Thomas Pynchon Wiki - User contributions [en]

ATD 792-820

2007-06-17T06:55:57Z

Mcg: /* Page 799 */

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

==Page XX==

'''Sample entry''' 
Please format like this.

==Page 792==

'''''rishta''-doctors . . . guinea-worms''' 
From the context, ''rishta''-doctors means Guinea worm disease doctors. 
During 12th to 13th centuries the word in Arabic-speaking countries for macaroni was ''rishta'', but the context clearly indicates that it means ''worm'', or specifically, ''Guinea worm''. 
The Guinea worm is a threadlike parasitic worm that grows and matures inside the human body growing as long as 3 feet long. After a year, the worm emerges through a painful blister in the skin causing long-term suffering and sometimes crippling after-effect. People get infected when they drink standing water containing a tiny water flea that is infected with the even tinier larvae of the Guinea worm. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracunculiasis The disease] occurs mainly in Africa.

'''drumfire''' 
Intense, continuous artillery fire, characteristic of the bombardments that preceded the attempted advances on the Western Front in World War I.

'''to get in out of it''' 
A typo? Should be "to get out of it"?? Not really: this is actually common English usage; for example, "to get in out of the rain."

==Page 793==

'''Tierra del Fuego''' 
Not exactly the other side of the world, but the closest land to that point. Tierra del Fuego translates as "Land of the Fire."

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

==Page 794==

'''communicate with the explorer Peary, then in the Arctic''' 
Robert Peary did not even leave New York City at the start of his polar expedition until July 6, 1908, 6 days '''after''' the Tunguska Event of 6-30-08, and did not reach Ellesmere Island until the summer of 1909(see[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_Event] section on Wardenclyffe Tower).
: But this was one of the 'theories' around the time and long after attempting to explain the Tunguska Event. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event Tunguska event in Wikipedia].

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._Peary Robert Peary] (1856-1920) was an American explorer who claimed to have been the first person to reach the geographic North Pole on April 6, 1909. He made several attempts to reach the North Pole between 1898 and 1905. His final assault set off from New York City on july 6, 1908 and wintered near
Cape Sheridan on Ellesmere Island and from there departed for the pole on March 1, 1909. He established Camp Jesup near the Pole on April 6. In his diary for April 7, Peary wrote "The Pole at alst !!! The prize of 3 centuries, ... ''Mine'' at last ..."

'''Tesla . . . his tower at Wardenclyffe''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardenclyffe_Tower Nikola Tesla's Wardenclyffe Tower] (1901-1917) was an early wireless telecommunications aerial tower intended for commercial wireless trans-Atlantic telephony, broadcasting and to demonstrate the transmission of power without interconnecting wire. The tower was named after James Warden, a lawyer and banker, who had purchased the land in Shoreham, Long Island, about 60 miles from Manhattan. The Tesla Tower was never fully operational and was not completed due to economic problems. The property is now owned by [[Q-weapon_and_Photography#gevaert|Agfa-Gevaert]].

Paramorphic Alert: Thursday, June 7, 2007, an [http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-06/miot-mdw060107.php MIT research group headed by Marin Soljacic] is making wireless power transfer happen in their lab. Tesla redux.

'''Ellsmere Island''' 
Commonly spelled [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellesmere_Island Ellesmere Island]. Lying within the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and with Cape Columbia, Ellesmere Island is the most northerly point of land in Canada. With an area of over 75,000 square miles, it is the world's 10th largest island and Canada's third largest.

'''Brother Tom Swift. He spends more time these days in court than in the laboratory.''' 
Tom Swift is the young protagonist in several series of juvenile adventure novels starting in the early twentieth century and continuing to the present. More exactly, each such series stars a young protagonist named Tom Swift who is a genius inventor and whose breakthroughs in technology (especially transport technology) drive the plots of the novels. Besides the similarity (or "brotherhood") between the adventuring youths, the Chums' stories have titles similar to the Tom Swift novels, eg ''Tom Swift and His Motor Boat; or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa''; ''Tom Swift and His Airship; or, The Stirring Cruise of the Red Cloud''; &c &c.

Although the Tom Swift novels weren't published until 1910 an ''apparent'' anachronism we should remember that Tom Swift, in this context, is as "real" as the Chums of Chance, and thus the events in the first novel, ''Tom Swift and His Motor Cycle; or, Fun and Adventure on the Road'' -- which included patent disputes and lawsuits -- would have "happened" prior to the novel being published.

'''Semipalatinsk''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semey Semipalatinsk] is a city on the Irtysh River, a ''long'' way southwest of Vanavara. Soviet nuclear tests were administered from here.

'''Irbit''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irbit Irbit] is a town in Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia on the right bank of the Nitsa River. It is located about 120 miles east of Yekaterinburg.

'''''obstanovka''''' 
Russian: situation.

==Page 795==

'''''Zdorovo!''''' 
Russian: ''hel''lo!

'''Neutral Moresnet''' 
Tiny "country" between Belgium and Germany; existed 1816-1919; see, oh ''do'' see, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral_Moresnet Wikipedia entry.]

'''''tchudak''''' 
Now transliterated ''chudak.'' Russian: crank.

'''Kiakhta''' 
Or [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyakhta ''Kyakhta''], only two syllables. Town on Russian (Buriat)-Mongolian border south of Lake Baikal, a center of Russian trade with China.

'''Not even Russian army does that!''' 
And it cost them dearly in 1914 when intercepted "clear" radio traffic helped the Germans crush them at the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1914_Battle_of_Tannenberg Battle of Tannenberg.]

==Page 796==

'''By dusk . . . running-lights''' 
An enigma. The ordinary way of analyzing it: Make a model, say a flashlight, an orange and a toothpick mooring line with a raisin balloon at the top. As the orange rotates toward the east and the flashlight appears to set in the [http://www.example.com link title]west, what gets dark first? The base of the toothpick, the shadow progressing upward. But the text says the raisin does, the shadow arc moving downward.

It's very curious that immediately following this apparently topsy-turvy paragraph Miles says "As above, so below." Significant?

Are the Chums watching from above?..."as the boys watched"..."as above,so below."?--[User: MKohut] January 28, 2007

:I suggest there's no error, and the "ordinary way" is not the right way to understand the text. It definitely is worth looking for a way that the narration--and Miles' benediction--can be technically as well as thematically correct.

In wizardry (developed from shamanry) Hermes Trismegistus wrote an
Emerald Tablet on which he wrote his wisdom (9-14 precepts).
Sir Isaac Newton translated one precept as:
"That which is below is like that which is above & that which is above is like that which is below."

So, magic?
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald_Tablet Wiki]

--[[User:mrplong]] 13:36, 31 January 2007 (AST)

The only way that the described phenomenon: the order in which the cargo balloons become enshadowed, could be true is if it was the darkness that was advancing as a physical force. It's as if the definitions of light and dark have been reversed. A rising sun (light source) will illuminate the highest objects first, a rising "dark source" would enshadow the highest objects first, too.

In addition to all the other references stated, I believe Miles' comment refers to the cargo balloons and their tethers to the ground, echoing the Inconvenience and its links to its Earth based masters. [mwm]

The precept has been linked to numerology [http://home.online.no/~luneng/999.html]; These words circulate throughout occult and magical circles, and they come from Hermetic texts. The concept was first laid out in The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, in the words "That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above, corresponds to that which is Below, to accomplish the miracles of the One Thing."[24]

In accordance with the various levels of reality: physical, mental, and spiritual, this relates that what happens on any level happens on every other. This is however more often used in the sense of the microcosm and the macrocosm. The microcosm is oneself, and the macrocosm is the universe. The macrocosm is as the microcosm, and vice versa; within each lies the other, and through understanding one (usually the microcosm) you can understand the other.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeticism#_note-10]. Card I of the Major Arcana of the Waite Tarot Deck (alluded to throughout AtD) shows The Magician, simultaneously pointing up toward the sky and down toward the earth.

'''Slowly as God's justice''' 
Must be noted given title and everything religious in ATD.

==Page 797==

'''upriver from Vanavara''' 
"Ground zero" of the Event was 40 miles north of Vanavara. Cf [[ATD_768-791#Page_779|page 779: A heavenwide blast of light.]]

'''"simultaneity" . . . Special Relativity''' 
Einstein's special theory of relativity (1905) refutes the idea that two observers seeing two events can ever agree on whether the events were simultaneous. Adopters of the theory (and in 1908 they were all ''early'' adopters) would be asking one another if it applied to this phenomenon.

'''the error of the seismograph recordings . . . singularity''' 
"Error" doesn't mean mistake or wrongness. It measures the variability within each instrument; every measurement comes with a plus-or-minus figure. If the Event happened instantaneously, each of the charts would record it as a more or less spread-out peak. The energy released in a process is calculated from the area under the curve of intensity versus time; to get the power (rate of energy release), divide the energy by the duration of the process. Even though he states the math wrongly, Vanderjuice suspects the seismographs of the world have responded to a titanic release of energy that took place in essentially no time at all, so that power = energy divided by zero. When physicists see a ''real'' process apparently demanding division by zero, they call it a singularity and go looking for an explanation.

'''the equations of history''' 
Perhaps an allusion to Isaac Asimov's ''Foundation Trilogy'', in which the Psychohistorian Harry Selden calculates equations of history. His equations are (seemingly) thrown off by the advent of a mutant with unusual powers that his predictive equations do not take into account--not unlike the advent of the Tunguska Event.

'''Tchernobyl, the star of Revelation''' 
Tchernobyl is the Ukraine translation (perhaps mistranslation) for Wormwood "the destroying star in the book of Revelation" (page 784). And, as we all know, in 1986 there was a a nuclear meltdown of the Ukranian city Chernobyl.

'''something that had not quite happened yet''' 
In short, an Omen. The Tunguska Event could be seen as an omen of the destructive forces unleashed over the entire course of the 20th Century.

'''Circassian slave''' 
Common figure in European literature about the "Lustful Turk." Circassia is a region in the Caucasus. 

In the early 1860s, after Russian conquest of their region of the Caucasus, nearly half a million Circassians migrated to Turkey. Many Circassian women, prized for their beauty, were sold into slavery.

'''teppisti''' 
Italian: hooligans, hoodlums, thugs

==Page 798==

'''Krakatoa''' 
Cf [[ATD_489-524#Page_506|page 506: Krakatoa]].

'''''mala vita''''' 
Italian: evil life. With more specific reference to Mafia style criminal organizations like the Malavita del Brenta of Venice. There is also a genre of songs glorifying Mafia life called canto di Malavita.

'''brides picotees''' 
A Venetian lace with a hexagonal pattern. French: tickle straps

==Page 799==

'''"Bevis Moistleigh"''' 
Bevis Mostly? Bevis Wetly?
Cf. Sir Bevis from Lang's Red Romance Book around this time. Or a Twilight Zone story, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twilight_Zone/Mr._Bevis Mr. Bevis 1960]. 
Or, see later in ATD, Bevis is an allusion to Beavis & Butthead. [Idiot]

Possibly, given what follows, an allusion to the Bevis Marks Synagogue in London, oldest extant Jewish house of worship in Britain [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bevis_Marks_Synagogue], but more likely a reference to (p.800)''Bevis,the Story of a Boy.''

'''''macchinette''''' 
Italian for small devices.

'''Glagolitic alphabet''' 
See excellent annotation to [[ATD_243-272#Page_252|page 252]] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glagolitic_alphabet this].

'''gematria''' 
As described in the text, each letter of the Hebrew alphabet is also a number. In the simplest form of Gematria, words, phrases and sentences with eqivalent numerical value are somehow linked, in a way promoting exegesis of Torah and Midrash (Torah commentary). More complex, mystical gematria systems are described in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gematria].
Not strictly gematria, but, there is also the so-called "Bible Code" based on another sort of numerical reading of Torah.

==Page 800==

'''''fatkeqëse''''' 
Albanian: translated in the text as "disaster." Is this correct?

'''gongs''' 
Medals.

'''Irredentism''' 
A policy appealing to the idea that "our" lands are unredeemed, i.e., ruled by some outsider, and must be brought into our domain. See annotation to "Eurasia Irredenta" ([[ATD_748-767#Page_761|page 761).]]

'''''Bevis . . . the Story of a Boy''''' 
Theign taunts Bevis with the title of a popular novel, ''Bevis, the Story of a Boy'' (1882), by Richard Jefferies. From bits and pieces of the work quoted online (the book is apparently still in print), the narrative style and dialog writing appear similar to what we've seen in the early Chums passages. What's more, themes associated with this and other books by Jefferies (e.g., the beauty of the untouched countryside) align with some of the ''AtD'' themes. Jefferies also published a "post-Apocalypse" novel called ''After London.'' The Jefferies-Pynchon link may merit a closer look.

This contributor, with a keen sense of sacrifice for the greater good, actually ''read'' the three-volume novel. Jefferies writes in a good plain style but seems not to have thought of putting a plot in his book. Bevis, of what would later be recognized as Boy Scout age, spends several hundred pages of a southern English summer exploring and naming the world within a dozen miles of his home (Africa, Ceylon, the East Indies, South America are all there). He is rich and has, sadly, what we must call criminally negligent parents who don't even look for him when he vanishes into the South Seas for a week at a time. Most of the highlights of the book concern Bevis' killing some creature (to eat it, more often than not) or kicking his faithful dog Pan. Bevis doesn't know the meaning of fear, and my guess is that he went into the Army and got his self-reliant head blown off in South Africa. If ''Bevis'' shares any thematic point with ''AtD'' it is pretty well limited to geographic exhaustiveness; his journeys of exploration are set forth in as much detail as any of the Traverses'.

==Page 801==

'''unprovided for in the future tense of any language''' 
I.e., we have no simple way to describe future events in a chaotic system. You can't say that Chinese butterfly '''will''' cause a windstorm in Brazil.

'''High susceptibility to primordial variables''' 
Chaos theorists talk about "extreme sensitivity to initial conditions."

'''"an emigration of reason itself".......Crusade"''' 
Notice war talk and natural destruction around the Event. 
As well, the Crusades were a series of western European Christian attacks on Islam, the Mideast (with the establishment of Crusader Kingdoms), and even Christian Byzantium/Constantinople, linking the text to 19th and 20th century Imperialist ventures. For a map of the medieval kingdoms, see [http://www.medievaltymes.com/courtyard/images/crusades/first/crusader_states.jpg]

'''Railway Brain''' 
A recognized disorder at one time, explained in the text following in AtD.

==Page 802==

'''croakers''' 
Slang: doctors, especially quacks.

Also: One who croaks, murmurs, grumbles, or complains
unreasonably; one who habitually forebodes evil.

"Croaker" is a long-established (slang) word for "doctor," and in this passage it is quite clear that the doctors (performing curative activities to earn their fees but not really curing anything) feel they are putting one over on everybody else.

Some online citations: 
:http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=19757 
:http://www.whysanity.net/monos/requiem.html 
:http://cancer.iu.edu/news/research/archives/2000/06.pdf ("In the Spotlight," 2nd graf) 
:http://www.classiccrimefiction.com/hardboiled-slang.htm 
:http://www.hobonickels.org/alpert04.htm 
:http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jcnewman/definition.html 
:In short, it wasn't the complainers who "thought they were putting one over," it was the quacks who administered expensive treatments for all ills.

:Slang, sic. I see. Another possible multiple TRP meaning, the complaining doctors, esp. quack "shrinks", relatively new at the time?

'''radioactive mud-bath slime''' 
Treatment with naturally radioactive waters from hot springs was thought to cure many ailments. An example of a radioactive hot spring resort in Austria is Badgastein.

'''Mentone''' 
Mentone, Italy or across the border, Menton (Italian name ''Mentone''), France, in the Riviera. In fact there was no Menton, France, for a long time until 1860 the former Grimaldi town of Mentone, Italy, was bought by France. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menton Menton] is much better known than Mentone; this small town on the Franco-Italian border, about 45 miles northeast of Nice, is the most beautiful town on the French Riviera—''La perle de la France'' (The Pearl of France). It's warm climate makes it a favorite tourist destination. Menton is also a city of gardens; it won the competition for the best city of flowers in France five different times.

'''...an evening sky which had refused the dusk...''' 
Inverse of Against the Day?

'''the boulevard Carnolès''' 
There is a ''Palais Carnolès'' at 3 Avenue de la Madone, Menton (or ''Mentone''). But couldn't locate the Boulevard Carnolès.

'''Mariahilf''' 
The Sixth District of Vienna, known as a shopping district.

==Page 803==

'''midinettes''' 
salesgirls (of Paris).

'''Facharbeiter''' 
German: technician, specialist, skilled worker.

'''Gabika''' 
"Cute" double diminutive for the Hungarian male name Gábor (Gabriel) and also, more commonly, for the female name Gabriella. The ambiguity (also his looks) fits finely the subversion of gender roles in his relationship to Noellyn Fanshawe.
*Wouldn't it be his relationship to Yashmeen? [[User:Jpicco|Jpicco]] 13:16, 11 April 2007 (PDT)

==Page 804==

'''Maida Vale''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maida_Vale Maida Vale] is a street in north-west London. The area, also known as Little Venice, is mostly residential and often extremely affluent.

'''eleven''' 
Vienna is 86 degrees west of the Event, more or less. Converting longitude to time at 15 degrees = 1 hour, we get a time difference of 5 hours 44 minutes. At 7:17 a.m. Event time, it was 1:33 a.m. in Vienna. Now, at 11:00 p.m. the same day, Vienna time, it is 21 hours and 27 minutes after the event. The atmospheric effect has propagated west (possibly against the high-level winds?) from Siberia to Central Europe in quite a short time. All these numbers are rough!

==Page 805==

'''prepare them against the day''' 
Here the phrase means "in anticipation of" or "to be ready for." 
And more. Thematic.
Given what has been said about the Tunguska Event, colored by accounts of the atmospheric effects of the Krakatoa eruption, highly suggestive of Judgment Day.

I shoulda been keepin' notes, dammit! I am sure that regularly through the book I have been spotting deliberate sentences ending with "... ''something'' the day"...but not, until now, with "''against'' the day". And a few score pages ago I'm sure there was a sentence what ended w' "...against the night...", then Tunguska happens, and we now need to be wary o'the day..?

I didn't catch occurrences of "the day" but I did catch a lot of "against the..." Of course I noticed it about halfway through. I would like to read it again and make note of all of the things against some other thing. Also, I believe this is the only place in the book where the title occurs. But then, I do have 6 pages left.

:I wouldn't get too hung up on that. You can find 'em all, but then what? Pynchon loves red herrings. More interesting to track more oblique references to the title, some of which are on the [[Against the Day Title#Title References Oblique and Otherwise|Title Speculations page]]

==Page 806==

'''Toward the end of October all Hell broke loose . . . annex Bosnia''' 
The Bosnian Crisis began with the fear on the part of Austria-Hungary of possible reverses of Turkish concessions since the Russo-Turkish War of 1878 by the newly-resurgent Young Turk movement. The answer to this was annexation of Bosnia, which it had ruled as a colony since 1878. Knowing such a move would be opposed by Serbia, in turn supported by Russia, the Austrians offered to support the right of Russia to move warships through the Bosporus, and to support a declaration of independence from Turkey by Bulgaria. This provoked a general crisis [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_Crisis] from which Serbia had to back down, lacking Russian support. All had been settled in secret meetings in the months before; the Bulgarian (Glagolitic) traffic intercepted by Bevis Moistleigh, above, is thus explained. So is the sense of Grand Conspiracy; all the Great Powers were eventuallly involved. 
See [http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/boshtml/bos127.htm The Annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1908.]

Brigitte Hamann in her book ''Hitler's Vienna'' writes:
"Diplomatic observers explained [the annexation] as an attempt 'to help the country get over its internal calamity'....To be sure, the real reason was indeed a patriotic one: annexing Bosnia and Herzegovina was meant to be an anniversary present to the old emperor [1908 marked the 60th annivesary of FJ's reign]. After all, in wars that had brought much loss, the empire had become smaller and smaller during Franz Josef's reign...Now the empire finally was supposed to become larger again for a change, in a way that was erroneously deemed simple. The consequences of such a step on European politics were vastly underestimated, and preparation for the annexation was flawed on an interntational level." ''Hitler's Vienna'', p. 104. [[User:Sideming|Sideming]]

'''coconut-shy''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconut_shy A coconut shy] (or coconut shie) is a traditional game frequently found as a sidestall at funfairs and fêtes. The game consists of throwing wooden balls at a row of coconuts balanced on posts. Typically a player buys three balls and wins each coconut successfully dislodged. In some cases other prizes may be won instead of the coconuts.
The origins of the game are unclear, although the term is first listed in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1903.
The word 'shy' in this context is a colloquial English term, meaning 'to throw' or toss.

'''šljivovica''' 
One of the spellings of this word for plum brandy (also slivovica, slivovitz, etc.). Serbian culture (perhaps others) seems to attribute almost nationalist cultural significance to the drink (the contributor is Serbian-American).

'''one to fifty million . . . mile-to-the-inch sheets''' 
Two extremes of mapmaking. A 1:50,000,000 map of the United States would fit comfortably on a page of ''AtD'' with most of Mexico and several Canadian provinces. Austria-Hungary at that scale would be about as big as your two thumbprints side by side.

The British Ordnance Survey produced a famous series of inch-to-the-mile sheets (1:63,360); the detail is about fine enough to show the left-turn lane of a city street. At this scale it would take some 200 unhandily large sheets to cover Austria-Hungary.

'''Decisions of the utmost gravity''' 
that lead to Gravity's rainbows'''

==Page 807==

'''Major B. F. Vumb''' 
Major Bum Fuck Vumb, as in Dumb? Another Pynchonian V-name
with the usual associations.

'''''Judensau''''' 
German: Jewish pig.

'''the Vienna Woods''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wienerwald The Vienna Woods] is a low, wooded section of the Alps in eastern Lower Austria and far into the city of Vienna, covering over nearly 390 square miles and including the northermost parts of the entire Alpine chain. It is a favourite outdoor destination for people living around Vienna.

'''Christian Socialists . . . Dr. Karl Lueger''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Lueger Karl Lueger] (pronounced in three syllables, LOO eh ger) (1844-1910) was a Viennese politician, Burgomeister (mayor) of Vienna, and founder of the anti-Semitic Christian Social Party. He was a role model for Adolf Hitler.

'''Burgomeister''' 
This is the English form of the German Burgermeister -- mayor.

'''Reichsrath''' 
Austrian parliament.

'''''Wer Jude ist, bestimme ich''''' 
German: as translated in text.
Lueger used anti-Semitism as the rocket fuel to launch and maintain his political career, yet he himself had Jewish friends and backers. When confronted on this point his retort was this line -- essentially meaning the opposite of how it is used in the text. Instead of non-Jews being labelled Jews indiscriminately, Lueger meant it in the sense that his Jewish friends were ''not'' Jews -- and therefore exempt from persecution. His anti-Semitism was based on religion, not race -- which Hitler later faulted as leading to a situation where Jews would convert in name only.

'''''der schöne'' Karl''' 
German: the handsome, or the nice, Karl. Deeply sarcastic.

==Page 808==

'''"Well actually . . ."''' 
Shanghai, which because of its international status did not require a passport or visa for entry, would become a refuge for Jews made stateless by Nazi Germany or were otherwise refugees in the 1930s. Many tens of thousands were able to reach it, and survived the war and the Holocaust under Japanese occupation. Large numbers reached it using so-called Sugihara Passports, letters of transit issued by the Japanese vice-consul to Lithuania in 1940, with the connivance of Dutch diplomats[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugihara]. Obviously an anachronism, but actually...this is about portents and other bends in Time, perhaps things that echo up and down the Timelines (ours and alternates).

'''Graz''' 
Cf [[ATD_489-524#Page_519|page 519: Graz]].

'''Elefant Hotel''' 
The only listed Elefant Hotel in Austria, a building described as "ancient", is in Salzburg, not Graz; it is currently a Best Western. There is also a Hotel Elefant in Prague, once part ot the Empire; perhaps there was a chain?

'''. . . common Anglo-Habsburg interests...''' 
All the Great Powers found ways to benefit from the Bosnian Crisis, perhaps explaining Theign providing Italian naval decodes to the Austrians. Or, as Latewood accuses below, he is a double agent; McHugh is at least suspicious here. Either way, sending Latewood and Moistleigh on a suicide mission to Bosnia is one way to cover his tracks.

'''Murgasse''' 
Street in Graz. The Murgasse was first mentioned in a document from 1346. The part of town to the south was occupied by the farmers.
Murgasse
8490 Bad Radkersburg, Austria

==Page 809==

'''the Treaty of Berlin''' 
Cf [[ATD_489-524#Page_495|page 495: the Treaty of Berlin]].

'''Novi Pazar''' 
Novi Pazar also figures briefly in ''GR'' (P.14-15, Viking eds.): "...on this obscure sanjak had once hinged the entire fate of Europe" The Novi Pazar desk is manned by Lord Blatherard Osmo. The crisis passed, but Lord Osmo has an adenoid, and this mucoid "lymphatic monster", now independently alive in 1939, is confronted by an agent of The Firm (an outfit very like its temporal predecessor the T.W.I.T. in its interests in the paranormal) , one "Pirate" Prentice; it is "now as big as St Paul's and growing by the hour" threatening all London, but confined successfully--leading to Lord Osmo's neglect of Novi Pazar...A bizarre satiric experience of Crisis Management by Great Power foreign ministries, and the literally sticky mess they created. Currently, some obscure ex-Ottoman sanjaks, cobbled together as Iraq in 1919, are something of a hinge of history; another paramorphic mirroring of 1900/2000.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novi_Pazar Novi Pazar] is now a city of Serbia, about 110 miles directly south of Belgrade. Its name means "a new bazaar" in the local language. It was administered by Austria-Hungary from 1878 to 1908, and by Turkey (Ottoman Empire) from 1908 to 1912, and by Serbia 1912 to now.

'''Constantinople''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantinople Constantinople] was the capital of the Roman Empire (330-395), the Byzantine Empire (395-1204 and 1261-1453), the Latin Empire (1204-1261) and the Ottoman Empire (1453-1922). It is strategically located between the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara on the Bosphorous Strait. It extends both on the European (Thrace) and on the Asian (Anatolia) side of the Bosphorus, and is thereby the only metropolis in the world which is situated on two continents. It was officially renamed to Istanbul in 1930.

'''the Young Turks with their revolution''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Turks The Young Turks] was a coalition of various reform groups in favor of reforming the administration of Ottoman Empire. Their movement brought about the second constitutional era through a revolution against the monarchy. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Turk_Revolution The Young Turk Revolution] of 1908 restored the suspended parliament and was a landmark in the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. The Revolution arose from the Ottoman peoples' near-universal opposition to the tyranny and corruption of the Sultan, which forged an unlikely union of reform-minded pluralists, Turkish nationalists, and Western-oriented secularists.

'''the vile Aerenthal''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alois_Lexa_von_Aehrenthal Aloys (or Alois) von Aerenthal] (1854-1912), Austrian foreign minister (1906-1912) who engineered the annexation of Bosnia in 1908.

'''in three-quarter time''' 
Waltzes are in 3/4 time and so the national powers are waltzing into a European war. Note the chain-like sliding/closing/turning step sequence in Viennese Waltz, and also the rhythm itself represented by the repeated dactyl "and so on, and so on".

Two plausible references: events driven by Vienna, the world's waltz capital, and a dark comic song recorded by the Kingston Trio in the 1960s: "Merry Minuet." In 3/4 time, it includes lyrics commenting on ethnic hatred, irredentism and inevitable nuclear catastrophe.

In fact, the sequence of events described here as a possibility in 1908 were realized in 1914, when Russia, in the crisis provoked by a Serbian youth group's assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, this time backed Serbia, resulting in the cascade of troop mobilizations that became World War I.

'''Mitrovitsa''' 
A Serbian town near the Turkish-Serbian border (now in Kosovo), about 25 miles southeast of Novi Pazar and 140 miles southeast of Sarajevo. The full Serbian name now is Kosovska Mitrovica, the Albanian name is Mitrovicë, and the population is mostly Albanian nowadays. (Some precognition about Novi Pazar.)

'''a railroad link from Sarajebo to Mitrovitsa, and thus to the Ægean Sea''' 
A railroad of 210 miles long linking Mitrovitsa (Turkish-Serbian border) throuhg Skopje (Macedonia) to Salonica (Greece) by the Ægean Sea alredy existed since December 1874.

'''Isvolsky''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Izvolski Alexander Petrovich Izvolsky] (Izvolski, Izvolskii) (1856-1919), Russian foreign minister (1906-1910), a major architect of the Anglo-Russian Entente, who on September 15, 1908, traded Bosnia-Herzegovina to Austria in exchange for Austria's help in opening the Bosporus and Dardanelles to Russian ships. Pynchon's spelling may well be from a contemporary source; consistent transliteration is a more recent fetish.

'''Grey''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Grey,_1st_Viscount_Grey_of_Fallodon Sir Edward Grey] (1862-1933), British Foreign Secretary 1905-16. He was the other major architect of the Anglo-Russian Entente (1907).

'''The Dardanelles''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dardanelles The Dardanelles], an international waterway, is a narrow strait in northwestern Turkey connecting the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara. It separates Europe (Gallipoli peninsula) and the mainland of Asia. With the Bosporus, Dardanelles connects the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea.
Talk about a hinge of history! The Dardanelles were the site of the Trojan War; Troy being located on the western, Asian side of the strait.
Xerxes and Alexander marched through. It has figured in the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War and is the site of the Battle of Gallipoli in WWI.

==Page 810==

'''It's like having the lights brought up for a bit...''' 
As the crisis wound down to war in 1914, Sir Edward Grey (still Foreign Minister) is famously quoted as having said, "The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime."[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Grey,_1st_Viscount_Grey_of_Fallodon]

'''Vlado Clissan''' 
His name comes from his hometown of Clissa, but this is the Italian name of the place. In Serbo-Croatian it is ''Klis.'' A pseudonym?

'''Blutwurst Special''' 
German: blood sausage.

'''toad-in-the-hole''' 
a traditional British dish. It consists of sausages in Yorkshire pudding batter, usually served with vegetables and gravy.

==Page 811==

'''"iron convergences and receding signal-lamps"''' 
our 'free choices' in . . . life; so ironic at this point.

Kurt Vonnegut, in ''Slaughterhouse Five'', described the human point of view as from consciousness strapped to a railroad car, forever facing only backward; from this vantage, history looks single and inevitable, whereas in reality the train of history is moving over unknown numbers of (from this perspective unseen) switch points, the settings of which are in fact changeable (the more complex view being taken by an extraterrestrial species, the Tralfamadorians, who can see forward to the many possibilities), alternate histories possible at every switch. The character Pointsman in ''GR'' in some ways embodies these possibilities.

'''The Semmering tunnel''' 
It refers to the Semmering mountain-peak tunnel of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semmering_Railway the Semmering Railway]. The tunnel, with a length of 4,700 ft, was opened on May 15, 1854. (A new Semmering tunnel, through the mountain base, was built in 1952). The Semmering Railway, having a total of 15 tunnels, is a part of the Austrian Souther Railway (Südbahn) connecting Vienna to Trieste. The world's first mountain railway with a standard gauge, it was built between 1848 and 1854 and is now a UNESCO World Heritage site.

'''the Mur Valley''' 
The valley of the Mur River which, about 300 miles long, runs through the south-central Austria, northeast Slovenia and northern Croatia, where it flows into the Drava River. The biggest city in the Mur Valley is Graz, Austria.

'''Slavonian''' 
Today the name applies to the eastern part of Croatia, but a map will confirm that the route passes through the Slovenian plain. Writers before the World War must have had difficulty keeping Slovenia, Slovakia and Slavonia straight, especially since all were inhabited by Slavonic peoples.

'''the Slavonian plain''' 
The Slavonian plain is a fertile agricultural lowland in eastern Croatia and beyond. It is part of the larger Pannonia plain. It includes three primary rivers: the Drava in the north and the Sava in the south and the Danube in the east. The area between the Sava and Drava rivers and bounded on the east by the Hungarian border is the historical region Slavonia forming the eastern part of Croatia.

'''Ljubljana''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ljubljana Ljubljana] is the capital of Slovenia. It is also the cultural and economical center of the country. It is located in central Slovenia.

'''the Karst''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kras The Karst] is a limestone borderline plateau region of southwestern Slovenia and northeastern Italy. It rises quite steeply above the neighboring landscape and is famous for its caves including Vilenica in Slovenia, the oldest tourist cave in the world. In addition to caves, erosion has produced in the Karst fissures, sinkholes and underground streams.

'''Općina''' 
A village about 4 miles northeast of Trieste.

'''the Piazza Grande''' 
Trieste's central square, a great rectangle lined on three sides by stately imperial buildings, its fourth, short side, revealing the Adriatic sea.

'''the Piazza Cavana''' 
Trieste's "Nighttown" before World War I.

'''Austrian double''' 
Latewood, in light of Theign's treatment of Yashmeen, and the apparent passing of Italian naval decrypts to Austria, accuses Theign of being an Austrain double agent.

==Page 812==

'''a Fortuny gown''' 
[http://www.chick.net/proust/fortuny.html Mariano Fortuny] (1871-1949), a Spanish fashion designer worked mostly in Venice, created some of the most remarkable fabrics and dresses of 20th century. His pleated silk gowns and velvet cloaks are regarded by collectors and museums around the world as the unique expression and embodiment of a craft at its best. He was one of the source of inspiration to Marcel Proust.

'''Mestre Bridge''' 
Mestre is a town in Veneto, northern Italy, a frazione of the comune of Venice. Located on the mainland,the city is connected to Venice by a large rail and road bridge, called Ponte della Libertà (Freedom Bridge). Cf [[ATD_695-723#Page_706|Page 706: Mestre bridge]].

'''Cloisters Court''' 
Cf [[ATD_489-524#Page_490|page 490: Cloisters Court]].

'''King's''' 
Cf [[ATD_489-524#Page_497|page 497: King's]]

==Page 813==

''''And England's far, and honour a name'''' 
Cyprian quoting from the 1897 poem [[Vitai Lampada|"Vitaï Lampada"]] ("They Pass the Torch of Life") by Sir Henry Newbolt (1862-1938), previously quoted on page 236 [[ATD_219-242#Page_236|(also see annotation)]].

'''"honour"''' 
Cf. Falstaff on.

'''the Caffè degli Specchi''' 
Trieste was one of the first European cities took to coffee in a big way.
It is the leading coffee port on the Mediterranean and is renowned for its cafes and coffee. The first coffe houses in Trieste opened at the beginning of the 18th century. They become very popular with artists and intellecturals. Several of the original coffe houses are still going strong; the Caffè degli Specchi, located in the Piazza Unità d'Italia and opened since 1839, is one of them.

==Page 814==

'''Lateeners''' 
A lateener is a boat with a lateen sail: a triangular sail with one edge tied to a long spar, which is supported in the middle on a mast.

'''''Strichmädchen''''' 
German: streetwalker, hooker, prostitute.

'''LLoyd Austriaco''' 
A ship line. Lloyd Triestino was formed in 1919 as the successor to Lloyd Austriaco following the incorporation of Trieste into the Kingdom of Italy on January 3rd 1919.

'''Molo San Carlo''' 
A pier (''molo'') in Trieste. See [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Molo_San_Carlo.jpg Molo San Carlo']picture around 1900.

==Page 815==

'''"Nimrod" . . . from Elgar's ''Enigma Variations''''' 
"Nimrod" is the ninth section of this major 1899 work by English composer Edward Elgar (1857-1934). Like the other 13 sections, it characterizes a family friend; this one is A. J. Jaeger (whose name means "hunter" in German, hence "Nimrod," the name of a hunter mentioned in the Bible). [http://www.elgar.org/3enigma.htm Here is a very good description of the work and "Nimrod" in particular.]

The "Nimrod" variation is perhaps the most poignant of the piece; it rises to a cresendo and slowly, sadly, fades; an anthem for the fading of the 19th century.

'''"La Gazza Ladra"''' 
Overture by Rossini to an opera whose title means "The Thieving Magpie." It is as bright and impersonal as "Nimrod" is serious and sentimental.

'''"The Volga Boatmen" . . . "Auld Lang Syne"''' 
The puzzle in the "Enigma" Variations is this: Variations are based on a theme, but Elgar never states the theme; what is the melody? These are two of the popular guesses.

'''Gonzalo''' 
Gonzalo who?

'''Millicent''' 
? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millicent_Fawcett Millicent Fawcett] (1847-1929), a British suffragist and an early feminist. Is this the right person?

'''Δt''' 
Mathematical symbol used to represent a short length of time.

In addition, Pynchon is very concerned with dt,(little delta-t) the time differential, an infinitesimal change in time; to quote Pynchon from ''Lot 49'' (Lippincott, 1965 p.129): "a vanishingly small instant in which change had to be confronted at last for what it was, where it could no longer disguise itself as something innocuous like an average rate; where the velocity dwelled in the projectile though the projectile be frozen in midflight, where death dwelled in the cell though the cell be looked in on at its most quick." But, the paragraph goes on, "dt" also suggests DTs, Delirium Tremens (alcohol withdrawal) a state giving access to hallucinatory experiences, "spectra beyond the known Sun, music made purely of Antarctic loneliness and fright." Which is the general mood in the wake of the Tunguska Event and the Bosnian Crisis, or should be, if the characters were not so dutifully repressing it. (In ''Lot 49'' the realization of the dt/DTs connection has to do with Oedipa Maas' realization of the finality of death, and what inaccessible realms of experience are lost with each individual's death).

:Are you confusing Δ''t'', symbolizing a finite duration, with ''dt,'' a duration shrunk to an infinitesimal? 
(Possibly--my physics/calculus may be rusting. The connection may still hold; note emendation above--thanks. Edit further if necessary!).

'''Davos''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davos Davos] is a municipality in the eastern part of Switzerland. A popular destination for the rich and ailing because its high valley climate has long been considered excellent by doctors for curing lung desease. It is the setting of Thomas Mann's ''The Magic Mountain''. Davos is famous as the host of the World Economic Forum, an annual meeting of global political and business elites.

'''Föhn''' 
German. [http://www.bom.gov.au/lam/glossary/fpagegl.shtml#fo Wind] warmed and dried by descent on the lee side of a mountain. Germans even today acknowledge that its presence (say, in Munich) affects mood and emotions.

'''co-conscious with the everyday''' 
again. Linked to creativity here.

'''Ramanujan's Formula''' 
an elegant hyperbolic summation, Ramanujan's formula for the Riemann zeta function evaluated at the odd positive integers. Cf [[ATD_489-524#Page_498|page 498: Rumanujan]] didn't come to the attention of Western mathematicians until he wrote to Hardy in late 1912 - early 1913 and travelled to Cambridge in 1914. Is Yashmeen prescient?

==Page 816==

'''''dolce far niente''''' 
Italian: sweet idleness (literally, sweet to do nothing).

'''divided second''' 
A dt.

'''of his entry''' 
Vlado the Impaler?

'''the Karst''' 
Cf [[ATD_792-820#Page_811|page 811: the Karst]]. 
Generic "karst topography" takes its name from this area of Slovenia and Italy (locally called ''kras'' and ''carso''). The terrain features limestone with fissures and cavities eroded by water. Caves as well as underground streams and lakes are common.

'''''osmizza''''' 
These are informal eating places out in rural areas, where farmers sell their meats, cheeses, olives and wines.

'''Illyria''' 
The Roman province in which modern Trieste is located.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illyria Illyria] was in Clssical antiquity a region in the western part of today's Balkan Peninsula, found by the tribes and clans of Illyrian, an ancient people who spoke the Illyrian languages. Illyria was a formidable local power in the 4th century BC, only after the Roman conquest in 168 BC did Illyria become one of the Roman provinces, Illyricum. In the context "ancient before Illyria" referrs to the period before the Roman conquest.

==Page 817==

'''quiet spaces between trams, unpredictable, even, she imagined, mathematically so''' 
An observation that might have seemed "foreign" to mathematics at the time she made it. A [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisson_distribution Poisson distribution] expresses the probability that a specific number of trams arrive during a given time interval but cannot determine the exact arrival time of the next tram. The length of the "quiet space" varies in a ''chaotic'' way—which doesn't at all mean that the transit system is random.

The appearance of "chaos theory" in the second half of the 20th century provided a vehicle for interpreting the process, and observations like that of the trams were incorporated into mathematics. Two familiar "rhythms" have this quality of chaotic intervals: the beating of the human heart and the sound of water dripping from a faucet. The second part of the phrase is subtle: the time of the next tram/thud/drip can't be mathematically predicted (to arbitrary accuracy), but it is possible to describe in mathematical terms the ''way'' in which it's unpredictable. James Gleick's [http://www.around.com/chaos.html ''Chaos, Making a New Science,''] is just one of the good sources on this new theory.

'''never farther than half a block from the counter-soporific fluid''' 
Perhaps an allusion or parallel to the 21st century ubiquity of Starbucks.

:Cf [[ATD_792-820#Page_813|page 813: the Caffe degli Specchi]].

'''''Svr šavam!''''' 
Croatian/Serbian: I'm finishing. Also, implausibly, written ''Svršavam.''

'''Velebit''' 
Cf [[ATD_318-335#Page_326|page 326: Velebit]].
A ridge that runs parallel to the Croatian Adriatic coast a few tens of miles south of Trieste. Lying a short distance inland, it is made up of limestone karst.

==Page 818==

'''Zengg''' 
Cf [[ATD_695-723#Page_697|page 697: Zengg]].

'''Veglia''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krk_(island) Veglia], the second largest Adriatic island, is a Croatian island (''Krk'') in the northern Adriatic Sea, located near Fiume.

'''persisted from day to day''' 
The image again of the storm that retains its identity over a long time.

'''Stationary waves''' 
Crests and troughs that don't move. Seen more often where water is flowing (up/downstream of rocks in rapids), but also where waves coming onshore interact with those reflected from the shore.

'''Novlian''' 
A family from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novi_Vinodolski Novi], a town on the Adriatic coast in Croatia about 10 miles north of Zengg (''Senj'') and 22 miles southeast of Fiume (''Rijeka'').

'''Uskok''' 
Cf [[ATD_695-723#Page_697|page 697: Uskok]]. 
Serbian/Croatian: fugitive. Writers even in antiquity noted that piracy was a main economic activity along this coast.

In all, Vlado seems very like the Traverse brothers, set against the modern world, or anyway modern power arrangements, a bit of an anarchist in his own way. But his grievances have historic depth and resonance, more of what Pynchon in ''V.'' called "Temporal Bandwidth".

Uskok is also a place's name.

'''the Argonauts''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argonauts The Argonauts], in Greek mythology, were a band of heroes who, in the years before the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_war Trojan War], accompanied Jason to Colchis in his quest to find the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_fleece Golden Fleece]. Their name comes from their ship ''Argo'' which in turn was named after its builder Argus.

'''Split''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split Split], situated on a small peninsula on the eastern shores of the Adriatic Sea about 150 miles southeast of Zengg, is the largest and most important city in Dalmatia, Croatia.

'''Clissa''' 
Town from which Vlado Clissan takes his ''nom de guerre.'' Locally called [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klis Klis] which is located inland just 5 miles northeast of Split near the eponymous mountain pass. Because of its geographical position, Clissa is susceptible to a rather strong bora wind.

==Page 819==

'''You know the play by Shakespeare, ''The Merchant of Venice''? [...] We keep hoping till the end for Antonio to come to grief.''' 
In ''The Merchant of Venice'', Antonio, the protagonist, is a wealthy merchant in Venice, his wealth coming from the ships he owns, which could easily be at peril from pirates. So, natch, Vlado and his comrades who attack Venetian ships are pulling for the pirates.

'''''mala vita''''' 
bad life

'''palačinka''' 
Serbo-Croatian for crepe or thin pancake.

==Page 820==

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

ATD 792-820

2007-06-17T06:16:48Z

Mcg: /* Page 792 */

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

==Page XX==

'''Sample entry''' 
Please format like this.

==Page 792==

'''''rishta''-doctors . . . guinea-worms''' 
From the context, ''rishta''-doctors means Guinea worm disease doctors. 
During 12th to 13th centuries the word in Arabic-speaking countries for macaroni was ''rishta'', but the context clearly indicates that it means ''worm'', or specifically, ''Guinea worm''. 
The Guinea worm is a threadlike parasitic worm that grows and matures inside the human body growing as long as 3 feet long. After a year, the worm emerges through a painful blister in the skin causing long-term suffering and sometimes crippling after-effect. People get infected when they drink standing water containing a tiny water flea that is infected with the even tinier larvae of the Guinea worm. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracunculiasis The disease] occurs mainly in Africa.

'''drumfire''' 
Intense, continuous artillery fire, characteristic of the bombardments that preceded the attempted advances on the Western Front in World War I.

'''to get in out of it''' 
A typo? Should be "to get out of it"?? Not really: this is actually common English usage; for example, "to get in out of the rain."

==Page 793==

'''Tierra del Fuego''' 
Not exactly the other side of the world, but the closest land to that point. Tierra del Fuego translates as "Land of the Fire."

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

==Page 794==

'''communicate with the explorer Peary, then in the Arctic''' 
Robert Peary did not even leave New York City at the start of his polar expedition until July 6, 1908, 6 days '''after''' the Tunguska Event of 6-30-08, and did not reach Ellesmere Island until the summer of 1909(see[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_Event] section on Wardenclyffe Tower).
: But this was one of the 'theories' around the time and long after attempting to explain the Tunguska Event. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event Tunguska event in Wikipedia].

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._Peary Robert Peary] (1856-1920) was an American explorer who claimed to have been the first person to reach the geographic North Pole on April 6, 1909. He made several attempts to reach the North Pole between 1898 and 1905. His final assault set off from New York City on july 6, 1908 and wintered near
Cape Sheridan on Ellesmere Island and from there departed for the pole on March 1, 1909. He established Camp Jesup near the Pole on April 6. In his diary for April 7, Peary wrote "The Pole at alst !!! The prize of 3 centuries, ... ''Mine'' at last ..."

'''Tesla . . . his tower at Wardenclyffe''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardenclyffe_Tower Nikola Tesla's Wardenclyffe Tower] (1901-1917) was an early wireless telecommunications aerial tower intended for commercial wireless trans-Atlantic telephony, broadcasting and to demonstrate the transmission of power without interconnecting wire. The tower was named after James Warden, a lawyer and banker, who had purchased the land in Shoreham, Long Island, about 60 miles from Manhattan. The Tesla Tower was never fully operational and was not completed due to economic problems. The property is now owned by [[Q-weapon_and_Photography#gevaert|Agfa-Gevaert]].

Paramorphic Alert: Thursday, June 7, 2007, an [http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-06/miot-mdw060107.php MIT research group headed by Marin Soljacic] is making wireless power transfer happen in their lab. Tesla redux.

'''Ellsmere Island''' 
Commonly spelled [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellesmere_Island Ellesmere Island]. Lying within the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and with Cape Columbia, Ellesmere Island is the most northerly point of land in Canada. With an area of over 75,000 square miles, it is the world's 10th largest island and Canada's third largest.

'''Brother Tom Swift. He spends more time these days in court than in the laboratory.''' 
Tom Swift is the young protagonist in several series of juvenile adventure novels starting in the early twentieth century and continuing to the present. More exactly, each such series stars a young protagonist named Tom Swift who is a genius inventor and whose breakthroughs in technology (especially transport technology) drive the plots of the novels. Besides the similarity (or "brotherhood") between the adventuring youths, the Chums' stories have titles similar to the Tom Swift novels, eg ''Tom Swift and His Motor Boat; or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa''; ''Tom Swift and His Airship; or, The Stirring Cruise of the Red Cloud''; &c &c.

Although the Tom Swift novels weren't published until 1910 an ''apparent'' anachronism we should remember that Tom Swift, in this context, is as "real" as the Chums of Chance, and thus the events in the first novel, ''Tom Swift and His Motor Cycle; or, Fun and Adventure on the Road'' -- which included patent disputes and lawsuits -- would have "happened" prior to the novel being published.

'''Semipalatinsk''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semey Semipalatinsk] is a city on the Irtysh River, a ''long'' way southwest of Vanavara. Soviet nuclear tests were administered from here.

'''Irbit''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irbit Irbit] is a town in Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia on the right bank of the Nitsa River. It is located about 120 miles east of Yekaterinburg.

'''''obstanovka''''' 
Russian: situation.

==Page 795==

'''''Zdorovo!''''' 
Russian: ''hel''lo!

'''Neutral Moresnet''' 
Tiny "country" between Belgium and Germany; existed 1816-1919; see, oh ''do'' see, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral_Moresnet Wikipedia entry.]

'''''tchudak''''' 
Now transliterated ''chudak.'' Russian: crank.

'''Kiakhta''' 
Or [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyakhta ''Kyakhta''], only two syllables. Town on Russian (Buriat)-Mongolian border south of Lake Baikal, a center of Russian trade with China.

'''Not even Russian army does that!''' 
And it cost them dearly in 1914 when intercepted "clear" radio traffic helped the Germans crush them at the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1914_Battle_of_Tannenberg Battle of Tannenberg.]

==Page 796==

'''By dusk . . . running-lights''' 
An enigma. The ordinary way of analyzing it: Make a model, say a flashlight, an orange and a toothpick mooring line with a raisin balloon at the top. As the orange rotates toward the east and the flashlight appears to set in the [http://www.example.com link title]west, what gets dark first? The base of the toothpick, the shadow progressing upward. But the text says the raisin does, the shadow arc moving downward.

It's very curious that immediately following this apparently topsy-turvy paragraph Miles says "As above, so below." Significant?

Are the Chums watching from above?..."as the boys watched"..."as above,so below."?--[User: MKohut] January 28, 2007

:I suggest there's no error, and the "ordinary way" is not the right way to understand the text. It definitely is worth looking for a way that the narration--and Miles' benediction--can be technically as well as thematically correct.

In wizardry (developed from shamanry) Hermes Trismegistus wrote an
Emerald Tablet on which he wrote his wisdom (9-14 precepts).
Sir Isaac Newton translated one precept as:
"That which is below is like that which is above & that which is above is like that which is below."

So, magic?
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald_Tablet Wiki]

--[[User:mrplong]] 13:36, 31 January 2007 (AST)

The only way that the described phenomenon: the order in which the cargo balloons become enshadowed, could be true is if it was the darkness that was advancing as a physical force. It's as if the definitions of light and dark have been reversed. A rising sun (light source) will illuminate the highest objects first, a rising "dark source" would enshadow the highest objects first, too.

In addition to all the other references stated, I believe Miles' comment refers to the cargo balloons and their tethers to the ground, echoing the Inconvenience and its links to its Earth based masters. [mwm]

The precept has been linked to numerology [http://home.online.no/~luneng/999.html]; These words circulate throughout occult and magical circles, and they come from Hermetic texts. The concept was first laid out in The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, in the words "That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above, corresponds to that which is Below, to accomplish the miracles of the One Thing."[24]

In accordance with the various levels of reality: physical, mental, and spiritual, this relates that what happens on any level happens on every other. This is however more often used in the sense of the microcosm and the macrocosm. The microcosm is oneself, and the macrocosm is the universe. The macrocosm is as the microcosm, and vice versa; within each lies the other, and through understanding one (usually the microcosm) you can understand the other.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeticism#_note-10]. Card I of the Major Arcana of the Waite Tarot Deck (alluded to throughout AtD) shows The Magician, simultaneously pointing up toward the sky and down toward the earth.

'''Slowly as God's justice''' 
Must be noted given title and everything religious in ATD.

==Page 797==

'''upriver from Vanavara''' 
"Ground zero" of the Event was 40 miles north of Vanavara. Cf [[ATD_768-791#Page_779|page 779: A heavenwide blast of light.]]

'''"simultaneity" . . . Special Relativity''' 
Einstein's special theory of relativity (1905) refutes the idea that two observers seeing two events can ever agree on whether the events were simultaneous. Adopters of the theory (and in 1908 they were all ''early'' adopters) would be asking one another if it applied to this phenomenon.

'''the error of the seismograph recordings . . . singularity''' 
"Error" doesn't mean mistake or wrongness. It measures the variability within each instrument; every measurement comes with a plus-or-minus figure. If the Event happened instantaneously, each of the charts would record it as a more or less spread-out peak. The energy released in a process is calculated from the area under the curve of intensity versus time; to get the power (rate of energy release), divide the energy by the duration of the process. Even though he states the math wrongly, Vanderjuice suspects the seismographs of the world have responded to a titanic release of energy that took place in essentially no time at all, so that power = energy divided by zero. When physicists see a ''real'' process apparently demanding division by zero, they call it a singularity and go looking for an explanation.

'''the equations of history''' 
Perhaps an allusion to Isaac Asimov's ''Foundation Trilogy'', in which the Psychohistorian Harry Selden calculates equations of history. His equations are (seemingly) thrown off by the advent of a mutant with unusual powers that his predictive equations do not take into account--not unlike the advent of the Tunguska Event.

'''Tchernobyl, the star of Revelation''' 
Tchernobyl is the Ukraine translation (perhaps mistranslation) for Wormwood "the destroying star in the book of Revelation" (page 784). And, as we all know, in 1986 there was a a nuclear meltdown of the Ukranian city Chernobyl.

'''something that had not quite happened yet''' 
In short, an Omen. The Tunguska Event could be seen as an omen of the destructive forces unleashed over the entire course of the 20th Century.

'''Circassian slave''' 
Common figure in European literature about the "Lustful Turk." Circassia is a region in the Caucasus. 

In the early 1860s, after Russian conquest of their region of the Caucasus, nearly half a million Circassians migrated to Turkey. Many Circassian women, prized for their beauty, were sold into slavery.

'''teppisti''' 
Italian: hooligans, hoodlums, thugs

==Page 798==

'''Krakatoa''' 
Cf [[ATD_489-524#Page_506|page 506: Krakatoa]].

'''''mala vita''''' 
Italian: evil life. With more specific reference to Mafia style criminal organizations like the Malavita del Brenta of Venice. There is also a genre of songs glorifying Mafia life called canto di Malavita.

'''brides picotees''' 
A Venetian lace with a hexagonal pattern. French: tickle straps

==Page 799==

'''"Bevis Moistleigh"''' 
Bevis Mostly? Bevis Wetly?
Cf. Sir Bevis from Lang's Red Romance Book around this time. or a Twilight Zone story, Bevis 1960. See Wikipedia. 
Or, see later in ATD, Bevis is an allusion to Beavis & Butthead. [Idiot]

Possibly, given what follows, an allusion to the Bevis Marks Synagogue in London, oldest extant Jewish house of worship in Britain [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bevis_Marks_Synagogue], but more likely a reference to (p.800)''Bevis,the Story of a Boy.''

'''''macchinette''''' 
Italian for small devices.

'''Glagolitic alphabet''' 
See excellent annotation to [[ATD_243-272#Page_252|page 252]] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glagolitic_alphabet this].

'''gematria''' 
As described in the text, each letter of the Hebrew alphabet is also a number. In the simplest form of Gematria, words, phrases and sentences with eqivalent numerical value are somehow linked, in a way promoting exegesis of Torah and Midrash (Torah commentary). More complex, mystical gematria systems are described in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gematria].
Not strictly gematria, but, there is also the so-called "Bible Code" based on another sort of numerical reading of Torah.

==Page 800==

'''''fatkeqëse''''' 
Albanian: translated in the text as "disaster." Is this correct?

'''gongs''' 
Medals.

'''Irredentism''' 
A policy appealing to the idea that "our" lands are unredeemed, i.e., ruled by some outsider, and must be brought into our domain. See annotation to "Eurasia Irredenta" ([[ATD_748-767#Page_761|page 761).]]

'''''Bevis . . . the Story of a Boy''''' 
Theign taunts Bevis with the title of a popular novel, ''Bevis, the Story of a Boy'' (1882), by Richard Jefferies. From bits and pieces of the work quoted online (the book is apparently still in print), the narrative style and dialog writing appear similar to what we've seen in the early Chums passages. What's more, themes associated with this and other books by Jefferies (e.g., the beauty of the untouched countryside) align with some of the ''AtD'' themes. Jefferies also published a "post-Apocalypse" novel called ''After London.'' The Jefferies-Pynchon link may merit a closer look.

This contributor, with a keen sense of sacrifice for the greater good, actually ''read'' the three-volume novel. Jefferies writes in a good plain style but seems not to have thought of putting a plot in his book. Bevis, of what would later be recognized as Boy Scout age, spends several hundred pages of a southern English summer exploring and naming the world within a dozen miles of his home (Africa, Ceylon, the East Indies, South America are all there). He is rich and has, sadly, what we must call criminally negligent parents who don't even look for him when he vanishes into the South Seas for a week at a time. Most of the highlights of the book concern Bevis' killing some creature (to eat it, more often than not) or kicking his faithful dog Pan. Bevis doesn't know the meaning of fear, and my guess is that he went into the Army and got his self-reliant head blown off in South Africa. If ''Bevis'' shares any thematic point with ''AtD'' it is pretty well limited to geographic exhaustiveness; his journeys of exploration are set forth in as much detail as any of the Traverses'.

==Page 801==

'''unprovided for in the future tense of any language''' 
I.e., we have no simple way to describe future events in a chaotic system. You can't say that Chinese butterfly '''will''' cause a windstorm in Brazil.

'''High susceptibility to primordial variables''' 
Chaos theorists talk about "extreme sensitivity to initial conditions."

'''"an emigration of reason itself".......Crusade"''' 
Notice war talk and natural destruction around the Event. 
As well, the Crusades were a series of western European Christian attacks on Islam, the Mideast (with the establishment of Crusader Kingdoms), and even Christian Byzantium/Constantinople, linking the text to 19th and 20th century Imperialist ventures. For a map of the medieval kingdoms, see [http://www.medievaltymes.com/courtyard/images/crusades/first/crusader_states.jpg]

'''Railway Brain''' 
A recognized disorder at one time, explained in the text following in AtD.

==Page 802==

'''croakers''' 
Slang: doctors, especially quacks.

Also: One who croaks, murmurs, grumbles, or complains
unreasonably; one who habitually forebodes evil.

"Croaker" is a long-established (slang) word for "doctor," and in this passage it is quite clear that the doctors (performing curative activities to earn their fees but not really curing anything) feel they are putting one over on everybody else.

Some online citations: 
:http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=19757 
:http://www.whysanity.net/monos/requiem.html 
:http://cancer.iu.edu/news/research/archives/2000/06.pdf ("In the Spotlight," 2nd graf) 
:http://www.classiccrimefiction.com/hardboiled-slang.htm 
:http://www.hobonickels.org/alpert04.htm 
:http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jcnewman/definition.html 
:In short, it wasn't the complainers who "thought they were putting one over," it was the quacks who administered expensive treatments for all ills.

:Slang, sic. I see. Another possible multiple TRP meaning, the complaining doctors, esp. quack "shrinks", relatively new at the time?

'''radioactive mud-bath slime''' 
Treatment with naturally radioactive waters from hot springs was thought to cure many ailments. An example of a radioactive hot spring resort in Austria is Badgastein.

'''Mentone''' 
Mentone, Italy or across the border, Menton (Italian name ''Mentone''), France, in the Riviera. In fact there was no Menton, France, for a long time until 1860 the former Grimaldi town of Mentone, Italy, was bought by France. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menton Menton] is much better known than Mentone; this small town on the Franco-Italian border, about 45 miles northeast of Nice, is the most beautiful town on the French Riviera—''La perle de la France'' (The Pearl of France). It's warm climate makes it a favorite tourist destination. Menton is also a city of gardens; it won the competition for the best city of flowers in France five different times.

'''...an evening sky which had refused the dusk...''' 
Inverse of Against the Day?

'''the boulevard Carnolès''' 
There is a ''Palais Carnolès'' at 3 Avenue de la Madone, Menton (or ''Mentone''). But couldn't locate the Boulevard Carnolès.

'''Mariahilf''' 
The Sixth District of Vienna, known as a shopping district.

==Page 803==

'''midinettes''' 
salesgirls (of Paris).

'''Facharbeiter''' 
German: technician, specialist, skilled worker.

'''Gabika''' 
"Cute" double diminutive for the Hungarian male name Gábor (Gabriel) and also, more commonly, for the female name Gabriella. The ambiguity (also his looks) fits finely the subversion of gender roles in his relationship to Noellyn Fanshawe.
*Wouldn't it be his relationship to Yashmeen? [[User:Jpicco|Jpicco]] 13:16, 11 April 2007 (PDT)

==Page 804==

'''Maida Vale''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maida_Vale Maida Vale] is a street in north-west London. The area, also known as Little Venice, is mostly residential and often extremely affluent.

'''eleven''' 
Vienna is 86 degrees west of the Event, more or less. Converting longitude to time at 15 degrees = 1 hour, we get a time difference of 5 hours 44 minutes. At 7:17 a.m. Event time, it was 1:33 a.m. in Vienna. Now, at 11:00 p.m. the same day, Vienna time, it is 21 hours and 27 minutes after the event. The atmospheric effect has propagated west (possibly against the high-level winds?) from Siberia to Central Europe in quite a short time. All these numbers are rough!

==Page 805==

'''prepare them against the day''' 
Here the phrase means "in anticipation of" or "to be ready for." 
And more. Thematic.
Given what has been said about the Tunguska Event, colored by accounts of the atmospheric effects of the Krakatoa eruption, highly suggestive of Judgment Day.

I shoulda been keepin' notes, dammit! I am sure that regularly through the book I have been spotting deliberate sentences ending with "... ''something'' the day"...but not, until now, with "''against'' the day". And a few score pages ago I'm sure there was a sentence what ended w' "...against the night...", then Tunguska happens, and we now need to be wary o'the day..?

I didn't catch occurrences of "the day" but I did catch a lot of "against the..." Of course I noticed it about halfway through. I would like to read it again and make note of all of the things against some other thing. Also, I believe this is the only place in the book where the title occurs. But then, I do have 6 pages left.

:I wouldn't get too hung up on that. You can find 'em all, but then what? Pynchon loves red herrings. More interesting to track more oblique references to the title, some of which are on the [[Against the Day Title#Title References Oblique and Otherwise|Title Speculations page]]

==Page 806==

'''Toward the end of October all Hell broke loose . . . annex Bosnia''' 
The Bosnian Crisis began with the fear on the part of Austria-Hungary of possible reverses of Turkish concessions since the Russo-Turkish War of 1878 by the newly-resurgent Young Turk movement. The answer to this was annexation of Bosnia, which it had ruled as a colony since 1878. Knowing such a move would be opposed by Serbia, in turn supported by Russia, the Austrians offered to support the right of Russia to move warships through the Bosporus, and to support a declaration of independence from Turkey by Bulgaria. This provoked a general crisis [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_Crisis] from which Serbia had to back down, lacking Russian support. All had been settled in secret meetings in the months before; the Bulgarian (Glagolitic) traffic intercepted by Bevis Moistleigh, above, is thus explained. So is the sense of Grand Conspiracy; all the Great Powers were eventuallly involved. 
See [http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/boshtml/bos127.htm The Annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1908.]

Brigitte Hamann in her book ''Hitler's Vienna'' writes:
"Diplomatic observers explained [the annexation] as an attempt 'to help the country get over its internal calamity'....To be sure, the real reason was indeed a patriotic one: annexing Bosnia and Herzegovina was meant to be an anniversary present to the old emperor [1908 marked the 60th annivesary of FJ's reign]. After all, in wars that had brought much loss, the empire had become smaller and smaller during Franz Josef's reign...Now the empire finally was supposed to become larger again for a change, in a way that was erroneously deemed simple. The consequences of such a step on European politics were vastly underestimated, and preparation for the annexation was flawed on an interntational level." ''Hitler's Vienna'', p. 104. [[User:Sideming|Sideming]]

'''coconut-shy''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconut_shy A coconut shy] (or coconut shie) is a traditional game frequently found as a sidestall at funfairs and fêtes. The game consists of throwing wooden balls at a row of coconuts balanced on posts. Typically a player buys three balls and wins each coconut successfully dislodged. In some cases other prizes may be won instead of the coconuts.
The origins of the game are unclear, although the term is first listed in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1903.
The word 'shy' in this context is a colloquial English term, meaning 'to throw' or toss.

'''šljivovica''' 
One of the spellings of this word for plum brandy (also slivovica, slivovitz, etc.). Serbian culture (perhaps others) seems to attribute almost nationalist cultural significance to the drink (the contributor is Serbian-American).

'''one to fifty million . . . mile-to-the-inch sheets''' 
Two extremes of mapmaking. A 1:50,000,000 map of the United States would fit comfortably on a page of ''AtD'' with most of Mexico and several Canadian provinces. Austria-Hungary at that scale would be about as big as your two thumbprints side by side.

The British Ordnance Survey produced a famous series of inch-to-the-mile sheets (1:63,360); the detail is about fine enough to show the left-turn lane of a city street. At this scale it would take some 200 unhandily large sheets to cover Austria-Hungary.

'''Decisions of the utmost gravity''' 
that lead to Gravity's rainbows'''

==Page 807==

'''Major B. F. Vumb''' 
Major Bum Fuck Vumb, as in Dumb? Another Pynchonian V-name
with the usual associations.

'''''Judensau''''' 
German: Jewish pig.

'''the Vienna Woods''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wienerwald The Vienna Woods] is a low, wooded section of the Alps in eastern Lower Austria and far into the city of Vienna, covering over nearly 390 square miles and including the northermost parts of the entire Alpine chain. It is a favourite outdoor destination for people living around Vienna.

'''Christian Socialists . . . Dr. Karl Lueger''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Lueger Karl Lueger] (pronounced in three syllables, LOO eh ger) (1844-1910) was a Viennese politician, Burgomeister (mayor) of Vienna, and founder of the anti-Semitic Christian Social Party. He was a role model for Adolf Hitler.

'''Burgomeister''' 
This is the English form of the German Burgermeister -- mayor.

'''Reichsrath''' 
Austrian parliament.

'''''Wer Jude ist, bestimme ich''''' 
German: as translated in text.
Lueger used anti-Semitism as the rocket fuel to launch and maintain his political career, yet he himself had Jewish friends and backers. When confronted on this point his retort was this line -- essentially meaning the opposite of how it is used in the text. Instead of non-Jews being labelled Jews indiscriminately, Lueger meant it in the sense that his Jewish friends were ''not'' Jews -- and therefore exempt from persecution. His anti-Semitism was based on religion, not race -- which Hitler later faulted as leading to a situation where Jews would convert in name only.

'''''der schöne'' Karl''' 
German: the handsome, or the nice, Karl. Deeply sarcastic.

==Page 808==

'''"Well actually . . ."''' 
Shanghai, which because of its international status did not require a passport or visa for entry, would become a refuge for Jews made stateless by Nazi Germany or were otherwise refugees in the 1930s. Many tens of thousands were able to reach it, and survived the war and the Holocaust under Japanese occupation. Large numbers reached it using so-called Sugihara Passports, letters of transit issued by the Japanese vice-consul to Lithuania in 1940, with the connivance of Dutch diplomats[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugihara]. Obviously an anachronism, but actually...this is about portents and other bends in Time, perhaps things that echo up and down the Timelines (ours and alternates).

'''Graz''' 
Cf [[ATD_489-524#Page_519|page 519: Graz]].

'''Elefant Hotel''' 
The only listed Elefant Hotel in Austria, a building described as "ancient", is in Salzburg, not Graz; it is currently a Best Western. There is also a Hotel Elefant in Prague, once part ot the Empire; perhaps there was a chain?

'''. . . common Anglo-Habsburg interests...''' 
All the Great Powers found ways to benefit from the Bosnian Crisis, perhaps explaining Theign providing Italian naval decodes to the Austrians. Or, as Latewood accuses below, he is a double agent; McHugh is at least suspicious here. Either way, sending Latewood and Moistleigh on a suicide mission to Bosnia is one way to cover his tracks.

'''Murgasse''' 
Street in Graz. The Murgasse was first mentioned in a document from 1346. The part of town to the south was occupied by the farmers.
Murgasse
8490 Bad Radkersburg, Austria

==Page 809==

'''the Treaty of Berlin''' 
Cf [[ATD_489-524#Page_495|page 495: the Treaty of Berlin]].

'''Novi Pazar''' 
Novi Pazar also figures briefly in ''GR'' (P.14-15, Viking eds.): "...on this obscure sanjak had once hinged the entire fate of Europe" The Novi Pazar desk is manned by Lord Blatherard Osmo. The crisis passed, but Lord Osmo has an adenoid, and this mucoid "lymphatic monster", now independently alive in 1939, is confronted by an agent of The Firm (an outfit very like its temporal predecessor the T.W.I.T. in its interests in the paranormal) , one "Pirate" Prentice; it is "now as big as St Paul's and growing by the hour" threatening all London, but confined successfully--leading to Lord Osmo's neglect of Novi Pazar...A bizarre satiric experience of Crisis Management by Great Power foreign ministries, and the literally sticky mess they created. Currently, some obscure ex-Ottoman sanjaks, cobbled together as Iraq in 1919, are something of a hinge of history; another paramorphic mirroring of 1900/2000.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novi_Pazar Novi Pazar] is now a city of Serbia, about 110 miles directly south of Belgrade. Its name means "a new bazaar" in the local language. It was administered by Austria-Hungary from 1878 to 1908, and by Turkey (Ottoman Empire) from 1908 to 1912, and by Serbia 1912 to now.

'''Constantinople''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantinople Constantinople] was the capital of the Roman Empire (330-395), the Byzantine Empire (395-1204 and 1261-1453), the Latin Empire (1204-1261) and the Ottoman Empire (1453-1922). It is strategically located between the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara on the Bosphorous Strait. It extends both on the European (Thrace) and on the Asian (Anatolia) side of the Bosphorus, and is thereby the only metropolis in the world which is situated on two continents. It was officially renamed to Istanbul in 1930.

'''the Young Turks with their revolution''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Turks The Young Turks] was a coalition of various reform groups in favor of reforming the administration of Ottoman Empire. Their movement brought about the second constitutional era through a revolution against the monarchy. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Turk_Revolution The Young Turk Revolution] of 1908 restored the suspended parliament and was a landmark in the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. The Revolution arose from the Ottoman peoples' near-universal opposition to the tyranny and corruption of the Sultan, which forged an unlikely union of reform-minded pluralists, Turkish nationalists, and Western-oriented secularists.

'''the vile Aerenthal''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alois_Lexa_von_Aehrenthal Aloys (or Alois) von Aerenthal] (1854-1912), Austrian foreign minister (1906-1912) who engineered the annexation of Bosnia in 1908.

'''in three-quarter time''' 
Waltzes are in 3/4 time and so the national powers are waltzing into a European war. Note the chain-like sliding/closing/turning step sequence in Viennese Waltz, and also the rhythm itself represented by the repeated dactyl "and so on, and so on".

Two plausible references: events driven by Vienna, the world's waltz capital, and a dark comic song recorded by the Kingston Trio in the 1960s: "Merry Minuet." In 3/4 time, it includes lyrics commenting on ethnic hatred, irredentism and inevitable nuclear catastrophe.

In fact, the sequence of events described here as a possibility in 1908 were realized in 1914, when Russia, in the crisis provoked by a Serbian youth group's assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, this time backed Serbia, resulting in the cascade of troop mobilizations that became World War I.

'''Mitrovitsa''' 
A Serbian town near the Turkish-Serbian border (now in Kosovo), about 25 miles southeast of Novi Pazar and 140 miles southeast of Sarajevo. The full Serbian name now is Kosovska Mitrovica, the Albanian name is Mitrovicë, and the population is mostly Albanian nowadays. (Some precognition about Novi Pazar.)

'''a railroad link from Sarajebo to Mitrovitsa, and thus to the Ægean Sea''' 
A railroad of 210 miles long linking Mitrovitsa (Turkish-Serbian border) throuhg Skopje (Macedonia) to Salonica (Greece) by the Ægean Sea alredy existed since December 1874.

'''Isvolsky''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Izvolski Alexander Petrovich Izvolsky] (Izvolski, Izvolskii) (1856-1919), Russian foreign minister (1906-1910), a major architect of the Anglo-Russian Entente, who on September 15, 1908, traded Bosnia-Herzegovina to Austria in exchange for Austria's help in opening the Bosporus and Dardanelles to Russian ships. Pynchon's spelling may well be from a contemporary source; consistent transliteration is a more recent fetish.

'''Grey''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Grey,_1st_Viscount_Grey_of_Fallodon Sir Edward Grey] (1862-1933), British Foreign Secretary 1905-16. He was the other major architect of the Anglo-Russian Entente (1907).

'''The Dardanelles''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dardanelles The Dardanelles], an international waterway, is a narrow strait in northwestern Turkey connecting the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara. It separates Europe (Gallipoli peninsula) and the mainland of Asia. With the Bosporus, Dardanelles connects the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea.
Talk about a hinge of history! The Dardanelles were the site of the Trojan War; Troy being located on the western, Asian side of the strait.
Xerxes and Alexander marched through. It has figured in the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War and is the site of the Battle of Gallipoli in WWI.

==Page 810==

'''It's like having the lights brought up for a bit...''' 
As the crisis wound down to war in 1914, Sir Edward Grey (still Foreign Minister) is famously quoted as having said, "The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime."[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Grey,_1st_Viscount_Grey_of_Fallodon]

'''Vlado Clissan''' 
His name comes from his hometown of Clissa, but this is the Italian name of the place. In Serbo-Croatian it is ''Klis.'' A pseudonym?

'''Blutwurst Special''' 
German: blood sausage.

'''toad-in-the-hole''' 
a traditional British dish. It consists of sausages in Yorkshire pudding batter, usually served with vegetables and gravy.

==Page 811==

'''"iron convergences and receding signal-lamps"''' 
our 'free choices' in . . . life; so ironic at this point.

Kurt Vonnegut, in ''Slaughterhouse Five'', described the human point of view as from consciousness strapped to a railroad car, forever facing only backward; from this vantage, history looks single and inevitable, whereas in reality the train of history is moving over unknown numbers of (from this perspective unseen) switch points, the settings of which are in fact changeable (the more complex view being taken by an extraterrestrial species, the Tralfamadorians, who can see forward to the many possibilities), alternate histories possible at every switch. The character Pointsman in ''GR'' in some ways embodies these possibilities.

'''The Semmering tunnel''' 
It refers to the Semmering mountain-peak tunnel of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semmering_Railway the Semmering Railway]. The tunnel, with a length of 4,700 ft, was opened on May 15, 1854. (A new Semmering tunnel, through the mountain base, was built in 1952). The Semmering Railway, having a total of 15 tunnels, is a part of the Austrian Souther Railway (Südbahn) connecting Vienna to Trieste. The world's first mountain railway with a standard gauge, it was built between 1848 and 1854 and is now a UNESCO World Heritage site.

'''the Mur Valley''' 
The valley of the Mur River which, about 300 miles long, runs through the south-central Austria, northeast Slovenia and northern Croatia, where it flows into the Drava River. The biggest city in the Mur Valley is Graz, Austria.

'''Slavonian''' 
Today the name applies to the eastern part of Croatia, but a map will confirm that the route passes through the Slovenian plain. Writers before the World War must have had difficulty keeping Slovenia, Slovakia and Slavonia straight, especially since all were inhabited by Slavonic peoples.

'''the Slavonian plain''' 
The Slavonian plain is a fertile agricultural lowland in eastern Croatia and beyond. It is part of the larger Pannonia plain. It includes three primary rivers: the Drava in the north and the Sava in the south and the Danube in the east. The area between the Sava and Drava rivers and bounded on the east by the Hungarian border is the historical region Slavonia forming the eastern part of Croatia.

'''Ljubljana''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ljubljana Ljubljana] is the capital of Slovenia. It is also the cultural and economical center of the country. It is located in central Slovenia.

'''the Karst''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kras The Karst] is a limestone borderline plateau region of southwestern Slovenia and northeastern Italy. It rises quite steeply above the neighboring landscape and is famous for its caves including Vilenica in Slovenia, the oldest tourist cave in the world. In addition to caves, erosion has produced in the Karst fissures, sinkholes and underground streams.

'''Općina''' 
A village about 4 miles northeast of Trieste.

'''the Piazza Grande''' 
Trieste's central square, a great rectangle lined on three sides by stately imperial buildings, its fourth, short side, revealing the Adriatic sea.

'''the Piazza Cavana''' 
Trieste's "Nighttown" before World War I.

'''Austrian double''' 
Latewood, in light of Theign's treatment of Yashmeen, and the apparent passing of Italian naval decrypts to Austria, accuses Theign of being an Austrain double agent.

==Page 812==

'''a Fortuny gown''' 
[http://www.chick.net/proust/fortuny.html Mariano Fortuny] (1871-1949), a Spanish fashion designer worked mostly in Venice, created some of the most remarkable fabrics and dresses of 20th century. His pleated silk gowns and velvet cloaks are regarded by collectors and museums around the world as the unique expression and embodiment of a craft at its best. He was one of the source of inspiration to Marcel Proust.

'''Mestre Bridge''' 
Mestre is a town in Veneto, northern Italy, a frazione of the comune of Venice. Located on the mainland,the city is connected to Venice by a large rail and road bridge, called Ponte della Libertà (Freedom Bridge). Cf [[ATD_695-723#Page_706|Page 706: Mestre bridge]].

'''Cloisters Court''' 
Cf [[ATD_489-524#Page_490|page 490: Cloisters Court]].

'''King's''' 
Cf [[ATD_489-524#Page_497|page 497: King's]]

==Page 813==

''''And England's far, and honour a name'''' 
Cyprian quoting from the 1897 poem [[Vitai Lampada|"Vitaï Lampada"]] ("They Pass the Torch of Life") by Sir Henry Newbolt (1862-1938), previously quoted on page 236 [[ATD_219-242#Page_236|(also see annotation)]].

'''"honour"''' 
Cf. Falstaff on.

'''the Caffè degli Specchi''' 
Trieste was one of the first European cities took to coffee in a big way.
It is the leading coffee port on the Mediterranean and is renowned for its cafes and coffee. The first coffe houses in Trieste opened at the beginning of the 18th century. They become very popular with artists and intellecturals. Several of the original coffe houses are still going strong; the Caffè degli Specchi, located in the Piazza Unità d'Italia and opened since 1839, is one of them.

==Page 814==

'''Lateeners''' 
A lateener is a boat with a lateen sail: a triangular sail with one edge tied to a long spar, which is supported in the middle on a mast.

'''''Strichmädchen''''' 
German: streetwalker, hooker, prostitute.

'''LLoyd Austriaco''' 
A ship line. Lloyd Triestino was formed in 1919 as the successor to Lloyd Austriaco following the incorporation of Trieste into the Kingdom of Italy on January 3rd 1919.

'''Molo San Carlo''' 
A pier (''molo'') in Trieste. See [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Molo_San_Carlo.jpg Molo San Carlo']picture around 1900.

==Page 815==

'''"Nimrod" . . . from Elgar's ''Enigma Variations''''' 
"Nimrod" is the ninth section of this major 1899 work by English composer Edward Elgar (1857-1934). Like the other 13 sections, it characterizes a family friend; this one is A. J. Jaeger (whose name means "hunter" in German, hence "Nimrod," the name of a hunter mentioned in the Bible). [http://www.elgar.org/3enigma.htm Here is a very good description of the work and "Nimrod" in particular.]

The "Nimrod" variation is perhaps the most poignant of the piece; it rises to a cresendo and slowly, sadly, fades; an anthem for the fading of the 19th century.

'''"La Gazza Ladra"''' 
Overture by Rossini to an opera whose title means "The Thieving Magpie." It is as bright and impersonal as "Nimrod" is serious and sentimental.

'''"The Volga Boatmen" . . . "Auld Lang Syne"''' 
The puzzle in the "Enigma" Variations is this: Variations are based on a theme, but Elgar never states the theme; what is the melody? These are two of the popular guesses.

'''Gonzalo''' 
Gonzalo who?

'''Millicent''' 
? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millicent_Fawcett Millicent Fawcett] (1847-1929), a British suffragist and an early feminist. Is this the right person?

'''Δt''' 
Mathematical symbol used to represent a short length of time.

In addition, Pynchon is very concerned with dt,(little delta-t) the time differential, an infinitesimal change in time; to quote Pynchon from ''Lot 49'' (Lippincott, 1965 p.129): "a vanishingly small instant in which change had to be confronted at last for what it was, where it could no longer disguise itself as something innocuous like an average rate; where the velocity dwelled in the projectile though the projectile be frozen in midflight, where death dwelled in the cell though the cell be looked in on at its most quick." But, the paragraph goes on, "dt" also suggests DTs, Delirium Tremens (alcohol withdrawal) a state giving access to hallucinatory experiences, "spectra beyond the known Sun, music made purely of Antarctic loneliness and fright." Which is the general mood in the wake of the Tunguska Event and the Bosnian Crisis, or should be, if the characters were not so dutifully repressing it. (In ''Lot 49'' the realization of the dt/DTs connection has to do with Oedipa Maas' realization of the finality of death, and what inaccessible realms of experience are lost with each individual's death).

:Are you confusing Δ''t'', symbolizing a finite duration, with ''dt,'' a duration shrunk to an infinitesimal? 
(Possibly--my physics/calculus may be rusting. The connection may still hold; note emendation above--thanks. Edit further if necessary!).

'''Davos''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davos Davos] is a municipality in the eastern part of Switzerland. A popular destination for the rich and ailing because its high valley climate has long been considered excellent by doctors for curing lung desease. It is the setting of Thomas Mann's ''The Magic Mountain''. Davos is famous as the host of the World Economic Forum, an annual meeting of global political and business elites.

'''Föhn''' 
German. [http://www.bom.gov.au/lam/glossary/fpagegl.shtml#fo Wind] warmed and dried by descent on the lee side of a mountain. Germans even today acknowledge that its presence (say, in Munich) affects mood and emotions.

'''co-conscious with the everyday''' 
again. Linked to creativity here.

'''Ramanujan's Formula''' 
an elegant hyperbolic summation, Ramanujan's formula for the Riemann zeta function evaluated at the odd positive integers. Cf [[ATD_489-524#Page_498|page 498: Rumanujan]] didn't come to the attention of Western mathematicians until he wrote to Hardy in late 1912 - early 1913 and travelled to Cambridge in 1914. Is Yashmeen prescient?

==Page 816==

'''''dolce far niente''''' 
Italian: sweet idleness (literally, sweet to do nothing).

'''divided second''' 
A dt.

'''of his entry''' 
Vlado the Impaler?

'''the Karst''' 
Cf [[ATD_792-820#Page_811|page 811: the Karst]]. 
Generic "karst topography" takes its name from this area of Slovenia and Italy (locally called ''kras'' and ''carso''). The terrain features limestone with fissures and cavities eroded by water. Caves as well as underground streams and lakes are common.

'''''osmizza''''' 
These are informal eating places out in rural areas, where farmers sell their meats, cheeses, olives and wines.

'''Illyria''' 
The Roman province in which modern Trieste is located.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illyria Illyria] was in Clssical antiquity a region in the western part of today's Balkan Peninsula, found by the tribes and clans of Illyrian, an ancient people who spoke the Illyrian languages. Illyria was a formidable local power in the 4th century BC, only after the Roman conquest in 168 BC did Illyria become one of the Roman provinces, Illyricum. In the context "ancient before Illyria" referrs to the period before the Roman conquest.

==Page 817==

'''quiet spaces between trams, unpredictable, even, she imagined, mathematically so''' 
An observation that might have seemed "foreign" to mathematics at the time she made it. A [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisson_distribution Poisson distribution] expresses the probability that a specific number of trams arrive during a given time interval but cannot determine the exact arrival time of the next tram. The length of the "quiet space" varies in a ''chaotic'' way—which doesn't at all mean that the transit system is random.

The appearance of "chaos theory" in the second half of the 20th century provided a vehicle for interpreting the process, and observations like that of the trams were incorporated into mathematics. Two familiar "rhythms" have this quality of chaotic intervals: the beating of the human heart and the sound of water dripping from a faucet. The second part of the phrase is subtle: the time of the next tram/thud/drip can't be mathematically predicted (to arbitrary accuracy), but it is possible to describe in mathematical terms the ''way'' in which it's unpredictable. James Gleick's [http://www.around.com/chaos.html ''Chaos, Making a New Science,''] is just one of the good sources on this new theory.

'''never farther than half a block from the counter-soporific fluid''' 
Perhaps an allusion or parallel to the 21st century ubiquity of Starbucks.

:Cf [[ATD_792-820#Page_813|page 813: the Caffe degli Specchi]].

'''''Svr šavam!''''' 
Croatian/Serbian: I'm finishing. Also, implausibly, written ''Svršavam.''

'''Velebit''' 
Cf [[ATD_318-335#Page_326|page 326: Velebit]].
A ridge that runs parallel to the Croatian Adriatic coast a few tens of miles south of Trieste. Lying a short distance inland, it is made up of limestone karst.

==Page 818==

'''Zengg''' 
Cf [[ATD_695-723#Page_697|page 697: Zengg]].

'''Veglia''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krk_(island) Veglia], the second largest Adriatic island, is a Croatian island (''Krk'') in the northern Adriatic Sea, located near Fiume.

'''persisted from day to day''' 
The image again of the storm that retains its identity over a long time.

'''Stationary waves''' 
Crests and troughs that don't move. Seen more often where water is flowing (up/downstream of rocks in rapids), but also where waves coming onshore interact with those reflected from the shore.

'''Novlian''' 
A family from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novi_Vinodolski Novi], a town on the Adriatic coast in Croatia about 10 miles north of Zengg (''Senj'') and 22 miles southeast of Fiume (''Rijeka'').

'''Uskok''' 
Cf [[ATD_695-723#Page_697|page 697: Uskok]]. 
Serbian/Croatian: fugitive. Writers even in antiquity noted that piracy was a main economic activity along this coast.

In all, Vlado seems very like the Traverse brothers, set against the modern world, or anyway modern power arrangements, a bit of an anarchist in his own way. But his grievances have historic depth and resonance, more of what Pynchon in ''V.'' called "Temporal Bandwidth".

Uskok is also a place's name.

'''the Argonauts''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argonauts The Argonauts], in Greek mythology, were a band of heroes who, in the years before the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_war Trojan War], accompanied Jason to Colchis in his quest to find the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_fleece Golden Fleece]. Their name comes from their ship ''Argo'' which in turn was named after its builder Argus.

'''Split''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split Split], situated on a small peninsula on the eastern shores of the Adriatic Sea about 150 miles southeast of Zengg, is the largest and most important city in Dalmatia, Croatia.

'''Clissa''' 
Town from which Vlado Clissan takes his ''nom de guerre.'' Locally called [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klis Klis] which is located inland just 5 miles northeast of Split near the eponymous mountain pass. Because of its geographical position, Clissa is susceptible to a rather strong bora wind.

==Page 819==

'''You know the play by Shakespeare, ''The Merchant of Venice''? [...] We keep hoping till the end for Antonio to come to grief.''' 
In ''The Merchant of Venice'', Antonio, the protagonist, is a wealthy merchant in Venice, his wealth coming from the ships he owns, which could easily be at peril from pirates. So, natch, Vlado and his comrades who attack Venetian ships are pulling for the pirates.

'''''mala vita''''' 
bad life

'''palačinka''' 
Serbo-Croatian for crepe or thin pancake.

==Page 820==

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

ATD 678-694

2007-05-12T22:32:02Z

Mcg: typo fix Miditerranean...

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

==Page 678==

'''''Whitechapel . . . Ripping . . .'' murders of the late '80s''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitechapel Whitechapel] is an inner city district east of Charing Cross, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.
The heart of the district is Whitechapel Road itself, named for a small chapel of ease dedicated to St. Mary. In Victorian era Whitechapel area was full of poor English country stock which was swelled by large number of immigrants. This endemic poverty drove many women to prostitution. Such prostitutes were the victims of the serial killer known as [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_the_Ripper Jack the Ripper] who terrorised this part of London in the autumn of 1888.

'''''Piggott's''''' 
???

'''the Strand''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.ord/wiki/Strand,_London The Strand] is the popular name of a street in London called ''Strand''. It derives its name from the Old English "shore" or "river bank". It currently starts at Trafalgar Square and runs east to join Fleet Street at Temple Bar. There are many prominent buildings, churches, and palaces along the street.

'''exhibiting that sinister British craving for the dark and shiny...''' 
Perhaps an Orwellian reference here:

:'It's this bloody thing that does it,' she said, ripping off the scarlet sash of the Junior Anti-Sex League and flinging it on to a bough. Then, as though touching her waist had reminded her of something, she felt in the pocket of her overalls and produced a small slab of chocolate. She broke it in half and gave one of the pieces to Winston. Even before he had taken it he knew by the smell that it was very unusual chocolate. '''It was dark and shiny''', and was wrapped in silver paper.<ref>''1984'', George Orwell, 1948, Ch. X</ref>

The whole paragraph also recalls the Velvet Underground Song ''Venus in Furs'' [http://www.lyricsdomain.com/22/velvet_underground/shiny_shiny_shiny_boots_of_leather.html Lyrics], a hymn of the SM/Fetish-scene: "dark and shiny... patent boots... [http://www.lorraineelement.com/links.htm mackintoshes]..." reads like catchwords from the covers of [http://www.atomage.co.uk/index.html Atomage Magazine], whose editor [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sutcliffe_%28designer%29 John Sutcliffe], btw, did the costumes for the TV-Series [http://dissolute.com.au/avweb/fashion1.html The Avengers].

'''...students of the chimpanzee...''' 
A stretch? According to a paper done by Arthur W. Epstein (1987), (male) chimpanzees and other primates might develop a fetish: "The endowing of an object with ... [erotic associations] has been noted in a zoo-dwelling chimpanzee ... who displayed sexual arousal toward one specific object, a rubber boot.... The chimpanzee quickly approached, gazed at the boot and handled it. The penis became erect and was touched to the boot. Shortly thereafter, manual self-stimulation and ejaculation occurred. The ejaculate was then consumed. This response was said to be invariable and occurred whether the boot was worn by a keeper or simply placed in the cage. (pp. 143-144)" [http://www.scottsdalecc.edu/ricker/psy101/readings/Section_3/3-1.html source]
:To me, the text implies the chimpanzee likes all the bright and shiny stuff, not that it has any neurotic fetishes...see list down to albedo. The experts in 'erotic neuropathy' see what 'students of the chmpanzee' know. [User: MKOHUT, February 4, 2007]

'''marcasite''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcasite Wikipedia]

Marcasite, in keeping with the idea of bilocations and doubles, is also a ''twinned'' mineral, it's opposing pair being pyrite (fool's gold), much as diamonds are twinned with graphite.
[http://www.galleries.com/minerals/sulfides/marcasit/marcasit.htm]

'''queasy albedo''' 
Albedo is the ratio of reflected to incident electromagnetic radiation power. It is a unitless measure indicative of a surface's or body's reflectivity. The word is derived from albus, a Latin word for "white".

'''streetlighting... luminous equivalent of a ...shriek''' 
Thematic. 

Whitechapel and white color theme all over.

'''buskers''' 
persons who entertain in a public place for donations.

'''Duke of Cumberland's Theatre''' 
Queen Victoria's uncle Ernest Augustus was the Duke of Cumberland; [[ATD_219-242#Page_230|see annotation to page 230.]] A real theater?

==Page 679==

'''co-tenant of Tarot Card XV...Renfrew 
Werfner is other co-tenant surely. 
Card XV is the Devil.

'''K. & K. Landwehr''' 
German. ''K. und K.'' or ''K-K'', Kaiserlich-Königlich, Imperial and Royal. ''Landwehr,'' a section of the "joint" Austro-Hungarian Army over which only the Austrian (as disctinct from Austro-Hungarian) government had authority.

'''''slightly more mineral''''' 
cf Frank's "mineral condition", [[ATD_374-396#Page_395|page 395]].

'''Jack the Ripper''' 
The serial killer in Whitechapel district of London in 1888. Cf [[ATD_678-694#Page_678|page 678:''Whitechapel . . . Ripping . . . murders'']].

==Page 680==

'''"including the blood everyone's come for"''' 
The audience at a musical about Jack the Ripper 'comes for blood'? Revenge
motivations even here? Notice response of other audience member...

'''''Sowieso''''' 
German: anyway.

'''Piccadilly Circus''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piccadilly_Circus Piccadilly Circus], a circular open space at a street junction, is a famous traffic intersection and public space at the heart of West End, London. It links to several well-known theathres and is close to major shopping areas in a central location. Its memorial fountain status itself is a major tourist attraction.

==Page 681==

'''the tragedy at Mayerling''' 
It refers to the deaths of Austrian Crown Prince, Archduke Rudolf, and his girlfriend, Baroness Mary Vetsera, at the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mayerling_Incident Mayerling] hunting lodge in Lower Austria on January 30, 1889. Austrian officials regarded it as an act of a suicide pact but many others believed an international conspiracy of murder.

'''old F.F.''' 
Franz Ferdinand. (Cf [[ATD_26-56#Page_45|page 45:Francis Fernand]]). The eldest son of the younger brother of Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph. Austria's heir apparent after the death of Crown Prince Rudolf in 1889. His assassination in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, precipitated World War I.

'''''Liebestod''''' 
German: love-death. Denotes in particular the climactic scene in Wagner's opera ''Tristan und Isolde,'' but here means the fatal end of an affair. And Rudolf's unfortunate love-death led to Austria's death-love thru Ferdinand!?

'''''Fachsimpelei''''' 
German: shop talk.

'''the Triple Alliance''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_Alliance_(1882) The treaty] by which Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy pledged on May 20, 1882, to support each others militarily in the event of an attack against any of them by two or more great powers.

'''''Ach, die Vetsera''''' 
German: ah, the Vetsera. Baroness Mary Vetsera was the mistress of Crown Prince Rudolf. In 1889 both were found dead at the Mayerling hunting lodge.

'''''cherchons la femme''''' 
French: let us seek the woman. The phrase usually means to look for the woman who has set events in motion; here it's used ironically to mean that focusing on the search for the woman will mask any questions about Rudolf and his father.

'''[Pynchon thru]Khautsch links the first famous serial killer in history, Jack the Ripper, with the assassination of Crown Prince Rudolf--he could have been at Mayerling!--and the serial genocidal killings of Austria? "Railway depot...gates disposed radially in all directions"...p.683 "lives by the trainload"...
The implication, though, is that all of those thousands of potential murderers were, in fact, the one true murderer--that each of the victims was killed by an unspecified but potentially enormous number of killers, simultaneously...

:serial genocidal killings of Austria ?

==Page 682==

'''Trafalgar Square''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trafalgar_Square Trafalgar Square] is a square in London that commemorates the Battle of Trafalgar (October 21, 1805) in which the British Navy of 27 ships soundly defeated the French and Spanish combined fleet of 33 ships west of Cape Trafalgar in south-west Spain. The square, a popular site for political demonstrations, is the location of Nelson's Column.

'''the "Boston"''' 
A dance somewhat like the waltz.

'''pentatonic''' 
A scale with five notes per octave. C-D-E-G-A(-C) or A-C-D-E-G(-A), for example. Western listeners sense this as an "Oriental" scale—Ravel used it in the "Empress of the Pagodas" movement of his ''Mother Goose'' Suite—but it occurs much more widely ("Loch Lomond").

==Page 683==

'''Franz Josef''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Joseph_I_of_Austria Franz Josef] (1830-1916), Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary and Bohemia from 1848 to 1916. His 68-year reign is the third-longest in the recorded history of Europe.

'''the Belvedere''' 
The Belvedere Palace, Vienna, comprises two magnificent baroque mansions facing each other across a sloping formal garden. Prince Eugene of Savoy, whose campaigns against the Turks enabled the Habsburg Emprie to reclaim Hungary, purchased some land beyond Vienna's city walls in 1693, upon which he ordered a park with elaborate water features and fountains to be built. In 1714 the Prince had the lower Belvedere built and in 1721 the upper one. The Palace now is open to public tours. See [http://www.freefoto.com/browse.jsp?id=02-07-3 Belvedere Pictures].

'''Prince Eugene of Savoy''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Eugene_of_Savoy Prince Eugene of Savoy] (1663-1736) was the greatest general to serve the Habsburgs.

'''Ballhausplatz''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballhausplatz Ballhausplatz] is a square in central Vienna containing the building that over 200 years has been the official residence of the State Chancellor. As a result, ''Ballhausplatz'' is often used as shorthand for the Austrian Chancellery

'''the Anglo-Russian Entente''' 
Cf [[ATD_615-643#Page_618|page 618:the Anglo-Russian Entente]].

'''Wilhelmstrasse''' 
Cf [[ATD_489-524#Page_496|page 496:Wilhelmstrasse]].

'''''gemütlicher alter Junge''''' 
German: good old boy.

'''a man who is standing ''where he should not be''.''' 
This ominous sentence could be applied to the likes of GWB and those shady charcters who allegedly stood on the grassy knoll (among others).

'''some symmetry was being broken''' 
Spontaneous symmetry breaking in physics takes place when a system that is symmetric with respect to some symmetry group goes into a vacuum state that is not symmetric. At this point the system no longer appears to behave in a symmetric manner. A common example to help explain this phenomenon is a ball sitting on top of a hill. This ball is in a completely symmetric state. However, it is not a stable one: the ball can easily roll down the hill. At some point, the ball will spontaneously roll down the hill in one direction or another. The symmetry has been broken because the direction the ball rolled down in has now been singled out from other directions [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneously_broken_symmetry].

Here, the meaning appears to be that the equilibrium of the twinned professors is broken; Werfner is in London, where he "should not be" (Renfrew's territory); a historical stasis has been broken; this must mean something. Perhaps a foreshadowing of the collapse of the Great Power "symmetry" of 1814 to 1914.

Not spontaneous symmetry broken, just plain broken symmetry. Cf [[ATD_525-556#Page_537|page 537:broken symmetries]].

==Page 684==

'''da capo''' 
Musical direction. Italian: (repeat) from the top.

'''Spitalfields''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spitalfields Spitalfields] is an area in Tower Hamlets, in the East End of London, near to Liverpool Station and Brick Lane.

'''Brick Lane''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brick_Lane Brick Lane] is a street in the East End of London. the street is paved with bricks and the area was known in earlier times fo brick and tile manfacture.

'''Stepney''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepney Stepney] is an inner-city district in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets as Spitalfields.

==Page 685==

'''[D.C.]''' 
[[ATD_678-694#Page_684|See ''da capo.'']]

'''''impersonating British idiots''''' 
Again and again in ''AtD'' we see the vital importance of being able to act the part of an idiot.

'''Lew, detective realizing he is also a hired hand, has an epiphany into bilocation/doubling theme re Renfrew and Werfner.''' 
"kept separate.. [by].. two distinct kinds of light."'''p. 686 

==Page 686==
'''Dr. Otto Ghloix''' 
p. 132 & 148.

Gloix bears some resemblance to C.G. Jung, a Swiss alienist (psychotherapist) interested in paranormal phenomena (ala T.W.I.T) whose comments on fate are exactly those as presented here by Ghloix. Jung, born in 1875, would have been about 31 at the time of the novel's action.
Interestingly, Jung chose to go into this field after reading Krafft-Ebbing. Also, 1906 was the year Jung initiated contact with Freud.

Specifically Jung wrote:

''The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves.''

'''''beyul''''' 
Interesting article on beyuls: [http://www.khandro.net/mysterious_places.htm]

'''Pure Land''' 
Shambala but any other meanings?
Yes, Pure Land Buddhism....a faith oriented branch of Mahayana Buddhism that held that the world was in decline (entropically speaking!) and that Nirvana was getting harder and harder for common folk (the preterite) to reach. This school teaches that devotion to Amitabha brings re-birth in the Pure Land from which Nirvana is guaranteed.

==Page 687==

'''the coal of Dr. Ghloix's Corona''' 
Easier to see when people smoke in the dark. The glowing red end of his cigar.

'''a small Welsbach unit''' 
Welsbach mantle, a device for generating bright white light when heated by a flame. It is one of many inventions by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Auer_von_Welsbach Welsbach] (1858-1929), an Austrian scientist and inventor.

'''''Plafond Lumineux''''' 
French: luminous ceiling.

'''the light offered the batsmen at the end of the day''' 
Cricket term whereby the umpires give the batsmen the opportunity to cease play due to deteriorating light. Also referred to as "bad light" (cf page 691:28).

==Page 688==

'''lantern-horn''' 
"Since horn can be softened and made malleable, and be molded into various shapes, such as spoons, . . . combs . . ." In Middle Ages, [http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/horn/horn2.html horn] "was also used to make ''lantern panes'', window panes," etc.

'''we risk being divided in two . . . Atonement, in any case comes much later''' 
A superbly constructed wordplay. "Atonement" means seeking and gaining release from guilt or ostracism, but the word is constructed from "at one." So the risk of splitting in two is followed, at length, by becoming one again.

==Page 690==

'''the Macedonian Question''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macedonia_%28region%29 Macedonia] is a geographical and historical region of the Balkan peninsula in southeastern Europe whose area was politically re-defined several times in the past. Nowhere in Europe are races and nationalities (Greeks, Bulgarians, Albanians, Bosniaks, Serbs, Turks, etc) so inextricably intermingled as in Macedonia. Much of the difficulty of the Macedonian problem lies in the communal antagonisms of these peoples, and in the ambitions of the neighboring Balkan States and the intrigues of the "Great Powers". Until the summer of 1878, there was no Macedonian Question because it was part of the general Balkan question. 
Russia's ambition of having access to the Mediterranean Sea and extending her influence over the Balkan Peninsula by driving the Ottoman Empire out from there led to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Turkish_War,_1877%E2%80%931878 the Russo-Turkish War] (1877-1878). The war ended with [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_San_Stefano the Treaty of San Stefano] (March 3, 1878) by which Romania, Serbia, Montenegro obtained their independence and a Russophile [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Bulgaria Greater Bulgaria] was established causing great concerns in Britain, Austria-Hungary, Germany, France and Italy. The Greater Bulgaria was then dismembered by the "Great Powers" in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_of_Berlin the Congress of Berlin] (June 13 - July 13, 1878) under the terms of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Berlin%2C_1878 the Treaty of Berlin]: Bulgaria was divided into Principality of Bulgaria, East Rumelia, and the Macedonia, which was returned to the Ottoman Empire. On September 6, 1885, however, the Bulgarians of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_of_Bulgaria East Rumelia unified with Bulgaria] making Bulgaria the largest state in the Balkans then, much to the annoyance of Serbia and Greece, and the anger of Russia. Now, the stage was set for the appearance of [http://www.mak-truth.com/fe_mqest.htm the Macedonia Question]: with all the Slavs living in Macedonia but under the Turkish rule providing a new focus point for the century-old Balkan rivalries to explode in various forms. 
[http://en.wikipedia.rog/wiki/Serbo-Bulgarian_War A two-week war] (November 14-28, 1885) was fought between Serbia and Bulgaria right after the Bulgaria's Unification. These two countries had their different ambitions for Macedonia which led to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balkan_Wars two Balkan Wars] in 1912-1913 involving other Balkan countries. And then World War I, World War II, War in Slovenia (1991), Croatian War of Independence (1991-1995), Bosnia War (1992-1995), Kosovo War (1999), Southern Serbia Conflict (2001) and Macedonia Conflict (2001), and up to present day. The question of Kosovo's independence is still not solved as of 2007 and prospect of violence there is highly likely.

'''Sofia''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofia Sofia] is the capital of Bulgaria, located in the western part of the country.

'''Balkan Range''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balkan_Mountains Balkan Mountain Range] runs 340 miles from Eastern Serbia eastward through Central Bulgaria onto the Black Sea.

'''Sredna Gora''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sredna_Gora Sredna Gora] is a mountain range in Central Bulgaria.

'''''das Interdikt''''' 
Prof Werfner's name for a 200-mile long, from Sofia to the Black Sea, phosgene (poison gas) line.

'''irreversible, pitiless''' 
Definition of a Doomsday Machine. See ''Dr. Strangelove'' and too many other authorities to count.

'''Charlottenburg''' 
District of Berlin, west and south of the city center. Woods, a castle.

Charlottenburg was an independent city until 1920. As a symbol of power and authority, Charlottenburg here refers to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlottenburg_Palace Charlottenburg Palace] (now a museum) in that city.

'''Fenner's''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenner's Fenner's] is the cricket ground of the University of Cambridge. It has hosted first-class cricket matches since 1848, and many world-class players appeared there.

'''I.Z.''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Zingari I Zingari] is an English amateur cricket club which was formed on July 4 1845. The name was from the Italian for "the gypsies".

'''the Gentleman Bomber''' 
Cf [[ATD_219-242#Page_236|page 236: The Gentleman Bomber of Headingly]]

==Page 691==

'''Cheapside''' 
Cf [[ATD_219-242#Page_234|page 234: Cheapside]]

'''Dr. Coombs De Bottle''' 
Cf Page 234.

'''carbonyl chloride''' 
Phosgene, a poison gas used in World War I, Cf [[ATD_219-242#Page_236|page 236: Phosgene]].

'''the Jameson Raid''' 
Cf [[ATD_119-148#Page_146|page 146: Dr. Jim's little adventure]].

==Page 692==
'''"No one seemed to be in charge"''' 
The non-violent situation and meaning of anarchism. Things still worked and Lew on the next page felt free, released from a "contract", the social, political contract?

==Page 693==
'''scabland''' 
An elevated area of barren rocky land with little or no soil cover, often crossed by dry stream channels. Often used in the plural.

==References==
<references/>

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

ATD 588-614

2007-05-02T23:55:39Z

Mcg: /* Page 604 */

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

==Page 588==

'''tannery''' 
In ancient history, tanning was considered a noxious or "odiferous trade" and relegated to the outskirts of town, amongst the poor. Indeed, tanning by ancient methods is so foul smelling that tanneries are still isolated from those towns today where the old methods are used.

'''Gottlob''' 
Literally "praise to God", as an exclamation also "Thank God!". Though it is rare, it is a real German name.

'''Humfried''' 
A German translation of Humphrey. This was not an existing German name any time after the medieval, though.

'''Gauss's brain''' 
After Carl Friedrich Gauss died in 1855, his brain was preserved for research purposes. To this day, it is in the possession of the University of Göttingen. Cf [[ATD_489-524#Page 498|page 498:Gauss]].

'''impervious to the wind''' 
(Attribute of tanned leather?)

'''''"Heiliger Bimbam!"''''' 
A German expression of surprise, translated elsewhere as "Holy Moly!"

'''It is she, she!''' 
probably an allusion to H. Rider Haggard's She. See Wikipedia entry. She has been purified by a pillar of fire. In ''Against the day'', she rises from the swamp. Carl Jung, who used the novel ''She'' (1887) as an example of anima, posited the anima is an archetypical form, expressing the fact that a man has a minority of female genes. Haggard's Queen Ayesha is an unmistakable anima type the ultimate guide and mediator to the inner world. The idea has also connections with the observations of James Frazer in his classical study ''The Golden Bough''. Haggard's idea of a journey into the "darkest Africa," which turns into a spiritual search, has been used by a number of writers, including Joseph Conrad in ''Heart of Darkness'' (1902). 
"My empire is of thy imagination", She says in the novel, "She". Cf. a line, [which I am checking] in "The Crying of Lot 49".

She is 'discovered' somewhere in unknown Africa by some British 'explorers' in a hidden kingdom, and she first appears in a sort of late 19th century private boudoir there. She came to that place via a complicated story some 2000 years earlier, and is of Yemenite origin, having come to the world in pretty much the normal fashion. Yashmeen seems indeed to be based on some fin-de-siecle imaginations of the 'ideal' woman (her looks in general, and the often mentioned streaming black hair of hers), but unlike Haggard's She, Yashmeen is rather powerless in the long run, despite her obvious erotic influence on the men and women in ATD. - Tommaso

:Powerless is a term worth lots of discussion here. [User: MKOHUT]

'''rim''' 
Kit pretends to think he's referring to monocle as 'chichi' (stylish).

'''Kovalevskaia''' 
Sofia Kovalevskaia, 1850-1891. Russian mathematician, in 1884 appointed professor in Stockholm. The third female professor in Europe ever. Cf [[ATD_489-524#Page 500|page 500:Sofia Kovalevskaia]] and (Wikipedia)

'''Roentgen-ray spectacles''' 
The X-ray glasses that used to be advertised in comic books.

'''''natürlich''''' 
German: naturally.

==Page 589==

'''Those curves are everywhere continuous but nowhere differentiable''' 
This is exactly a description of a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weierstrass_function Weierstrass function] (1872), a pathological example of a real-valued function on the real line. This function was cited on page 594 by Yashmeen as one of the crises in mathermatics. Also see [http://mathworld.wolfram.com/WeierstrassFunction.html Weierstrass function from MathWorld] and Cf [[ATD_489-524#Page 500|page 500:Karl Weierstrass]].

'''Those curves . . . ''Noli me tangere''''' 
A well-turned wordplay: The operation of differentiating a curve involves drawing ''tangents'' to it at selected points. The curves in question are continuous, but the injunction ''Noli me tangere'' means you can't draw the tangents.

:If a curve is nowhere differentiable then there will be no tangents anywhere. The curve is everywhere ''untouchable''.

'''''Noli me tangere''''' 
Latin for 'don't touch me'

'''''Hausknochen''''' 
German: a giant housekey, as defined, literally House Bone,with perhaps a
double entendre on bone?

==Page 590==

'''Hadamard... Poussin... Prime Number Theorem''' 
Hadamard and Poussin independently proved the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_number_theorem prime number theorem] in 1896, relying on Riemann's Zeta function.

[http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Hadamard.html Jacques Hadamard] (1865-1963), a French mathematician best known for his proof of the Prime Number Theorem in 1896.

[http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Vallee_Poussin.html de la Vallée Poissin] (1866-1962), a Belgian mathematician best known for his proof (independently) of the Prime Number Theorem and his major work ''Cours d'Analyse''.

'''patent ''Kühlbox''''' 
''Kühlbox'' here just means "icebox" or "cooler." Refrigerators were available at the time of the action but not widely used, so an icebox is more likely. It's upstairs in Kit's room, so not necessarily portable.

"Patent," attached to a noun like [[ATD_429-459#Page_457|leather or pencil,]] could mean really, officially patented ''or'' novel and gimmicky. Patent medicines are sold under protected names but not genuine patents in most cases. So the icebox features some radical or distinctive design. My money's on asbestos insulation between the zinc sheets.

[http://www.dhm.de/datenbank/index.html?/datenbank/rb00/rb000891.html Pic of a ca. 1920 Eiskiste-model]. According to German Wikipedia, the mobile "Eiskiste" (icebox) had to be filled with (natural) ice, while its successor, the Kühlbox, worked/works with "Kühlaggregate" (cooling units). The contributor is not sure if suchlike were around at that time. German Wikipedia on [http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiskiste Eiskiste] and [http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BChlbox Kühlbox].

'''beleaguered subset''' 
a group (from the whole) under attack

'''That is, is it was ''some smile''''' 
Typo, for That is, it was ''some smile''.

'''Prime Number Theorem''' 
Gives an estimate of the number of primes less than a whole number ''n.'' For example, if ''n'' is 20 then there are nine primes less than it (1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19). The Prime Number Theorem is closely related to the Riemann Hypothesis.

:It seems the Prime Number Theorem says something about π(n)(ln n)/n approaches a limit as n increases indefinitely. π (n) is the number of primes.

==Page 591==

'''prats''' 
Literally the buttocks. As a slang term, a 'prat' is an idiot.

'''''Die Nullstellen der ζ-Funktion''''' 
German: the zeroes of the ζ function. (Null = zero; Stelle = location.) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_zeta_function#Zeros_of_the_Riemann_zeta_function Wikipedia] on the "Zeros of the Riemann zeta-function".

'''not all that hard to prove''' 
Kit will upset the applecart if he can prove the Riemann Hypothesis; Yashmeen's research topic will shrink to triviality. (Last time I checked, no one had yet proved the hypothesis.)

'''"Richard Harding Davis"''' 
Popular writer of fiction and drama, journalist/war-correspondent and a major male-role-model of his time (1864 - 1916). He was considered the model for illustrator Charles Dana Gibson's dashing Gibson man, the male equivalent of his famous Gibson Girl. He is also referenced early in Sinclair Lewis's book, ''Dodsworth'' as the example of an exciting, adventure-seeking legitimate hero. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Harding_Davis Wikipedia]. Among other things, he reported on Belgian atrocities in the Congo.

'''seldom, if ever''' 
Cf p559 re Umeki!?

'''tetralatry''' 
made up from greek "tettares" (prefix -tetra) = four and "latreia" = worship

'''C. Howard Hinton''' 
Charles Howard Hinton (1853 – 1907) was a British mathematician and writer of science fiction works titled ''Scientific Romances''. He was interested in higher dimensions, particularly the fourth dimension, and is known for coining the word ''tesseract'' and for his work on methods of visualising the geometry of higher dimensions. He also had a strong interest in theosophy. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Howard_Hinton Wikipedia Entry]

'''Johann K.F. Zöllner''' 
Johann Karl Friedrich Zöllner (1834–1882) was a German astrophysicist. Studied Photometrie and optical illusions. He insisted a fourth dimension should be considered in Physics and tried to scientifically explain spiritist phenomena.

'''vogue... 'vague'''' 
Nice wordplay as Yashmeen seems to think the vogue of mysticism is not very precise, is 'vague' intellectually. Further play on "vague" = wave, as in an intellectual fad, e.g. in film, the French "Nouvelle Vague" (New Wave).

==Page 592==

'''upside-down triangles''' 
Also Pléiade p538. In mathematics that would be the operator ''del'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Del Wikipedia]. Since pre-history and across most cultures the upside-down triangle is a symbol for the female (genitals).

Florian Cajori's ''A History of Mathematical Notations''(v.2 p.135) states that the del (aka Hamiltonian operator) was introduced by William Hamilton in his 1853 lecture on Quaternions. Rumour has it that it is supposed to be a drawing of an ancient Hebrew harp (nabla). It is also known as the atled (backword delta).

This in turn suggests (within the context of AtD (atled??) a reversal of time or a mirror image of change.

'''screamingly obvious fallacy in this . . . "proof" of yours''' 
Yashmeen reacts in a slight panic to Kit's threat (page 591).

'''metallic banging''' 
Hausknochen on doors, with 'banging' entendre.

'''"metric interval"''' 
In Euclidean (three-dimensional) space a distance is just what you think it is. In other geometrical systems the term "metric interval" is preferred as a generalized distance.

'''social life is unpredictable''' 
mirrors the situation in the "Hotel Noctambulo", p. 462. Are all these guys "chums of chance"?

'''Prinzenstrasse and Weenderstrasse''' 
A street corner at the very center of Göttingen ([http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=g%C3%B6ttingen,+germany&ie=UTF8&om=1&z=17&ll=51.534284,9.935417&spn=0.006107,0.010793&t=h Google Maps]), "known to mathematicians here as the origin of the city of Göttingen's coordinate system".

==Page 593==

'''twenty marks''' 
A mark is short for deutschemark, a German monetary unit. 
That was the case after the Second World War, but the unit was just called the mark until at least the end of the empire. [http://www.thegoldcoinstore.com/WorldGold/German_Gold_20_Marks_Kaizer_Wilhelm_II.php Here] is a picture of a 20 mark coin from the period of the action.

'''''der Pistolenheld''''' 
German: the pistol hero.

'''automorphic functions and the Anharmonic Pencil''' 
[http://mathworld.wolfram.com/AutomorphicFunction.html Automorphic Functions] are generalizations of trigonometric functions and elliptic functions.

Anharmonic Pencil see [[ATD_525-556#Page 532|page 532:Anharmonic Pencil]].

'''''das Nichtharmonischestrahlenbündel''''' 
Or ''das nichtharmonische Strahlenbündel.'' German: the anharmonic pencil. A "pencil" is the set of lines passing through a point.

'''Euler''' 
Leonhard Euler (pronounced Oiler; IPA [ˈɔʏlɐ]) (April 15, 1707 – September 7, 1783) was a Russian-German mathematician and physicist of Swiss descent. From Wikipedia and below:

Euler made important discoveries in fields as diverse as calculus, number theory, and topology. He also introduced much of the modern mathematical terminology and notation, particularly for mathematical analysis, such as the notion of a mathematical function. [1] He is also renowned for his work in mechanics, optics, and astronomy.

Euler is considered to be the preeminent mathematician of the 18th century and one of the greatest of all time.

'''Felix Klein''' 
[http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Klein.html Felix Klein] (1849-1925), a German mathematician, best known for his work in non-Euclidean goemetry, for his work on the connections between geometry and group theory, and for results in function theory. Cf [[ATD_557-587#Page 565|page 565:Felix Klein]].

'''''Mathematical Theory of the Top''''' 
Published in the U.S. in 1897. Compare Felix Klein and Arnold Sommerfeld, ''Über die Theorie des Kreisels,'' 4 volumes, 1897-1910.

'''Leopold Kronecker''' and '''Cantor''' 
[http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Kronecker.html Leopold Kronecker] (1823-1891), a German mathematician, primary contributions were in the theory of equations. He made major contributions in elliptic functions and the theory of algebraic numbers.

[http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Cantor.html Georg Cantor] (1845-1918), a German mathematician. He founded set theory and introduced the concept of infinite numbers with his discovery of cardinal numbers. He also advanced the study of trigonometric series. (Cf [[ATD_243-272#Page 250|page 250:Dr. Cantor]]).

The "monumental quarrel between Kronecker and Cantor" is also referred to as a "religious war," appropriately enough. It's based in a disagreement over the legitimacy of numbers. Kronecker held that "'the positive integers were created by God, and all else is the work of man.'" This is contradicted by "'Cantor with his ''Kontinuum'', professing an equally strong belief in just those regions, infinitely divisible, which lie ''between'' the whole numbers so demanding of all Kronecker's devotion.'"

The disagreement between the two mathematicians is reminiscent of (or does it anticipate?) the rift between Pointsman and Mexico in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. Kronecker's integers "created by God" have become a Pavlovian digital binary for Pointsman, but the two oppositions track faithfully right down to the italicized "between."

"The young statistician [Mexico] is devoted to number and to method, not table-rapping or wishful thinking. But in the domain of zero to one, not-something to something, Pointsman can only possess the zero and the one. He cannot, like Mexico, survive anyplace in between. Like his master I. P. Pavlov before him, he imagines the cortex of the brain as a mosaic of tiny on/off elements.... But to Mexico belongs the domain ''between'' zero and one." [Page 55]

It should be noted, however, that the continuous number line was a modern innovation. In Greek number theory, a number is a collection of indivisible units. Irrationals, such as the square root of 2 are not numbers but "magnitudes." One is not even a number for it is not a number of units. There are no negative numbers as well. (see Klein's Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra.) So Kronecker's position may be less of a crazy innovation as much as a maintenance of ancient theory.

:That last paragraph makes an excellent point.

'''the square root of minus one''' 
The imaginary number ''i''. Cf [[ATD_119-148#Page 133|page 133:Imarginary Number]].

'''the square root of ''plus two''' 
From Carl B. Boyer's ''A History of Mathematics'', 2nd Ed. 1991, pp.564 & 565): 
The domain of rational numbers can be extended to form a continuum of real numbers if one assumes Cantor-Dedekind axiom that the points on a line can be put into one-to-one correspondence with the real numbers. "Arithmetically expressed, this means that for every division of the rational numbers into two classes A and B such that every number of the first class, A, is less than every number of the second class, B, there is one and only one real number producing this ''Schnitt'', or . . . cut. If A has a largest number, or if B contains a smallest number, the cut defines a rational number; but if A has no largest number and B no smallest, then the cut defines an irrational number. If, for example, we put in A all negative rational numbers and also all positive rational numbers whose squares are less than 2, and in B all positive rational numbers whose squares are more than 2, we have subdivided the entire field of rational numbers in a manner defining an irrational number—in this case the number that we usually write as" ''suqare root of 2''. In fact, the squae root of ''plus two'' "can be defined simply as that segment or subclass of the set of rational numbers made up of all positive rational numbers whose squares are less than 2 and also of all negative rational numbers." —— This is what Kronecker did not believe.

'''''Kontinuum''''' 
This passage closely parallels the one about the "microcosm of Venice" on page 575.

==Page 594==

'''''Nervenklinik''''' 
German: nerve clinic. Three-dollar word for a mental hospital.

'''boundless epsilonic world''' 
Epsilon, Greek letter like E. In mathematics (particularly calculus), an arbitrary (or nearly so) small positive quantity is commonly denoted ε; see limit.
By analogy with this, the late mathematician Paul Erdős also used the term "epsilons" to refer to children (Hoffman 1998, p. 4). Wikipedia; of Huxley's five classes of citizens in ''Brave New World'' epsilons were purposely stunted physically and intellectually.

'''Der Finsterzwerg''' 
The choice of the tavern "The Dwarf of Darkness" may have been meant as a dig at five-foot-tall Kronecker.

'''chloral hydrate''' 
A/k/a "knockout drops" a/k/a a "Mickey Finn". Hence the ''Mickifest''. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chloral_hydrate Wikipedia entry].

'''''Kneipe''''' 
German: dive.

'''Gauss passing to Weber a remark''' 
Carl Friedrich Gauss (Gauß) (30 April 1777 – 23 February 1855) was a German mathematician and scientist of profound genius who contributed significantly to many fields, including number theory, analysis, differential geometry, geodesy, magnetism, astronomy and optics. Sometimes known as "the prince of mathematicians" and "greatest mathematician since antiquity", Gauss had a remarkable influence in many fields of mathematics and science and is ranked as one of history's most influential mathematicians. (Cf [[ATD_489-524#Page 498|page 498:Gauss]].)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Eduard_Weber Wilhelm Weber] (1804-91), a noted German physicist. He studied magnetism with Gauss and in 1831, on the recommendation of Gauss, he was appointed as professor of physics at Göttingen. And in 1833 Gauss and Weber constructed the first electromagnetic telegraph. The SI unit of magnetic flux, the ''weber'', is named after him.

In 1831 Gauss developed a fruitful collaboration with the physics professor Wilhelm Weber; it led to new knowledge in the field of magnetism (including finding a representation for the unit of magnetism in terms of mass, length and time) and the discovery of Kirchhoff's circuit laws in electricity. Gauss and Weber constructed the first electromagnetic telegraph in 1833, which connected the observatory with the institute for physics in Göttingen. Gauss ordered a magnetic observatory to be built in the garden of the observatory and with Weber founded the magnetischer Verein ("magnetic club"), which supported measurements of earth's magnetic field in many regions of the world. He developed a method of measuring the horizontal intensity of the magnetic field which has been in use well into the second half of the 20th century and worked out the mathematical theory for separating the inner (core and crust) and outer (magnetospheric) sources of Earth's magnetic field

'''Göttingen . . . in the war with Prussia''' 
This refers to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austro-Prussian_war Austro-Prussian War], (also called Seven Weeks' War), June 15–August 23, 1866, between Prussia, allied with Italy, and Austria, allied with Bavaria, Wüttemberg, Saxony (where Göttingen is located), Hanover, Baden and several other smaller German states. It was Bismarck's aim to expel, by force, Austria from the German Confederation as a step toward the unification of Germany under Prussian dominace.

'''political crisis in Europe''' 
The period of 1870 to 1914 was characterized by the Anglo-German naval race and European powers - Germany, Italy, Belgium, Britain and France - scrambled for Africa. The major events in Europe were: 1870-1871 Franco-Prussian War; 1905 Russian Revolution; 1908 Bosnia Crisis; 1911-12 Italian Turkish War; 1912-13 Balkan War; 1914 World War I began.

'''crisis in mathematics . . . Weierstrass functions, Cantor's continuum, Russell's inexhaustible capacity for mischief''' 
A genuine crisis as well-established ideas were challenged. Weierstrass functions have the unheard-of property that they are "continuous but nowhere differentiable." Cantor's ideas about the continuum violated a longstanding prohibition against infinite quantities. Bertrand Russell around this time was setting the cat among the pigeons by identifying paradoxes and inconsistencies in set theory and number theory.

'''"the infinite" was all but a conjuror's convenience''' 
There is a very good book relating how the infinite, between the 18th and early 20th centuries, finally found a place in mathematics: ''In Search of Infinity'' by N.Ya. Vilenkin (translated by Abe Shenitzer).

==Page 595==

'''That winter, in St. Petersburg . . . Hundred were killed and wounded.''' 
22 Jan 1905, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_%281905%29 Bloody Sunday]. 

The event on January 22, 1905, ''Bloody Sunday'', was a watershed in the Russian history. 
Russia's armies were losing to the Japanese in the Far East. Her workers at home were challenging the rule of Romanov's Autocracy. At the beginning of 1905, the worker of ''Putilov Works'' of St. Petersburg, the capital of Russia, went on stike for better living and working conditions. They were joined by many from other factories. Father Gapon, a priest, urged the striking workers to present directly to the Tsar on January 22, 1905 a petition to seek justice and protection. They would beg Nicholas II to come to their aid. The morning of January 22 was very cold (about five degrees below freezing) and some 200,000 workers and their wives and children came peacefully and orderly carrying icons, portraits of Nicholas, and no revolutionary placards not even red handkerchiefs. To stop the workers' march upon the Palace Square barracades were set across several avenues that connected to the city center. At each of these points, soldiers tried to turn back the marchers and, at several of them, officers ordered to fire into the crowds. The worst slaughter took place on the Winter Palace Square itself, between 150 and 200 men, women, and children lay shot dead and another 450 to 800 had been wounded while the Cossacks charged into the dispersing crowds with sabers drawn. 
Bloody Sunday, as that tragic day soon became known, marked the beginning of what the Tsar's mother called the "year of nightmares", and the beginning of what many others called the "year of revolution". (Based on W. Bruce Lincoln's ''Romanovs'' (1981)).

'''Grand Duke Sergei''' 
Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich Romanov (1857-1905) was the uncle and brother-in-law of Tsar Nicholas II (1868-1918, Reign: 1894-1917). In 1891 he was appointed as Moscow Governor General. In 1894 he also was a member of the State Council. He resigned from the Governorship on January 1, 1905 but continued as Commander of the Moscow military district. In the afternoon of February 17, 1905, in a carriage leaving the Kremlin Grand Duke Sergei was killed by a nitroglycerine bomb thrown by a Socialist Revolutionary terrorist directly into his lap. He was literally blown to bits and pieces. The assassination of Grand Duke Sergei signaled the beginning of a broader wave of popular unrest that had been sparked by the events of Bloody Sunday and swept the whole nation. Many more assassinations, strikes, disorders and uprisings followed during the year.
(Grand Duke Sergei's replacement, Shurvalov, was assassinated on July 11 of the same year.)

'''More strikes . . . peasant and military insurections . . . into the summer''' 
In January-February, turbulent reaction to Bloody Sunday spread across neighboring regions, especially the industrial centers which experienced spontaneous workers' strikes: Vilno, Kovno, Kiev, Moscow were paralyzed. In February-March the labor unrests reached Saratov Province and the Caucasus, and Siberia. Labor unrests were persistent throughout Russia into August. In early March university students left their classrooms, and at the end of the month the authorities closed down all the universities throughout the whole country for the rest of the academic year. (Student unrest even reached Orthodox seminaries.) 
In March, peasant unrests erupted widely, especially in Kursk, and Chernigov and Orel provinces and northwest regions of European Russia. In June, the Battleship ''Potemkin'' mutinied and in the Black Sea port city Odessa there was a large scale uprising by the sailors, soldiers, workers and ordinary citizens. On June 28 afternoon hundreds of protesters were killed on the Odessa Steps which was immortalized by the classic movie sequence in the 1925 Eisenstein's [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Batlleship_Potemkin ''The Battleship Potemkin''] (considered by some one of the greatest films of all time). In summer widespread peasants' attacks on landowners' estates dramatically increased throughout Russia. The Peasant Union was organized at a secret August 13-14 Moscow conference.

'''Kronstadt''' 
Kronstadt was a naval fortress in the Gulf of Finland 18 miles west of St. Petersburg. Following the destruction of the Baltic Fleet by the Japanese in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) (Cf [[ATD_318-335#Page 318|page 318: The Russo-Japanese War]]) Kronstadt joined the general uprising which swept the whole Russian country. The first Kronstadt uprising on November 8-9, 1905, participated in by the majority of Kronstadt's 13,000 sailors and soldiers, was basically a large armed riot accompanied by liberal political demands. It lasted only two days. Kronstadt's second uprising took place in July 1906 but was brutally suppressed.

'''Sebastopol''' 
A port city of Russia (now, Sevastopol of Ukrain), located on the Black Sea coast of the Crimean peninsula west of Yalta. Sebastopol was associated with rebellion, mutiny and civil war. 
On June 27, 1905 the battleship ''Potemkin'' sailed from Sebastopol to Odessa and to mutiny against the ship's oppressive officers. The mutineers killed seven of the eighteen officers, including the Captain and the Second in Command. The ship eventually sailed to Romania and turned over to the authority there on July 7. (Sergei Eisenstein's ''The Battlehip Potemkin'' made her famous well beyond Russia.) 
On October 1, 1905, citizen of Sebastopol and sailors from the Black Fleet demonstrated in the city center demanding the authority to free political presoners, etc, but were met with gun fire. Wide spread unrest and naval mutinies followed. In November the cruiser ''Ochakov'' led a rebellion joined by several other warships. The rebellion was eventually suppressed by a stronger government force a couple of months later.

'''Black Hundreds''' 
Anti-Semitic vigilantes.

The name was a derogatory one, adapted from the term "White Hundreds", which was used in medieval Russia for the privileged caste of nobles and wealthy merchants. The lower-class types who joined the Black Hundreds were not in this class hence their ironic nomenclature. It was formed in response to the October Manifesto by those who had either lost or were afraid of losing their petty status in the social hierachy as a result of modernization and reform. They blamed the Jews as the ultimate cuase for Tsar's retreat. Fighting revolution in the streets was their way of revenging themselves, a means of putting the clock back and restoring the social and racial hierarchy. (Based on Orlando Figes' ''A People's Tragedy'' (1996))

'''Japanese won''' 
The Japanese destroyed the bulk of the Russian Baltic Fleet in the Battle of Tsushima Strait on May 27-28, 1905. In ''GR'', the soon-to-be-defeated fleet puts in at German Southwest Africa during the 1904 Herero Revolt; Tchicherine's father, a sailor in that fleet, may also be the father of Enzian, leader of the Schwarzcommando.

By January 1905 the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo_Japanese_War Russo-Japanese War (1904-05)] had been going on in Manchuria for nearly a year. In the summer of 1904, the Russia's Pacific Fleet was bottled up inside Port Arthur (now, Lüshun, Liaoning, China) and the port was under siege as from August. In October, the Tsar sent the entire Baltic Fleet to relief the siege. At the beginning of 1905, Port Arthur finally fell after a siege and bombardment lasted 156 days. In March 1905 Russia and Japan fought the greatest land battle in the history up to then at Mukden (Shenyang, Liaoning). Each side committed more than 300,000 troops and over 1,000 pieces of artillery. After nearly one month's fighting both lost more than 50,000 killed and wounded, but the Russians withrew 40 miles to the north. After streaming halfway around the world in a grueling voyage of many months without adequate logistic support, on May 27 the Russian fleet met the waiting Japanese (under Admiral Togo) in the Tsuhsima Straits that separated Japan and Korea. The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tsushima Battle of Tsushima Straits (May 27-28)] was one of the most decisive naval battles in history. Even though the Russians had more ships and more heavy guns, but within a few hours, they lost 8 battleships, 3 cruisers, 5 minelayers and 4 other ships. Four more battleship surrendered next day, and the Russian commanding admiral (Admiral Rozhdestvenskii) was also captured. The Japanese lost only a total of 3 torpedo boats. (Based on W. Bruce Lincoln's ''Romanovs'' (1981)). 
After two months' negotiation, the Russo-Japanese War officially ended with the signing of the Peace Treaty of Porstmouth (New Hampshire) on September 5, 1905.

'''A general strike in the autumn . . .''' 
In late September a printer's trike in Moscow was in progress for over a fortnight. By October 18 it seemed that the strike was losing steam. But on October 20 railroad workers struck the Moscow-Kazan Railway and the strike spread outward along all the railroad lines: to St Petersburg in the west, to Voronesh and Kharkov in the south; and by October 23 it had reached Siberia. Twenty-six thougsand miles of track were immobilized as 750,000 railroad employees struck. At this time much of European Russia was in the grip of one of the greatest and most effective general strikes in the history of labor protest anywhere in the world. All of Russia's industry ground to a halt, everyone stopped work. Factory workers, servants, postal workers, telegraph operatiors, janitors, and hackney drivers all walked off their wjobs, as did bank clerks, shop clerks, and clerks in government office. Doctors, laywers, shcoolteachers, university professors, even the entire corps de ballet of the great Imperaial Mariinskii Theatre—all joined the strike. There were no newspapers, no streetlights, no tramcars . . . As all rail traffic stopped and telegraph line dead, Russia was isolated from the rest of the world. At the same time, the revolutionary groups organized a new body for coordinating the activities of the striking workers and for expressing their joint political and economic demands: the "St. Petersburg
''Soviet'' of Workers' Deputies". Many other Soviets were set up and developed later as alternate governing organizations. The name and organization ''Soviet'' (Russian word ''Sovet'' means council) took on a legendary meaning from then on and became historical. 
With the regime on the verge of collapse, in response, the Tsar, advised by the Prime Minister, issued the famouse ''October Manifesto'' on October 30, 1905, by which Nicholas granted to all Russian civil rights, agreed to summon a Duma (Parliament) elected by wide (though not universal) suffrage, and agreed that all laws must be approved by the Duma. In the meantime, on December 16, troops were sent to arrest some three hundred members of the St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Deputies. The Revolution of 1905 in the Capital passed into history.

'''In December . . . another major uprising''' 
In Moscow, the Soviet of Workers' Deputeis proclaimed a general strike for December 20. When the authorities moved to arrest the stike leaders, an armed uprising broke out. Barricades went up in workers' quarter of the city, and revolutionaries from St. Petersburg, Odessa, and elsewhere joined in the struggle. Nicholas dispatched elite troops with artillery which reduced the rebels' area to ruins. By December 31, the rebellion in Moscow was over. The number of killed and wounded totaled over a thousand.

'''In the East . . . up and down the railroad lines''' 
The Russo-Japanese War was officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth on August 23, 1905. In late summer there were numerous minor mutinies by troop returning from Manchuria on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Fighting between the left and the right erupted on October 20 around Tomsk. On November 12, mutinous soldiers and sailors destroyed much of Vladivostok on the Pacific coast, the end of the Trans-Siberian. There were unrests and prisings in Chita (November 29), Irkutsk (December 13), and Novorossiisk (December 22) as well.

'''Muslim rebellion''' 
The downfall of the Ottoman Empire by Turkey?

:No. In this whole paragraph Pynchon only factually describes the events in Russia and the Russian 1905 Revolution.

:Muslims in Central Asia (Kirghiz, Kazakh, Uzbek, Tadzhik, and others) had never been happy as pawns in the "Great Game" and now (1905) attempted to throw off Russian domination. Turkey, center of the Ottoman Empire, had its rebellion a few years later.

:The text said "'''''a''''' Muslim rebellion". Anyone knows this 1905 Muslim Rebellion in Russia?

'''the year that followed . . . Russians everywhere''' 
The well-known 1905 Revolution in Russian history was the beginning of the fall of the ''Old Regime''. The text "as the Revolution went collapsing" refered exactly to this one, not the February and October Revolutions in 1917. So "the year that followed" refered to 1906. In fact, Pynchon explicitly stated on page 602: "''By 1906'' there were Russians everywhere, . . ."

Soon after the collapse of the 1905 Revolution many Russians emmigrated abroad. They were 1) opponents to the Tsar regime feared of reprisal and backlash; 2) intelligentsia who were frightened by what just happened and afraid of a more violent upheaval in the future (Maxim Gorky, the writer, left Russia in the spring of 1906); 3) Jews, the victims of the large scale pogroms in 1905-06 (1964 Broadway musical ''Fiddler on the Roof'' told the story of how one Jewish family being forced to leave Russia in 1906); 4) youngsters who escaped the compulsory millitary service or looked for a quieter place for education. This was the second wave (1905-1917) of Russian emmigration. (1st wave: 1880-1905; 3rd: 1917-1939; 4th: 1945-1960; 5th: 1991-current).

'''as the Revolution went collapsing''' 
The first paragraph of this page is a factual description of the revolutionary events occured in Russia in 1905 which wwere later collectively called [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution_of_1905 1905 Revolution]. It was the foreshock of that of 1917. It had all of Russia in its grip, and its outbreak had not been planned; it had simply grown spontaneously. It failed under the usual combination of repression and concessions. (see Richard Pipes' ''The Russian Revolution'' (1990)). In Soviet Marxist history 1905 Revolution is second only in importance to 1917 October Revolution, one of the most important revolutionary iconic events. (The 1917 Frebruary Revolution, the one actually overthrew the Tsar's Regime, was lightly mentioned because it was considered a ''bourgeois revolution''.) Numerous books, songs, poems, films . . . had been devoted to this Revolution. To the west the most memorable are the Eisenstein's silent film ''Battleship Potmekin'' (1925) and Shostakovich's ''Symphony No 11: The year 1905'' (1957).

'''Peter and Paul Fortress''' 
At St. Petersburg, established by Peter the Great. Political prisoners were confined there from the first half of the 1700s. Conditions were notoriously harsh.

'''kazatsky''' 
A Cossack dance, stereotypical Russian behavior.

'''raid....Waziristan''' 
Waziristan (Pashto: وزیرستان) is a mountainous region of northwest Pakistan, bordering Afghanistan and covering some 11 585 km² (4,473 mi²). It comprises the area west and southwest of Peshawar between the Tochi River to the north and the Gomal River to the south, forming part of Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The North-West Frontier Province lies immediately to the east. The region was an independent tribal territory from 1893, remaining outside of British-ruled empire and Afghanistan. Tribal raiding into British-ruled territory was a constant problem for the British, eliciting frequent punitive expeditions between 1860 and 1945. Wikipedia

Currently, it is thought to be the last stronghold of Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden.

:Worth noting, perhaps, that Yashmeen came from Russia and had been ''transported'' to Waziristan for sale as a slave.

==Page 596==

'''as-ever transcendentally interesting hair''' 
(Perhaps a reference to Albert Einstein?)

Possibly, but given the numerous mentions of the Zeta function it is most likely a reference to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendental_numbers Transcendental Numbers]. These are irrational numbers that do not exist as the zero (or solution) to any algebraic function. A number of groundbreaking results regarding transcendentalism were made around the time the novel is set, and most if not all of the mathematicians and mathematical methods mentioned in the book revolve around transcendental numbers and functions.

Given that these numbers are often expressed as an infinite series, in which successive terms add ever-more-miniscule amounts to the value of the number, yet each digit is fascinatingly unique (since the decimal never repeats), it seems to me that Pynchon is suggesting that Yashmeen's hair has the quality of being endlessly fascinating, that even the observation of a single hair (or even a portion of a single hair) is involving and invigorating. This would mirror Kit's fascination and infatuation with Yashmeen, and the term would likely spring readily to the mind of a mathematician of the era.[[User:Dharper|Dharper]] 08:15, 16 January 2007 (PST)

'''. . . the Revolution''' 
Russian 1905 Revolution.

'''...it all finds its way back to the T.W.I.T. people....'''

"and what comes out of their shop can surprisingly often be trusted"

Suggestive of the CIA's Stargate Project in Remote Viewing

''''gen'''' 
British military slang for information. To gen-up is to learn quickly. OED gives earliest recorded use of the word as 1940.

'''a soul impaled . . . as if to bisect me''' 
Harks back to the fate of La Jarretière in ''V.''

'''Afghani dirhan''' 
An Afghani coin, more usually transliterated as "dirham". [http://ghaznavid.ancients.info/ This site] has pictures and more information.

'''Ghaznivid Empire''' 
Usually transliterated as [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghaznavid_Empire Ghaznavid Empire] (Wikipedia)

'''coffee scion''' 
Coffee motif. More likely: coffee heir.

'''Günther von Quassel''' 
"quasseln" is a German verb, meaning roughly "to jabber"

'''less than universally respected Ludwig Boltzmann''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Boltzmann Boltzmann] proposed an explanation of thermodynamics based on the statistical behaviour of atoms. Many influential colleagues at the time did not believe in the reality of atoms and thus worked to discredit Boltzmann.

==Page 597==

'''Gymnasium child''' 
A Gymnasium is a German secondary school

'''''Ach, die Zetamanie''''' 
German: Oh, the zeta-mania.

'''one measure of the chaos''' 
Cf. p. 188, where Neville and Nigel are referred to as "the N's," and to the proliferation of N name in T.W.I.T. in general.

'''crime...narrative puzzle''' 
Hinting at Webb's role in the novel?

'''Göttingen tradition'''...'''statue''' 
Like other university towns, Göttingen has developed its own folklore. On the day of their doctorate, postgraduate students are drawn in handcarts from the Great Hall to the Gänseliesel-Fountain in front of the Old Town Hall. There they have to climb the fountain and kiss the statue of the Gänseliesel (Goose girl). This practice is actually forbidden by law, but the law is not at all enforced. She is considered to be the most-kissed girl in the world. Wikipedia.

Addendum of interest for GR and ATD.
Nearly untouched by allied bombing in World War II (the informal understanding during the war was that Germany wouldn't bomb Cambridge and Oxford and the allies wouldn't bomb Heidelberg and Göttingen).

'''Rathaus square''' 
The square in front of City Hall.

==Page 598==

'''Axioms of Zermelo''' 
The basic axioms of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zermelo-Frankel_set_theory#The_axioms Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory].

'''Poincaré''' 
Henri Poincaré (1854-1912), one of France's greatest mathermaticians and theorectical physicists. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Poincar%C3%A9 Wikipedia])

'''Cauchy''' 
Augustin Louis Cauchy (1789-1857), a French mathematician. His name was connected with many other mathematicians mentioned in ATD: Cauchy-Riemann equation, Cauchy-Frobenious lemma, Cauchy-Euler equation, Cauchy-Kovalevskaia theorem. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin_Louis_Cauchy Wikipedia])

'''Whittaker and Watson''' 
A standard mathematics textbook of the time ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whittaker_and_Watson Wikipedia])

'''two point one''' 
(Cf Sondheim lyric, "A Little Night Music" [http://lynxfeather.net/nest/lyrics/nightmusic-nowlatersoon.html lyrics].)

:I think here just point-by-point listing was being used: 1); 2); 2.1).

==Page 599==

'''"What here is he ''doing?''" . . . "Obviously, we must now a duel fight."''' 
In keeping with his name (see p. 596 annotations), Günther speaks in a stage-German accent.

'''dueling-society cap''' 
Probably student corporation insignia.

'''inconvenience''' 
Obviously the name of the Chums' airship; whenever the word appears there seems to be a reference to the Chums; here: "...Here, not completely...slightly...somewhere else" as the airship always seems to be.

'''''Liebchen''''' 
German, "sweetheart"

'''''Egal was, meine Schatze''''' 
German, "No matter what, my darling" - though "meine Schatze" is an improper femininization, which ought to be "mein Schatz".

'''''Schläger''''' 
A specialized weapon for student duels. See Wikipedia's [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_fencing Academic fencing] article.

'''Krummsäbel''' 
German, "scimitar".

'''Korbrapier''' 
A rapier with a basket ("Korb" in German) like protection hilt.

'''épée''' 
A sharp-pointed duelling sword.

==Page 600==

'''Colt six-shooters''' 
I guess Kit's luggage beat him to Gottingen.

'''''Verbindung''''' 
German: connection, union. Here the student corps one belongs to.

'''upon the face of the other, ''to inscribe one's mark''''' 
In several of his movies, the actor Erich von Stroheim appeared with a nasty scar on the left side of his face. Dueling was a pastime of honor at some universities, and the sword scar was the mark of having sustained one's honor there. Special weapons, masks and inflaming treatments were employed to produce this lifelong disfigurement.

'''a Mexican tilde''' 
The wavy mark over the letter ñ in Spanish.

'''restoring moment, elastic constants''' 
Günther's scar is tilde-shaped because as his opponent's sword passed across his face it vibrated up and down once and returned to its starting position. The following would be a reasonable problem for a high-school physics student: If you know how fast the blade tip was traveling side to side and you're allowed to measure the scar, what was the frequency of the up-and-down motion? A second-year university physics student could work out the frequency of vibration given certain properties of the sword and swordsman. A ''restoring moment'' acts to swing the blade back to its mean position when it is deflected; the duelist's wrist exerts one restoring moment and the elasticity of the steel exerts a second one. The restoring moment depends in part on a number called ''elastic constant'' that relates force to linear deflection (think of the classic fisherman's scale, where more weight extends the spring farther).

'''wasn't going to converge . . . skipped a step . . . ''divided by zero''''' 
Kit insults Günther by pointing out blunders in the proof he gave to Yashmeen.

'''Geheimrat Hilbert''' 
German: confidential counsellor. A title of honor given to prominent civilian figures in Germany. For Hilbert Cf [[ATD_318-335#Page 324|page 324:Dr. Hilbert]].

==Page 601==

'''''Ehrenkodex''''' 
German, "code of honor"

'''Tyrolean hats''' 
[http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=tirolerhut&btnG=Search+Images Images]

'''''Schnurrbartbinde''''' 
A device to keep one's mustache safe from entanglement when sleeping, like [http://www.volkskrantblog.nl/pub/mm/2006/01/1137360569.70341.gif this].

'''Zeiss "Palmos Panoram"''' 
An early panoramic camera, mentioned in the 1911 Britannica's [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Photography Photography] article.

'''''"Auf die Mensur!"''''' 
German, "to the duel"

'''Andaman Islands''' 
[http://www.openencyclopedia.net/index.php/Andaman_Islands Here]'s a mention of tattooing practices in the Andaman Islands

'''Stephanie du Motel... group-theory godfather Évariste Galois''' 
Évariste Galois died in a duel at the age of 20. Though much confusion surrounds the affair, it is suspected that he provoked the duel after being rejected by one Stéphanie-Felice du Motel. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evariste_Galois#Final_days Wikipedia])

==Page 602==

'''By 1906 there were Russians everywhere, flown and fleeing westward''' 
Cf [[ATD_588-614#Page 595|page 595:the year that followed . . . Russians everywhere]]. fleeing westward: most popular destination for Russian refugees was then France, later America.

'''young Ouspensky''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Uspensky Peter D. Ouspensky] (1878-1947), Russian mystic and philosopher, author of ''The Fourth Dimension'', appropriate to Pynchon's themes in ''ATD''.

'''Theosophoid''' 
???

'''Chong''' 
A strange and seemingly unlikely visitor to Göttingen. The name might be taken from the Chinese philosopher Wang Chong, or Wang Ch'ung. Could also be Cheech Marin's partner, Tommy Chong (C.Marin alluded to earlier p.477). - This is Sidney Reilly, a famous spy of the time, in disguise. See the note on Sidney below.

'''"The what?"''' 
(Precipitous drop in authorial expectations?)

'''Chinese Bolshevik''' 
Chinese Communist. For the true meaning of Bolshevik Cf [[ATD_615-643#Page 616|page 616:Bolshevists]]

'''Sidney . . . Kensington Sid''' 
Sidney Webb, leading political theorist [socialist] and (later, I think) Labour Pary representative of the time? No "Chinese Bolshevik", but with his wife Beatrice, an English supporter and defender of Russia See Wikipedia.
Kensington is where elected officials worked. 
Cf [http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/TUwebbS.htm Sidney Webb] and
[http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/TUwebbB.htm Beatrice Webb].

-No, nothing to do with Sidney Webb. This is Sidney Reilly, the famous Ace of Spies. The reference is made clear by Swome on page 630, and, to the extent that any appearance here makes sense, a spy makes more sense than a political theorist. An annotation on page 630 includes a Wikipedia reference for Reilly. I don't know whether Reilly (or British spies of the day in general) had a particular association with Kensington, or whether the reference is to Chunxton Crescent, which is placed in roughly that part of London.

'''transtriadic''' 
Beyond the three.

==Page 603==

'''"Spiritual... At Göttingen?"''' 
Gottingen is materialistic. Preserved brains as like in a tannery.

'''Applied Mechanics Institute''' 
An institute of the University of Göttingen

'''Prandtl's recent discovery of the boundary layer''' 
Ludwig Prandtl ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Prandtl Wikipedia]) in 1904 developed the theory of the boundary layer ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary%20layer Wikipedia]) in aerodynamics, greatly simplifying aerodynamic calculations.

'''powered flight . . . at the edge of history''' 
In 1905 already a reality, but the pioneering empirical work was taking place in Ohio, not Germany.

'''brambled guttie''' 
A proto golf-ball, see [http://www.che.rochester.edu/users/dafoster/ChE243/SciAm%20GolfBall.pdf here].

'''Bürgerstrasse''' 
German, "Citizen's Street", a street in Göttingen.

'''Brauweg''' 
German, "Brewery Way", a street in Göttingen.

'''Zhukovsky's Transformation''' 
The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joukowsky_transform Joukowsky Transform] maps the unit circle in the complex plane to a shape very much like an airfoil.

'''Geheimrat Klein ''' 
Geheimrat = Privy councillor. 
In geometry, the Klein model, also called the projective model... is a model of n-dimensional hyperbolic geometry in which the points of the geometry are in an n-dimensional disk, or ball, and the lines of the geometry are line segments contained in the disk; that is, with endpoints on the boundary of the disk. 

'''glass of tea''' 
(Why not 'cup'?)
because in Europe, as opposed to in England, tea may be drunk from glassware.

'''draw pictures . . . flights of arrows . . . vectors without pictures''' 
Vectors can be visualized as arrows in a plane or three-dimensional space; more generally they can be represented as arrays of coefficients, and now they are not limited to three dimensions.

'''''"...according to Spiral Theory, up to infinity." "And beyond, " added Gunther, nodding earnestly.''''' 
Reference to Buzz Lightyear's stock character phrase in 1995's TOY STORY (Pixar/Disney):
"To Infinity... and Beyond!"
--[[User:Btchakir|Btchakir]] 07:43, 19 December 2006 (PST)
: The text said nothing about Spiral Theory, I believe.

'''according to Spectral Theory, up to infinity''' 
Cf [[ATD_318-335#Page 324|page 324:Spectral Theory]] and [[ATD_318-335#Page 324|page 324:''infinite'' dimensions]].

==Page 604==

'''nontrivial zeroes''' 
The Riemann zeta function has two classes of zeros, the trivial zeroes being at negative even integers (-2, -4...), the non-trivial complex numbers, believed (but not proven) to have Re(z)=1/2. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis Wikipedia]. or Cf [[ATD_489-524#Page 496|page 496:Zeta function conjecture]].

'''much-noted talk''' 
At the 1900 International Congress of Mathematicians in Paris, Hilbert proposed a research programme of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert%27s_problems#Tabulated_information 23 problems]. The Riemann hypothesis is number 8 on the list.

'''Sorbonne''' 
Until 1971, the name ''Sorbonne'' refered to the historic University of Paris in Paris, France, one of the best universities in France. The name is derived from the ''Collège de Sorbonne'', founded in 1257 by Robert de Sorbon as one of the first significant colleges of the medieval University of Paris; the university itself as such predates the college by about a centure. In 1971, after the univeristy reforms, the five faculties of the former University of Paris were split and then reformed into thirteen interdisciplinary universities. Three of them as true "heirs" to the original, have kept the Sorbonne name as part of their official title: Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV), the New Sorbonne, and the Panthéon-Sorbonne. [http://www.paris4.sorbonne.fr/en/sommaire.php3 The University of Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV)] was the inheritor of the former University of Paris' Arts and Sciences Faculties.

'''the outstanding problems in mathematics''' 
Hilbert's Problems are 23 (originally) unsolved problems in mathematics proposed by Hilbert. Of the 23 total appearing in the printed address, 10 were actually presented at the Second International Congress of Mathematics at the Sorbonne, Paris on August 8, 1900. [http://mathworld.wolfram.com/HilbertsProblems.html Hilbert's Problems] were designed to serve as examples for the kinds of problems whose solutions would lead to the furthering of disciplines in mathermatics. As such, some were areas for investigation and therefore not strictly "problems".

'''eigenvalues''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenvalue Wikipedia] Dudley Eigenvalue, D.D.S., was a character in ''V.''

'''Hermitian operator''' 
A Hermitian operator generalises some of the ideas of symmetry when complex numbers are involved. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermitian_operator Wikipedia]

'''spine of reality . . . ''"Rückgrat von Wirklichkeit"''''' 
Probably a reference to the main diagonal of a Hermitian matrix, which can contain only real numbers. The German phrase is one accurate way to translate the English.

'''Hilbert-Polya Conjecture''' 
The conjecture that the zeroes of the Riemann function would be the eigenvalues of a Hermitian operator, just what Yashmeen is suggesting.

==Page 605==

'''Vance Aychrome''' 
The voracious detective is a stock figure in the mystery genre (Nero Wolfe, Mycroft Holmes, Inspector Dover, D.C.I. Dalziel and others). 
Is his name pronounced Eye Chrome, as in private eye? Weak possible connection?-- a truck light called Big Eye Chrome. The name sounds like 'fancy chrome.'

'''Full English Breakfast''' 
Bacon, eggs, tomato, toast... otherwise known as a fry-up.

'''Pythagorean dietary''' 
The Greek philosopher Pythagoras, who lived towards the end of the 6th century BC, was a prominent proponent of vegetarianism. The Pythagorean diet came to mean an avoidance of the flesh of slaughtered animals. Pythagorean ethics first became a philosophical morality between 490-430 BC with a desire to create a universal and absolute law including injunctions not to kill "living creatures," to abstain from "harsh-sounding bloodshed," in particular animal sacrifice, and "never to eat meat." (From a review of ''The Heretics Feast: a History of Vegetarianism'' by Colin Spencer, University Press of New England, 1995)

'''kippers and bloaters''' 
Different words (both Scottish) for smoked herrings

'''baps''' 
soft bread rolls - another Scottish word

'''Spong machine''' 
Appropriate technology. An English-made hand-cranked coffee grinder that doesn't light up, lacks a readout to tell when the beans are ready, and signally fails to function before the user wakes up. Only drawback is that some spouses compare its sound to half a load of cobbles being dumped on the roof.

'''thinned''' 
From full 78. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarot Wikipedia]

'''vegetarian haggis''' 
It exists: [http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22vegetarian+haggis Google search]

==Page 606==

'''Lamont Replevin''' 
"Replevin" is a legal term for a form of civil action to recover possession of property being wrongfully held by another.

'''Elflock Villa''' 
Elflock: A lock of hair tangled as if by elves. Often used in the plural.

'''Stuffed Edge, Herts''' 
An imaginary village in the South-East English county of Hertfordshire. Stuffed hedge?

'''kedgeree''' 
A hot breakfast dish of fish, rice, and eggs.

'''Cesare Lombroso''' 
Anthropologist who devised a method of identifying criminal "types" from their facial structures. (Cf [[ATD_171-198#Page 172|page 172: Dr. Lombroso]]).

'''Trans-Oxanian''' 
From the other side of the Oxus River (now Amu-Darya) in Central Asia. Cf. [[ATD_429-459#Page 439|page 439:the Oxus]].

'''Graeco-Buddhist''' 
The hybrid cultural background evidenced in Shambhala. Greco-Buddhism, sometimes spelled Graeco-Buddhism, is the cultural syncretism between Hellenistic culture and Buddhism, which developed over a period of close to 800 years in Central Asia in the area corresponding to modern-day Afghanistan and Pakistan, between the 4th century BCE and the 5th century CE. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhism Wikipedia] and Cf [[ATD_429-459#Page 438|page 438:Graeco-Buddhist]].

'''bad hats''' 
A bad hat is a slang term for a rascal

==Page 607==

'''Gas Office''' 
As explained in the text, the Scotland Yard bureau that kept gas communications under surveillance.

'''communication by means of coal-gas''' 
Cf Nabokov's "Ada". Also inverse of Tesla's energy-transmitter. A parallel to the Tristero, too. The description of communication by gas seems like a self-parody of ''The Crying of Lot 49.''

'''bombs... Suffragettes''' 
(Did they bomb post offices?!?)post boxes:Suffragettes carried out direct action such as chaining themselves to railings, setting fire to the contents of mailboxes, smashing windows and on occasions setting off bombs. Wikipedia

'''Persian''' 
Majority language in Iran, now called Farsi.

'''Pashto''' 
A language spoken in Afghanistan and nearby.

'''Tadjik''' 
A language spoken in Tadjikistan. "Mountain Tadjik" presumably dominates in the 60% or so of the country that is in high mountains.

'''Seven Dials''' 
In Covent Garden, London - a place where 7 roads meet. An unsavory assignment for a policeman.

==Page 608==

'''"Avoid beans"''' 
Pythagoreans follow a proscription against eating beans.

'''spotted dick''' 
A suet pudding with raisins or currants

'''Yarmouth bloater''' 
A cured herring from the port town of Yarmouth.

'''queering the pitch''' 
[http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/297387.html Disrupting someone's business;] compare [[ATD_748-767#Page_758|"yakitori pitches," p. 758.]]

''''shape'''' 
a doughnut,which comes in various shapes? Including the math-relevant
shape: a torus. But probably just a bit of bun, scone, etc. listed as Vance's breakfast...no doughnut listed.

'Shape' is another word for blancmange, which is made of gelatin, derived probably from the bones of some animal. Aychrome wonders "what's it made of", to which Lew responds "Maybe you don't want to know." [[User:Nehoccramcire|Nehoccramcire]] 09:14, 12 March 2007 (PDT)

'''the Embankment''' 
Victoria Embankment, London, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotland_yard Scotland Yard] was located there from 1890 to 1967. Scotland Yard was founded on September 29, 1829, on a street off Whitehall; and in 1967 it moved to the present location at 10 Broadway Street, London.

'''blue lamps''' 
Traditionally hung outside police stations in England.

'''lamé surfaces''' 
Lamé (fabric), a fabric inwoven metallic threads 
Lamé, name of the electrically conductive jacket worn by foil and sabre fencers 
Lamé (armor), an unarticulated component of a larger piece of armor 

'''yarmulke... high crown... dented Trilby style''' 
[http://www.wpclipart.com/clothes/hats/index.html Image of a Trilby hat.]

==Page 609==

'''Bukhara''' 
Cf [[ATD_397-428#Page 425|page 425:Bukhara]]

'''''Kelly's Suburban Dictionary''''' 
The peerless ''London A to Z'' did not come along until the 1930s.

'''wenlets''' 
Politician and journalist William Cobbett (1763-1835) called London "the great wen." It was not a compliment, because ''wen'' means a sebaceous cyst. Wenlets are small versions of the "great" wen.

==Page 610==

'''daylight oil''' 
from the streetlamps, lit up for hours?

'''a moon no one could see''' 
Note that the ''Inconvenience'' is repeatedly referred to as a "second moon".

'''refused to dim''' 
(Nicely vivid.)

'''Vontz's Universal Pick''' 
Vontz (Yiddish): bedbug.

'''alchemized coke''' 
Gas works that manufacture syngas also produce coke as an end product, called gas house coke.

Fluid coking is a process by which heavy residual crude is converted into lighter products such as naptha, kerosene, heating oil, and hydrocarbon gases. The "fluid" term refers to the fact that coke particles are in a continuous system versus older batch coking technology. Wikipedia

'''Lincrusta-Walton''' 
an embossed fabric used for covering walls, invented in 1877 by Frederick Walton as an alternative to more expensive wallpapers (wikipedia).

'''hipshot''' 
having one hip lower than the other: a Greek statue in hipshot pose.M-W.

'''captive maiden''' 
In ''The Crying of Lot 49'', Oedipa Maas is referred to as a "captive maiden" in the scene where she's standing in front of the Remedios Varo painting. It would certainly be worth while to examine the parallels more closely.

'''scalene polygons''' 
Polygons with sides of unequal length.

'''jet''' 
jet black, a color.

'''Apotheosis Sparkless Torch''' 

==Page 611==

'''magnalium''' 
An alloy of magnesium and aluminum.

'''Lamont Replevin (for it was he)''' 
Formula from penny-dreadful literature: Open the chapter with an unknown character (referred to ahead of time but never yet making an appearance), describe looks and some little action, then spring the name on the reader.

'''''The Slow and the Stupefied''''' 
Daytime soap 'The Young and the Restless'.

'''gas-head''' 
Cf pothead, acidhead, etc.

'''Pike's Peak''' 
Lew's old stompinground.

'''Gus Swallowfield''' 
A curious pseudonym assumed by Lew Basnight while in the presence of Lamont Replevin. As Mr. Swallowfield, Lew professes to be an insurance salesman. The name is very overtly British and is possibly referential to the Swallowfield estate in Berkshire, which itself has a curious history.

'''most theft policies''' 
(Fact?)

'''pantechnicon''' 
A closed van or carryall. (Is TRP trying to put a burr under S. Weisenburger's saddle by bringing this vehicle back? SW's gloss in the ''GR Companion,'' at page 19 of the Viking edition, is famously wrong.) 

Pantechnicon can mean either a furniture warehouse (originally a bazaar) or a removal van. The reference in GR to "the piano in the pantechnicon" is therefore ambiguous. TRP might say that he meant a van, not a bazaar, but that would not mean that SW was wrong. Just that SW and TRP had different readings of the novel. And the author's reading does not necessarily have primacy.

This assertion is generally debateable and in the case of TRP his conscious intentions in his fully thought out novels carries a lot of primacy most of the time, most might argue. This wiki attests to that.

:Lots of people would say the wiki is wrong then. You can discover sources and you may be able to parse processes (rewrites, selection of information), but the author's intentions are not accessible; only the work is. Therefore (and so on and so forth). A philosophical question and probably not wiki-able.

'''legitimate bill of sale''' 
That is, a stolen object with a stolen bill of sale cannot be proved to be stolen; the thief has the receipt.

==Page 612==

'''''Pavonazzetto''''' 
???

'''Phrygian marble''' 
Phrygia is an ancient region of west central Asia Minor, to the south of Bithynia. Marble from there was highly valued.

'''Atys... Agdistis''' 
??? From Greek and Roman mythology. Atys (or Attis) is a young lover of the goddess Cybele (also known as Agdistis in Phrygia). When he wished to marry, Cybele drove him mad and he castrated himself. Catullus wrote a poem on the subject.

'''''The Mutilation of Atys''''' 
No images: [http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&lr=&q=%22Mutilation%20of%20Atys&btnG=Search&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi Google image search]

But under the name Attis, this two-panel sequence: [http://www.aztriad.com/aacarati.html page 1,] [http://www.aztriad.com/aacatals.html page 2,] from "Seladore's Historical Cartoons." And [http://paxnortona.notfrisco2.com/?p=2332 a photo] of what appears to be an old statue of Attis.

'''Arturo Naunt, Chelsea's own, shocking the bourgeoisie since 1889''' 
Phrasing reminiscent of advertising.

'''shocking the bourgeoisie''' 
A popular pastime for young and not-so-young soi-disant radicals ("Epater le bourgeois").

'''koumiss vessel''' 
A container for fermented horse's milk. Perhaps like this one:
[http://studentorgs.utexas.edu/husa/origins/szkitahist/scythianvessel.html]

'''depending on the angle you hold it at, sometimes it doesn't look like anything at all''' 
A concise description of anamorphic and paramorphic images; this one needs the Paramorphoscope to interpret it.

'''wrathful deities from Tantric Buddhism''' 
Tantric Buddhism is also known as Varjayana Buddhism. In Varjayana Buddhism, a dharmapāla (Tibetan drag-gshed) is a type of wrathful deity. The name means "Dharma-defender" in Sanskrit, and the dharmapalas are also known as the Defenders of the Law (Dharma) or the Protectors of the Law in English.
In Buddhist iconography, they are invariably depicted as fearsome beings, often with many heads, hands or feet; blue, black or red skin; and a fierce expression with protruding fangs. Though dharmapalas have a terrifying appearance, they are all bodhisattvas or buddhas- embodiments of compassion that act in a wrathful way for the sake of sentient beings.Wikipedia

==Page 613==

'''tiny German hand camera''' 
Probably a Zeiss Ikon. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeiss Wikipedia Entry]

'''raw light''' 
light from a gaslight is not 'artificial' as from electric lights, streetlamps, etc. Cf. Telleruide section.

'''Gasophilia''' 
Love of gas.

'''Schwärmer''' 
The name is a German word meaning visionary, zealot, raver.

'''Waves in a timeless stream of Gas''' 
Replevin equates piped gas to the æther.

'''Sensitive Flame''' 
A burner flame adjusted so that it responds to the tiniest disturbance in the air. Used by both physicists and spiritualists.

'''cognizant nose...medium for the most exquisite poetry'''

see Proust

'''Chidambaram''' 
A city in south India and Chidambaram is one of the Panchabhoota Sthalams - temples built for the 5 elements said to embody Shiva - at Chidambaram (space), Kalahasti (wind), Thiruvanaikaval (water), Tiruvannamalai (fire) and Kanchipuram (earth).

'''''Akaša''''' 
Akasa is the fifth element,the ether, unseen and invisible but an important element permeating the whole universe. It is also considered
to be indentical with Brahma, the creator..... 
Akasa is 'simple,continuous infinite substance and is the substratum of sound.' Both from Indian Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 1999.

'''Atman''' 
''Sanskrit''. In Hinduisim, the innermost essence of each individual. Also, the soul. ''Cf.'' Weed Atman in ''Vineland''.

''''''Chaos'''''' 
allusion is seems to Genesis. "Chaos" is in fact the Greek word [for without form and void], says this site.
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light; and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness."
-- Genesis 1: 1-4 (KJV)

'''van Helmont''' 
He claimed to have coined the word "gas" in just the way described here.

'''stridently unpopulated''' 
Cf p610.

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