Thomas Pynchon Wiki - User contributions [en]

ATD 557-587

2007-03-06T19:17:29Z

Blazes: /* Page 579 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 557==

'''Viktor Mulciber''' 
Well, no benign associations with "Mulciber"! Mulciber is an alternative name of the Roman god Vulcan, the god of fire and volcanoes, and the manufacturer of art, arms, iron, and armor for gods and heroes. Mulciber is also the name of a character in John Milton's ''Paradise Lost'', the architect of the demon city of Pandemonium. In the Harry Potter books, Mulciber is a Death Eater, a minor Dark Wizard.

'''bespoke''' 
made to order, hence hand-made and expensive. Somewhere in the novel is a reference to 1 Savile Row, the address of Gieves and Hawkes, a very traditional English tailor.

'''Basil Zaharoff''' 
Sir Basil Zaharoff, originally Zacharias Basileios, (1849, Muğla, Turkey - 1936, Monte Carlo, Monaco) was a Greek arms trader and financier, the director and chairman of the Vickers munitions firm during World War I [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaharoff_Basil]. He also turns up as an international arms dealer in Reilly, Ace of Spies.

'''trains of history... run''' 
Karl Marx, in ''Das Kapital'', referred to wars as the "express trains of history" because they can spark societal or national crises, marking a historical turning point, and they can release economic, social, and moral forces of unforeseen power and dimensions, making any return to the status quo impossible.
Also notice TRP's steady referencing of 'railroads' in a negative way.

'''Q-weapon''' 
Possible allusion to Professor Kokintz's "Q-bomb" in ''The Mouse That Roared'' (1959) or to James Bond's master armorer Q. It could also be an allusion to the character "Q" in Star Trek where the name "Q" is also shared by other members of the Q Continuum. Q is a mischievous omnipotent being who has taken an interest in humans. He also has a flair for the dramatic, with a mercurial personality that switches between a joking, camp style and a more ominous and even dangerous manner. While he is boastful, condescending and threatening, he arguably has humanity's best interests at heart. In the episode "The Q and the Gray" (''Star Trek: Voyager'' - 3rd season), Q weapons are provided to the crew of the Voyager to free Q and Janeway, who have been captured by rebels. [http://www.answers.com/topic/the-q-and-the-grey Synopsis]; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_(Star_Trek) Wikipedia]

'''Balkan ''komitadji''''' 
Originally, members of the rebel gangs ("committees"), controlled from Sofia, who made forays into Macedonia, the chief object of Bulgarian expansionism before WWI. The word was also commonly used for Serbian irregular fighters.

:See this slightly different [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komitadji Komitadji].

'''waybill''' 
Ancestor of what Fedex and UPS call "shipping document"; it identifies the article shipped and contains necessary addresses and instructions.

'''metamorphosed into an American Negro''' 
Cf honorary Negro (Frank above).

'''Nipponese''' 
Japanese

'''peach''' 
Plum, actually.

'''Hertzian''' 
Electromagnetic waves, first demonstrated by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Rudolf_Hertz Heinrich Hertz] (Cf [[ATD_318-335#Page 318|page 318:Hertz]]).

'''they cannot strictly . . . longitudinal as well as transverse''' 
Hertz's theory and Maxwell's equations describe ''transverse'' waves in which the electric and magnetic fields are perpendicular to the direction of travel; no longitudinal waves--with vibrations parallel to the direction of travel--are permitted. In air, sound waves are longitudinal; what's suggested here is a new wave that does not fit the Hertz-Maxwell paradigm.

==Page 558==

'''scalar part''' 
Quaternion equivalent of the real part. 
Time is a scaler term.

'''baritone in a barbershop quartet''' 
[http://www.barbershop.org/web/groups/public/documents/pages/pub_id_000827.hcsp Quote]:Technically speaking, barbershop harmony is a style of unaccompanied singing with three voices harmonizing to the melody. The lead usually sings the melody, with the tenor harmonizing above the lead. The bass sings the lowest harmonizing notes and the baritone provides in-between notes, either above or below the lead to make chords (specifically, dominant-type or "barbershop" sevenths) that give barbershop its distinctive, "full" sound.

'''viola in a string quartet''' 
Two violins, a viola, and a violoncello make up a string quartet. The viola is between the others in pitch and is generally considered to have been given the least interesting parts in Classical and Romantic music for string quartet.

'''Further Term''' 
The three parts of a quaternion that are multiples of '''i''', '''j''' and '''k''' (Cf [[ATD_525-556#Page 525|page 525: Quaternions]].)

'''the fulfiller of the Trinity''' 
the name of the first atom bomb detonated at Los Alamos. Alluded to earlier as the "Anti-Stone" (Webb and Merle, p.78). The origin of the name Trinity for this event is uncertain. It is commonly thought that Robert Oppenheimer provided the name, which would seem logical, but even this is not definitely known. A leading theory is that Oppenheimer did select it, and that he did so with reference to the divine Hindu trinity of Brahma (the Creator), Vishnu (the Preserver), and Shiva (the Destroyer). Oppenheimer had an avid interest in Sanskrit literature (which he had taught himself to read), and following the Trinity test is reported to have recited a passage from the Bhagavad-Gita that is quoted earlier in this wiki. 

The usage of the Tibetan Mount Kailash, the holy dwelling place of Shiva, God of destruction and regeneration, on p. 437 seems to support this.

Also, a religious allusion to the three-person Godhead in Christian theology. 
Also, third ATD meaning!, a college in Dublin mentioned on page 560.

Also,"the Destroyer, the fulfiller of the trinity" recalls the Destroyer on page 154, the meteorite, and thus relates ''that'' passage to the Anti-Stone.

Also, in Jungian Psychology the 'fulfiller' of the trinity, making it a complete four-aspect entity, is the 'shadow', or traditionally, the devil (the force always excluded and seen as bad in Christian theology). Cf. C. G. Jung, "Versuch einer psychologischen Deutung des Trinitätsdogmas", Gesammelte Werke 11, especially p.179-94. Interestingly, Jung uses the term 'quaternarisch' for this. More Q-talk, then.

'''the pulselessness of salvation''' 
salvation lies outside of time?

'''A weapon based on Time''' 
Time is why there is entropy, that key Pynchonian term. Pynchon has created a brilliant metaphor that uses the concept uniquely. The Q-weapon, at the heart of which lies "a crystal about the size of a human eyeball" is based on Time. What becomes of the Q-weapon after Umeki (possibly) gives it to Halfcourt in Constantinople? ([[ATD_1018-1039#Page 1036|See page 1036...]])

'''laterite''' 
A mineral structure formed by erosion, see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laterite Wikipedia]. Laterite is typically rich in metal oxides and poor in organic matter.

'''Ostend''' 
Cf [[ATD_525-556#Page 525|page 525:Ostend]]. Ostend (Dutch: Oostende, French & German: Ostende) is a Belgian municipality located in the Flemish province of West Flanders. It comprises the villages of Mariakerke, Stene and Zandvoorde, and the city of Ostend proper – the largest at the Belgian coast. Wikipedia.

'''Inner Boulevards''' 
streets in Brussels."In spite of the competition of the Central or Inner Boulevards, the Montagne de la Cour still remains the principal street for shopping in Brussels." "Brussels", Antiques Digest, 1904.

'''Gare du Midi''' 
The largest railway station in Brussels and a haunt of prostitutes.

<div id="gevaert"></div>'''Edouard Gevaert''' 
It seems this gentleman is fictional. although there are some interesting, but tenuous, connections. Agfa-Gevaert is the current owner of the [[W#wardenclyffe|Wardenclyffe Tower]] facility which housed the Tesla Tower. [http://www.maerlant.be/photherel/student/nvgevaert.htm Lieven Gevaert] (1868-1935) was a Belgian industrialist who founded Gevaert & Co. which produced photographic paper, in 1894. The company specialized in "daylight" paper, which relies on the event of exposure of the positive image through daylight, as opposed to development paper which is based on a process of special manipulation with chemicals. (Are photographs "stolen goods"? "Unworldy go-betweens"? Is the Q-Weapon a ... camera? No. It unlocks Time, animating the photograph - [[ATD_1018-1039#Page 1036|See page 1036]]) Agfa (Actien-Gesellschaft für Anilin-Fabrikation) was founded in 1864 as a manufacturer of dies and stains. In World War II, it became part of IG Farben (prominent in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=IG_Farben_References ''Gravity's Rainbow'']. The Allies broke up IG Farben after the war and Agfa emerged as an individual company. And, well, there ''was'' a Dutch arms dealer named Edouard de Beaumont (1841-1895) who has a rifle named after him. Yes, a stretch... Upon further reflection, I believe "Edouard" may refer to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muybridge Eadweard Muybridge] (Edouard was a variant spelling he earlier used) and his photographic experiments with ''freezing'' motion/Time.

==Page 559==

'''Krupp field-piece''' 
The Krupps are an ancient German family, famous for making weapons. A field-piece is a light-cannon.

'''vaguely glandular''' 
Describes Belgium, it seems.

'''''ostinato''''' 
A continually repeated musical phrase or rhythm.

'''poleaxed''' 
Stunned, brought to a mental standstill. (I believe a poleaxe was used in slaughterhouses. --[[User:Volver|Volver]] 11:31, 3 January 2007 (PST))

'''lost to silence''' 
(Not silent, or very?)Very

==Page 560==

'''Wellington Hippodrome''' 
A race track in Ostend. (Cf [[ATD_525-556#Page 528|page 528:Hippodrome]].)

'''Estacade''' 
???

'''''mousmée... mouchard''''' 
French: a young Japanese woman; a police spy.
:When Henry James revised ''The Princess Casamassima'' for the 1909 New York edition, the phrase "middle-class spy" in the 1886 text became ''mouchard''. Source: note by Patricia Crick in Penguin Classics edition.

'''always lead an irregular life''' 
Cf GR.

'''Maria Bayley Hamilton''' 
???
Hamilton's wife !!!

'''council meeting''' 
???

==Page 561==

'''Brougham Bridge''' 
It was on this site that the [[H#hamilton|mathematician William Rowan Hamilton]], in a flash of genius, came upon the formula for Quaternions and scratched it into the stone of the bridge.

About the bridge, the carving, photos of them, a couple of mathematicians' impression of the bridge, etc, see [http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/octonions/node24.html Brougham Bridge].

'''on the stone''' 
The bridge is evidently a stone bridge. Stone, a natural thing, is a good for Pynchon. Hamilton's action is metaphorically a deeply religious moment. "Pentecostal" wherein the Quaternions 'descend' to earth [in the thoughts of men].

'''''i² = j² = k² = ijk = –1''''' 
Cf [[ATD_525-556#Page 525|page 525:Quaternion]].

'''Pentecostal''' 
Pentecost (< Greek πεντηκοστή [ἡμέρα], pentekostē [hēmera], "the fiftieth day") is the fiftieth day after Easter Sunday, which corresponds to the tenth day after Ascension Thursday. It is a feast in the Christian liturgical calendar — symbolically related to the Jewish festival of Shavuot — that commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and the followers of Jesus on that day, as described in the Book of Acts, Chapter 2. Pentecost is also called "Whitsunday" (deriving from "Wit Sunday") in UK and other English-speaking areas.

Almost needless to say, the Pentecostal revelation is what is supposed to happen at the end of "Lot 49".

'''official Mischief Opportunity''' 
like 'shore leave', it seems. To leave the rules of the Organization and create mischief.

'''absinthe spoons''' 
absinthe spoons have slits whereon are placed sugar cubes through which one pours the absinthe

'''cravats''' 
A cravat is the neckband forerunner of the modern, tailored necktie. From the end of the 16th century, the term "band" applied to any long-strip neckcloth that was not a "ruff"; the ruff—a starched, pleated white linen strip—started its fashion career earlier in the 16th century as neckcloth that could be changed-a-fresh to keep the neck of a doublet from becoming too-soiled or as a bib or a napkin. A "band" could indicate a plain, attached shirt collar or a detachable "falling band" that draped over the doublet collar. 
Necktie fashions have changed over time. The modern cravat originated in the 1630s when Western Europeans saw Croats wearing extravagant neck scarves; the French word ''cravate'' means "Croatian cavalryman."

'''"four-door farce"''' 
(See eg Bogdanovich's "What's Up, Doc?")
This is also a pun on the name of Georges Feydeau, French writer of farces who was writing when Pynchon's novel is set. One of the recurring physical jokes involves sets with many doors and people coming in and out, just missing each other....

==Page 562==

'''Minque''' 
the fish auction house.

'''Bruges''' 
A city about 18 miles east of Ostende, Cf [[ATD_525-556#Page 531|page 531:Bruges]].

'''Ghent''' 
A city about 40 miles southeast by east from Ostend, Cf [[ATD_525-556#Page 531|page 531:Ghent]].

'''carillons... carilloneur''' 
bells...bellringer

'''Hanseatic''' 
The Hansa or Hanseatic League (definitely a creation of "the Christian North," next paragraph) was a great mercantile system that held itself above national rule.

'''burghers''' 
middle-class married men

'''silted up''' 
backed up, underwater, with mud; i.e. neglected, because replaced by railroads. -As it silted up "back in the 1400s" we can safely exclude the influence of railroads.

'''Damme and Sluis''' 
Port cities near Bruges, heavily dependent on them from the 14th Century. 
See [http://www.damme-online.com/gb/communities/damme.htm Damme] and [http://www.damme-online.com/gb/arounddamme/sluis.htm Sluis]. For an overview map, showing cannals, roads etc, of the general area around Bruges-Damme-Sluis see [http://www.damme-online.com/gb/maps/generaloverview.htm Bruges-Damme-Sluis]

==Page 563==

'''trusted his intuitiveness''' 
Woevre is a natural killer.

'''''"Jou moerskont!"''... Afrikaans''' 
Possibly "you horse's ass"? --More likely something like "mother's cunt".

==Page 564==

'''voices of everyone he had ever put to death had been ... scored for some immense choir''' 
A possible reference to ''Star Wars'': Obi-wan experiences the obliteration of an entire planet as "a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced." [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076759/quotes]

Also another potentially time-less event, all of Woevre's murders collapsed into a single moment.

'''"I cannot bear it ... this terrible light..."''' 
Shades of the Kirghiz Light in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=The_Kirghiz_Light ''Gravity's Rainbow'']

'''''Voetsak''''' 
Dutch or Afrikaans, "Go away!", also spelled "voertsek" or "voetsek"

'''starers''' 
Those who stared at Kit earlier.

'''tobacco-stricken''' 
A smoker's deep or gritty voice.

'''half-silvering''' 
A design for an optical [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beam_splitter beam splitter] that causes half of the incident light to be transmitted and the other half to be reflected.

'''the fatal number four—to a Japanese mind''' 
Japanese character for number "four" has the same pronunciation as that of character "death". 
Cf [[ATD_243-272#Page 258|page 258:Jampanese character for "four"]].

'''four cusps... index-surface''' 
???

'''co-conscious''' 
Cf [[ATD_525-556#Page 527|page 527:co-conscious]]. Repeat here: "mental processes outside the main stream of consciousness but sometimes available to it - from Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary."

Third use, I think. Who/what is co-conscious here? (First time, page 478; then page 527.)

Could it be the dimly perceived consciousness of one's double in the adjacent, alternate world? Or one's consciousness of that world?

==Page 565==

'''true icosahedron''' 
Probably an regular icosahedron, where the sides are formed by 20 equilateral triangles. For a picture see [http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Icosahedron.html Icosahedron].

'''12+8... pyrites''' 
Pyrite crystals form a structure that can be decomposed into unit cells that contain (part of) 12 sulphur atoms and 8 iron atoms.

'''Riemann sphere''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_sphere Wikipedia]

'''Felix Klein''' 
German mathematician ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Klein Wikipedia])

'''ebonite''' 
An early plastic([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebonite Wikipedia])

'''Ohmic Drift''' 
ohm = : the practical meter-kilogram-second unit of electric resistance equal to the resistance of a circuit in which a potential difference of one volt produces a current of one ampere

'''speed of the earth . . . kinetic energy''' 
Einstein in 1905 showed most of this argument to be nonsense, but if Lorentz's paper is still recent (next entry) the shift in thinking may not have happened yet. 
:Since the earth's mean orbital speed ( ~ 30 km/s) is rather small in comparison with the speed of light ( ~ 300,000 km/s), no relativistic correction is needed in calculating earth's orbital kinetic energy. And in a reference frame anchored on the Sun, the earth's kinetic eneregy, ''E = ½ m v²'', where ''m'' is the earth mass and ''v'' it's orbital speed, still holds. Einstein showed only that it is no longer true against the nonexistent stationary ''æther''. Of course, it is irrelevant to an earthbound weapon tried to make use of this energy against a person who is standing on the earth.

'''Recently Lorentz's paper''' 
Lorentz's 1904 "Electromagnetic phenomena in a system moving with any velocity less than that of light" ([http://www.soso.ch/wissen/hist/SRT/L-1904.pdf PDF])

'''Lorentz . . . Fitzgerald . . . along the axis of motion''' 
It was the phenomenon of the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction, together with the abolition of the æther by Michelson and Morley, that led Einstein to his theory of special relativity.
:Michelson and Morley did NOT abolish the æther. Their experiement (1887), attempting to detect the light speed change due to the effect of the æther wind, was a total failure, and they could not explain the negative result.

:The Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction hypothesis was proposed to explain the "null" result of the Michelson-Morley experiment but still keeping the æther. (see paragraph 8 of Lorentz's 1904 paper above). Lorentz considered the contraction was not physically real but a device to explain the Michelson-Morley experiment. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_Fitzgerald_contraction_hypothesis Lorentz_Fitzgerald Contraction]).

:Einstein (1905) derived the Lorentz contraction directly, without assuming the existence of the æther, from the ''Principle of Relativity'' (ie different observers moving at a constant speed with respect to each other find the laws of physics to be identical and find the speed of light to be the same), and proved that Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction hypothesis had been "ad-hoc". And Einstein explain the failure of Michelson-Morley experiment by abolishing the æther !

'''Lord Rayleigh''' 
British physicist ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Rayleigh Wikipedia])

==Page 566==

'''In a dream...''' 

This passage, describing Kit's dream of Umeki and the message it conveys, pulls together many of the main themes of ''Against the Day'', tying things together in a way that Pynchon seldom does, almost as if he's providing a rather large piece of the puzzle to help the reader understand the novel:

"Deep among the equations describing the behavor of light, field equations, Vector and Quaternion equations, lies a set of directions, an intinerary, a map to a hidden space. Double refraction appears again and again as a key element, permitting a view into a Creation set just to the side of this one, so close as to overlap, where the membrane between the worlds, in many places, has become too frail, too permeable, for safety.... Within the mirror, with the scalar term, within the daylit and obvious and taken-for-granted has always lain, as if in wait, the dark intinerary, the corrupted pilgrim's guide, the nameless Station before the first, in the lightless uncreated, where salvation does not yet exist."

This is rather a good description of ''AtD'' itself. It is a (inevitably) "corrupted pilgrim's guide", but is the guide corrupted, or the pilgrim?

'''analogies''' 
(Pynchonian heuristics.)

'''the corrupted pilgrim's guide, the nameless Station before the first''' 
Cf. p. 436 '''holy pilgrimages. One defines a destination, proceeds through a series of stations...

'''lightless uncreated''' 
(Gnostic heresy?)

'''...within the daylit and obvious and taken-for-granted has always lain, as if in wait, the dark itinerary, the corrupted pilgrim's guide, the names Station before the first, in the lightless uncreated, where salvation does not yet exist.''' 
Compare with "daylit America . . . its steadfast denial of night" ([[ATD_724-747#Page 732|page 732]]), ''AtD'' epigraph, Thelonious Monk's "It's always night, or we wouldn't need light." '''and''' "the boys expressed wonder at how much more infected with light the night-time terrains passing below them had become [...] they felt themselves in uneasy witness to some final conquest, a triumph over night whose motive none could quite grasp" ([[ATD 1018-1039#Page 1032|p. 1032]]);

'''stuffed sinus''' 
sinus/nasal congestion. It is like looking out onto a new world when one's sinus finally clears after days of congestion.

'''''Konichiwa''''' 
Japanese greeting

==Page 567==

'''new Puccini opera''' 
Obviously, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_Butterfly Madame Butterfly]

'''[Americans] can't ever die of shame''' 
shameless, unlike the Japanese

'''Kimura-san''' 
Kimura ( "tree village") is the 18th most common Japanese surname.
-san is used as a courtesy title in Japanese-speaking areas as a suffix to the given name, surname, or title of the person being addressed, regardless of age or gender: Yamamoto san; sensei-san. 
Chimera-san?

'''Borel-Clerc... "La Matchiche"''' 
Popular vaudeville song from 1903. "La Matchiche" is French for the Brazilian dance Maxixe.

'''western anchor''' 
What about France, Spain, Portugal? Belgium is a port country with a highly developed transportation system into all of these countries. .....it was the first country to industrialize in Europe....Wikipedia.

In addition, Ostend is the westernmost port. It remains today a major Continental ferry terminus for North Sea crossings, including the fastest surface route, the hydrofoil.

'''the Orient Express''' 
The first [http://mikes.railhistory.railfan.net/r045.html Orient Express] (1883-1914), connecting the English Channel with the Black Sea, is one of the most famous trains in Europe. It ran from Calais and Paris to Bucharest (Romania), passing through Strasbourg (France), Munich (Germany), Vienna (Austria), Bratislava (Czechoslovakia), Budapest (Hungary). From Bucharest it went through Bulgaria and then, by ferry, to Istanbul of Turkey. The original Orient Express was operated by Compaignie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. Ever since the original Orient Express started operation, the name has become synonymous with luxury travel. After World I there were various railway routes had the name of Orient Express. The current one is from Paris to Vienna, to be discontinue on June 9, 2007.

'''the Trans-Siberian''' 
The [http://www.transsib.ru/Eng/history-phases.htm Trans-Siberian] is a railway route connecting Moscow (Europe) to Vladivostok (Far East Asia). Taking a journey by the Trans-Siberian Railway has long been considered an experience with mythological proportions. It is the longest continuous rail line on earth - about 6,000 miles over one third of the globe. In 1891, Czar Alexander III drew up planes for the Trans-Siberian and initiated its construction, and a more or less continuous route was completed in 1905. It took many more years to make the route smoothly operative.

'''the Berlin-to-Baghdad''' 
The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Railway Berlin-Baghdad (also Basra) Railway] was the route of German's expansion from Europe to the Persian Gulf, from which trade goods and supplies could be directly exchanged with the farthest of the German colonies and the world. It could also supply German industry directly with oil. Its conception (1888) and completion a couple of years later engendered great opposition from Russia, France and England as part of the "Great Game".

'''Compaignie Internationale des Wagons-Lits''' 
"International Sleeping-Car Company", [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlson_Wagonlit Wikipedia]

'''two hundred francs''' 
"None of that, Hakkabut. Hold your tongue." And, turning to Rosette, the captain said, "If, sir, I understand right, you require some silver five-franc pieces for your operation?"
"Forty," said Rosette, surlily.
"Two hundred francs!" whined Hakkabut.-- On a Comet, Jules Verne

'''theory of sets''' 
Set theory is the mathematical theory of sets, which represent collections of abstract objects. It encompasses the everyday notions, introduced in primary school, of collections of objects, and the elements of, and membership in, such collections. In most modern mathematical formalisms, set theory provides the language in which mathematical objects are described. It is (along with logic and the predicate calculus) one of the axiomatic foundations for mathematics, allowing mathematical objects to be constructed formally from the undefined terms of "set" and "set membership". It is in its own right a branch of mathematics and an active field of mathematical research. Wikipedia 
:The members of a set can be, say, [Mike, Mary, Jack, Richard, Ron, Umeki, . . . . . .], the employees of a company, or the passengers of the train leaving the station; they need NOT be abstract. Cf [[ATD_525-556#Page 535|page 525:set theory]].

'''Bruges Canal''' 
Belgium: Bruges canal. For a picture of the canal see [http://cruises.about.com/library/pictures/baltic/blbruges19.htm Bruges Canal].

==Page 568==

'''vaporetto''' 
A Venetian water-bus.

'''Grand Canal''' 
The main canal that runs through the heart of Venice and down past San Marco, the city's main square.

'''San Marco end''' 
See above. This is where Florian's (appears in the novel) is situated.

'''Piazzetta''' 
??? A small piazza. The large square in front of St Mark's is the Piazza San Marco. The smaller side square running beside the Piazza Ducale down to the canal is the Piazzetta San Marco.

'''San Giorgio Maggiore''' 
A rather over-ornate church on the Grand Canal opposite San Marco.

'''spreading... cloak''' 
Cliche/allusion?

'''live here forever''' 
Pynchon special-pleading that Dally isn't just another tourist.
Or is this just a typical reaction of the tourist? And a Pynchonesque longing for home?

'''Teatro Verdi in Trieste''' 
A 1200+ seat theatre built in late-eighteenth century in Trieste for classical music, opera and ballet ([http://selectitaly.com/events.php?product_id=27&city_id=122 Teatro Verdi]). With its stately columns, elaborate adornments and lush elegance it is rather an unlikely venue for magic show. Another unlikely venue for magic show is Teatro Malibran in Venice (next page).

==Page 569==

'''Malibran... Polo's house''' 
The Teatro Malibran, built at the site of Marco Polo's house, which was destroyed in 1596.
:It is still there ! Cf [[ATD_336-357#Page 355|page 355:Teatro Malibran]] and the external link (for photos, etc) listed there.

'''"pincette" pass''' 
Probably from the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pincer_movement pincer movement] of military strategy.
:Professor Hoffman's ''Modern Magic'' (1876) describes three "passes with coins," La Pincette, Le Tourniquet and La Coulée. Amazon has the book for sale if anyone wants to look up the details.

'''profondes''' 
"Large pockets in tail coats which can be used for vanishes or productions", [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conjuring_terms Wikipedia]

'''Vincenzo Miserere''' 
??? Misero means poor, pitiful, miserable, etc. Psalm 51 (sometimes numbered as 50) is known as the Miserere because it begins (in Latin) Miserere mei Deus (Have mercy on me, God).

'''train to Trieste''' 
???Venice and Trieste are on the opposite sides (about 70 miles apart) of the same gulf : Gulf of Venice. Taking a train from Venice to Trieste would mean taking a route several times lengthier than a ferry.

'''Svegli''' 
The fictional professor's name comes from the Italian ''sveglio'' for "clever, dextrous, skillful."

'''shark leather''' 
Different from sharkskin?

'''''Specchiere''''' 
Mirror-maker

'''glassmakers on Murano''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murano Wikipedia]

'''today''' 
When is that?

'''''guaglion''''' 
Naples dialect: ''guaglione'' is boy. (It first appeared on page 531).

==Page 570==

'''another one of his stories''' 
(Jackson Pynchon should highlight all the AtD passages that originated as bedtime stories.)

'''TERAPIA''' 
Italian, "therapy"

'''San Servolo''' 
An island in the Venetian archipelago, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Servolo Wikipedia], [http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=45.418654+N,+12.35698+E&ie=UTF8&z=17&ll=45.418651,12.35698&spn=0.006891,0.010793&t=k&om=1&iwloc=addr Google Maps]

'''Palazzo Ducale''' 
The Ducal Palace in Venice, residence of the Doge. It's by San Marco.

'''''manicomio''''' 
Italian, "madhouse"

'''''paramorfico''''' 
paramorphic - see the entry for [[P|Paramorphoscope]]

'''uterine vellum''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vellum Vellum] produced from the skin of an unborn calf

'''pitch, rouge''' 
Products used in the grinding of lenses and mirrors.

==Page 571==

'''La Doppiatrice''' 
Italian: the Doubler.

Perhaps an analogue of the diffraction grating that splits the electron into two "alternate" electrons in Schrodinger's thought experiment on quantum effects, source here of a sort of human quantum splitting, an alternate universe creator.

'''Ettore Sananzolo''' 
???

'''Maskelyne cabinet''' 
After Neville Maskelyne, from ''Mason and Dixon.'' Maskelyne was sent at the same time as M and D to record the Transit of Venus on St. Helena. He became Astronomer Royal while they were in America.

More likely a descendant, Jasper M., famous stage magician and designer of dazzle camouflage.[[User:Volver|Volver]] 15:34, 2 January 2007 (PST)

Or it could be [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Nevil_Maskelyne John Nevil Maskelyne] another descendent. --[[User:Jeffersonista|Jordan]] 13:46, 25 January 2007 (PST)

I'm convinced you are right, Jordan. --[[User:Volver|Volver]] 15:17, 29 January 2007 (PST)

==Page 572==

'''smoke back into a cigar''' 
Time's arrow/ entropy motif.

'''hard-as-a-rock black cigar''' 
The quality of a cigar is usually higher with dark, more tightly-wrapped tobacco. Vincenzo has a fine one, it seems.

'''thumping''' 
sound/feeling of a water-bus?

'''''salso''''' 
Longest river in Sicily.Its small deltaic system there is dominated by marine processes rather than fluvial ones. It is a seasonal torrent, with brief but violent floods during the winter rains (from November to February), Is this what riding the salso in and back out again means? Riding the floods from the winter rains?

'''''sandoli''''' 
??? The sandolo is a type of boat used in Venice, similar to a gondola but (I believe) larger.

'''trains pulling in''' 
Famous early film.

==Page 573==

'''San Polo''' 
It is one of the six districts (sestieri) of Venice. (The other five are: Cannaregio, Dorsoduro, Santa Croce, San Marco, and Castello.) It (with Santa Croce and Dorsoduro) is located at the south side of the Grand Canal just across the Rialto bridge from San Marco. The San Polo district is the second most important area of Venice in terms of historical immportance and attractions for the tourists. It is the home to the Rialto market, the old artisan quarters of Venice, and the stunning Frari church.

'''Cannareggio''' 
It is commonly spelled Cannaregio. It is located north of the Grand Canal, and is one of the few parts of the city where Venetians still live in great numbers. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannaregio Canaregio].

==Page 574==

'''thirty years older''' 
About 65yo?

'''that day''' 
In NYC when Dally showed up.

'''when she was born''' 
Cf Pretenders/Chryssie Hynde.

'''Stronzo''' 
Italian curse word, roughly "asshole"

'''''In bocc' al lupo!''''' 
From the Roman dialect, in which the Italians - including Rocco and Pino - seem to speak. Meaning, literally, "In the
mouth of the wolf," and idiomatically, "Good luck."

Specifically the good-luck wish among actors: "Break a leg!" [[User:Volver|Volver]] 15:36, 2 January 2007 (PST)

'''''campielli''''' 
??? Small squares. A campo is literally a field and by extension a large square in a town. A campiello is a small square. I believe Venice has only one Piazza (San Marco) and the other squares are campi and campielli.

'''impersonation of itself''' 
echoes "the mountains had become geometrical impersonations of themselves", p. 394

==Page 575==

'''Riva''' 
??? Probably Riva del Vin by the Grand Canal; a great tourist attraction from where one can view the historical Rialto Bridge. (The word ''riva'' itself means ''river bank''). [http://arglist.com/cgi-bin/image?gallery=venice&name=20050525-025 Riva del Vin] and[http://www.altravistavenezia.it/_VirtualTours/VA/Rialto_Riva_del_Vin/rialto_riva_del_vin.html Rialto-Riva del Vin]

'''middy blouses''' 
In the style of a midshipman's blouse (shirt).

'''not yet been rebuilt''' 
Remember p256.

'''''lucciole''''' 
prostitutes

'''''fondamenta''''' 
A waterside street in Venice

'''''ombreta''''' 
??? A local wine produced in the hills north of Venice. 
Well, actually ''ombreta de vin'' means "a glass of wine" in Venetian dialect.

'''light's good here''' 
Old joke about drunk looking for car keys under streetlight though he dropped them somewhere else.

'''inside that labyrinth . . . microcosm of all Venice''' 
A hologram has this property, that a little chip broken off it contains the entire image. This is, however, a specific reference to Fractal non-Euclidian Geometry ... self-similarity over scale. A fractal is an object or quantity that displays self-similarity, in a somewhat technical sense, on all scales. The object need not exhibit exactly the same structure at all scales, but the same "type" of structures must appear on all scales. A plot of the quantity on a log-log graph versus scale then gives a straight line, whose slope is said to be the fractal dimension. The prototypical example for a fractal is the length of a coastline measured with different length rulers. The shorter the ruler, the longer the length measured, a paradox known as the coastline paradox, mentioned by Pynchon on [[ATD_792-820#Page_820|page 820]].

==Page 576==

'''''rio''''' 
narrow waterway in Venice (Cf [[ATD_243-272#Page 245|page 245:''rio'']].)

'''twelve soldi''' 
??? A soldo is a small coin.

'''franc... ten francs''' 
???

'''Santos-Dumont style''' 
Cf [[ATD_525-556#Page 529|page 529:Monsieur Santos-Dumont]]

'''Canaletto''' 
Real name: [http://www.wga.hu/bio/c/canalett/biograph.html Zuane Antonio Canal] (1697-1768), a well-known scenery painter at the time. He went to England in 1746 and returned to Venice in 1755. 
Venetian landscape painter, 1697-1768, famous for his paintings of Venice ([http://www.artericerca.com/ven_set/Canaletto/canaletto.htm Italian website]).

As described, Penhallow's pictures are reminiscent, in spirit and in some ways content, of John Singer Sargent's Venetian paintings. Sargent also later painted one of the most haunting images of World War I, [http://jssgallery.org/Paintings/Gassed/Gassed.htm "Gassed"], showing a column of men blinded by mustard gas feeling their way to an aid station.

'''Beppo''' 
Allusion to Byron's poem "Beppo - A Venetian Story". Beppo is a husband who's been away for many years and then, returning, reclaims his wife from another man.

Beppo = Mouse, diminutive of Giuseppi. There is also Beppo Levi (born on May 14, 1875 in Turin, Italy, died on August 28, 1961 in Rosario, Argentina) Italian mathematician, director of the Mathematics Institute of the National University of the Littoral from 1939 to 1961. His work included the mathematics of alternative spaces[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beppo_Levi].

'''pitch''' 
From Merriam-Webster Dictionary: ''chiefly British: an outdoor site (as for camping or doing business).

'''Bauer-Grünwald''' 
An expensive hotel near San Marco in Venice.

'''demobilized from a war that nobody knew about . . . seeking refuge from time''' 
Hunter Penhallow, one of the Trespassers?

==Page 577==

'''a time-traveler from the future''' 
Hunter Penhallow IS a Trespasser.

''''Safe'''' 
Recent art-movie title? I think safe here means safe without allusion.

'''neutral hour?''' 
Is any moment in Time apolitical?

'''Castello''' 
Castello is the largest of the six sestieri of Venice. The district grew up from the thirteenth century around a naval dockyard on what was originally the Isole Gemini.

'''Evening Gun''' 
"At reveille the morning gun goes off; and at retreat, the evening". From
a history description. Here is a site with picture.http://www.ziplink.net/~edkreutz/1f.html

'''Dr. Grace''' 
Renowned, full-bearded 19th-century English cricket player.

'''Charing Cross''' 
Charing Cross Railway Station, London. The original station was opened on 11 January 1864 by the South East Railway. Now, over 37 million people pass through Charing Cross every year. Situated on the forecourt of the stations is the Eleanor Cross, from which point road distances from London are measured. For more see [http://www.networkrail.co.uk/aspx/795.aspx#history Charing Cross].

==Page 578==

'''Dorsoduro''' 
An area of Venice. The Dorsoduro district is a relatively central area of the city, located on the opposie side of the Grand Canal from the San Marco district. But, at the smae time it offers the visitor a chance to explore a delightful part of the city free from the crowds of San Marco.
The Accademia Gallery, Peggy Gugggenheim Museum, and the Santa della Maria Salute Church (one of the most famous landmarks of Venice) are all located here. [http://www.tours-italy.com/venice/guide_dorsoduro.htm Dorsoduro].

'''''pensione''''' 
A cheap Italian hotel, like a bed and breakfast.

'''La Calcina''' 
A historical hotel. La Calcina means ''The Lime House'', because the hotel was built on a 17th-century lime production site. It is located on the Zattere promenade, at the foot of the Calcina Bridge. Various Bohemian artists frequented the Café of the hotel, and John Ruskin indeed stayed at the hotel from February 13 to May 23, 1877. For the historical background of the hotel see [http://www.lacalcina.com/HTML/en/calcina_storia_en.html La Calcina].

'''''"traces of conciousness"...streaming by''''' 
Possible allusion to Joyce's "stream of conciousness". Ulysses is also set in 1904, the year Joyce met his wife.

'''Zattere''' 
An area of wide waterfront pavements in Venice.

'''''...in hotels, the way your dreams are often, alarmingly, not your own?''''' 
One more possible allusion to Proust, including also the following paragraph. At the beginning of the ''Recherche'', the main character, Marcel, spends a sleepless night in a hotel room, surrounded by memories he can't make sense of.

In ''Lot 49'' Oedipa Maas considers all the dreams and memories stored in the mattresses of transients' hotels, and of the information destroyed when they burned.

'''''cimici''''' 
Latin: bedbug.

'''bora''' 
a regional wind, blowing each winter.

==Page 579==

'''vino forte''' 
strong wine.

'''Brindisi, Squinzano, . . . Brletta''' 
They are the cities in Puglia (Apula) region of southeast Italy, ie. at the "heel of the Italian Boot".

'''Tintoretto's ''Abduction . . .''''' 
See [http://www.egypttoday.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=3374 here]

Tintoretto (1518-94), Venetian painter. Originally named Jacopo Robusti, because of his father's profession of ''tintore'' (dye) he was nicknamed as [http://www.wga.hu/bio/t/tintoret/biograph.html Tintoretto]. The most successful painter of Venetian school in the generation after Titian. His drawings, unlike Michelangelo's detailed life studies, are brilliant, rapid notations, bristling with energy, and his color is more somber and mystical than Titian's. For a better, can be enlarged, view of his [http://www.wga.hu/html/t/tintoret/2religio/stealing.html ''Abduction of the Body of St. Mark (1562-66)''].

'''Accademia''' 
The major art-gallery in Dorsoduro, Venice

'''Titian''' 
16th century Venetian painter. 
Vecellio Tiziano (1490-1576), better known as Titian, the greatest painter of the Venetain School and the leading light of the Italian Renaissance. Titian was recognized as a towering genius in his own time and his reputation as one of the giants of art has never been seriously questioned. He was supreme in every branch of painting and his achievements were so varied — ranging "from the joyous evocation of pagan antiquity . . . to the depths of tragedy in his late religious paintings" — that he has been an inspiration to artists of very different character. In many subjects, above all in portraiture, he set patterns that were followed by generations of artists. For more and Titian's paintings [http://www.wga.hu/bio/t/tiziano/biograph.html Titian].

'''Infancy Gospel of Thomas''' 
One of the apocryphal scriptures. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas relates the miraculous deeds of Jesus before he turned twelve. [http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/infancythomas.html 1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Thomas Wikipedia on the Gospel of Thomas]

→Actually, The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is not the same as the Gospel of Thomas. The former is a brief summary of Jesus' misadventures as a child (as AtD notes, Jesus really is described as a hell-raiser and although at one point he brings a child named Zenon back from death, the Infancy Gospel mostly just makes a shallow exhibition of Jesus' miraculous powers). The latter is a Gnostic text and a "collection of sayings, prophecies, proverbs, and parables of Jesus" (Willis Barnstone, "The Other Bible" p. 299).

Also, I read through the whole Infancy Gospel of Thomas and could not find the particular parable that Pynchon describes. However, Pynchon's parable is in keeping with the style of this Gospel. Jesus gets in trouble--making adults irate--and then sets everything straight. This particular parable also does not appear in The Infancy Gospel of James, The Infacy Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, or The Arabic Infancy Gospel.

==Page 580==

'''Pentecost story in Acts''' 
Pentecost is a Christian holiday commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit on Jesus' followers and the beginning of the Christian church. Pentecost is celebrated by many (but not all) Christians on the Sunday 50 days after Easter. It often falls in early June. [[Acts II|Read the Biblical passages in Acts II...]]

'''Galilean dialect''' 
Of Aramaic.

'''Yes, well, it's redemption, isn't it, you expect chaos, you get order instead''' 
In the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Pentecost, first Jesus, then the Holy Ghost, act as Maxwell's Demon [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_Demon]. In the Infancy Gospel story, Jesus sorts the randomly mixed dye molecules so that each garment comes out one color; in the Pentecost story the Holy Ghost causes a single language, just random noise to all but Galileans, to be heard as the many different languages of the listeners. Taking the two stories together, thermodynamic entropy is reversed, but the entropy of information is increased. This is the crux of ''Lot 49''; here it is another "secular miracle"; order emerges from chaos. The mathemateicians, artists and similar seekers may bring forth a similar miracle, the ability to experience other dimensions, to understand the universe (See Kit's dream, P.566).

'''''rii''''' 
Plural of ''rio''.

==Page 581==

'''''sotopòrteghi''''' 
An open doorway for public access. (Cf [[ATD_243-272#Page 246|page 246:sotopòrteghi]].)

'''Bodeo 10.4 mm''' 
A mass-produced Italian-made service revolver, initially made around 1889. Demand for them as guns was low, causing thousands of the weapons to be converted to table lamps. An interesting Pynchonian connection between light, manufacture, weapons, and war.

==Page 582==

'''''foschetta''''' 
''foschia'' in Italian means "fog". ''foschetta'' is a term for "light fog".

'''''masègni''''' 
???

'''''patrone''''' 
Probably meaning ''padrone'', "master". -- blicero2

'''wine trains up from Puglia''' 
???Puglia region is in southeast of Italy (at the "heel of the Italian Boot"). From page 578-579: "In September, when the vino forte arrived from Brindis, Squinzano, and Barletta . . ." These three cities are in Puglia. Cf [[ATD_557-587#Page 579|page 579:vino forte]] and [[ATD_557-587#Page 579|page 579:Brindisi, Squinzano, . . . Barletta]].

'''Winter''' 
1904-1905?

'''Principessa Spongiatosta''' 
Is Pugnax's book from p6 at all relevant here?

'''Ca'''' 
Abbreviated form of "Casa," Italian for "house."

Which appears to be multidimensional, or at any rate non-Euclidean, reminiscent of Zombini's cabinet.

'''Roman Composite order''' 
A classical order (style of building design) dating from late Roman times, formed by superimposing Ionic volute (volute = a spiral scroll ornament) on a Corinthian capital (capital = the head or crowning feature of a column). ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composite_order Composite order]).

'''japonica''' 
Japanese honeysuckle.

==Page 583==

'''Iron Bridge''' 
The Ponte dell’Accademia - connecting the Venetian quarters (sestieri) San Marco and Dorsoduro - was constructed during the Austrian occupation in 1854. This steel construction got replaced ca. 1933 by a wooden bridge (which was replaced by yet another wooden bridge in 1985) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponte_dell'Accademia Wikipedia]

'''Le Havre''' 
French port city on the Atlantic (English Channel).

'''''ma via''''' 
Meaning "come on!", in Italian. -- blicero2

'''third eyes touching''' 
The third eye, as existing on some reptiles is a dorsal organ that is receptive to light, otherwise known as the ''pineal eye''. Since the two half-sisters are obviously not reptiles, this reference might allude to the figurative third eye, or the eye of the mind, heart or soul. When the two touch foreheads, they are able to peer into each other consciences, by way of these third eyes. [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/third+eye /Dictionary Entry]

==Page 584==

'''"Swiss insurance salesman. Wolf. No, Putzi."''' 
Bria's had so many beaux she gets them confused? One was a wolf; the other a putz?

'''''topo''''' 
A topo is a guide for a crag or climbing area.

'''Dogana''' 
Custom House, built on a wedge of land called ''Punta della Dogana'' (Custom Point). This wedge of land is at the entrance of the Grand Canal, as described in the text: "where the Grand Canal and the Lagoon meet". The original 14th-century customs tower was replaced by a colonnaded building named the ''Dogana de Mare'' (Sea Customs Post). See picture [http://uk.encarta.msn.com/media_1041505867_761562189_-1_1/Punta_della_Dogana_Venice.html Punta della Dogana]

'''Andrea Tancredi''' 
An artist and acquaintence made by Hunter Penhallow in Venice. His name is likely derived from the Gioacchino Rossini opera ''Tancredi'' or the Voltaire play by the same name. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tancredi Wikipedia Entry] 
Tancredi, restored, is a tragedy. the soldier Tancredi and his family have been stripped of their estates and inheritances, and he himself has been banished since his youth. Two more noble families — headed by Argirio and Orbazzano — have been warring for years. Wikipedia.
Tancredi presides in exile...he is mortally wounded at the end after learning the person he thought betrayed the heroine did not.

:Actually, per [[T#tancredi|my entry in the Alpha index]], more likely the name connects with Tancredi, the time-traveling character in ''City of Death'', a four-part serial in the British science fiction television series ''Dr. Who'' which involves time travel and bilocation. Tancredi is the sole survivor of the Jagaroth race, an evil people who destroyed themselves in a war some 400 million years ago. Tancredi explains that a few escaped in a dilapidated spacecraft and found Earth in a primeval, lifeless stage of its development. The ship disintegrated upon takeoff and [[Scaroth]] tells of how he was fractured in time, splinters of his being were scattered across time and space, all identical, none complete. Whereas, in ''City of Death'', Tancredi, one of the Scaroff "splinters" living in Renaissance Italy, is plotting to create multiple Mona Lisa's for fraudulent purposes, ''Against the Day'''s Tancredi is fighting art fraud. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Death Read the synopsis of ''City of Death'']; The name "Andrea" ''could'' be a reference to the protagonist Andrea Marsh, a time-traveler in the 1889 novel, ''Timeless Love'' by Judy Hinson ([[Timeless Love|synopsis]]).

'''Seurat and Signac''' 
George Seurat (1859-1891) and Paul Signac (1863-1935), French painters who developed pointillism. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointillism Wikipedia entry].

'''Divisionism''' 
Term invented by Paul Signac to describe the Neo-Impressionist separation of colour into dots or patches applied directly to the canvas. From Grove Dictionary of Art.

'''Marinetti''' 
The Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti was the first among [the Futurists] to produce a manifesto of their artistic philosophy in his Manifesto of Futurism (1909)(see below).

'''"Futurists"''' 
Practitioners or followers of Futurism, an early 20th century art movement that is considered the genesis of Cubism, Dada and Art Deco. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurism_%28art%29 Wikipedia entry].Marinetti summed up the major principles of the Futurists, including a passionate loathing of ideas from the past, especially political and artistic traditions. He and others also espoused a love of speed, technology and violence. The car, the plane, the industrial town were all legendary for the Futurists, because they represented the technological triumph of man over nature.

'''brutalism''' 
See above and The Futurists were often condemned as fascistic in their manifestos and outlook.

'''Torcello''' 
A lonely Venetian island: very peaceful and beautiful with a church and little else.

'''primitivo''' 
A kind of red wine (same as the original Zinfandel, actually).

==Page 585==

'''green-and-lavender''' 
Another clashing color scheme.

'''sirocco''' 
A hot dust-laden wind from the Libyan deserts that blows on the northern Mediterranean coast chiefly in Italy, Malta, and Sicily. 
The correct spelling in Italian is ''Scirocco''.

'''San Michele''' 
San Michele, nicknamed The Island of the Dead, is the cemetery island of Venice. It is associated with the sestiere of Cannaregio from which it lies a short distance north east.
Walls of San Michele.Along with neighbouring San Cristoforo della Pace, the island was a popular place for local travellers and fishermen to land. Mauro Codussi's Chiesa di San Michele in Isola of 1469, the first Renaissance church in Venice, and a monastery lie on the island.

'''futuristic vehicle''' 
P155. Of course, the machine-inspired Futurists would remind Hunter of this vehicle that 'had borne him to safety'!

'''''Preliminary Studies...''''' 
Artists often do 'preliminary studies'..'infernal machine' comes out of Futurism's ideas.

==Page 586==

'''Always with us.''' 
Gospel of Matthew. "The poor you will always have with you". Here reference is to born-again Christers.

'''''vero?''''' 
Literally meaning ''true'' in Italian, here it is used as you would use: "Are you talking of an infernal machine, ''aren't you'' ?"

'''orpiment yellow''' 
A yellow color pigment ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orpiment Wikipedia])

'''Nürnberg violet''' 
An artificial color pigment discovered in 1868 in the city of Nuremberg

==Page 587==

'''Brownian movement''' 
Also called Brownian motion. It is the irregular motion of small particles suspended in a liquid or a gas, caused by the bombardment of the particles by molecules of the medium
first divscovered by botanist Robert Brown (1773-1858) in 1827. Einstein in one of his four ''Annus Mirabilis Papers'' of 1905 explained the random motion using molecular kinetic theory of heat. Cf [[ATD_397-428#Page 412|page 412:young Einstein]].

'''I really love the old dump''' 
For the same reason Dally does: Venice has what Pynchon called (in ''V.'') "Temporal Bandwidth": a life in a depth of time, a simultaneous humane immesion in past, present and future. The canals of industrialized Belgium are silted up, the connections to its Hanse past lost, paved and tracked over. This has not, and cannot, happen to Venice; even a Futurist painter cannot carry out the appaling modernization he describes. Venice is a place to hide from the future; indeed, in terms of physical destruction, the world wars barely touched La Serenisima.

'''''nebbia, nebbietta, foschia, caligo, sfumato''''' 
Varieties of fog.

'''speed of sound''' 
Air temperature is more important that density.

'''''La Velocità del Suono''''' 
Italian, "speed of sound"

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 525-556

2007-03-05T04:33:06Z

Blazes: /* Page 550 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 525==

'''Ostend''' 
Cf [[ATD_489-524#Page 521|page 521:Ostend]], 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 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostend 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 [[ATD_119-148#Page 130|page 130:Quaternions]]. Quaternions are a non-communtative extension of compelx numbers (Hamilton, 1843). 

Analogy with the complex numbers (Cf [[ATD_119-148#Page 132|page 132:complex number]]) being represented as a sum of real and imaginary parts, a + b''i'', where ''i''² = −1, a quaternion is defined as a combination a + b''i'' + c''j'' + d''k'', where ''i''² = ''j''² = ''k''² = ''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 [[ATD_119-148#Page 133|page 133:imaginary number]]), 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''''' 
A half-pint glass (25 centilitres, actually).

'''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. [http://www.rarebooks.nd.edu/digital/heraldry/partitions.html 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 [[ATD_26-56#Page 29|page 29:Professor Gibbs]]) 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 [[ATD_525-556#Page 525|page 525:Quaternions]]). 
A vector is defined by not only a magnitude but also a direction, such as a velocity vector, ''v'' is defined by ''v'' = a''i'' + b''j'' + c''k'',
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 [[ATD_318-335#Page 326|page 326:Curl]] and p. 536, ''Laplacian'' — Cf [[ATD_318-335#Page 326|page 326:Laplacian]] 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. ([http://web.mit.edu/wwmath/vectorc/summary.html 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. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Nouveau 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 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Turks Young Turks], a Turkish revolutionary movement

'''Garde Civique''' 
A part of the Belgian army. According to the [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Belgium 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. A man of almost Nixonian fiendishness. In the Congo he acted as sole proprietor and absolute ruler. The positive outcomes of his exploitation include ''Heart of Darkness'' and the phrase "crime against humanity."

'''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 ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_Publique Wikipedia]). "King Leopold's private army" may be a more accurate description.

'''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. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kh%C3%A2gne 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. [[http://academic.reed.edu/formosa/texts/reclusbio.html Reclus]).

'''Stirnerite''' 
Follower of Max Stirner, 19th century German philosopher and author of ''The Ego and Its Own,'' a work influential in anarchist thought. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Stirner 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 [http://www.iep.utm.edu/n/nihilism.htm#H1 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." ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Sipido Sipido]).

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

'''Hippodrome''' 
Hippodrome Wellington, a horse racing track in Ostend built in 1883. The facility hosts both harness and flat racing events. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippodrome_Wellington Hippodrome]).

'''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, [http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/PER_PIG/PICRIC_ACID_or_TRINITROPHENOL_C.html 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 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Santos-Dumont 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 Quaternionists, 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. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Whitehead Whitehead]].

''Fiume'' is now Rijeka, Croatia. Trieste is on the northwestern edge of the Istra Peninsula, Rijeka is east of it. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rijeka Fiume]].

'''''Alberta''''' 
The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_yacht Wikipedia] entry on royal yachts goes back to the 17th century but doesn't include ''Alberta.'' The craft does get a mention in [http://www.bouncing-balls.com/timeline/people/nr_leopoldmorel.htm this page on Leopold and the Congo.]

'''Siluro Dirigibile a Lenta Corsa''' 
or S.L.C. "slow course torpedo", "slow-running torpedo". [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_torpedo Wikipedia] Italy‘s Navy was among the first to experiment with manned torpedos. Though according to [http://web.ukonline.co.uk/chalcraft/sm/chariots.html 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''. [http://www.geocities.com/tegetthoff66/viribus.html website]

The Wikipedia entry linked above doesn't contain the Italian word ''dirigibile'' (steerable), which sets up the torpedo as a counterpart of the dirigible ''Inconvenience.''

:I suspect there's a connection between the torpedo and "Not the usual lateener, in fact appearing to have neither sails, masts, nor oars" in Miles' reversed vision, [[ATD_243-272#Page_250|page 250.]] Needs work, though.

==Page 530==

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

'''''Macchè''''' 
Italian: certainly not, not a chance. And in Pynchon's Italian is used as an all-purpose exclamation.

'''''Ehi, stu gazz', categoria''''' 
Stu gazz' is a dialect representation of ''sto cazzo'', literally meaning ''this dick here''. Normally you could translate the sense of the sentence as: ''yeah, why not, a fucking category! ''. -- blicero2 - 2007.02.22

'''''mezzogiornismo''''' 
Denigrating the Italian South. Mezzogiorno means ''midday'' in Italian but refers generally to Southern Italy.

==Page 531==

'''Bruges''' 
An exceptionally beautiful Belgian town of canals which is thus one of several towns known as the 'Venice of the north'. In the 14th cettury Burges already became an international finanacial and trading center, but
started to decline in the 15th century. In the 20th century, however, the city was dsicovered by the international tourism and the medieval heritage turned out to be a new source of wealth. A new harbor of Zeebrugge, 10 miles outside of Bruges at the North Sea coast, brought new developments and new industries to the region. For the city and its history see ([http://www.trabel.com/brugge.htm Bruges]).

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

'''Ghent''' 
Belgian city, less than 30 miles southeast of Bruges, on the rail line about halfway between Ostend and Brussels. It is the fourth largest city of Belgium. It is bigger than Bruges but not as famous as a tourist attraction. But the city is a showcase of medieval Flemish wealth and commercial success. See ([http://www.trabel.com/gent.htm Ghent]).

'''Daimler six-cylinder''' 
???

'''a hundred horsepower''' 
???

'''''guaglion''''' 
italian (dialectal) = boy, young person

'''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 [[ATD_26-56#Page 29|page 29:Kimura]] and [[ATD_318-335#Page 318|page 318:Shunkichi Kimura]].

'''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.

'''Anharmonic Pencil''' 
''Pencil'' is a term commonly used in Synthetic Geometry. Straight lines incident with a plane - coplanar lines - and passing through a common point are said to be concurrent lines and the set of all such concurrent coplanar lines is called the ''pencil''. (Cf [[ATD_429-459#Page 456|page 456:Pencil]]). For a figure and a not quite precise definition see [http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Pencil.html pencil]. If a, b, c and d, are four distinct coplanar lines and their double ratio λ = (abcd) = -1, then a, b, c, d are called a harmonic quadruple of lines; they are said to constitute a ''harmonic pencil''. A ''pencil'' which is not harmonic then is known as ''anharmonic pencil''. See Pencil (lines 8-9), Double Ratio λ (lines 32-35) and Harmonic Pencil (line 39) of [http://ca.geocities.com/ingsaler6/mathworld.html Mathworld].

'''''Comptes rendus''''' 
''Comptes rendus des séances hebdomadaires,'' Proceedings of the weekly sessions (of the Academy of Sciences), published from 1835, later (ca. 1935) retitled ''Comptes rendus de l'Académie des sciences,'' Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences. (Notice that the academy didn't see the need to specify "French." Take that, Royal Society of London!) For about a century, one of two journals so universally circulated and recognized that bibliographies nearly always cited them in nickname form: ''C.R.'' The other was ''Ber.,'' short for ''Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft,'' Reports of the German Chemical Society (from 1868).

'''De Forest''' 
Cf [[ATD_26-56#Page 29|page 29:De Forest]].

'''Gibbs''' 
Cf [[ATD_26-56#Page 29|page 29:Professor Gibbs]].

'''Maxwell Equations''' 
Cf [[ATD_57-80#Page 58|page 58:Maxwell Field Equations]].

==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.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaviside].

'''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.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Grassmann].

'''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. ([http://www.monopole.org 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. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_monopole 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 [http://linguistlist.org/forms/langs/GetListOfConstructedLgs.html 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.

'''We are the Jews of mathematics, wandering out here in our diaspora--some destined for the past, others the future, even a few able to set out at unknown angles from the simple line of Time, upon journeys that no one can predict''' 
In keeping with the analogy of Judaism, those "few" people within the Quaternionists "able to set out at unknown angles" are most likely being compared to Kabbalists who claim to partake in a mystic "journey to the Throne of God through the mythological realm of the seven heavens" (Armstrong, A History of God--p. 247). Throne Mysticism in Kabbalah is explored extensively in Gravity's Rainbow.

==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 [http://www.metmuseum.org/special/se_event.asp?OccurrenceId={0DC3D00F-4611-4F91-8DC2-CC3C1A5C48D5} 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 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Poiretgown.jpg Poiret Gown]. ''The New York Times'' reported on February 1, 2007 that A Poiret Gown Brings $5,500 at [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B07EFDA1538F93AA15756C0A967948260 Christie's Auction] - the gown was made in 1913 when Poiret was at the height of his career. For his bio see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Poiret 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?

'''set theory''' 
Set theory deals with the properties of well-defined collections, or ''sets'', of entities - the ''elements'' or ''members'' of the set - conceived as a whole. The elements may be of a mathematical nature or non-mathematical. The set theory grew out of the German mathematician Georg Cantor's (1845-1918) study of infinite sets of real numbers. The ''languages of sets'' has become an important tool for all branches of mathematics, but is of very little relevance to the practice of mathematics in everyday life.

'''Hamilton . . . early genius''' 
Hamilton, according to ''Chambers Biographical Dictionary'', "at fifteen knew thirteen languages, had read Newton's ''Principia'', and commenced original investigations". At twenty-two, "while still an undergraduate, he was appointed professor of Astronomy at Dublin and Irish Astronomer-Royal"; at thirty "he was knighted".

'''Hamilton . . . in the grip of a first love''' 
??? 
Pynchon probably didn't mean Quaternion was Hamilton's first love, but its effect on him was similar to that of a first love. In 1843 at the age of 38 Hamilton invented the Quaternion, the first non-communtative algebra to be studied. He felt this would revolutionise mathematical physics, and he spent the rest of his life working on it. In 1853 he published a large volume, ''Lectures on Quaternions'', on his grand invention. The last seven years of his life, Hamilton was writing a 800-page book ''Elements of Quaternions'' modeling on Euclid's ''Elements''. The last chapter of the book was completed by his son after his death.

==Page 536==

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

'''Kursaal''' 
Spa. Casino ?

'''vectors''' 
For serious minds see Cf [[ATD_525-556#Page 526|page 526:Gibbsian Vectors]], but let's follow Pynchon's lighter mood, here is a non-mathematical definition by Kamen (1995):
:''Many things have more than direction;''
:''The magnitude is also a question.''
:''With acceleration or force,''
:''And many more things, of course,''
:''It's vectors that make the connection.''

'''Curls''' 
Cf [[ATD_318-335#Page 326|page 326:Curl]]: 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. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace].

:Cf [[ATD_318-335#Page 326|page 326:Laplacian]]: 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''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_symmetry Broken symmetry] is a concept used widely in mathematics and physics. For a simplest explanation (good enough for the text here), this term means that an object breaks either rotational symmetry or translational sysmetry - when one can only rotate an object in certain angles or when one is able to tell if the object has been shifted sideways. For a little bit more detailed explanation see [http://www.lassp.cornell.edu/sethna/OrderParameters/BrokenSymmetry.html Identify the Broken Symmetry]; or even more [http://scienceweek.com/2005/sw050708-6.htm On Broken Symmetry].

'''''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 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernand_Khnopff wikipedia entry]

'''Pléiade Lafrisée''' 

in French, "friser" means to curl or twist. "La frisée" could mean "curled." The Pleiades is a cluster of stars.

'''''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.

'''what is a Quaternino?''' 
Cf [[ATD_525-556#Page 525|page 525:Quaternions]] for a mathematical definition. From ''The Random House Dictionary of the English Languages'', The Unabridged Edition (1966): Quaternion is "a quantity or operator expressed as the sum of a real number and three complex numbers, equivalent to the ''quotient of two vectors''. The field of quaternions is not commutative under multiplication.".

'''Bertie ('Mad Dog') Russell''' 
Mad Dog ??? 

[http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1950/russell-bio.html Bertrand Russell] (1872-1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician and social critic. Best known for his work in mathermatical logic and analytic philosophy. In late spring of 1901 he discovered the so-called [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell-paradox/ Russell Paradox], "the most famous of the logical or set-theoretical paradoxes. The paradox arises within naive set theory by considering the set of all sets that are not members of themselves. Such a set appears to be a member of itself if and only if it is not a member of itself, hence the paradox." (On-line Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). He won the 1950 Nobel Prize in Literature in "recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thouhgt".

'''Hegel... puns''' 
???

==Page 539==

'''a vector quotient''' 
The result of one vector divided by another. According to the English dictionary definition of previous page this is just a Quaternion.

'''unit vector''' 
Unit vector is a vector with magnitude of one. The unit vectors in 3-dimensional space, ''i, j, k'', associated with ''x, y, z'' directions are used in defining a general 3D vector (Cf [[ATD_525-556#Page 526|page 526:Gibbsian Vectors]]).

'''''square root of minus one''''' 
Imaginary number (Cf [[ATD_119-148#Page 132|page 133:Imaginary Number]]). The imaginary numbers ''i, j, k'' are used in defining a Quaternion (Cf [[ATD_525-556#Page 525|page 525:Quaternions]]).

''''Triangle Asana'''' 
A basic yoga pose.

[http://yoga.org.nz/postures/yoga_positions_images_page.htm 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.
[http://www.astunit.com/tutorials/glossary.htm]
:Isn't that sort of a red herring? "[P]roducing from her reticule a . . . watch" doesn't really allow of that second meaning.

'''Vacheron & Constantin watch''' 
Made by a Swiss company founded in 1755. From 1819 to 1970 the name was as in the text, then the & dropped out. See the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacheron_Constantin Wikipedia entry.]

'''hunting-case''' 
For a pocket watch, a case with a hinged metal cover. More often called "hunter case" (and such a watch a "hunter").

==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''' 
The Woëvre is a natural region of Lorraine in north-east France. It forms part of Lorraine plateau and lies largely in the department of Meuse. During World War I, there was much fighting there due to vast mineral resources that had been discovered in the Briey basin or Eastern Woevre at the end of the 19th century. "Piet" is Dutch for "rock" or "stone" and is a fairly common Dutch name, the English equivalent being Peter.

'''Force Publique''' 
The Force Publique (FP) was the official armed force for what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1885, (when the territory was known as the Congo Free State), through the period of direct Belgian rule (1908-60), until the beginning of the Second Republic in 1965. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_Publique Wikipedia entry]

'''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 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanns_Johst].

'''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. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._T._Whittaker 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 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Edmund_Whittaker_Memorial_Prize].

'''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''' 
???
The evil-doer who must come might be Adolf Hitler. It would make sense. The implication being that Europe is precipitating into a no-return situation. Capitalism cannot but end in WW2. 
Ah, a lot more and less than capitalism going on here, especially if anyone specific like Hitler is meant.

'''General Boulanger''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlieffen_Plan Schlieffen Plan] included an attack on France through Belgium, disregarding its neutrality.

'''Wilhelm has offered Leopold part of France, the ancient Duchy of Burgundy''' 
[http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/fr-bg.html History of the duchy.] [http://www.freiburg-madison.de/freiburg_history/1386-1517_The%20Early%20Habsburgs.htm 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. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Freiherr_von_Krafft-Ebing 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. [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0395500761&id=rbEjDovfyNMC&pg=RA2-PA111&lpg=RA2-PA111&ots=ELKl5b_6Tx&dq=mayonnaise+trout.fishing&num=100&sig=BiyXRqJXRGrMWbrBNgn8de2kpCo#PRA2-PA112,M1 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 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XV].

'''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 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleo_de_Merode]. The character Madame Leonora Armfeldt in Stephen Sondheim's ''A Little Night Music'' has some features in common with her.

'''marquise de Pompadour''' 
Mistress of Louis XV,once friend of Voltaire and a power behind official scenes.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_de_Pompadour].

==Page 545==

'''duc de Richelieu''' 
Duc de Richelieu (1696-1788), marshal of France, was a grandnephew of Cardinal Richelieu, and born in Paris. Apart from his reputation as a man of exceptionally loose morals, he attained, in spite of a defective education, distinction as a diplomatist and general. ([http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Louis_Francois_Armand_du_Plessis,_duc_de_Richelieu duc de Richelieu] and cf [[ATD_489-524#Page 490|page 490:duc de Richelieu]])

'''dubious 'victory' in 1756''' 
As 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''' 
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.

'''''n'est-ce pas?''''' 
Right? (Isn't that so?)

'''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, page 536.

'''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''' 
A lounge suit is another name for business suit consisting of a matching jacket and trousers or skirt.

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

'''dripping-heads''' 
???

'''''cuves d'agitation''''' 
agitation vat or tank.

'''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!

'''''vero?''''' 
true? real?

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

'''Oudenberg''' 
A southeast suburb of Ostende.

'''Quai de l'Entrepôt''' 
???
Warehouse Quay

'''''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 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlieffen_plan] 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 '''de'''composed; 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''' 
???
Nieuport is a Belgian seaport about 10 miles southwest of Ostend. Dunkirk is a French port (less than 10 miles inside the French border) about 20 miles southwest of Nieuport. The latter was a site of one of the bloodest battle in World War I. The general area between Niewport and Dunkirk was the well traversed battle fields of two world wars. (Dunkirk was (in)famous for the British Army's escape from the Nazi German's assault in World War II.)

'''power-receivers''' 
Not information, energy.

==Page 550==

'''Lot's wife''' 
Angels of God led Lot and his family out of Sodom as it was being destroyed and told them not to look back at the mayhem. Lot's wife, Edith, imprudently looked back and was transfigured into a pillar of salt.

'''Italian grotto''' 
???an imitating recess or structure made to resemble a natural 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). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uhlan 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? Or perhaps it's a nod to the Ryder-Waite Tarot deck and to Kevin Thorn (Kevin Matthew Fertig, 1977-), the American professional wrestler better known by his ring name Kevin Thorn who is currently signed to World Wrestling Entertainment wrestling on its ECW brand. He has appeared in vigniettes with Ariel (Shelly Martinez, 1980-), the tarot card reader, who spits blood at the camera while she "predicted the future of ECW." Yup, a stretch...

'''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'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland]; 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''' 
soaked in water or exposed to moisture (as flax or hemp) to facilitate the removal of the fiber from the woody tissue by partial rotting.

==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 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passchendaele].

'''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. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieronymus_Bosch Wikipedia entry].

'''Brueghel''' 
Pieter Brueghel the Elder(1525-1569), Flemish painter.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_Brueghel_the_Elder 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''' 
Frédéric Chopin (1810-49), a Polish pianist and composer ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Chopin Chopin]). He was born in Warsaw, Poland to a Polish morther and a French father. He went to Paris at the age of 20 and died there at the age of 39. He was widely regarded as one of the most famous and influential composers for the piano. From 1837-47 he had a 10-year stormy relationship with the French writer George Sand. His E-minor Nocturne is a 4-minute long Romantic style piano solo composed in 1827. (A ''nocturne'' is usually a musical composition that is inspired by, or evocative of, the night [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocturne Nocturne].)

'''owl-light''' 
???glimmering or imperfect light or twilight hours.

''''plasmic hysteresis'''' 
???

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 489-524

2007-03-02T22:19:01Z

Blazes: /* Page 518 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 489==

'''Neville . . . Nigel''' 
Lew's rescuers after the attempt to blow him up in Colorado, page 185.

'''stage left or audience left?''' 
A theater has two directions called left. "Stage left" is to the left of the performers as they face the audience. "House left" or "audience left" is to the left of an audience member facing the stage.

'''desolate sighs''' 
(They're not gay?)

'''embryo Apostlet''' 
The Cambridge Apostles, also known as the Cambridge Conversazione Society, is an elite intellectual secret society at Cambridge University, founded in 1820 by George Tomlinson, a Cambridge student who went on to become the Bishop of Gibraltar. Undergraduates being considered for membership are called "embryos" and are invited to "embryo parties," where members judge whether the student should be invited to join. "-let" is a common suffix that denotes smallness or youth, like droplet (small drop) or piglet or eyelet &c &c..., thus, a young Apostle. [[Cambridge Apostles|More on the Cambridge Apostles and the Cambridge spy ring...]]

'''Cyprian Latewood''' 
Possibly named after third-century Saint Cyprian, during his lifetime made Bishop of Carthage and eventually martyred under a Valerian persecution of Christians. Saint Cyprian is notable for having ordered his executioner to be paid twenty-five pieces of gold, then having stripped himself of clothes and awaiting, in prayer, his beheading. There are a number of thematic resonances between Pynchon's Cyrian and the traditional one; notably their primary characterization as men of submission and servitude. Additionally, etymologically, 'cyprian' signifies both ''Aphrodite-worshiper'' and ''prostitute''. [[User:Bean|remy]] 07:33, 29 December 2006 (PST)

'''sod''' 
Not simply the term for a disagreeable person but specifically a homosexual; short for ''sodomite.''

'''Eastern wog''' 
Cf p222.

'''The German Sea''' 
A public house; the name occurs again with a different meaning at the end of this chapter.

'''sub-Clerkenwell''' 
Clerkenwell is a neighborhood in London that has a reputation for producing the highest quality of watches, clocks and jewellery. A sub-Clerkenwell trinket would be a poorly made trinket

'''annoyance''' 
(Why?)
:the other's penis seemed larger than one's own?
::Annoyance not because of the penises but because they are rivals. Lethargic not because of the penises but because they aren't getting anywhere in their courtship. Finally, "each regarding the other's penis" because even straight men can't deny that that's one of the things they look at in the steamroom.

==Page 490==

'''gyps''' 
Servants who do housekeeping chores for students living in college.

Also possibly gypsies. But context points to people ''in'' the colleges, which pretty well rules out Gypsies. --[[User:Volver|Volver]] 07:00, 11 January 2007 (PST)

'''Byron's Pool''' 
???

'''"Div!"''' 
???
:From "divine" or "divinity"? Of course if these kids were Vectorists they would be talking about the '''div''' (divergence) operator.

'''"Whizzo!"''' 
An early-twentieth century English slang expression of delight. Uttered earlier, by Neville or Nigel, on introducing Lew to the Tarot deck, page 186.

'''''"That'' is that of which ''I'' speak!"''' 
prob. homosexuality. cf. "I am the Love that dare not speak its name." -- Lord Alfred Douglas's poem 'Two Loves' in ''Chameleon'' ca. 1896.

Made more famous as an utterance by Oscar Wilde during his trial for sodomy. His response: '"The Love that dare not speak its name" in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare.[...]. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an elder and a younger man, when the elder man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him."

: This seems wrong, given the typical Pynchon scene of males ogling/desiring women. There is no homosexuality invloved with these guys
but a "'range' [again] of remarks" and 'all-night rhapsodizing' over the beauty of naked women. This line "That, etc." seems more likely a comic spin on a famous line which we know Pynchon has alluded to before [V.]: Wittgenstein's "whereof I can not speak, thereof I must remain silent" from the Tractatus. He could NOT not speak of their nakedness.

This whole scene is reminiscent, perhaps, of the biblically famous Susannah and the Elders, where she, too, is watched appreciatively bathing. Wallace Stevens, among others, has a famous poem about it.

::All this about homosexuality is useful knowledge, but (a) the men here are motivated by lust directed at ''women'' and (b) this is among the "catchphrases of [a] day" when Oscar Wilde's love could not yet even speak its name. "''That'' is that of which ''I'' speak!" is a Pynchon trick, taking a 20th-21st century expression and paramorphically projecting it back in time. At the university it was upper-class and refined; today it has become a vulgarism, "That's what I'm talkin' about!" Other examples: "high susceptibility to primordial variables," page 801 (today "extreme sensitivity to initial conditions"); "as cheerful as a finch," page 21 ("as happy as a lark"). --[[User:Volver|Volver]] 11:39, 31 January 2007 (PST)

'''Cloisters Court''' 
Cloisters Court, part of Girton College, Cambridge University.

'''King's''' 
King's College, Cambridge University. --[[User:Volver|Volver]] 15:22, 8 January 2007 (PST)

'''Queen Anne's Gate''' 
Some part of the British Home Office is, or was, located in the London (Westminster) street named Queen Anne's Gate. --[[User:Volver|Volver]] 15:22, 8 January 2007 (PST)

'''inconvenience''' 
Not sure what connection Pynchon is making here, but the word inconvenience could not come up accidentally in this novel.

'''Newnham''' 
An all-women's college at Cambridge, founded in 1871.

'''Wrangleresses''' 
Made-up: top female Math Scholars at Cambridge. Top students were called Wranglers, all male at this time. "Cambridge University and within it of the Mathematics Tripos, the competitive graduation examination process that ranked candidates in order of “Wrangler”" ...

'''Phillippa Fawcett''' 
Typo, should be Philippa Fawcett (1868-1948). She was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge. In 1890, she was the first woman to score the highest mark at Mathematics Tripos at Cambridge. She served as a College Lecturer in mathematics at Newnham College for 10 years. [http://www.agnesscott.edu/Lriddle/WOMEN/fawcett.htm]

'''Grace Chisholm and Will Young''' 
''Grace Chisholm'' (1868-1944), an English mathematician. She went to Girton College, Cambridge in 1889 to study mathematics. Since no women were accepted to graduate schools in England, after graduation She went to the University of Göttingen to continue her mathematics education and received her PhD there in 1895. The following year she married ''William Young'' (1863-1942), one of her tutors at Girton and also a mathematician. (''romances with one's tutors à la . . .'') Grace Chisholm and Will Young formed a mathematical married partnetship of real significance. Husband and wife played a major role in set theory research. Between them they wrote 214 mathematical articles and several books, including one on geometry and one on set theory. [http://www.agnesscott.edu/LRIDDLE/WOMEN/young.htm Grace Chisholm] and [http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Biographies/Young.html William Young].

'''nautch-girl''' 
notch-girl? A woman who could 'notch' a lot of men?

An exotic dancer, more or less. This whole phrase "nautch-girl extravagance of looks and self-possession" refers to the sense of dominance the stripper feels over the yawps in the audience.

Nautch girl was an Indian traditional dancer in Hindu temple or court performing ritual and religious dances. Her costume generally was of bright color. Pynchon probably refered to Yahsmeen's beautiful but exotic, extraordinary look and poise.
[[http://www.hitchams.suffolk.sch.uk/india_art/starter/nautch_girls.htm nautch girl]].

'''socio-acrobatic aggrandizement''' 
'social climbing'

'''''opium beer''''' 
laudanum?, if not literally.

'''duc de Richelieu''' 
Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu, Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu (September 9, 1585 – December 4, 1642), was a French clergyman, noble, and statesman.

Consecrated as a bishop in 1607, he later entered politics, becoming a Secretary of State in 1616. Richelieu soon rose in both the Church and the state, becoming a cardinal in 1622, and King Louis XIII's chief minister in 1624. He remained in office until his death in 1642;
from Wikipedia.

:Wrong Richelieu. The duke in question won his big battle at Mahon in 1756. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Fran%C3%A7ois_Armand_du_Plessis%2C_duc_de_Richelieu Here's the Wikipedia link for the right one.]

'''Line and staff''' 
Cyprian's father sees his work in the City as analogous to the profession of arms. Officers in the British and most other armies of the time were classified as "line," those commanding troops, and "staff," those performing administrative and planning functions.

==Page 491==

'''the City''' 
Major banks and other big-money institutions are located in the City of London, a fairly small subset of Metropolitan London.

'''can't ''ever'' tell''' 
Dog-eat-dog capitalism?

'''Reginald "Ratty" McHugh''' 

'''"fifteen years later'''
Reginald nodded appreciatively FIFTEEN YEARS OR SO LATER?...What is going
on here time-wise? 
All the conversation before this line, between Cyprian and his father, is "recalled", having taken place some "fifteen years or so" earlier.

'''one more flag''' 
IE, his father's wallpaper brand.

'''Balkan Sobranies''' 
An upscale brand of cigarette.

'''lilies-and-lassitude humor of the '90s''' 
Cult of Oscar Wilde?
Aubrey Beardsley and the pre-Raphaelites?

'''table d'hôte''' 
French: host's table. In a restaurant, a meal chosen by the management, no substitutions please. If the appetizer is shrimp and you don't like shrimp, then don't eat the appetizer.

'''Very well, I contradict myself.''' 
Walt Whitman allusion. See Leaves of Grass. Next line in ADT affirms this.

==Page 492==

'''divine . . . prosaic''' 
(Walt Whitman was of course prosaic himself before he became divine.)

'''xanthocroid''' 
Prefix xantho- is from Greek and means yellow. Does the whole word mean "yellow-haired"? Yes, i.e. blondes.

'''Capsheaf''' 
Is this a third speaker, or another name for Ratty? Third speaker. Ratty puts in some words a little bit down the page.

'''viva''' 
Slangy short form of ''viva voce,'' an oral examination.

'''Crayke''' 
???
Crayke is a village and civil parish in the Hambleton district of North Yorkshire, England, about two miles east of Easingwold. Relevant?

'''Shetland''' 
Shetland Islands, an island group northeast of the Orkney Islands, comprising a county of Scotland.

'''Shetland ponies''' 
one of a breed of small but sturdy, rough-coated ponies raised originally in the Shetland Islands.

'''''D'accord''''' 
French: right, OK.

'''reputation for viciousness''' 
The Shetland pony breed has a repuation for viciousness, even if this reputation isn't entirely accurate.

'''Arab''' 
Arabian hourse. One of a breed of horses, raised originally in Arabia and adjacent countries, noted for their intellegence, grace, and speed.

'''Thoroughbred''' 
One of a breed of horses, to which all race horse belong, originally developed in England by crossing Arbian stallions with European mares.

'''croft''' 
Farm.

'''Mainland''' 
The name of one of the 29 inhabited islands in the Shetland Islands, Scotland, UK. It is the largest island in Shetland Islands, the third largest in Great Britian.

'''Mavis Grind''' 
A narrow isthmus joining the Northmavine peninsula to the rest of Mainland in the Shetland Islands, UK. The name means "gate of the narrow isthmus" in the local dialect. Mavis Grind is said to be the only place in the UK where you can toss a stone across land from the North Sea to the Atlantic Ocean.

'''orthopædic journals''' 
???

'''Dymphna''' 
After [http://www.catholic-forum.com/SAINTS/saintd01.htm St. Dymphna,] whose intercession is effective against insanity, possession and epilepsy.

'''decks full of hearts''' 
(52 or 13 per deck?)

==Page 493==

'''Thucydides... remind me''' 
Thucydides' book is an account of the Peloponnesian war, organized in a rather difficult method in which all the actions of one season are described before proceeding to the next. Here are some erotic possibilities in it, however: 
-Pericles, in his famous funeral oration, says the citizen ought to have an eros for the city. 
-At one point some Athenians are lured out of a garrison by way of a gymnastic (that is male, nude) demonstration. 
-On the eve of the fateful Sicilian expedition, all the oversized phalloi of the hermes are mysteriously knocked off. One of the generals on the expedition, Alcibiades, is accused of the offense and is eventually called called back. In Plato's Symposium Alcibiades drunkenly crashes the party and confesses that Socrates has consistently spurned his sexual advances.

In this context, Thucydides is proposed specifically for its non-erotic qualities. In writing his histories, Thucydides attempted to produce a clinical account of the Peloponnesian war without the passion and inaccuracies of previous histories, such as those of Herodotus. Indeed it is hard to imagine a less erotic work. It is suggested for Cyprian Latewood to help him get over his infatuation with Yashmeen.

'''McHugh''' 
Talking to self?

'''''Peeng''-kyeah''' 
Pinky, name given to Yashmeen by the blonde girls, Lorelei, Noellyn an Faun.

'''alfresceehwh''' 
An alfresco, an outdoor gathering. ''-eehwh'' is a rendering of the accent for comic effect.

'''Lorelei, Noellyn, and Faun''' 
Lorelei, more frequently "Loreley": In a famous German myth, a mermaid sitting on a rock by the river Rhine. The rock itself is also named Loreley. With her song, she bewitches the captains of passing ships, who then steer into the rock. The syllable "Ley" derives from a Celtic word for "stone".

Faun: Faunus, the Roman god of fertility, also responsible for nightmares. Fauns are also the Romans counterparts of the Greek "satyrs", followers of Dionysos. Faunus is playing a flute, another connection to music.

Noellyn ??

'''"all blonde, of course"''' 
with all the Germanic mythology around here, possibly a reference to the "blonde/blue-eyed"-cliche of German women.

'''High Albedo''' 
Albedo: power of reflecting light. Blondes reflect more light than brunettes.

'''"dark rock...again and again"''' 
cf "Lorelei"

'''Pinky''' 
Nicknames opposite of truth?

''''''sans merci'''''' 
a reference to Keats's 19th century Romantic ballad 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci'. The lady of the title entraps men by making them fall in love with her and abandoning them.

==Page 494==

'''wrong altar''' 
She, a lesbian, tells him that he 'worships' a woman who is wrong for him.

'''gnomic tenses''' 
Gnomic = marked by aphorisms; aphoristic...'gnomic verse, a gnomic style".
American Heritage Dictionary.

'''circs''' 
Short form (typically British): circumstances.

''''If she's not content with a vegetable love'''' 
a reference to Marvell's seventeenth century poem 'To His Coy Mistress'. "Vegetable love" refers to the slow, slow way he would let his love grow, to become "vaster than empires and more slow" had they "world enough and time", but since they don't, since they are in human time, he is trying to 'convince' her to make love with him now.

'''Rugby blue''' 
To be a 'Rugby blue' means to have represented Oxford (colour: dark blue) or Cambridge (light blue) at Rugby, which is a major European sport, invented, supposedly, at Rugby school in England in the nineteenth century.

'''Mâconnais''' 
This refers to a bargain sub-Burgundian wine that comes from the Macon region of France.

'''George Grossmith...and that jolly Weedon''' 

George and Weedon Grossmith, authors of the sublime, hillarious 'Diary of a Nobody', which gave the world the adjective 'pooterish'. Undoubtedly an influence on Pynchon's depictions of the 'oh dear' side of Englishness. Pooter is a 'nobody' who decides to publish his diaries, even though he is of no interest and nothing of any note occurs. A prototypical blogger, some might suggest. Originally published in Punch magazine (I think), set in late 19th Century. Don't know if the Grossmiths went to Cambridge, will check....

The elder George Grossmith performed in Gilbert and Sullivan works. He was not university-educated. The younger G.G. was also a noted performer and collaborated with P.G. Wodehouse.

[plenty of info here: http://ehlt.flinders.edu.au/english/DON/Diary_Home.htm]

==Page 495==

'''Junior or Senior?''' 
expressions used at traditional English (independent) schools to refer to younger and older brothers. Thus Smith Junior or Smith Senior.

See Grossmith entry on preceding page.

'''"Small hands, some evidence of early trauma, cp. Wilhelm II file"''' 
Wilhelm II suffered an injury at birth and had a withered arm. All his photographs show him with the "small hand" in his pocket.

Wikipedia: William II, German Emperor
Reign 1888-1918
Born 27 January 1859
Berlin, Germany
Died 4 June 1941
Doorn, Netherlands
Predecessor Frederick III
Successor None (monarchy abolished)

Royal House House of Hohenzollern
William II or Wilhelm II (born Frederick William Albert Victor; German: Friedrich Wilhelm Albert Victor) (27 January 1859–4 June 1941) was the last German Emperor and King of Prussia (German: Deutscher Kaiser und König von Preußen), ruling both the German Empire and Prussia from 15 June 1888 to 9 November 1918.

The role of William II in German history is sometimes a controversial issue in historical scholarship. Initially seen as an important, but embarrassing figure in German history until the late 1950s, for many years after that, the dominant view was that he had little or no influence on German policy leading up to the First World War. This has been challenged since the late 1970s, particularly by Professor John C. G. Röhl who saw William II as the key figure in understanding the recklessness and subsequent downfall of Imperial Germany.[1]

more Pynchon and Germany.

'''"Map of the World"''' 
???

'''Newmarket''' 
A famous English race-course, hence the following reference to the 'racing season'.

'''Morse and Vassilev''' 
???

'''East Rumelian''' 
Cf [[ATD_336-357#Page_356|page 356: East Rumelia. ]] Rumelia was a Turkish province in the Balkan Peninsula. East Rumelia lay mostly in what is now Bulgaria.

'''Treaty of Berlin''' 
In the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 Russia crushed Turkey and forced it to accept the Treaty of San Stefano. This created a greatly expanded Bulgaria under Russian protection. Britain feared that Russia might spread its control to Constantinople (now Istanbul) and to the Suez Canal, and therefore, with Austria, demanded a revised treaty. Weakened by war, Russia consented. The Treaty of San Stefano was replaced thus by the Treaty of Berlin (1878), the final act of the Congress of Berlin of the Great Britain, Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and the Ottoman Empire. The new treaty recognized the complete independence of Romania, Serbia and Montenegro. The autonomy of Bulgaria was also recognized but it remained under formal Ottoman overlordship and divied between the Principality of Bulgaria and the autonomous province of ''East Rumelia''.

'''''zadruga''''' 
Bulgarian: labor cooperative.

'''''tchifliks''''' 
Bulgarian: farms.

'''''gradinarski druzhini''''' 
Bulgarian: gardening (or farming?) associations.

'''gossamer''' 
Pynchon draws him as 'wet' as possible?

==Page 496==

'''sod . . . pouffe''' 
Derogatory terms for homosexual ("sod" from "sodomite").

'''failed canards''' 
Discredited rumors.

'''Lent . . . Easter . . . Long Vacation''' 
''Lent'' is an anual season of fasting and penitence in preparation for ''Easter'', beginning at Ash Wednesday and lasting 40 weekdays to Easter. After ''Lent'', ''Easter'' the school terms would soon glide into the summer recess, the ''Long Vacation.''

'''Colonial Office''' 
Defunct British Ministry, later Foreign & Colonial Office, now Foreign & Commonwealth Office.

'''Okhrana''' 
a secret police force of the Russian Empire and part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okhrana Wikipedia Entry]

'''Ballhausplatz''' 
Location of the Austrian State Chancellery and Foreign Ministry [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballhausplatz Wikipedia Entry]

'''Wilhelmstrasse''' 
Administrative Center of the Kingdom of Prussia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelmstrasse Wikipedia Entry]

'''G.F.B. Riemann''' 
Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann. A German mathematician who did extensive work in differential geometry. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernhard_Riemann Wikipedia Entry]

[http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Riemann.html Bernhard Riemann] (1826-66), a German mathermatician. He studied mathematics at the University of Göttingen and later taught that subject there. He did important work in geometry, complex analysis, and mathematical physics. Riemanm's work on Riemann geometry laid the foundation for Einstein's general relativity. He investigated the Riemann zeta function about which he stated the famous (and still not completely proven) Riemann hypothesis (see below). He died of tuberculosis in Selasca, Italy, at the age of 39.

'''Zeta function . . . conjecture''' 
The Riemann zeta function. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_zeta_function/ Wikipedia Entry]

The Riemann zeta function is an extremely important special function of mathematics and physics that arises in definite integration and is intimately related with very deep results surrounding the prime number theorem. While many of the properties of this function have been investigated, there remain important fundamental ''conjectures'' (most notably the Riemann hypothesis) that remain unproved to this day. See [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_zeta_function Zeta function]].

The Riemann hypothesis (''conjecture'') is a conjecture about the distribution of zeros of the Riemann zeta function. The Riemann zeta function is defined for all complex numbers (Cf [[ATD_119-148#Page132|page 132]]) not equal to zero. It has zeros at the negative even integers, (-2, -4, -6 and so on), called trivial zeros. The Riemann hypothesis is concerned with the non-trivial zeros, saying, ''"The real part of any non-trivial zero of the Riemann zeta function is 1/2."'' This conjecture remains unproved. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis Riemann conjecture]].

''''joint'''' 
Opium den.

'''Bob's your uncle''' 
An English and Commonwealth expression referring to the ease with which something can be done. Still used, though probably more common in the time in which ''Against the Day'' is set. Possible [http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/70100.html derivations].

'''Limehouse''' 
An area of East London that borders on the River Thames near the Isle of Dogs. The name may derive from the fact that sailors were about as this was a point of embarkation for sea journeys. In the late 19th century the area was famous for opium dens [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limehouse Wikipedia].

==Page 497==

'''Knightsbridge''' 
Knightsbridge is a street in Westminster bourough, London. Notable for its super rich and famous high profile residents and its exclusive shops. (Recent residents included members of the Saudi royal family, Joan Collins, Gucci, Prince Diana and so on; it's shops included Egyptian Fayed's Harrods, etc . . . ) [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knightsbridge Knightsbridge]].

'''excess''' 
(So not wholly gossamer?)

'''Coronation Red''' 
The Peer‘s traditional robes at Coronation Day are made of crimson red velvet [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronation_of_the_British_Monarch Wikipedia] [http://www.geocities.com/noelcox/Peers_Robes.htm website]. Edward VII and Queen Alexandra were crowned at Westminster Abbey on 9 August 1902 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_VII_of_the_United_Kingdom Wikipedia]

'''Ranji and C.B. Fry''' 
Two notable cricketers who would have been in their prime when the novel is set. Both played for England. 'Ranji' is short for Ranjitsinhji and is how he was familiarly known. [http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/england/content/player/12930.html C.B. Fry] [http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/england/content/player/19331.html Ranji]

'''Australian season''' 
A reference to the Australian cricket season which runs throughout their summer and the Eurpoean winter.

'''New Court''' 
A major building in St John's College (founded 1511), University of Cambridge. It was completed in 1831. It's style is Gothic, a romantic version of a mediaeval building; its basic plan is classical. For pictures and more info [http://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/about/tour/new_court New Court].

'''Tavernier-Gravet slide rules''' 
French-made, some with special scales (slope conversions, etc.). [http://discover.com/issues/aug-03/features/featslide/ Photograph.]

'''High Church''' 
Anglican

'''Mags and Nuncs and Matins responsories''' 
A responsory is a form of (Christian) chant (call and response, perhaps), which is here qualified by Latin designations for specific prayers. 
Mags: possibly for ''Magnificat,'' the hymn beginning "My soul doth magnify the Lord"? 
Nunc = Now. For ''Nunc dimittis,'' the prayer beginning "Let thy servant now depart." 
Matin = Morning.

'''Trinity''' 
Trinity College, was founded by Henry VIII in 1546 as part of the Univeristy of Cambridge. Most of its major buildings date from the 16th and 17th centuries. "Princes, spies, poets and prime-ministers have all been taught here." (Trinity's own website [http://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/index.php?pageid=2 Trinity])

'''King's''' 
King's College, Cambridge University, was found by Henry VI in 1441. From the first, the College's buildings were intened to be a magnificent display of the power of royal patronage. King's College Chapel, wanted by the King to be without equal in size and beauty and took nearly a century to complete, is one of the greatest examples of gothic architecture. It is also home to the world famous Choir, envisaged by Henry VI for daily singing of services in the chapel. [[http://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/visitors/history.html King's]].

'''not Zion''' 
The context indicated that the original meaning Mount Zion, a hill near Jerusalem, was used; i.e. "not Mount Zion".

'''Compline hour''' 
??? 
bedtime. Compline is the last prayers or service of the day.

'''Te Deum''' 
Te Deum = Thou, O God (Latin).

Since "the Te Deum" was used in the text, it meant the ancient Latin hymn of praise to God, in the form of a psalm, sung regularly at matins in the Roman Catholic Church and, usually in an English translation, at Morning Prayer in the Anglican Church, as well as on special occasions as a service of thanksgiving or commemoration. First words of the hymn, which begin; ''Te Deum laudāmus'' (we praise thee God). Te Deum also refers to the musical setting or form of this hyman with a certain structure which Filtham had blotched. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Te_Deum Wikipedia]

Coincidence? According to the [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14468c.htm Catholic Encyclopedia] there is a discussion among scholars whether the hymn of the Te Deum goes back to a text written by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Cyprian St. Cyprian of Carthage] : "...if the hymn was borrowed from St. Cyprian, why did it not include the "virgines" instead of stopping with "martyrum"?".

'''Khaki Election''' 
A term in British political history. It refered to the British general election of 1900. The reason for this name was that the issues of the election were overshadowed totally by the issue of the (2nd) Boer War (South African War, 1899-1902 [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War Boer War]]), as ''khaki'' was the color of the new army uniform. A ''Khaki Election'' is now applied to any British national election which is heavily influenced by wartime or postwar sentiment. 1918 general election (end of World War I) and 1945 election (end of Wordl War II) were both described as Khaki Elections.

'''Filtham''' 
???

==Page 498==

'''violation of . . . child-labor statutes''' 
If such laws applied to children in the choirs of Cambridge colleges, the great length of the composition would keep them at work too many hours.

'''chromaticism . . . Richard Strauss''' 
Chromaticism refers to the use of the chromatic scale in composing music. Ever since Baroque Period (17th to early 18th century) almost all music were compsoed either in major or minor scale, in which only seven of the twelve tones of the octave were used. Beginning in the late Romanic Period (mid 19th to 20th century) the chromatic scale including all 12 tones of the octave was used. By using the tones that are not "supposed" to be in a certain key, the music thus composed had stronger dissonance and exaggerated tension. 

Richard Strauss (1864-1949) was a German composer of the late Romantic era well known for his tone poems and operas. His ''Also sprach Zarathustra'' (1896), a symphonic poem, was made widely popular by Stanley Kubrick's film ''2001: A Space Odyssey'' in 1968 — the music (especially the brass fanfare opening) introduced the memorable ape/man sequence of the film. His many opera includes ''Salome, Des Rosenkavalier, Capriccio'' and others. Chromaticism was not that new to Richard Strauss, but "relentless chromaticism" just might be too "modern" for him.

'''Staindrop''' 
Home of Jeremiah Dixon.

'''"Filtham's Tedium"''' 
(Talk about overlabored puns...)

'''dress regulations''' 
???

'''Gauss''' 
Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855), a German mathematician and scientist, and one of the all-time greats. He worked in a wide variety of fields in both mathematics and physics including number theory, analysis, differential geometry, geodesy, magnetism, astronomy and optics. His work has had an immense influence in many areas. Riemann was a studen of his at Göttingen. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss Wikipedia].

'''Ramanujan''' 
Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920), one of India's greatest mathematical geniuses. Long before he came to Cambridge and though without any formal university education, Ramanujan made substantial contributions to the anlytical theory of numbers and worked on elliptic functions, continued fractions and infinite series. He, a poor savant from India, was invited in 1914 to Cambridge by G.H. Hardy after he wrote him a letter asking abstruse mathematical questions. In his letter, Ramanujan enclosed a long list of then unproved theorems which he had solved. After his arriving at Cambridge Ramnujan collaborated with G.H. Hardy resulting in important results. He was allowed to enroll in 1914 in Cambridge despite not having the proper qualifications and received a PhD degree in 1916. Plagued by health problems all his life, his health deteriorated rapidly from 1917, and he returned to India in 1919 and died there the following year. Two years efore his death, however, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London. [[http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Ramanujan.html Ramanujan]]. Therefore,
". . . Ramanujan here at Trinity . . ." could have happened only between 1914 - 1919.

'''revisited, in some way 'relighted' the scene''' 
Light, mental light.

'''display of hurt feelings''' 
Cf p30.

==Page 499==

'''light up''' 
Dark world vs spark of value.

'''ζ-function''' 
Another reference to the Riemann zeta function.

'''Hilbert thinks of nothing else''' 
The Riemann hypothesis is one of the 20 problems put forth by Hilbert in 1900.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert_problem Wikipedia Entry]

'''desire... of rather a specialized sort''' 
???

'''Great Eastern''' 
Railway linking Cambridge and London.

==Page 500==

'''Weierstrass and Sofia Kovalevskaia''' 
Sofia Kovalevskaia was the first woman to apply for a mathematics degree at the University of Goettingen in Germany. She was not accepted at the university, but was allowed to tutor under one of the university's math professors. She wrote a paper there that became an important part of the theory of differential equations.

:Kovalevskaia's private math tutor was Weierstrass at Berlin (see below).

''Karl Weierstrass'' (1815-97), a German mathermatician. He attended the University of Bonn studying law, finance and economics instead of mathermatics, the subject he was really interested in and studied out of shcool. He left the Univeristy of Bonn without a degree and went to the University of Münster for mathematics. Later he became a teacher in the city of Münster. Around 1850 he took a chair at the Technical University of Berlin. For four years (1870-1874) he gave private mathematics lessons to Sofia Kovalevskaia while she was denied the university entrance in Berlin. His investigations were mainly on the topic of "Special Functions": Weierstrass Elliptic Function, Weierstrass Zeta Function, Weierstrass Product Theroem, etc.

''Sofia Kovalevskaia'' (1850-91) Russian mathematician and novelist. She was born in Moscow and showed an interest in mathematics from an early age. When 11 she studied differential and integral analysis from her father's calculus lecture notes that were used as wallpaper in the family house. She was given a special tutor of higher mathematics. At age 18 she entered a "false" marriage (it became genuine later) in order to be able to attend college abroad. In 1869 she enrolled as a provisional student at Heidelberg University. In 1870 she moved to Berlin attempting to study under ''Weierstrass'' and enroll at Berlin University. But the university refused to accept her because of her gender. However, Weierstrass was so impressed by her talent that he gave her private mathematics lessons twice a week for four years. By the spring of 1874, Kovalevskaia had completed three papers. Weierstrass deemed each of these worthy of a doctorate. And with his help, in Kovaleskaia's absence, University of Göttingen granted her a PhD in Mathematics (a historical first) and Master (''summa cum laude'') in Fine Art. In the same year she returned to Russia but failed to get an academic job. She did not practice mathematics for six years but pursued literary work instead. In 1880 she returned to mathematics and applied to teach at universities in Russia but was denied again. Finaly she found employment at Sweden's Stockholm University in 1883. She died of pneumonia in Stockholm in 1891. 
In her short life Kovalevskaia had won a historic place in mathermatics. She was the first woman to receive a doctorate in mathermatics, the first woman to obtain a permanent position on a university faculty in mathematics, the first woman having a place on the editorial staff of a mathematical journal, the first female member of St. Petersburg Academy of Science, and the first woman to win the most prestigeous mathematical contest of her day, an honor equivalent to the winning of a Nobel Prize. Her literary achievements was quite substantial. Her ''Russian Childhood'' won wide acclaim and was translated into many languages (the English edition still avilable). She had a couple of novels (''Nihilist Girl'' etc) published as well. She dabbled in playwriting and produced a steady stream of both fiction and nonfiction publications for Russian journals.

'''Pythagorean doctrine''' 
From the text it refers to Pythagorean doctrine of transmigration of souls. Pythogoras and his disciples believed in reincarnation (or metempsychosis), according to which human souls are immortal and are reborn into other animals after death. ("reborn as a vegetable" may be questionable.) 
[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pythagora Pythagoras], one of the most famous and controversial ancient Greek philosophers, lived from ca. 570 to ca. 490 BC. He spent his early years on the island of Samos, off the coast of modern Turkey. At the age of 40, he moved to Crotona in southern Italy and most of his philosophical activity occurred there. His philosophical thinking exercised an important influence on the work of Plato. "Pythagoras was famous (1) as an expert on the fate of the soul after death . . .; (2) as an expert on religious ritual; (3) as a wonder-worker who had a thigh of gold and who could be two places at the same time; (4) as the founder of a strict way of life that emphasized dietary restrictions, . . . and rigorous self discipline." (on-line Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). 
Pythagoras was also a famous mathematician best known for the Pythagorean Theorem; also know as the father of numbers.

'''sounds like maths''' 
Yashmeen seems to see 'maths' as otherwordly.

'''folio''' 
an edition of a book in pages that fold in half to make the leaves of a codex.

'''four-color chromolithograph''' 
Chromo--in Chemistry, chromium

'''Snazzbury''' 
???

'''Silent Frock''' 
Cf noise-canceling headphones.

'''toilette''' 
No longer in use in modern english, the term 'toilette' indicated a dressing table covered to the floor with cloth (toile) and lace, on which stood a dressing glass, which might also be draped in lace. Wikipedia

It's still used, and in addition to the dressing table meaning, it refers to how somebody is "got up"--dress, makeup and all.

==Page 501==

'''green, white, and mauve stripes''' 
Colors associated with the Suffragette Movement of the time.Diane Atkinson, one of the leading contemporary scholars on the suffrage movement, edited a book, Suffragettes in the Purple, White, and Green London 1906-1914, which served as a catalog at an exhibition of suffrage memorabilia at the Museum of London and which discusses the symbolism. Atkinson notes that the color scheme was devised by Mrs. Pethick-Lawrence, treasurer and co-editor of the weekly newspaper Votes for Women. In the spring 1908 issue of that paper, Pethick-Lawrence explained the symbolism of the colors:

"Purple as everyone knows is the royal colour. It stands for the royal blood that flows in the veins of every suffragette, the instinct of freedom and dignity...white stands for purity in private and public life...green is the colour of hope and the emblem of spring."

'''black crepon''' 
The shell is made of black rayon crepon and fully lined to within 2" of bottom hem. From a description of a black [nursing] dress online.

'''Italian-cloth''' 
The Champagne fairs were a circuit of six cloth fairs in the towns of Champagne and Brie, changing location every two months and spanning the year from January to October. At their height, in the 13th century, the Champagne fairs linked the cloth-producing cities of the Low Countries with the Italian dyeing and exporting centers. The fairs, which were already well-organized at the start of the century, were one of the earliest manifestations of a linked European economy, a characteristic of the High Middle Ages.

The towns provided huge warehouses, still to be seen at Provins. From the north came woolens and linen cloth. Wikipedia.

==Page 502==

'''modern lettering''' 
Refers to Art Nouveau lettering popular at the turn of the 20th century and still commonly used on entrance signs for Paris metro stations.

'''"a kind of helical ramp"''' 
Possibly a reference to the Riemann Sphere, which is built in large part upon complex numbers and which look something like a helix. 
[[Image:Riemann Sphere.jpg]]

'''L'ARIMEAUX ET QUEURLIS''' 
Larry, Moe, and Curly's

'''twilling''' 
Twill = A fabric with diagonal parallel ribs. 2. The weave used to produce such a fabric.
TRANSITIVE VERB: Inflected forms: twilled, twill·ing, twills
To weave (cloth) so as to produce a pattern of diagonal parallel ribs. From The American Heritage Dictionary

==Page 503==

'''Earl's Court Wheel''' 
Earl's Court is an area of London. A Ferris Wheel there.

Another "paramorphic" parallel to our time: The London Eye, a huge Ferris Wheel built for the Millenium Exposition of 2000. The trip around is not, as Yasmeen notes, thermodynamically reversible, since one would be "changed forever" in the course of the journey around the wheel (in the Heraclitean sense that "No man steps in the same river twice"--the river changes.) 
This is the connection between entropy in thermodynamics and entropy in information theory, embodied in Maxwell's Demon [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_Demon], at the center of Pynchon's ''Crying of Lot 49'', now back as a problem in non-Euclidean geometries and multiple dimensions.

'''whelks''' 
A whelk is a large marine gastropod (snail) found in temperate waters.

'''Chinese Turkestan railway shares''' 
Chinese Turkestan is where the Chums of Chance are currently, in the sub-desertine vehicle.

'''jellied eel''' 
An East End of London delicacy [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jellied_eels Wikipedia]

'''West Ham, the Park, Upton Lane, lads all in claret and blue''' 
The "lads in claret and blue" are kicking a football around, as they are players of current Premiership side West Ham United. Founded in 1895, the "Hammers" are playing their home games at Boleyn Ground aka "Upton Park". Yep, soccer.

'''lupine liminality''' 
Latin: lupus = wolf, limen = threshold. Allusion to the proverbial wolf at the door.

Lupine = any of a genus (Lupinus) of leguminous herbs including some poisonous forms and others cultivated for their long showy racemes of usually blue, purple, white, or yellow flowers or for green manure, fodder, or their edible seeds; also : an edible lupine seed.

The liminal state is characterized by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy. One's sense of identity dissolves to some extent, bringing about disorientation. Liminality is a period of transition, during which your normal limits to thought, self-understanding, and behavior are relaxed, opening the way to something new.

'''hydrangeas''' 
a kind of flower. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrangea Wikipedia]

'''Hardy,''' 
Cf. [[ATD_219-242#Page 239|page 239:McTaggart . . . Hardy]]. G.H. (Godfrey Harold) Hardy (1877-1947),famous Cambridge mathematician [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._H._Hardy Wikipedia]. He wrote "A Mathematician's Apology" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mathematician%27s_Apology Wikipedia] [http://www.math.ualberta.ca/~mss/books/A%20Mathematician's%20Apology.pdf Full Text]. Knew all the most famous intellectuals and was himself very influential.

==Page 504==

'''Harwich... German Sea''' 
Harwich is a town in Essex, England, located on the coast with the North Sea to the east.The North Sea historically also known as the German Ocean. By the late nineteenth century, German Sea was a rare, scholarly usage ...

"The German Sea" is also a public house (p. 489).

'''Hook of Holland''' 
Hoek van Holland in the Netherlands. It is not a hook but the southwest ''corner'' of South-Holland province (Dutch ''hoek'' = corner).

''Hook of Holland'' is also the name of the ferry port, an entry point into Holland and Europe. It is served by ferry sailings from Harwich and is the main entry port when travelling from the UK. It is less than 15 miles southwest of The Hague. [[http://www.eurodrive.co.uk/ports.asp?ID=39&p=Hook-Of-Holland Port of Hook of Holland]].

'''madhouse at Osnabrück''' 
OSNABRUCK, a town and episcopal see of Germany, in the Prussian province of Hanover, situated on the Hase, 70 m. W. of the city of Hanover, 31 m. by rail N.E. of Munster, and at the junction of the lines Hamburg-Cologne and BerlinAmsterdam. Pop. (1905) 59,5 80. The lunatic asylum occupies a former nunnery.

==Page 505==

'''plug hats''' 
a plug hat may be a top hat or a bowler hat.

'''Cobh''' 
the historic port town of Cobh Ireland. Many ocean liners sailed from there, including the Titanic... the port of Queenstown (now known as Cobh)

==Page 506==

'''Euclid''' 
Avenue of classy mansions in Cleveland

'''elms in Cleveland''' 
(Before Dutch elm disease?)

'''went on for years''' 
the Krakatoa eruption put dust and ashes aloft for years.

'''Krakatoa''' 
The correct name is Krakatau. It is a volcanic, uninhabited Indonesia's island lies between Java and Sumatra. A series of cataclysmic explosions of August 26 - 27, 1883, the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history, collapsed the northern two-thirds of the island beneath the sea, generating an immense tsunamis that ravaged adjeacent coastlines and killed over 36,000 perople. Tephra (volcanic rock and glass fragments) from the eruption fell as far as 1,500 miles downwind in the days following the explosion. The finest fragments were propelled high into the stratosphere, spreading outward as a broad cloud acroos the entire equatorial belt in only two weeks. These particles would remain suspended in the atmosphere for a long time. For years, the earth experienced exotic colors in the sky, halos around the sun and moon, and a spectacular array of anomalous sunsets and sunrises. In the year following the equption, average global temperatures fell by as much as 1.2° Celsius. Weather patterns continued to be chaotic for years and temperature did not return to normal until 1888. For more about 1883 eruption, map, pictures, current volcanic activities etc see [http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoes_work/Krakatau.html Krakatau 1] and [http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/current_volcs/krakatau/krakatau.html Krakatau 2].

'''Shorty''' 
the 'short-order' cook?

==Page 507==

'''how little I cared''' 
(Blaming Krakatoa???)Seems to me she is saying that her feelings for Bert faded, as everything was, maybe, supposed to, as had the fantastic sunsets
caused by Krakatoa when they got back to ordinary.

'''palm upward''' 
One of many "old wives' tales" described in [http://www.childbirthsolutions.com/articles/pregnancy/oldwives/index.php this web page.]

'''Prospect Avenue''' 
???

'''leaf-spring suspension''' 
A form of suspension for wheeled vehicles. Still very occasionally used in automobiles, but more likely nowadays to be seen on a perambulator. A "leaf" here is a long thin strip of tempered steel (they may also be stacked for greater strength).

'''overrun''' 
the excess kerosene when made.

'''Flats''' 
lands around the Cuyahoga River.

==Page 508==

'''Cuyahoga''' 
Major river in Ohio that goes around Cleveland. Famous in the 60's for literally catching on fire from the combustible pollutants in it. Here, Pynchon shows that industrial pollution and its effect on the river. "It's like looking down into the sky".

'''your exact face''' 
(How common?)

'''allowing Erlys do the work''' 
Error in first edition. Should be "allowing Erlys to do the work..."

==Page 509==

'''descending minor triad''' 
in music, an interval of three half tones.

'''Svengali''' 
In George Du Maurier's novel ''Trilby'' (1894), the hypnotist who makes the title character a great singer but keeps her under rigorous control.

'''tea roses''' 
Yellow-orange roses.

'''cosmos''' 
any composite plant of the genus ''Cosmos'', of tropical America, some species of which are cultivated for their showy flowers.

==Page 510==

'''first momentous glance''' 
Page 349 only?

'''Elis''' 
Yale University students, called so after founder Eli Yale.

'''snooting''' 
the act of snubbing, treating scornfully or with disdain (OED)

'''tuned to a 440 A''' 
the elusive 440 A. ... Today's A above middle C has been set at 440 cycles per second or 440 Hertz. ...

==Page 511==

'''preferring''' 
Cf Rose in "Titanic".

'''Root Tubsmith''' 
???

'''Fuchs''' 
Lazarus Fuchs (1833-1902), a German mathematician. He worked on differential equations and the theory of functions, ordinary differential equations with complex functions as coefficients, elliptic integrals, etc. [http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Fuchs.html Fuchs].

'''Schwarz''' 
Herman Schwarz (1843-1921), a German mathematician, known for his work in complex analysis. He worked in Halle, Göttingen and then Berlin, dealing with the subjects of function theory, differential geometry and the calculus of variation. [http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Schwarz.html Schwarz].

'''Frobenius''' 
Ferdinand Frobenius (1849-1917), a German mathematician. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Georg_Frobenius], possibly important here for his contributions to Group Theory and to topology [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frobenius_theorem_%28differential_topology%29]. He received his doctorate from the Univeristy of Berlin supervised by Weierstrass. Later, he taught mathematics there as well. He combined results from the theory of algebraic equations, geometry and number theory, which led him to the representation theory and the character theory of groups. [http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Frobenius.html Frobenius].

'''Professor Manning''' 
???

'''language difference''' 
Kit and Root both speak English, but in different mathematical dialects.

'''Marseilles''' 
Second largest city of France; Mediterannean port, legendarily corrupt.

'''species of tarantella''' 
Tarantella is a fast dance or dance tune in 6/8 time. Probably named for Taranto, not tarantula.

'''dreamed it''' 
(Page?)

'''Cigar Deck''' 
A deck on a luxury yacht, hotel or residence where 'gentlemen' went to smoke cigars.... "venue has everything - including a full bar, cigar deck, and dance floor. ..."

==Page 512==

'''how to stop looking''' 
Cf p27.

'''lobelias''' 
Plant or flower of the genus Lobelia. At least one member of the genus is blue (Blue Lobelia.

'''Victor Herbert''' 
Irish-born American composer (1859-1924) of songs, operettas, light classics.

'''Wolf-Ferrari''' 
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (1876-1948), born in Venice, composer of many extremely popular operas.

==Page 513==

'''She smlled falsely''' 
Error in first edition. Should be "She smiled falsely."

'''Reuben''' 
A hick, as in the carnie's cry, "Hey, Rube".

'''sailing along on Moonlight Bay''' 
Apparently someone overheard Kit's dialog. This phrase would become part of the song "On Moonlight Bay," Madden (lyrics) and Weinrich (music), 1912.

==Page 515==

'''high-hatting''' 
Snubbing, cutting.

'''memories of desert plateau, mountian peaks...some unexpected river''' 
Instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with the back-country Rocky Mountains.
Cf also the description of the landscape Frank's riding through on page 394/395.

'''twenty-knot push''' 
The ship is making twenty knots (20 nautical miles per hour), hence generating a twenty knot wind toward the stern.

'''uncreated''' 
Featureless? ongoing present becoming the future as compared to his memories.

The watery void of Genesis, before creation of the land and life.

'''after 1914''' 
Still 10 years away.

'''S.M.S. ''Emperor Maximilian''''' 
S.M.S.: Seiner Majestäts Schiff, His Majesty's Ship (German or, as in this case, Austrian). One Habsburg Emperor Maximilian was set up in Mexico, then deposed and killed.

'''25,000-ton''' 
The ship's displacement (measure of its size).

'''dreadnoughts''' 
''HMS Dreadnought'' gave her name to a new philosophy that governed the design of capital ships beginning in the 1890s and continuing past the 1920s: high speed, heavy armor, heavy investment in the "main battery" and de-emphasis of secondary battery, main battery comprising the largest practicable guns mounted in turrets on the ship's centerline.

'''Slavonian''' 
Perhaps a deceptive name for the company; Slavonia was an inland province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, northwest of Croatia; Trieste would have been in Slovenia.

'''Schultz-Thorneycroft''' 
???

'''Parsons turbines''' 
Cf. The Steam Turbine, by Sir Charles A. Parsons ---The Rede Lecture, 1911.
Was manufactured and named for Parsons--this lecture was after its extensive use.

'''British men-o'-war''' 
Warships.

==Page 516==

'''shell-rooms-to-be and giant powder magazines''' 
''Stupendica'' contains spaces that will belong to ''Maximilian'' on her transformation. (Indeed, she must contain the shells and powder too.)

'''circular cabins''' 
A battleship turret extends several decks below the gunhouse. No doubt there were stacks of these circular cabins.

'''twelve-inch barrels''' 
Dreadnoughts progressed from 8-inch main guns to 12-inch in a couple of decades.

'''shelter deck''' 
???

'''to fold upward''' 
Transformer fashion.

'''casemates''' 
Turrets.

'''freeboard''' 
The amount of the ship above the water. You need a certain amount of freeboard to maintain balance, but battleships try to limit it as much as possible (so as to present a smaller target).

'''"Dazzle" camouflage''' 
Patterns as described in the text, meant to confuse enemy eyes. [http://web.mac.com/gesamtkunstwerk/iWeb/The_Poetry_of_Sight/Dazzle%20Camouflage.html] Camouflage techniques used in World War I were developed in part by magician Jasper Maskelyne, a descendant of the Astronomer Royal in ''Mason & Dixon.''

'''dihedrals''' 
A dihedral is the figure formed by two planes intersecting in a line. The bow of a ship is pretty close.

'''Fangsley''' 
???

'''less horizontally disposed''' 
less level

Passenger liner has as many decks as possible above waterline. Warship has as many as possible ''below'' waterline, hence it's "taller."

'''Trieste''' 
Trieste is a city and port in northeastern Italy right on the border with Slovenia. It is located at the head of the Gulf of Trieste on the Adriatic Sea, about 70 miles east of Venice across the Gulf of Venice. The city had been occupied, administrated, annexed by various countries in the past. As late as early 19th century Napoleon took it for France, and in 1813 Austrian empire annexed it and kept it until the end of World War I. In 1920 it was transfered to Italy. During World War II German occupied the city until 1945 when Yugoslav partisans under Tito briefly occupied the city. Between 1947 to 1954 Trieste was governed by British and American. Finally, in 1954 the city of Trieste went to Italy and the southern suburb went to Yugoslaiva (now Slovenia).

'''Lloyd Arsenale''' 
Lloyd Shipyard, Austria's commercial counterpart of Stabilimento Tecnico. In 1833 a company with the name ''Lloyd Austriaco'' was founded as a maritime insurance organization. Three years later a new section, the Shipping Section was established and running company's own vessels. In 1853 Lloyd Austriaco started buidling its own shipyard, called ''Arsenale'', both for building new ships and maintenance of the fleet. The shipyard was completed and fully operative in 1861. In 1919 ''Lloyd Austriaco'' changed its name to ''Lloyd Triestino'', currently still operating in Trieste. [[http://www.italiamarittima.it/newhistory.asp?ordernum=10 Lloyd Arsenale]].

'''Stabilimento Tecnico''' 
Technical Plant, a shipyard. Stabilimento Tecnico was an Austro-Hungarian shipbuilding company based in Trieste. It served the Austro-Hungarian Navy on a large scale and was the largest shipyard of that country. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stabilimento_Tecnico_Triestino Stabilimento]]. Four Tegetthoff class dreadnoughts were built by Stabilimento Tecnico for the Austro-Hungarian Navy: ''SMS Viribus Unitis, SMS Tegetthoff, SMS Prinz Eugen'' and ''SMS Szent Istvan''. They were of about 21,000 ton displacement and a speed of 20 kt with twelve 12-inch guns. Tegetthoff was a 19th century Austrian admiral.[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tegetthoff_class_battleship Tegetthoff battleships]]. 
Stabilimento Tecnico and Lloyd Triestino are both currently active. In fact these two establishments are the largest industrial organizations in Trieste.

==Page 517==

'''''merged''''' 
Pynchon writes about bilocation in a peculiar sense: not necessarily one person being in two places, but one ''place'' being two (or one language being two, Dutch/Flemish, Serbian/Croatian).

'''Promontorio''' 
In Italian promontorio is headland, a small stripe of mountain-like terrain surrounded on all but one side by see.

'''O.I.C. Bodine''' 
"Oh, I see" Bodine?. Cf. Pig Bodine from ''V.'', also ''GR'' and ''Mason & Dixon.''

O.I.C: Oiler-in-Chief?

It isn't possible, is it, that O.I.C. is pronounced ''oyk''? Isn't that a British slang word?

'''fermented potato mash''' 
Cf Veikko's vodka p82.

'''four shafts''' 
Four propellers.

'''''Mauretania''''' 
HMS Mauretania, launched 1907, sister ship of the ill-fated Lusitania (the sinking of the latter propelled the US into WW I). Served as Cunard liner, troopship, hospital ship in WW I.

'''''Zu befehl, Herr Hauptheitzer''''' 
German: Ready for orders, Chief Stoker. (Should be ''Zu Befehl, Herr Hauptheizer.'')

'''Black Gang''' 
The stoking crew, turned black by coal dust.

'''Oberhauptheitzer''' 
German: Master Chief Stoker. (Should be: ''Oberhauptheizer.'')

'''Mannlicher''' 
German military pistol.

'''''"Dampf mehr!"''''' 
German for "more steam!" (Should be: ''Mehr Dampf!'')

'''singlet''' 
Undershirt.

==Page 518==

'''ignorant off''' 
Error in first edition. Should be "ignorant of".

'''Marconi room''' 
Radio shack.

'''British and German battle groups were engaged off the Moroccan coast''' 
This could be a reference to the First Moroccan Crisis (a.k.a. Tangier Crisis) taking place between March 1905 and May 1906. This would be in keeping with the timeline of the novel, however, there seems to have been no engagement of troops between British and German forces. On the other hand, this could also be a reference to the Agadir Crisis (a.k.a. The Second Moroccan Crisis) of 1911 where the German gunboat, Panther, was deployed to the Moroccan port of Agadir, threatening British naval supremacy. Although the later altercation seems unlikely given the timeline of the story, Pynchon notes that the S.S. Stupendica received its message "from somewhere else not quite in the world, more like from a continuum lateral to it."

'''design maximum of nine degrees''' 
''Maximilian'' will right herself from a nine-degree heel but may be in trouble if she leans over farther.

'''nymphs''' 
Stage in the life cycle of many insects, including the cockroach.

'''''"Porca miseria"''''' 
Italian: good grief, for heaven's sake, dammit.

==Page 519==

'''tight circle''' 
Military as inane as circus clowns.

'''southeast by east''' 
The compass rose has 32 points, each 11 and a quarter degrees from the next. Southeast by east is one point to the east of southeast, i.e., 123 and three-quarters degrees clockwise from north.

'''deeper levels''' 
(Eg particle vs wave?)

'''A "deeper level" where dualities are resolved''' 
Engine room is far below the main deck, therefore a deeper level. The ''Stupendica/Maximilian'' duality is resolved there because it's a shared space.

'''Chinese''' 
???

'''''nicht wahr''''' 
German: aint it true?

'''Graz''' 
Capital of the Austrian province of Styria [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graz Wikipedia]

'''bilge-crab''' 
???

==Page 520==

'''a Teutonic''' 
Ethnically a German.

'''Tangier''' 
a seaport in Northern Morocco on the west end of the Strait of Gibralta, about 500 miles northeast from Agadir, another Atlantic seaport. (Casablanca is midway between them.)

'''Mulai Ahmed er-Raisuli''' 
Infamous Morrocan outlaw/warlord. From this [http://www.explorers.org/publications/books_club/imprint/housetears.php website]: "Several decades before Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and Islamic insurgents, an international crisis ignited between the United States and the Middle East. In May 1904 Moroccan warlord Mulai Ahmed er Raisuli kidnapped Ion Perdicaris, a wealthy Greek-American resident of Tangier, in an attempt to extort money from the Sultan of Morocco. President Theodore Roosevelt responded with his "big stick" approach to diplomacy by dispatching a squadron of seven battleships to the Moroccan coast with the order: "Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead." The nine-week standoff, with US troops and ships in Tangier Bay and Raisuli holding fort in the mountains, exposed the impotence of emerging American power and a critical misunderstanding about Moroccan politics. When it was discovered that Perdicaris was not an American citizen after all, the US government kept the embarrassing episode a secret until 1933. Profiting royally from the conflict, Raisuli built his palace, which he called the "House of Tears"." [http://www.capitalcentury.com/1904.html another source]

'''Agadir, Queen of the Iron Coast''' 
Agadir is a city in southwest Morocco, capital of the Souss-Massa-Dra region. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agadir Wikipedia] From the [http://www.jcsm.org/StudyCenter/Encyclopedia_Britannica/MOL_MOS/MOROCCO.html Encyclopedia Britannica]: "Sixty miles farther south lies Mogador, beyond which the coast becomes more and more inaccessible and dangerous in winter, being known to navigators as the " Iron Coast." From Cape Sim (Ras Tagriwalt), to m. south of Mogador, the direction is due south to Cape Ghir (Ighir Ufrani), the termination of Jebel Ida u Taman, a spur of the Atlas. Beyond this headland lies Agadir (Agadir Ighir), the Santa Cruz Mayor or Santa Cruz de Berberia
of the Spaniards, formerly known as the Gate of the Sudan.' It is a little town with white battlements three-quarters of a mile in circumference, on a steep eminence 600 ft. high." [http://www.rabat-maroc.net/marocautrefois/index.php?rep=AGADIR old postcards from Agadir]

'''''colonists''...justify German interests...shadow-colonists''' 
In July 1911, the german gunboat "Panther" approached the harbour of Agadir under the pretext to protect german citizens from Sus-tribesmen, resulting in the "Agadir-Crisis" and nearly triggering WW I three years early. As there were no german citizens to protect in Agadir, so one had to be dispatched from Mogador. See [http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/boshtml/bos137.htm Morocco Crisis of 1911.] and [http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/05/23/its_not_the_first_war_under_false_pretenses/ source]

'''...destined for plantation...''' 
Typo in First Edition.
???

'''Sus... Susi''' 
The Sous Basin [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Souss Wikipedia] and it‘s inhabitants, probably.

'''Abdel Aziz''' 
Sultan of Morocco 1894-1908 (aged 10-24yrs.) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdelaziz_of_Morocco Wikipedia]

'''Canaries''' 
Canary Islands, about 80 miles off Morocco‘s Atlantic coast [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_islands Wikipedia]

'''Many would go crazy and set out in small boats...''' 
Another paramorpic mirror image of our century. The Canaries, a Spanish possession, are the goal of untold thousands of would-be African entrants to the EU, i.e. a route of illegal immigration.

'''Lübeck''' 
Lübeck is the second-largest city in Schleswig-Holstein (northern Germany). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%BCbeck Wikipedia]

'''Berbers''' 
The Berbers (also called Amazigh people or Imazighen, "free men") are an ethnic group indigenous to Northwest Africa, speaking the Berber languages of the Afroasiatic family. In actuality, Berber is a generic name given to numerous heterogeneous ethnic groups that share similar cultural, political, and economic practices. It is not a term originated by the group itself. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berber_people Wikipedia]. Berbers of southwestern Morocco usually belong to the ones known as Chleuhs [http://c.1asphost.com/imazighen/chleuhs/algeria.htm pics]

==Page 521==

'''tree-climbing goats''' 
Can be seen often, esp. in Morocco [http://www.markhorrell.com/travel/morocco/antiatlas/goats3.html Pic]

'''argan trees''' 
The Argan (Argania spinosa, syn. A. sideroxylon Roem. & Schult.) is a species of tree endemic to the calcareous semi-desert Sous valley of southwestern
Morocco. It is the sole species in the genus Argania. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argan_tree Wikipedia]

'''Gnaoua''' 
The Gnawa or Gnaoua refers at once to a style of Moroccan music with sub-Saharan Africa origins or influence, an ethnic group and religious order at least in part descended from former slaves from Sub-Saharan Africa or black Africans migrated in caravans with the Trans-Saharan trade, or a combination of both [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnawa Wikipedia] [http://www.mincom.gov.ma/english/gallery/music/gnawa.html more on Gnaoua] [http://www.mincom.gov.ma/french/galerie/musique/mp3/gnaoua.mp3 Gnaoua music sample mp3] [http://www.ibiblio.org/gnawastories/GNAWA%20STORIES20cDRIVE.swf nicely made site on Gnawa]

'''''mlouk gnaoui''''' 
Mlouk is the plural of melk, a supernatural entity envoked in the Gnawa rituals. Various types are known and they are distinguished by colors. The following is a google translation of the relevant paragraph from [http://www.bladi.net/2556-les-differents-aspects-de-la-culture-gnaouie.html this site]: "The mlouk are of male or female sex, Moslems or Jews. Their color corresponds to their origins. Thus one distinguishes the mlouks from the sea (bahriyin) to which one allots the light blue; the celestial ones (samaouiyin), have as a color dark blue; the mlouk of the forest (rijal el ghaba), originating in Africa, have as a color the black just like the mlouk pertaining to the troop of Sidi Mimoun, finally the red mlouk (Al homar), related to blood and which haunt the slaughter-houses, have as a color the red. The white and the green, colors symbols of Islam sunnite, are reserved to the called upon saints, in particular Moulay Abdelkader Jilali and Chorfa. To the female mlouk three colors are allotted: the yellow for the coquettery of Lala Reflected, the red for Lala Rkia for its capacity to cure the menorrhagia and the black for Lala Aïcha Kendisha because of its Sudanese origin. The Jewish mlouks which are sometimes called upon after the troop of the female mlouk have the black color. Incense fumigations of various perfumes accompany the invocations by these mlouks, with a preference however for the benzoin or jaoui."

'''Seigneurs Noirs''' 
French: Black Lords. According to the above translation, those most probably are jewish mlouks.

'''Bardo State''' 
Tibetan Bhuddist belief in a state between two mortal incarnations, during which one has direct perception of reality--for better or worse, Karmically speaking. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bardo]

'''Habsburg navy''' 
Austrian Navy

'''Mogador road''' 
Mogador" is a city and tourist resort in Morocco, near Marrakech on the Atlantic coast. (31°30′47″N)
Mogador is another name for Essaouira [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mogador Wkipedia] about 70 miles north of Agadir. [http://www.rabat-maroc.net/marocautrefois/index.php?rep=MOGADOR old postcards Mogador]

'''Tawil Balak''' 
In the Liner Notes for the Album "Love Songs of Lebanon" [http://www.smithsonianglobalsound.org/trackdetail.aspx?itemid=29129 downloadable from this site] the song ''Tawil Balak Ya Habboub'' translates as "Patience, My Love" - Tawil Balak being the Patience part. (Thats one nice soundtrack, btw!)

"Tawil", according to web-searches, is arabic for "allegorical explanation/interpretation/exegese" (of the Qu‘ran and Sunna texts). "Balak" might refer to the according Tora reading (Parsah) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balak_%28parsha%29 Wikipedia]. cf. Balaam‘s Ass p. 432. Do the cosmopolitan regulars at the bar like Moises spend their time interpreting holy texts?

'''Rahman''' 
???

'''Ostend''' 
a seaport in northwest Belgium. ''Ostende'' in German and French. It is the largest city at the Belgian North Sea coast. (It is about 1,700 miles from Agadir, Morocco.)

'''''Fomalhaut''''' 
The Maritime Digital Encyclopedia lists a "Dutch Vessel" named "Formalhaut" [http://www.ibiblio.org/maritime/photolibrary/displayimage.php?album=lastup&cat=688&pos=0 pic].

According to several websites [http://skytonight.com/news/3310401.html?showAll=y&c=y 1] [http://www.skyscript.co.uk/pis_aus.html 2] [http://www.icoproject.org/star.html 3] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fomalhaut Wikipedia] etc. Fomalhaut is the 17th or 18th brightest star as seen from our planet and is located in the constellation called Pisces Austrinus (Southern Fish). The name derives from the Arabic Fum (or Fam) al-Hut, meaning "Mouth of the Fish" or according to a few web-resources the contributor has just visited, "Mouth of the Whale". The latter would mean its a strong connotation with the Biblical Legend of Jonah and the Whale (see annotations for this page below (not a spoiler, i hope).

Among most readers of Science-Fiction "Fomalhaut" is a location as common as [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldebaran "Aldebaran"] or [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassiopeia_%28constellation%29 "Cassiopeia"].

As per today (07 01 10) the Wikipedia-Entry on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_Fomalhaut Demon Fomalhaut] is just a stub. According to most sites the contributor just visited, claiming credibility in the Book of Enoch [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Enoch Wikipedia] and due to some more non-canonical catergorizations, Fomalhaut seems to be a member of the infamous gang of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallen_angel Fallen Angels], a daredevil companero to Lucifer that is. This sub-summation in a hierarchy of angels might refer to some astrological/-nomical constellations of the star Fomalhaut as is.

As usual, with TP, we dont know for sure if theres some outlandish pun intended/-cluded in the name of a person or thing. What, to give variety to it, about a german compositive noun? Ger. "formal" = formal (like in formal behavior) + "haut" = skin; "Formal Skin".

'''Moïsés''' 
???

'''Jonah... Massa''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonah Jonah Wikipedia Entry] [http://www.isidore-of-seville.com/jonah/jonah.html "Jonah on the Web"] From the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Morocco website]: "Some 60 m. farther south (from Agadir), at the mouth of a river known by the same name, is the roadstead of Massa, with a mosque popularly reputed the scene of Jonah's restoration to terra firma."

==Page 522==

'''Two Fishes, two Jonahs, two Agadirs?''' 
The Jewish Encyclopedia 1901-1906 mentions rabbinic literature regarding two fishes - one male, one female - having swallowed Jonah: check out the "fish" paragraph [http://72.14.221.104/search?q=cache:8_12F1Yp1YoJ:www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp%3Fartid%3D388%26letter%3DJ+jonah+encyclopedia&hl=de&gl=at&ct=clnk&cd=1 here]. Both Tarshish (Cadiz), the "Agadir" in southwestern Spain, and Agadir in Morocco likely were founded by the Phoenicians: "Cadiz bears a Phoenician name, a deformation of Gaddir (wall), which we find in the Berber city of Agadir in Morroco." [http://faculty.uml.edu/jgarreau/50.315/Europ1.htm source]

'''kashbah''' 
Wikipedia entries on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasbah Kasbah] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casbah Casbah] [http://www.rabat-maroc.net/marocautrefois/AGADIR/agadir-la-casbah-vue-en-avion.jpg The Casbah of Agadir as seen from above]

'''Ighir Ufrani''' 
a.k.a Cape Ghir, a cape north of Agadir.

'''''Mogador herring''...''alimzah''...''tasargelt''''' 
From the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Morocco Morocco Entry]: "Occasionally a small shoal (of mackarel) may be found as far south as Mogador. Soles, turbot, bream, bass, conger eel and mullet are common along the coast, and southern Morocco is visited occasionally by shoals of a large fish called the azlimzah (sciaena aquila), rough scaled and resembling a cod, and the tasargelt (Temnodon saltator), the "blue fish" of North America. Crayfish, prawns, oysters and mussels swarm in the rocky places, but the natives have no proper method of catching them, and edible crabs seem unknown. The tunny, pilchard and sardine, and a kind of shad known as the "Mogador herring," all prove at times of practical importance."

azlimzah (sciaena aquila) [http://www.finerareprints.com/animals/histoire_naturelle/vol_hn_fish_4999.htm pic] (the lower one).

tasargelt (Temnodon saltator) [http://www.amatorbalikci.net/resimupload/lufer.jpg pic] (not sure if this is the real thing!)

'''scruff''' 
???

'''Staketsel''' 
According to the [http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staketsel Dutch Wikipedia] and its link to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pier english site] this means "pier". [http://arglist.com/cgi-bin/image?gallery=oostende&name=20040909-004 pic]

'''lazarettes''' 
Below-decks storage space in the stern of a vessel. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarette].

'''''mon chou''''' 
"My cabbage." A french term of affection.

==Page 523==

'''moon deck''' 
???

'''lower orlop''' 
Lowest deck of a multi-decked vessel (OED).

'''lateen-riggers''' 
Boats or larger craft with triangular sails rigged fore-and-aft (picture: [http://www.carfilhiot.co.uk/media/1/20050607-rig.jpg]common in the Mediterannean [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateen] after introduction by the Romans in the 3rd century.

==Page 524==

'''exhilirated''' 
Second occurrence of this misspelling of ''exhilarated.'' (Cf. page 236, line 38: "exhiliration".)

'''Piazza Grande''' 
The central square in many Italian cities.

'''Denza''' 
Cf [[ATD_336-357#Page 353|page 353]]. Luigi Denza (1846-1922), Italian composer, most famous for his "Funiculi, funicula".

'''Antonio Smareglia''' 
Italian opera composer (1854-1929).

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 525-556

2007-03-02T21:53:18Z

Blazes: /* Page 533 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 525==

'''Ostend''' 
Cf [[ATD_489-524#Page 521|page 521:Ostend]], 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 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostend 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 [[ATD_119-148#Page 130|page 130:Quaternions]]. Quaternions are a non-communtative extension of compelx numbers (Hamilton, 1843). 

Analogy with the complex numbers (Cf [[ATD_119-148#Page 132|page 132:complex number]]) being represented as a sum of real and imaginary parts, a + b''i'', where ''i''² = −1, a quaternion is defined as a combination a + b''i'' + c''j'' + d''k'', where ''i''² = ''j''² = ''k''² = ''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 [[ATD_119-148#Page 133|page 133:imaginary number]]), 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''''' 
A half-pint glass (25 centilitres, actually).

'''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. [http://www.rarebooks.nd.edu/digital/heraldry/partitions.html 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 [[ATD_26-56#Page 29|page 29:Professor Gibbs]]) 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 [[ATD_525-556#Page 525|page 525:Quaternions]]). 
A vector is defined by not only a magnitude but also a direction, such as a velocity vector, ''v'' is defined by ''v'' = a''i'' + b''j'' + c''k'',
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 [[ATD_318-335#Page 326|page 326:Curl]] and p. 536, ''Laplacian'' — Cf [[ATD_318-335#Page 326|page 326:Laplacian]] 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. ([http://web.mit.edu/wwmath/vectorc/summary.html 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. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Nouveau 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 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Turks Young Turks], a Turkish revolutionary movement

'''Garde Civique''' 
A part of the Belgian army. According to the [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Belgium 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. A man of almost Nixonian fiendishness. In the Congo he acted as sole proprietor and absolute ruler. The positive outcomes of his exploitation include ''Heart of Darkness'' and the phrase "crime against humanity."

'''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 ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_Publique Wikipedia]). "King Leopold's private army" may be a more accurate description.

'''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. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kh%C3%A2gne 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. [[http://academic.reed.edu/formosa/texts/reclusbio.html Reclus]).

'''Stirnerite''' 
Follower of Max Stirner, 19th century German philosopher and author of ''The Ego and Its Own,'' a work influential in anarchist thought. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Stirner 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 [http://www.iep.utm.edu/n/nihilism.htm#H1 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." ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Sipido Sipido]).

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

'''Hippodrome''' 
Hippodrome Wellington, a horse racing track in Ostend built in 1883. The facility hosts both harness and flat racing events. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippodrome_Wellington Hippodrome]).

'''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, [http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/PER_PIG/PICRIC_ACID_or_TRINITROPHENOL_C.html 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 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Santos-Dumont 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 Quaternionists, 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. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Whitehead Whitehead]].

''Fiume'' is now Rijeka, Croatia. Trieste is on the northwestern edge of the Istra Peninsula, Rijeka is east of it. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rijeka Fiume]].

'''''Alberta''''' 
The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_yacht Wikipedia] entry on royal yachts goes back to the 17th century but doesn't include ''Alberta.'' The craft does get a mention in [http://www.bouncing-balls.com/timeline/people/nr_leopoldmorel.htm this page on Leopold and the Congo.]

'''Siluro Dirigibile a Lenta Corsa''' 
or S.L.C. "slow course torpedo", "slow-running torpedo". [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_torpedo Wikipedia] Italy‘s Navy was among the first to experiment with manned torpedos. Though according to [http://web.ukonline.co.uk/chalcraft/sm/chariots.html 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''. [http://www.geocities.com/tegetthoff66/viribus.html website]

The Wikipedia entry linked above doesn't contain the Italian word ''dirigibile'' (steerable), which sets up the torpedo as a counterpart of the dirigible ''Inconvenience.''

:I suspect there's a connection between the torpedo and "Not the usual lateener, in fact appearing to have neither sails, masts, nor oars" in Miles' reversed vision, [[ATD_243-272#Page_250|page 250.]] Needs work, though.

==Page 530==

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

'''''Macchè''''' 
Italian: certainly not, not a chance. And in Pynchon's Italian is used as an all-purpose exclamation.

'''''Ehi, stu gazz', categoria''''' 
Stu gazz' is a dialect representation of ''sto cazzo'', literally meaning ''this dick here''. Normally you could translate the sense of the sentence as: ''yeah, why not, a fucking category! ''. -- blicero2 - 2007.02.22

'''''mezzogiornismo''''' 
Denigrating the Italian South. Mezzogiorno means ''midday'' in Italian but refers generally to Southern Italy.

==Page 531==

'''Bruges''' 
An exceptionally beautiful Belgian town of canals which is thus one of several towns known as the 'Venice of the north'. In the 14th cettury Burges already became an international finanacial and trading center, but
started to decline in the 15th century. In the 20th century, however, the city was dsicovered by the international tourism and the medieval heritage turned out to be a new source of wealth. A new harbor of Zeebrugge, 10 miles outside of Bruges at the North Sea coast, brought new developments and new industries to the region. For the city and its history see ([http://www.trabel.com/brugge.htm Bruges]).

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

'''Ghent''' 
Belgian city, less than 30 miles southeast of Bruges, on the rail line about halfway between Ostend and Brussels. It is the fourth largest city of Belgium. It is bigger than Bruges but not as famous as a tourist attraction. But the city is a showcase of medieval Flemish wealth and commercial success. See ([http://www.trabel.com/gent.htm Ghent]).

'''Daimler six-cylinder''' 
???

'''a hundred horsepower''' 
???

'''''guaglion''''' 
italian (dialectal) = boy, young person

'''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 [[ATD_26-56#Page 29|page 29:Kimura]] and [[ATD_318-335#Page 318|page 318:Shunkichi Kimura]].

'''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.

'''Anharmonic Pencil''' 
''Pencil'' is a term commonly used in Synthetic Geometry. Straight lines incident with a plane - coplanar lines - and passing through a common point are said to be concurrent lines and the set of all such concurrent coplanar lines is called the ''pencil''. (Cf [[ATD_429-459#Page 456|page 456:Pencil]]). For a figure and a not quite precise definition see [http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Pencil.html pencil]. If a, b, c and d, are four distinct coplanar lines and their double ratio λ = (abcd) = -1, then a, b, c, d are called a harmonic quadruple of lines; they are said to constitute a ''harmonic pencil''. A ''pencil'' which is not harmonic then is known as ''anharmonic pencil''. See Pencil (lines 8-9), Double Ratio λ (lines 32-35) and Harmonic Pencil (line 39) of [http://ca.geocities.com/ingsaler6/mathworld.html Mathworld].

'''''Comptes rendus''''' 
''Comptes rendus des séances hebdomadaires,'' Proceedings of the weekly sessions (of the Academy of Sciences), published from 1835, later (ca. 1935) retitled ''Comptes rendus de l'Académie des sciences,'' Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences. (Notice that the academy didn't see the need to specify "French." Take that, Royal Society of London!) For about a century, one of two journals so universally circulated and recognized that bibliographies nearly always cited them in nickname form: ''C.R.'' The other was ''Ber.,'' short for ''Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft,'' Reports of the German Chemical Society (from 1868).

'''De Forest''' 
Cf [[ATD_26-56#Page 29|page 29:De Forest]].

'''Gibbs''' 
Cf [[ATD_26-56#Page 29|page 29:Professor Gibbs]].

'''Maxwell Equations''' 
Cf [[ATD_57-80#Page 58|page 58:Maxwell Field Equations]].

==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.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaviside].

'''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.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Grassmann].

'''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. ([http://www.monopole.org 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. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_monopole 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 [http://linguistlist.org/forms/langs/GetListOfConstructedLgs.html 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.

'''We are the Jews of mathematics, wandering out here in our diaspora--some destined for the past, others the future, even a few able to set out at unknown angles from the simple line of Time, upon journeys that no one can predict''' 
In keeping with the analogy of Judaism, those "few" people within the Quaternionists "able to set out at unknown angles" are most likely being compared to Kabbalists who claim to partake in a mystic "journey to the Throne of God through the mythological realm of the seven heavens" (Armstrong, A History of God--p. 247). Throne Mysticism in Kabbalah is explored extensively in Gravity's Rainbow.

==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 [http://www.metmuseum.org/special/se_event.asp?OccurrenceId={0DC3D00F-4611-4F91-8DC2-CC3C1A5C48D5} 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 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Poiretgown.jpg Poiret Gown]. ''The New York Times'' reported on February 1, 2007 that A Poiret Gown Brings $5,500 at [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B07EFDA1538F93AA15756C0A967948260 Christie's Auction] - the gown was made in 1913 when Poiret was at the height of his career. For his bio see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Poiret 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?

'''set theory''' 
Set theory deals with the properties of well-defined collections, or ''sets'', of entities - the ''elements'' or ''members'' of the set - conceived as a whole. The elements may be of a mathematical nature or non-mathematical. The set theory grew out of the German mathematician Georg Cantor's (1845-1918) study of infinite sets of real numbers. The ''languages of sets'' has become an important tool for all branches of mathematics, but is of very little relevance to the practice of mathematics in everyday life.

'''Hamilton . . . early genius''' 
Hamilton, according to ''Chambers Biographical Dictionary'', "at fifteen knew thirteen languages, had read Newton's ''Principia'', and commenced original investigations". At twenty-two, "while still an undergraduate, he was appointed professor of Astronomy at Dublin and Irish Astronomer-Royal"; at thirty "he was knighted".

'''Hamilton . . . in the grip of a first love''' 
??? 
Pynchon probably didn't mean Quaternion was Hamilton's first love, but its effect on him was similar to that of a first love. In 1843 at the age of 38 Hamilton invented the Quaternion, the first non-communtative algebra to be studied. He felt this would revolutionise mathematical physics, and he spent the rest of his life working on it. In 1853 he published a large volume, ''Lectures on Quaternions'', on his grand invention. The last seven years of his life, Hamilton was writing a 800-page book ''Elements of Quaternions'' modeling on Euclid's ''Elements''. The last chapter of the book was completed by his son after his death.

==Page 536==

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

'''Kursaal''' 
Spa. Casino ?

'''vectors''' 
For serious minds see Cf [[ATD_525-556#Page 526|page 526:Gibbsian Vectors]], but let's follow Pynchon's lighter mood, here is a non-mathematical definition by Kamen (1995):
:''Many things have more than direction;''
:''The magnitude is also a question.''
:''With acceleration or force,''
:''And many more things, of course,''
:''It's vectors that make the connection.''

'''Curls''' 
Cf [[ATD_318-335#Page 326|page 326:Curl]]: 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. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace].

:Cf [[ATD_318-335#Page 326|page 326:Laplacian]]: 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''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_symmetry Broken symmetry] is a concept used widely in mathematics and physics. For a simplest explanation (good enough for the text here), this term means that an object breaks either rotational symmetry or translational sysmetry - when one can only rotate an object in certain angles or when one is able to tell if the object has been shifted sideways. For a little bit more detailed explanation see [http://www.lassp.cornell.edu/sethna/OrderParameters/BrokenSymmetry.html Identify the Broken Symmetry]; or even more [http://scienceweek.com/2005/sw050708-6.htm On Broken Symmetry].

'''''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 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernand_Khnopff wikipedia entry]

'''Pléiade Lafrisée''' 

in French, "friser" means to curl or twist. "La frisée" could mean "curled." The Pleiades is a cluster of stars.

'''''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.

'''what is a Quaternino?''' 
Cf [[ATD_525-556#Page 525|page 525:Quaternions]] for a mathematical definition. From ''The Random House Dictionary of the English Languages'', The Unabridged Edition (1966): Quaternion is "a quantity or operator expressed as the sum of a real number and three complex numbers, equivalent to the ''quotient of two vectors''. The field of quaternions is not commutative under multiplication.".

'''Bertie ('Mad Dog') Russell''' 
Mad Dog ??? 

[http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1950/russell-bio.html Bertrand Russell] (1872-1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician and social critic. Best known for his work in mathermatical logic and analytic philosophy. In late spring of 1901 he discovered the so-called [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell-paradox/ Russell Paradox], "the most famous of the logical or set-theoretical paradoxes. The paradox arises within naive set theory by considering the set of all sets that are not members of themselves. Such a set appears to be a member of itself if and only if it is not a member of itself, hence the paradox." (On-line Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). He won the 1950 Nobel Prize in Literature in "recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thouhgt".

'''Hegel... puns''' 
???

==Page 539==

'''a vector quotient''' 
The result of one vector divided by another. According to the English dictionary definition of previous page this is just a Quaternion.

'''unit vector''' 
Unit vector is a vector with magnitude of one. The unit vectors in 3-dimensional space, ''i, j, k'', associated with ''x, y, z'' directions are used in defining a general 3D vector (Cf [[ATD_525-556#Page 526|page 526:Gibbsian Vectors]]).

'''''square root of minus one''''' 
Imaginary number (Cf [[ATD_119-148#Page 132|page 133:Imaginary Number]]). The imaginary numbers ''i, j, k'' are used in defining a Quaternion (Cf [[ATD_525-556#Page 525|page 525:Quaternions]]).

''''Triangle Asana'''' 
A basic yoga pose.

[http://yoga.org.nz/postures/yoga_positions_images_page.htm 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.
[http://www.astunit.com/tutorials/glossary.htm]
:Isn't that sort of a red herring? "[P]roducing from her reticule a . . . watch" doesn't really allow of that second meaning.

'''Vacheron & Constantin watch''' 
Made by a Swiss company founded in 1755. From 1819 to 1970 the name was as in the text, then the & dropped out. See the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacheron_Constantin Wikipedia entry.]

'''hunting-case''' 
For a pocket watch, a case with a hinged metal cover. More often called "hunter case" (and such a watch a "hunter").

==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''' 
The Woëvre is a natural region of Lorraine in north-east France. It forms part of Lorraine plateau and lies largely in the department of Meuse. During World War I, there was much fighting there due to vast mineral resources that had been discovered in the Briey basin or Eastern Woevre at the end of the 19th century. "Piet" is Dutch for "rock" or "stone" and is a fairly common Dutch name, the English equivalent being Peter.

'''Force Publique''' 
The Force Publique (FP) was the official armed force for what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1885, (when the territory was known as the Congo Free State), through the period of direct Belgian rule (1908-60), until the beginning of the Second Republic in 1965. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_Publique Wikipedia entry]

'''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 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanns_Johst].

'''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. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._T._Whittaker 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 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Edmund_Whittaker_Memorial_Prize].

'''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''' 
???
The evil-doer who must come might be Adolf Hitler. It would make sense. The implication being that Europe is precipitating into a no-return situation. Capitalism cannot but end in WW2. 
Ah, a lot more and less than capitalism going on here, especially if anyone specific like Hitler is meant.

'''General Boulanger''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlieffen_Plan Schlieffen Plan] included an attack on France through Belgium, disregarding its neutrality.

'''Wilhelm has offered Leopold part of France, the ancient Duchy of Burgundy''' 
[http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/fr-bg.html History of the duchy.] [http://www.freiburg-madison.de/freiburg_history/1386-1517_The%20Early%20Habsburgs.htm 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. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Freiherr_von_Krafft-Ebing 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. [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0395500761&id=rbEjDovfyNMC&pg=RA2-PA111&lpg=RA2-PA111&ots=ELKl5b_6Tx&dq=mayonnaise+trout.fishing&num=100&sig=BiyXRqJXRGrMWbrBNgn8de2kpCo#PRA2-PA112,M1 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 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XV].

'''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 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleo_de_Merode]. The character Madame Leonora Armfeldt in Stephen Sondheim's ''A Little Night Music'' has some features in common with her.

'''marquise de Pompadour''' 
Mistress of Louis XV,once friend of Voltaire and a power behind official scenes.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_de_Pompadour].

==Page 545==

'''duc de Richelieu''' 
Duc de Richelieu (1696-1788), marshal of France, was a grandnephew of Cardinal Richelieu, and born in Paris. Apart from his reputation as a man of exceptionally loose morals, he attained, in spite of a defective education, distinction as a diplomatist and general. ([http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Louis_Francois_Armand_du_Plessis,_duc_de_Richelieu duc de Richelieu] and cf [[ATD_489-524#Page 490|page 490:duc de Richelieu]])

'''dubious 'victory' in 1756''' 
As 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''' 
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.

'''''n'est-ce pas?''''' 
Right? (Isn't that so?)

'''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, page 536.

'''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''' 
A lounge suit is another name for business suit consisting of a matching jacket and trousers or skirt.

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

'''dripping-heads''' 
???

'''''cuves d'agitation''''' 
agitation vat or tank.

'''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!

'''''vero?''''' 
true? real?

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

'''Oudenberg''' 
A southeast suburb of Ostende.

'''Quai de l'Entrepôt''' 
???
Warehouse Quay

'''''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 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlieffen_plan] 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 '''de'''composed; 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''' 
???
Nieuport is a Belgian seaport about 10 miles southwest of Ostend. Dunkirk is a French port (less than 10 miles inside the French border) about 20 miles southwest of Nieuport. The latter was a site of one of the bloodest battle in World War I. The general area between Niewport and Dunkirk was the well traversed battle fields of two world wars. (Dunkirk was (in)famous for the British Army's escape from the Nazi German's assault in World War II.)

'''power-receivers''' 
Not information, energy.

==Page 550==

'''Italian grotto''' 
???an imitating recess or structure made to resemble a natural 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). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uhlan 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? Or perhaps it's a nod to the Ryder-Waite Tarot deck and to Kevin Thorn (Kevin Matthew Fertig, 1977-), the American professional wrestler better known by his ring name Kevin Thorn who is currently signed to World Wrestling Entertainment wrestling on its ECW brand. He has appeared in vigniettes with Ariel (Shelly Martinez, 1980-), the tarot card reader, who spits blood at the camera while she "predicted the future of ECW." Yup, a stretch...

'''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'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland]; 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''' 
soaked in water or exposed to moisture (as flax or hemp) to facilitate the removal of the fiber from the woody tissue by partial rotting.

==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 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passchendaele].

'''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. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieronymus_Bosch Wikipedia entry].

'''Brueghel''' 
Pieter Brueghel the Elder(1525-1569), Flemish painter.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_Brueghel_the_Elder 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''' 
Frédéric Chopin (1810-49), a Polish pianist and composer ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Chopin Chopin]). He was born in Warsaw, Poland to a Polish morther and a French father. He went to Paris at the age of 20 and died there at the age of 39. He was widely regarded as one of the most famous and influential composers for the piano. From 1837-47 he had a 10-year stormy relationship with the French writer George Sand. His E-minor Nocturne is a 4-minute long Romantic style piano solo composed in 1827. (A ''nocturne'' is usually a musical composition that is inspired by, or evocative of, the night [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocturne Nocturne].)

'''owl-light''' 
???glimmering or imperfect light or twilight hours.

''''plasmic hysteresis'''' 
???

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}