Difference between revisions of "ATD 792-820"

Revision as of 15:35, 21 January 2007

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

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Page 794

communicate with the explorer Peary, then in the Arctic Robert Peary did not even leave New York City at the start of his polar expedition until July 6, 1908, 6 days after the Tunguska Event of 6-30-08, and did not reach Ellesmere Island until the summer of 1909.

Semipalatinsk
Town on the Irtysh River, a long way southwest of Vanavara. Soviet nuclear tests were administered from here.

obstanovka
Russian: situation.

Page 795

Zdorovo!
Russian: hello!

Neutral Moresnet
Tiny "country" between Belgium and Germany; existed 1816-1919; see, oh do see, Wikipedia entry.

tchudak
Now transliterated chudak. Russian: crank.

Kiakhta
Or Kyakhta, only two syllables. Town on Russian (Buriat)-Mongolian border south of Lake Baikal, a center of Russian trade with China.

Not even Russian army does that!
And it cost them dearly in 1914 when intercepted "clear" radio traffic helped the Germans crush them at the Battle of Tannenberg.

Page 796

By dusk . . . running-lights
This is deeply disturbing, and I hope it is simply my misunderstanding. Apply the description in this long paragraph to a tiny model, say a flashlight, an orange and a toothpick representing one of the mooring lines with a raisin balloon at the top. The orange rotates toward the east, so that the flashlight appears to set in the west. Which part of the system gets dark first? The text says the raisin does, the arc of the orange's shadow moving downward. But plainly the bottom end of the toothpick is shaded first and the raisin remains illuminated until last. What would move downward from the highest raisin to the orange-peel countryside? The arc of the orange's shadow at flashlightrise would. Either I'm running my film backward or the Chums are . . . or Pynchon is. --Volver 13:38, 4 January 2007 (PST)

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

Page 797

upriver from Vanavara
"Ground zero" of the Event was 40 miles north of Vanavara.

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

the error of the seismograph recordings . . . singularity
"Error" doesn't mean mistake or wrongness. It measures the variability within each instrument; every measurement comes with a plus-or-minus figure. If the Event happened instantaneously, each of the charts would record it as a more or less spread-out peak. The energy released in a process is calculated from the area under the curve of intensity versus time; to get the power (rate of energy release), divide the energy by the duration of the process. Even though he states the math wrongly, Vanderjuice suspects the seismographs of the world have responded to a titanic release of energy that took place in essentially no time at all, so that power = energy divided by zero. When physicists see a real process apparently demanding division by zero, they call it a singularity and go looking for an explanation. --Volver 13:38, 4 January 2007 (PST)

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

Page 798

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

Page 799

Glagolitic alphabet
See excellent annotation to page 252.

Page 800

Irredentism
A policy appealing to the idea that "our" lands are unredeemed, i.e., ruled by some outsider, and must be brought into our domain. See annotation to "Eurasia Irredenta" (page 761).

Page 801

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

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

Page 802

croakers
Doctors.

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

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

Page 803

midinettes
???

Facharbeiter
German: technician, specialist.

Page 804

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

Page 805

prepare them against the day
Here the phrase means "in anticipation of" or "to be ready for."

Page 806

šlivovica
One of the spellings of this word for plum brandy (also slivovica, slivovitz, etc.).

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

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

Page 807

Judensau
German: Jewish pig.

Christian Socialists . . . Dr. Karl Lueger
Lueger (pronounced in three syllables, LOO eh ger) was a Viennese politician and founder of the anti-Semitic Christian Social Party.

Reichsrath
Austrian parliament.

Wer Jude ist, bestimme ich
German: as translated in text.

der schöne Karl
German: fine Karl.

Page 808

Page 809

the vile Aerenthal
Aloys (or Alois) von Aerenthal (1854-1912), Austrian foreign minister who engineered the annexation of Bosnia in 1908.

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

Isvolsky
A.P. Izvolsky (Izvolski, Izvolskii) (1856-1919), Russian foreign minister who traded Bosnia-Herzegovina to Austria in exchange for Austria's help in opening the Bosporus and Dardanelles to Russian ships. Pynchon's spelling may well be from a contemporary source; consistent transliteration is a more recent fetish.

Grey
Sir Edward Grey (1862-1933), British Foreign Secretary 1905-16.

Page 810

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

Blutwurst Special
Perhaps a roll, some mustard and a portion of roasted potatoes with the blood sausage.

Page 811

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

Page 812

Page 813

And England's far, and honour a name
From the 1897 poem "Vitaï Lampada" ("They Pass the Torch") by Sir Henry Newbolt (1862-1938).

Page 814

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

Strichmädchen
German: streetwalker.

Page 815

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

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

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

Δt
Mathematical symbol used for a finite length of time.

Page 816

dolce far niente
Italian: sweet doing-nothing.

the Karst
Generic "karst topography" takes its name from this area of Slovenia and Italy (locally called kras and carso). The terrain features limestone with fissures and cavities eroded by water. Caves as well as underground streams and lakes are common.

Page 817

quiet spaces between trams, unpredictable, even, she imagined, mathematically so
Two familiar "rhythms" have this quality of chaotic intervals: the beating of the human heart and the sound of water dripping from a faucet. The second part of the phrase is subtle: the time of the next drip can't be mathematically predicted (to arbitrary accuracy), but it is possible to describe in mathematical terms the way in which it's unpredictable.

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

Velebit
A ridge that runs parallel to the Croatian Adriatic coast a few tens of miles south of Trieste. Lying a short distance inland, it is made up of limestone karst.

Page 818

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

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

Uskok
Serbian/Croatian: fugitive. Writers even in antiquity noted that piracy was a main economic activity along this coast.

Clissa
Town from which Vlado Clissan takes his nom de guerre. Locally called Klis.

Page 819

Page 820

John of Asia
John of Asia, also called John of Ephesus, was a 6th-century church leader and historian. The ruins of Ephesus are located in western Asia Minor, now in Turkey.

coastline approaching infinite length
Another reference to the "crisis" in mathematics. The closer you look at the coastline, the longer it gets. If you could view it from infinitely close up, it would become infinitely long.

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