the plastics and weaponry of the past or the more advanced forms which we have now, will only serve to grasp us from behind and force its necessity upon us, creating with its grasp a nearly unbreakable ionic bond. Jamf’s, and through his teachings, Pökler’s, view of death is that it (for the Preterite, at least) should be a joyous and accepted occasion. This — considering ‘it’ is represented in Kollwitz’s sketch and in Lang’s film as a rape — goes to show what level the Elite view themselves at, and what They believe the Preterite should have to endure for Their pleasure and for Their definition of a ‘better’ world.
Finally moving on from his cinematic digressions, Pökler returns to Jamf’s lectures on chemical bonding. He equates the covalent bond, such as those between carbon (C) and hydrogen (H), to an endless cycle of workdays: taking "your lunch-bucket in to the works every morning with the faceless droves who can’t wait to get in out of the sunlight—or move beyond" (580). Jamf cannot fathom a collective goal or project and instead believes that the only way to live would be to seek this ‘beyond’ — what he would likely categorize as a form of Godhood or at least joining the ranks of the Elite. And his strategy toward joining this rank is to leave the measly covalent bonds — along with the traditional hydrogens and carbons — behind and strive for the inorganic, because in the realm of the inorganic, "here is Strength, and the Timeless" (580). An invincible Elite. As we saw though, one member of the Preterite, Slothrop, did attempt to join the Elite through this ‘ascension toward Godhood’ by conducting a rape aboard the Anubis — one which he likely viewed as more congenial than Lang’s film or Kollwitz’s sketch, but which in reality was anything but.
On the board during this lecture Jamf writes Si—N, a silicon bound ionically to a nitrogen to form a strong compound used often in various industries. The inorganic bond not only represents all of the symbolism discussed up to this point, but also quite literally spells out ‘sin,’ a crime against both God and nature. ‘Sin’ could also represent ‘sine’ — as in a sine wave — showing the rising and falling parabolic arc of the Rocket’s path: "The wave of the future" (580).
However, all of this ranting and lecturing seemed to be for naught, because Jamf stuck with the covalent, organic C—H compounds for the rest of his career after moving to America. Why would this be? Well, upon moving to America, he came "under the sinister influence of Lyle Bland" (580): Slothrop’s uncle who procured him for experimentation by Laszlo Jamf (3.1), but who also had a major hand in many of the industrial, pharmaceutical, and other realms of major profiteering in US black and white markets. And within these realms, things must always begin and end with oil — carbon. The drugs that will take our minds and enslave us to a system must bind organically to receptors in our brains. The fuel which powers our weapons must have the ability to break apart and combust to move them onward. So, we still need these advancing forms of organic ‘technology,’ but that does not mean that the inorganic will not further Their project. The solution is to merge the realms of the organic and inorganic — incorporate flesh and carbon within the Rocket itself. But it is not Jamf who will achieve this amalgamation, it is those he will teach and those he does not know. Pökler, assisting Blicero, will be the next step in this project with the development of the Schwartzgerät and the 00000. And along with this, it will take decades further in the future until the ionic bond of Si-N would fully come to fruition as Jamf had predicted. When it did though, it would usher in a new era of power dynamics: this time through the creation of a far more abstracted material and its use within Silicon Valley.
Up Next: Part 3, Chapter 30