ATD 678-694
- Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.
Contents
Page 678
Whitechapel . . . Ripping . . . murders of the late '80s
Whitechapel is an inner city district east of Charing Cross, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.
The heart of the district is Whitechapel Road itself, named for a small chapel of ease dedicated to St. Mary. In Victorian era Whitechapel area was full of poor English country stock which was swelled by large number of immigrants. This endemic poverty drove many women to prostitution. Such prostitutes were the victims of the serial killer known as Jack the Ripper who terrorised this part of London in the autumn of 1888.
Piggott's
???
the Strand
The Strand is the popular name of a street in London called Strand. It derives its name from the Old English "shore" or "river bank". It currently starts at Trafalgar Square and runs east to join Fleet Street at Temple Bar. There are many prominent buildings, churches, and palaces along the street.
exhibiting that sinister British craving for the dark and shiny...
Perhaps an Orwellian reference here:
- 'It's this bloody thing that does it,' she said, ripping off the scarlet sash of the Junior Anti-Sex League and flinging it on to a bough. Then, as though touching her waist had reminded her of something, she felt in the pocket of her overalls and produced a small slab of chocolate. She broke it in half and gave one of the pieces to Winston. Even before he had taken it he knew by the smell that it was very unusual chocolate. It was dark and shiny, and was wrapped in silver paper.[1]
The whole paragraph also recalls the Velvet Underground Song Venus in Furs Lyrics, a hymn of the SM/Fetish-scene: "dark and shiny... patent boots... mackintoshes..." reads like catchwords from the covers of Atomage Magazine, whose editor John Sutcliffe, btw, did the costumes for the TV-Series The Avengers.
...students of the chimpanzee...
A stretch? According to a paper done by Arthur W. Epstein (1987), (male) chimpanzees and other primates might develop a fetish: "The endowing of an object with ... [erotic associations] has been noted in a zoo-dwelling chimpanzee ... who displayed sexual arousal toward one specific object, a rubber boot.... The chimpanzee quickly approached, gazed at the boot and handled it. The penis became erect and was touched to the boot. Shortly thereafter, manual self-stimulation and ejaculation occurred. The ejaculate was then consumed. This response was said to be invariable and occurred whether the boot was worn by a keeper or simply placed in the cage. (pp. 143-144)" source
- To me, the text implies the chimpanzee likes all the bright and shiny stuff, not that it has any neurotic fetishes...see list down to albedo. The experts in 'erotic neuropathy' see what 'students of the chmpanzee' know. [User: MKOHUT, February 4, 2007]
marcasite
Wikipedia
Marcasite, in keeping with the idea of bilocations and doubles, is also a twinned mineral, it's opposing pair being pyrite (fool's gold), much as diamonds are twinned with graphite. [1]
queasy albedo
Albedo is the ratio of reflected to incident electromagnetic radiation power. It is a unitless measure indicative of a surface's or body's reflectivity. The word is derived from albus, a Latin word for "white".
streetlighting... luminous equivalent of a ...shriek
Thematic.
Whitechapel and white color theme all over.
buskers
persons who entertain in a public place for donations.
Duke of Cumberland's Theatre
Queen Victoria's uncle Ernest Augustus was the Duke of Cumberland; see annotation to page 230. A real theater?
Page 679
co-tenant of Tarot Card XV...Renfrew
Werfner is other co-tenant surely.
Card XV is the Devil.
K. & K. Landwehr
German. K. und K. or K-K, Kaiserlich-Königlich, Imperial and Royal. Landwehr, a section of the "joint" Austro-Hungarian Army over which only the Austrian (as disctinct from Austro-Hungarian) government had authority.
slightly more mineral
cf Frank's "mineral condition", page 395.
Jack the Ripper
The serial killer in Whitechapel district of London in 1888. Cf page 678:Whitechapel . . . Ripping . . . murders.
Page 680
"including the blood everyone's come for"
The audience at a musical about Jack the Ripper 'comes for blood'? Revenge
motivations even here? Notice response of other audience member...
Sowieso
German: anyway.
Piccadilly Circus
Piccadilly Circus, a circular open space at a street junction, is a famous traffic intersection and public space at the heart of West End, London. It links to several well-known theathres and is close to major shopping areas in a central location. Its memorial fountain status itself is a major tourist attraction.
Page 681
the tragedy at Mayerling
It refers to the deaths of Austrian Crown Prince, Archduke Rudolf, and his girlfriend, Baroness Mary Vetsera, at the Mayerling hungting lodge in Lower Austria on January 30, 1889. Austrian officials regarded it as an act of a suicide pact but many others believed an international conspiracy of murder.
old F.F.
Franz Ferdinand. (Cf page 45:Francis Fernand). The eldest son of the younger brother of Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph. Austria's heir apparent after the death of Crown Prince Rudolf in 1899. His assassination in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, precipitated World War I.
Liebestod
German: love-death. Denotes in particular the climactic scene in Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde, but here means the fatal end of an affair.
And Rudolf's unfortunate love-death led to Austria's death-love thru Ferdinand!?
Fachsimpelei
German: shop talk.
the Triple Alliance
The treaty by which Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy pedged on May 20, 1882, to support each others militarily in the event of an attack against any of them by two or more great powers.
Ach, die Vetsera
German: ah, the Vetsera. Baroness Mary Vetsera was the mistress of Crown Prince Rudolf. In 1889 both were found dead at the Mayerling hunting lodge.
cherchons la femme
French: let us seek the woman. The phrase usually means to look for the woman who has set events in motion; here it's used ironically to mean that focusing on the search for the woman will mask any questions about Rudolf and his father.
[Pynchon thru]Khautsch links the first famous serial killer in history, Jack the Ripper, with the assassination of Crown Prince Rudolf--he could have been at Mayerling!--and the serial genocidal killings of Austria? "Railway depot...gates disposed radially in all directions"...p.683 "lives by the trainload"... The implication, though, is that all of those thousands of potential murderers were, in fact, the one true murderer--that each of the victims was killed by an unspecified but potentially enormous number of killers, simultaneously...
- serial genocidal killings of Austria ?
Page 682
Trafalgar Square
Trafalgar Square is a square in London that commemorates the Battle of Trafalgar (October 21, 1805) in which the British Navy of 27 ships soundly defeated the French and Spanish combined fleet of 33 ships west of Cape Trafalgar in south-west Spain. The square, a popular site for political demonstrations, is the location of Nelson's Column.
the "Boston"
a dance somewhat likes waltz.
pentatonic
A pentatonic scale with five notes per octave.
Page 683
Franz Josef
Franz Josef (1830-1916), Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary and Bohemia from 1848 to 1916. His 68-year reign is the third-longest in the recorded history of Europe.
the Belvedere
The Belvedere Palace, Vienna, comprises two magnificent baroque mansions faacing each other across a sloping formal garden. Prince Eugene of Savoy, whose campaigns against the Turks enabled the Habsburg Emprie to reclaim Hungary, purchased some land beyond Vienna's city walls in 1693, upon which he ordered a park with elaborate water features and fountains to be built. In 1714 the Prince had the lower Belvedere built and in 1721 the upper one. The Palace now is open to public tours. See Belvedere Pictures.
Prince Eugene of Savoy
Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663-1736) was the greatest general to serve the Habsburgs.
Ballhausplatz
Ballhausplatz is a square in central Vienna containing the building that over 200 years has been the official residence of the State Chancellor. As a result, Ballhausplatz is often used as shorthand for the Austrian Chancellery
the Anglo-Russian Entente
Cf page 618:the Anglo-Russian Entente.
gemütlicher alter Junge
German: good old boy.
some symmetry was being broken
Spontaneous symmetry breaking in physics takes place when a system that is symmetric with respect to some symmetry group goes into a vacuum state that is not symmetric. At this point the system no longer appears to behave in a symmetric manner. A common example to help explain this phenomenon is a ball sitting on top of a hill. This ball is in a completely symmetric state. However, it is not a stable one: the ball can easily roll down the hill. At some point, the ball will spontaneously roll down the hill in one direction or another. The symmetry has been broken because the direction the ball rolled down in has now been singled out from other directions [2].
Here, the meaning appears to be that the equilibrium of the twinned professors is broken; Werfner is in London, where he "should not be" (Renfrew's territory); a historical stasis has been broken; this must mean something. Perhaps a foreshadowing of the collapse of the Great Power "symmetry" of 1814 to 1914.
Not spontaneous symmetry broken, just plain broken symmetry. Cf page 537:broken symmetries.
Page 685
[D.C.]
Musical direction, Italian: da capo = (repeat) from the top.
impersonating British idiots
Again and again in AtD we see the vital importance of being able to act the part of an idiot.
Lew, detective realizing he is also a hired hand, has an epiphany into bilocation/doubling theme re Renfrew and Werfner.
"kept separate.. [by].. two distinct kinds of light."p. 686
Page 686
Dr. Otto Ghloix
p. 132 & 148.
Pure Land
Shambala but any other meanings?
Page 687
Plafond Lumineux
French: luminous ceiling.
Page 688
we risk being divided in two . . . Atonement, in any case comes much later
A superbly constructed wordplay. "Atonement" means seeking and gaining release from guilt or ostracism, but the word is constructed from "at one." So the risk of splitting in two is followed, at length, by becoming one again.
Page 690
irreversible, pitiless
Definition of a Doomsday Machine. See Dr. Strangelove and too many other authorities to count.
Charlottenburg
District of Berlin, west and south of the city center. Woods, a castle.
Page 691
carbonyl chloride
Phosgene.
Page 692
"No one seemed to be in charge"
The non-violent situation and meaning of anarchism. Things still worked and Lew on the next page felt free, released from a "contract", the social, political contract?
Page 693
scabland
An elevated area of barren rocky land with little or no soil cover, often crossed by dry stream channels. Often used in the plural.
References
- ↑ 1984, George Orwell, 1948, Ch. X
Annotation Index
| Part One: The Light Over the Ranges |
|
|---|---|
| Part Two: Iceland Spar |
119-148, 149-170, 171-198, 199-218, 219-242, 243-272, 273-295, 296-317, 318-335, 336-357, 358-373, 374-396, 397-428 |
| Part Three: Bilocations |
429-459, 460-488, 489-524, 525-556, 557-587, 588-614, 615-643, 644-677, 678-694 |
| Part Four: Against the Day |
695-723, 724-747, 748-767, 768-791, 792-820, 821-848, 849-863, 864-891, 892-918, 919-945, 946-975, 976-999, 1000-1017, 1018-1039, 1040-1062 |
| Part Five: Rue du Départ |
