Difference between revisions of "ATD 892-918"

Revision as of 07:42, 15 February 2007

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

Page 892

Bodeo-packing
The Bodeo was the Italian service pistol; this suggests police [1].

coglioni
Means testicle literally, with the connotation of a dumb person. ...

Bloomsbury
Fashionable London district including the British Museum and University College London.

west of Regents Park
The huge park is in northern central London. To the west are Lisson, Paddington, Westbourne Green, Kensal Town and other districts.

Page 893

taximeter cab
The taximeter is the device that measures and totalizes miles traveled.

Fedora
Capitalized because at the time it was recognized as a proper name: from Sardou's play Fédora. Description, picture and history on Wikipedia.

Lampo
Italian-made pistol.

Peckham Rye
District in southeast London.

Perhaps of significance, perhaps not: site of Muriel Sparks' 1960 novel The Ballad of Peckham Rye, in which one character, around whom the action revolves, may or may not be teh Devil, but who is certainly disruptive of normal middle class values.

Vitaï Lampada
The Newbolt poem quoted by Cyprian on page 813.

pietà
Works so titled commonly show Mary, the mother of Jesus, with his body after its removal from the cross.

Page 894

predators' wings
Western art mostly depicts angels with the wings of prey species, namely doves.

Angel of Death
This angel appears in V. and GR too.

Pegamoid traveler's satchel
Pegamoid: a fabric coated with plasticized nitrocellulose; used for early aircraft fuselages, convertible roofs and wallets. There is a Pegamoid Road in the borough of Enfield, London.

Page 895

capitalist temples . . . those of us who do
Is Dally a concrete being or an abstraction? Here she is flipping back and forth.

The Spirit of Bimetallism
Beautiful title: invented image for a perfectly spiritless policy.

And one that had turned to blood in the Colorado mines.

semeuse
French: girl sowing seeds.

Charlie Sykes Charles Robinson Sykes was a sculptor who designed the hood ornament for Rolls Royce, called "The Spirit of Ecstasy." See also p. 1074.

Page 896

Three Choirs Festival ... Phrygian resonances
Ralph Vaughan Williams' "Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis" was composed in 1910 for the Three Choirs Festival, a British music festival held each August alternately at the cathedrals of Hereford, Gloucester and Worcester and originally featuring their three choirs. The theme on which Vaughan Williams based his work is in the Phrygian mode which, in Greek music theory, was based on the Phrygian tetrachord, a series of rising intervals of a whole tone, followed by a semitone, followed by a whole tone. Applied to a whole octave, the Phrygian mode was built upon two Phrygian tetrachords separated by a whole tone (playing all the white keys on a piano keyboard from D to D sounds the Greek Phrygian mode). However, when the early Christian church developed its eight modes, the medieval modes were given the wrong Greek names, resulting in a second Phrygian mode, one that sounds quite different (played on the white keys from E to E) from the Greek mode of the same name, a more "exotic," Arabic sound (The 1960s hit "White Rabbit" has a Phrygian feel and the mode was actually fairly popular in the 60s). Thus, in Against the Day, another incidence of doubling. More from Wikipedia on "Fantasia on a Theme". Pythagorean Theory of Music and Color

very slowly Ruperta began to levitate...
Ruperta's levitation, caused or triggered by the Phrygian music she is hearing, has a Pythagorean precedent:

Pythagoras discovered that the seven modes — or keys — of the Greek system of music had the power to incite or allay the various emotions. It is related that while observing the stars one night he encountered a young man befuddled with strong drink and mad with jealousy who was piling faggots about his mistress' door with the intention of burning the house. The frenzy of the youth was accentuated by a flutist a short distance away who was playing a tune in the stirring Phrygian mode. Pythagoras induced the musician to change his air to the slow, and rhythmic Spondaic mode, whereupon the intoxicated youth immediately became composed and, gathering up his bundles of wood, returned quietly to his own home. From Pythagorean Theory of Music and Color

However, whereas in the Pythagoras story the Phrygian mode causes the young man to become agitated, in Ruperta's case, the effect is physically and spiritually uplifting.

Ralph Vaughan Williams
English composer, 1872-1958 [2]. He premiered the "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis" in 1910.

Somehow, I alone, for every single wrong act of my life, must find a right one to balance it
Ruperta retuns to earth a Buddhist; her first step is to restore karmic balance in her life. If any music in the world could produce such a transformation, it is Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, heard in an English cathedral's acoustics. This, too, produces alternate histories.

Page 897

imprimatura
The unfilled white ground of a canvas, painted only with white primer.

immoderate light-space ..Dido Building Carthage
See image.

Page 898

mitzvah
Hebrew: good or worthy deed.

character juvenile
In a theater company the "juvenile" played a young, eligible man, counterpart to the ingenue. "Character" is almost an antonym for a stock player, having the ability to play many roles without limitation by physical type.

vocal range was half an octave
A song as simple as "Home on the Range" calls for a full octave of range. Half an octave is not much more than inflected humming.

Shaftesbury Avenue, the Strand, Haymarket, and Kings Way
The rough quadrangle bounded by these streets lies west of the City and includes Covent Garden, the Royal Opera House, the National Portrait Gallery and one entrance to Charing Cross railway station.

from Camberwell Green to Notting Hill Gate
Camberwell Green is in southeast London, Notting Hill Gate in the west central part of the area.

Scotch eggs
A delicacy Americans often just refuse to believe: a hard-boiled egg enrobed in sausage meat and deep-fried.

chip-shop newspaper
The newspaper used to wrap the fish and chips (US: French Fries); very greasy, naturally, but the only paper that may come to hand.

Page 899

laddered stockings
Britishism; in US parlance, stockings ruined by a run (producing a laddered effect).

beauties of photogravuredom
When newspapers used the gravure process, costs dictated they reserve it for pictorial material of special value, often publishing a separate section or even a magazine showing fashionably dressed women.

Turkish railway intrigues
Refers to the international machinations among the Powers over the proposed (Berlin to) Baghdad Railway, in fact the Basra railway. Such a rail link would give Germany access to development of a large swath of the Ottoman Empire, and make possible a naval presence in the Persian Gulf, seen by Britain as a threat to routes to India in case of war. Elsewhere in AtD there are references to the proposed routes for this rail network (routes through East Roumelia,; the Orient Express route), which was eventually completed--the last link being put in place under Vichy France in Syria in 1940 [3].

The meaning within AtD of such a network, linking Europe and Asia, widens to potential links to Russian railways, e.g. the Trans-Caucasian Kit rides, and the Trans-Siberian; and via Palestine and Cairo, to Cecil Rhodes' proposed Cape to Cairo Railway. Add the recently completed Channel Tunnel and a recently proposed Bering Strait Tunnel, and there is a potential for a world-spanning network of steel rails, binding everywhere to everywhere--a 19th Century dream come true--and the old routes languish, as in Ostend.

Page 900

Finsbury
North of the City of London and near the suggestively named Shoreditch.

Northumberland Avenue
Upscale street near Charing Cross and Scotland Yard.

in expensive déshabillé
Déshabillé is French: undressed. I.e., dressed (expensively) but not dressed to go out.

Overlunch
Dally and Lew meet over lunch. Nice.

Moon, Sun
Which Dally held in her balance as the Spirit of Bimetallism, P.895.

Page 901

Vionnet-gowned
Madeleine Vionnet (June 22, 1876 - 1975) was a French fashion designer. Called the "Queen of the bias cut" and "the architect among dressmakers," Vionnet is best-known today for her elegant Grecian-style dresses and for introducing the bias cut to the fashion world. The bias cut and absence of padding allowed a new freedom of movement {http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_Vionnet].

Sirius, which ruled this part of the summer
A sky enigma (see the annotations to page 796 for another). In old beliefs, Sirius "ruled" late summer (the "Dog Days") by lining up with the Sun so that their heats added together. In this season Sirius and the Earth are on opposite sides of the Sun, so that you look toward the Sun and see Sirius near it and behind it; Sirius sets a little time before or after sunset rather than ascending throughout the evening.

I suggest it is worth the effort to seek a way this passage can be technically and thematically right. --Volver 14:44, 28 January 2007 (PST)

Page 902

playing now in 3/4, too fast to be called a waltz...
Disaster in 3/4 time--see P.809 and note. Once again the pace of movement toward the European Disaster is picking up; here again there is an echo of Ravel's chaotic La Valse.

West End
Area, centered roughly on Shaftesbury Avenue, where London legitimate theaters concentrate. British equivalent of Broadway.

Page 903

rapid changes in Turkish politics
The Turkish oscillations between the other Powers, here principally England and Germany, the Berlin to Baghdad Railway being one among the issues at stake.

level of 'reality' at which nations, like money in the bank, are merged and indistinguishable
This rather cryptic line will take on more meaning on P.904, where there is reference to alternate historical possibilities (note teh partail quotes areound 'reality'), literally merging England and Germany, victor and vanquished in the First World War. This is also an Anarchist tenet, the equally evil nature of all governments.

Page 904

A royal charter . . . illuminating gas
Ernest Augustus (1771-1851) was a younger son of British and Hanoverian King George III. In Britain he had a substantial military career and, as Duke of Cumberland, began to pursue a political one as well. His niece Victoria acceded to the British throne in 1837—the crown passing to her as heiress of an older son of George III—but Hanover's laws said a woman could not serve as monarch there, so the royal dynasty split. Ernest Augustus was named King of Hanover and occupied the throne until his death. He evidently used the name Ernst-August in Hannover.

(Göttingen, by the way, lay in this kingdom. Its university was founded by Ernest Augustus' great-grandfather George II.)

The tunnel in question would link Galloway in Scotland to Ulster in Ireland, burrowing under 20 miles of seabed in waters some 100 fathoms (over 150 m) deep. In 1837-51 it was laughably unfeasible, and indeed it would not become an economic proposition until over a century later. (From most parts of Britain it would be harder to get to Galloway than Ireland anyway.)

So the "charter" mentioned in the text was granted for an impossible project by a monarch who, our history tells us, had no jurisdiction in the countries affected. It is essential to read this bit of text in conjunction with the Grand Cohen's speculations on pages 230-231.

(What is suggested here is that the building houses files from alternate timelines, alternate histories,; or: from alternate Possibilities that collapsed into the certainty of a single timeline).

A railroad . . . East Roumelia
As in Mason & Dixon, another straight line cast across the land.

And part of the proposed German financed Berlin to Baghdad network outflanking Britain's sea routes, through some territory of doubtful and disputed sovereignty.

guilloche
Or guilloché, a pattern of interlaced curved lines.

A deed . . . east of Wolverton and north of Bletchley
Is it coincidence that this area contains the designed town of Milton Keynes?

Obock
A real French colony in present-day Djibouti; sovereignty is not made clear by the Wikipedia entry.

Sagallo
A Russian colony near Obock; another Wikipedia article.

Atchinoff
Or Achinov: adventurer who sought in 1889 to establish the colony of Sagallo.

the archimandrite Païsi
Archimandrite: a ranking priest in the Orthodox Church.

Page 905

lunes
A lune is the surface formed by cutting a sphere with two planes each including the center.

nacreous
Having the luster of pearl or mother-of-pearl.

Madame Entrevue
Mrs. Interview.

Page 906

but it's they who want to sell him something
Uh-oh. The device that Umeki took away is coming back.

Page 907

condition of sin
Possible reference to the (perhaps hopeless) intertwining of spiritual and temporal quests, like the search for Shambhala. The seeking of knowledge seems hopelessly entwined with the seeking of power.

Page 908

what some were beginning to call Istanbul
See annotation to page 846.

Cağaloğlu
District in Istanbul somewhat west of Aya Sophia.

Byzantine schemes
Wonderful play on words. Constantinople was the capital of the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire until the Turkish conquest of 1458; any complex intrigue, said to be typical of the old and very sophisticated Empire, is called "Byzantine" in complexity. Here of course the schemes are both complex and, located in Constantinople, literally Byzantine. A good example of Pynchonian "Temporal Bandwidth"; this is a multicultural, multitemporal joke.

Szeged
City in southern Hungary, a major center of paprika production.

Wagons-Lits
Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits et des Grands Express Européens (the International Sleeping-Car Company and Great European Expresses). Originally, the company deployed sleeping- and dining-cars in Europe, similar to the Pullman company in the US. The company deployed the first sleeping and dining cars for long-distance train travel in Europe. In 1883 the company started with a service to Constantinople called the Orient Express [4]. The train followed several routes in its storied history ([5]). Kit and Dally are both on the luxury Wagons-Lits version, running by way of Vienna and Budapest [6]. The European sections of the route were as much subject to political machinations as the proposed Ottoman Empire continuations on to Baghdad and beyond.

Page 909

Zaharoff úr
Hungarian: Mr. Zaharoff.

Fönök
Hungarian: principal, chief.

Page 910

Euphorbia
Quick thinking, but she may not be flattered. The genus Euphorbia comprises the spurges, large-leafed plants with milky sap.

Bocsánat
Hungarian: pardon!

chef de brigade
French: crew chief.

kalabriás
Hungarian: the complicated card game klaberjas or "klob." Kalábriász is a more common spelling.

Porta Orientalis
The Eastern Gate Pass in the Southern Carpathians (Transylvanian Alps), complete with railway tunnel, connecting historical Translyvania with the Danubian Plain in Walachia (southern Romania).

Széchenyi-Tér tramline
Széchenyi tér is a central city square in Szeged, where the first tramline (electric streetcar) was inaugurated in 1908.

Kiskúnfélegyháza
Town 70 miles southeast of Budapest on the route to Szeged.

Page 911

the invisible city ahead of him gripping him ever more surely in its field
Istanbul (was Constantinople...) is another city, like Venice, with enormous Temporal Bandwidth. Ancient, multicultural, politically and historically complex, it (its "field"?) grips Kit as Venice gripped Dally. It is, in fact historically connected to Venice (two poles of the medieval Mediterannean) by trade and competition. Venice had a hand in the destruction of Constantinople during a Crusade; Venetian mercenaries were among its last defenders in the Turkish siege of 1458.

the Sultan's threatened counterrevolution
April 1909.

Page 912

drummer
Salesman.

air show in Brescia last year
The competition took place in September 1909.

pilots like Calderara and Cobianchi
Mario Calderara (1879-1944) and Mario Cobianchi (1881-1944), Italian pioneers of aviation. For an eerie foreshadowing of Inconvenience and the Campanile, look at the photo near the middle of this page.

meyhane
A Turkish tavern.

politissas
???

Page 913

the promise . . . year before last
So the promise and Dally and Kit's goodbye took place in 1908?

Grand-Hôtel Tisza
Named for the Tisza River.

újházaspár
Hungarian: new wedded couple (literally). The formation is perfect but there is no such compound word in common usage; seems to be a calque for "newlyweds"

Varosi Színház
Hungarian: Municipal Theater. The correct spelling should be Városi.

Béla Blaskó . . . from Lugos
In the same way that a man from Miskolc took the name Miskolci, this successful actor in another life will take a new stage name.

Page 914

hálaszlé
Hungarian: fisherman soup.

Temesvár
In Romanian, Timişoara, in Transylvania, another political football in 19th and early 20th century politics; reinforces the Bela Lugosi reference. - In the strict sense Temesvár/Timişoara does not belong to Translyvania proper but to Banat, a particularly multi-ethnic region between the Danube and the southernmost reaches of the Carpathians. Under Habsburg rule it was a garrison town with mostly German population, and in 1989 it was the birthplace of the Romanian revolution.

The Burgher King
I.e., middle-class.

Also, of course, a play on the fast food chain, similar to the character Muller Hoch-Leben (MIller High Life) in GR.

Interplay between the aristocracy and the middle (or lower) classes was a central theme in the Austro-Hugarian operetta of the age, with titles like Prince Bob, Baroness Lili, Countess Marica, the Count of Luxemburg, the Princess of Circus, and last but not least, the Queen of Csárdás, a perennial classic.

Schleppingsdorff
Comic German name: a shlep from shlepville.

Machen wir . . . nichts kaufen
German: Let's go for a window-shopping stroll; / Put on something fiddly (or fancy). / In streets and lanes let's just run— / Stare at everything but don't buy anything.

Page 915

molto agitato
Italian musical direction: highly agitated.

So super-ficially deep...Good time girl from the K and K
The plot is a mash-up of countless operettas and Mozart light opera. As far as "good time girls, superficially deep": at this point (1900-1910) the art and literature of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (Osterreiches-Hungarisches Koenig und Konigriech; O.H.K.K.) was replete with complicated women in complicated relationships (cf. the stories of Robert Musil, Stefan Zweig; not to mention Sigmund Freud's case histories, particularly "Dora"); mistresses and prostitutes did figure heavily as well.

Page 916

up the river
The Tisza.

Szolnok
Town east of Budapest.

Lake Balaton
Long narrow lake in west central Hungary, with reputedly the finest beaches in Central Europe. Popular holiday resorts.

Pragerhof
Pragersko in present-day Slovenia.

Venezia
Venice.

Siófok
Town on the southern shore of Lake Balaton.

Page 917

gaff-riggers
A gaff-rigger is a boat or ship with gaff-rigged sails. Gaff-rigged denotes a fore-and-aft sail bent to a mast, to a boom at the lower edge, and to a gaff (inclined spar) extending from the mast at the top.

fogások
Hungarian: zanders (Lucioperca lucioperca or sandra). The correct spelling is fogasok, without an accent.

Page 918

Annotation Index