Difference between revisions of "ATD 768-791"

Revision as of 19:36, 3 February 2007

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

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Page 768

fourteeners
Affectionate name applied by Coloradans to mountain peaks 14,000 feet (approx. 4200 m) high.

Baikal
Another bi-location: one world out here, another reflected one in the lake.

Page 769

a maze of slot canyons
The ground is crumpled rather like Kovalevskaia's handkerchief on page 634.

Page 770

followed by the whizzing sound
As the impact of the V-2 was in Gravity's Rainbow.

Page 771

You are released
Echoes Ite, missa est on page 668.

samovars . . . gasping and puffing
Samovar: a double urn containing a large amount of hot water and a small amount of super-strong tea. Passengers mixed their own to taste. Many Russian railroad cars had samovars.

nephrite
Fibrous silicate mineral, one of the constituents of jade.

Page 773

kupechestvo
Russian: the merchant community.

Page 774

Club Golomyanka
A golomyanka is a viviparous fish of the perch family, unique to Lake Baikal.

NAUSHNIKI
As translated in the text.

Page 775

Ilimpiya
Presumably the Ilimpeya River, a left-bank tributary of the Lower Tunguska, is named for them.

siberyaki
Standard spelling sibiryaki. Russian: Siberians.

embouchure
French word denoting the conformation of the mouth (in speaking, playing the clarinet, etc.).

Page 776

taiga
Coniferous boreal forest; supports logging, trapping, hunting/gathering.

Tierra del Fuego
Not exactly the other side of the world, but the closest land to that point.

This may not be suitable as a permanent feature of the wiki, but there is a strange web site where you can click on a location and see what's exactly on the opposite side of the world: http://map.pequenopolis.com/index.php?lang=en --Volver 11:55, 29 January 2007 (PST)

Page 777

shamanism
Decentralized religion. The village shaman engaged in spirit travel and communicated with animals, ancestors, etc., for the benefit of the people, often using bizarrely excessive amounts of drugs.

Page 779

poods
Russian measure of weight. One pood = 16.38 kilograms; 30 poods = 491 kg = 1081 pounds, pretty close to half a ton.

ekipazh
Russian: crew, team.

Právil'no
Russian: all right!

Russian design philosophy
. . . which is perpetuated in Soviet and Russian space technology.

Razvedka
Russian: intelligence (in the military-political sense).

pogroms
Terror campaigns, usually against Jews.

Page 780

Ofitser Nauchny
Russian: science officer.

umnik
Russian: clever man.

General Sukhomlinoff
V.A. Sukhomlinov (1848-1926), cavalry officer; chief of general staff 1908-9, minister of war 1909-15, imprisoned for failure to prepare army for World War One 1917-18, emigrated.

Zi!
???

butterfly . . . angel
The description of the damage pattern is accurate; see Wikipedia article.

Page 781

zastolye
Russian: group of regulars.

Khuy
Impolite Russian: cock!

Bezumyoff
The name derives from Russian bezumets: madman.

vseznaǐka
Russian: as translated in text. In keeping with the sources he must have used—many of them contemporary—Pynchon applies a bewildering assortment of rules in transliterating Russian words.

"potentially a hole in the earth" One of the theories regarding the real Tungaska Event is that a small black hole entered the earth. Flaw in theory: an exit has never been found. See Wikipedia ([1]).

...at any moment, directly beneath St Petersburg...
"According to the Guinness Book of World Records (1966 edition), if the collision had occurred 4 hours 47 minutes later, it would have wiped out St. Petersburg, the starting point of the Bolshevik revolution." (Wikipedia article, [2].

Tsarskoe Selo
Now Pushkin; "country" home of the tsars.

Page 782

Nichevo
Russian: nothing.

Page 784

Raskol'niki
Russian: schismatics, dissenters. Raskol'nikov in Crime and Punishment derives his name from this word.

Tchernobyl . . . Wormwood
Now rendered more commonly as Chernobyl (Russian), Chornobyl (Ukrainian).

heat . . . tended to flow unpredictably
The Laws of Thermodynamics have taken a brief holiday.

Old Slavonic
Or Old Church Slavonic; liturgical language of Russian Orthodox Church, closely related to Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian.

Page 785

izba
Russian: hut.

Page 786

"borbanngadyr"
throat singing..like a flute: from the context.

"the heart of Earth"
"all's I see's a bunch of sheep"
"Exactly."

Page 787

"Bo Peep"
she who has lost her sheep, as in the rhyme.

"Never work,", muttered Darby. "They'll squash you like bugs."
Darby, now a lawyer, now cynical, presents the archetypal response to Prance's visiting " deities" as in classic sci-fi books and movies.

Page 788

brodyagi
Russian: tramps.

"Topor"
Russian: The Ax.

fusel oils
Toxic byproducts of fermentation, sometimes still present in bad liquor.

strange mottled red mushrooms
Amanita muscaria, an hallucinogenic mushroom. Wikipedia entry.

drank one another's urine
Shamanistic practice also observed in some "mystery" religions. The person who ingests the drug partly metabolizes it and excretes it; followers can get a, hrmm, watered-down dose by drinking his urine.

Page 789

brodyagi
See page 788.

Christian propaganda mill down south
A college?

Pacific Coast League
Minor league (Triple-A) baseball league that at the time was the only professional baseball league west of St. Louis. Wikipedia entry.

Page 790

the wilderness Creature that feeds on all other creatures...
Described by Captain Padzhitnoff on p.124

Krasnoyarsk
Town on the Yenisei River upstream of Yeniseisk.

arival
Misspelling of arrival.

Page 791

the Vormance people
The Vormance polar expedition was mentioned on page 130 and elsewhere.

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