Difference between revisions of "ATD 489-524"

Revision as of 15:01, 2 January 2007

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

Page 489

desolate sighs
(They're not gay?)

Apostlet
???

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

Eastern wog
Cf p222.

The German Sea
???

sub-Clerkenwell
???

annoyance
(Why?)

Page 490

gyps
???

Byron's Pool
???

"Div!"
???

"Whizzo!"
???

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

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

A rendition of That's what I'm talkinabout!

Cloisters Court
???

King's
???

Queen Anne's Gate
???

Newnham
???

Wrangleresses
???

Phillippa Fawcett
???

Grace Chisolm and Will Young
???

nautch-girl
???

socio-acrobatic aggrandizement
'social climbing'

opium beer
???

duc de Richelieu
???

Page 491

the City
???

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

Reginald "Ratty" McHugh
???

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

Balkan Sobranies
An upscale brand of cigarette.

lilies-and-lassitude humor of the '90s
Cult of Oscar Wilde?

table d'hôte
???

Very well, I contradict myself.<br Walt Whitman allusion. ???

Page 492

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

xanthrocroid
???

Capsheaf
Is this a third speaker, or another name for Ratty?

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

Crayke
???

D'accord
French: right, OK.

reputation for viciousness
???

croft
???

Mavis Grind
???

orthopædic journals
???

Dymphna
???

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

Page 493

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

McHugh
Talking to self?

alfresceehwh
???

Lorelei, Noellyn, and Faun
???

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

white veils
???

Pinky
Nicknames opposite of truth?

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

Page 494

wrong altar
???

gnomic tenses
???

circs
???

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

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

Mâconnais
???

George Grossmith...and that jolly Weedon

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

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

Page 495

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

cp. Wilhelm II file
???

"Map of the World"
???

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

Morse and Vassilev
???

East Rumelian
???

zadruga
???

tchifliks
???

gradinarski druzhini
???

gossamer
Pynchon draws him as 'wet' as possible?

Page 496

sod... pouffe
???

failed canards
???

Lent... Easter... Long Vacation
???

Colonial Office
???

Okhrana
a secret police force of the Russian Empire and part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Wikipedia Entry

Ballhausplatz
Location of the Austrian State Chancellery and Foreign Ministry Wikipedia Entry

Wilhelmstrasse
Administrative Center of the Kingdom of Prussia Wikipedia Entry

G.F.B. Riemann
???

Zeta function... conjecture
???

'joint'
???

Bob's your uncle
???

Limehouse
???

Page 497

excess
(So not wholly gossamer?)

Coronation Red
???

Ranji and C.B. Fry
Two notable cricketers who would have been in their prime when the novel is set. Both played for England. 'Ranji' is short for Ranjitsinhji and is how he was familiarly known.

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

New Court
???

Tavernier-Gravet slide rules
???

High Church
???

Mags and Nuncs and Matins
???

not Zion
???

Compline hour
???

Te Deum
???

Khaki Election
???

Filtham
???

Page 498

chromaticism... Richard Strauss
???

Staindrop
???

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

dress regulations
???

Gauss
???

Ramanujan
???

display of hurt feelings
Cf p30.

Page 499

light up
Dark world vs spark of value.

ζ-function
???

Hilbert thinks of nothing else
???

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

Great Eastern
???

Page 500

Weierstrass and Sofia Kovalevskaia
???

sounds like maths
???

folio
???

four-color chromolithograph
???

Snazzbury
???

Silent Frock
Cf noise-canceling headphones.

toilette
???

Page 501

green, white, and mauve stripes
???

black crepon
???

Italian-cloth
???

Page 502

modern lettering
???

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

twilling
???

Page 502

Earl's Court Wheel
???

whelks
???

Chinese Turkestan railway shares
???

jellied eel
???

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

lupine liminality
???

hydrangeas
???

Hardy, whimsical
???

Page 504

Harwich... German Sea
???

Hook of Holland
???

madhouse at Osnabrück
???

Page 505

plug hats
???

Cobh
???

Page 506

Euclid
???

elms in Cleveland
(Before Dutch elm disease?)

went on for years
???

Shorty
???

Page 507

how little I cared
(Blaming Krakatoa???)

palm upward
???

Prospect Avenue
???

leaf-spring suspension
???

overrun
???

Flats
???

Page 508

Cuyahoga
???

your exact face
(How common?)

Page 509

descending minor triad
???

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

tea roses
???

cosmos
???

Page 510

first momentous glance
Page 349 only?

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

Page 511

preferring
Cf Rose in "Titanic".

Root Tubsmith
???

Fuchs, Schwarz... Frobenius
???

Professor Manning
???

Marseilles
???

species of tarantella
???

dreamed it
(Page?)

Cigar Deck
???

Page 512

how to stop looking
Cf p27.

fooling
(They both miss it?)

lobelias
???

Victor Herbert
???

Wolf-Ferrari
???

Page 513

1st Edition Typo
"She smlld falsely"

Page 515

high-hatting
Snubbing, cutting.

twenty-knot
???

uncreated
Featureless?

after 1914
Still 10 years away.

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

25,000-ton
???

dreadnoughts
???

Slavonian
???

Schultz-Thorneycroft
???

Parsons turbines
???

British men-o'-war
Warships.

Page 516

shell-rooms-to-be
???

twelve-inch barrels
???

shelter deck
???

casemates
???

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

"Dazzle" camouflage
Patterns as described in the text, meant to confuse enemy eyes. Camouflage techniques used in World War I were developed in part by magician Jasper Maskelyne, a descendant of the Astronomer Royal in Mason & Dixon.

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

Fangsley
???

horizontally disposed
???

Lloyd Arsenale
???

Stabilimento Tecnico
???

Page 517

Promontorio
???

O.I.C. Bodine
Stands for...? nope

fermented potato mash
Cf Veikko's vodka p82.

four shafts
???

Mauretania
???

Zu befehl, Herr Hauptheitzer
???

Black Gang
???

Oberhauptheitzer
???

Mannlicher
???

"Dampf mehr!"
???

singlet
???

Page 518

Marconi room
???

design maximum of nine degrees
???

nymphs
???

"Porca miseria"
???

Page 519

tight circle
Military as inane as circus clowns.

deeper levels
(Eg particle vs wave?)

Chinese
???

nicht wahr
???

Graz
???

bilge-crab
???

Page 520

Teutonic
???

Mulai Ahmed er-Raisuli
???

Agadir, Queen of the Iron Coast
???

Sus... Susi
???

Abdel Aziz
???

Canaries
???

Lübeck
???

Berbers
???

Page 521

tree-climbing goats
???

argan trees
???

Gnaoua
???

mlouk gnaoui
???

Seigneurs Noirs
???

Habsburg navy
???

Mogador road
???

Tawil Balak
???

Rahman
???

Formalhaut
???

Moïsés
???

Jonah... Massa
???

Page 522

kashbah
???

Ighir Ufrani
???

alimzah
???

tasargelt
???

scruff
???

Staketsel
???

lazarettes
???

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

Page 523

moon deck
???

lower orlop
???

lateen-riggers
???

Page 524

exhilirated Second occurrence of this misspelling of exhilarated.

Piazza Grande
???

Denza
???

Antonio Smareglia
???

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