Difference between revisions of "ATD 525-556"

Revision as of 22:09, 1 February 2007

Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.

Page 525

Ostend
Cf page 521, a seaport in northwest Belgium. Among English-speaking tourists, Ostend (or Ostende) is best known as a ferry port. Ships have shuttled between Dover and Ostend for more than 150 years, and today's high-speed catamarans move hundreds of passengers and vehicles between these two ports in just two hours. But this thousand-year-old city is a popular beach resort with Belgians, who flock to Ostend for sun, surfing, sailing and the Kursaal (Casino). The fishing hardbor and old town draw many visitors. Ostend is the only Belgian coastal resort that is as lively in the summer as in the winter. For more and pictures Ostend.

Fishermen's Quai
Fishermen's Quay, also called De Trap. The shrimp boats come home here from the sea in the morning. Along the quay many stands sell lots of seafoods.

Boulevard van Isenghem
A major thoroughfare in Ostend, locally called Van Iseghemlaan, extending diagonally from seafront southwest through the city.

street-plausible
Presentable.

Quai de l'empereur
???

estaminet
According to the OED - A café in which smoking is allowed. Now, any small establishment selling alcoholic liquor.

twelve-centime
one centime is the French eqivalent of one cent. A twelve-centime beer would cost 12/100 of a franc.

Quaternions
Cf page 130. Quaternions are a non-communtative extension of compelx numbers (Hamilton, 1843).

Analogy with the complex numbers (Cf page 132) being represented as a sum of real and imaginary parts, a + bi, where i² = −1, a quaternion is defined as a combination a + bi + cj + dk, where
i² = j² = k² = i j k = −1, and a, b, c, d are four explicit real numbers. The non-commutative property refers to i j = −j i = k; j k = −k j = i; k i = −i k = j. (i.e. i j ≠ j i; j k ≠ k j; k i ≠ i k; etc.) The using of i, j, k, the imaginary numbers (Cf page 133), led to the phrases of "the ijk lot" of page 533 and "creature of i-j-k" of page 534.

Kellner
German: waiter, barman. Use of the German word would be insulting to the Belgian barman.

demi
Half glass.

Lambic
Pron. lahm-BEEK. Unique Belgian beer style, sour and often thin in body.

skimmer
Straw hat ("Panama").

Page 526

biquaternion
Double quaternion.

Barry Nebulay
Pun on a term from heraldry, barry nebuly. Barry (rhymes with "starry," not "carry") refers to a shield divided into an even number of parts by horizontal lines. Nebuly signals that the lines are deformed into stylized "cloud" shapes. Here you can see an example. If a British author had a character with a heraldic name, it would suggest a pseudonym.

University of Dublin
The Alma Mater of Hamilton, the father of Quaternion. He studied, graduated and taught at Trinity College, the University of Dublin, Ireland's oldest university.

If University College, Dublin, then Joyce had graduated in 1902.

Quaternioneers
Quaternion believers.

Gibbsian Vectors
Vector Analysis (or Vector Calculus) developed by Willard Gibbs (Cf page 29) in 1881 and 1884. It is a branch of calculus that deals with vectors and process involving vectors. It is much more easily applied to phsics and other applied sciences than Hamilton's Quaternions (Cf p. 525).
A vector is defined by not only a magnitude but also a direction, such as a velocity vector, v is defined by v = ai + bj + ck, where a, b, and c are the magnitudes of the velocity components in directions of i, j and k which are unit vectors, (not imaginary numbers as in Quaternion), with magnitude of 1. In three dimensional cases and xyz coordinate system is used then i, j, k are related to x, y, z directions ("xyz people" of page 533); but they, in general, may be used irrespective of the notation of the coordinates. Mathematical operations (addition, substraction, multiplication), differential operator (curl — Cf page 326 and p. 536, Laplacian — Cf page 326 and p. 536, etc) and integral operation can be applied to vectors. It is interesting to know that one of the two multiplication operations is called cross product; for unit vectors (i, j, k) perpendicular to each other, then, i × i = j × j = k × k = 0, i × j = k, j × i = -k, etc. (Vector Caculus).
A simple vector anyalysis example here: if k, the unit vector, stands for the direction upward and g is the gravitational acceleration, then the acceleration vector, a, for a projectile, is defined for downward action, (the i and j directions have zero components):

a = -g k

Integrating a would give the velocity vector, v

v = -g t k

for zero initial velocity case, and t stand for time.
And integrating v would yield the position vector, h, for the projectile

h = -½ g t² k

toward the sea level.

Quaternionists
Quaternion believers, same as Quaternioneers.

Tasmania
Tasmania is an island of the southern coast of Australia. Known for its relative isolation, it was a prison for English convicts in the 1800s

Hamiltonian devotees
The Quaternion faction, after William Hamilton, who devised the scheme.

Grand Hôtel de la Nouvelle Digue
There is a Hotel Digue in the Seychelles; this is a New Hotel Digue by Pynchon?

Grand Hotel of New Dyke, may be a made up hotel name.

anterooms of death
This metaphor is sometimes applied to concentration camps. Here the lyric "feel like I'm fixin' to die" seems more apposite.

Belgian Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau, 1890(or 80) to 1914, explores a new style in the visual arts and architecture that developed in Europe and North America at the end of the 19th century. At its height (~1907), Art Nouveau was a concerted attempt to create an international style based on decoration. It was developed by a brilliant and energetic generation of artists and desisgners, who sought to fashion an art form appropriate to the post-Industrial Revolution modern age.
Brussels was one of the Art Nouveau centers and represented different style from the others. The jewelers there, accepted as artists rahter than craftsmen, (together with those in Paris) defined Art Nouveau in jewelery and achieved the most renown. (Art Nouveau).

Page 527

dossing
British slang for "sleeping", "staying overnight"

Russian nihilists

The following four are local, Belgian, not Russian, nihilists !

Eugénie, Fatou
Females.

Denis, and Policarpe
Males.

Young Congo
Probably in reference to the Young Turks, a Turkish revolutionary movement

Garde Civique
A part of the Belgian army. According to the 1911 Britannica, "the mass of the garde civique does not pretend to possess military value. It is a defence against sedition and socialism."

French Second Bureau boys
Deuxieme Bureau; French Intelligence.

phalange
French: phalanx. A military (here mock-military) group ready for combat.

"...until something had happened, something too terrible to remember..."
Again this theme of an unknowable past transgression, here invoked almost as if the unknown signifies the other 'lateral' (a word which has cropped up at least a dozen times already) 'vector'.

the Digue
French for "dyke"

Congo... Belgians
The Belgian colonisation of the Congo was, as Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" makes clear, notable for its greed and brutality.

Leopold, King of the Belgians
1835-1909, reigned 1865-1909. In the Congo he acted as sole proprietor and absolute ruler.

co-conscious
mental processes outside the main stream of consciousness but sometimes available to it — from Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary.

Force Publique
Belgian armed forces operating in the Belgian Congo (Wikipedia)

rubber worker
See above: One of the early missions of the FP was to increase rubber export quotas through forced labor and related atrocities.

Page 528

khâgne
an informal term used by French students for Classes Préparatoires Littéraires, the two-year cycle of classes taken after the Baccalaureat (taken at age 17-18), to prepare for the entrance examination to the Ecole Normale Supeieure. (khâgne).

Reclus
J. J. Élisée Reclus (1830-1905), French geographer but mainly educated in Germany. Several times he was forced to leave France because of his political views; he traveled widely in Europe, the British Isles, the United States, and South America and for many years lived in Switzerland. He was professor of comparative geography at the University of Brussels from 1895 to 1905. He had quite an extensive connection with various socialist and anarchist circles (met Bakunin while in Florence).Once he was imprisoned in Versailles in 1871 for his part in the Paris Commune. In 1882 he initiated the Anti-marriage movement while in Geneva. [Reclus).

Stirnerite
Follower of Max Stirner, 19th century German philosopher and author of The Ego and Its Own, a work influential in anarchist thought. Wikipedia entry.

Max Stirner's (1806-56) attacks on systematic philosophy, his denial of absulutes, and his rejection of abstract concepts of any kind often places him among the first philosophical nihilists. For Stirner, achieving individual freedom is the only law; and the state, which necvessarily imperils freedom, must be destroyed. Even beyond the oppression of the state, though, are the constraints imposed by others because their very existence is an obstable compromising individual freedom. Thus Stirner argues that existence is an endless "war of each against all" (1845). (taken from the paragraph about Max Stirner in Nihilism)
Sourcing here? Much complexity in properly understanding Stirner, who has some Pynchon-like qualities, to say the least. From the Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy
His major work:

The Ego and Its Own

Much of Stirner's prose—which is crowded with aphorisms, italicisation, and hyperbole—appears calculated to disconcert. Most striking, perhaps, is the use of word play. Rather than reach a conclusion through the conventional use of argument, Stirner often approaches a claim that he wishes to endorse by exploiting words with related etymologies or formal similarities. For example, he associates words for property (such as ‘Eigentum’) with words connoting distinctive individual characteristics (such as ‘Eigenheit’) in order to promote the claim that property is expressive of selfhood. (Stirner's account of egoistic property—see below—gives this apparently orthodox Hegelian claim a distinctive twist.)

This rejection of conventional forms of intellectual discussion is linked to Stirner's substantive views about language and rationality. His unusual style reflects a conviction that both language and rationality are human products which have come to constrain and oppress their creators. Stirner maintains that accepted meanings and traditional standards of argumentation are underpinned by a conception of truth as a privileged realm beyond individual control. As a result, individuals who accept this conception are abandoning a potential area of creative self-expression in favour of adopting a subordinate role as servants of truth. In stark contrast, Stirner insists that the only legitimate restriction on the form of our language, or on the structure of our arguments, is that they should serve our individual ends. It is the frequent failure of ordinary meanings and standard forms of argument to satisfy his interpretation of this criterion which underpins Stirner's remorselessly idiosyncratic style.

The Ego and Its Own has an intelligible, but scarcely transparent, structure. It is organised around a tripartite account of human experience, initially introduced in a description of the stages of an individual life. The first stage in this developmental narrative is the realistic one of childhood, in which children are constrained by material and natural forces such as their parents. Liberation from these external constraints is achieved with what Stirner calls the self-discovery of mind, as children find the means to outwit those forces in their own determination and cunning. The idealistic stage of youth, however, contains new internal sources of constraint, as individuals once more become enslaved, this time to the spiritual forces of conscience and reason. Only with the adulthood of egoism do individuals escape both material (external) and spiritual (internal) constraints, learning to value their personal satisfaction above all other considerations.

Stirner portrays this dialectic of individual growth as an analogue of historical development, and it is a tripartite account of the latter which structures the remainder of the book. Human history is reduced to successive epochs of realism (the ancient, or pre-Christian, world), idealism (the modern, or Christian, world), and egoism (the future world).

What about these "successive epochs" in understanding ATD?

Stirner's major work, The Ego and Its Own has been reissued in English a number of times in Pynchon's lifetime,from the 60s on. (Not that TRP could not have read it in German!)

Anarcho-individualiste
i.e. he has doctrinal differernces with Stirnerism, strictly speaking; see P. 324, and "Eigenheit".

Leopold
See p. 527.

going down lately
Being assassaniated.

Sipido
Jean-Baptiste Sipido (1884-1959), a Belgian socialist. Accusing the Prince of Wales of causing thousands of inocents were killed in the Boer War in South Africa, on April 5, 1900, Sipido leaped onto the foot board of the royal compartment right before the train left the North Railway Station (Gare du Nord), Brussel, and fired two (or one? as reported in The Manchester Guardian, or four? as stated in the text here) shots through the window but missed everyone inside. He was arrested, tried and acquitted. The leader of the House of Commons called the acquittal a "grave and most unfortunate miscarriage of justice." (Sipido).

Prince... of Wales
(Maud Gonne's husband claimed to have been involved in another such plot.)

Royal Bathing Hut... twenty francs
???

twenty francs
???

Page 529

picric family
The explosive picric acid (2,4,6-trinitrophenol) and its derivatives. For picric acid, Brugère's powder and Designolle's powder, see this Britannica article.

Brugère's powder
See "picric family" above.

Designolle's
See "picric family" above.

Monsieur Santos-Dumont
Alberto Santos-Dumont (1873-1932), a pioneer of aviation from Brasil. Check out Wikipedia to get a look at the way he was wearing his "trademark Panama hat".

Green Hour and l'heure vertigineuse
Absinthe-drinking time. The liqueur is green. In French, l'heure verte, so vertigineuse (vertiginous, causing dizziness) is a pun on the word for "green."

Rocco and Pino
Rabid Quaternionists and sudden friends of Kit Traverse.

No, they were not mathematicians at all, let alone Quaternists, but two "Italian naval renegades" !!

Whitehead works in Fiume
Anticipating GR's V2 works.

Robert Whitehead (1823-1905), an English engineer. He developed the first self-propelled torpedo in 1866. He attended Manchester's Mechanics Institute, worked in a shipyard in Toulon (1844), France, and as a consultant engineer in Milan (1847), Italy. Later he moved to Trieste and in 1856 became a manager of a company called Founderia Mettali (later, Stabilimento Tecnico di Fiume) in Fiume producing ship steam boilers and engines which were the most advanced of that era. He also developed the first self-propelled torpedo which was very popular. Whitehead's torpedo was propelled by a compressed air engine, carried 18lbs dynamites and a self-regulating device which kept the torpedo cruising at a constant preset depth. [Whitehead].

Fiume is now Rijeka, Croatia. Trieste is on the northern shore of the Istra Peninsula, Rijeka on the southern shore. [Fiume].

Alberta
???

Siluro Dirigible a Lenta Corsa
or S.L.C. "slow course torpedo", "slow-running torpedo". Wikipedia Italy‘s Navy was among the first to experiment with manned torpedos. Though according to this site this did not happen until 1935, Italian frogmen as early as October 31, 1918 made it into the harbour of Pula with the help of a modified german torpedo and sank the former Austrian but by then since a few hours Croatian/Slovenian/Bosnian battleship SMS Viribus Unitis. website

Italian dirigibile means "steerable." The word suggests the torpedo is a counterpart of the dirigible Inconvenience.

Page 530

exfiltrate
Make a surreptitious escape (as "infiltrate" means to make a surreptitious entrance).

Macchè
???

Ehi, stugazz', categoria
???

mezzogiornismo
Denigrating the Italian South

Page 531

Bruges
An exceptionally beautiful Belgian town of canals which is thus one of several towns known as the 'Venice of the north'.

Raoul's Atelier de la Vitesse
French: Ralph's Speed Shop.

Ghent
Belgian city on the rail line about halfway between Ostend and Brussels.

Daimler six-cylinder
???

a hundred horsepower
???

guaglion
???

Umeki Tsurigane
Umeki is typically made with some combination of the various kanji for "plum" (ume) and "tree" (ki), though one has the ki being the character for "ghost/devil" and one obscure reading that's entirely redundant, where ume is "plant" (usually read ue). There is one where ume is the kanji for "buried or embedded". Tsurigane, means a "temple bell", which can stand alone or be followed by the grass kanji to mean "bellflower" (lots of botanical stuff happening here, if that means anything; hardly the only example in AtD). Given the search for Shambhala going on, "Buried Temple Bell" seems a likely translation, at least at this point; the botanical meanings could perhaps emerge later.

Professor Knott
???

Page 532

Kimura
Cf page 29 and page 318.

drover's sombrero
Cowboy hat.

furoshiki
???
Japanese all-purpose cloth. Can be worn, used as wrapping, or used as a bag.

taupe
A brownish gray.

boilermakers and their helpers
A shot of straight scotch followed by a beer chaser, plus other drinks.

Comptes rendus
Les Comptes rendus de l'Académie des sciences Francais. The Reports of the France Academy of Sciences.

De Forest
Cf page 29.

Gibbs
Cf page 29.

Maxwell Equations
Cf page 58.

Page 533

aniline teal
The wallpaper dye; aniline dyes were the products of I.G. Farben, significant in GR.

Heavisiders
Oliver Heaviside (May 18, 1850 – February 3, 1925) was a self-taught English electrical engineer, mathematician and physicist who adapted complex numbers to the study of electrical circuits, developed techniques for applying Laplace transforms to the solution of differential equations, reformulated Maxwell's field equations in terms of electric and magnetic forces and energy flux, and independently co-formulated vector analysis. Although at odds with the scientific establishment for most of his life, Heaviside changed the face of mathematics and science for years to come.[1].

Grassmanniacs
Nineteenth century German mathematician and linguist, essentially the inventor/discoverer of vector space. Grassmann showed that once geometry is put into the algebraic form he advocated, then the number three has no privileged role as the number of spatial dimensions; the number of possible dimensions is in fact unbounded.[2].

in the mood for a clambake
Anachronistic Broadway show tune? If so, the clambake in Carousel turns into a brawl; the assmebled factions of mathematicians could be in the mood for either a party or a brawl, apparently.

Monopole de la Maison
Monopole of the House, a fanciful name of a fanciful drink.
There is, since 1898, a well known restaurant called Monopole Lunch & Sea Grill in Plattsburgh of upper New York state. (Monopole Restaurant).
Most probably, it's the Magnetic monopole being refered here. In physics, monopole is a magnet with a net magnetic charge, ie. there is only one pole instead of two (so no net magnetic charge) as always. (Monopole). It's existenece had been theoretically predicted by various particle theories (superstring theory, etc) but never been proved experimentally. Proving the existence of a monopole would certainly worth a Nobel Prize.

Idiom Neutral
An invented language, like Esperanto. Idiom Neutral dictionaries first appeard in 1902. It looks like a simplified Latinate language and it grew out of Volapuk, another "auxiliary language." It was abandoned by the Akademi Internasional de Lingu Universal in 1908.

For a list of all the invented languages that linguists are keeping track of, including Klingon, try Eastern Michigan's Linguist List. And don't forget to click on the link to "Browse sites devoted to constructed languages."

phatic
Basically, small talk or chatter. Words used to convey fellow-feeling rather than to impart information.

Kampf ums Dasein
German: struggle for existence.

Q-brother
"My fellow Quaternion"?

Fellow Quaternioneer or Fellow Quaternionist.

Page 534

Poiret gown
A gown designed by Paul Poiret (1879-1944), a French fashion designer based in Paris. "In the annals of fashion history, Paul Poiret is best remembered for freeing women from corsets and further liberating them through pantaloons . . . it was Poiret's remarkable innovations in the cut and construction of cloting . . . Working with fabric directly onto the body, Poiret helped to pioneer a radical approach to dressmakeing that relied more on the skills of drapery than on those of tailoring." (from MetMuseum, New York Metropolitan Museum's Special Exhibitions, Poiret: King of Fashion, May 9, 2007 to August 5, 2007). For a picture of Poiret gown see Poiret Gown. The New York Times reported on February 1, 2007 that A Poiret Gown Brings $5,500 at Christie's Auction - the gown was made in 1913 when Poiret was at the height of his career. For his bio see Poiret.

green and long
Pickle, or... what?

A green and long gherkin (a small, immature fruit of a variety of cucumber used in pickling).

Page 535

no-name wine
1970s idiom for common European practice?

Hamilton... first love
???

Page 536

Oscar Wilde
Note that Wilde's Dorian Gray also undergoes a kind of bilocation.

Kursaal
Spa. Casino ?

Curls
Cf page 326: curl is a vector operator that shows a vector field's rate of rotation.

Laplacians
Pierre-Simon, Marquis de Laplace (March 23, 1749 – March 5, 1827); French mathematician and astronomer who summarized and extended the work of his predecessors in his five volume Mécanique Céleste (Celestial Mechanics) (1799-1825), translating the geometrical study of mechanics used by Isaac Newton to one based on calculus, known as physical mechanics.

He is also the discoverer of Laplace's equation. Although the Laplace transform is named in honor of Laplace, who used the transform in his work on probability theory, the transform was discovered originally by Leonhard Euler. The Laplace transform appears in all branches of mathematical physics — a field he took a leading role in forming. The Laplacian differential operator, much relied-upon in applied mathematics, is likewise named after him. [3].

Cf page 326: Laplacian is a differential operator named after Laplace. The text here was talking about mathematical operations and operators — rates of change, rotations, partial differentials, Curls, Laplacians, . . .

scream
Scream motif.

beginning to appal
By 1905 there had been years of outrage at conditions in the Belgian Congo, King Leopold's private fief. Conrad's Heart of Darkness had been published as a serial in Backwood's Magazine in 1899 and as a book in 1902. There were missionaries' accounts of the brutality, and newspaper reports. Leopold and his apologists published rebuttals. The Norton Critical Edition of Heart of Darkness contains an extensive collection of both.

baize
Baize is a course woolen felt.

Page 537

broken symmetries
???

sphinxe Khnopffienne
refers to the Belgian symbolist painter Fernand Khnopff (1858-1921), famous for his painting "The Caress", in which a female sphinx erotically lures a young man. The painting can be seen in the wikipedia entry

Pléiade Lafrisée
???

Conseilleuse
Female consultant?

Page 538

retroversion matrix
???

Ma foi
Literally "My faith", i.e. "By my faith!", a mild exclamation of incredulity.

ten thousand francs
???

piker
Someone cheap or cautious, possibly named after people from PIke County, Missouri, who came to California in the 1800s, looking for work. They were poor, hence cheap.

'Mad Dog'
???

Hegel... puns
???

Page 539

vector quotient
???

'Triangle Asana'
A basic yoga pose.

Here are images of several basic poses.

'Quadrantal Versor Asana'
A triangle pose taken that extra dimension.

"Uwe moer!"
???

noncommutative
A term typical to mathematics. A commutative equation is one that can operate in exact reverse and still yield the same results. 'Noncommutative' then suggests unidirectionality. The ability to go from point A to point B, but not from B to A.

reticule
A woman's drawstring handbag; usually made of net or beading or brocade; also: A system of lines forming a pattern of squares at the focal plane of a telescope, used in micrometers. [www.astunit.com/tutorials/glossary.htm]

Vacheron & Constantin watch
???

hunting-case
???

Page 540

"haar rekening, ja?"
The bill, yes? (Dutch)?

Her bill, yes? I.e., give the check to the lady.

Given the presence of Chris 'Kit' Traverse here, this very much suggests a reference to Christopher 'Kit' Marlowe, Elizabethan poet, playwright and contemporary of Shakespeare. Marlowe was stabbed to death in 1593, in murky circumstances, ostensibly over a bill or 'reckoning', though he was widely believed to have been involved in some form of espionage.

Piet Woevre
Pete Weaver?

made him reach
Possible allusion to a famous line, "When I hear the word culture I reach for my gun." From Hanns Johst's biographical play Schlageter. The original line is slightly different: "Wenn ich Kultur höre ... entsichere ich meinen Browning," "Whenever I hear of culture... I release the safety-catch of my Browning!" (Act 1, Scene 1). It is spoken by another character in conversation with the young Schlageter. In the scene Schlageter and his wartime comrade Friedrich Thiemann are studying for a college examination, but then start disputing whether it's worthwhile doing so when the nation is not free.

The line is often misattributed to better-known Nazis and others [4].

not unambiguous
Ie, ambiguous.

rastaquoueres
8???

de Decker
In Dutch/Flemish, the name means "roofer." (De in these names almost never means "of, from" as in French; it's nearly always the definite article.)

Page 541

bobbejaan
???

MKIV/ODC... Mark Four
???

your remit
???

gatkruiper
Dutch/Flemish: brownnose, ass-kisser.

one on her wrist
???

over the day
Title motif?

Page 542

trans-horizontic
???

Edmund Whittaker
Edmund Whittaker (1873-1956), an English mathematician. He is best known for his work in numerical analysis. And he contributed widely to applied mathematics, mathematical physics and the theory of special functions. He also worked on celestial mechanics and the history of applied mathermatics and physics. (Whittaker).

The Sir Edmund Whittaker Memorial Prize is awarded every four years by the Edinburgh Mathematical Society to an outstanding young mathematician having a specified connection with Scotland [5].

foaming louche
???

cheval-glass
Standing mirror in a freestanding vertical frame.

as if someone
Sound-cancelling vs opacity-cancelling?

Page 543

monitory
Admonitory.

He Who Must Come
???

General Boulanger
Georges Boulanger, French War Minister urging an attack on Germany

what death and what transfiguration
Allusion to Richard Strauss' tone poem "Death and Transfiguration" (Tod und Verklärung), premiered in 1890.

"Zeker"
Dutch, "certainly"

dead cert
Dead certainty, sure thing.

Von Schlieffen
Alfred von Schlieffen was the author of a German war plan to win a two-front war against both France and Russia by quickly defeating France before Russian troops could be mobilized. The Schlieffen Plan included an attack on France through Belgium, disregarding its neutrality.

Wilhelm has offered Leopold part of France, the ancient Duchy of Burgundy
History of the duchy. Map, with portrait of Duke Charles the Rash.

lowlands
Title of Pynchon's first published story. Here, ass?

Page 544

Place d'Armes
Main square of Ostend; literally "drill field".

peau de soie
"Skin of silk" A heavy, smooth satin with very fine ribbing; somewhat dull in sheen compared with traditional silk finishes.

Krafft-Ebing
Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing, Austro-German psychiatrist and author of Psychopathia Sexualis (1886), a pioneering study of deviant sexual behavior and fetishism. Coined both sadism and masochism as terms for these respective behaviors. Wikipedia entry.

toque
A chef's hat

guipure
???

midinette
???

sous
???
coins. Originally Roman gold coins, latterly any kind of coin.

mayonnaise
Brautigan's "Trout Fishing in America" famously ends with the word mayonnaise. GoogleBooks

ovoöleaginous
Another Pynchonic word combination, here denoting the two main ingredients of mayonnaise: 1) eggs, and 2) oil. It's not "fecoventilatory collision" as seen in "Vineland," but it's nice.

Grenache
???
Grape commonly used in Rhone Valley wines e.g. Chateauneuf du Pape.

Chantilly
???
Region north of Paris.

attainder
Legislative act declaring that a person is guilty of a crime and setting punishment without the benefit of a formal trial. The Constitution forbids the federal government (Article I, Section 9, clause 3) and the state governments (Article I, Section 10, clause 1) from passing bills of attainder. [www.historycentral.com/Civics/B.html]

'Aux armes, citoyens'
To arms, citizens, from the French national anthem, La Marseillaise (1792). Kit confused La Mayonnaise with La Marseillaise.
Not "Le Marseillaise," you nitwit!

Louis XV
King of France 1715-1774 [6].

Cléo de Mérode
Glamorous French ballerina (1875-1966), later Follies Bergere dancer and famous beauty. Her reputed intimacy with King Leopold was only a rumor [7].

marquise de Pompadour
Mistress of Louis XV,once friend of Voltaire and a power behind official scenes.[8].

Page 545

dubious 'victory' in 1756
Part of the Seven Years' War (1756-1763), duc de Richelieu (1696-1788), a Marshal of France, won a victory in the Battle of Minorca (May 20, 1756) over John Byng (1704-1757), a British Admiral. In spring of 1756 John Byng was sent with a small and undermanned fleet to relieve the British Port Mahon on the Mediterranean island of Minorca. During the battle ensued, several British ships were badly damaged by the French squadron while others, including Byng's flagship, were still out of effective firing range. Instead of engaging the enemy directly, Byng decided to keep the formation, allowing the French fleet to get away undamaged. (Battle of Minorca).

the ill-fated Admiral Byng
John Byng, convicted by court-martial of failure "to do his utmost" in the battle, shot in 1757. Remembered because of (1) his being the last officer of flag rank to be put to death for conduct in battle and (2) Voltaire's gag in Candide: "In this country it is good to kill an admiral from time to time in order to encourage the others."

cantharides
"Spanish fly," contact irritant sometimes ill-advisedly used as aphrodisiac.

Sadean
Pertaining to the Marquis de Sade. The acts the chef performs on the egg and oil have the same names as acts of Sadean sex.

vetiver
A grass (Vetiveria zizanioides) of tropical India, cultivated for its aromatic roots that yield an oil used in perfumery. [www.answers.com/topic/vetiver]. So, a perfume with, llterallly, roots in India.

pip
A beaut; in current parlance, a hottie.

Q.P. system
Quaternion Probability, p?.

Usine Régionale
French: as translated in the text.

Page 546

disjunctive effects of thunderstorms
Folk wisdom says a thunderstorm will cause mayonnaise to separate (oil from yolks).

lounge suit
???

congress shoes
ankle high shoes with elastic gussets in the sides (wordweb online)

dripping-heads
???

cuves d'agitation
???

Clinique d'Urgence pour Sauvetage des Sauces
French: Emergency Clinic for Salvage of Sauces.

Page 547

Cazzo, cretino
Literally, "Dick, cretin." Cazzo is a common Italian interjectionary obscenity, especially in the south. "Cazzo, cretino," is akin to someone saying, "Well shit, dummy," or "F-ing moron!"

È il cowboy!
Italian: It's the cowboy!

Le bambole anarchiste, porca miseria
Italian: Anarchist babes, oh boy.

Oudenberg
???

Quai de l'Entrepôt
???

ragazzi
Italian: boys, guys.

Page 548

timbres fictifs
French: fictive postage stamps. Cf "Lot 49".

"IIIb"
As explained in the text

Germany might stand a better chance...
That is, if the French were to push into Alsace (per Boulanger) as the Germans executed the Schlieffen Plan [9] for the encirclement of Paris, it would put the French at an even greater disadvantage...as actually happened in 1914. Had the Belgians and British not delayed the Germans in Flanders, and had the French railroads not performed speedily to bring the French troops back to the Marne, World War I could have had a very different outcome...an alternate history.

revanchist
Policies based on revenge, or a person following such policies. In General Boulanger's case, revenge against Germany for the Franco-Prussian War (that is, retaking Alsace, lost in 1871).

the somewhat discomposed General
Having died in 1891, the General by the time of the action is certainly somewhat decomposed; brief biographies do not suggest he was non compos mentis, that is, mentally discomposed.

Page 549

cackled Darby
(When did he lose his innocence?)

a modification of any salsician metaphor toward the diminutive
Salsician: pertaining to sausage. Lindsay says Suckling's penis is better compared to a wiener than a knockwurst.

"Why you little–and I do mean 'little'–"
Another Simpsons reference?

dunes between Nieuport and Dunkirk
???

power-receivers
Not information, energy.

Page 550

Italian grotto
???

a highly developed taste, moreover, for human blood
Since Pugnax developed this taste in the Carpathians, home of Castle Dracula, this seems a clear reference to Bram Stoker's novel.

Carpathians
Major mountain range running northwest-southeast through Poland, Slovakia, western Ukraine and Romania.

Uhlans
Uhlan regiments belonged to the light cavalry. They wore splendid uniforms (model for some U.S. marching band uniforms). Wikipedia article.

Temesvár
Now Timişoara, extreme western Romania.

Page 551

...separated by only a slice of Time...
Miles is beginning to experience Time almost as a spatial dimension, his personal vector as traversing (!) 4-dimensional space, or perhaps multidimensional space, the mathematics for which is being debated in Ostend.

securing the mess decks
The Chums follow U.S. Navy idiom in orders (frequently prefixed with "Now") and shipboard activities ("secure" meaning "whatever you did before, undo it now," in this case put away the dishes and fold up the tables).

Ryder Thorn
Tolkienesque name?

He was at Candlebrow.
Presumably a 'trespasser.'

the four-note chord in the context of timelessness
A melody is formed by notes following one another in time; a chord on the ukulele violates that practice by having all the notes sound at once. A really clever little passage.

Page 552

knuckle-duster
Brass knuckles.

Diksmuide
20 kilometers south of Ostend (about halfway to Ypres).

Page 553

The terrain was flat...lowlands
Not, this time, a reference to Pynchon's Lowlands, but to the two-dimensionality of Flanders, as in Edwin A. Abbott's Flatland [10]; most humans, like the inhabitants of Flanders and Abbott's Flatlanders, experience life in two dimensions.

Somewhere up in the sky was Miles' home...
Whereas Miles and the Chums of Chance, in contrast, live in three dimensions. The mathematicians gathered in Ostend are trying to calculate how to experience and use vectors to live in four dimensions; in a way, to experience Time as a kind of spatial dimension. Miles, on P. 551, is demonstrating the beginnings of an intuitive discovery of how to experience Time as an almost spatial dimension. Which would be a sort of "time travel", or at least an expanded view of life and history.

retted
???

Page 554

Ypres and Menin
Municipalities in West Flanders that were sites of some of the bloodiest battles of WWI. At the beginning of the war, the British and Belgian stand helped save Paris from encirclement by the Germans, and saved the Channel ports, but as Thorn points out, the area became the western anchor of the Western Front trench system. The several Battles of Ypres saw the first uses of poison gas (Mustard Gas, dichlorodiethylsulfide, was first called Yperite), the use of enormous mines, and the legendary mud of Passchendaele [11].

Ten years from now
(1914?) through 1918? and beyond?. Another paramorphic mirror--what do we now face. Whatever it is, it is nuclear.

Bosch
Hieronymous Bosch (1450-1516), Dutch painter of nightmares. Wikipedia entry.

Brueghel
Pieter Brueghel the Elder(1525-1569), Flemish painter.Wikipedia entry.

League
League of Nations? The League of Nations was formed after WWI to prevent future wars. Didn't succeed.

where the needles went and which way to rotate them
I.e., how to push Thorn's buttons; the image is from acupuncture.

Page 555

simpletons at the fair
Making Pynchon's metaphor explicit.

Chopin E-minor Nocturne
???

owl-light
???

'plasmic hysteresis'
???

Annotation Index

Part One: The Light Over the Ranges	1-25, 26-56, 57-80, 81-96, 97-118
Part Two: Iceland Spar	119-148, 149-170, 171-198, 199-218, 219-242, 243-272, 273-295, 296-317, 318-335, 336-357, 358-373, 374-396, 397-428
Part Three: Bilocations	429-459, 460-488, 489-524, 525-556, 557-587, 588-614, 615-643, 644-677, 678-694
Part Four: Against the Day	695-723, 724-747, 748-767, 768-791, 792-820, 821-848, 849-863, 864-891, 892-918, 919-945, 946-975, 976-999, 1000-1017, 1018-1039, 1040-1062
Part Five: Rue du Départ	1063-1085

top of page

Retrieved from "http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_525-556&oldid=8109"

@@ Line 589: / Line 589: @@
 '''dubious 'victory' in 1756'''<br>
-???
+Part of the Seven Years' War (1756-1763), duc de Richelieu (1696-1788), a Marshal of France, won a victory in the  Battle of Minorca (May 20, 1756) over John Byng (1704-1757), a British Admiral. In spring of 1756 John Byng was sent with a small and undermanned fleet to relieve the British ''Port Mahon'' on the Mediterranean island of Minorca. During the battle ensued, several British ships were badly damaged by the French squadron while others, including Byng's flagship, were still out of effective firing range. Instead of engaging the enemy directly, Byng decided to keep the formation, allowing the French fleet to get away undamaged. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Minorca Battle of Minorca]).
 '''the ill-fated Admiral Byng'''<br>