마르틴 하이데거의 차이의 틈새의 형이상학과 토머스 핀천의 『중력의 무지개』

Martin Heidegger’s Metaphysics of Between - Difference and Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow

The literary critical approaches to Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow (1973. hereafter referred to as GR) have been unique and various. This paper aims to close up what is Pynchon’s view of language and how he deals with language by broadly referring to Heidegger’s metaphysics of between-difference. The hermeneutical approach among literary critical ones has its own priorities. For it offers all the contradictory ideas of experience, namely, a systematic process of the nature of Being. In terms of this approach, GR reflects the proposition of being which is ontologically problematic. The so-called problematic novel is structurally assumed to have the dual aspects of the conventional literary form and its counterpart, anti-form as well as the co-existence of the idea of the canonized tradition and that of anti-tradition. In fact, it is apparent that language has a significant role in such problematic novels. In this aspect of language does Pynchon correspond to those of Heidegger. In a word, through language they all together seek to disclose the ontological potential of Being inherent in the dialogue of a text rather than to explain the truth(reality) of the work by dint of recognizing the mysterious nature of language which reveals the potential power of language and Being. Pynchon points out the characteristics of language by alluding and parodying Rainer Maria Rilke’s The Sonnets to Orpheus and The Duino Elegies like as Heidegger does explain his metaphysics as difference by analyzing Rilke’s poetry and Trakl’s “A Winter Evening”. Heidegger’s well-known proposition, “Being-true is Being-uncovering” comes from his assertion that “language is the precinct that is the house of Being.” Thus, Heidegger’s poetic hermeneutics of between-difference and Pynchon’s concept of “interface” each other aim at uncovering the ontological nature of language. To conclude, GR, as a work of paradox, is certainly composed of the author’s ideas of the epistemological indeterminancy and metaphysical uncertainty. In other words, GR pursues both the movement of creation and destruction and at the same time the paradox of unity of still.