Thomas Pynchon Wiki - User contributions [en]

ATD 1040-1062

2023-01-28T11:34:27Z

Unmensch: /* Page 1059 */added content

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

==Page 1040==

'''one of those swank new buildings going up along Broadway''' 
It is tempting to place Lew Basnight's office in the Bradbury Building at Broadway and Third. The Bradbury was featured in Blade Runner and many other films and television shows, sometimes as the office setting for private detectives. It fits Pynchon's description of the building interior, but it is a stretch to call the Pacific Electric Building at Sixth and Main "Right down the street". Opened in 1893, it was definitely "swank" but not exactly "new."

The another likely location is the intersection of Broadway and Sixth, but this contributor can find no image or reference for a building with a "domed skylight" at this spot.

'''the Pacific Electric Building and its new Coles P.E. Buffet''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cole%27s_Pacific_Electric_Buffet Cole's Pacific Electric Buffet] opened in 1908 on the ground floor of the fabled [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Electric_Building Pacific Electric Building]. It is one of Los Angeles's oldest restaurants and claims (in contest with [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe%27s Philippe's], another restaurant in the neighborhood dating back to 1908) to have been the originator of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_dip_sandwich French dip sandwich]. Philippe's and the French dip sandwich were both recently featured in the outstanding PBS documentary [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandwiches_That_You_Will_Like Sandwiches That You Will Like].

==Page 1041==

'''living in Lincolnwood''' 
Perhaps a bilocation. During Prohibition, the area was called Tessville. It was notorious for speakeasies that were outside the jurisdiction of Chicago police. The town cleaned up its act and was renamed Lincolnwood in 1936. Only at that time did it become a place that someone might retire to.

'''Dr. Ghloix''' 
He was also the alienist of the Vormance expedition ([[ATD_119-148#Page 132|page 132]]).

'''shadow-factories''' 
Movie studios.

'''Thetis Pomidor''' 
Thetis the Silver-Footed is a Nereid (sea nymph) in Greek mythology. She is the mother of Achilles, who seeks to prevent his death by dipping him in the water of the river Styx (holding him by the famously vulnerable heel), by trying to prevent him from joining the war at Troy, and by persuading him not to try to avenge Patroclus. In the end she has made for him the magnificent shield he carries in his duel with Hector.

Pomidor is the Polish word for "tomato" (possibly other languages too). (A "tomato" = a "hottie" in mid 20th century slang).

==Page 1042==

'''Erno Rapée''' 
1891-1945, Hungarian-born composer for American movies. He published a book of "photoplay music" for the silents.

'''Shalimar''' 
Excessively evocative name for a detective's moll; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shalimar the Wikipedia disambiguation page] leads to many of the meanings.

'''Mezzanine Perkins''' 
Her given name suggests a physical attribute also called "balcony," while her surname makes a nice fit with another desirable quality, "perkiness."

'''Chester LeStreet''' 
Chester le Street is a town in the north east of England. Home of Durham County Cricket club, amongst other things.

TRP almost certainly picked up on the name during research for 'Mason & Dixon'. Dixon was a native of County Durham, which is home to a number of odd place names (e.g. Pity Me, No Place). Chester-le-Street is roughly 15 miles south of Newcastle upon Tyne.

I imagine TRP keeping long lists of potential character names from odd terminology which he runs across in his research...

'''Vertex Club''' 
The vertex is the intersection of two lines of an angle, the zero point on a graph/grid. Recalls the V Note in ''V.''.

'''Balcony''' 
A platform that protrudes outward from the home.

'''Miss Jardine Maraca''' 
Allusion to Beach Boys guitarist [http://www.aljardine.com Al Jardine,] who bears a reasonably common surname? Rude teenagers in the 1960s sometimes used the word "maracas" when they didn't want to come right out and refer to a girl's bazongas.

==Page 1043==

'''the days just before the earthquake''' 
The quake of June 29, 1925, destroyed the center of Santa Barbara and occasioned rebuilding to a "Mission-style" plan.

'''chifferobe''' 
From ''chiffonier'' + ''wardrobe'', a combination chest of drawers and wardrobe for hanging clothes. Pronounced "SHIF-uh-rohb." Also ''chifforobe'', ''chiffrobe'', or ''chiffarobe''.

The disposal of an old chifferobe is a plot point in Harper Lee's ''To Kill a Mockingbird''.

'''hop''' 
Marijuana.

==Page 1044==

'''smoked a Fatima''' 
Sometime in the mid-20th century, this American cigarette brand sponsored a radio program starring Basil Rathbone.

''Possibly not relevant, but given the marijuana reference, the choice of this particular cigarette brand also echoes the phrase "smoke a fatty", i.e. a big joint of marijuana.''

==Page 1045==

'''glass mattes''' 
Scenes painted on glass could be filmed along with the action, so that large or intricate backgrounds did not have to be built to full scale.

==Page 1046==

'''Olga Nethersole''' 
British actress and producer, 1863-1941; had successful tours in the U.S. and elsewhere.

'''Mrs. Fiske''' 
American actress Minnie Maddern Fiske, 1865-1932; a leading figure on the stage; made movies of two of her theatrical productions.

==Page 1047==

'''Li'l Jailbirds''' 
Some points in common with the Little Tough Guys, Dead End Kids, East Side Kids and other movie series; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Tough_Guys see the Wikipedia entry.]

'''one-reel comedies''' 
A reel of film ran off in something over 12 minutes.

'''orthochromatic film''' 
Film with low sensitivity to red light. The human face reflects a lot of red light, which made little impression on the film, so that faces tended to look dark in the projected image. Adaptations in the studio included green makeup to bring the face into highlight.

'''it's a silent movie''' 
This is an anachronism. It's about 1925 here (if "just before the earthquake" on page 1043 still holds for this passage), talkies don't come around until 1927 ''(The Jazz Singer)'', and until then, all films (with a few experimental exceptions), "silent" would not have been necessary to mention. Later, "silent film" comes in as a retronym, like "pocket watch" after the introduction of wrist watches, and "analog watch" after the introduction of digital watches.

'''birch beer''' 
Carbonated soft drink made with birch bark or oil, typically popular in northeastern U.S. and Newfoundland.

'''stuffed peppers they liked to call "mangoes"''' 
This term for bell peppers occurs in the Midwest and especially southern Ohio.

'''rat cheese''' 
Informal for cheddar.

==Page 1048==

'''a P.E. stop''' 
"P.E." stands for "Pacific Electric." The Pacific Electric Railway (AAR reporting mark is PE), also known as the Red Car system, was a mass transit system in Southern California using streetcars, light rail and buses. At its greatest extent, around 1925, the system connected cities in Los Angeles and Orange Counties, and to Riverside County and San Bernardino County in the Inland Empire. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Electric_Railway Wikipedia]

'''runs through the time between the picture was taken and now in a matter of seconds''' 
The reason this may sound plausible is that analog computers were used in just this way to generate artillery firing tables. But in the artillery case, the parameters of motion were given; photographic film does not record this information.

==Page 1049==

'''''Intolerance''''' 
Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916) was D.W. Griffith's follow-up to ''Birth of a Nation''.
Intolerance and its effects are examined in four historical eras. In ancient Babylon, a mountain girl is caught up in the religious rivalry that leads to the city's downfall. In Judea, the hypocritical Pharisees condemn Jesus Christ. In 1572 Paris, unaware of the impending St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, two young Huguenots prepare for marriage. Finally, in modern America, social reformers destroy the lives of a young woman and her beloved. The sets were reportedly spectacular, and on a huge scale.

'''the ''Times'' bombing''' 
[http://www.usc.edu/libraries/archives/la/scandals/times.html The Bombing of the ''Los Angles Times''], October 1, 1910.

'''the constant term in the primitive, which differentiation has taken to zero''' 
Last part first: differentiation is the operation of finding the rate of change of a quantity; a constant doesn't change, so its differentiation yields a result of zero. The "primitive" is the function that was differentiated; if it contained a constant term, that has vanished and must be restored. Reconstruction of the primitive therefore involves reversing the differentiation (finding the "indefinite integral") and setting the correct value of the constant term. By guesswork in this instance. No, it doesn't work, but remember that this is ''alchemy'' we're talking about.

Or 'Pataphysics.

Consider a pun on "primitive" in Pynchon's worldview...the primitive being a good thing, now vanished.

==Page 1050==

'''his official . . . life . . . a completely different life''' 
The reconstruction of the "primitive" (page 1049) entails fixing a value for the constant term. The operator can choose the "official" value and get Lew's "supposed-to-be" life as output, or can choose a different value and track some unofficial life. The machine can't tell the difference.

'''Louis Le Prince''' 
1842-90. Inventor in 1888 of the "chronophotographe" process. Widely acknowledged to be first to photograph motion. He vanished from a train.

==Page 1051==

'''mazuma''' 
Slang; Yiddish derived from Hebrew: money.

==Page 1052==

'''a company-issued Bulldog''' 
A Bulldog is a small, "snubbie" revolver, with a very high power-to-weight ratio, perfect for carrying in the pocket as a concealed weapon or, in Deuce's case, in a shoulder holster. First referred to in the "Beavers of the Brain" song, [[ATD 171-198#Page 183|p. 183]]

==Page 1053==

''''em mick bastards bombed the ''Times''''' 
James and Joseph McNamara ultimately pleaded guilty to the bombing (see [[#Page 1049|page 1049]] and [[#Page 1058|page 1058]]).

'''dago dynamiters''' 
Deuce must have acquired this bit of alliterative bigotry somewhere and randomly dropped it into his rant.

==Page 1054==

'''the Universal Dream Casino''' 
a "dream casino" has been used by some writers to describe the 'ideal'
gambling place as in the phrase, "Bugsy Siegel's dream casino" in Vegas.
A 'dream casino'--real betting, it seems--company for women exists.
From the context, and novel's themes, I suggest that this phrase means
all of Lake's possible, fantasizable fates, played out as 'chance'.

'''Chinese fourths''' The interval of a fourth in music consists of 2 whole-tones plus one half-tone. The following are all fourths: from do to fa, re to sol, mi to la; fa to ti is a tritone. In the context here, the 2 notes in the interval are being played simultaneously. In the music of the Western world (North America, Europe, and Australia), if one plays parallel fourths (e.g., do-fa to re-sol, to mi-la), it sounds like Chinese music. Authentic Chinese music is played using an Eastern scale which is different from the Western scale people in the West are used to, which is why Chinese music might sound out of tune ("jangling") to someone from the West.

==Page 1055==

==Page 1056==

'''it's no longer possible to go back the way they came''' 
A situation encountered before in ''AtD,'' for example Kit's predicament at the doubling of ''Stupendica.''

==Page 1057==

'''Hamburger's''' 
[http://www.ulwaf.com/LA-1900s/08.08.html Hamburger's] opened in August, 1908, at the corner of Broadway, 8th, and Hill Streets. It was, at the time, "the biggest department store in town."

==Page 1058==

'''it wasn't Haymarket . . . It wasn't Ludlow. It wasn't the Palmer raids''' 
Haymarket bombing; Colorado coal war; Justice Department campaign against American leftists under Woodrow Wilson's attorney general Alexander M. Palmer.

'''Virgil Maraca''' 
For Virgil, [[ATD_821-848#Page_825|see page 825.]]

'''...when the land was free, before it got hijacked by capitalist Christer Republicans for their long term evil purposes....''' 
and once again (say it with me) "No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

'''Gray Otis . . . the McNamaras . . . Brother Darrow''' 
the McNamaras were accused of dynamiting the Los Angeles Times building on October 1, 1910, resulting in the death of 21 persons. The crime was one of a nation-wide series intended to prevent the use of non-union materials and non-union labor. The defendants were strongly supported by the American Federation of Labor. Later the accused pleaded guilty, and James B. McNamara was sentenced to life imprisonment and John McNamara to imprisonment for 15 years. The pro-McNamara forces claimed that escaping gas, not a bomb, had destroyed the Times building. More extremist labor sympathizers charged that Otis himself had arranged the explosion.

Harrison Gray Otis (1837-1917) was an American newspaper publisher who directed the Los Angeles Times from 1886 until after World War I, which he edited with an iron hand, becoming one of the most powerful figures in southern California. He made his newspaper a voice of Republican interests, and he opposed labor unions.

The McNamara brothers trial, which ended just as it began with confessions of guilt by the McNamaras, set the cause of organized labor on the West Coast back by decades. [http://law.jrank.org/pages/2770/McNamara-Brothers-Trial-1911.html More...]

It also nearly ruined the career of Clarence Darrow (1857-1938), one of America's leading criminal defense lawyers, who represented the McNamaras in the trial. Bert Franklin, on Darrow's payroll, was caught bribing two of the jurors in the McNamara trial. He plead ed guilty to jury tampering and he testified that Darrow had known and approved of the bribery efforts.

Darrow was arrested and put on trial. When organized labor turned its back on Darrow's request for financial assistance, Darrow had to pay all the legal costs of the 13-week trial out of his own pocket. Darrow denied the charges, and on August 14 and 15, 1912, gave an impassioned closing speech to the jurors, in which he claimed that:

:"I am not on trial for having sought to bribe a man named Lockwood. I am on trial because I have been a lover of the poor, a friend of the oppressed, because I have stood by Labor for all these years."

On August 15, 1912, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty after deliberating for less than an hour. [http://law.jrank.org/pages/2768/McNamara-Brothers-Trial-1911-Darrow-Tried-Bribing-Jurors.html More about Darrow's trial...]

==Page 1059==

'''paradiddle''' 
In this sense perhaps more often "taradiddle." Fiddle, finagle, wriggle. In strict pedantic usage "paradiddle" is a kind of quadruple stroke on the snare drum. Nothing pedantic about it, LeStreet is the drummer in the house band at the Vertex Club and a paradiddle is a 4-beat exercise pattern on the snare drum. E.g., R-R-L-R-L-L-R-L or R-L-R-R-L-R-L-L or etc. (there are lots of paradiddles). The purpose is to play them fast enough so that it sounds like a roll. Different patterns produce rolls that sound distinct from each other, very important to a jazz drummer.

// The punning on “taradiddle” (a petty lie or omission, esp. used to finagle out of something) is apt, but the significance of paradiddles in drumming is not really to play them fast enough to sound like a roll. Rolls (the drummer’s means of creating sustain on an inherently staccato instrument) are almost universally played as buzz or press rolls (alternately driving the beads of the stick into the drumhead with finger pressure to create a smooth sustain), single stroke rolls (rapid alternation of single strokes on each hand: R L R L R L R L . . .), or double stroke rolls (alternation of two strokes on each hand: RR LL RR LL . . .). Paradiddles are rather a form of stick control, a means of playing rhythms in particular sticking patterns that allow for particular phrasings to stand out or for ease in moving across a drum kit. One salient point about them in this context is that the first stroke of each paradiddle is played on alternate hands (RLRR LRLL …) — a kind of mirroring or bilocation which shifts the accented part of each paraddidle from the dominant hand (the day, authority, capital) to the subdominant (night, anarchy, the marginal/liminal). I doubt Pynchon intended this as more than a drumming joke given its object, but there’s a thematic resonance, even inadvertently.

'''a barnstormer's Curtis JN''' 
An army surplus airplane from the World War, bought and flown by an itinerant pilot in aerobatic exhibitions. Nicknamed "Jenny," the plane was pictured on a 1918 airmail stamp; some sheets had the center image printed upside down: the "Jenny Invert."

==Page 1060==

'''constant-term recalibration, or C.T.R.''' 
[[ATD_1040-1062#Page_1050|See annotation to page 1050.]]

'''spagyrist''' 
Alchemist, especially one seeking cures. Follower of Paracelsus.

'''Doddling''' 
(1) Frequent misspelling of "dawdling." (2) Easy duty for an English bus conductor (e.g., issuing tickets but not supervising operations). (3) Sexual intercourse.

'''Tree of Diana''' 
Branching possibilities, alternate histories branching out from any given moment.

'''...one compassionate time-machine story, time travel in the name of love...''' 
Two come to mind: Robert Heinlein: ''The Door Into Summer'' and Jack Finney: ''Time and Again''. In both a protagonist succcessfully chases an impossible love through time.
:And don't forget the special meaning of "compassionate" in ''AtD,'' "the Compassionate" = the Chums of Chance.

A possibility: "The Compassionate" = "The Kindly Ones" = the Erinyes, or Furies, in Greek myth ? = The Chums of Chance.

'''Now, as if the terrible flood of time ...''' 
This beautiful paragraph is reminiscent of the famous time travel sequence in George Pal's film [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine_(1960_film) The Time Machine]. But here, instead of history, wars, etc. Lew sees his love. It is as if Pynchon is saying "This is how it ''should'' be done."

==Page 1061==

'''mathematical mists''' 
Recalls Kit's dream on P.566, of equations permitting a view into possible worlds.
Also recalls Julian Barbour's work on probablity mists hovering over possible time capsules. Please see his book, [http://www.platonia.com/index.html ''The End of Time''] for more details.

'''Béthenod-Latour alternator''' 
A high-frequency alternator, capable of producing continuous waves, important in the early development of wireless telegraphy and radio.

==Page 1062==

The material on Merle and Roswell in this chapter (pg. 1040-1062) completes the thread begun by the chapter (pg. 447-459) where Merle first meets meets Roswell. The two chapters are like a pair of bookends.

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

ATD 864-891

2023-01-22T08:06:55Z

Unmensch: /* Page 867 */

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

==Page 864==

'''''galleggianti''''' 
Boathouses.

'''''traghetto''''' 
ferry-boat.

==Page 865==

'''cicerone''' 
Guide, especially for a single woman.

'''''Inglesi''''' 
Italian: Englishmen.

==Page 866==

'''Gorblimey''' 
Representing a Cockney pronunciation of "God blind me!"; in medieval times, people would curse using contractions rather than breaking the third commandment (Do not use the Lord's name in vain oaths). Compare strewth, zounds, 'sblood. -- Wiktionary

'''Jenny Invert''' 
This is not her first occurrence. Part of the printing of 1918 24-cent airmail stamps showed an inverted image of a Curtis JN-4 Jenny airplane. [http://www.afa.org/magazine/1990/0790jenny.asp It's a famous and valuable stamp.] 
Another female character named after a stamp is "Penny Black"

'''Newmarket''' 
Cf [[ATD_489-524#Page_495|page 495: Newmarket]].

'''Nether Wallop, Hants''' 
Hants: customary shortening of Hampshire. 
NETHER WALLOP, a parish in the hundred of Thorngate, county Hants, 7 miles S.W. of Andover, and 3½ N.W. of Stockbridge, its post town. The parish is situated under Danebury Hill, on which are remains of a fortification with ramparts, strengthened on the western side by an outwork, and supposed to have been formed by Canute the Great. The surface is hilly and the soil chalky. The living is a vicarage* in the diocese of Winchester, value £350. The church, dedicated to St. Andrew, contains several old monuments and two brasses-one of an abbess, bearing date 1432, and the other of a mitred abbot. Gazeteer of Ireland and Great Britain. 
Great Pynchonian name. Surprising that it's real-- Nether Wallop = whack in the ass, much like the "fundament-seizing" back on pg. 110

'''Inanimate Bird Association''' 
Concerned with clay pigeons, i.e., trapshooting.

'''rather shirty''' 
Shirty: angry, irritated, huffy, stroppy.
Maybe from "Keep your shirt on!" (Don't get angry!)

'''the key also changes day to day''' 
A code depending upon changes in the starting point for shifts in the text (e.g a book with a different starting page depending on the date, groups of letters that change starting with a different letter every day)is considered unbreakable unless one knows the starting point, called the Key.

'''''Oca ti jebem''''' 
Macedonian: I fuck your father.

'''Giles Piprake''' 
Is he aping Chico Marx? 
A small rake with women? See his remark about Ratty's wife. The joke here is that if Ratty's wife did complain, that would be a problem Piprake couldn't sort out. 
No, G.P.'s comeback is a joke in the "That's what ''she'' said" genre. 
Lots of definitions for [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/pip pip], take your pick. Breaking through a shell (shell being a metaphor for a problem barrier in this case) seems as appropriate as any. Lots of definitions for [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/rake rake], too. 
A ''pipkrake'' is a narrow spike of ice that grows upward from a body of groundwater in freezing weather, carrying a portion of soil on its top surface. [http://epod.usra.edu/archive/epodviewer.php3?oid=336192 Here] are a photo and discussion; note that the caption has the misspelling ''piprake''!

==Page 867==

'''remember not to wear yellow''' 
Cyprian thinks he was seen hiding because he was wearing yellow?
Conjecture: Austro-Hungary's colors were yellow and black. So yellow not only draws the eye, but he might also be taken for an Austrian in Venice incurring Italian mob wrath or perhaps Theign's attention.
 The color yellow was associated with the decadence movement in the arts during the 1890s, specifically with the queerness and homosexuality embraced by many of the artists involved. The Yellow Book was a journal which took its name from the notorious volume in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (a thinly-veiled reference to J.K. Huysmans’ novel Á Rebours). After Wilde’s trial for homosexuality in 1895, The Yellow Book itself became associated with queerness in the British cultural mind. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yellow_Book. Cyprian is reminding himself not to inadvertently signal to the Principe Spongiatosta that he is there for a sexual encounter, in view of the assignations previously arranged for him by Theign.

'''''valletto''''' 
Italian: valet, attendant.

'''''heliotrope''''' 
A moderate, light, or brilliant violet to moderate or deep reddish purple.

'''''Facciam' il porco''''' 
We (the Prince and valletto) are playing the sexual pervert. Literally, we are doing the pig, but porco is Italian slang for sexual pervert.

'''''Il mio ragazzo è molto geloso''''' 
Italian: My little guy is very jealous.

'''''Qualsiasi, Ciprianino''''' 
Italian: Whatever you want (you want is implied), little Cyprian.

'''The Iron Gateway''' 
an imaginary internal 'Symbolist' artwork embodying vivid hallucinatory visions within ATD? 
Also a real structure:
Iron Gateway & Draghut Mosque, Tripoli Medina
Iron Gateway, Tripoli Medina
Iron Gateway & Draghut Mosque, Tripoli Medina

-- Is this a reference to the Portal, p.154?
: Could be, but there are a lot of thresholds and portals in this book; the Tushuk Tash back on pg. 764, and the Halkata approaching on pg. 955... But Hunter's painting sounds more like the portal to war, endings, the Zero-- described in Gravity's Rainbow on pg. 51 "One by one men step out into this perfectly black rectangle of night and disappear. Gone, the war taking them, the man behind already presenting his ticket."

'''Carlo Zen furniture''' 
Designed by Carlo Zen (Italian, 1851-1918)
Among the more prolific designers and cabinet-makers of the period was the firm of Carlo Zen. Some of his decorations suggest the strong influence of continental symbolism, while other objects reveal a keen awareness of geometric simplification.

'''Galileo Chini''' 
Galileo CHINI , famous italian painter and ceramist, was born in Florence on December 2nd 1873 and died on August 23rd 1956.
In 1896, he funded "The Art of Ceramics" (later called "Factory Fornaci S.Lorenzo). He introduced the Liberty style in Italy.
As a painter he took part at the"Biennale di Venezia" from 1901 till 1936.
In 1911 he was in Bangkok to decorate Siam King's palace.
He remained there till 1913: it was a triumph! Back in Italy, he taught at the "Accademia di Belle Arti"in Florence. Some of his beautiful works of Art can be found at the Modern Art Gallery in Rome, at the Uffizi in Florence and at the Modern Art Gallery in Palazzo Pitti.

'''Bugatti''' 
Carlo Bugatti (1856-1940), world-famous furniture designer from Milan.

==Page 868==

'''''corno''''' 
The "horned" cap worn by Doges of Venice. An example comes from a Bellini portrait of a doge at [http://www.prints.co.nz/page/fine-art/PROD/Renaissance_Art_Prints/7211].

'''''lo stato''''' 
Italian: the state.

'''penance....imbalance in Nature.''' 
incredible thematic paragraph that relates to revenge motif?

- seems also to refer to the idea of Karma and karmic penance. Only if you make up for the deeds done in this or in an earlier life, the karmic account will be balanced (i.e. 'Nature' in the sense of the whole cosmos).

I see also a clear reference to the idea of control in modern society put forward by French philosopher Michael Foucault, who explains in his book ''Surveiller et punir'' (Discipline and Punish) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discipline_and_Punish] how governments (power) try to subtly control us in order to make us become 'proper citizens' and how those who dare to be out of such properness must and should be punished.

==Page 869==

'''''salizzada''''' 
Salizzada once meant a paved street, implying that all other, less important calles were once just dirt-packed alleyways.From a Venice Guidebook.

==Page 870==

'''Not by a long chalk''' 
This mainly British expression means “not by any means”, “not at all” and often turns up in conventional expressions such as they weren’t beaten yet, not by a long chalk.
It goes back to the days in which a count or score of almost any kind was marked up on a convenient surface using chalk. At a pub or ale house this might be a note of the amount of credit you had been given (often called the chalk in the early nineteenth century), which Charles Dickens refers to in Great Expectations: “There was a bar at the Jolly Bargemen, with some alarmingly long chalk scores in it on the wall at the side of the door, which seemed to me to be never paid off.”-- Yahoo answers.

'''gibanica''' 
Croatian: a rolled pastry filled with cheese or fruit.

'''kadulja''' 
Croatian, literally: garden sage.

'''coastal Čakavština''' 
Speech of a region in coastal Croatia.

==Page 871==

'''''bàcari''''' 
Venetian wine bars

'''formulæ''' 
Spells. The plural of formula, an established form of words or symbols for use in a ceremony or procedure.

==Page 872==

'''''Altezza''''' 
Italian: Highness.

==Page 873==

'''Montepulciano''' 
A red wine, considered among Italy's best, from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montepulciano Montepulciano].

'''the Ponte degli Scalzi''' 
Cf [[ATD_724-747#Page_746|page 746: the Ponte degli Scalzi]].

==Page 874==

'''11 mm Montenegrin Gasser''' 
A hinged-framed 11.3 mm calibre revolver

'''... to leave some mark of imbalance''' 
Refer back to p.868: "... there is an imbalance in Nature."

'''San Stae''' 
In Santa Croce district.

==Page 875==

==Page 876==

'''gentleman ops''' 
A tradition in thrillers. Bulldog Drummond and Tommy Hambledon are just two in the crowd.

'''dittoes''' 
"A suit of dittoes" is an outfit of coat, vest (waistcoat) and trousers from the same fabric.

'''Wrong sod, I'm afraid''' 
Not Oscar Wilde, i.e. not a Dandy

'''religious surrender of the self''' 
See P. 836, and note. Suggests Cyprian's masochism is a form of self-transcendence; transgression as transcendence. He has indeed demonstrated his ability to lose all desire...

==Page 877==

'''...what were the chances of finding anyone seeking to transcend that, and not even particularly aware of it?''' 
Passing beyond the self, passing beyond desire (and without fanfare), Cyprtian's very Buddhist quest, is perceived only as masochistic in the Western materialist view.

==Page 878==

'''''brisance''''' 
A French word now fully adopted in English. In the context of explosives it means "shattering power." In English it means the shattering or crushing effect of a sudden release of energy as in an explosion.

'''undissembled''' 
Synonyms: open-hearted, honest, plain, artless, guileless, ingenuous, innocent, natural, sincere, transparent, unconcealed, undisguised, unvarnished. Antonyms: devious, secretive, two-faced, evasive.

'''Wigan''' 
A town near Manchester, England, (with a professional soccer team, Wigan Athletic).<

'''the Earl's Court Wheel''' 
[http://www.shadyoldlady.com/location.php?loc=492 The Great Wheel] of a height of 300 ft built at the Earls Court exhibition grounds, London. It was modelled on the original one in Chicago. It was opend on July 6, 1895 for the "Empire of India Exhibition" and stayed in service until 1906. It was dismantled in 1907.

'''reversals of power''' 
Reversals of sexual power positions parallel Alernating Current. If DC is "direct" i.e. in one direction only, and AC is "alternating" current, a current of periodical reversals, perhaps all this talk of transcending sexual norms and role reversals is a social/sexual counterpoint to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Currents Current Wars]fought between Edison and Tesla. After much heated contention, Tesla and AC won, enormously extending the range and safety of power distribution (electrical, economic, sexual, social) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_engineering].Seen in the light of electrical circuitry, Anarchist explosions are expressions of power imbalance, every detonation another circuit blown. 
Electrical engineering terms take on new significance in AtD: twisted pair, induction coupling, Q inductors, three-phase generation, loads, triangle wave, square wave, etc. Interestingly, the wiki commentary on the War of the Currents states that "AC cannot really be understood or exploited without a substantial mathematical and mathematical physics orientation, which Tesla had" -- as did Yashmeen -- at whose feet these power reversals were but the "outskirts" (an interesting double entendre in outskirts). That Yashmeen is central to all this sexual power transformation, generation, distribution, alternating style as well as being a human mental radio (clairvoyance) -- she becomes an embodiment of both Henry Adams' dynamo and Virgin -- in one! A duality in singularity. She is the mother/whore of the electrical world.

==Page 879==

'''the least ''clairvoyante''''' 
The (woman) friend least able to exercise occult powers such as seeing the future.

'''Carnevale''' 
Italian: Carnival. The Italian word [http://italianfood.about.com/library/rec/blr0149.htm ''Carnevale''] derives from ''Carne Levare'' — Remove Meat — the name of the sumptuous dinner people would hold the night before Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent. In the past, things were especially intense in Venice, where debauched revels went on for weeks.
The standard folk etymology says that Carnevale means 'Farewell to meat" (vale is Latin for goodbye). See below, Carnesalve.

==Page 880==

'''Carnesalve''' 
If Carnevale means "goodbye to meat" (beginning of the Lenten fast), Carnesalve means "hello there, meat!"

'''San Servolo''' 
Island in the Venetian Lagoon, to the southeast of San Giorgio Maggiore, from 18th century until 1978 site of the Venetian psychiatric hospital. Since 1978, site of the "Istituto per le Ricerche e gli Studi sull´Emarginazione Sociale e Culturale" (Institute for the Study of Social and Cultural Marginalization) to preserve the documents associated with the history of the psychiatric hostpital [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Servolo].

'''Signori di Notte''' 
Italian: night lords.

==Page 881==

'''...framed by Signor Fabrizio's re-imagining of Yashmeen's hair...''' 
Saved from when he cut it off. On P. 860, she says he may "do whatever he want(s) with it" and the approach of this costume ball is implied.

'''Parma violets''' 
A delicate variety of the flower produced in the Italian city. The blossoms are sometimes sold candied, too.

'''loggie''' 
Plural of ''loggia.'' Italian: theater box or similar feature in a formal room.

==Page 882==

'''''amoretti''''' 
Italian: "Cupids" used as space fillers or decorative elements.

'''''tesoro''''' 
Italian: treasure.

'''Quickly now ....''' 
The conception described here is technically immaculate: Reef fulfills the role of the Father, Yashmeen that of Mary, and Cyprian that of the Holy Ghost. 

Or is this a human instance of three phase electrical generation? 
Or an alchemical operation to produce the Philosopher's Stone? 
Or the creation of a Moonchild through sex magic ala Aleister Crowley.

Alchemical musings: Person-Sex-Orb-Metal 
Reef: male, sun, gold 
Yashmeen: female, moon, silver 
Cyprian: female/male, mercury, mercury (quicksilver)

Cyprian first receives the seed as the functional equivalent of a female and then plants the seed as a male. He changes gender relating to his passing through the arch alone -- this also seems metaphorically related to the process of photographic plate development shift in colors. 

This sex shift also relates him to Mercury, quicksilver, a transition metal named for a hermaphroditic god. The glyph for Mercury is used in biology and botany to mean double-sexed.

Mercury was once used in the amalgamation process of refining gold and silver ores. It was central to the practice of the assayer in juding the purity of gold and silver ore, and the alchemist in the the production of the Philosopher's Stone. Mercury signifies the ''coniunctio'' or uniting of opposites.

'''''fellatrice''''' 
Or: fellatrix , a female who performs oral-genital-sex on the penis. Quote: Woody Allen to Miro Sorvino in Mighty Aphrodite (1995): ' I'm sure that you're a state-of-the-art fellatrix .' The etymology of fellatrice and fellatrix is the same as that of fellatio: from Latin, fellare (to suck). These words are used in English, French and Italian.
(denoting Cyprian's role, not his physiology).
 ''in fact, the word is not used in italian at all.''

==Page 883==

'''Ascension Day''' 
The fortieth day after Easter Sunday (which is always a Thursday), commemorating the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension Ascension] of Christ into heaven, according to Mark 16:19, Luke 24:51, and Acts 1:2.

==Page 884==

==Page 885==

'''outmoded sexual protocols''' 
Again, transgression = transcendence. Of course, also parallels struggles over acceptance of homosexuality in our times.

'''nasal intrusion''' 
Sticking one's nose into something.

'''''chavalitos''''' 
Spanish: kids.

==Page 886==

'''Grand Army of the Matrimonial Republic''' 
The Grand Army of the Republic comprised Union veterans of the American Civil War. Its heyday came around 1890-1910.

==Page 887==

'''endlessless''' 
A typo for endlessness.

==Page 887-888==
'''[T]he dream came and found him...''' 
Reef's contribution to the hallucination/dream motif previously referenced in the Traverse sections of the novel. The color yellow seems to be significant here and elsewhere, especially coded to Webb Traverse. [More forthcoming]

<blockquote>
          In the dream they were no longer in the ghostly canyons of the McElmo but in the city, not Venice but noplace American either, with an umappable operational endlessless (sic) to its streets, the same ancient, disquieting pictures engraved on its walls as back in the McElmo, spelling out a story whose pitiless truth couldn't be admitted officially by the authorities here because of the danger to the public sanity.... It was darker out here than he had any idea of. In the distance Reef caught sight of a procession of miners in their long rubber coats, only one of them, about halfway along, with the candle stub in his hat lit. Like postulants in habits, they proceeded single file down a narrow street like a humid drift lit back or front by a yellow lamp. As Reef came closer he saw the bearer of the light was Webb. 
        "Small victories," Webb greeted him. "Just to come away with one or two. To praise and to honor the small victories where and however they happen." 
        "Hasn't been too many of them lately, Pa," Reef tried to say. 
        "Not talking about yours, you numbskull." 
        Understanding that this was Webb's attempt to pass on another message, like up the séance in the Alps, Reef saw just for one lucid instant that this was the precise intelligence he needed to get him back to where he had wandered off the trail, so long ago. And then he was awake and trying to remember why it was important.</blockquote>

[[User:Bean|remy]] 13:15, 28 December 2006 (PST)

endlessless: typo for endlessness

pictures engraved on the walls: the Puebloan pictograms

'''Garfagnana''' 
Historical region of Italy, today part of the province of Lucca in the Apennines, in northwest Tuscany, but before the unification of Italy it belonged to the Duchy of Modena and Reggio, ruled by the Este family. For a short time, in the 16th century, it was governed by the poet Ludovico Ariosto [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garfagnana].

'''Bagni di Lucca''' 
Note the similarity in name to Banjaluka (or Banja Luka), Bosnia or actually Republika Srpska , mentioned on page 834. Another bilocation, like Kara Tagh and Montenegro ([[ATD_748-767#Page_764|annotations, page 764]]).

Might also add: Novi Pazar = Novi Bazar = Newmarket.

Also Agadir and Cádiz, both coming from the Phoenician gadir, meaning '"castle", "fortress"..."walled stronghold" or simply "wall"'.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A1diz]

'''homeopathic principle''' 
Like cures like. To alleviate an allergy, according to homeopathic doctrine, administer the allergen in an exceedingly dilute form.

==Page 889==

'''Say surly topple''' 
You can't help thinking Reef does this on purpose (or Pynchon :-). French ''C'est sur la table'': It's on the table.
Maybe he ran into James Joyce on his travels. These are all very 'Finnegans Wake' type puns.
These lucky mistranslations appear in other Pynchon novels as well; Doc Sportello's declaration of love in "Inherent Vice" is 'cootie food!'

'''pasta asciutta''' 
Pasta dish with potatoes and green beans. Actually ''pasta asciutta'' refers to any kind of ''pasta''. Actually, pasta asciutta refers to any kind of packaged dry (asciutta translates as dry) pasta (as opposed to made from [http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1635,144190-254199,00.html scratch]) and apparently when Reef boiled it, it "was always overdone." There are also lots of regional recipes with pasta asciutta as part of the name of the recipe, e. g., pasta asciutta alla bolognese, or pasta asciutta alla siciliana.

'''pasta fazool''' 
Officially ''pasta e fagioli;'' "fazool" imitates the pronunciation in a regional dialect of Italian. A hearty soup consisting of pasta, any one of a variety of beans (borlotti (cranberry) beans, kidney beans, cannellini beans, ...), and optionally some meat.

==Page 890==

'''''al dente''''' 
Italian, cooked so as to be firm when eaten; literally: to the tooth or to the bite, referring to the need to chew the pasta due to its firmness.

'''Barcelona''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragic_Week Tragic Week] (in Catalan la Setmana Tràgica, in Spanish la Semana Trágica) (July 25-August 2, 1909) is the name used for a series of bloody confrontations between the army and the working classes of Barcelona and other cities of Catalonia, backed by the anarchists, communists and republicans, during the last week of July 1909. It was caused by the calling-up of reserve troops by Prime Minister Antonio Maura to be sent as reinforcements when Spain renewed military-colonial activity in Morocco on July 9. There would be risings again in 1917, and Barcelona was among the last strongholds of the Spanish Republic in the Civil War of 1936-39; even during the Civil war, anarchists and Communists fought in the streets (see Orwell's ''Homage to Catalonia'' for a participant account. In 1972 anarchist grafiti could still be found in the Old City). But in 1909, indeed, much worse was to come.

'''''línea del fuego''''' 
Spanish: line of (the) fire. This may be a naive translation of "firing line" or "line of fire" (note the satisfying ambiguity); ''línea de tiro'' seems to be preferred.

'''...''absence of desire''--why one might choose ''not to embrace'' what the world judges, it often seemed unanimously, to lie clearly in one's interest.''' 
Cyprian is becoming aware of his interest in divesting himself of desire. Yashmeen in the following sentences notes this change that took place in him in Bosnia; he notes how difficult renouncing his desire for her will be, and she that this is not the real meaning.

==Page 891==

'''Biarritz''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biarritz Biarritz], located about 11 miles from the border with Spain, is a town by the Bay of Biscay, on the Atlantic coast, in southwestern France.

'''''bal musette''''' 
French: dance hall (bal), with the music provided by an accordion band. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bal-musette Bal-musette] is a style of French popular music presumably played at these dance halls.

'''in some auxiliary sense . . . his own''' 
Review details of the encounter at Carnesalve (page 881).

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

ATD 864-891

2023-01-22T08:06:30Z

Unmensch: /* Page 867 */

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

==Page 864==

'''''galleggianti''''' 
Boathouses.

'''''traghetto''''' 
ferry-boat.

==Page 865==

'''cicerone''' 
Guide, especially for a single woman.

'''''Inglesi''''' 
Italian: Englishmen.

==Page 866==

'''Gorblimey''' 
Representing a Cockney pronunciation of "God blind me!"; in medieval times, people would curse using contractions rather than breaking the third commandment (Do not use the Lord's name in vain oaths). Compare strewth, zounds, 'sblood. -- Wiktionary

'''Jenny Invert''' 
This is not her first occurrence. Part of the printing of 1918 24-cent airmail stamps showed an inverted image of a Curtis JN-4 Jenny airplane. [http://www.afa.org/magazine/1990/0790jenny.asp It's a famous and valuable stamp.] 
Another female character named after a stamp is "Penny Black"

'''Newmarket''' 
Cf [[ATD_489-524#Page_495|page 495: Newmarket]].

'''Nether Wallop, Hants''' 
Hants: customary shortening of Hampshire. 
NETHER WALLOP, a parish in the hundred of Thorngate, county Hants, 7 miles S.W. of Andover, and 3½ N.W. of Stockbridge, its post town. The parish is situated under Danebury Hill, on which are remains of a fortification with ramparts, strengthened on the western side by an outwork, and supposed to have been formed by Canute the Great. The surface is hilly and the soil chalky. The living is a vicarage* in the diocese of Winchester, value £350. The church, dedicated to St. Andrew, contains several old monuments and two brasses-one of an abbess, bearing date 1432, and the other of a mitred abbot. Gazeteer of Ireland and Great Britain. 
Great Pynchonian name. Surprising that it's real-- Nether Wallop = whack in the ass, much like the "fundament-seizing" back on pg. 110

'''Inanimate Bird Association''' 
Concerned with clay pigeons, i.e., trapshooting.

'''rather shirty''' 
Shirty: angry, irritated, huffy, stroppy.
Maybe from "Keep your shirt on!" (Don't get angry!)

'''the key also changes day to day''' 
A code depending upon changes in the starting point for shifts in the text (e.g a book with a different starting page depending on the date, groups of letters that change starting with a different letter every day)is considered unbreakable unless one knows the starting point, called the Key.

'''''Oca ti jebem''''' 
Macedonian: I fuck your father.

'''Giles Piprake''' 
Is he aping Chico Marx? 
A small rake with women? See his remark about Ratty's wife. The joke here is that if Ratty's wife did complain, that would be a problem Piprake couldn't sort out. 
No, G.P.'s comeback is a joke in the "That's what ''she'' said" genre. 
Lots of definitions for [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/pip pip], take your pick. Breaking through a shell (shell being a metaphor for a problem barrier in this case) seems as appropriate as any. Lots of definitions for [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/rake rake], too. 
A ''pipkrake'' is a narrow spike of ice that grows upward from a body of groundwater in freezing weather, carrying a portion of soil on its top surface. [http://epod.usra.edu/archive/epodviewer.php3?oid=336192 Here] are a photo and discussion; note that the caption has the misspelling ''piprake''!

==Page 867==

'''remember not to wear yellow''' 
Cyprian thinks he was seen hiding because he was wearing yellow?
Conjecture: Austro-Hungary's colors were yellow and black. So yellow not only draws the eye, but he might also be taken for an Austrian in Venice incurring Italian mob wrath or perhaps Theign's attention.
 The color yellow was associated with the decadence movement in the arts during the 1890s, specifically with the queerness and homosexuality embraced by many of the artists involved. The Yellow Book was a journal which took its name from the notorious volume in Oscar Wilde’s The Portrait of Dorian Gray (a thinly-veiled reference to J.K. Huysmans’ novel Á Rebours). After Wilde’s trial for homosexuality in 1895, The Yellow Book itself became associated with queerness in the British cultural mind. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yellow_Book. Cyprian is reminding himself not to inadvertently signal to the Principe Spongiatosta that he is there for a sexual encounter, in view of the assignations previously arranged for him by Theign.

'''''valletto''''' 
Italian: valet, attendant.

'''''heliotrope''''' 
A moderate, light, or brilliant violet to moderate or deep reddish purple.

'''''Facciam' il porco''''' 
We (the Prince and valletto) are playing the sexual pervert. Literally, we are doing the pig, but porco is Italian slang for sexual pervert.

'''''Il mio ragazzo è molto geloso''''' 
Italian: My little guy is very jealous.

'''''Qualsiasi, Ciprianino''''' 
Italian: Whatever you want (you want is implied), little Cyprian.

'''The Iron Gateway''' 
an imaginary internal 'Symbolist' artwork embodying vivid hallucinatory visions within ATD? 
Also a real structure:
Iron Gateway & Draghut Mosque, Tripoli Medina
Iron Gateway, Tripoli Medina
Iron Gateway & Draghut Mosque, Tripoli Medina

-- Is this a reference to the Portal, p.154?
: Could be, but there are a lot of thresholds and portals in this book; the Tushuk Tash back on pg. 764, and the Halkata approaching on pg. 955... But Hunter's painting sounds more like the portal to war, endings, the Zero-- described in Gravity's Rainbow on pg. 51 "One by one men step out into this perfectly black rectangle of night and disappear. Gone, the war taking them, the man behind already presenting his ticket."

'''Carlo Zen furniture''' 
Designed by Carlo Zen (Italian, 1851-1918)
Among the more prolific designers and cabinet-makers of the period was the firm of Carlo Zen. Some of his decorations suggest the strong influence of continental symbolism, while other objects reveal a keen awareness of geometric simplification.

'''Galileo Chini''' 
Galileo CHINI , famous italian painter and ceramist, was born in Florence on December 2nd 1873 and died on August 23rd 1956.
In 1896, he funded "The Art of Ceramics" (later called "Factory Fornaci S.Lorenzo). He introduced the Liberty style in Italy.
As a painter he took part at the"Biennale di Venezia" from 1901 till 1936.
In 1911 he was in Bangkok to decorate Siam King's palace.
He remained there till 1913: it was a triumph! Back in Italy, he taught at the "Accademia di Belle Arti"in Florence. Some of his beautiful works of Art can be found at the Modern Art Gallery in Rome, at the Uffizi in Florence and at the Modern Art Gallery in Palazzo Pitti.

'''Bugatti''' 
Carlo Bugatti (1856-1940), world-famous furniture designer from Milan.

==Page 868==

'''''corno''''' 
The "horned" cap worn by Doges of Venice. An example comes from a Bellini portrait of a doge at [http://www.prints.co.nz/page/fine-art/PROD/Renaissance_Art_Prints/7211].

'''''lo stato''''' 
Italian: the state.

'''penance....imbalance in Nature.''' 
incredible thematic paragraph that relates to revenge motif?

- seems also to refer to the idea of Karma and karmic penance. Only if you make up for the deeds done in this or in an earlier life, the karmic account will be balanced (i.e. 'Nature' in the sense of the whole cosmos).

I see also a clear reference to the idea of control in modern society put forward by French philosopher Michael Foucault, who explains in his book ''Surveiller et punir'' (Discipline and Punish) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discipline_and_Punish] how governments (power) try to subtly control us in order to make us become 'proper citizens' and how those who dare to be out of such properness must and should be punished.

==Page 869==

'''''salizzada''''' 
Salizzada once meant a paved street, implying that all other, less important calles were once just dirt-packed alleyways.From a Venice Guidebook.

==Page 870==

'''Not by a long chalk''' 
This mainly British expression means “not by any means”, “not at all” and often turns up in conventional expressions such as they weren’t beaten yet, not by a long chalk.
It goes back to the days in which a count or score of almost any kind was marked up on a convenient surface using chalk. At a pub or ale house this might be a note of the amount of credit you had been given (often called the chalk in the early nineteenth century), which Charles Dickens refers to in Great Expectations: “There was a bar at the Jolly Bargemen, with some alarmingly long chalk scores in it on the wall at the side of the door, which seemed to me to be never paid off.”-- Yahoo answers.

'''gibanica''' 
Croatian: a rolled pastry filled with cheese or fruit.

'''kadulja''' 
Croatian, literally: garden sage.

'''coastal Čakavština''' 
Speech of a region in coastal Croatia.

==Page 871==

'''''bàcari''''' 
Venetian wine bars

'''formulæ''' 
Spells. The plural of formula, an established form of words or symbols for use in a ceremony or procedure.

==Page 872==

'''''Altezza''''' 
Italian: Highness.

==Page 873==

'''Montepulciano''' 
A red wine, considered among Italy's best, from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montepulciano Montepulciano].

'''the Ponte degli Scalzi''' 
Cf [[ATD_724-747#Page_746|page 746: the Ponte degli Scalzi]].

==Page 874==

'''11 mm Montenegrin Gasser''' 
A hinged-framed 11.3 mm calibre revolver

'''... to leave some mark of imbalance''' 
Refer back to p.868: "... there is an imbalance in Nature."

'''San Stae''' 
In Santa Croce district.

==Page 875==

==Page 876==

'''gentleman ops''' 
A tradition in thrillers. Bulldog Drummond and Tommy Hambledon are just two in the crowd.

'''dittoes''' 
"A suit of dittoes" is an outfit of coat, vest (waistcoat) and trousers from the same fabric.

'''Wrong sod, I'm afraid''' 
Not Oscar Wilde, i.e. not a Dandy

'''religious surrender of the self''' 
See P. 836, and note. Suggests Cyprian's masochism is a form of self-transcendence; transgression as transcendence. He has indeed demonstrated his ability to lose all desire...

==Page 877==

'''...what were the chances of finding anyone seeking to transcend that, and not even particularly aware of it?''' 
Passing beyond the self, passing beyond desire (and without fanfare), Cyprtian's very Buddhist quest, is perceived only as masochistic in the Western materialist view.

==Page 878==

'''''brisance''''' 
A French word now fully adopted in English. In the context of explosives it means "shattering power." In English it means the shattering or crushing effect of a sudden release of energy as in an explosion.

'''undissembled''' 
Synonyms: open-hearted, honest, plain, artless, guileless, ingenuous, innocent, natural, sincere, transparent, unconcealed, undisguised, unvarnished. Antonyms: devious, secretive, two-faced, evasive.

'''Wigan''' 
A town near Manchester, England, (with a professional soccer team, Wigan Athletic).<

'''the Earl's Court Wheel''' 
[http://www.shadyoldlady.com/location.php?loc=492 The Great Wheel] of a height of 300 ft built at the Earls Court exhibition grounds, London. It was modelled on the original one in Chicago. It was opend on July 6, 1895 for the "Empire of India Exhibition" and stayed in service until 1906. It was dismantled in 1907.

'''reversals of power''' 
Reversals of sexual power positions parallel Alernating Current. If DC is "direct" i.e. in one direction only, and AC is "alternating" current, a current of periodical reversals, perhaps all this talk of transcending sexual norms and role reversals is a social/sexual counterpoint to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Currents Current Wars]fought between Edison and Tesla. After much heated contention, Tesla and AC won, enormously extending the range and safety of power distribution (electrical, economic, sexual, social) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_engineering].Seen in the light of electrical circuitry, Anarchist explosions are expressions of power imbalance, every detonation another circuit blown. 
Electrical engineering terms take on new significance in AtD: twisted pair, induction coupling, Q inductors, three-phase generation, loads, triangle wave, square wave, etc. Interestingly, the wiki commentary on the War of the Currents states that "AC cannot really be understood or exploited without a substantial mathematical and mathematical physics orientation, which Tesla had" -- as did Yashmeen -- at whose feet these power reversals were but the "outskirts" (an interesting double entendre in outskirts). That Yashmeen is central to all this sexual power transformation, generation, distribution, alternating style as well as being a human mental radio (clairvoyance) -- she becomes an embodiment of both Henry Adams' dynamo and Virgin -- in one! A duality in singularity. She is the mother/whore of the electrical world.

==Page 879==

'''the least ''clairvoyante''''' 
The (woman) friend least able to exercise occult powers such as seeing the future.

'''Carnevale''' 
Italian: Carnival. The Italian word [http://italianfood.about.com/library/rec/blr0149.htm ''Carnevale''] derives from ''Carne Levare'' — Remove Meat — the name of the sumptuous dinner people would hold the night before Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent. In the past, things were especially intense in Venice, where debauched revels went on for weeks.
The standard folk etymology says that Carnevale means 'Farewell to meat" (vale is Latin for goodbye). See below, Carnesalve.

==Page 880==

'''Carnesalve''' 
If Carnevale means "goodbye to meat" (beginning of the Lenten fast), Carnesalve means "hello there, meat!"

'''San Servolo''' 
Island in the Venetian Lagoon, to the southeast of San Giorgio Maggiore, from 18th century until 1978 site of the Venetian psychiatric hospital. Since 1978, site of the "Istituto per le Ricerche e gli Studi sull´Emarginazione Sociale e Culturale" (Institute for the Study of Social and Cultural Marginalization) to preserve the documents associated with the history of the psychiatric hostpital [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Servolo].

'''Signori di Notte''' 
Italian: night lords.

==Page 881==

'''...framed by Signor Fabrizio's re-imagining of Yashmeen's hair...''' 
Saved from when he cut it off. On P. 860, she says he may "do whatever he want(s) with it" and the approach of this costume ball is implied.

'''Parma violets''' 
A delicate variety of the flower produced in the Italian city. The blossoms are sometimes sold candied, too.

'''loggie''' 
Plural of ''loggia.'' Italian: theater box or similar feature in a formal room.

==Page 882==

'''''amoretti''''' 
Italian: "Cupids" used as space fillers or decorative elements.

'''''tesoro''''' 
Italian: treasure.

'''Quickly now ....''' 
The conception described here is technically immaculate: Reef fulfills the role of the Father, Yashmeen that of Mary, and Cyprian that of the Holy Ghost. 

Or is this a human instance of three phase electrical generation? 
Or an alchemical operation to produce the Philosopher's Stone? 
Or the creation of a Moonchild through sex magic ala Aleister Crowley.

Alchemical musings: Person-Sex-Orb-Metal 
Reef: male, sun, gold 
Yashmeen: female, moon, silver 
Cyprian: female/male, mercury, mercury (quicksilver)

Cyprian first receives the seed as the functional equivalent of a female and then plants the seed as a male. He changes gender relating to his passing through the arch alone -- this also seems metaphorically related to the process of photographic plate development shift in colors. 

This sex shift also relates him to Mercury, quicksilver, a transition metal named for a hermaphroditic god. The glyph for Mercury is used in biology and botany to mean double-sexed.

Mercury was once used in the amalgamation process of refining gold and silver ores. It was central to the practice of the assayer in juding the purity of gold and silver ore, and the alchemist in the the production of the Philosopher's Stone. Mercury signifies the ''coniunctio'' or uniting of opposites.

'''''fellatrice''''' 
Or: fellatrix , a female who performs oral-genital-sex on the penis. Quote: Woody Allen to Miro Sorvino in Mighty Aphrodite (1995): ' I'm sure that you're a state-of-the-art fellatrix .' The etymology of fellatrice and fellatrix is the same as that of fellatio: from Latin, fellare (to suck). These words are used in English, French and Italian.
(denoting Cyprian's role, not his physiology).
 ''in fact, the word is not used in italian at all.''

==Page 883==

'''Ascension Day''' 
The fortieth day after Easter Sunday (which is always a Thursday), commemorating the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension Ascension] of Christ into heaven, according to Mark 16:19, Luke 24:51, and Acts 1:2.

==Page 884==

==Page 885==

'''outmoded sexual protocols''' 
Again, transgression = transcendence. Of course, also parallels struggles over acceptance of homosexuality in our times.

'''nasal intrusion''' 
Sticking one's nose into something.

'''''chavalitos''''' 
Spanish: kids.

==Page 886==

'''Grand Army of the Matrimonial Republic''' 
The Grand Army of the Republic comprised Union veterans of the American Civil War. Its heyday came around 1890-1910.

==Page 887==

'''endlessless''' 
A typo for endlessness.

==Page 887-888==
'''[T]he dream came and found him...''' 
Reef's contribution to the hallucination/dream motif previously referenced in the Traverse sections of the novel. The color yellow seems to be significant here and elsewhere, especially coded to Webb Traverse. [More forthcoming]

<blockquote>
          In the dream they were no longer in the ghostly canyons of the McElmo but in the city, not Venice but noplace American either, with an umappable operational endlessless (sic) to its streets, the same ancient, disquieting pictures engraved on its walls as back in the McElmo, spelling out a story whose pitiless truth couldn't be admitted officially by the authorities here because of the danger to the public sanity.... It was darker out here than he had any idea of. In the distance Reef caught sight of a procession of miners in their long rubber coats, only one of them, about halfway along, with the candle stub in his hat lit. Like postulants in habits, they proceeded single file down a narrow street like a humid drift lit back or front by a yellow lamp. As Reef came closer he saw the bearer of the light was Webb. 
        "Small victories," Webb greeted him. "Just to come away with one or two. To praise and to honor the small victories where and however they happen." 
        "Hasn't been too many of them lately, Pa," Reef tried to say. 
        "Not talking about yours, you numbskull." 
        Understanding that this was Webb's attempt to pass on another message, like up the séance in the Alps, Reef saw just for one lucid instant that this was the precise intelligence he needed to get him back to where he had wandered off the trail, so long ago. And then he was awake and trying to remember why it was important.</blockquote>

[[User:Bean|remy]] 13:15, 28 December 2006 (PST)

endlessless: typo for endlessness

pictures engraved on the walls: the Puebloan pictograms

'''Garfagnana''' 
Historical region of Italy, today part of the province of Lucca in the Apennines, in northwest Tuscany, but before the unification of Italy it belonged to the Duchy of Modena and Reggio, ruled by the Este family. For a short time, in the 16th century, it was governed by the poet Ludovico Ariosto [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garfagnana].

'''Bagni di Lucca''' 
Note the similarity in name to Banjaluka (or Banja Luka), Bosnia or actually Republika Srpska , mentioned on page 834. Another bilocation, like Kara Tagh and Montenegro ([[ATD_748-767#Page_764|annotations, page 764]]).

Might also add: Novi Pazar = Novi Bazar = Newmarket.

Also Agadir and Cádiz, both coming from the Phoenician gadir, meaning '"castle", "fortress"..."walled stronghold" or simply "wall"'.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A1diz]

'''homeopathic principle''' 
Like cures like. To alleviate an allergy, according to homeopathic doctrine, administer the allergen in an exceedingly dilute form.

==Page 889==

'''Say surly topple''' 
You can't help thinking Reef does this on purpose (or Pynchon :-). French ''C'est sur la table'': It's on the table.
Maybe he ran into James Joyce on his travels. These are all very 'Finnegans Wake' type puns.
These lucky mistranslations appear in other Pynchon novels as well; Doc Sportello's declaration of love in "Inherent Vice" is 'cootie food!'

'''pasta asciutta''' 
Pasta dish with potatoes and green beans. Actually ''pasta asciutta'' refers to any kind of ''pasta''. Actually, pasta asciutta refers to any kind of packaged dry (asciutta translates as dry) pasta (as opposed to made from [http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1635,144190-254199,00.html scratch]) and apparently when Reef boiled it, it "was always overdone." There are also lots of regional recipes with pasta asciutta as part of the name of the recipe, e. g., pasta asciutta alla bolognese, or pasta asciutta alla siciliana.

'''pasta fazool''' 
Officially ''pasta e fagioli;'' "fazool" imitates the pronunciation in a regional dialect of Italian. A hearty soup consisting of pasta, any one of a variety of beans (borlotti (cranberry) beans, kidney beans, cannellini beans, ...), and optionally some meat.

==Page 890==

'''''al dente''''' 
Italian, cooked so as to be firm when eaten; literally: to the tooth or to the bite, referring to the need to chew the pasta due to its firmness.

'''Barcelona''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragic_Week Tragic Week] (in Catalan la Setmana Tràgica, in Spanish la Semana Trágica) (July 25-August 2, 1909) is the name used for a series of bloody confrontations between the army and the working classes of Barcelona and other cities of Catalonia, backed by the anarchists, communists and republicans, during the last week of July 1909. It was caused by the calling-up of reserve troops by Prime Minister Antonio Maura to be sent as reinforcements when Spain renewed military-colonial activity in Morocco on July 9. There would be risings again in 1917, and Barcelona was among the last strongholds of the Spanish Republic in the Civil War of 1936-39; even during the Civil war, anarchists and Communists fought in the streets (see Orwell's ''Homage to Catalonia'' for a participant account. In 1972 anarchist grafiti could still be found in the Old City). But in 1909, indeed, much worse was to come.

'''''línea del fuego''''' 
Spanish: line of (the) fire. This may be a naive translation of "firing line" or "line of fire" (note the satisfying ambiguity); ''línea de tiro'' seems to be preferred.

'''...''absence of desire''--why one might choose ''not to embrace'' what the world judges, it often seemed unanimously, to lie clearly in one's interest.''' 
Cyprian is becoming aware of his interest in divesting himself of desire. Yashmeen in the following sentences notes this change that took place in him in Bosnia; he notes how difficult renouncing his desire for her will be, and she that this is not the real meaning.

==Page 891==

'''Biarritz''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biarritz Biarritz], located about 11 miles from the border with Spain, is a town by the Bay of Biscay, on the Atlantic coast, in southwestern France.

'''''bal musette''''' 
French: dance hall (bal), with the music provided by an accordion band. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bal-musette Bal-musette] is a style of French popular music presumably played at these dance halls.

'''in some auxiliary sense . . . his own''' 
Review details of the encounter at Carnesalve (page 881).

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

ATD 864-891

2023-01-22T08:05:49Z

Unmensch: /* Page 867 */

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

==Page 864==

'''''galleggianti''''' 
Boathouses.

'''''traghetto''''' 
ferry-boat.

==Page 865==

'''cicerone''' 
Guide, especially for a single woman.

'''''Inglesi''''' 
Italian: Englishmen.

==Page 866==

'''Gorblimey''' 
Representing a Cockney pronunciation of "God blind me!"; in medieval times, people would curse using contractions rather than breaking the third commandment (Do not use the Lord's name in vain oaths). Compare strewth, zounds, 'sblood. -- Wiktionary

'''Jenny Invert''' 
This is not her first occurrence. Part of the printing of 1918 24-cent airmail stamps showed an inverted image of a Curtis JN-4 Jenny airplane. [http://www.afa.org/magazine/1990/0790jenny.asp It's a famous and valuable stamp.] 
Another female character named after a stamp is "Penny Black"

'''Newmarket''' 
Cf [[ATD_489-524#Page_495|page 495: Newmarket]].

'''Nether Wallop, Hants''' 
Hants: customary shortening of Hampshire. 
NETHER WALLOP, a parish in the hundred of Thorngate, county Hants, 7 miles S.W. of Andover, and 3½ N.W. of Stockbridge, its post town. The parish is situated under Danebury Hill, on which are remains of a fortification with ramparts, strengthened on the western side by an outwork, and supposed to have been formed by Canute the Great. The surface is hilly and the soil chalky. The living is a vicarage* in the diocese of Winchester, value £350. The church, dedicated to St. Andrew, contains several old monuments and two brasses-one of an abbess, bearing date 1432, and the other of a mitred abbot. Gazeteer of Ireland and Great Britain. 
Great Pynchonian name. Surprising that it's real-- Nether Wallop = whack in the ass, much like the "fundament-seizing" back on pg. 110

'''Inanimate Bird Association''' 
Concerned with clay pigeons, i.e., trapshooting.

'''rather shirty''' 
Shirty: angry, irritated, huffy, stroppy.
Maybe from "Keep your shirt on!" (Don't get angry!)

'''the key also changes day to day''' 
A code depending upon changes in the starting point for shifts in the text (e.g a book with a different starting page depending on the date, groups of letters that change starting with a different letter every day)is considered unbreakable unless one knows the starting point, called the Key.

'''''Oca ti jebem''''' 
Macedonian: I fuck your father.

'''Giles Piprake''' 
Is he aping Chico Marx? 
A small rake with women? See his remark about Ratty's wife. The joke here is that if Ratty's wife did complain, that would be a problem Piprake couldn't sort out. 
No, G.P.'s comeback is a joke in the "That's what ''she'' said" genre. 
Lots of definitions for [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/pip pip], take your pick. Breaking through a shell (shell being a metaphor for a problem barrier in this case) seems as appropriate as any. Lots of definitions for [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/rake rake], too. 
A ''pipkrake'' is a narrow spike of ice that grows upward from a body of groundwater in freezing weather, carrying a portion of soil on its top surface. [http://epod.usra.edu/archive/epodviewer.php3?oid=336192 Here] are a photo and discussion; note that the caption has the misspelling ''piprake''!

==Page 867==

'''remember not to wear yellow''' 
Cyprian thinks he was seen hiding because he was wearing yellow?
Conjecture: Austro-Hungary's colors were yellow and black. So yellow not only draws the eye, but he might also be taken for an Austrian in Venice incurring Italian mob wrath or perhaps Theign's attention.
 The color yellow was associated with the decadence movement in the arts during the 1890s, specifically with the queerness and homosexuality embraced by many of the artists involved. The Yellow Book was a journal which took its name from the eponymous volume in Oscar Wilde’s The Portrait of Dorian Gray (a thinly-veiled reference to J.K. Huysmans’ novel Á Rebours). After Wilde’s trial for homosexuality in 1895, The Yellow Book itself became associated with queerness in the British cultural mind. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yellow_Book. Cyprian is reminding himself not to inadvertently signal to the Principe Spongiatosta that he is there for a sexual encounter, in view of the assignations previously arranged for him by Theign.

'''''valletto''''' 
Italian: valet, attendant.

'''''heliotrope''''' 
A moderate, light, or brilliant violet to moderate or deep reddish purple.

'''''Facciam' il porco''''' 
We (the Prince and valletto) are playing the sexual pervert. Literally, we are doing the pig, but porco is Italian slang for sexual pervert.

'''''Il mio ragazzo è molto geloso''''' 
Italian: My little guy is very jealous.

'''''Qualsiasi, Ciprianino''''' 
Italian: Whatever you want (you want is implied), little Cyprian.

'''The Iron Gateway''' 
an imaginary internal 'Symbolist' artwork embodying vivid hallucinatory visions within ATD? 
Also a real structure:
Iron Gateway & Draghut Mosque, Tripoli Medina
Iron Gateway, Tripoli Medina
Iron Gateway & Draghut Mosque, Tripoli Medina

-- Is this a reference to the Portal, p.154?
: Could be, but there are a lot of thresholds and portals in this book; the Tushuk Tash back on pg. 764, and the Halkata approaching on pg. 955... But Hunter's painting sounds more like the portal to war, endings, the Zero-- described in Gravity's Rainbow on pg. 51 "One by one men step out into this perfectly black rectangle of night and disappear. Gone, the war taking them, the man behind already presenting his ticket."

'''Carlo Zen furniture''' 
Designed by Carlo Zen (Italian, 1851-1918)
Among the more prolific designers and cabinet-makers of the period was the firm of Carlo Zen. Some of his decorations suggest the strong influence of continental symbolism, while other objects reveal a keen awareness of geometric simplification.

'''Galileo Chini''' 
Galileo CHINI , famous italian painter and ceramist, was born in Florence on December 2nd 1873 and died on August 23rd 1956.
In 1896, he funded "The Art of Ceramics" (later called "Factory Fornaci S.Lorenzo). He introduced the Liberty style in Italy.
As a painter he took part at the"Biennale di Venezia" from 1901 till 1936.
In 1911 he was in Bangkok to decorate Siam King's palace.
He remained there till 1913: it was a triumph! Back in Italy, he taught at the "Accademia di Belle Arti"in Florence. Some of his beautiful works of Art can be found at the Modern Art Gallery in Rome, at the Uffizi in Florence and at the Modern Art Gallery in Palazzo Pitti.

'''Bugatti''' 
Carlo Bugatti (1856-1940), world-famous furniture designer from Milan.

==Page 868==

'''''corno''''' 
The "horned" cap worn by Doges of Venice. An example comes from a Bellini portrait of a doge at [http://www.prints.co.nz/page/fine-art/PROD/Renaissance_Art_Prints/7211].

'''''lo stato''''' 
Italian: the state.

'''penance....imbalance in Nature.''' 
incredible thematic paragraph that relates to revenge motif?

- seems also to refer to the idea of Karma and karmic penance. Only if you make up for the deeds done in this or in an earlier life, the karmic account will be balanced (i.e. 'Nature' in the sense of the whole cosmos).

I see also a clear reference to the idea of control in modern society put forward by French philosopher Michael Foucault, who explains in his book ''Surveiller et punir'' (Discipline and Punish) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discipline_and_Punish] how governments (power) try to subtly control us in order to make us become 'proper citizens' and how those who dare to be out of such properness must and should be punished.

==Page 869==

'''''salizzada''''' 
Salizzada once meant a paved street, implying that all other, less important calles were once just dirt-packed alleyways.From a Venice Guidebook.

==Page 870==

'''Not by a long chalk''' 
This mainly British expression means “not by any means”, “not at all” and often turns up in conventional expressions such as they weren’t beaten yet, not by a long chalk.
It goes back to the days in which a count or score of almost any kind was marked up on a convenient surface using chalk. At a pub or ale house this might be a note of the amount of credit you had been given (often called the chalk in the early nineteenth century), which Charles Dickens refers to in Great Expectations: “There was a bar at the Jolly Bargemen, with some alarmingly long chalk scores in it on the wall at the side of the door, which seemed to me to be never paid off.”-- Yahoo answers.

'''gibanica''' 
Croatian: a rolled pastry filled with cheese or fruit.

'''kadulja''' 
Croatian, literally: garden sage.

'''coastal Čakavština''' 
Speech of a region in coastal Croatia.

==Page 871==

'''''bàcari''''' 
Venetian wine bars

'''formulæ''' 
Spells. The plural of formula, an established form of words or symbols for use in a ceremony or procedure.

==Page 872==

'''''Altezza''''' 
Italian: Highness.

==Page 873==

'''Montepulciano''' 
A red wine, considered among Italy's best, from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montepulciano Montepulciano].

'''the Ponte degli Scalzi''' 
Cf [[ATD_724-747#Page_746|page 746: the Ponte degli Scalzi]].

==Page 874==

'''11 mm Montenegrin Gasser''' 
A hinged-framed 11.3 mm calibre revolver

'''... to leave some mark of imbalance''' 
Refer back to p.868: "... there is an imbalance in Nature."

'''San Stae''' 
In Santa Croce district.

==Page 875==

==Page 876==

'''gentleman ops''' 
A tradition in thrillers. Bulldog Drummond and Tommy Hambledon are just two in the crowd.

'''dittoes''' 
"A suit of dittoes" is an outfit of coat, vest (waistcoat) and trousers from the same fabric.

'''Wrong sod, I'm afraid''' 
Not Oscar Wilde, i.e. not a Dandy

'''religious surrender of the self''' 
See P. 836, and note. Suggests Cyprian's masochism is a form of self-transcendence; transgression as transcendence. He has indeed demonstrated his ability to lose all desire...

==Page 877==

'''...what were the chances of finding anyone seeking to transcend that, and not even particularly aware of it?''' 
Passing beyond the self, passing beyond desire (and without fanfare), Cyprtian's very Buddhist quest, is perceived only as masochistic in the Western materialist view.

==Page 878==

'''''brisance''''' 
A French word now fully adopted in English. In the context of explosives it means "shattering power." In English it means the shattering or crushing effect of a sudden release of energy as in an explosion.

'''undissembled''' 
Synonyms: open-hearted, honest, plain, artless, guileless, ingenuous, innocent, natural, sincere, transparent, unconcealed, undisguised, unvarnished. Antonyms: devious, secretive, two-faced, evasive.

'''Wigan''' 
A town near Manchester, England, (with a professional soccer team, Wigan Athletic).<

'''the Earl's Court Wheel''' 
[http://www.shadyoldlady.com/location.php?loc=492 The Great Wheel] of a height of 300 ft built at the Earls Court exhibition grounds, London. It was modelled on the original one in Chicago. It was opend on July 6, 1895 for the "Empire of India Exhibition" and stayed in service until 1906. It was dismantled in 1907.

'''reversals of power''' 
Reversals of sexual power positions parallel Alernating Current. If DC is "direct" i.e. in one direction only, and AC is "alternating" current, a current of periodical reversals, perhaps all this talk of transcending sexual norms and role reversals is a social/sexual counterpoint to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Currents Current Wars]fought between Edison and Tesla. After much heated contention, Tesla and AC won, enormously extending the range and safety of power distribution (electrical, economic, sexual, social) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_engineering].Seen in the light of electrical circuitry, Anarchist explosions are expressions of power imbalance, every detonation another circuit blown. 
Electrical engineering terms take on new significance in AtD: twisted pair, induction coupling, Q inductors, three-phase generation, loads, triangle wave, square wave, etc. Interestingly, the wiki commentary on the War of the Currents states that "AC cannot really be understood or exploited without a substantial mathematical and mathematical physics orientation, which Tesla had" -- as did Yashmeen -- at whose feet these power reversals were but the "outskirts" (an interesting double entendre in outskirts). That Yashmeen is central to all this sexual power transformation, generation, distribution, alternating style as well as being a human mental radio (clairvoyance) -- she becomes an embodiment of both Henry Adams' dynamo and Virgin -- in one! A duality in singularity. She is the mother/whore of the electrical world.

==Page 879==

'''the least ''clairvoyante''''' 
The (woman) friend least able to exercise occult powers such as seeing the future.

'''Carnevale''' 
Italian: Carnival. The Italian word [http://italianfood.about.com/library/rec/blr0149.htm ''Carnevale''] derives from ''Carne Levare'' — Remove Meat — the name of the sumptuous dinner people would hold the night before Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent. In the past, things were especially intense in Venice, where debauched revels went on for weeks.
The standard folk etymology says that Carnevale means 'Farewell to meat" (vale is Latin for goodbye). See below, Carnesalve.

==Page 880==

'''Carnesalve''' 
If Carnevale means "goodbye to meat" (beginning of the Lenten fast), Carnesalve means "hello there, meat!"

'''San Servolo''' 
Island in the Venetian Lagoon, to the southeast of San Giorgio Maggiore, from 18th century until 1978 site of the Venetian psychiatric hospital. Since 1978, site of the "Istituto per le Ricerche e gli Studi sull´Emarginazione Sociale e Culturale" (Institute for the Study of Social and Cultural Marginalization) to preserve the documents associated with the history of the psychiatric hostpital [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Servolo].

'''Signori di Notte''' 
Italian: night lords.

==Page 881==

'''...framed by Signor Fabrizio's re-imagining of Yashmeen's hair...''' 
Saved from when he cut it off. On P. 860, she says he may "do whatever he want(s) with it" and the approach of this costume ball is implied.

'''Parma violets''' 
A delicate variety of the flower produced in the Italian city. The blossoms are sometimes sold candied, too.

'''loggie''' 
Plural of ''loggia.'' Italian: theater box or similar feature in a formal room.

==Page 882==

'''''amoretti''''' 
Italian: "Cupids" used as space fillers or decorative elements.

'''''tesoro''''' 
Italian: treasure.

'''Quickly now ....''' 
The conception described here is technically immaculate: Reef fulfills the role of the Father, Yashmeen that of Mary, and Cyprian that of the Holy Ghost. 

Or is this a human instance of three phase electrical generation? 
Or an alchemical operation to produce the Philosopher's Stone? 
Or the creation of a Moonchild through sex magic ala Aleister Crowley.

Alchemical musings: Person-Sex-Orb-Metal 
Reef: male, sun, gold 
Yashmeen: female, moon, silver 
Cyprian: female/male, mercury, mercury (quicksilver)

Cyprian first receives the seed as the functional equivalent of a female and then plants the seed as a male. He changes gender relating to his passing through the arch alone -- this also seems metaphorically related to the process of photographic plate development shift in colors. 

This sex shift also relates him to Mercury, quicksilver, a transition metal named for a hermaphroditic god. The glyph for Mercury is used in biology and botany to mean double-sexed.

Mercury was once used in the amalgamation process of refining gold and silver ores. It was central to the practice of the assayer in juding the purity of gold and silver ore, and the alchemist in the the production of the Philosopher's Stone. Mercury signifies the ''coniunctio'' or uniting of opposites.

'''''fellatrice''''' 
Or: fellatrix , a female who performs oral-genital-sex on the penis. Quote: Woody Allen to Miro Sorvino in Mighty Aphrodite (1995): ' I'm sure that you're a state-of-the-art fellatrix .' The etymology of fellatrice and fellatrix is the same as that of fellatio: from Latin, fellare (to suck). These words are used in English, French and Italian.
(denoting Cyprian's role, not his physiology).
 ''in fact, the word is not used in italian at all.''

==Page 883==

'''Ascension Day''' 
The fortieth day after Easter Sunday (which is always a Thursday), commemorating the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension Ascension] of Christ into heaven, according to Mark 16:19, Luke 24:51, and Acts 1:2.

==Page 884==

==Page 885==

'''outmoded sexual protocols''' 
Again, transgression = transcendence. Of course, also parallels struggles over acceptance of homosexuality in our times.

'''nasal intrusion''' 
Sticking one's nose into something.

'''''chavalitos''''' 
Spanish: kids.

==Page 886==

'''Grand Army of the Matrimonial Republic''' 
The Grand Army of the Republic comprised Union veterans of the American Civil War. Its heyday came around 1890-1910.

==Page 887==

'''endlessless''' 
A typo for endlessness.

==Page 887-888==
'''[T]he dream came and found him...''' 
Reef's contribution to the hallucination/dream motif previously referenced in the Traverse sections of the novel. The color yellow seems to be significant here and elsewhere, especially coded to Webb Traverse. [More forthcoming]

<blockquote>
          In the dream they were no longer in the ghostly canyons of the McElmo but in the city, not Venice but noplace American either, with an umappable operational endlessless (sic) to its streets, the same ancient, disquieting pictures engraved on its walls as back in the McElmo, spelling out a story whose pitiless truth couldn't be admitted officially by the authorities here because of the danger to the public sanity.... It was darker out here than he had any idea of. In the distance Reef caught sight of a procession of miners in their long rubber coats, only one of them, about halfway along, with the candle stub in his hat lit. Like postulants in habits, they proceeded single file down a narrow street like a humid drift lit back or front by a yellow lamp. As Reef came closer he saw the bearer of the light was Webb. 
        "Small victories," Webb greeted him. "Just to come away with one or two. To praise and to honor the small victories where and however they happen." 
        "Hasn't been too many of them lately, Pa," Reef tried to say. 
        "Not talking about yours, you numbskull." 
        Understanding that this was Webb's attempt to pass on another message, like up the séance in the Alps, Reef saw just for one lucid instant that this was the precise intelligence he needed to get him back to where he had wandered off the trail, so long ago. And then he was awake and trying to remember why it was important.</blockquote>

[[User:Bean|remy]] 13:15, 28 December 2006 (PST)

endlessless: typo for endlessness

pictures engraved on the walls: the Puebloan pictograms

'''Garfagnana''' 
Historical region of Italy, today part of the province of Lucca in the Apennines, in northwest Tuscany, but before the unification of Italy it belonged to the Duchy of Modena and Reggio, ruled by the Este family. For a short time, in the 16th century, it was governed by the poet Ludovico Ariosto [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garfagnana].

'''Bagni di Lucca''' 
Note the similarity in name to Banjaluka (or Banja Luka), Bosnia or actually Republika Srpska , mentioned on page 834. Another bilocation, like Kara Tagh and Montenegro ([[ATD_748-767#Page_764|annotations, page 764]]).

Might also add: Novi Pazar = Novi Bazar = Newmarket.

Also Agadir and Cádiz, both coming from the Phoenician gadir, meaning '"castle", "fortress"..."walled stronghold" or simply "wall"'.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A1diz]

'''homeopathic principle''' 
Like cures like. To alleviate an allergy, according to homeopathic doctrine, administer the allergen in an exceedingly dilute form.

==Page 889==

'''Say surly topple''' 
You can't help thinking Reef does this on purpose (or Pynchon :-). French ''C'est sur la table'': It's on the table.
Maybe he ran into James Joyce on his travels. These are all very 'Finnegans Wake' type puns.
These lucky mistranslations appear in other Pynchon novels as well; Doc Sportello's declaration of love in "Inherent Vice" is 'cootie food!'

'''pasta asciutta''' 
Pasta dish with potatoes and green beans. Actually ''pasta asciutta'' refers to any kind of ''pasta''. Actually, pasta asciutta refers to any kind of packaged dry (asciutta translates as dry) pasta (as opposed to made from [http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1635,144190-254199,00.html scratch]) and apparently when Reef boiled it, it "was always overdone." There are also lots of regional recipes with pasta asciutta as part of the name of the recipe, e. g., pasta asciutta alla bolognese, or pasta asciutta alla siciliana.

'''pasta fazool''' 
Officially ''pasta e fagioli;'' "fazool" imitates the pronunciation in a regional dialect of Italian. A hearty soup consisting of pasta, any one of a variety of beans (borlotti (cranberry) beans, kidney beans, cannellini beans, ...), and optionally some meat.

==Page 890==

'''''al dente''''' 
Italian, cooked so as to be firm when eaten; literally: to the tooth or to the bite, referring to the need to chew the pasta due to its firmness.

'''Barcelona''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragic_Week Tragic Week] (in Catalan la Setmana Tràgica, in Spanish la Semana Trágica) (July 25-August 2, 1909) is the name used for a series of bloody confrontations between the army and the working classes of Barcelona and other cities of Catalonia, backed by the anarchists, communists and republicans, during the last week of July 1909. It was caused by the calling-up of reserve troops by Prime Minister Antonio Maura to be sent as reinforcements when Spain renewed military-colonial activity in Morocco on July 9. There would be risings again in 1917, and Barcelona was among the last strongholds of the Spanish Republic in the Civil War of 1936-39; even during the Civil war, anarchists and Communists fought in the streets (see Orwell's ''Homage to Catalonia'' for a participant account. In 1972 anarchist grafiti could still be found in the Old City). But in 1909, indeed, much worse was to come.

'''''línea del fuego''''' 
Spanish: line of (the) fire. This may be a naive translation of "firing line" or "line of fire" (note the satisfying ambiguity); ''línea de tiro'' seems to be preferred.

'''...''absence of desire''--why one might choose ''not to embrace'' what the world judges, it often seemed unanimously, to lie clearly in one's interest.''' 
Cyprian is becoming aware of his interest in divesting himself of desire. Yashmeen in the following sentences notes this change that took place in him in Bosnia; he notes how difficult renouncing his desire for her will be, and she that this is not the real meaning.

==Page 891==

'''Biarritz''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biarritz Biarritz], located about 11 miles from the border with Spain, is a town by the Bay of Biscay, on the Atlantic coast, in southwestern France.

'''''bal musette''''' 
French: dance hall (bal), with the music provided by an accordion band. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bal-musette Bal-musette] is a style of French popular music presumably played at these dance halls.

'''in some auxiliary sense . . . his own''' 
Review details of the encounter at Carnesalve (page 881).

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

ATD 864-891

2023-01-22T07:58:16Z

Unmensch: /* Page 867 */

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

==Page 864==

'''''galleggianti''''' 
Boathouses.

'''''traghetto''''' 
ferry-boat.

==Page 865==

'''cicerone''' 
Guide, especially for a single woman.

'''''Inglesi''''' 
Italian: Englishmen.

==Page 866==

'''Gorblimey''' 
Representing a Cockney pronunciation of "God blind me!"; in medieval times, people would curse using contractions rather than breaking the third commandment (Do not use the Lord's name in vain oaths). Compare strewth, zounds, 'sblood. -- Wiktionary

'''Jenny Invert''' 
This is not her first occurrence. Part of the printing of 1918 24-cent airmail stamps showed an inverted image of a Curtis JN-4 Jenny airplane. [http://www.afa.org/magazine/1990/0790jenny.asp It's a famous and valuable stamp.] 
Another female character named after a stamp is "Penny Black"

'''Newmarket''' 
Cf [[ATD_489-524#Page_495|page 495: Newmarket]].

'''Nether Wallop, Hants''' 
Hants: customary shortening of Hampshire. 
NETHER WALLOP, a parish in the hundred of Thorngate, county Hants, 7 miles S.W. of Andover, and 3½ N.W. of Stockbridge, its post town. The parish is situated under Danebury Hill, on which are remains of a fortification with ramparts, strengthened on the western side by an outwork, and supposed to have been formed by Canute the Great. The surface is hilly and the soil chalky. The living is a vicarage* in the diocese of Winchester, value £350. The church, dedicated to St. Andrew, contains several old monuments and two brasses-one of an abbess, bearing date 1432, and the other of a mitred abbot. Gazeteer of Ireland and Great Britain. 
Great Pynchonian name. Surprising that it's real-- Nether Wallop = whack in the ass, much like the "fundament-seizing" back on pg. 110

'''Inanimate Bird Association''' 
Concerned with clay pigeons, i.e., trapshooting.

'''rather shirty''' 
Shirty: angry, irritated, huffy, stroppy.
Maybe from "Keep your shirt on!" (Don't get angry!)

'''the key also changes day to day''' 
A code depending upon changes in the starting point for shifts in the text (e.g a book with a different starting page depending on the date, groups of letters that change starting with a different letter every day)is considered unbreakable unless one knows the starting point, called the Key.

'''''Oca ti jebem''''' 
Macedonian: I fuck your father.

'''Giles Piprake''' 
Is he aping Chico Marx? 
A small rake with women? See his remark about Ratty's wife. The joke here is that if Ratty's wife did complain, that would be a problem Piprake couldn't sort out. 
No, G.P.'s comeback is a joke in the "That's what ''she'' said" genre. 
Lots of definitions for [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/pip pip], take your pick. Breaking through a shell (shell being a metaphor for a problem barrier in this case) seems as appropriate as any. Lots of definitions for [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/rake rake], too. 
A ''pipkrake'' is a narrow spike of ice that grows upward from a body of groundwater in freezing weather, carrying a portion of soil on its top surface. [http://epod.usra.edu/archive/epodviewer.php3?oid=336192 Here] are a photo and discussion; note that the caption has the misspelling ''piprake''!

==Page 867==

'''remember not to wear yellow''' 
Cyprian thinks he was seen hiding because he was wearing yellow?
Conjecture: Austro-Hungary's colors were yellow and black. So yellow not only draws the eye, but he might also be taken for an Austrian in Venice incurring Italian mob wrath or perhaps Theign's attention.
 The color yellow was associated with the decadence movement in the arts during the final decades of the 19th century, and specifically with the queerness and homosexuality embraced by many of the artists involved. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yellow_Book. Cyprian is reminding himself not to inadvertently signal to the Principe Spongiatosta that he is there for a sexual encounter, in view of the assignations previously arranged for him by Theign.

'''''valletto''''' 
Italian: valet, attendant.

'''''heliotrope''''' 
A moderate, light, or brilliant violet to moderate or deep reddish purple.

'''''Facciam' il porco''''' 
We (the Prince and valletto) are playing the sexual pervert. Literally, we are doing the pig, but porco is Italian slang for sexual pervert.

'''''Il mio ragazzo è molto geloso''''' 
Italian: My little guy is very jealous.

'''''Qualsiasi, Ciprianino''''' 
Italian: Whatever you want (you want is implied), little Cyprian.

'''The Iron Gateway''' 
an imaginary internal 'Symbolist' artwork embodying vivid hallucinatory visions within ATD? 
Also a real structure:
Iron Gateway & Draghut Mosque, Tripoli Medina
Iron Gateway, Tripoli Medina
Iron Gateway & Draghut Mosque, Tripoli Medina

-- Is this a reference to the Portal, p.154?
: Could be, but there are a lot of thresholds and portals in this book; the Tushuk Tash back on pg. 764, and the Halkata approaching on pg. 955... But Hunter's painting sounds more like the portal to war, endings, the Zero-- described in Gravity's Rainbow on pg. 51 "One by one men step out into this perfectly black rectangle of night and disappear. Gone, the war taking them, the man behind already presenting his ticket."

'''Carlo Zen furniture''' 
Designed by Carlo Zen (Italian, 1851-1918)
Among the more prolific designers and cabinet-makers of the period was the firm of Carlo Zen. Some of his decorations suggest the strong influence of continental symbolism, while other objects reveal a keen awareness of geometric simplification.

'''Galileo Chini''' 
Galileo CHINI , famous italian painter and ceramist, was born in Florence on December 2nd 1873 and died on August 23rd 1956.
In 1896, he funded "The Art of Ceramics" (later called "Factory Fornaci S.Lorenzo). He introduced the Liberty style in Italy.
As a painter he took part at the"Biennale di Venezia" from 1901 till 1936.
In 1911 he was in Bangkok to decorate Siam King's palace.
He remained there till 1913: it was a triumph! Back in Italy, he taught at the "Accademia di Belle Arti"in Florence. Some of his beautiful works of Art can be found at the Modern Art Gallery in Rome, at the Uffizi in Florence and at the Modern Art Gallery in Palazzo Pitti.

'''Bugatti''' 
Carlo Bugatti (1856-1940), world-famous furniture designer from Milan.

==Page 868==

'''''corno''''' 
The "horned" cap worn by Doges of Venice. An example comes from a Bellini portrait of a doge at [http://www.prints.co.nz/page/fine-art/PROD/Renaissance_Art_Prints/7211].

'''''lo stato''''' 
Italian: the state.

'''penance....imbalance in Nature.''' 
incredible thematic paragraph that relates to revenge motif?

- seems also to refer to the idea of Karma and karmic penance. Only if you make up for the deeds done in this or in an earlier life, the karmic account will be balanced (i.e. 'Nature' in the sense of the whole cosmos).

I see also a clear reference to the idea of control in modern society put forward by French philosopher Michael Foucault, who explains in his book ''Surveiller et punir'' (Discipline and Punish) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discipline_and_Punish] how governments (power) try to subtly control us in order to make us become 'proper citizens' and how those who dare to be out of such properness must and should be punished.

==Page 869==

'''''salizzada''''' 
Salizzada once meant a paved street, implying that all other, less important calles were once just dirt-packed alleyways.From a Venice Guidebook.

==Page 870==

'''Not by a long chalk''' 
This mainly British expression means “not by any means”, “not at all” and often turns up in conventional expressions such as they weren’t beaten yet, not by a long chalk.
It goes back to the days in which a count or score of almost any kind was marked up on a convenient surface using chalk. At a pub or ale house this might be a note of the amount of credit you had been given (often called the chalk in the early nineteenth century), which Charles Dickens refers to in Great Expectations: “There was a bar at the Jolly Bargemen, with some alarmingly long chalk scores in it on the wall at the side of the door, which seemed to me to be never paid off.”-- Yahoo answers.

'''gibanica''' 
Croatian: a rolled pastry filled with cheese or fruit.

'''kadulja''' 
Croatian, literally: garden sage.

'''coastal Čakavština''' 
Speech of a region in coastal Croatia.

==Page 871==

'''''bàcari''''' 
Venetian wine bars

'''formulæ''' 
Spells. The plural of formula, an established form of words or symbols for use in a ceremony or procedure.

==Page 872==

'''''Altezza''''' 
Italian: Highness.

==Page 873==

'''Montepulciano''' 
A red wine, considered among Italy's best, from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montepulciano Montepulciano].

'''the Ponte degli Scalzi''' 
Cf [[ATD_724-747#Page_746|page 746: the Ponte degli Scalzi]].

==Page 874==

'''11 mm Montenegrin Gasser''' 
A hinged-framed 11.3 mm calibre revolver

'''... to leave some mark of imbalance''' 
Refer back to p.868: "... there is an imbalance in Nature."

'''San Stae''' 
In Santa Croce district.

==Page 875==

==Page 876==

'''gentleman ops''' 
A tradition in thrillers. Bulldog Drummond and Tommy Hambledon are just two in the crowd.

'''dittoes''' 
"A suit of dittoes" is an outfit of coat, vest (waistcoat) and trousers from the same fabric.

'''Wrong sod, I'm afraid''' 
Not Oscar Wilde, i.e. not a Dandy

'''religious surrender of the self''' 
See P. 836, and note. Suggests Cyprian's masochism is a form of self-transcendence; transgression as transcendence. He has indeed demonstrated his ability to lose all desire...

==Page 877==

'''...what were the chances of finding anyone seeking to transcend that, and not even particularly aware of it?''' 
Passing beyond the self, passing beyond desire (and without fanfare), Cyprtian's very Buddhist quest, is perceived only as masochistic in the Western materialist view.

==Page 878==

'''''brisance''''' 
A French word now fully adopted in English. In the context of explosives it means "shattering power." In English it means the shattering or crushing effect of a sudden release of energy as in an explosion.

'''undissembled''' 
Synonyms: open-hearted, honest, plain, artless, guileless, ingenuous, innocent, natural, sincere, transparent, unconcealed, undisguised, unvarnished. Antonyms: devious, secretive, two-faced, evasive.

'''Wigan''' 
A town near Manchester, England, (with a professional soccer team, Wigan Athletic).<

'''the Earl's Court Wheel''' 
[http://www.shadyoldlady.com/location.php?loc=492 The Great Wheel] of a height of 300 ft built at the Earls Court exhibition grounds, London. It was modelled on the original one in Chicago. It was opend on July 6, 1895 for the "Empire of India Exhibition" and stayed in service until 1906. It was dismantled in 1907.

'''reversals of power''' 
Reversals of sexual power positions parallel Alernating Current. If DC is "direct" i.e. in one direction only, and AC is "alternating" current, a current of periodical reversals, perhaps all this talk of transcending sexual norms and role reversals is a social/sexual counterpoint to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Currents Current Wars]fought between Edison and Tesla. After much heated contention, Tesla and AC won, enormously extending the range and safety of power distribution (electrical, economic, sexual, social) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_engineering].Seen in the light of electrical circuitry, Anarchist explosions are expressions of power imbalance, every detonation another circuit blown. 
Electrical engineering terms take on new significance in AtD: twisted pair, induction coupling, Q inductors, three-phase generation, loads, triangle wave, square wave, etc. Interestingly, the wiki commentary on the War of the Currents states that "AC cannot really be understood or exploited without a substantial mathematical and mathematical physics orientation, which Tesla had" -- as did Yashmeen -- at whose feet these power reversals were but the "outskirts" (an interesting double entendre in outskirts). That Yashmeen is central to all this sexual power transformation, generation, distribution, alternating style as well as being a human mental radio (clairvoyance) -- she becomes an embodiment of both Henry Adams' dynamo and Virgin -- in one! A duality in singularity. She is the mother/whore of the electrical world.

==Page 879==

'''the least ''clairvoyante''''' 
The (woman) friend least able to exercise occult powers such as seeing the future.

'''Carnevale''' 
Italian: Carnival. The Italian word [http://italianfood.about.com/library/rec/blr0149.htm ''Carnevale''] derives from ''Carne Levare'' — Remove Meat — the name of the sumptuous dinner people would hold the night before Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent. In the past, things were especially intense in Venice, where debauched revels went on for weeks.
The standard folk etymology says that Carnevale means 'Farewell to meat" (vale is Latin for goodbye). See below, Carnesalve.

==Page 880==

'''Carnesalve''' 
If Carnevale means "goodbye to meat" (beginning of the Lenten fast), Carnesalve means "hello there, meat!"

'''San Servolo''' 
Island in the Venetian Lagoon, to the southeast of San Giorgio Maggiore, from 18th century until 1978 site of the Venetian psychiatric hospital. Since 1978, site of the "Istituto per le Ricerche e gli Studi sull´Emarginazione Sociale e Culturale" (Institute for the Study of Social and Cultural Marginalization) to preserve the documents associated with the history of the psychiatric hostpital [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Servolo].

'''Signori di Notte''' 
Italian: night lords.

==Page 881==

'''...framed by Signor Fabrizio's re-imagining of Yashmeen's hair...''' 
Saved from when he cut it off. On P. 860, she says he may "do whatever he want(s) with it" and the approach of this costume ball is implied.

'''Parma violets''' 
A delicate variety of the flower produced in the Italian city. The blossoms are sometimes sold candied, too.

'''loggie''' 
Plural of ''loggia.'' Italian: theater box or similar feature in a formal room.

==Page 882==

'''''amoretti''''' 
Italian: "Cupids" used as space fillers or decorative elements.

'''''tesoro''''' 
Italian: treasure.

'''Quickly now ....''' 
The conception described here is technically immaculate: Reef fulfills the role of the Father, Yashmeen that of Mary, and Cyprian that of the Holy Ghost. 

Or is this a human instance of three phase electrical generation? 
Or an alchemical operation to produce the Philosopher's Stone? 
Or the creation of a Moonchild through sex magic ala Aleister Crowley.

Alchemical musings: Person-Sex-Orb-Metal 
Reef: male, sun, gold 
Yashmeen: female, moon, silver 
Cyprian: female/male, mercury, mercury (quicksilver)

Cyprian first receives the seed as the functional equivalent of a female and then plants the seed as a male. He changes gender relating to his passing through the arch alone -- this also seems metaphorically related to the process of photographic plate development shift in colors. 

This sex shift also relates him to Mercury, quicksilver, a transition metal named for a hermaphroditic god. The glyph for Mercury is used in biology and botany to mean double-sexed.

Mercury was once used in the amalgamation process of refining gold and silver ores. It was central to the practice of the assayer in juding the purity of gold and silver ore, and the alchemist in the the production of the Philosopher's Stone. Mercury signifies the ''coniunctio'' or uniting of opposites.

'''''fellatrice''''' 
Or: fellatrix , a female who performs oral-genital-sex on the penis. Quote: Woody Allen to Miro Sorvino in Mighty Aphrodite (1995): ' I'm sure that you're a state-of-the-art fellatrix .' The etymology of fellatrice and fellatrix is the same as that of fellatio: from Latin, fellare (to suck). These words are used in English, French and Italian.
(denoting Cyprian's role, not his physiology).
 ''in fact, the word is not used in italian at all.''

==Page 883==

'''Ascension Day''' 
The fortieth day after Easter Sunday (which is always a Thursday), commemorating the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension Ascension] of Christ into heaven, according to Mark 16:19, Luke 24:51, and Acts 1:2.

==Page 884==

==Page 885==

'''outmoded sexual protocols''' 
Again, transgression = transcendence. Of course, also parallels struggles over acceptance of homosexuality in our times.

'''nasal intrusion''' 
Sticking one's nose into something.

'''''chavalitos''''' 
Spanish: kids.

==Page 886==

'''Grand Army of the Matrimonial Republic''' 
The Grand Army of the Republic comprised Union veterans of the American Civil War. Its heyday came around 1890-1910.

==Page 887==

'''endlessless''' 
A typo for endlessness.

==Page 887-888==
'''[T]he dream came and found him...''' 
Reef's contribution to the hallucination/dream motif previously referenced in the Traverse sections of the novel. The color yellow seems to be significant here and elsewhere, especially coded to Webb Traverse. [More forthcoming]

<blockquote>
          In the dream they were no longer in the ghostly canyons of the McElmo but in the city, not Venice but noplace American either, with an umappable operational endlessless (sic) to its streets, the same ancient, disquieting pictures engraved on its walls as back in the McElmo, spelling out a story whose pitiless truth couldn't be admitted officially by the authorities here because of the danger to the public sanity.... It was darker out here than he had any idea of. In the distance Reef caught sight of a procession of miners in their long rubber coats, only one of them, about halfway along, with the candle stub in his hat lit. Like postulants in habits, they proceeded single file down a narrow street like a humid drift lit back or front by a yellow lamp. As Reef came closer he saw the bearer of the light was Webb. 
        "Small victories," Webb greeted him. "Just to come away with one or two. To praise and to honor the small victories where and however they happen." 
        "Hasn't been too many of them lately, Pa," Reef tried to say. 
        "Not talking about yours, you numbskull." 
        Understanding that this was Webb's attempt to pass on another message, like up the séance in the Alps, Reef saw just for one lucid instant that this was the precise intelligence he needed to get him back to where he had wandered off the trail, so long ago. And then he was awake and trying to remember why it was important.</blockquote>

[[User:Bean|remy]] 13:15, 28 December 2006 (PST)

endlessless: typo for endlessness

pictures engraved on the walls: the Puebloan pictograms

'''Garfagnana''' 
Historical region of Italy, today part of the province of Lucca in the Apennines, in northwest Tuscany, but before the unification of Italy it belonged to the Duchy of Modena and Reggio, ruled by the Este family. For a short time, in the 16th century, it was governed by the poet Ludovico Ariosto [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garfagnana].

'''Bagni di Lucca''' 
Note the similarity in name to Banjaluka (or Banja Luka), Bosnia or actually Republika Srpska , mentioned on page 834. Another bilocation, like Kara Tagh and Montenegro ([[ATD_748-767#Page_764|annotations, page 764]]).

Might also add: Novi Pazar = Novi Bazar = Newmarket.

Also Agadir and Cádiz, both coming from the Phoenician gadir, meaning '"castle", "fortress"..."walled stronghold" or simply "wall"'.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A1diz]

'''homeopathic principle''' 
Like cures like. To alleviate an allergy, according to homeopathic doctrine, administer the allergen in an exceedingly dilute form.

==Page 889==

'''Say surly topple''' 
You can't help thinking Reef does this on purpose (or Pynchon :-). French ''C'est sur la table'': It's on the table.
Maybe he ran into James Joyce on his travels. These are all very 'Finnegans Wake' type puns.
These lucky mistranslations appear in other Pynchon novels as well; Doc Sportello's declaration of love in "Inherent Vice" is 'cootie food!'

'''pasta asciutta''' 
Pasta dish with potatoes and green beans. Actually ''pasta asciutta'' refers to any kind of ''pasta''. Actually, pasta asciutta refers to any kind of packaged dry (asciutta translates as dry) pasta (as opposed to made from [http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1635,144190-254199,00.html scratch]) and apparently when Reef boiled it, it "was always overdone." There are also lots of regional recipes with pasta asciutta as part of the name of the recipe, e. g., pasta asciutta alla bolognese, or pasta asciutta alla siciliana.

'''pasta fazool''' 
Officially ''pasta e fagioli;'' "fazool" imitates the pronunciation in a regional dialect of Italian. A hearty soup consisting of pasta, any one of a variety of beans (borlotti (cranberry) beans, kidney beans, cannellini beans, ...), and optionally some meat.

==Page 890==

'''''al dente''''' 
Italian, cooked so as to be firm when eaten; literally: to the tooth or to the bite, referring to the need to chew the pasta due to its firmness.

'''Barcelona''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragic_Week Tragic Week] (in Catalan la Setmana Tràgica, in Spanish la Semana Trágica) (July 25-August 2, 1909) is the name used for a series of bloody confrontations between the army and the working classes of Barcelona and other cities of Catalonia, backed by the anarchists, communists and republicans, during the last week of July 1909. It was caused by the calling-up of reserve troops by Prime Minister Antonio Maura to be sent as reinforcements when Spain renewed military-colonial activity in Morocco on July 9. There would be risings again in 1917, and Barcelona was among the last strongholds of the Spanish Republic in the Civil War of 1936-39; even during the Civil war, anarchists and Communists fought in the streets (see Orwell's ''Homage to Catalonia'' for a participant account. In 1972 anarchist grafiti could still be found in the Old City). But in 1909, indeed, much worse was to come.

'''''línea del fuego''''' 
Spanish: line of (the) fire. This may be a naive translation of "firing line" or "line of fire" (note the satisfying ambiguity); ''línea de tiro'' seems to be preferred.

'''...''absence of desire''--why one might choose ''not to embrace'' what the world judges, it often seemed unanimously, to lie clearly in one's interest.''' 
Cyprian is becoming aware of his interest in divesting himself of desire. Yashmeen in the following sentences notes this change that took place in him in Bosnia; he notes how difficult renouncing his desire for her will be, and she that this is not the real meaning.

==Page 891==

'''Biarritz''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biarritz Biarritz], located about 11 miles from the border with Spain, is a town by the Bay of Biscay, on the Atlantic coast, in southwestern France.

'''''bal musette''''' 
French: dance hall (bal), with the music provided by an accordion band. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bal-musette Bal-musette] is a style of French popular music presumably played at these dance halls.

'''in some auxiliary sense . . . his own''' 
Review details of the encounter at Carnesalve (page 881).

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

ATD 864-891

2023-01-22T07:57:12Z

Unmensch: /* Page 867 */

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

==Page 864==

'''''galleggianti''''' 
Boathouses.

'''''traghetto''''' 
ferry-boat.

==Page 865==

'''cicerone''' 
Guide, especially for a single woman.

'''''Inglesi''''' 
Italian: Englishmen.

==Page 866==

'''Gorblimey''' 
Representing a Cockney pronunciation of "God blind me!"; in medieval times, people would curse using contractions rather than breaking the third commandment (Do not use the Lord's name in vain oaths). Compare strewth, zounds, 'sblood. -- Wiktionary

'''Jenny Invert''' 
This is not her first occurrence. Part of the printing of 1918 24-cent airmail stamps showed an inverted image of a Curtis JN-4 Jenny airplane. [http://www.afa.org/magazine/1990/0790jenny.asp It's a famous and valuable stamp.] 
Another female character named after a stamp is "Penny Black"

'''Newmarket''' 
Cf [[ATD_489-524#Page_495|page 495: Newmarket]].

'''Nether Wallop, Hants''' 
Hants: customary shortening of Hampshire. 
NETHER WALLOP, a parish in the hundred of Thorngate, county Hants, 7 miles S.W. of Andover, and 3½ N.W. of Stockbridge, its post town. The parish is situated under Danebury Hill, on which are remains of a fortification with ramparts, strengthened on the western side by an outwork, and supposed to have been formed by Canute the Great. The surface is hilly and the soil chalky. The living is a vicarage* in the diocese of Winchester, value £350. The church, dedicated to St. Andrew, contains several old monuments and two brasses-one of an abbess, bearing date 1432, and the other of a mitred abbot. Gazeteer of Ireland and Great Britain. 
Great Pynchonian name. Surprising that it's real-- Nether Wallop = whack in the ass, much like the "fundament-seizing" back on pg. 110

'''Inanimate Bird Association''' 
Concerned with clay pigeons, i.e., trapshooting.

'''rather shirty''' 
Shirty: angry, irritated, huffy, stroppy.
Maybe from "Keep your shirt on!" (Don't get angry!)

'''the key also changes day to day''' 
A code depending upon changes in the starting point for shifts in the text (e.g a book with a different starting page depending on the date, groups of letters that change starting with a different letter every day)is considered unbreakable unless one knows the starting point, called the Key.

'''''Oca ti jebem''''' 
Macedonian: I fuck your father.

'''Giles Piprake''' 
Is he aping Chico Marx? 
A small rake with women? See his remark about Ratty's wife. The joke here is that if Ratty's wife did complain, that would be a problem Piprake couldn't sort out. 
No, G.P.'s comeback is a joke in the "That's what ''she'' said" genre. 
Lots of definitions for [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/pip pip], take your pick. Breaking through a shell (shell being a metaphor for a problem barrier in this case) seems as appropriate as any. Lots of definitions for [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/rake rake], too. 
A ''pipkrake'' is a narrow spike of ice that grows upward from a body of groundwater in freezing weather, carrying a portion of soil on its top surface. [http://epod.usra.edu/archive/epodviewer.php3?oid=336192 Here] are a photo and discussion; note that the caption has the misspelling ''piprake''!

==Page 867==

'''remember not to wear yellow''' 
Cyprian thinks he was seen hiding because he was wearing yellow?
Conjecture: Austro-Hungary's colors were yellow and black. So yellow not only draws the eye, but he might also be taken for an Austrian in Venice incurring Italian mob wrath or perhaps Theign's attention.
 The color yellow was associated with the decadence movement in the arts during the final decades of the 19th century, and specifically with the queerness and homosexuality embraced by many of the artists involved. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yellow_Book. Cyprian is reminding himself not to inadvertently signal to the Principe Spongiatosta that he is there for a sexual encounter, in view of the assignations previously arranged for him by Theign.

'''''valletto''''' 
Italian: valet, attendant.

'''''heliotrope''''' 
A moderate, light, or brilliant violet to moderate or deep reddish purple.

'''''Facciam' il porco''''' 
We (the Prince and valletto) are playing the sexual pervert. Literally, we are doing the pig, but porco is Italian slang for sexual pervert.

'''''Il mio ragazzo è molto geloso''''' 
Italian: My little guy is very jealous.

'''''Qualsiasi, Ciprianino''''' 
Italian: Whatever you want (you want is implied), little Cyprian.

'''The Iron Gateway''' 
an imaginary internal 'Symbolist' artwork embodying vivid hallucinatory visions within ATD? 
Also a real structure:
Iron Gateway & Draghut Mosque, Tripoli Medina
Iron Gateway, Tripoli Medina
Iron Gateway & Draghut Mosque, Tripoli Medina

-- Is this a reference to the Portal, p.154?
: Could be, but there are a lot of thresholds and portals in this book; the Tushuk Tash back on pg. 764, and the Halkata approaching on pg. 955... But Hunter's painting sounds more like the portal to war, endings, the Zero-- described in Gravity's Rainbow on pg. 51 "One by one men step out into this perfectly black rectangle of night and disappear. Gone, the war taking them, the man behind already presenting his ticket."

'''Carlo Zen furniture''' 
Designed by Carlo Zen (Italian, 1851-1918)
Among the more prolific designers and cabinet-makers of the period was the firm of Carlo Zen. Some of his decorations suggest the strong influence of continental symbolism, while other objects reveal a keen awareness of geometric simplification.

'''Galileo Chini''' 
Galileo CHINI , famous italian painter and ceramist, was born in Florence on December 2nd 1873 and died on August 23rd 1956.
In 1896, he funded "The Art of Ceramics" (later called "Factory Fornaci S.Lorenzo). He introduced the Liberty style in Italy.
As a painter he took part at the"Biennale di Venezia" from 1901 till 1936.
In 1911 he was in Bangkok to decorate Siam King's palace.
He remained there till 1913: it was a triumph! Back in Italy, he taught at the "Accademia di Belle Arti"in Florence. Some of his beautiful works of Art can be found at the Modern Art Gallery in Rome, at the Uffizi in Florence and at the Modern Art Gallery in Palazzo Pitti.

'''Bugatti''' 
Carlo Bugatti (1856-1940), world-famous furniture designer from Milan.

==Page 868==

'''''corno''''' 
The "horned" cap worn by Doges of Venice. An example comes from a Bellini portrait of a doge at [http://www.prints.co.nz/page/fine-art/PROD/Renaissance_Art_Prints/7211].

'''''lo stato''''' 
Italian: the state.

'''penance....imbalance in Nature.''' 
incredible thematic paragraph that relates to revenge motif?

- seems also to refer to the idea of Karma and karmic penance. Only if you make up for the deeds done in this or in an earlier life, the karmic account will be balanced (i.e. 'Nature' in the sense of the whole cosmos).

I see also a clear reference to the idea of control in modern society put forward by French philosopher Michael Foucault, who explains in his book ''Surveiller et punir'' (Discipline and Punish) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discipline_and_Punish] how governments (power) try to subtly control us in order to make us become 'proper citizens' and how those who dare to be out of such properness must and should be punished.

==Page 869==

'''''salizzada''''' 
Salizzada once meant a paved street, implying that all other, less important calles were once just dirt-packed alleyways.From a Venice Guidebook.

==Page 870==

'''Not by a long chalk''' 
This mainly British expression means “not by any means”, “not at all” and often turns up in conventional expressions such as they weren’t beaten yet, not by a long chalk.
It goes back to the days in which a count or score of almost any kind was marked up on a convenient surface using chalk. At a pub or ale house this might be a note of the amount of credit you had been given (often called the chalk in the early nineteenth century), which Charles Dickens refers to in Great Expectations: “There was a bar at the Jolly Bargemen, with some alarmingly long chalk scores in it on the wall at the side of the door, which seemed to me to be never paid off.”-- Yahoo answers.

'''gibanica''' 
Croatian: a rolled pastry filled with cheese or fruit.

'''kadulja''' 
Croatian, literally: garden sage.

'''coastal Čakavština''' 
Speech of a region in coastal Croatia.

==Page 871==

'''''bàcari''''' 
Venetian wine bars

'''formulæ''' 
Spells. The plural of formula, an established form of words or symbols for use in a ceremony or procedure.

==Page 872==

'''''Altezza''''' 
Italian: Highness.

==Page 873==

'''Montepulciano''' 
A red wine, considered among Italy's best, from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montepulciano Montepulciano].

'''the Ponte degli Scalzi''' 
Cf [[ATD_724-747#Page_746|page 746: the Ponte degli Scalzi]].

==Page 874==

'''11 mm Montenegrin Gasser''' 
A hinged-framed 11.3 mm calibre revolver

'''... to leave some mark of imbalance''' 
Refer back to p.868: "... there is an imbalance in Nature."

'''San Stae''' 
In Santa Croce district.

==Page 875==

==Page 876==

'''gentleman ops''' 
A tradition in thrillers. Bulldog Drummond and Tommy Hambledon are just two in the crowd.

'''dittoes''' 
"A suit of dittoes" is an outfit of coat, vest (waistcoat) and trousers from the same fabric.

'''Wrong sod, I'm afraid''' 
Not Oscar Wilde, i.e. not a Dandy

'''religious surrender of the self''' 
See P. 836, and note. Suggests Cyprian's masochism is a form of self-transcendence; transgression as transcendence. He has indeed demonstrated his ability to lose all desire...

==Page 877==

'''...what were the chances of finding anyone seeking to transcend that, and not even particularly aware of it?''' 
Passing beyond the self, passing beyond desire (and without fanfare), Cyprtian's very Buddhist quest, is perceived only as masochistic in the Western materialist view.

==Page 878==

'''''brisance''''' 
A French word now fully adopted in English. In the context of explosives it means "shattering power." In English it means the shattering or crushing effect of a sudden release of energy as in an explosion.

'''undissembled''' 
Synonyms: open-hearted, honest, plain, artless, guileless, ingenuous, innocent, natural, sincere, transparent, unconcealed, undisguised, unvarnished. Antonyms: devious, secretive, two-faced, evasive.

'''Wigan''' 
A town near Manchester, England, (with a professional soccer team, Wigan Athletic).<

'''the Earl's Court Wheel''' 
[http://www.shadyoldlady.com/location.php?loc=492 The Great Wheel] of a height of 300 ft built at the Earls Court exhibition grounds, London. It was modelled on the original one in Chicago. It was opend on July 6, 1895 for the "Empire of India Exhibition" and stayed in service until 1906. It was dismantled in 1907.

'''reversals of power''' 
Reversals of sexual power positions parallel Alernating Current. If DC is "direct" i.e. in one direction only, and AC is "alternating" current, a current of periodical reversals, perhaps all this talk of transcending sexual norms and role reversals is a social/sexual counterpoint to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Currents Current Wars]fought between Edison and Tesla. After much heated contention, Tesla and AC won, enormously extending the range and safety of power distribution (electrical, economic, sexual, social) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_engineering].Seen in the light of electrical circuitry, Anarchist explosions are expressions of power imbalance, every detonation another circuit blown. 
Electrical engineering terms take on new significance in AtD: twisted pair, induction coupling, Q inductors, three-phase generation, loads, triangle wave, square wave, etc. Interestingly, the wiki commentary on the War of the Currents states that "AC cannot really be understood or exploited without a substantial mathematical and mathematical physics orientation, which Tesla had" -- as did Yashmeen -- at whose feet these power reversals were but the "outskirts" (an interesting double entendre in outskirts). That Yashmeen is central to all this sexual power transformation, generation, distribution, alternating style as well as being a human mental radio (clairvoyance) -- she becomes an embodiment of both Henry Adams' dynamo and Virgin -- in one! A duality in singularity. She is the mother/whore of the electrical world.

==Page 879==

'''the least ''clairvoyante''''' 
The (woman) friend least able to exercise occult powers such as seeing the future.

'''Carnevale''' 
Italian: Carnival. The Italian word [http://italianfood.about.com/library/rec/blr0149.htm ''Carnevale''] derives from ''Carne Levare'' — Remove Meat — the name of the sumptuous dinner people would hold the night before Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent. In the past, things were especially intense in Venice, where debauched revels went on for weeks.
The standard folk etymology says that Carnevale means 'Farewell to meat" (vale is Latin for goodbye). See below, Carnesalve.

==Page 880==

'''Carnesalve''' 
If Carnevale means "goodbye to meat" (beginning of the Lenten fast), Carnesalve means "hello there, meat!"

'''San Servolo''' 
Island in the Venetian Lagoon, to the southeast of San Giorgio Maggiore, from 18th century until 1978 site of the Venetian psychiatric hospital. Since 1978, site of the "Istituto per le Ricerche e gli Studi sull´Emarginazione Sociale e Culturale" (Institute for the Study of Social and Cultural Marginalization) to preserve the documents associated with the history of the psychiatric hostpital [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Servolo].

'''Signori di Notte''' 
Italian: night lords.

==Page 881==

'''...framed by Signor Fabrizio's re-imagining of Yashmeen's hair...''' 
Saved from when he cut it off. On P. 860, she says he may "do whatever he want(s) with it" and the approach of this costume ball is implied.

'''Parma violets''' 
A delicate variety of the flower produced in the Italian city. The blossoms are sometimes sold candied, too.

'''loggie''' 
Plural of ''loggia.'' Italian: theater box or similar feature in a formal room.

==Page 882==

'''''amoretti''''' 
Italian: "Cupids" used as space fillers or decorative elements.

'''''tesoro''''' 
Italian: treasure.

'''Quickly now ....''' 
The conception described here is technically immaculate: Reef fulfills the role of the Father, Yashmeen that of Mary, and Cyprian that of the Holy Ghost. 

Or is this a human instance of three phase electrical generation? 
Or an alchemical operation to produce the Philosopher's Stone? 
Or the creation of a Moonchild through sex magic ala Aleister Crowley.

Alchemical musings: Person-Sex-Orb-Metal 
Reef: male, sun, gold 
Yashmeen: female, moon, silver 
Cyprian: female/male, mercury, mercury (quicksilver)

Cyprian first receives the seed as the functional equivalent of a female and then plants the seed as a male. He changes gender relating to his passing through the arch alone -- this also seems metaphorically related to the process of photographic plate development shift in colors. 

This sex shift also relates him to Mercury, quicksilver, a transition metal named for a hermaphroditic god. The glyph for Mercury is used in biology and botany to mean double-sexed.

Mercury was once used in the amalgamation process of refining gold and silver ores. It was central to the practice of the assayer in juding the purity of gold and silver ore, and the alchemist in the the production of the Philosopher's Stone. Mercury signifies the ''coniunctio'' or uniting of opposites.

'''''fellatrice''''' 
Or: fellatrix , a female who performs oral-genital-sex on the penis. Quote: Woody Allen to Miro Sorvino in Mighty Aphrodite (1995): ' I'm sure that you're a state-of-the-art fellatrix .' The etymology of fellatrice and fellatrix is the same as that of fellatio: from Latin, fellare (to suck). These words are used in English, French and Italian.
(denoting Cyprian's role, not his physiology).
 ''in fact, the word is not used in italian at all.''

==Page 883==

'''Ascension Day''' 
The fortieth day after Easter Sunday (which is always a Thursday), commemorating the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension Ascension] of Christ into heaven, according to Mark 16:19, Luke 24:51, and Acts 1:2.

==Page 884==

==Page 885==

'''outmoded sexual protocols''' 
Again, transgression = transcendence. Of course, also parallels struggles over acceptance of homosexuality in our times.

'''nasal intrusion''' 
Sticking one's nose into something.

'''''chavalitos''''' 
Spanish: kids.

==Page 886==

'''Grand Army of the Matrimonial Republic''' 
The Grand Army of the Republic comprised Union veterans of the American Civil War. Its heyday came around 1890-1910.

==Page 887==

'''endlessless''' 
A typo for endlessness.

==Page 887-888==
'''[T]he dream came and found him...''' 
Reef's contribution to the hallucination/dream motif previously referenced in the Traverse sections of the novel. The color yellow seems to be significant here and elsewhere, especially coded to Webb Traverse. [More forthcoming]

<blockquote>
          In the dream they were no longer in the ghostly canyons of the McElmo but in the city, not Venice but noplace American either, with an umappable operational endlessless (sic) to its streets, the same ancient, disquieting pictures engraved on its walls as back in the McElmo, spelling out a story whose pitiless truth couldn't be admitted officially by the authorities here because of the danger to the public sanity.... It was darker out here than he had any idea of. In the distance Reef caught sight of a procession of miners in their long rubber coats, only one of them, about halfway along, with the candle stub in his hat lit. Like postulants in habits, they proceeded single file down a narrow street like a humid drift lit back or front by a yellow lamp. As Reef came closer he saw the bearer of the light was Webb. 
        "Small victories," Webb greeted him. "Just to come away with one or two. To praise and to honor the small victories where and however they happen." 
        "Hasn't been too many of them lately, Pa," Reef tried to say. 
        "Not talking about yours, you numbskull." 
        Understanding that this was Webb's attempt to pass on another message, like up the séance in the Alps, Reef saw just for one lucid instant that this was the precise intelligence he needed to get him back to where he had wandered off the trail, so long ago. And then he was awake and trying to remember why it was important.</blockquote>

[[User:Bean|remy]] 13:15, 28 December 2006 (PST)

endlessless: typo for endlessness

pictures engraved on the walls: the Puebloan pictograms

'''Garfagnana''' 
Historical region of Italy, today part of the province of Lucca in the Apennines, in northwest Tuscany, but before the unification of Italy it belonged to the Duchy of Modena and Reggio, ruled by the Este family. For a short time, in the 16th century, it was governed by the poet Ludovico Ariosto [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garfagnana].

'''Bagni di Lucca''' 
Note the similarity in name to Banjaluka (or Banja Luka), Bosnia or actually Republika Srpska , mentioned on page 834. Another bilocation, like Kara Tagh and Montenegro ([[ATD_748-767#Page_764|annotations, page 764]]).

Might also add: Novi Pazar = Novi Bazar = Newmarket.

Also Agadir and Cádiz, both coming from the Phoenician gadir, meaning '"castle", "fortress"..."walled stronghold" or simply "wall"'.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A1diz]

'''homeopathic principle''' 
Like cures like. To alleviate an allergy, according to homeopathic doctrine, administer the allergen in an exceedingly dilute form.

==Page 889==

'''Say surly topple''' 
You can't help thinking Reef does this on purpose (or Pynchon :-). French ''C'est sur la table'': It's on the table.
Maybe he ran into James Joyce on his travels. These are all very 'Finnegans Wake' type puns.
These lucky mistranslations appear in other Pynchon novels as well; Doc Sportello's declaration of love in "Inherent Vice" is 'cootie food!'

'''pasta asciutta''' 
Pasta dish with potatoes and green beans. Actually ''pasta asciutta'' refers to any kind of ''pasta''. Actually, pasta asciutta refers to any kind of packaged dry (asciutta translates as dry) pasta (as opposed to made from [http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1635,144190-254199,00.html scratch]) and apparently when Reef boiled it, it "was always overdone." There are also lots of regional recipes with pasta asciutta as part of the name of the recipe, e. g., pasta asciutta alla bolognese, or pasta asciutta alla siciliana.

'''pasta fazool''' 
Officially ''pasta e fagioli;'' "fazool" imitates the pronunciation in a regional dialect of Italian. A hearty soup consisting of pasta, any one of a variety of beans (borlotti (cranberry) beans, kidney beans, cannellini beans, ...), and optionally some meat.

==Page 890==

'''''al dente''''' 
Italian, cooked so as to be firm when eaten; literally: to the tooth or to the bite, referring to the need to chew the pasta due to its firmness.

'''Barcelona''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragic_Week Tragic Week] (in Catalan la Setmana Tràgica, in Spanish la Semana Trágica) (July 25-August 2, 1909) is the name used for a series of bloody confrontations between the army and the working classes of Barcelona and other cities of Catalonia, backed by the anarchists, communists and republicans, during the last week of July 1909. It was caused by the calling-up of reserve troops by Prime Minister Antonio Maura to be sent as reinforcements when Spain renewed military-colonial activity in Morocco on July 9. There would be risings again in 1917, and Barcelona was among the last strongholds of the Spanish Republic in the Civil War of 1936-39; even during the Civil war, anarchists and Communists fought in the streets (see Orwell's ''Homage to Catalonia'' for a participant account. In 1972 anarchist grafiti could still be found in the Old City). But in 1909, indeed, much worse was to come.

'''''línea del fuego''''' 
Spanish: line of (the) fire. This may be a naive translation of "firing line" or "line of fire" (note the satisfying ambiguity); ''línea de tiro'' seems to be preferred.

'''...''absence of desire''--why one might choose ''not to embrace'' what the world judges, it often seemed unanimously, to lie clearly in one's interest.''' 
Cyprian is becoming aware of his interest in divesting himself of desire. Yashmeen in the following sentences notes this change that took place in him in Bosnia; he notes how difficult renouncing his desire for her will be, and she that this is not the real meaning.

==Page 891==

'''Biarritz''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biarritz Biarritz], located about 11 miles from the border with Spain, is a town by the Bay of Biscay, on the Atlantic coast, in southwestern France.

'''''bal musette''''' 
French: dance hall (bal), with the music provided by an accordion band. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bal-musette Bal-musette] is a style of French popular music presumably played at these dance halls.

'''in some auxiliary sense . . . his own''' 
Review details of the encounter at Carnesalve (page 881).

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

ATD 864-891

2023-01-22T07:56:51Z

Unmensch: /* Page 867 */

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

==Page 864==

'''''galleggianti''''' 
Boathouses.

'''''traghetto''''' 
ferry-boat.

==Page 865==

'''cicerone''' 
Guide, especially for a single woman.

'''''Inglesi''''' 
Italian: Englishmen.

==Page 866==

'''Gorblimey''' 
Representing a Cockney pronunciation of "God blind me!"; in medieval times, people would curse using contractions rather than breaking the third commandment (Do not use the Lord's name in vain oaths). Compare strewth, zounds, 'sblood. -- Wiktionary

'''Jenny Invert''' 
This is not her first occurrence. Part of the printing of 1918 24-cent airmail stamps showed an inverted image of a Curtis JN-4 Jenny airplane. [http://www.afa.org/magazine/1990/0790jenny.asp It's a famous and valuable stamp.] 
Another female character named after a stamp is "Penny Black"

'''Newmarket''' 
Cf [[ATD_489-524#Page_495|page 495: Newmarket]].

'''Nether Wallop, Hants''' 
Hants: customary shortening of Hampshire. 
NETHER WALLOP, a parish in the hundred of Thorngate, county Hants, 7 miles S.W. of Andover, and 3½ N.W. of Stockbridge, its post town. The parish is situated under Danebury Hill, on which are remains of a fortification with ramparts, strengthened on the western side by an outwork, and supposed to have been formed by Canute the Great. The surface is hilly and the soil chalky. The living is a vicarage* in the diocese of Winchester, value £350. The church, dedicated to St. Andrew, contains several old monuments and two brasses-one of an abbess, bearing date 1432, and the other of a mitred abbot. Gazeteer of Ireland and Great Britain. 
Great Pynchonian name. Surprising that it's real-- Nether Wallop = whack in the ass, much like the "fundament-seizing" back on pg. 110

'''Inanimate Bird Association''' 
Concerned with clay pigeons, i.e., trapshooting.

'''rather shirty''' 
Shirty: angry, irritated, huffy, stroppy.
Maybe from "Keep your shirt on!" (Don't get angry!)

'''the key also changes day to day''' 
A code depending upon changes in the starting point for shifts in the text (e.g a book with a different starting page depending on the date, groups of letters that change starting with a different letter every day)is considered unbreakable unless one knows the starting point, called the Key.

'''''Oca ti jebem''''' 
Macedonian: I fuck your father.

'''Giles Piprake''' 
Is he aping Chico Marx? 
A small rake with women? See his remark about Ratty's wife. The joke here is that if Ratty's wife did complain, that would be a problem Piprake couldn't sort out. 
No, G.P.'s comeback is a joke in the "That's what ''she'' said" genre. 
Lots of definitions for [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/pip pip], take your pick. Breaking through a shell (shell being a metaphor for a problem barrier in this case) seems as appropriate as any. Lots of definitions for [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/rake rake], too. 
A ''pipkrake'' is a narrow spike of ice that grows upward from a body of groundwater in freezing weather, carrying a portion of soil on its top surface. [http://epod.usra.edu/archive/epodviewer.php3?oid=336192 Here] are a photo and discussion; note that the caption has the misspelling ''piprake''!

==Page 867==

'''remember not to wear yellow''' 
Cyprian thinks he was seen hiding because he was wearing yellow?
Conjecture: Austro-Hungary's colors were yellow and black. So yellow not only draws the eye, but he might also be taken for an Austrian in Venice incurring Italian mob wrath or perhaps Theign's attention.
The color yellow was associated with the decadence movement in the arts during the final decades of the 19th century, and specifically with the queerness and homosexuality embraced by many of the artists involved. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yellow_Book. Cyprian is reminding himself not to inadvertently signal to the Principe Spongiatosta that he is there for a sexual encounter, in view of the assignations previously arranged for him by Theign.

'''''valletto''''' 
Italian: valet, attendant.

'''''heliotrope''''' 
A moderate, light, or brilliant violet to moderate or deep reddish purple.

'''''Facciam' il porco''''' 
We (the Prince and valletto) are playing the sexual pervert. Literally, we are doing the pig, but porco is Italian slang for sexual pervert.

'''''Il mio ragazzo è molto geloso''''' 
Italian: My little guy is very jealous.

'''''Qualsiasi, Ciprianino''''' 
Italian: Whatever you want (you want is implied), little Cyprian.

'''The Iron Gateway''' 
an imaginary internal 'Symbolist' artwork embodying vivid hallucinatory visions within ATD? 
Also a real structure:
Iron Gateway & Draghut Mosque, Tripoli Medina
Iron Gateway, Tripoli Medina
Iron Gateway & Draghut Mosque, Tripoli Medina

-- Is this a reference to the Portal, p.154?
: Could be, but there are a lot of thresholds and portals in this book; the Tushuk Tash back on pg. 764, and the Halkata approaching on pg. 955... But Hunter's painting sounds more like the portal to war, endings, the Zero-- described in Gravity's Rainbow on pg. 51 "One by one men step out into this perfectly black rectangle of night and disappear. Gone, the war taking them, the man behind already presenting his ticket."

'''Carlo Zen furniture''' 
Designed by Carlo Zen (Italian, 1851-1918)
Among the more prolific designers and cabinet-makers of the period was the firm of Carlo Zen. Some of his decorations suggest the strong influence of continental symbolism, while other objects reveal a keen awareness of geometric simplification.

'''Galileo Chini''' 
Galileo CHINI , famous italian painter and ceramist, was born in Florence on December 2nd 1873 and died on August 23rd 1956.
In 1896, he funded "The Art of Ceramics" (later called "Factory Fornaci S.Lorenzo). He introduced the Liberty style in Italy.
As a painter he took part at the"Biennale di Venezia" from 1901 till 1936.
In 1911 he was in Bangkok to decorate Siam King's palace.
He remained there till 1913: it was a triumph! Back in Italy, he taught at the "Accademia di Belle Arti"in Florence. Some of his beautiful works of Art can be found at the Modern Art Gallery in Rome, at the Uffizi in Florence and at the Modern Art Gallery in Palazzo Pitti.

'''Bugatti''' 
Carlo Bugatti (1856-1940), world-famous furniture designer from Milan.

==Page 868==

'''''corno''''' 
The "horned" cap worn by Doges of Venice. An example comes from a Bellini portrait of a doge at [http://www.prints.co.nz/page/fine-art/PROD/Renaissance_Art_Prints/7211].

'''''lo stato''''' 
Italian: the state.

'''penance....imbalance in Nature.''' 
incredible thematic paragraph that relates to revenge motif?

- seems also to refer to the idea of Karma and karmic penance. Only if you make up for the deeds done in this or in an earlier life, the karmic account will be balanced (i.e. 'Nature' in the sense of the whole cosmos).

I see also a clear reference to the idea of control in modern society put forward by French philosopher Michael Foucault, who explains in his book ''Surveiller et punir'' (Discipline and Punish) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discipline_and_Punish] how governments (power) try to subtly control us in order to make us become 'proper citizens' and how those who dare to be out of such properness must and should be punished.

==Page 869==

'''''salizzada''''' 
Salizzada once meant a paved street, implying that all other, less important calles were once just dirt-packed alleyways.From a Venice Guidebook.

==Page 870==

'''Not by a long chalk''' 
This mainly British expression means “not by any means”, “not at all” and often turns up in conventional expressions such as they weren’t beaten yet, not by a long chalk.
It goes back to the days in which a count or score of almost any kind was marked up on a convenient surface using chalk. At a pub or ale house this might be a note of the amount of credit you had been given (often called the chalk in the early nineteenth century), which Charles Dickens refers to in Great Expectations: “There was a bar at the Jolly Bargemen, with some alarmingly long chalk scores in it on the wall at the side of the door, which seemed to me to be never paid off.”-- Yahoo answers.

'''gibanica''' 
Croatian: a rolled pastry filled with cheese or fruit.

'''kadulja''' 
Croatian, literally: garden sage.

'''coastal Čakavština''' 
Speech of a region in coastal Croatia.

==Page 871==

'''''bàcari''''' 
Venetian wine bars

'''formulæ''' 
Spells. The plural of formula, an established form of words or symbols for use in a ceremony or procedure.

==Page 872==

'''''Altezza''''' 
Italian: Highness.

==Page 873==

'''Montepulciano''' 
A red wine, considered among Italy's best, from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montepulciano Montepulciano].

'''the Ponte degli Scalzi''' 
Cf [[ATD_724-747#Page_746|page 746: the Ponte degli Scalzi]].

==Page 874==

'''11 mm Montenegrin Gasser''' 
A hinged-framed 11.3 mm calibre revolver

'''... to leave some mark of imbalance''' 
Refer back to p.868: "... there is an imbalance in Nature."

'''San Stae''' 
In Santa Croce district.

==Page 875==

==Page 876==

'''gentleman ops''' 
A tradition in thrillers. Bulldog Drummond and Tommy Hambledon are just two in the crowd.

'''dittoes''' 
"A suit of dittoes" is an outfit of coat, vest (waistcoat) and trousers from the same fabric.

'''Wrong sod, I'm afraid''' 
Not Oscar Wilde, i.e. not a Dandy

'''religious surrender of the self''' 
See P. 836, and note. Suggests Cyprian's masochism is a form of self-transcendence; transgression as transcendence. He has indeed demonstrated his ability to lose all desire...

==Page 877==

'''...what were the chances of finding anyone seeking to transcend that, and not even particularly aware of it?''' 
Passing beyond the self, passing beyond desire (and without fanfare), Cyprtian's very Buddhist quest, is perceived only as masochistic in the Western materialist view.

==Page 878==

'''''brisance''''' 
A French word now fully adopted in English. In the context of explosives it means "shattering power." In English it means the shattering or crushing effect of a sudden release of energy as in an explosion.

'''undissembled''' 
Synonyms: open-hearted, honest, plain, artless, guileless, ingenuous, innocent, natural, sincere, transparent, unconcealed, undisguised, unvarnished. Antonyms: devious, secretive, two-faced, evasive.

'''Wigan''' 
A town near Manchester, England, (with a professional soccer team, Wigan Athletic).<

'''the Earl's Court Wheel''' 
[http://www.shadyoldlady.com/location.php?loc=492 The Great Wheel] of a height of 300 ft built at the Earls Court exhibition grounds, London. It was modelled on the original one in Chicago. It was opend on July 6, 1895 for the "Empire of India Exhibition" and stayed in service until 1906. It was dismantled in 1907.

'''reversals of power''' 
Reversals of sexual power positions parallel Alernating Current. If DC is "direct" i.e. in one direction only, and AC is "alternating" current, a current of periodical reversals, perhaps all this talk of transcending sexual norms and role reversals is a social/sexual counterpoint to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Currents Current Wars]fought between Edison and Tesla. After much heated contention, Tesla and AC won, enormously extending the range and safety of power distribution (electrical, economic, sexual, social) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_engineering].Seen in the light of electrical circuitry, Anarchist explosions are expressions of power imbalance, every detonation another circuit blown. 
Electrical engineering terms take on new significance in AtD: twisted pair, induction coupling, Q inductors, three-phase generation, loads, triangle wave, square wave, etc. Interestingly, the wiki commentary on the War of the Currents states that "AC cannot really be understood or exploited without a substantial mathematical and mathematical physics orientation, which Tesla had" -- as did Yashmeen -- at whose feet these power reversals were but the "outskirts" (an interesting double entendre in outskirts). That Yashmeen is central to all this sexual power transformation, generation, distribution, alternating style as well as being a human mental radio (clairvoyance) -- she becomes an embodiment of both Henry Adams' dynamo and Virgin -- in one! A duality in singularity. She is the mother/whore of the electrical world.

==Page 879==

'''the least ''clairvoyante''''' 
The (woman) friend least able to exercise occult powers such as seeing the future.

'''Carnevale''' 
Italian: Carnival. The Italian word [http://italianfood.about.com/library/rec/blr0149.htm ''Carnevale''] derives from ''Carne Levare'' — Remove Meat — the name of the sumptuous dinner people would hold the night before Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent. In the past, things were especially intense in Venice, where debauched revels went on for weeks.
The standard folk etymology says that Carnevale means 'Farewell to meat" (vale is Latin for goodbye). See below, Carnesalve.

==Page 880==

'''Carnesalve''' 
If Carnevale means "goodbye to meat" (beginning of the Lenten fast), Carnesalve means "hello there, meat!"

'''San Servolo''' 
Island in the Venetian Lagoon, to the southeast of San Giorgio Maggiore, from 18th century until 1978 site of the Venetian psychiatric hospital. Since 1978, site of the "Istituto per le Ricerche e gli Studi sull´Emarginazione Sociale e Culturale" (Institute for the Study of Social and Cultural Marginalization) to preserve the documents associated with the history of the psychiatric hostpital [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Servolo].

'''Signori di Notte''' 
Italian: night lords.

==Page 881==

'''...framed by Signor Fabrizio's re-imagining of Yashmeen's hair...''' 
Saved from when he cut it off. On P. 860, she says he may "do whatever he want(s) with it" and the approach of this costume ball is implied.

'''Parma violets''' 
A delicate variety of the flower produced in the Italian city. The blossoms are sometimes sold candied, too.

'''loggie''' 
Plural of ''loggia.'' Italian: theater box or similar feature in a formal room.

==Page 882==

'''''amoretti''''' 
Italian: "Cupids" used as space fillers or decorative elements.

'''''tesoro''''' 
Italian: treasure.

'''Quickly now ....''' 
The conception described here is technically immaculate: Reef fulfills the role of the Father, Yashmeen that of Mary, and Cyprian that of the Holy Ghost. 

Or is this a human instance of three phase electrical generation? 
Or an alchemical operation to produce the Philosopher's Stone? 
Or the creation of a Moonchild through sex magic ala Aleister Crowley.

Alchemical musings: Person-Sex-Orb-Metal 
Reef: male, sun, gold 
Yashmeen: female, moon, silver 
Cyprian: female/male, mercury, mercury (quicksilver)

Cyprian first receives the seed as the functional equivalent of a female and then plants the seed as a male. He changes gender relating to his passing through the arch alone -- this also seems metaphorically related to the process of photographic plate development shift in colors. 

This sex shift also relates him to Mercury, quicksilver, a transition metal named for a hermaphroditic god. The glyph for Mercury is used in biology and botany to mean double-sexed.

Mercury was once used in the amalgamation process of refining gold and silver ores. It was central to the practice of the assayer in juding the purity of gold and silver ore, and the alchemist in the the production of the Philosopher's Stone. Mercury signifies the ''coniunctio'' or uniting of opposites.

'''''fellatrice''''' 
Or: fellatrix , a female who performs oral-genital-sex on the penis. Quote: Woody Allen to Miro Sorvino in Mighty Aphrodite (1995): ' I'm sure that you're a state-of-the-art fellatrix .' The etymology of fellatrice and fellatrix is the same as that of fellatio: from Latin, fellare (to suck). These words are used in English, French and Italian.
(denoting Cyprian's role, not his physiology).
 ''in fact, the word is not used in italian at all.''

==Page 883==

'''Ascension Day''' 
The fortieth day after Easter Sunday (which is always a Thursday), commemorating the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension Ascension] of Christ into heaven, according to Mark 16:19, Luke 24:51, and Acts 1:2.

==Page 884==

==Page 885==

'''outmoded sexual protocols''' 
Again, transgression = transcendence. Of course, also parallels struggles over acceptance of homosexuality in our times.

'''nasal intrusion''' 
Sticking one's nose into something.

'''''chavalitos''''' 
Spanish: kids.

==Page 886==

'''Grand Army of the Matrimonial Republic''' 
The Grand Army of the Republic comprised Union veterans of the American Civil War. Its heyday came around 1890-1910.

==Page 887==

'''endlessless''' 
A typo for endlessness.

==Page 887-888==
'''[T]he dream came and found him...''' 
Reef's contribution to the hallucination/dream motif previously referenced in the Traverse sections of the novel. The color yellow seems to be significant here and elsewhere, especially coded to Webb Traverse. [More forthcoming]

<blockquote>
          In the dream they were no longer in the ghostly canyons of the McElmo but in the city, not Venice but noplace American either, with an umappable operational endlessless (sic) to its streets, the same ancient, disquieting pictures engraved on its walls as back in the McElmo, spelling out a story whose pitiless truth couldn't be admitted officially by the authorities here because of the danger to the public sanity.... It was darker out here than he had any idea of. In the distance Reef caught sight of a procession of miners in their long rubber coats, only one of them, about halfway along, with the candle stub in his hat lit. Like postulants in habits, they proceeded single file down a narrow street like a humid drift lit back or front by a yellow lamp. As Reef came closer he saw the bearer of the light was Webb. 
        "Small victories," Webb greeted him. "Just to come away with one or two. To praise and to honor the small victories where and however they happen." 
        "Hasn't been too many of them lately, Pa," Reef tried to say. 
        "Not talking about yours, you numbskull." 
        Understanding that this was Webb's attempt to pass on another message, like up the séance in the Alps, Reef saw just for one lucid instant that this was the precise intelligence he needed to get him back to where he had wandered off the trail, so long ago. And then he was awake and trying to remember why it was important.</blockquote>

[[User:Bean|remy]] 13:15, 28 December 2006 (PST)

endlessless: typo for endlessness

pictures engraved on the walls: the Puebloan pictograms

'''Garfagnana''' 
Historical region of Italy, today part of the province of Lucca in the Apennines, in northwest Tuscany, but before the unification of Italy it belonged to the Duchy of Modena and Reggio, ruled by the Este family. For a short time, in the 16th century, it was governed by the poet Ludovico Ariosto [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garfagnana].

'''Bagni di Lucca''' 
Note the similarity in name to Banjaluka (or Banja Luka), Bosnia or actually Republika Srpska , mentioned on page 834. Another bilocation, like Kara Tagh and Montenegro ([[ATD_748-767#Page_764|annotations, page 764]]).

Might also add: Novi Pazar = Novi Bazar = Newmarket.

Also Agadir and Cádiz, both coming from the Phoenician gadir, meaning '"castle", "fortress"..."walled stronghold" or simply "wall"'.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A1diz]

'''homeopathic principle''' 
Like cures like. To alleviate an allergy, according to homeopathic doctrine, administer the allergen in an exceedingly dilute form.

==Page 889==

'''Say surly topple''' 
You can't help thinking Reef does this on purpose (or Pynchon :-). French ''C'est sur la table'': It's on the table.
Maybe he ran into James Joyce on his travels. These are all very 'Finnegans Wake' type puns.
These lucky mistranslations appear in other Pynchon novels as well; Doc Sportello's declaration of love in "Inherent Vice" is 'cootie food!'

'''pasta asciutta''' 
Pasta dish with potatoes and green beans. Actually ''pasta asciutta'' refers to any kind of ''pasta''. Actually, pasta asciutta refers to any kind of packaged dry (asciutta translates as dry) pasta (as opposed to made from [http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1635,144190-254199,00.html scratch]) and apparently when Reef boiled it, it "was always overdone." There are also lots of regional recipes with pasta asciutta as part of the name of the recipe, e. g., pasta asciutta alla bolognese, or pasta asciutta alla siciliana.

'''pasta fazool''' 
Officially ''pasta e fagioli;'' "fazool" imitates the pronunciation in a regional dialect of Italian. A hearty soup consisting of pasta, any one of a variety of beans (borlotti (cranberry) beans, kidney beans, cannellini beans, ...), and optionally some meat.

==Page 890==

'''''al dente''''' 
Italian, cooked so as to be firm when eaten; literally: to the tooth or to the bite, referring to the need to chew the pasta due to its firmness.

'''Barcelona''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragic_Week Tragic Week] (in Catalan la Setmana Tràgica, in Spanish la Semana Trágica) (July 25-August 2, 1909) is the name used for a series of bloody confrontations between the army and the working classes of Barcelona and other cities of Catalonia, backed by the anarchists, communists and republicans, during the last week of July 1909. It was caused by the calling-up of reserve troops by Prime Minister Antonio Maura to be sent as reinforcements when Spain renewed military-colonial activity in Morocco on July 9. There would be risings again in 1917, and Barcelona was among the last strongholds of the Spanish Republic in the Civil War of 1936-39; even during the Civil war, anarchists and Communists fought in the streets (see Orwell's ''Homage to Catalonia'' for a participant account. In 1972 anarchist grafiti could still be found in the Old City). But in 1909, indeed, much worse was to come.

'''''línea del fuego''''' 
Spanish: line of (the) fire. This may be a naive translation of "firing line" or "line of fire" (note the satisfying ambiguity); ''línea de tiro'' seems to be preferred.

'''...''absence of desire''--why one might choose ''not to embrace'' what the world judges, it often seemed unanimously, to lie clearly in one's interest.''' 
Cyprian is becoming aware of his interest in divesting himself of desire. Yashmeen in the following sentences notes this change that took place in him in Bosnia; he notes how difficult renouncing his desire for her will be, and she that this is not the real meaning.

==Page 891==

'''Biarritz''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biarritz Biarritz], located about 11 miles from the border with Spain, is a town by the Bay of Biscay, on the Atlantic coast, in southwestern France.

'''''bal musette''''' 
French: dance hall (bal), with the music provided by an accordion band. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bal-musette Bal-musette] is a style of French popular music presumably played at these dance halls.

'''in some auxiliary sense . . . his own''' 
Review details of the encounter at Carnesalve (page 881).

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

ATD 864-891

2023-01-22T07:56:39Z

Unmensch: /* Page 867 */

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

==Page 864==

'''''galleggianti''''' 
Boathouses.

'''''traghetto''''' 
ferry-boat.

==Page 865==

'''cicerone''' 
Guide, especially for a single woman.

'''''Inglesi''''' 
Italian: Englishmen.

==Page 866==

'''Gorblimey''' 
Representing a Cockney pronunciation of "God blind me!"; in medieval times, people would curse using contractions rather than breaking the third commandment (Do not use the Lord's name in vain oaths). Compare strewth, zounds, 'sblood. -- Wiktionary

'''Jenny Invert''' 
This is not her first occurrence. Part of the printing of 1918 24-cent airmail stamps showed an inverted image of a Curtis JN-4 Jenny airplane. [http://www.afa.org/magazine/1990/0790jenny.asp It's a famous and valuable stamp.] 
Another female character named after a stamp is "Penny Black"

'''Newmarket''' 
Cf [[ATD_489-524#Page_495|page 495: Newmarket]].

'''Nether Wallop, Hants''' 
Hants: customary shortening of Hampshire. 
NETHER WALLOP, a parish in the hundred of Thorngate, county Hants, 7 miles S.W. of Andover, and 3½ N.W. of Stockbridge, its post town. The parish is situated under Danebury Hill, on which are remains of a fortification with ramparts, strengthened on the western side by an outwork, and supposed to have been formed by Canute the Great. The surface is hilly and the soil chalky. The living is a vicarage* in the diocese of Winchester, value £350. The church, dedicated to St. Andrew, contains several old monuments and two brasses-one of an abbess, bearing date 1432, and the other of a mitred abbot. Gazeteer of Ireland and Great Britain. 
Great Pynchonian name. Surprising that it's real-- Nether Wallop = whack in the ass, much like the "fundament-seizing" back on pg. 110

'''Inanimate Bird Association''' 
Concerned with clay pigeons, i.e., trapshooting.

'''rather shirty''' 
Shirty: angry, irritated, huffy, stroppy.
Maybe from "Keep your shirt on!" (Don't get angry!)

'''the key also changes day to day''' 
A code depending upon changes in the starting point for shifts in the text (e.g a book with a different starting page depending on the date, groups of letters that change starting with a different letter every day)is considered unbreakable unless one knows the starting point, called the Key.

'''''Oca ti jebem''''' 
Macedonian: I fuck your father.

'''Giles Piprake''' 
Is he aping Chico Marx? 
A small rake with women? See his remark about Ratty's wife. The joke here is that if Ratty's wife did complain, that would be a problem Piprake couldn't sort out. 
No, G.P.'s comeback is a joke in the "That's what ''she'' said" genre. 
Lots of definitions for [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/pip pip], take your pick. Breaking through a shell (shell being a metaphor for a problem barrier in this case) seems as appropriate as any. Lots of definitions for [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/rake rake], too. 
A ''pipkrake'' is a narrow spike of ice that grows upward from a body of groundwater in freezing weather, carrying a portion of soil on its top surface. [http://epod.usra.edu/archive/epodviewer.php3?oid=336192 Here] are a photo and discussion; note that the caption has the misspelling ''piprake''!

==Page 867==

'''remember not to wear yellow''' 
Cyprian thinks he was seen hiding because he was wearing yellow?
Conjecture: Austro-Hungary's colors were yellow and black. So yellow not only draws the eye, but he might also be taken for an Austrian in Venice incurring Italian mob wrath or perhaps Theign's attention.
The color yellow was associated with the decadence movement in the arts during the final decades of the 19th century, and specifically with the queerness and homosexuality embraced by many of the artists involved. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yellow_Book”>The Yellow Book. Cyprian is reminding himself not to inadvertently signal to the Principe Spongiatosta that he is there for a sexual encounter, in view of the assignations previously arranged for him by Theign.

'''''valletto''''' 
Italian: valet, attendant.

'''''heliotrope''''' 
A moderate, light, or brilliant violet to moderate or deep reddish purple.

'''''Facciam' il porco''''' 
We (the Prince and valletto) are playing the sexual pervert. Literally, we are doing the pig, but porco is Italian slang for sexual pervert.

'''''Il mio ragazzo è molto geloso''''' 
Italian: My little guy is very jealous.

'''''Qualsiasi, Ciprianino''''' 
Italian: Whatever you want (you want is implied), little Cyprian.

'''The Iron Gateway''' 
an imaginary internal 'Symbolist' artwork embodying vivid hallucinatory visions within ATD? 
Also a real structure:
Iron Gateway & Draghut Mosque, Tripoli Medina
Iron Gateway, Tripoli Medina
Iron Gateway & Draghut Mosque, Tripoli Medina

-- Is this a reference to the Portal, p.154?
: Could be, but there are a lot of thresholds and portals in this book; the Tushuk Tash back on pg. 764, and the Halkata approaching on pg. 955... But Hunter's painting sounds more like the portal to war, endings, the Zero-- described in Gravity's Rainbow on pg. 51 "One by one men step out into this perfectly black rectangle of night and disappear. Gone, the war taking them, the man behind already presenting his ticket."

'''Carlo Zen furniture''' 
Designed by Carlo Zen (Italian, 1851-1918)
Among the more prolific designers and cabinet-makers of the period was the firm of Carlo Zen. Some of his decorations suggest the strong influence of continental symbolism, while other objects reveal a keen awareness of geometric simplification.

'''Galileo Chini''' 
Galileo CHINI , famous italian painter and ceramist, was born in Florence on December 2nd 1873 and died on August 23rd 1956.
In 1896, he funded "The Art of Ceramics" (later called "Factory Fornaci S.Lorenzo). He introduced the Liberty style in Italy.
As a painter he took part at the"Biennale di Venezia" from 1901 till 1936.
In 1911 he was in Bangkok to decorate Siam King's palace.
He remained there till 1913: it was a triumph! Back in Italy, he taught at the "Accademia di Belle Arti"in Florence. Some of his beautiful works of Art can be found at the Modern Art Gallery in Rome, at the Uffizi in Florence and at the Modern Art Gallery in Palazzo Pitti.

'''Bugatti''' 
Carlo Bugatti (1856-1940), world-famous furniture designer from Milan.

==Page 868==

'''''corno''''' 
The "horned" cap worn by Doges of Venice. An example comes from a Bellini portrait of a doge at [http://www.prints.co.nz/page/fine-art/PROD/Renaissance_Art_Prints/7211].

'''''lo stato''''' 
Italian: the state.

'''penance....imbalance in Nature.''' 
incredible thematic paragraph that relates to revenge motif?

- seems also to refer to the idea of Karma and karmic penance. Only if you make up for the deeds done in this or in an earlier life, the karmic account will be balanced (i.e. 'Nature' in the sense of the whole cosmos).

I see also a clear reference to the idea of control in modern society put forward by French philosopher Michael Foucault, who explains in his book ''Surveiller et punir'' (Discipline and Punish) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discipline_and_Punish] how governments (power) try to subtly control us in order to make us become 'proper citizens' and how those who dare to be out of such properness must and should be punished.

==Page 869==

'''''salizzada''''' 
Salizzada once meant a paved street, implying that all other, less important calles were once just dirt-packed alleyways.From a Venice Guidebook.

==Page 870==

'''Not by a long chalk''' 
This mainly British expression means “not by any means”, “not at all” and often turns up in conventional expressions such as they weren’t beaten yet, not by a long chalk.
It goes back to the days in which a count or score of almost any kind was marked up on a convenient surface using chalk. At a pub or ale house this might be a note of the amount of credit you had been given (often called the chalk in the early nineteenth century), which Charles Dickens refers to in Great Expectations: “There was a bar at the Jolly Bargemen, with some alarmingly long chalk scores in it on the wall at the side of the door, which seemed to me to be never paid off.”-- Yahoo answers.

'''gibanica''' 
Croatian: a rolled pastry filled with cheese or fruit.

'''kadulja''' 
Croatian, literally: garden sage.

'''coastal Čakavština''' 
Speech of a region in coastal Croatia.

==Page 871==

'''''bàcari''''' 
Venetian wine bars

'''formulæ''' 
Spells. The plural of formula, an established form of words or symbols for use in a ceremony or procedure.

==Page 872==

'''''Altezza''''' 
Italian: Highness.

==Page 873==

'''Montepulciano''' 
A red wine, considered among Italy's best, from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montepulciano Montepulciano].

'''the Ponte degli Scalzi''' 
Cf [[ATD_724-747#Page_746|page 746: the Ponte degli Scalzi]].

==Page 874==

'''11 mm Montenegrin Gasser''' 
A hinged-framed 11.3 mm calibre revolver

'''... to leave some mark of imbalance''' 
Refer back to p.868: "... there is an imbalance in Nature."

'''San Stae''' 
In Santa Croce district.

==Page 875==

==Page 876==

'''gentleman ops''' 
A tradition in thrillers. Bulldog Drummond and Tommy Hambledon are just two in the crowd.

'''dittoes''' 
"A suit of dittoes" is an outfit of coat, vest (waistcoat) and trousers from the same fabric.

'''Wrong sod, I'm afraid''' 
Not Oscar Wilde, i.e. not a Dandy

'''religious surrender of the self''' 
See P. 836, and note. Suggests Cyprian's masochism is a form of self-transcendence; transgression as transcendence. He has indeed demonstrated his ability to lose all desire...

==Page 877==

'''...what were the chances of finding anyone seeking to transcend that, and not even particularly aware of it?''' 
Passing beyond the self, passing beyond desire (and without fanfare), Cyprtian's very Buddhist quest, is perceived only as masochistic in the Western materialist view.

==Page 878==

'''''brisance''''' 
A French word now fully adopted in English. In the context of explosives it means "shattering power." In English it means the shattering or crushing effect of a sudden release of energy as in an explosion.

'''undissembled''' 
Synonyms: open-hearted, honest, plain, artless, guileless, ingenuous, innocent, natural, sincere, transparent, unconcealed, undisguised, unvarnished. Antonyms: devious, secretive, two-faced, evasive.

'''Wigan''' 
A town near Manchester, England, (with a professional soccer team, Wigan Athletic).<

'''the Earl's Court Wheel''' 
[http://www.shadyoldlady.com/location.php?loc=492 The Great Wheel] of a height of 300 ft built at the Earls Court exhibition grounds, London. It was modelled on the original one in Chicago. It was opend on July 6, 1895 for the "Empire of India Exhibition" and stayed in service until 1906. It was dismantled in 1907.

'''reversals of power''' 
Reversals of sexual power positions parallel Alernating Current. If DC is "direct" i.e. in one direction only, and AC is "alternating" current, a current of periodical reversals, perhaps all this talk of transcending sexual norms and role reversals is a social/sexual counterpoint to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Currents Current Wars]fought between Edison and Tesla. After much heated contention, Tesla and AC won, enormously extending the range and safety of power distribution (electrical, economic, sexual, social) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_engineering].Seen in the light of electrical circuitry, Anarchist explosions are expressions of power imbalance, every detonation another circuit blown. 
Electrical engineering terms take on new significance in AtD: twisted pair, induction coupling, Q inductors, three-phase generation, loads, triangle wave, square wave, etc. Interestingly, the wiki commentary on the War of the Currents states that "AC cannot really be understood or exploited without a substantial mathematical and mathematical physics orientation, which Tesla had" -- as did Yashmeen -- at whose feet these power reversals were but the "outskirts" (an interesting double entendre in outskirts). That Yashmeen is central to all this sexual power transformation, generation, distribution, alternating style as well as being a human mental radio (clairvoyance) -- she becomes an embodiment of both Henry Adams' dynamo and Virgin -- in one! A duality in singularity. She is the mother/whore of the electrical world.

==Page 879==

'''the least ''clairvoyante''''' 
The (woman) friend least able to exercise occult powers such as seeing the future.

'''Carnevale''' 
Italian: Carnival. The Italian word [http://italianfood.about.com/library/rec/blr0149.htm ''Carnevale''] derives from ''Carne Levare'' — Remove Meat — the name of the sumptuous dinner people would hold the night before Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent. In the past, things were especially intense in Venice, where debauched revels went on for weeks.
The standard folk etymology says that Carnevale means 'Farewell to meat" (vale is Latin for goodbye). See below, Carnesalve.

==Page 880==

'''Carnesalve''' 
If Carnevale means "goodbye to meat" (beginning of the Lenten fast), Carnesalve means "hello there, meat!"

'''San Servolo''' 
Island in the Venetian Lagoon, to the southeast of San Giorgio Maggiore, from 18th century until 1978 site of the Venetian psychiatric hospital. Since 1978, site of the "Istituto per le Ricerche e gli Studi sull´Emarginazione Sociale e Culturale" (Institute for the Study of Social and Cultural Marginalization) to preserve the documents associated with the history of the psychiatric hostpital [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Servolo].

'''Signori di Notte''' 
Italian: night lords.

==Page 881==

'''...framed by Signor Fabrizio's re-imagining of Yashmeen's hair...''' 
Saved from when he cut it off. On P. 860, she says he may "do whatever he want(s) with it" and the approach of this costume ball is implied.

'''Parma violets''' 
A delicate variety of the flower produced in the Italian city. The blossoms are sometimes sold candied, too.

'''loggie''' 
Plural of ''loggia.'' Italian: theater box or similar feature in a formal room.

==Page 882==

'''''amoretti''''' 
Italian: "Cupids" used as space fillers or decorative elements.

'''''tesoro''''' 
Italian: treasure.

'''Quickly now ....''' 
The conception described here is technically immaculate: Reef fulfills the role of the Father, Yashmeen that of Mary, and Cyprian that of the Holy Ghost. 

Or is this a human instance of three phase electrical generation? 
Or an alchemical operation to produce the Philosopher's Stone? 
Or the creation of a Moonchild through sex magic ala Aleister Crowley.

Alchemical musings: Person-Sex-Orb-Metal 
Reef: male, sun, gold 
Yashmeen: female, moon, silver 
Cyprian: female/male, mercury, mercury (quicksilver)

Cyprian first receives the seed as the functional equivalent of a female and then plants the seed as a male. He changes gender relating to his passing through the arch alone -- this also seems metaphorically related to the process of photographic plate development shift in colors. 

This sex shift also relates him to Mercury, quicksilver, a transition metal named for a hermaphroditic god. The glyph for Mercury is used in biology and botany to mean double-sexed.

Mercury was once used in the amalgamation process of refining gold and silver ores. It was central to the practice of the assayer in juding the purity of gold and silver ore, and the alchemist in the the production of the Philosopher's Stone. Mercury signifies the ''coniunctio'' or uniting of opposites.

'''''fellatrice''''' 
Or: fellatrix , a female who performs oral-genital-sex on the penis. Quote: Woody Allen to Miro Sorvino in Mighty Aphrodite (1995): ' I'm sure that you're a state-of-the-art fellatrix .' The etymology of fellatrice and fellatrix is the same as that of fellatio: from Latin, fellare (to suck). These words are used in English, French and Italian.
(denoting Cyprian's role, not his physiology).
 ''in fact, the word is not used in italian at all.''

==Page 883==

'''Ascension Day''' 
The fortieth day after Easter Sunday (which is always a Thursday), commemorating the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension Ascension] of Christ into heaven, according to Mark 16:19, Luke 24:51, and Acts 1:2.

==Page 884==

==Page 885==

'''outmoded sexual protocols''' 
Again, transgression = transcendence. Of course, also parallels struggles over acceptance of homosexuality in our times.

'''nasal intrusion''' 
Sticking one's nose into something.

'''''chavalitos''''' 
Spanish: kids.

==Page 886==

'''Grand Army of the Matrimonial Republic''' 
The Grand Army of the Republic comprised Union veterans of the American Civil War. Its heyday came around 1890-1910.

==Page 887==

'''endlessless''' 
A typo for endlessness.

==Page 887-888==
'''[T]he dream came and found him...''' 
Reef's contribution to the hallucination/dream motif previously referenced in the Traverse sections of the novel. The color yellow seems to be significant here and elsewhere, especially coded to Webb Traverse. [More forthcoming]

<blockquote>
          In the dream they were no longer in the ghostly canyons of the McElmo but in the city, not Venice but noplace American either, with an umappable operational endlessless (sic) to its streets, the same ancient, disquieting pictures engraved on its walls as back in the McElmo, spelling out a story whose pitiless truth couldn't be admitted officially by the authorities here because of the danger to the public sanity.... It was darker out here than he had any idea of. In the distance Reef caught sight of a procession of miners in their long rubber coats, only one of them, about halfway along, with the candle stub in his hat lit. Like postulants in habits, they proceeded single file down a narrow street like a humid drift lit back or front by a yellow lamp. As Reef came closer he saw the bearer of the light was Webb. 
        "Small victories," Webb greeted him. "Just to come away with one or two. To praise and to honor the small victories where and however they happen." 
        "Hasn't been too many of them lately, Pa," Reef tried to say. 
        "Not talking about yours, you numbskull." 
        Understanding that this was Webb's attempt to pass on another message, like up the séance in the Alps, Reef saw just for one lucid instant that this was the precise intelligence he needed to get him back to where he had wandered off the trail, so long ago. And then he was awake and trying to remember why it was important.</blockquote>

[[User:Bean|remy]] 13:15, 28 December 2006 (PST)

endlessless: typo for endlessness

pictures engraved on the walls: the Puebloan pictograms

'''Garfagnana''' 
Historical region of Italy, today part of the province of Lucca in the Apennines, in northwest Tuscany, but before the unification of Italy it belonged to the Duchy of Modena and Reggio, ruled by the Este family. For a short time, in the 16th century, it was governed by the poet Ludovico Ariosto [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garfagnana].

'''Bagni di Lucca''' 
Note the similarity in name to Banjaluka (or Banja Luka), Bosnia or actually Republika Srpska , mentioned on page 834. Another bilocation, like Kara Tagh and Montenegro ([[ATD_748-767#Page_764|annotations, page 764]]).

Might also add: Novi Pazar = Novi Bazar = Newmarket.

Also Agadir and Cádiz, both coming from the Phoenician gadir, meaning '"castle", "fortress"..."walled stronghold" or simply "wall"'.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A1diz]

'''homeopathic principle''' 
Like cures like. To alleviate an allergy, according to homeopathic doctrine, administer the allergen in an exceedingly dilute form.

==Page 889==

'''Say surly topple''' 
You can't help thinking Reef does this on purpose (or Pynchon :-). French ''C'est sur la table'': It's on the table.
Maybe he ran into James Joyce on his travels. These are all very 'Finnegans Wake' type puns.
These lucky mistranslations appear in other Pynchon novels as well; Doc Sportello's declaration of love in "Inherent Vice" is 'cootie food!'

'''pasta asciutta''' 
Pasta dish with potatoes and green beans. Actually ''pasta asciutta'' refers to any kind of ''pasta''. Actually, pasta asciutta refers to any kind of packaged dry (asciutta translates as dry) pasta (as opposed to made from [http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1635,144190-254199,00.html scratch]) and apparently when Reef boiled it, it "was always overdone." There are also lots of regional recipes with pasta asciutta as part of the name of the recipe, e. g., pasta asciutta alla bolognese, or pasta asciutta alla siciliana.

'''pasta fazool''' 
Officially ''pasta e fagioli;'' "fazool" imitates the pronunciation in a regional dialect of Italian. A hearty soup consisting of pasta, any one of a variety of beans (borlotti (cranberry) beans, kidney beans, cannellini beans, ...), and optionally some meat.

==Page 890==

'''''al dente''''' 
Italian, cooked so as to be firm when eaten; literally: to the tooth or to the bite, referring to the need to chew the pasta due to its firmness.

'''Barcelona''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragic_Week Tragic Week] (in Catalan la Setmana Tràgica, in Spanish la Semana Trágica) (July 25-August 2, 1909) is the name used for a series of bloody confrontations between the army and the working classes of Barcelona and other cities of Catalonia, backed by the anarchists, communists and republicans, during the last week of July 1909. It was caused by the calling-up of reserve troops by Prime Minister Antonio Maura to be sent as reinforcements when Spain renewed military-colonial activity in Morocco on July 9. There would be risings again in 1917, and Barcelona was among the last strongholds of the Spanish Republic in the Civil War of 1936-39; even during the Civil war, anarchists and Communists fought in the streets (see Orwell's ''Homage to Catalonia'' for a participant account. In 1972 anarchist grafiti could still be found in the Old City). But in 1909, indeed, much worse was to come.

'''''línea del fuego''''' 
Spanish: line of (the) fire. This may be a naive translation of "firing line" or "line of fire" (note the satisfying ambiguity); ''línea de tiro'' seems to be preferred.

'''...''absence of desire''--why one might choose ''not to embrace'' what the world judges, it often seemed unanimously, to lie clearly in one's interest.''' 
Cyprian is becoming aware of his interest in divesting himself of desire. Yashmeen in the following sentences notes this change that took place in him in Bosnia; he notes how difficult renouncing his desire for her will be, and she that this is not the real meaning.

==Page 891==

'''Biarritz''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biarritz Biarritz], located about 11 miles from the border with Spain, is a town by the Bay of Biscay, on the Atlantic coast, in southwestern France.

'''''bal musette''''' 
French: dance hall (bal), with the music provided by an accordion band. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bal-musette Bal-musette] is a style of French popular music presumably played at these dance halls.

'''in some auxiliary sense . . . his own''' 
Review details of the encounter at Carnesalve (page 881).

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

ATD 864-891

2023-01-22T07:56:08Z

Unmensch: /* Page 867 */added content

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

==Page 864==

'''''galleggianti''''' 
Boathouses.

'''''traghetto''''' 
ferry-boat.

==Page 865==

'''cicerone''' 
Guide, especially for a single woman.

'''''Inglesi''''' 
Italian: Englishmen.

==Page 866==

'''Gorblimey''' 
Representing a Cockney pronunciation of "God blind me!"; in medieval times, people would curse using contractions rather than breaking the third commandment (Do not use the Lord's name in vain oaths). Compare strewth, zounds, 'sblood. -- Wiktionary

'''Jenny Invert''' 
This is not her first occurrence. Part of the printing of 1918 24-cent airmail stamps showed an inverted image of a Curtis JN-4 Jenny airplane. [http://www.afa.org/magazine/1990/0790jenny.asp It's a famous and valuable stamp.] 
Another female character named after a stamp is "Penny Black"

'''Newmarket''' 
Cf [[ATD_489-524#Page_495|page 495: Newmarket]].

'''Nether Wallop, Hants''' 
Hants: customary shortening of Hampshire. 
NETHER WALLOP, a parish in the hundred of Thorngate, county Hants, 7 miles S.W. of Andover, and 3½ N.W. of Stockbridge, its post town. The parish is situated under Danebury Hill, on which are remains of a fortification with ramparts, strengthened on the western side by an outwork, and supposed to have been formed by Canute the Great. The surface is hilly and the soil chalky. The living is a vicarage* in the diocese of Winchester, value £350. The church, dedicated to St. Andrew, contains several old monuments and two brasses-one of an abbess, bearing date 1432, and the other of a mitred abbot. Gazeteer of Ireland and Great Britain. 
Great Pynchonian name. Surprising that it's real-- Nether Wallop = whack in the ass, much like the "fundament-seizing" back on pg. 110

'''Inanimate Bird Association''' 
Concerned with clay pigeons, i.e., trapshooting.

'''rather shirty''' 
Shirty: angry, irritated, huffy, stroppy.
Maybe from "Keep your shirt on!" (Don't get angry!)

'''the key also changes day to day''' 
A code depending upon changes in the starting point for shifts in the text (e.g a book with a different starting page depending on the date, groups of letters that change starting with a different letter every day)is considered unbreakable unless one knows the starting point, called the Key.

'''''Oca ti jebem''''' 
Macedonian: I fuck your father.

'''Giles Piprake''' 
Is he aping Chico Marx? 
A small rake with women? See his remark about Ratty's wife. The joke here is that if Ratty's wife did complain, that would be a problem Piprake couldn't sort out. 
No, G.P.'s comeback is a joke in the "That's what ''she'' said" genre. 
Lots of definitions for [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/pip pip], take your pick. Breaking through a shell (shell being a metaphor for a problem barrier in this case) seems as appropriate as any. Lots of definitions for [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/rake rake], too. 
A ''pipkrake'' is a narrow spike of ice that grows upward from a body of groundwater in freezing weather, carrying a portion of soil on its top surface. [http://epod.usra.edu/archive/epodviewer.php3?oid=336192 Here] are a photo and discussion; note that the caption has the misspelling ''piprake''!

==Page 867==

'''remember not to wear yellow''' 
Cyprian thinks he was seen hiding because he was wearing yellow?
Conjecture: Austro-Hungary's colors were yellow and black. So yellow not only draws the eye, but he might also be taken for an Austrian in Venice incurring Italian mob wrath or perhaps Theign's attention.
The color yellow was associated with the decadence movement in the arts during the final decades of the 19th century, and specifically with the queerness and homosexuality embraced by many of the artists involved. See <a href=“https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yellow_Book”>The Yellow Book</a>. Cyprian is reminding himself not to inadvertently signal to the Principe Spongiatosta that he is there for a sexual encounter, in view of the assignations previously arranged for him by Theign.

'''''valletto''''' 
Italian: valet, attendant.

'''''heliotrope''''' 
A moderate, light, or brilliant violet to moderate or deep reddish purple.

'''''Facciam' il porco''''' 
We (the Prince and valletto) are playing the sexual pervert. Literally, we are doing the pig, but porco is Italian slang for sexual pervert.

'''''Il mio ragazzo è molto geloso''''' 
Italian: My little guy is very jealous.

'''''Qualsiasi, Ciprianino''''' 
Italian: Whatever you want (you want is implied), little Cyprian.

'''The Iron Gateway''' 
an imaginary internal 'Symbolist' artwork embodying vivid hallucinatory visions within ATD? 
Also a real structure:
Iron Gateway & Draghut Mosque, Tripoli Medina
Iron Gateway, Tripoli Medina
Iron Gateway & Draghut Mosque, Tripoli Medina

-- Is this a reference to the Portal, p.154?
: Could be, but there are a lot of thresholds and portals in this book; the Tushuk Tash back on pg. 764, and the Halkata approaching on pg. 955... But Hunter's painting sounds more like the portal to war, endings, the Zero-- described in Gravity's Rainbow on pg. 51 "One by one men step out into this perfectly black rectangle of night and disappear. Gone, the war taking them, the man behind already presenting his ticket."

'''Carlo Zen furniture''' 
Designed by Carlo Zen (Italian, 1851-1918)
Among the more prolific designers and cabinet-makers of the period was the firm of Carlo Zen. Some of his decorations suggest the strong influence of continental symbolism, while other objects reveal a keen awareness of geometric simplification.

'''Galileo Chini''' 
Galileo CHINI , famous italian painter and ceramist, was born in Florence on December 2nd 1873 and died on August 23rd 1956.
In 1896, he funded "The Art of Ceramics" (later called "Factory Fornaci S.Lorenzo). He introduced the Liberty style in Italy.
As a painter he took part at the"Biennale di Venezia" from 1901 till 1936.
In 1911 he was in Bangkok to decorate Siam King's palace.
He remained there till 1913: it was a triumph! Back in Italy, he taught at the "Accademia di Belle Arti"in Florence. Some of his beautiful works of Art can be found at the Modern Art Gallery in Rome, at the Uffizi in Florence and at the Modern Art Gallery in Palazzo Pitti.

'''Bugatti''' 
Carlo Bugatti (1856-1940), world-famous furniture designer from Milan.

==Page 868==

'''''corno''''' 
The "horned" cap worn by Doges of Venice. An example comes from a Bellini portrait of a doge at [http://www.prints.co.nz/page/fine-art/PROD/Renaissance_Art_Prints/7211].

'''''lo stato''''' 
Italian: the state.

'''penance....imbalance in Nature.''' 
incredible thematic paragraph that relates to revenge motif?

- seems also to refer to the idea of Karma and karmic penance. Only if you make up for the deeds done in this or in an earlier life, the karmic account will be balanced (i.e. 'Nature' in the sense of the whole cosmos).

I see also a clear reference to the idea of control in modern society put forward by French philosopher Michael Foucault, who explains in his book ''Surveiller et punir'' (Discipline and Punish) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discipline_and_Punish] how governments (power) try to subtly control us in order to make us become 'proper citizens' and how those who dare to be out of such properness must and should be punished.

==Page 869==

'''''salizzada''''' 
Salizzada once meant a paved street, implying that all other, less important calles were once just dirt-packed alleyways.From a Venice Guidebook.

==Page 870==

'''Not by a long chalk''' 
This mainly British expression means “not by any means”, “not at all” and often turns up in conventional expressions such as they weren’t beaten yet, not by a long chalk.
It goes back to the days in which a count or score of almost any kind was marked up on a convenient surface using chalk. At a pub or ale house this might be a note of the amount of credit you had been given (often called the chalk in the early nineteenth century), which Charles Dickens refers to in Great Expectations: “There was a bar at the Jolly Bargemen, with some alarmingly long chalk scores in it on the wall at the side of the door, which seemed to me to be never paid off.”-- Yahoo answers.

'''gibanica''' 
Croatian: a rolled pastry filled with cheese or fruit.

'''kadulja''' 
Croatian, literally: garden sage.

'''coastal Čakavština''' 
Speech of a region in coastal Croatia.

==Page 871==

'''''bàcari''''' 
Venetian wine bars

'''formulæ''' 
Spells. The plural of formula, an established form of words or symbols for use in a ceremony or procedure.

==Page 872==

'''''Altezza''''' 
Italian: Highness.

==Page 873==

'''Montepulciano''' 
A red wine, considered among Italy's best, from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montepulciano Montepulciano].

'''the Ponte degli Scalzi''' 
Cf [[ATD_724-747#Page_746|page 746: the Ponte degli Scalzi]].

==Page 874==

'''11 mm Montenegrin Gasser''' 
A hinged-framed 11.3 mm calibre revolver

'''... to leave some mark of imbalance''' 
Refer back to p.868: "... there is an imbalance in Nature."

'''San Stae''' 
In Santa Croce district.

==Page 875==

==Page 876==

'''gentleman ops''' 
A tradition in thrillers. Bulldog Drummond and Tommy Hambledon are just two in the crowd.

'''dittoes''' 
"A suit of dittoes" is an outfit of coat, vest (waistcoat) and trousers from the same fabric.

'''Wrong sod, I'm afraid''' 
Not Oscar Wilde, i.e. not a Dandy

'''religious surrender of the self''' 
See P. 836, and note. Suggests Cyprian's masochism is a form of self-transcendence; transgression as transcendence. He has indeed demonstrated his ability to lose all desire...

==Page 877==

'''...what were the chances of finding anyone seeking to transcend that, and not even particularly aware of it?''' 
Passing beyond the self, passing beyond desire (and without fanfare), Cyprtian's very Buddhist quest, is perceived only as masochistic in the Western materialist view.

==Page 878==

'''''brisance''''' 
A French word now fully adopted in English. In the context of explosives it means "shattering power." In English it means the shattering or crushing effect of a sudden release of energy as in an explosion.

'''undissembled''' 
Synonyms: open-hearted, honest, plain, artless, guileless, ingenuous, innocent, natural, sincere, transparent, unconcealed, undisguised, unvarnished. Antonyms: devious, secretive, two-faced, evasive.

'''Wigan''' 
A town near Manchester, England, (with a professional soccer team, Wigan Athletic).<

'''the Earl's Court Wheel''' 
[http://www.shadyoldlady.com/location.php?loc=492 The Great Wheel] of a height of 300 ft built at the Earls Court exhibition grounds, London. It was modelled on the original one in Chicago. It was opend on July 6, 1895 for the "Empire of India Exhibition" and stayed in service until 1906. It was dismantled in 1907.

'''reversals of power''' 
Reversals of sexual power positions parallel Alernating Current. If DC is "direct" i.e. in one direction only, and AC is "alternating" current, a current of periodical reversals, perhaps all this talk of transcending sexual norms and role reversals is a social/sexual counterpoint to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Currents Current Wars]fought between Edison and Tesla. After much heated contention, Tesla and AC won, enormously extending the range and safety of power distribution (electrical, economic, sexual, social) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_engineering].Seen in the light of electrical circuitry, Anarchist explosions are expressions of power imbalance, every detonation another circuit blown. 
Electrical engineering terms take on new significance in AtD: twisted pair, induction coupling, Q inductors, three-phase generation, loads, triangle wave, square wave, etc. Interestingly, the wiki commentary on the War of the Currents states that "AC cannot really be understood or exploited without a substantial mathematical and mathematical physics orientation, which Tesla had" -- as did Yashmeen -- at whose feet these power reversals were but the "outskirts" (an interesting double entendre in outskirts). That Yashmeen is central to all this sexual power transformation, generation, distribution, alternating style as well as being a human mental radio (clairvoyance) -- she becomes an embodiment of both Henry Adams' dynamo and Virgin -- in one! A duality in singularity. She is the mother/whore of the electrical world.

==Page 879==

'''the least ''clairvoyante''''' 
The (woman) friend least able to exercise occult powers such as seeing the future.

'''Carnevale''' 
Italian: Carnival. The Italian word [http://italianfood.about.com/library/rec/blr0149.htm ''Carnevale''] derives from ''Carne Levare'' — Remove Meat — the name of the sumptuous dinner people would hold the night before Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent. In the past, things were especially intense in Venice, where debauched revels went on for weeks.
The standard folk etymology says that Carnevale means 'Farewell to meat" (vale is Latin for goodbye). See below, Carnesalve.

==Page 880==

'''Carnesalve''' 
If Carnevale means "goodbye to meat" (beginning of the Lenten fast), Carnesalve means "hello there, meat!"

'''San Servolo''' 
Island in the Venetian Lagoon, to the southeast of San Giorgio Maggiore, from 18th century until 1978 site of the Venetian psychiatric hospital. Since 1978, site of the "Istituto per le Ricerche e gli Studi sull´Emarginazione Sociale e Culturale" (Institute for the Study of Social and Cultural Marginalization) to preserve the documents associated with the history of the psychiatric hostpital [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Servolo].

'''Signori di Notte''' 
Italian: night lords.

==Page 881==

'''...framed by Signor Fabrizio's re-imagining of Yashmeen's hair...''' 
Saved from when he cut it off. On P. 860, she says he may "do whatever he want(s) with it" and the approach of this costume ball is implied.

'''Parma violets''' 
A delicate variety of the flower produced in the Italian city. The blossoms are sometimes sold candied, too.

'''loggie''' 
Plural of ''loggia.'' Italian: theater box or similar feature in a formal room.

==Page 882==

'''''amoretti''''' 
Italian: "Cupids" used as space fillers or decorative elements.

'''''tesoro''''' 
Italian: treasure.

'''Quickly now ....''' 
The conception described here is technically immaculate: Reef fulfills the role of the Father, Yashmeen that of Mary, and Cyprian that of the Holy Ghost. 

Or is this a human instance of three phase electrical generation? 
Or an alchemical operation to produce the Philosopher's Stone? 
Or the creation of a Moonchild through sex magic ala Aleister Crowley.

Alchemical musings: Person-Sex-Orb-Metal 
Reef: male, sun, gold 
Yashmeen: female, moon, silver 
Cyprian: female/male, mercury, mercury (quicksilver)

Cyprian first receives the seed as the functional equivalent of a female and then plants the seed as a male. He changes gender relating to his passing through the arch alone -- this also seems metaphorically related to the process of photographic plate development shift in colors. 

This sex shift also relates him to Mercury, quicksilver, a transition metal named for a hermaphroditic god. The glyph for Mercury is used in biology and botany to mean double-sexed.

Mercury was once used in the amalgamation process of refining gold and silver ores. It was central to the practice of the assayer in juding the purity of gold and silver ore, and the alchemist in the the production of the Philosopher's Stone. Mercury signifies the ''coniunctio'' or uniting of opposites.

'''''fellatrice''''' 
Or: fellatrix , a female who performs oral-genital-sex on the penis. Quote: Woody Allen to Miro Sorvino in Mighty Aphrodite (1995): ' I'm sure that you're a state-of-the-art fellatrix .' The etymology of fellatrice and fellatrix is the same as that of fellatio: from Latin, fellare (to suck). These words are used in English, French and Italian.
(denoting Cyprian's role, not his physiology).
 ''in fact, the word is not used in italian at all.''

==Page 883==

'''Ascension Day''' 
The fortieth day after Easter Sunday (which is always a Thursday), commemorating the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension Ascension] of Christ into heaven, according to Mark 16:19, Luke 24:51, and Acts 1:2.

==Page 884==

==Page 885==

'''outmoded sexual protocols''' 
Again, transgression = transcendence. Of course, also parallels struggles over acceptance of homosexuality in our times.

'''nasal intrusion''' 
Sticking one's nose into something.

'''''chavalitos''''' 
Spanish: kids.

==Page 886==

'''Grand Army of the Matrimonial Republic''' 
The Grand Army of the Republic comprised Union veterans of the American Civil War. Its heyday came around 1890-1910.

==Page 887==

'''endlessless''' 
A typo for endlessness.

==Page 887-888==
'''[T]he dream came and found him...''' 
Reef's contribution to the hallucination/dream motif previously referenced in the Traverse sections of the novel. The color yellow seems to be significant here and elsewhere, especially coded to Webb Traverse. [More forthcoming]

<blockquote>
          In the dream they were no longer in the ghostly canyons of the McElmo but in the city, not Venice but noplace American either, with an umappable operational endlessless (sic) to its streets, the same ancient, disquieting pictures engraved on its walls as back in the McElmo, spelling out a story whose pitiless truth couldn't be admitted officially by the authorities here because of the danger to the public sanity.... It was darker out here than he had any idea of. In the distance Reef caught sight of a procession of miners in their long rubber coats, only one of them, about halfway along, with the candle stub in his hat lit. Like postulants in habits, they proceeded single file down a narrow street like a humid drift lit back or front by a yellow lamp. As Reef came closer he saw the bearer of the light was Webb. 
        "Small victories," Webb greeted him. "Just to come away with one or two. To praise and to honor the small victories where and however they happen." 
        "Hasn't been too many of them lately, Pa," Reef tried to say. 
        "Not talking about yours, you numbskull." 
        Understanding that this was Webb's attempt to pass on another message, like up the séance in the Alps, Reef saw just for one lucid instant that this was the precise intelligence he needed to get him back to where he had wandered off the trail, so long ago. And then he was awake and trying to remember why it was important.</blockquote>

[[User:Bean|remy]] 13:15, 28 December 2006 (PST)

endlessless: typo for endlessness

pictures engraved on the walls: the Puebloan pictograms

'''Garfagnana''' 
Historical region of Italy, today part of the province of Lucca in the Apennines, in northwest Tuscany, but before the unification of Italy it belonged to the Duchy of Modena and Reggio, ruled by the Este family. For a short time, in the 16th century, it was governed by the poet Ludovico Ariosto [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garfagnana].

'''Bagni di Lucca''' 
Note the similarity in name to Banjaluka (or Banja Luka), Bosnia or actually Republika Srpska , mentioned on page 834. Another bilocation, like Kara Tagh and Montenegro ([[ATD_748-767#Page_764|annotations, page 764]]).

Might also add: Novi Pazar = Novi Bazar = Newmarket.

Also Agadir and Cádiz, both coming from the Phoenician gadir, meaning '"castle", "fortress"..."walled stronghold" or simply "wall"'.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A1diz]

'''homeopathic principle''' 
Like cures like. To alleviate an allergy, according to homeopathic doctrine, administer the allergen in an exceedingly dilute form.

==Page 889==

'''Say surly topple''' 
You can't help thinking Reef does this on purpose (or Pynchon :-). French ''C'est sur la table'': It's on the table.
Maybe he ran into James Joyce on his travels. These are all very 'Finnegans Wake' type puns.
These lucky mistranslations appear in other Pynchon novels as well; Doc Sportello's declaration of love in "Inherent Vice" is 'cootie food!'

'''pasta asciutta''' 
Pasta dish with potatoes and green beans. Actually ''pasta asciutta'' refers to any kind of ''pasta''. Actually, pasta asciutta refers to any kind of packaged dry (asciutta translates as dry) pasta (as opposed to made from [http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1635,144190-254199,00.html scratch]) and apparently when Reef boiled it, it "was always overdone." There are also lots of regional recipes with pasta asciutta as part of the name of the recipe, e. g., pasta asciutta alla bolognese, or pasta asciutta alla siciliana.

'''pasta fazool''' 
Officially ''pasta e fagioli;'' "fazool" imitates the pronunciation in a regional dialect of Italian. A hearty soup consisting of pasta, any one of a variety of beans (borlotti (cranberry) beans, kidney beans, cannellini beans, ...), and optionally some meat.

==Page 890==

'''''al dente''''' 
Italian, cooked so as to be firm when eaten; literally: to the tooth or to the bite, referring to the need to chew the pasta due to its firmness.

'''Barcelona''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragic_Week Tragic Week] (in Catalan la Setmana Tràgica, in Spanish la Semana Trágica) (July 25-August 2, 1909) is the name used for a series of bloody confrontations between the army and the working classes of Barcelona and other cities of Catalonia, backed by the anarchists, communists and republicans, during the last week of July 1909. It was caused by the calling-up of reserve troops by Prime Minister Antonio Maura to be sent as reinforcements when Spain renewed military-colonial activity in Morocco on July 9. There would be risings again in 1917, and Barcelona was among the last strongholds of the Spanish Republic in the Civil War of 1936-39; even during the Civil war, anarchists and Communists fought in the streets (see Orwell's ''Homage to Catalonia'' for a participant account. In 1972 anarchist grafiti could still be found in the Old City). But in 1909, indeed, much worse was to come.

'''''línea del fuego''''' 
Spanish: line of (the) fire. This may be a naive translation of "firing line" or "line of fire" (note the satisfying ambiguity); ''línea de tiro'' seems to be preferred.

'''...''absence of desire''--why one might choose ''not to embrace'' what the world judges, it often seemed unanimously, to lie clearly in one's interest.''' 
Cyprian is becoming aware of his interest in divesting himself of desire. Yashmeen in the following sentences notes this change that took place in him in Bosnia; he notes how difficult renouncing his desire for her will be, and she that this is not the real meaning.

==Page 891==

'''Biarritz''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biarritz Biarritz], located about 11 miles from the border with Spain, is a town by the Bay of Biscay, on the Atlantic coast, in southwestern France.

'''''bal musette''''' 
French: dance hall (bal), with the music provided by an accordion band. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bal-musette Bal-musette] is a style of French popular music presumably played at these dance halls.

'''in some auxiliary sense . . . his own''' 
Review details of the encounter at Carnesalve (page 881).

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