Difference between revisions of "ATD 768-791"

Revision as of 14:31, 2 March 2007

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

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Sample entry
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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

Mount Kailash
Cf page 437: Mount Kailash.

Tengri Khan
Tengri Khan is a mountain, the second-highest peak (23,000 ft) of the Tian Shan mountain range.

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

Page 770

stand before the Gate . . . Kit looked up . . .
See the picture here: Cf page 764: Tushuk Tash.

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. The hot-water urn (the samovar proper) was in fact a small charcoal boiler; there was much steam. Many Russian railroad cars had samovars.

Ak-su
Ak-su (White Water) is a city in Xinjiang, China. It is located in the Southern foothills of Tian Shan. The economy of Ak-su is mostly agricultural, with cotton, in particular the long-staple cotton, as the main product.

Kucha
Kucha is a city in Xinjiang. It was an ancient Buddhist kingdom located on the branch of the Silk Road that ran along the northern edge of the Takalmakan desert in the Tarim Basin.

Korla
Korla, also spelled as Kurla, is a city south of Karashahr. The Iron Gate Pass, 4 miles north of the city, played an important part in protecting the ancient Silk Road from rading nomads from the north.

Karasahr
Karasahr (Black City) is located on the branch of the Silk Road that ran along the northern edge of the Taklamakan desert.

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

Turfan
Turfan is an oasis city located about 90 miles southeast of Ürümqi, the capital of Xinjiang, China, in a mountain basin on the northern side of the Turfan Depression. Even though it has only 0.9 inch rainfall per year, Turfan has long been the center of a fertile oasis, producing great quatities of high-quality fruits, and an imprtant trade center.

Flaming Mountains
Flaming Mountains are red sandstone hills on the northern edge of the Turfan Basin. The red of the hills has been likened to burning flames, and temperatures often reach a sweltering 130° F. The Mountains were made famous by the 16th-century Chinese classic novel Journey to the West.

the Sangre de Cristos
The Sangre de Cristos (Blood of Christ) are the southermost subrange of the Rocky Mountains located in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado.

Page 772

the ancient kingdom of Khocho . . . to be the historical Shambhala
Dr Edwin Bernbaum, a Research Associate of the University of California, Berkeley, claimed, in his book The Way to Shambhala: A Search for the Mythical Kingdom Beyond the Himalays (1980), that Shambhala is not in the Himalayas, but far to the north, in the Turfan Depression, "Established by the Uighurs, a Turkish perople, around 850, the kingdom of Khocho flourished for four hundred years as a remarkable oasis of culture and learning. A predominantly Buddhist country, with numerous monasteries, it also had active centers of Manicheanism and Nestorian Christianity . . . At the time the Kalackra appreared in India, the kingdom of Khocho probably possessed the most advanced civilization of any country in Central Asia. Well-irrigated fields and orchards produced enough surplus food to allow the Uighurs to run welfare programs for the poor. Living together in peaceful harmony, people of different races, relgions and languages stimulated each other's thought and culture. Paintings found in the ruins of Turfan show houses built in the Chinese style, men and women dressed in embroidered silk, and a chamber ensemble complete with harps, guitar, and flutes. Even the Chinese, the most fastidious connoisseurs of culture, were impressed by the grace of Uihur society." (pp.42-43)

Urumchi
Urumchi or Ürümqi, is the capital of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China. With a population of 2.1 million (75% are Han Chinese) and located in the northwest of the country, it is the largest city in the western half of China. Ürümqi is the most remote city from any sea in the world at a distance of about 1,400 miles from the nearest coastline.

lowlands of Dzungaria
A region of 300,000 sq mi in Xinjiang, NW China. It is a largely steppe and semidesert basin surrounded by high mountains: the Tian Shan in the south and the Altai in the north. Urumchi and Yining are the main cities with other smaller oasis towns dot the piedmont areas. The region passed to the Chinese only in the mid-18th century.

Page 773

Lake Zaisan
Lake Zaisan, in Russian Central Asia near the Chinese border, is located in an open valley between the Altai range on the northeast and the Tarbagatai on the south at an altitude of 1,355 ft.

The Irtysh . . . the Ob
The Irtysh is the chief tributary of the Ob which is a major river in western Siberia. The Ob is Russia's fourth longest river. The Ob-Irtysh form a major basin in Asia, encompassing most of western Siberia and the Altai Mountains.

Novosibirsk
Novosibirsk lies along the Ob river in the West Siberian Plain. It is Russia's 3rd largest city, after Moscow and St.Petersubrg. It was founded in 1893 as the future site of the Trans-Siberian Railway bridge crossing the Ob. In early 20th century the Turkestan-Siberia Railway, connecting Novosibirsk to Central Asia and the Caspian Sea, was completed.

The Paris of Irkutsk
By 1900 Irkutsk (Cf page 763: Irkutsk) had been nicknamed as such.

kupechestvo
Russian: the merchant community.

Glaskovsk
A suburb in Irkutsk across the Irkut river.

Page 774

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

NAUSHNIKI
As translated in the text.

1895 model Nagant revolver
Nagant revolver was designed in Belgium by Nagant brothers in the late 1880s and was adopted by numerous countries. The major user and manufacturer was Russia which adopted it in 1895.

British gold sovereigns
The world's most popular gold coins first came to existence in 1489 under Henry VII and continure to the present day. It has a value of one pound sterling (but much higher trading market value) made of 15.55 grams of standard gold coinage alloy of 23 carat, equal to 95.83% purity of gold.

Page 775

Young Vic
Image of young Queen Victoria on the British sovereign (1 pound) piece.

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

Dorzhieff
Agvan Dorjiev (1853/54–1938) was an ethnic Buriat who trained as a Buddhist monk in Tibet.He was one of the tutors of the 13th Dalai Lama and was his representative at the Russian court. He played a great role in the international political life, establishing various relations between Tibet and Russia. The British believed that Dorjiev had created the Shambala Russian myth. Ekai Kawaguchi, a Buddhist monk from Japan who visited Tibet at the turn of the 20th century, claimed to have heard of a pamphlet in which Dorjiev wrote “Shambhala was Russia. The Emperor, moreover, was an incarnation of Tsongkhapa, and would sooner or later subdue the whole world and found a gigantic Buddhist empire”. The religiously-based purpose of Agvan Dorjiev was the foundation of a Lamaist-oriented kingdom of the Tibetans and Mongols as a theocracy under the Dalai Lama ... [and] under the protection of Tsarist Russia ... In addition, among the Lamaists there existed the religiously grounded hope for help from a ‘Messianic Kingdom’ in the North ... called 'Northern Shambhala’. At the center of Dorjiev’s activities in Russia stood the construction of a three-dimensional mandala — the Buddhist temple in St. Petersburg. Regarding the décor, it is perhaps also of interest that there was a swastika motif which the Bolsheviks knocked out during the Second World War. Buddhist temple in St. Petersburg there was sufficient room for several lamas, who looked after the ritual life, to live on the grounds. Dorjiev had originally intended to triple the staffing and to construct not just a temple but also a whole monastery. This was prevented, however, by the intervention of the Russian Orthodox Church . Officially, the buddhist shrine was declared to be a place for the needs of the Buriat, Tuva, mongol ,and Kalmyk minorities in the capital. With regard to its occult functions it was a tantric mandala with which the Kalachakra system was to be transplanted into the West. From the lamas’ traditional point of view, founding a temple is seen as an act of spiritual occupation of a territory. Such sacred buildings as the Kalachakra temple in St. Petersburg are cosmograms which are employed by the lamas as magic seals in order to spiritually subjugate countries and peoples[1].

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

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!
Might be an error. "Wait" in the imperative mode is zhdi or podozhdi in Russian.

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 (Tunguska Event).

. . . 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, Tunguska Event.

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

Page 782

...to reaffrm allegiance to its limits, including mortality...
That is, to reaffirm the allegiance of the inhabitants of this world to the "something's" limits, remind Man of mortality and transcendent laws and limits.

Nichevo
Russian: nothing.

Page 783

homeopathic echoes to protect from its return
The homeopathic principle is that small doses of what kills will cure or prevent; drumming prevents return of the huge sound.

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).

Reindeer discovered again their ancient powers of flight, which had lapsed over the centuries since humans had invaded the North. Some were stimulated by the accompanying radiation into an epidermal luminescence at the red end of the spectrum, particularly around the nasal area.
In other words, Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer and his airborne squadron mates. Seriously: magic and the possibility of change is reintroduced into the world.

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."
This is Shambhala. Sheep may safely graze.

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

band of brodyagi
This entire passage is a reference to Don Quixote, namely the incident with Gines de Pasamonte and the galley slaves. In Don Quixote, Gines acts as a metafictional representation of Cervantes, as well as a symbol of the author/writer. Here, Topor acts as Gines, representing TRP (notice the name similarity). The hallucinogenic mushrooms represent the Quixote--with a two part narrative, the first pleasant and wonderous, the second full of horrors--as well as AtD and novels, generally. The urine-drinking seems to be a crack at literary critics and literature fans who write about books and read what others write--essentially, drinking each other's urine: the after-products of the consumption of books. --Specklebelly

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.

remittance man
A man living on remittances, i.e. family funds from home, a trust fund, etc. It is also time to note that a Fleetwood is a model of Cadillac.

Page 791

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

Annotation Index