Difference between revisions of "ATD 615-643"

Revision as of 13:31, 11 February 2007

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

Page 615

Kreditbrief
German: letter of credit.

Page 616

Auditorienhaus
Building housing auditoriums (and in this case a library).

Habilitationsschrift
In Germany a new faculty member presents a lecture or, in this case, a thesis on taking up office.

Achphänomen
German: the "aha" phenomenon.

Tchetvyortoye Izmereniye
Today more likely transliterated Chetvertoe izmerenie. Russian: (the) fourth dimension.

"Yob tvoyu mat'"
Russian: Fuck your mother. It's as impolite as it looks, but used way more often than in English.

Otzovists
A splinter Bolshevik faction. The name comes from the noun otzyv meaning "recall"; it does not mean "god-builders." The group (existing under this name only in 1908-9) demanded the recall of Social Democrats from the national legislature.

Page 617

above this galley-slave repetition of days
ATD motif i.e. rebel against the quotidian day.

the already seen
. . . which we know better under the French term déjà vu.

Staring at the wallpaper. A parallel to Kovalevskaya, whose father used Ostrogradsky notes to cover the walls. wiki

Page 618

Schnitte
Plural of Schnitt. German: cuts.

nichevo
Russian: nothing.

if it doesn't work with gold, the next step will be lead
Cowboy alchemy. If you can't settle your dispute with money, you will have to shoot it out. There's a reference to this process on page 105.

it's this damned English practice of talking in code
Refers to commonly noted English cultural tendency to avoid direct expression in conversation.

Page 619

Bierstube
German: tavern, beer hall.

Page 620

eidolon From Greek: image, picture.

Page 621

Reckon yo tengo que get el fuck out of aquí
Macaronic Spanish/English: Reckon I'd better get the fuck out of here.

Zum Mickifest! Komm, komm!
German: To the Mickey party, come, come! "Mickey Finn" = knockout drops such as chloral hydrate (see any film noir).

K.O.-Tropfen
German: K.O. (= knockout) drops.

Page 622

Group-theoretical implications
Introductions to group theory often use "symmetry under rotation" as an illustration. You can rotate a square 90 degrees and get the same square, and likewise 180 and 270 degrees, so the square has fourfold symmetry. Here Gottlob applies a similar concept to the printed words pun and und, which alternate with every 180 degree rotation.

Gottlob! Wo ist deine Spritze?
German: Gottlob, where is your syringe?

"Streng reserviert für den Elefanten!"
German: Strictly reserved for the elephant (not elephants).

Page 623

Noncommutative . . . Asymmetric
A relation like "cures" is commutative if "A cures B" implies that "B cures A" and vice versa. Here the situation is fuzzier because a total cure is not at issue: "Chloral alleviates the effects of strychnine" and "Strychnine alleviates the effects of chloral" are both true, so noncommutative doesn't quite apply, but one is more true than the other, so asymmetric is a better choice of word.

Verfluchte cowboy!
German: Damn cowboy! (should be Verfluchter Cowboy)

Achtung, Schwester!
German: Hey, Nurse!

Klapsmühle
German: nut factory. (Er hat einen Klaps means "He's nutty"; Mühle is a mill.)

one of his canonical outfits
"Canonicals" is a term for priestly vestments.
But also, in the psychology of perception, means 'typical' or 'most easily recognised as'

Dr. Willi Dingkopf
German: Thinghead. Possibly, given other meanings of "thing", Dickhead.

Page 625

"Cantor is a practicing Lutheran." "With a name like that? Please."
The church of St. Thomas (Thomaskirche) in Leipzig had a staff member called Cantor or Kantor. Noted Lutheran Johann Sebastian Bach held the position in his prime years. On the other hand, Kantor is a rather common family name among Jews of Polish origin.

Kolonie
German: colony, compound.

certain odors
cf. p. 408

someone . . . whom Kit . . . assumed was a guard
Outright grammatical errors in the narrative voice are quite rare. Parse this as "someone who/whom (Kit assumed) was a guard" and the correct choice of pronoun becomes clearer. Another way of looking at the phrase: did Kit assume someone? No, he assumed a proposition about someone: "someone was a guard." When the subject of that is transformed to "who/whom" for the purpose of linking it into the sentence, it remains the subject, not the object: "who was a guard." Volver 06:47, 3 January 2007 (PST)

So Gut Wie Neu
German: as good as new.

Dirigible Field
The inmates' occupational therapy is a disguise for constructing this landing facility.

a real Dirigible
The inmates have established a cargo cult Wikipedia article or maybe more of a UFO cult.

Doofland
German doof means comically stupid (possibly an origin of English "doofus").

O Tempora, O Mores
Latin: Oh, the times! Oh, the customs! (Was there really music under this title?)

The Black Whale of Askalon
"Im Schwarzen Walfisch zu Askalon," comic song. The "Black Whale" is a tavern in the ancient Persian town of Askalon. A paraphrase of the lyrics.

Page 626

the head of Jochanaan
In Strauss' opera Salome the title character asks for and receives as tribute John the Baptist's head on a platter. John in the opera is called Jochanaan.

the Five Jews
???

Judeamus igitur, Judenes dum su-hu-mus
German university students used to sing Gaudeamus igitur, juvenes dum sumus ("Then let us be joyful while we are young men"); the melody forms the climax of Brahms' "Academic Festival" overture. Dr. Dingkopf, obsessed or haunted, sings in bastard Latin, "Then let us Jew while we are Jews."

Ich Bin Ein Berliner
JFK said "Ich bin ein Berliner" at the Berlin wall in 1963. According to Wikipedia, there is an urban legend:

Kennedy should have said "Ich bin Berliner" to mean "I am a person from Berlin." By adding the indefinite article ein, his statement implied he was a non-human Berliner, thus "I am a jelly doughnut". The statement was followed by uproarious laughter.

There is no grammatical error in Kennedy's statement; the indefinite article does not change its meaning. In German, the statement of origin "Ich bin ein Brandenburger" (I am a Brandenburger) is more common than "Ich bin Brandenburger" (I am Brandenburger), but both are correct. The article "ein" can be used as a form of emphasis: it implies "just one of many." As Kennedy did stress the "ein", the usage was, according to German linguist Jürgen Eichhoff [1], "not only correct, but the one and only correct way of expressing in German what the President intended to say."

--Btchakir 07:51, 19 December 2006 (PST)

And Kennedy's motto drew tumultuous cheers, not laughter; the Berliners had no trouble understanding what he meant. --Volver 07:49, 3 January 2007 (PST)

Konditerei
German: pastry shop.

Puderzucker
German: powdered sugar.

Page 628

Halfcourt? what kind of a name is that?
This is Dingkopf speaking, in the context of his obsession with Jewish infiltration of British society. "What kind of a name is that?" has the subtext "Is that a Jewish name?"

Der Wall
In German there are at least three words for "wall": Wand (the wall of a room), Mauer (a masonry wall) and Wall (a wall of a fortification).

dotted quarter rest
Musical notation: brief pause.

Page 629

Rheinpfalz
A wine from the Rhine-Palatinate region in northern Germany.

Deidesheimer...Herrgottsacker...Hofstück
Three different wines.

do a bunk
Flee.

Page 630

Sidney Reilly
Sidney Reilly, aka The Ace of Spies--a real early 20th century British--and other--intelligence agent [1].

hoosier
Bumpkin; capitalized, it has a different meaning.

stans
Countries of Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Turkestan, etc.). Possible anachronism; term gained currency after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Kashgar
Now called Kashi, a city in the extreme west of China; at the western end of the Taklimakan desert; a principal town of Chinese Turkestan.

Auberon Halfcourt
The name Auberon is derived from Oberon and related to Alberich, the dwarf in Wagner's Ring cycle.

Page 631

"One vision ... spiritual, and the other, capitalist."
Competing visions as to the significance of what lies buried beneath the sands in Central Asia. We have already seen a map that reflects dual visions of the area. The Great Game competition shaping up in Asia is a continuation of a global 'metaphysical' conflict between materialist and integrationist tendencies.

lie doggo
Go underground, maintain a low profile.

Page 632

Museum der Monstrositäten
German: museum of monstrosities. Mathematical monstrosities.

motor diligence
Motor taxi, as opposed to horse-drawn.

"An older Germany .... Deeper"
Meaning pre-Christian Germany, as referenced earlier in the passage with the description 'witchlike'.

weapons somehow not yet decipherable
Rayguns.

Page 633

Knipfler...von Imbiss
Neither one existed. Imbiss is German: snacks, fast food.

Kot!
German: shit.

zone of dual nature
One place that is two places: this peculiar Pynchonian form of bilocation again.

part "real"...part "pictorial" or let us say "fictional"
Complex numbers are made up of a real number and an imaginary number (e.g "one plus the square root of negative one"), as AtD is made up of real and imaginary (fictional) parts, the effect of which (continuing into P.635) is described as "taking one beyond four dimensional environs...out into a timeless region..." This seems to be the goal of the protagonists, the author, and the reader.

Page 634

Mengenlehre
German: set theory.

one is thrust . . . into a timeless region
Like one of those funhouse rooms where gravity is reversed.

ZU DEN QUATERNIONEN
German railway stations all have a big sign: ZU DEN ZÜGEN, to the trains. Here it's to the quaternions.

complex knife
"part real and part imaginary", and there is a "real" reproduction nearby. These are aides memoires, inspirations--perhaps the dimensions beyond are literally located in imagination, mental spaces.

Page 635

The Kaiser now seeks in Mexico . . . opportunities for mischief toward the U.S.
Now and for years to come: America's entry into World War One was spurred in part by the Kaiser's offer to return part of the Southwest to Mexico.

Rosinenkacker
German: one who shits raisins. More commonly "Korinthenkacker", insulting term for a very pedantic person.

a world line...never travel
A world line is a tensor, a four-dimensional vector through space and time, therefore a history. Here Gunther is describing the closing off of his future possibilities. In quantum theory observation causes possible states to 'collapse' into one measured state; hence, the past observed from the present is deterministic (it has only one possible state), but the present observed from the past has many possible states until our actions cause it to collapse into one state. Our actions will then be seen to have been inevitable, a world line [2]. Hence: "Ach, das Schiksal".

Ach, das Schicksal
German: ah, fate.

chloral to coffee
A depressant to a stimulant, antipodal (opposite) effects on neuronal function.

Page 636

Children
The preceding sections are a concise, riotous, poignant summary of life at an institute of higher learning; students and to some extent faculty are, notoriously, children at play. Yashmeen, Kit and Gunther are graduating, without diplomas but going out of the hothouse atmosphere of the University into the "real world". But given the preceding 5 pages, how real is that?

The next time you visit...
The University never looks the same after graduation; also, nothing ever does: Heraclitus' dictum that no man ever steps in the same river twice. Time (pace Proust) cannot be reclaimed (even if you can find the tesseract's entrance again)because even if you go back in time, you are not the same person you were; you have been changed by experience.

"You know who I am."
??

Page 637

"El Atildado"
Spanish: the neat man. But it also suggests "the man marked with a tilde" (see page 600). When reading this passage aloud, think about how to stress the word "also" in "a gift Günther von Quassel had also been blessed with."

In mathematical notation, the tilde "~" means "approximately".

Page 638

Bohnen
German: beans

Maragogype
As Gunther says, a variety of coffee bean, large in size, grown in Mexico and Central America [3].

Arbuckles
Not only a brand of coffee, but a method of preparation also known as "Cowboy Coffee" similar to Turkish/Greek coffee in that boiling the grounds in the water [4]. Synonymous here with "plain old, unfancified coffee"--perhaps a swipe at 21st century coffee gourmets and at Starbucks. Another paramorphic-mirror image of the early 21st century in the early 20th.

el otro lado
Spanish: the other side (in one sense or other).

bucket shop
A stock swindle, in which one set of trades is reported to the customer, while the brokerage is really using the money in other, usually riskier trades ("bucketing").

[S]louching away into the yellow opacity, he invited them all up to a wingding [...] that evening.

Compare with T.S. Eliot's Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening

remy 09:52, 28 December 2006 (PST)

Page 639

adios chingamadre
Spanish: goodbye, motherfucker.

unnatural boom
Another paramorphic mirroring of the 21st/20th centuries; tech stock boom/bust of ~2000.

Page 640

Schnecken rigs
Circular magazine resembling a schnecken pastry?

anti-Porfiristas
Opponents of the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz, hence left wing. Eventually, ten years later, to become the Mexican Revolution led by Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata.

Page 641

Mondragóns will get you through
Echoes the wonderful 1970s slogan "Dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope."

Page 642

La Fotinga Huasteca
Fotinga is Spanish: jalopy. Huasteca is a region of the Sierra Madre Oriental north of San Luis Potosí. A local equivalent to "Tijuana Taxi"?

batería
Spanish: battery (collection of percussion instruments).

[T]hat dirty li'l back-shootin Bob Ford.
Ford shot notorious outlaw Jesse James in the back on April 3, 1882; Ford himself was shotgunned to death in 1892. The event inspired one Billy Gashade to pen the verse that became the popular folk ballad "Jesse James," recorded by Pete Seeger, Bruce Springsteen, and many others.
bnilsson 01:41, 2 January 2007 (EDT)

eight seconds . . . rodeo
A bull rider must stay aboard for eight seconds to score.

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