Quotations that Contribute to my Explanations at the bottom of this page:
1. “For the first time in his life, Tiffauges had departed from the absolute secrecy he had always maintained about his joys and fears and discoveries – he did tell the old man about inversion both malign and benign, saturation, phoria and the heroes that embodied it,” (p. 301).
“Whoever sins by symbols will be punished by symbols! Tiffauges, you are a reader of signs – I could see it, and you have proved it to me. You think that in Germany you have found the country of pure essences, where everything that passes is symbol, everything that happens is parable. And you are right. Besides, a man marked by destiny is inevitably bound to finish up in Germany, just as a moth flying around in the dark always ends by finding the light that intoxicates and kills it. But you have much to learn – Up to now you have discovered signs on things, like the letters and figures one reads on a milestone. That is only the weak form of symbolic existence,”(p.302).
“Signs are strong, it is they that brought you here. Signs are irritable, and the symbol thwarted becomes a diabol. From a center of light and concord it becomes a power of darkness and division,”(p. 302).
“You still have to learn the height of this mechanism of symbols – the combination of those three figures in one, which is synonymous with the apocalypse. For there is a terrifying moment when the sign no longer accepts being carried by a creature as a standard is carried by a soldier. It acquires autonomy, it escapes from the thing symbolized, and – this is what is frightening – it takes over that thing!”(p. 302-303).
“When the symbol devours the thing symbolized, when the cross-bearer becomes the crucified, when a malign inversion overthrows phoria, then the end of the world is at hand,”(p. 303).
“Symbol, no longer ballasted by anything, becomes master of heaven. It proliferates, insinuates itself everywhere, and shatters into a thousand meaning that don’t mean anything anymore,”(p.303).
“You say you love Prussia, Monsieur Tiffauges, because signs shine with incomparable brightness in its hyperborean light. But you don’t yet see what this awful proliferation of symbols leads to. In the sign-saturated sky a storm is gathering which will be violent as an apocalypse, and which will engulf us all! (p. 305 – 306).
2. “Mirror Twins,” Red & White color Imagery
“Twins carry the despiritualization of the flesh further. It is no longer a matter of contradictory tumult in which souls neutralize one another. The two bodies really have only one concept between them with which to clothe themselves in intelligence and fill themselves with spirit,”(p.287).
“So they develop with calm indecency, exhibiting their creamy complexion, their pink down…”(p, 287).
“But when I saw what he did with them – that red flag with a big white circle inscribed with a crooked cross I suspected the worst. For that tottering spider, turning around on itself and threatening everything that comes into with its hooked class, is a blatant antithesis of the cross of Malta, radiant with serenity and the desire for peace! (p. 303).
“Don’t these red shapes and white ground remind you of something Tiffauges? Said the old man, pursuing his own thought. ‘What would you say if I made you a knight attached to my house, with a coat of arms alluding to mine…it was you, wasn’t it who recruited these boys?” “Armorial bearings of an Ogre…eating children”
“He gave them their insignia: two swords of red cloth sewn on the left side of their white habit…The three red swords on the white ground recalled the two swords of the Knights of the Sword plus the one sword of the Teutonic Knights.
EXPLANATIONS
All of these themes are tied together in the malign inversion of “signs.” It is in these pages that we see Tiffauges becoming so enwrapped in “symbols” that he is blinded by their true meaning. He does not realize this because – he is overjoyed by the fact that he is permitted to examine, hold, and recruit children constantly. Although – he is unaware that he is collecting these children to be killed. Tiffauges is used to children being afraid of him, so when the young boy screams and kicks at Tiffauges, telling him to “call off the dogs!” Tiffauges is unfazed….unable to call off the dogs if he tried, capturing Lothar Wuenstroth, and the mirror-twins which are a symbol within itself.
The pyramid that the boys make represents the Three Swords of Kaltenborn – This uniting of red and white in the form of a trilogy, is the ultimate joy for Tiffauges. The officer jokingly offers to make Tiffauges “armorial bearings,” (something to carry) but fit for an Ogre who eats children.
This also ties into the way children are increasingly described like food: The creamy complexion of the twins & Lothar’s “mauve pools of his eyes….pudding-basin cut,”(p. 309)
The red and white a strong symbol of blood, innocence – the “massacre of innocence,”(p.284).
The way that the Swastika was described was akin to a “a cross that fell victim to malign-inversion, laced with black death, hooks, venomous pursuits of a spider. This is a perfect example of what the Frenchman was referring to when he talked about the danger of signs when the become autonomous – Tiffauges was not reading into the blatant signs that he was killing the children that he loved so much. The Nazis symbolize the perversion of humanity in the pursuit of power, where the “cross-bearer becomes the crucified.” This malign inversion and devastating discovery of symbols brings out the truly sinister side of Tiffauges.
Also, Tiffauges is disillusioned in his love for Prussia and Germany - the French man illustrates how he is going to fall to the "intoxicating light that kills those who are drawn to it," and how "whoever sins by symbols will be punished by them!" This quote I thought was especially important -- Tiffauges is being punished because he has lived his life in symbols - he put his faith in all of the signs that he was only able to read at surface-level, unaware of the atrocities he was helping Hitler commit -- even against his beloved children, the only source of joy in his life.
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