Difference between revisions of "ATD 219-242"

Revision as of 20:13, 10 February 2007

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

Page 219

The Tetractys

The Tetractys is a triangular figure consisting of ten points arranged in four rows: one, two, three, and four points in each row. As a mystical symbol, it was very important to the followers of the secret worship of the Pythagoreans, Kabbalists, and nutbars of other affiliations since. It has all kinds of symbological meaning, including the four elements, the organization of space, the Tarot, etc. Wikipedia entry

Chunxton Crescent
Invented by Pynchon.

Tyburnia
"Tyburnia occupies the ground on the north side of Hyde-park and Kensington-gardens, and stretches from Edgware-road on the east to about Inverness-terrace on the west. This is not, strictly speaking, a fashionable quarter; but it is not absolutely unfashionable, and is a very favourite part with those — lawyers, merchants, and others—who have to reside in town the greater part of the year." Charles Dickens (Jr.), Dickens's Dictionary of London, 1879.

Sir John Soane
(1753 – 1837) was an English architect who specialised in the Neo-Classical style. Wikipedia entry

Madame Blavatsky
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891), Russian-born founder of the Theosophical Society. Madame Blavatsky claimed that all religions were both true in their inner teachings and false or imperfect in their external conventional manifestations. Wikipedia

century had rushed . . . out the other side
An instant of zero, not a whole year, because they aren't yet "out the other side" of 1900.

Page 220

not even if that tartan were authentic
It's a solecism in England, but is (or was) a prosecutable offense in Scotland, to wear the tartan of a clan one doesn't belong to.

Caen stone
A cream-colored limestone for building, found near Caen, France.

syrinx
a primitive wind instrument consisting of several parallel pipes bound together; panpipes.

ten-in-one
Ten sideshow acts for one admission. Wikipedia

Grand Cohen
'Cohen' is Hebrew for 'priest'.

Page 221

Couldn't have been the same world as the one you're in now
Raising the possibility that Lew got blown up in one world and shifted to another.

"Lateral world-sets, other parts of the Creation, lie all around us, each with its crossover points or gates of transfer from one to another, and they can be anywhere, really."
Could this be the explanation for some of the most inexplicable scenes from the book thus far: Lew Basnight's first encounter with the Drave group (around page 39) and Hunter Penhallow's escape from the mysterious creature (around page 154)? Parallel worlds?

'Tzaddik'
A righteous Jew. Wikipedia

Page 222

The Tetractys isn't the only thing round here that's ineffable
Schoolyard joke. "F" a euphemism for fuck, so "ineffable" = unfuckable also describes Yashmeen.

Eighteenth Hussars
Prestigious British cavalry regiment. Stationed in India 1864-76 and 1890-98; Halfcourt's secondment must have taken place at one of these times.

Simla
British outpost in Himalayas. Wikipedia

Smartly taken at silly point
A cricketing reference. Silly point is a fielding position very close to the batsman. examples

To know, to dare, to will, to keep silent
Mystical formula. examples The four precepts of Western Magick, extensively discussed in the writings of Aleister Crowley.

In the States, "detective" doesn't mean—
. . . An agent who solves criminal cases. The major "detective" bureaus hired personnel out as bodyguards and muscle.

"There is but one 'case' which occupies us"
This echoes the famous quote from Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: "The world is all that is the case." (See the full text of the Tractatus here.) This quote also factors in heavily in V. (Specifically, in two places: there's the P's and Q's love song, and also in Captain Weissman's repeating, encoded, hallucinated message over the telegraph in Africa.)

The Number 22
I found it interesting that the significance of the number 22 was first brought up on page 222. might be nothing, really. 22 is the number of cards in the Major Arcana of the Tarot deck, the section of the deck that has been removed from the modern playing deck which only has the suits (elements) and the Court cards. The 22 Major Arcana are numbers 0 to 21 and move from The Fool card to the Universe. Purportedly and symbolically, the progression of cards tell a tale of the evolutionary path of the Soul in its course. The 22 cards also, in some systems, map onto the 22 paths that connect the spheres of the Kabalistic Tree of Life (which also is mentioned in this chapter). An understanding of the Tarot cards cannot be achieved with an understanding how they relate to the Tree of Life. They are the relationships between the Sephiroths which in turn at 10 in number, just like the Tetractys and portray the energies that flow from the highest monad of Divinity (Kether) down into the manifested world (Malkuth). Pynchon makes use of both the Tarot and the Kabalah in Against the Day as well as Gravity's Rainbow.

Page 223

"And the crime... just what would be the nature of that?"
Might Lew himself be one of the 22 suspects? Perhaps the ineffable crime is what made people treat him like a pariah earlier in the book.

Page 224

"'walking out'"
A walking date.

the veil of maya
In Hinduism, maya is the phenomenal world of separate objects and people, which creates for some the illusion that it is the only reality. In Hindu philosophy, maya is believed to be an illusion, a veiling of the true, unitary Self. Many philosophies or religions seek to "pierce the veil" in order to glimpse the transcendent truth. Arthur Schopenhauer used the term "Veil of Maya" to describe his view of The World as Will and Representation. Wikipedia entry

the ancient London landscape . . . known to the Druids
Peter Ackroyd's recent London, the Biography devotes many pages to sacred and magical features of the city.

Trumper's
London's royal barbers since 1875. site

On this island [...] all English, spoken or written, is looked down on as no more than strings of text cleverly encrypted
A sentiment echoed in the first sentence of Pynchon's December 2006 letter written in defense of novelist Ian McEwan: "Given the British genius for coded utterance..." Image of Letter

crosswords in newspapers
The first crossword to appear in a newspaper was in 1913. Cryptic crosswords in British newspapers certainly match Pynchon's description. See, for example, the Listener crossword.

Page 225

Girton College
For women, founded 1869. history

four stone
56 pounds.

Uckenfays
Pig latin for 'fucken'. Or loosely "fuckin A", "fuckin awesome" cite

gaver du visage
I.e., to stuff one's face. cite

Page 226

The Devil by Colman-Smith

growler
Four-wheeled carriage drawn by four horses. Supplanted by the Hansom cab.

Note that each Professor's name is the other's spelled backward.

Also notice the theme of dual natures or forces. The two professors are "bound and ... could not separate even if they wanted to." They become rivals within the broader conflict of the 'Great Game' -- the political rivalry over Central Asia being played out by the various European powers, but especially by Great Britain and the Russian Empire.

Berlin Conference of 1878
Divided Balkans after Russo-Turkish War. Wikipedia

English, ..., Japanese—not to mention indigenous—components
Not to mention them was exactly the point as the Great Powers sorted out the Ottoman possessions.

Page 227

"The Great Game"
The Great Game was a term used to describe the rivalry and strategic conflict between the British Empire and the Tsarist Russian Empire for supremacy in Central Asia. The term was later popularized by Rudyard Kipling in his novel, Kim. The classic Great Game period is generally regarded as running from approximately 1813 to the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907. Wikipedia entry Also the name of Padzhitnoff's airship.

mamluk lamps
pic

"Eskimoff . . . I say what sort of name is that?"
Tiptoeing around the real question, "Is she Jewish?"

English Rose
Traditional English beauty.

Page 228

Oliver Lodge
English physicist, inventor and writer (1851-1940) involved in the development of wireless telegraphy and radio. After the death of his son in 1915, Lodge became interested in spiritualism and life after death and wrote several books on the subject. Lodge conducted research on lightning, electricity, electromagnetism and wrote about the aether, themes that are repeated throughout ATD. Wikipedia entry.

William Crookes
English chemist and physicist (1832-1919) who worked in spectroscopy and whose work pioneered the construction and use of vacuum tubes. Like Oliver Lodge, Crookes was also a spiritualist, which appears to be Pynchon's reason for grouping him with others in this passage, although his experiments in electricity and light also tie in with these themes in ATD. Wikipedia entry.

Mrs. Piper
Probably Leonora Piper 1857-1950.

Eusapia Palladino
(1854-1918) Famous italian spiritualist medium. Wikipedia entry. It's fair to say she was often caught cheating.

W.T. Stead
William T. Stead (1849-1912), British writer, poet, social crusader, and spiritualist. He went down with the Titanic. Wikipedia entry.

Mrs. Burchell
???

assassination
Trouble with the time here. Lew's timeline points pretty strongly to autumn 1900. A séance that's "about to" go on Mme. Eskimoff's résumé, however, leads the murder of the Serbian king and queen by three months, and the murder itself occurred in June 1903, which seems to imply March of that year.

Alexander and Draga Obrenovich, the King and Queen of Serbia
According to Wikipedia the assassination occured on 11 June 1903, so the seance at which Mrs. Burchell "witnessed" it, should have taken place in March 1903.

Parsons-Short Auxetophone
pic and info

electros of the original wax impressions
A thin film of metal was electroplated onto the wax, then peeled off and wrapped around a new cylinder.

Page 229

syntonic
A term used in both engineering and psychology. Psychology: "Characterized by a high degree of emotional responsiveness to the environment." Electricity: "Of or relating to two oscillating circuits having the same resonant frequency."

Russo-Turkish War
(1877-1878) Wikipedia entry

Page 230

King's... Girton
King's College is one of the most famous and historic colleges at Cambridge. Girton College, Cambridge, was established in 1869 as the first residential college for women in England.

Michaelmas term
The fall term, starting early October (1900 here). Wikipedia

tweeny
Betweenmaid.

Edward Oxford
attempted to shoot Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert, at the time of her first pregnancy (1840).Wikipedia

had the young Queen died then without issue
Nookshaft posits two scenarios: (1) The implicit, unmentioned, and not as "interesting" possibility that everything is actual, as it "appears" to be in the "real" world, surrounding Queen Victoria; that she is simply an old, vain regent. (2) "the 'real' Vic is elsewhere," and the current, aged Victoria is a ghostly stand-in. Nookshaft implies that this figure is a proxy or puppet of Ernst-August. If this were "the case," then the question shifts to the following: (a) Is the ruler of the underworld, who holds the "real," eternally young Victoria captive in cahoots with Ernst-August in the "real" world? or: (b) Is the ruler of the underworld, who holds the "real," eternally young Victoria captive NOT in cahoots with Ernst-August, who nevertheless ascends to the throne with real-Vic out of the way, and imposes the stand-in? In which case: What would be the motivation of the underworld-entity third-party? And who, or what, specifically, is it?

sixty years ago
One event of 1840, the attempt on Victoria's life, is referred to as sixty years ago; another, the issue of the first adhesive stamps, as more than sixty years ago.

Salic law
was a body of traditional law that codified policy on matters such as inheritance, crime, and murder. The British and Hanoverian thrones separated after the death of King William IV of the United Kingdom and of Hanover. Hanover practiced the Salic law, while Britain did not. King William's niece Victoria ascended to the throne of Great Britain and Ireland, but the throne of Hanover went to William's brother Ernest, Duke of Cumberland. Wikipedia entry

Tory despotism
Thatcher?

Not necessarily-- it describes Ernest himself. "The Duke of Cumberland had a reputation as one of the least pleasant of the sons of George III. Politically an arch-reactionary, he opposed the 1828 Catholic Emancipation Bill proposed by the government of the Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington." Wikipedia entry

Catholics
Someone famously cited James Joyce as proof that Catholics shouldn't get university educations.

Page 231

The first adhesive stamp, 1840

stamp
This stamp has come to be called the Penny Black. Wikipedia entry

immune to time
Cf Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray, in which a painted portrait ages while its subject remains young.

springtide
Cf Stray's pregnancy, a "dreamy thing" (page 201).

Page 232

Éliphaz Lévi
A/K/A Eliphas Levi, nom de plume of Alphonse Louis Constant (1810-1875), French occultist and writer who pioneered a revival of Magick in the 19th Century, and was an influence on A.E. Waite, the Order of the Golden Dawn, and Aleister Crowley. An acquaintance of novelist Edward ("It was a dark and stormy night") Bulwer-Lytton. Wikipedia entry.

punters
customers, clients

number twenty-four
Or 25? etext

Iamblichus
(ca. 245 - ca. 325, Greek) was a neoplatonist philosopher who determined the direction taken by later Neoplatonic philosophy, and perhaps western Paganism itself. He is perhaps best known for his compendium on Pythagorean philosophy.Wikipedia

maquillage
Cosmetic or theatrical makeup. def

Page 233

Collis Brown's Mixture
Contained morphine, choloform, and caramel, among other things. Full ingredients

xylene
Xylene abuse is similar to "glue sniffing"-- xylene is a strong solvent able to cause several damages to health, especially to the brain. wikipedia

a thousand pounds a year
Over $100,000 today. cite

"pinky"
Condy's fluid is pink to purple. Methylated spirits is a kind of denatured alcohol: 95% ethyl alcohol, 5% methyl alcohol. "Pinky" would have a variety of effects, very possibly including blindness.

Page 234

Condy's fluid
A disinfectant used to treat and prevent Scarlet Fever, among other things. Wikipedia

Cheapside
an important market street in the City of London.

mews
A street originally for stabling; but in modern times often converted into houses/apartments.

Coombs de Bottle
"comes the bottle" ?

Russian duck
Duck is strong, untwilled linen or cotton, lighter and finer than canvas. Russian duck is coarse, heavy and unbleached but softer than English duck.

Page 235

sensitive flames
Cf GR p.29-32, 715.

extractors . . . distillation columns
Separatory apparatus. An extractor works on differences in solubility, a distillation column differences in volatility.

tremblers and timers
For bombs.

proper solvent procedures
Famous 1960s "Anarchist Cookbook" was infamously inaccurate. Amazon w/author's note

Page 236

Breathless hush in the close tonight sort of thing
Quotation from Henry Newbolt's poem "Vitaï Lampada," which makes school games a metaphor and model for martial bravery.

The Gentleman Bomber of Headingly
Cf Hornung's 'Gentleman Thief' and cricket player, Raffles. info

Reminds me of the Krikkit Robots in Douglas Adams' Life, The Universe, and Everything, where a bomb is put in place of a Cricket Ball at a match between Britain and Australia.

Here and elswhere the spelling of the cricket ground should be 'Headingley'.

The Ashes
An international cricket series between England and Australia dating back to 1882. dates A number of references in this chapter relate to this rivalry. For example, on this page the English cricket ball is compared to the Australian "kookaburra". Kookaburra is the brand name of the balls used in Australia, in England it's Duke. The properties of the English ball was one of the keys to England's success in the summer of 2005. Was Pynchon's writing here influenced by the hype in the UK at the time?

Phosgene
A poison gas used in World War I.Wikipedia

logwood
Source of red dye. Wikipedia

exhiliration
Misspelling of exhilaration.

Page 237

beige substance
Presumably Cyclomite.

Happy Birthday! . . . Gemini
Ordinarily you would think this tagged the date as 21 May to 20 June Wikipedia. But other evidence in the text points to autumn.

get the Ashes back . . . next year
On page 236 the Ashes (Test Matches, cricket competitions between England and Australia) are "in progress." At some time previous to this conversation Mme. Eskimoff said England will regain the trophy "next year" provided they use the young bowler Bosanquet (next entry).

Test Matches took place in (a) December 1901 to March 1902, Australia victorious; (b) May to August 1902, Australia again; (c) December 1903 to March 1904, England getting the Ashes back and Bosanquet figuring as a key bowler. When are we?

Bosanquet
Another Ashes reference. Bernard Bosanquet invented the bosie (or googly), as described here, around 1900. A major factor in England's 2005 Ashes success was reverse swing, another type of delivery whose physical dynamics are poorly understood.

Pom
A term for a British person commonly used in Australian English.

Hebrew letter Shin
Obviously a nod to the Vulcan greeting in Star Trek, with the distinctive hand sign and the phrase, "Live long and prosper." Perhaps also to the Jewish faith of Leonard Nimoy, who played Spock. See The Jewish origin of the Vulcan Salute

Pynchon placed one of these in Mason & Dixon, as well:

Dixon discovers "The Rabbi of Prague, headquarters of a Kabbalistick Faith, in Correspondence with the Elect Cohens of Paris, whose private Salute they now greet Dixon with, the Fingers spread two and two, and the Thumb held away from them likewise, said to represent the Hebrew letter Shin and to signify, 'Live long and prosper.'( M&D 485)

Might there be a further connection between The Cohen of T.W.I.T., the "Cohens of Paris" and these backwoods Kabbalists?

Page 238

Second Law of Thermodynamics
The law of entropy... "The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium." (Rudolf Clausius) [1]

There's no such thing as a perfectly efficient engine, i.e., a box that does work by taking in heat from where there is lots of heat (e.g., combustion chamber) and throwing off heat where there is not much (exhaust pipe). Something always gets lost. Similarly, the transfer of money from where there is plenty (bank) to where there isn't much (Europe) is never perfectly efficient.

"He began then, bewilderingly, to talk about something called entropy. The word bothered him... But it was too technical for her. She did gather that there were two distinct kinds of this entropy. One having to do with heat engines, the other to do with communication... The two fields were entirely unconnected, except at one point: Maxwell's Demon. As the Demon sat and sorted his molecules into hot and cold, the system was said to lose entropy. But somehow the loss was offset by the information the Demon gained about what molecules were where... Entropy is a figure of speech, then, a metaphor. It connects the world of thermodynamics to the world of information flow." The Crying of Lot 49 (Pages 84 - 85)

morsus fundamento
Latin: A bite on the ass?

The meaning is that he wouldn't know metaphysics if it bit him in the ass. Like "octogenarihexation" ("86"-ing) in Vineland--the vulgar faux fancied up.

three-percent consols
British bonds. wikipedia

Page 239

Colney Hatch
London lunatic asylum. Wikipedia

Out of the dust . . . beam of morning sunlight
I.e., sometimes your horse comes in.

MCTAGGART... VATICAN... HARDY
Seems to refer to a historical logician joke. explanation Professor McTaggart was, perhaps, the most famous philosopher who argued that Time did not exist as we seem to experience it. W.H. Hardy was a very famous Cambridge mathematician who knew all the famous philosophers in England.

An encyclical is a letter sent by the Pope. Nobody, let alone an atheist, but the Pope can issue an encyclical. Prof. McTaggart was an atheist. Of course, Vatican would strongly protest that he should send out an encyclical!

John McTaggart Ellis (J. M. E.) McTaggart (1866-1925), British philosopher. He was born in London and educated at Clifton College, Bristol and Trinity College, Cambridge. He lectured Philosophy at Trinity College from 1897 to 1923. His brilliant commentaries and studies on Hegel's dialectic (1896), cosmology (1901) and logic (1910) were preliminaries to his own constructive system-building in Nature of Existence (3 Vols. 1921-1927). In his 1908's essay The Unreality of Time" he argued that our perception of time is an illusion (Cf page 412: dismissing . . . the existence of Time).

Godfrey Harold Hardy (1877-1947), English mathematician. He was a lecturer at Cambridge (1906-1919), professor at Oxford (1919-31) and Cambridge (1931-47). Concurrently with Wilhelm Weinberg developed Hardy-Weinberg law (1906) describing genetic distribution and dequilibrium in large populations. He was also known for contributions to complex analysis, Diophantine analysis, Fourier series, distribution of prime numbers, etc.

Multi et Unus
Many and One.

CREATE MORE DUKES and EXPROPRIATE CHUCKERS
Is the grafitti in Cambridge another cricketing reference? Dukes are the balls used in England (cf. p236). Chucking (or bending the arm when bowling) is an emotive topic in cricket that arises from time to time. It first arose around 1900 [2]. In 2005 it caused administrators to change the rules of the game [3].

The Laplacian
A bar in Cambridge.

Are you saying it is a real establishment?

Can't say it's a fact.

A Laplacian is a differential operator named after Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749 – 1827), a famous French mathematician. Wikipedia entry

Page 240

Worse than Gordon at Khartoum
Refers to Charles George Gordon, British Major-General, whose attempted defense of Khartoum versus Arabi rebels in 1884-85 ended with his beheading. Wikipedia cf. Basil Dearden's 1966 film Khartoum, in which the role of Gordon is played by Charlton Heston.

Page 241

A bosie from a beamer
More cricket! A bosie is now more commonly known as a googly (cf. p237). A beamer is a full-pitched delivery that reaches the batsman above waist height.

Page 242

The northern hemisphere

unheimlich
German: uncanny, sinister.

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