ZERO-Fundstellen in Gravity’s Rainbow

Zero in Part 1 Zero in Part 2 Zero in Part 4 — The Zero Doctrine

III: In the zone

"Our responsibility ends at Stollen Number Zero (…)
"(…) the SS emblem."
"But it’s also a double integral sign! Did you know that?" (…) In the static space of the architect, he might’ve used a double integral now and then (…) But in the dynamic space of the living Rocket, the double integral has a different meaning. To integrate here is to operate on a rate of change so that time falls away: change is stilled. … "Meters per second" will integrate to "meters." The moving vehicle is frozen, in space, to become architecture, and timeless. It was never launched. It will never fall."
(31, 298-302)

"(…) a point in space, a point hung precise as the point where burning must end, never launched, never to fall. And what is the specific shape whose center of gravity is the Brennschluss Point? Don’t jump at an infinite number of possible shapes. There’s only one. It is most likely an interface between one order of things and another. There’s a Brennschluss Point for every firing site. They still hang up there, all of them, a constellation waiting to have a 13th sign of the Zodiac named for it … (…)
Double integral is also the shape of lovers curled asleep (…)."
(32, 302)
Auch wenn Slothrop hier vielleicht an Katje denkt, so war es doch Darlene (p. 119), mit der er wie ein Doppelintegral im Bett lag. Lance W. Ozier erläutert diese «Nullstelle» in seinem Aufsatz: Kalküle der Wandlung: Mathematische Bilder in Die Enden der Parabel:
„Die beiden parallelen Tunnel, in denen die Endmontage der V-2 Raketen stattfindet, haben die Form eines langgestreckten S und gleichen darin dem mathematischen Symbol ∫, das Leibniz 1675 für die Flächensumme unterhalb einer Kurve einführte und das heute als Integralzeichen bekannt ist. (…) Bei der Berechnung des Flugweges der Raketen, die in den integralförmigen Doppeltunnels von Nordhausen montiert worden sind, werden Beschleunigungsvorgänge in Bahndatzen umgesetzt. (…) Die Integration (…) hat zur Folge, daß Einheiten der Zeit aus den Flugdaten eliminiert werden. Dynamische Werte wie Beschleunigung (Meter pro Sekunde pro Sekunde) und Geschwindigkeit (Meter pro Sekunde) verwandeln sich so in statische, zeit-lose Positionsangaben (Entfernung in Meter). Metaphorisch verstanden, wird die fliegende Rakete aus der Zeit herausgenommen und in ihrer Bewegung «eingefroren»."

"It was a simple choice for the Hereros, between two kinds of death: tribal death, or Christian death. Tribal death made sense, Christian death made none at all. (…)The Empty Ones can guarantee a day when the last Zone–Herero will die, a final zero to a collective history fully lived. (…)
The people will find the Center again, the Center without time, the journey without hysteresis, where every departure is a return to the same place, the only place. … (…)
The Eternal Center can easily be seen as the Final Zero. Names and methods vary, but the movement toward stillness is the same.
(…) that Final Zero to look forward to. … " (32, 318-320)

"Dzagyp Qulan’s father was killed during the 1916 rising, trying to get away from kuropatkin’s troops and over the border into China—one of about 100 fleeing Kirghiz massacred one evening beside a drying trickle of river that might be traceable somehow north to the zero at the top of the world. Russian settlers, in full vigilante panic, surrounded and killed the darker refugees with shovels, pitchforks, old rifles, any weapon to hand." (34, 340)

Zero in Part 1 Zero in Part 2 Zero in Part 3 Zero in Part 4 — The Zero Doctrine
Index Hauptseite Vorwort Die Parabel Biographie Dekonstruktion Michael D. Bell Summary Literatur Richard Fariña Robert Frost Galerie Patterns–Muster Luddism Mason & Dixon Monographien u. Aufsätze Proverbs for Paranoids Schweine Slow Learner Soccer Sterblichkeit und Erbarmen in Wien Vineland Web Links Weiterführende Literatur The Wizard of Oz Fay Wray Homepage Page up/Seitenanfang