The tapestry that becomes the world also made me think of this short story by Borges who as you know was saturated in Gnosticism
"Of Rigor in Science"
...in that Empire, the art of Cartography attained such perfection that the map of a single province occupied the entirety of a city, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a province. In time, those unthinkable maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers' Guilds drew up a Map of the Empire whose size was exactly that of the Empire itself. The subsequent generations saw that that vast map was useless, and not without some pitilessness they delivered it up to the inclemencies of the sun and of the winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are tattered fragments of that Map, inhabited by animals and beggars; in all the land there is no other relic of the Disciplines of Geography.
There are other Borges fictions and poems that reflect a similar sense of blurring of scale representing the fictional or artistic depiction becoming its own world. Gnosticism for Borges was often a vehicular symbol for concepts around creating art and fiction and their relation to dreams and metaphysics, and I suspect that Pynchon was borrowing this Borgesian feel for a symbolic excursion into Gnostic symbolism.
The tapestry that becomes the world also made me think of this short story by Borges who as you know was saturated in Gnosticism
"Of Rigor in Science"
...in that Empire, the art of Cartography attained such perfection that the map of a single province occupied the entirety of a city, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a province. In time, those unthinkable maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers' Guilds drew up a Map of the Empire whose size was exactly that of the Empire itself. The subsequent generations saw that that vast map was useless, and not without some pitilessness they delivered it up to the inclemencies of the sun and of the winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are tattered fragments of that Map, inhabited by animals and beggars; in all the land there is no other relic of the Disciplines of Geography.
There are other Borges fictions and poems that reflect a similar sense of blurring of scale representing the fictional or artistic depiction becoming its own world. Gnosticism for Borges was often a vehicular symbol for concepts around creating art and fiction and their relation to dreams and metaphysics, and I suspect that Pynchon was borrowing this Borgesian feel for a symbolic excursion into Gnostic symbolism.
Thank you for this post. I’m reading crying lot and now it’s taking on new meaning. Love this
Lovely post. I wonder if that Jesús character was a reference to Fernando Arrabal? I'm not enough of a pynchon scholar to know...
The Pynchon Wiki seems to think it’s possible. Both have connections to anarchism, but I’m not enough of a Fernando Arrabal scholar to know…haha
Coincidentally (or not?!) Arrabal directed a sort of punk/industrial take on the Jesus story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE64sq2O_3M
Which apparently was from a play he wrote that was published in english in 1960. Funky breadcrumbs...
Awesome post my friend, the crying of lot 49 happens every year on either May 21-22, traditions vary.
So many breadcrumbs to follow! Thank you