Difference between revisions of "ATD 489-524"

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'''Hôtel Alsace'''<br>
'''Hôtel Alsace'''<br>
The propre name is Hôtel d'Alsace. It was, and still is, located at number 13 rue des Beaux-Arts, in the 6th arrondissement of  Paris. Oscar Wilde died there, under an assumed named, on november 30th, in 1900, following a two-day agony. Note some similarity of letters between the names Griswold and Wilde (both "sodomite"…).<br>
Also, Wilde's famous last words (well, recounted as last words but really uttered months before his death) was "either that wallpaper goes, or I do." Cyprian's uncle, Griswold, it seems, had the atrocious decorative taste that shoved Wilde into the great beyond. This is post-Wilde; the avant-garde pose has calcified into a tacky schtick, the  "lilies-and-lassitude" 90s, like the foreclosed frontier, a dead duck in the sodomite water.
see "Gris"--four associative definitions that interestingly modify/play with, the name Wilde: gray; a pale rose' (as in vin gris)and Juan Gris, Spanish painter. [http://www.google.com/search?q=define:gris&hl=en&oi=definel&defl=all  gris]

Revision as of 14:36, 26 August 2010


Page 489

Neville . . . Nigel
Lew's rescuers after the attempt to blow him up in Colorado, page 185. These two characters remind one of Looney Tunes Goofy Gophers.

stage left or audience left?
A theater has two directions called left. "Stage left" is to the left of the performers as they face the audience. "House left" or "audience left" is to the left of an audience member facing the stage.

desolate sighs
(They're not gay?)

embryo Apostlet
The Cambridge Apostles, also known as the Cambridge Conversazione Society, is an elite intellectual secret society at Cambridge University, founded in 1820 by George Tomlinson, a Cambridge student who went on to become the Bishop of Gibraltar. Undergraduates being considered for membership are called "embryos" and are invited to "embryo parties," where members judge whether the student should be invited to join. "-let" is a common suffix that denotes smallness or youth, like droplet (small drop) or piglet or eyelet &c &c..., thus, a young Apostle. More on the Cambridge Apostles and the Cambridge spy ring...

Cyprian Latewood
The name connects the character to the Greek demigod Orpheus. When Cyprian arrives, with Reef and Yashmeen, at the convent in the Balkans (Thrace) (p. 956), he is greeted with "Welcome home." Thrace was the birthplace of Orpheus.


After Orpheus loses Eurydice forever by turning to see if she's still following him out of the underworld, he never loves another woman, turning instead to young boys. One of Greek god Apollo's beloved boys, Cyparissus, loves a beautiful tame stag that he accidentally kills with a spear. In his grief, Apollo turns him into a cypress tree. The Cypress was one of the trees Orpheus charmed with song, according to Ovid in his Metamorphoses.


The "late wood" is the outer portion of the growth ring on a tree, more dense than the "early wood" which appears early in the growing season, appearing later in the season, usually summer. Wikipedia entry. The tree connection is strong. It was said that Orpheus could even charm the trees, and Rilke (who figures prominently in Gravity's Rainbow) in the first of his Sonnets to Orpheus, begins:
Tree arising! O pure ascendance!
Orpheus Sings! Towering tree within the ear!
Everywhere stillness, yet in this abeyance:
seeds of change and new beginnings near.

More about this connection...

All very interesting, but let's not forget the obvious: 'the Cyprian' in classical literature is a standard name for Aphrodite/Venus, goddess of love, because she was born in Cyprus, from the waves, as in the famous picture by Botticelli that plays a role in 'V' ('She hangs on the Western Wall').
And so, by association, 'a follower of Aphrodite', and in later usage, according to Webster, a prostitute.

if we were looking for yet another sexual innuendo, it would be interesting to note that the French word "cyprine" (the pronounciation of which is very similar to "Cyprian") describes the vaginal secretions that occur during the period of sexual arousal. The origin of this word can be traced back to the explanation above (i.e. Aphrodite). As for Latewood, well, that's kind of self-explanatory, no?

Common use; short for sodomite.

Eastern wog
Cf p222.

The German Sea
A public house; the name occurs again with a different meaning at the end of this chapter.

Clerkenwell is a neighborhood in London that has a reputation for producing the highest quality of watches, clocks and jewellery. A sub-Clerkenwell trinket would be a poorly made trinket


the other's penis seemed larger than one's own?
Annoyance not because of the penises but because they are rivals. Lethargic not because of the penises but because they aren't getting anywhere in their courtship. Finally, "each regarding the other's penis" because even straight men can't deny that that's one of the things they look at in the steamroom.

Note that annoyance is a synonym for inconvenience.

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A gyp is a college servant, whose office is that of a gentleman's valet, waiting on two or more collegians in the University of Cambridge. He differs from a bed-maker, inasmuch as he does not make beds; but he runs on errands, waits at table, wakes men for morning chapel, brushes their clothes, and so on. His perquisites are innumerable, and he is called a "gyp" (Greek: vulture) because he preys upon his employer like a vulture. At Oxford they are called scouts. [1]

Byron's Pool
Byron's Pool

A conservation area in Cambridge. The pool is named after the romantic poet Lord Byron, who is believed to have enjoyed swimming there. Byron studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, starting in 1805.

Probably short for "divine!" Of course, if these kids were Vectorists they would be aware of the double entendre with the div (divergence) operator.

An early-twentieth century English slang expression of delight. Uttered earlier, by Neville or Nigel, on introducing Lew to the Tarot deck, page 186.

"That is that of which I speak!"
prob. homosexuality. cf. "I am the Love that dare not speak its name." -- Lord Alfred 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."

This seems wrong, given the typical Pynchon scene of males ogling/desiring women. There is no homosexuality invloved with these guys

but a "'range' [again] of remarks" and 'all-night rhapsodizing' over the beauty of naked women. This line "That, etc." seems more likely a comic spin on a famous line which we know Pynchon has alluded to before [V.]: Wittgenstein's "whereof I can not speak, thereof I must remain silent" from the Tractatus. He could NOT not speak of their nakedness.

This whole scene is reminiscent, perhaps, of the biblically famous Susannah and the Elders, where she, too, is watched appreciatively bathing. Wallace Stevens, among others, has a famous poem about it.

All this about homosexuality is useful knowledge, but (a) the men here are motivated by lust directed at women and (b) this is among the "catchphrases of [a] day" when Oscar Wilde's love could not yet even speak its name. "That is that of which I speak!" is a Pynchon trick, taking a 20th-21st century expression and paramorphically projecting it back in time. At the university it was upper-class and refined; today it has become a vulgarism, "That's what I'm talkin' about!" Other examples: "high susceptibility to primordial variables," page 801 (today "extreme sensitivity to initial conditions"); "as cheerful as a finch," page 21 ("as happy as a lark").

Exactly as in the last paragraph, a poke at the currently colloquial: "That's what I'm talkin' about!"

Cloisters Court
Cloisters Court, part of Girton College, Cambridge University.

King's College, Cambridge University.

Queen Anne's Gate
Some part of the British Home Office is, or was, located in the London (Westminster) street named Queen Anne's Gate.

According to Wikipedia the British Home Office resided there from 1978 to 2004, so this is unlikely. Since the 1860's until recently, however, parts of the British secret service had their offices at Queen Anne's Gate - the context suggests that the N's report to that.

Not sure what connection Pynchon is making here, but the word inconvenience could not come up accidentally in this novel.

True enough. The word seems to keep cropping up, too, but nonchalantly. By this point in the novel, I had already been kicking myself for not circling every prior use of the word.

For what it's worth, one of my Google searches for "inconvenience" yielded this bit of Pynchon-worthy information:

John Evelyn, one of members of the Invisible College (the group that founded the Royal Society of the United Kingdom), published one of the first books on pre-industrial air pollution in 1661, Fumufugium: or, The Inconvience of the Aer, and Smoak of London Dissipated.
The first two paragraphs of Part I:
It is not without some considerable Analogy, that sundry of the Philosophers have named the Aer the Vehicle of the Soul, as well as that of the Earth, and this frail Vessell of ours which contains it; since we all of us finde the benefit which we derive from it, not onely for the necessity of Respiration and functions of the Organs; but likewise for the use of the Spirits and Primigene Humors, which doe most neerly approach that Divine particle. But we shall not need to insist, or refine much on this sublime Subject; and, perhaps, it might scandalize scrupulous Persons to pursue to the height it may possibly reach (as Diogenes and Anaximenes were wont to Deifie it) after we are past the Aetherial, which is a certain Aer of Plato's denomination, as well as that of the lesse pure, more turbulent and dense, which, for the most part, we live and breath in, and which comes here to be examined as it relates to the design in hand, the City of London, and the environs about it.
It would doubtlesse be esteemed for a strange and extravagant Paradox, that one should affirme, that the Aer itself is many times a potent and great disposer to Rebellion [note JE's book was printed right after Prince Charles' restoration]; and that Insulary people, and indeed, most of the Septentrion Tracts, where this Medium is grosse and heavy, are extremely versatile and obnoxious to change both in Religious and Secular Affaires: Plant the Foote of your Compasses on the very Pole, and extend the other limb to 50 degrees of Latitude: bring it about 'till it describe the Circle, and then reade the Histories of those Nations inclusively, and make the Calculation.

An all-women's college at Cambridge, founded in 1871.

Made-up: top female Math Scholars at Cambridge. Top students were called Wranglers, all male at this time. "Cambridge University and within it of the Mathematics Tripos, the competitive graduation examination process that ranked candidates in order of “Wrangler”" ...

Phillippa Fawcett
Typo, should be Philippa Fawcett (1868-1948). She was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge. In 1890, she was the first woman to score the highest mark at Mathematics Tripos at Cambridge. She served as a College Lecturer in mathematics at Newnham College for 10 years. [2]

Grace Chisholm and Will Young
Grace Chisholm (1868-1944), an English mathematician. She went to Girton College, Cambridge in 1889 to study mathematics. Since no women were accepted to graduate schools in England, after graduation She went to the University of Göttingen to continue her mathematics education and received her PhD there in 1895. The following year she married William Young (1863-1942), one of her tutors at Girton and also a mathematician. (romances with one's tutors à la . . .) Grace Chisholm and Will Young formed a mathematical married partnetship of real significance. Husband and wife played a major role in set theory research. Between them they wrote 214 mathematical articles and several books, including one on geometry and one on set theory. Grace Chisholm and William Young.

The nautch girl was an Indian traditional dancer in Hindu temple or court performing ritual and religious dances. Her costume generally was of bright color. Pynchon probably refered to Yahsmeen's beautiful but exotic, extraordinary look and poise. [nautch girl].

And then, through the medium of carnivals, she became an exotic dancer. This whole phrase "nautch-girl extravagance of looks and self-possession" refers to the sense of dominance the stripper feels over the yawps in the audience. Which figures in the key scene of the musical Gypsy (1959, book by Arthur Laurents, music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim). And an annotation to p. 125 ("red as a cursed ruby") points to a weird AtD nautch girl connection.

socio-acrobatic aggrandizement
'social climbing'

opium beer
laudanum?, if not literally.

duc de Richelieu


Wrong Richelieu. The duke in question won his big battle at Mahon in 1756. Here's the Wikipedia link for the right one.

Line and staff
Cyprian's father sees his work in the City as analogous to the profession of arms. Officers in the British and most other armies of the time were classified as "line," those commanding troops, and "staff," those performing administrative and planning functions.

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the City
Major banks and other big-money institutions are located in the City of London, a fairly small subset of Metropolitan London.

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

Reginald "Ratty" McHugh

"fifteen years later Reginald nodded appreciatively FIFTEEN YEARS OR SO LATER?...What is going on here time-wise?
All the conversation before this line, between Cyprian and his father, is "recalled", having taken place some "fifteen years or so" earlier.

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? Aubrey Beardsley and the pre-Raphaelites?
More generally, the 'Aesthetes', not the same as the Pre-Raphaelites. People like Wilde. In Gilbert and Sullivan's 'Patience' the Wilde-like character is described as follows:

Though the Philistines may jostle,
you will rank as an apostle
in the high aesthetic band,
If you walk down Piccadilly
with a poppy or a lily
in your medieval hand.

And ev'ryone will say,
As you walk your flow'ry way,
"If he's content with a vegetable love
which would certainly not suit me,
Why, what a most particularly pure young man
this pure young man must be!"

table d'hôte
French: host's table. In a restaurant, a meal chosen by the management, no substitutions please. If the appetizer is shrimp and you don't like shrimp, then don't eat the appetizer.

Very well, I contradict myself.
Walt Whitman allusion. See Leaves of Grass. Next line in ADT affirms this.

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

Prefix xantho- is from Greek and means yellow. Does the whole word mean "yellow-haired"? Yes, i.e. blondes.

Is this a third speaker, or another name for Ratty? Third speaker. Ratty puts in some words a little bit down the page.

In mathematics, a sheaf is the basic tool for expressing relationships between small regions of a space and large regions. Beginning with a topological space X, a sheaf assigns to every region (technically, open set) U of X some data F(U), such as a set, a group, or a ring. Often these data are a collection of geometric objects defined on that region, such as functions, vector fields, or differential forms. The data can be restricted to smaller regions, and compatible collections of data can be glued to give data over larger regions. wikipedia entry

Slangy short form of viva voce, an oral examination.

Crayke is a village and civil parish in the Hambleton district of North Yorkshire, England, about two miles east of Easingwold. Relevant?

Also, "crake" designates various species in the family Rallidae, which also includes rails, coots, gallinules, and swamphens. Crakes and rails generally are medium-sized, ground-dwelling birds, with adaptations of the foot suited to wetlands.

spot of audit
Audit ale, a strong ale served on a few special days. Some colleges at British universities brew their own or contract it out.

Shetland Islands, an island group northeast of the Orkney Islands, comprising a county of Scotland.

Shetland ponies
one of a breed of small but sturdy, rough-coated ponies raised originally in the Shetland Islands.

French: right, OK.

reputation for viciousness
The Shetland pony breed has a repuation for viciousness, even if this reputation isn't entirely accurate.

Arabian hourse. One of a breed of horses, raised originally in Arabia and adjacent countries, noted for their intellegence, grace, and speed.

One of a breed of horses, to which all race horse belong, originally developed in England by crossing Arbian stallions with European mares.


The name of one of the 29 inhabited islands in the Shetland Islands, Scotland, UK. It is the largest island in Shetland Islands, the third largest in Great Britian.

Mavis Grind
A narrow isthmus joining the Northmavine peninsula to the rest of Mainland in the Shetland Islands, UK. The name means "gate of the narrow isthmus" in the local dialect. Mavis Grind is said to be the only place in the UK where you can toss a stone across land from the North Sea to the Atlantic Ocean.

orthopædic journals
Both prof and pony have to do some twisting in order to get the act done. Their skeletal disorders will, erhhm, spur the interest of orthopædists. Especially if she kicks.

After St. Dymphna, whose intercession is effective against insanity, possession and epilepsy. Her shrine at Gheel, Belgium, has since the 11th century been a refuge for persons with mental illness and intellectual disability. The afflicted wealthy went to the shrine to be cured; they were boarded with townspeople, beginning a tradition of adult foster care for persons with mental illness which continues to this day; Gheel is a designated state psychiatric hospital center, at which all the patients live in foster family homes.

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

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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.

In this context, Thucydides is proposed specifically for its non-erotic qualities. In writing his histories, Thucydides attempted to produce a clinical account of the Peloponnesian war without the passion and inaccuracies of previous histories, such as those of Herodotus. Indeed it is hard to imagine a less erotic work. It is suggested for Cyprian Latewood to help him get over his infatuation with Yashmeen.

Talking to self?

Pinky, name given to Yashmeen by the blonde girls, Lorelei, Noellyn an Faun.

An alfresco, an outdoor gathering. -eehwh is a rendering of the accent for comic effect.

Lorelei, Noellyn, and Faun
Lorelei, more frequently "Loreley": In a famous German myth, a mermaid sitting on a rock by the river Rhine. The rock itself is also named Loreley. With her song, she bewitches the captains of passing ships, who then steer into the rock. The syllable "Ley" derives from a Celtic word for "stone".

Faun: Faunus, the Roman god of fertility, also responsible for nightmares. Fauns are also the Romans counterparts of the Greek "satyrs", followers of Dionysos. Faunus is playing a flute, another connection to music.

Noellyn ??
She is No Ellen?
Echo of Noel?

"all blonde, of course"
with all the Germanic mythology around here, possibly a reference to the "blonde/blue-eyed"-cliche of German women. Possible play on light-theme? Blonde (light, reflection) opposed to the dark (absence of light, absorption) Yashmeen?

High Albedo
Albedo: power of reflecting light. Blondes reflect more light than brunettes.
Possibly a citation of Gravity's Rainbow, p. 152 (Viking), "high-albedo stockings".

"dark rock...again and again"
cf "Lorelei"

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.

French for "no mercy" or "no pity", or, more precisely in this case: "without mercy". Alludes to Pinky's cold and unforgiving nature.

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wrong altar
She, a lesbian, tells him that he 'worships' a woman who is wrong for him.

gnomic tenses
Gnomic = marked by aphorisms; aphoristic...'gnomic verse, a gnomic style". American Heritage Dictionary.

In Greek the gnomic tense is the timeless aorist, i.e. an aorist indicating no special time. In English there is the timeless present tense, e.g. in proverbs. Since the gnomic aorist differs from the usual aorist only in its usage the term "gnomic tenses" seems a little stressed.

Short form (typically British): circumstances.

'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 than 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. Another interpretation would be female masturbation via vegetables.
True, but more directly, quoting Gilbert and Sullivan. See comments on p. 491 (lilies-and-lassitude).

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.

This refers to a bargain sub-Burgundian wine that comes from the Macon region of France.

Bargain? You've obviously never enjoyed a good bottle of Mâcon Villages Cuvée Botrytis Domaine de la Bongran 2000, which, if you decide to treat yourself to a great bottle of white, will set you back at least 180$. It is true, though, that some wine snobs look down on Mâcon Wines because the region doesn't have any Grand Crus or Premier Crus.
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....

The elder George Grossmith performed in Gilbert and Sullivan works. He was not university-educated. The younger G.G. was also a noted performer and collaborated with P.G. Wodehouse.

[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.—

I don't think this is correct - the junior/senior here just refers to the question of whether it's Grossmith the father or Grossmith the son. The traditional expression for younger and older brothers is minor/major. So Smith major would be the elder Smith brother, Smith minor the younger brother.Geb 19:49, 10 April 2008 (PDT)geb

See Grossmith entry on preceding page.

"Small hands, some evidence of early trauma, cp. Wilhelm II file"
Wilhelm II suffered an injury at birth and had a withered arm. All his photographs show him with the "small hand" in his pocket.

From Wikipedia:
William II, German Emperor (1859-1941), Reigned 1888-1918.

The role of William II in German history is sometimes a controversial issue in historical scholarship. Initially seen as an important, but embarrassing figure in German history until the late 1950s, for many years after that, the dominant view was that he had little or no influence on German policy leading up to the First World War. This has been challenged since the late 1970s, particularly by Professor John C. G. Röhl who saw William II as the key figure in understanding the recklessness and subsequent downfall of Imperial Germany.

"Map of the World"
Like it says in the text, simply what Renfrew calls all his data.

Although the name is possibly of some significance! Renfrew's dossiers could act as a way of divining holistic truth from a series of perspectives or projections. Obviously interpreting this data requires the correct viewing individual, or "lens." In this way, Renfrew's "Map" is not unlike the Sfinciuno Itinerary.

Ah, I think it worth pointing out that Renfrew's dossiers on "everyone' is a paranoid's nightmare. The map is a "map" of what Refrew learns about everyone, not a common meaning of 'map", and reminding this reader of They/Them in Gravity's Rainbow who have a map of everywhere Slothrop-- and others?--appear to be/have been. At least. MKOHUT 06:55, 3 October 2007 (PDT)

Also brings to mind the Wittgenstein line that TRP alludes to in The Crying of Lot 49: "The world is all that is the case". If Renfrew could map everything everyone does, he would have the whole [human] world 'mapped'.

A famous English race-course, hence the following reference to the 'racing season'.
And very close to Cambridge.

Morse and Vassilev
In 1896-97 the first radio-telegraphic equipment was imported into Bulgaria for the needs of the armed forces and large postal offices. This was the start of Bulgarian National Radio (BNR). At that time, the equipment was used only to transmit Morse code on electro-magnetic waves. Samuel F. B. Morse, an English speaking American, invented Morse code and the telegraph.(On May 24, 1844 he transmitted the first telegraph message: "What hath God wrought!").
BNR at one time was headed by Orlin Vassilev, a Bulgarian playwright. BNR at one time also employed former (Bulgarian) environment minister Valentin Vassilev.
Charles Morse published a full textbook of Bulgarian grammar in 1860, and compiled the first Bulgarian-English dictionary.#REDIRECT [[3]]

East Rumelian
Cf page 356: East Rumelia. Rumelia was a Turkish province in the Balkan Peninsula. East Rumelia lay mostly in what is now Bulgaria.

the Treaty of Berlin
In the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 Russia crushed Turkey and forced it to accept the Treaty of San Stefano. This created a greatly expanded Bulgaria under Russian protection. Britain feared that Russia might spread its control to Constantinople (now Istanbul) and to the Suez Canal, and therefore, with Austria, demanded a revised treaty. Weakened by war, Russia consented. The Treaty of San Stefano was replaced thus by the Treaty of Berlin (1878), the final act of the Congress of Berlin of the Great Britain, Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and the Ottoman Empire. The new treaty recognized the complete independence of Romania, Serbia and Montenegro. The autonomy of Bulgaria was also recognized but it remained under formal Ottoman overlordship and divied between the Principality of Bulgaria and the autonomous province of East Rumelia. And the Ottoman province of Bosnia was placed uner Austro-Hungarian administration.

Bulgarian: labor cooperative.

Bulgarian: farms.

gradinarski druzhini
Bulgarian: gardening (or farming?) associations.

Sheer, light, delicate, flimsy, airy, tenuous, like a cobweb.

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sod . . . pouffe
Derogatory terms for homosexual ("sod" from "sodomite").

failed canards
Discredited rumors.

Lent . . . Easter . . . Long Vacation
Lent is an anual season of fasting and penitence in preparation for Easter, beginning at Ash Wednesday and lasting 40 weekdays to Easter. After Lent, Easter the school terms would soon glide into the summer recess, the Long Vacation.

At Cambridge University 'Lent Term' is the second term of the academic year (after Christmas), and 'Easter Term' is the third (between Easter and Summer - or 'Long' - vacations.) So 'Lent and Easter' qualifies 'The Terms' in the previous clause: the sense is 'Lent Term and Easter Term went gliding...' (The first term of the Cambridge year, incidentally, is called 'Michaelmas'.)

Colonial Office
Defunct British Ministry, later Foreign & Colonial Office, now Foreign & Commonwealth Office.

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

Location of the Austrian State Chancellery and Foreign Ministry Wikipedia Entry

Administrative Center of the Kingdom of Prussia Wikipedia Entry

G.F.B. Riemann
Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann. A German mathematician who did extensive work in differential geometry. Wikipedia Entry

Bernhard Riemann (1826-66), a German mathematician. He studied mathematics at the University of Göttingen and later taught that subject there. He did important work in geometry, complex analysis, and mathematical physics. Riemanm's work on Riemann geometry laid the foundation for Einstein's general relativity. He investigated the Riemann zeta function about which he stated the famous (and still not completely proven) Riemann hypothesis (see below). He died of tuberculosis in Selasca, Italy, at the age of 39.

Zeta function . . . conjecture
The Riemann zeta function. Wikipedia Entry

The Riemann zeta function is an extremely important special function of mathematics and physics that arises in definite integration and is intimately related with very deep results surrounding the prime number theorem. While many of the properties of this function have been investigated, there remain important fundamental conjectures (most notably the Riemann hypothesis) that remain unproved to this day. See [Zeta function].

The Riemann hypothesis (conjecture) is a conjecture about the distribution of zeros of the Riemann zeta function. The Riemann zeta function is defined for all complex numbers (Cf page 132) not equal to zero. It has zeros at the negative even integers, (-2, -4, -6 and so on), called trivial zeros. The Riemann hypothesis is concerned with the non-trivial zeros, saying, "The real part of any non-trivial zero of the Riemann zeta function is 1/2." This conjecture remains unproved. [Riemann conjecture].

Riemann's zeta function is also used in the Zipf Probability Distribution [4], which itself led to the formulation of Zipf's Principle of Least Effort that TRP mined for semantic resonances in GR. [5]

Opium den.

Bob's your uncle
An English and Commonwealth expression referring to the ease with which something can be done. Still used, though probably more common in the time in which Against the Day is set. Possible derivations.

An area of East London that borders on the River Thames near the Isle of Dogs. The name may derive from the fact that sailors were about as this was a point of embarkation for sea journeys. In the late 19th century the area was famous for opium dens Wikipedia.

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Knightsbridge is a street in Westminster borough, London. Notable for its super rich and famous high profile residents and its exclusive shops. (Recent residents included members of the Saudi royal family, Joan Collins, Gucci, Prince Diana and so on; it's shops included Egyptian Fayed's Harrods, etc . . . ) [Knightsbridge].

Hôtel Alsace



(So not wholly gossamer?)

Coronation Red
The Peer‘s traditional robes at Coronation Day are made of crimson red velvet Wikipedia website. Edward VII and Queen Alexandra were crowned at Westminster Abbey on 9 August 1902 Wikipedia

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. C.B. Fry Ranji

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

More likely to refer to the tour of the Australian cricket team to England in the Summer of 1902. Of particular interest is the fact that the Aussies played a match against Cambridge University on June 9-10. 1902 Ashes Tour

New Court
A major building in St John's College (founded 1511), University of Cambridge. It was completed in 1831. It's style is Gothic, a romantic version of a mediaeval building; its basic plan is classical. For pictures and more info New Court.

Tavernier-Gravet slide rules
French-made, some with special scales (slope conversions, etc.). Photograph.

High Church

Mags and Nuncs and Matins responsories
A responsory is a form of (Christian) chant (call and response, perhaps), which is here qualified by Latin designations for specific prayers.
Mags: possibly for Magnificat, the hymn beginning "My soul doth magnify the Lord"?
Nunc = Now. For Nunc dimittis, the prayer beginning "Let thy servant now depart."
Matin = Morning.

Trinity College, was founded by Henry VIII in 1546 as part of the Univeristy of Cambridge. Most of its major buildings date from the 16th and 17th centuries. "Princes, spies, poets and prime-ministers have all been taught here." (Trinity's own website Trinity)

King's College, Cambridge University, was found by Henry VI in 1441. From the first, the College's buildings were intened to be a magnificent display of the power of royal patronage. King's College Chapel, wanted by the King to be without equal in size and beauty and took nearly a century to complete, is one of the greatest examples of gothic architecture. It is also home to the world famous Choir, envisaged by Henry VI for daily singing of services in the chapel. [King's].

not Zion
The context indicated that the original meaning Mount Zion, a hill near Jerusalem, was used; i.e. "not Mount Zion".

Compline hour
Bedtime. Compline is the last prayers or service of the day.

Te Deum
Te Deum = Thou, O God (Latin).

Since "the Te Deum" was used in the text, it meant the ancient Latin hymn of praise to God, in the form of a psalm, sung regularly at matins in the Roman Catholic Church and, usually in an English translation, at Morning Prayer in the Anglican Church, as well as on special occasions as a service of thanksgiving or commemoration. First words of the hymn, which begin; Te Deum laudāmus (we praise thee God). Te Deum also refers to the musical setting or form of this hymn with a certain structure which Filtham had blotched. Wikipedia

Coincidence? According to the Catholic Encyclopedia there is a discussion among scholars whether the hymn of the Te Deum goes back to a text written by St. Cyprian of Carthage : "...if the hymn was borrowed from St. Cyprian, why did it not include the "virgines" instead of stopping with "martyrum"?".

Khaki Election
A term in British political history. It refered to the British general election of 1900. The reason for this name was that the issues of the election were overshadowed totally by the issue of the (2nd) Boer War (South African War, 1899-1902 [Boer War]), as khaki was the color of the new army uniform. A Khaki Election is now applied to any British national election which is heavily influenced by wartime or postwar sentiment. 1918 general election (end of World War I) and 1945 election (end of Wordl War II) were both described as Khaki Elections.


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violation of . . . child-labor statutes
If such laws applied to children in the choirs of Cambridge colleges, the great length of the composition would keep them at work too many hours.

chromaticism . . . Richard Strauss
Chromaticism refers to the use of the chromatic scale in composing music. Ever since Baroque Period (17th to early 18th century) almost all music were compsoed either in major or minor scale, in which only seven of the twelve tones of the octave were used. Beginning in the late Romanic Period (mid 19th to 20th century) the chromatic scale including all 12 tones of the octave was used. By using the tones that are not "supposed" to be in a certain key, the music thus composed had stronger dissonance and exaggerated tension.

Richard Strauss (1864-1949) was a German composer of the late Romantic era well known for his tone poems and operas. His Also sprach Zarathustra (1896), a symphonic poem, was made widely popular by Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968 — the music (especially the brass fanfare opening) introduced the memorable ape/man sequence of the film. His many operas include Salome, Der Rosenkavalier, Capriccio and others. Chromaticism was not that new to Richard Strauss, but "relentless chromaticism" just might be too "modern" for him.

Home of Jeremiah Dixon.

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

"Tedium" is a common humorous way to refer to somebody-or-other's "Te Deum."

dress regulations

Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855), a German mathematician and scientist, and one of the all-time greats. He worked in a wide variety of fields in both mathematics and physics including number theory, analysis, differential geometry, geodesy, magnetism, astronomy and optics. His work has had an immense influence in many areas. Riemann was a student of his at Göttingen. Wikipedia.

Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920), one of India's greatest mathematical geniuses. Long before he came to Cambridge and though without any formal university education, Ramanujan made substantial contributions to the anlytical theory of numbers and worked on elliptic functions, continued fractions and infinite series. He, a poor savant from India, was invited in 1914 to Cambridge by G.H. Hardy after he wrote him a letter asking abstruse mathematical questions. In his letter, Ramanujan enclosed a long list of then unproved theorems which he had solved. After his arriving at Cambridge Ramanujan collaborated with G.H. Hardy resulting in important results. He was allowed to enroll in 1914 in Cambridge despite not having the proper qualifications and received a PhD degree in 1916. Plagued by health problems all his life, his health deteriorated rapidly from 1917, and he returned to India in 1919 and died there the following year. Two years before his death, however, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London. [Ramanujan]. Therefore, ". . . Ramanujan here at Trinity . . ." could have happened only between 1914 - 1919.

revisited, in some way 'relighted' the scene
Light, mental light.

display of hurt feelings
Cf p30.

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light up
Dark world vs spark of value.

Another reference to the Riemann zeta function.

Hilbert thinks of nothing else
The Riemann hypothesis is one of the 20 problems put forth by Hilbert in 1900. Wikipedia Entry

desire... of rather a specialized sort

Great Eastern
Railway linking Cambridge and London.

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Weierstrass and Sofia Kovalevskaia
Sofia Kovalevskaia was the first woman to apply for a mathematics degree at the University of Goettingen in Germany. She was not accepted at the university, but was allowed to tutor under one of the university's math professors. She wrote a paper there that became an important part of the theory of differential equations.

Kovalevskaia's private math tutor was Weierstrass at Berlin (see below).

Karl Weierstrass (1815-97), a German mathermatician. He attended the University of Bonn studying law, finance and economics instead of mathermatics, the subject he was really interested in and studied out of school. He left the Univeristy of Bonn without a degree and went to the University of Münster for mathematics. Later he became a teacher in the city of Münster. Around 1850 he took a chair at the Technical University of Berlin. For four years (1870-1874) he gave private mathematics lessons to Sofia Kovalevskaia while she was denied the university entrance in Berlin. His investigations were mainly on the topic of "Special Functions": Weierstrass Elliptic Function, Weierstrass Zeta Function, Weierstrass Product Theroem, etc.

Sofia Kovalevskaia (1850-91) Russian mathematician and novelist. She was born in Moscow and showed an interest in mathematics from an early age. When 11 she studied differential and integral analysis from her father's calculus lecture notes that were used as wallpaper in the family house. She was given a special tutor of higher mathematics. At age 18 she entered a "false" marriage (it became genuine later) in order to be able to attend college abroad. In 1869 she enrolled as a provisional student at Heidelberg University. In 1870 she moved to Berlin attempting to study under Weierstrass and enroll at Berlin University. But the university refused to accept her because of her gender. However, Weierstrass was so impressed by her talent that he gave her private mathematics lessons twice a week for four years. By the spring of 1874, Kovalevskaia had completed three papers. Weierstrass deemed each of these worthy of a doctorate. And with his help, in Kovaleskaia's absence, University of Göttingen granted her a PhD in Mathematics (a historical first) and Master (summa cum laude) in Fine Art. In the same year she returned to Russia but failed to get an academic job. She did not practice mathematics for six years but pursued literary work instead. In 1880 she returned to mathematics and applied to teach at universities in Russia but was denied again. Finaly she found employment at Sweden's Stockholm University in 1883. She died of pneumonia in Stockholm in 1891.
In her short life Kovalevskaia had won a historic place in mathermatics. She was the first woman to receive a doctorate in mathermatics, the first woman to obtain a permanent position on a university faculty in mathematics, the first woman having a place on the editorial staff of a mathematical journal, the first female member of St. Petersburg Academy of Science, and the first woman to win the most prestigeous mathematical contest of her day, an honor equivalent to the winning of a Nobel Prize. Her literary achievements was quite substantial. Her Russian Childhood won wide acclaim and was translated into many languages (the English edition still available). She had a couple of novels (Nihilist Girl etc.) published as well. She dabbled in playwriting and produced a steady stream of both fiction and nonfiction publications for Russian journals.

Pythagorean doctrine
From the text it refers to Pythagorean doctrine of transmigration of souls. Pythagoras and his disciples believed in reincarnation (or metempsychosis), according to which human souls are immortal and are reborn into other animals after death. ("reborn as a vegetable" may be questionable.)
Perhaps not so questionable. There is, after all, the Pythagorean prohibition against eating beans, wind being 'pneuma' = spirit.

Pythagoras, one of the most famous and controversial ancient Greek philosophers, lived from ca. 570 to ca. 490 BC. He spent his early years on the island of Samos, off the coast of modern Turkey. At the age of 40, he moved to Crotona in southern Italy and most of his philosophical activity occurred there. His philosophical thinking exercised an important influence on the work of Plato. "Pythagoras was famous (1) as an expert on the fate of the soul after death . . .; (2) as an expert on religious ritual; (3) as a wonder-worker who had a thigh of gold and who could be two places at the same time; (4) as the founder of a strict way of life that emphasized dietary restrictions, . . . and rigorous self discipline." (on-line Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).
Pythagoras was also a famous mathematician best known for the Pythagorean Theorem and the Music of the Spheres. Known as the father of numbers, his philosophy encompassed harmonics in mathematics, music, cosmology, geometry and had a lasting impact on hermeticism, gnosticism and alchemy.

sounds like maths
Yashmeen seems to see 'maths' as otherwordly.

an edition of a book in pages that fold in half to make the leaves of a codex.

four-color chromolithograph
Chromo--in Chemistry, chromium

Nothing to do with chromium. Chromolithography means 'The art of printing in colours from stone' (OED), an early technique for printing in more than one colour. The chromo- prefix is a shortened form of chromato-, a Greek-derived prefix denoting 'to do with colour'.


Silent Frock
Cf noise-canceling headphones.

No longer in use in modern english, the term 'toilette' indicated a dressing table covered to the floor with cloth (toile) and lace, on which stood a dressing glass, which might also be draped in lace. Wikipedia

It's still used, and in addition to the dressing table meaning, it refers to how somebody is "got up"--dress, makeup and all.

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green, white, and mauve stripes
Colors associated with the Suffragette Movement of the time.Diane Atkinson, one of the leading contemporary scholars on the suffrage movement, edited a book, Suffragettes in the Purple, White, and Green London 1906-1914, which served as a catalog at an exhibition of suffrage memorabilia at the Museum of London and which discusses the symbolism. Atkinson notes that the color scheme was devised by Mrs. Pethick-Lawrence, treasurer and co-editor of the weekly newspaper Votes for Women. In the spring 1908 issue of that paper, Pethick-Lawrence explained the symbolism of the colors:


black crepon
The shell is made of black rayon crepon and fully lined to within 2" of bottom hem. From a description of a black [nursing] dress online.

The Champagne fairs were a circuit of six cloth fairs in the towns of Champagne and Brie, changing location every two months and spanning the year from January to October. At their height, in the 13th century, the Champagne fairs linked the cloth-producing cities of the Low Countries with the Italian dyeing and exporting centers. The fairs, which were already well-organized at the start of the century, were one of the earliest manifestations of a linked European economy, a characteristic of the High Middle Ages.

The towns provided huge warehouses, still to be seen at Provins. From the north came woolens and linen cloth. Wikipedia.

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modern lettering
Refers to Art Nouveau lettering popular at the turn of the 20th century and still commonly used on entrance signs for Paris metro stations.

"a kind of helical ramp"
Possibly a reference to the Riemann Sphere, which is built in large part upon complex numbers and which look something like a helix.
Riemann Sphere.jpg

Larry, Moe, and Curly's

Twill = A fabric with diagonal parallel ribs. 2. The weave used to produce such a fabric. TRANSITIVE VERB: Inflected forms: twilled, twill·ing, twills To weave (cloth) so as to produce a pattern of diagonal parallel ribs. From The American Heritage Dictionary

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Earl's Court Wheel
Earl's Court is an area of London. A Ferris Wheel there.

Another "paramorphic" parallel to our time: The London Eye, a huge Ferris Wheel built for the Millenium Exposition of 2000. The trip around is not, as Yasmeen notes, thermodynamically reversible, since one would be "changed forever" in the course of the journey around the wheel (in the Heraclitean sense that "No man steps in the same river twice"--the river changes.)
This is the connection between entropy in thermodynamics and entropy in information theory, embodied in Maxwell's Demon [6], at the center of Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49, now back as a problem in non-Euclidean geometries and multiple dimensions.

A whelk is a large marine gastropod (snail) found in temperate waters.
Popular in the early 20th C as fast food sold from stalls in the street. You extracted the somewhat bogey-like creature with a pin and ate it.

five pound note, like in the song

Chinese Turkestan railway shares
Chinese Turkestan is where the Chums of Chance are currently, in the sub-desertine vehicle.

jellied eel
An East End of London delicacy Wikipedia

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. Founded in 1895, the "Hammers" are playing their home games at Boleyn Ground aka "Upton Park". Yep, soccer. However, it's highly dubious that Upton Park could be seen from Earl's Court, even at 300 feet. Much easier to see Chelsea, Fulham or Queen's Park Rangers grounds, all very close to Earl's Court.

lupine liminality
Latin: lupus = wolf, limen = threshold. Allusion to the proverbial wolf at the door.



a kind of flower. Wikipedia

Cf. page 239:McTaggart . . . Hardy. G.H. (Godfrey Harold) Hardy (1877-1947),famous Cambridge mathematician Wikipedia. He wrote "A Mathematician's Apology" Wikipedia Full Text. Knew all the most famous intellectuals and was himself very influential.

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Harwich... German Sea
Harwich is a town in Essex, England, located on the coast with the North Sea to the east.The North Sea historically also known as the German Ocean. By the late nineteenth century, German Sea was a rare, scholarly usage ...

"The German Sea" is also a public house (p. 489).

Hook of Holland
Hoek van Holland in the Netherlands. It is not a hook but the southwest corner of South-Holland province (Dutch hoek = corner).

Hook of Holland is also the name of the ferry port, an entry point into Holland and Europe. It is served by ferry sailings from Harwich and is the main entry port when travelling from the UK. It is less than 15 miles southwest of The Hague. [Port of Hook of Holland].

madhouse at Osnabrück
OSNABRUCK, a town and episcopal see of Germany, in the Prussian province of Hanover, situated on the Hase, 70 m. W. of the city of Hanover, 31 m. by rail N.E. of Munster, and at the junction of the lines Hamburg-Cologne and BerlinAmsterdam. Pop. (1905) 59,5 80. The lunatic asylum occupies a former nunnery.

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plug hats
a plug hat may be a top hat or a bowler hat.

the historic port town of Cobh Ireland. Many ocean liners sailed from there, including the Titanic... the port of Queenstown (now known as Cobh)

Page 506

Avenue of classy mansions in Cleveland

Euclid (300 BC) is also the father of geometry. wikipedia entry check out the section on optics and the theory of mirrors.

elms in Cleveland
(Before Dutch elm disease?)

went on for years
the Krakatoa eruption put dust and ashes aloft for years.

The correct name is Krakatau. It is a volcanic, uninhabited Indonesia's island lies between Java and Sumatra. A series of cataclysmic explosions of August 26 - 27, 1883, the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history, collapsed the northern two-thirds of the island beneath the sea, generating an immense tsunamis that ravaged adjeacent coastlines and killed over 36,000 perople. Tephra (volcanic rock and glass fragments) from the eruption fell as far as 1,500 miles downwind in the days following the explosion. The finest fragments were propelled high into the stratosphere, spreading outward as a broad cloud acroos the entire equatorial belt in only two weeks. These particles would remain suspended in the atmosphere for a long time. For years, the earth experienced exotic colors in the sky, halos around the sun and moon, and a spectacular array of anomalous sunsets and sunrises. In the year following the equption, average global temperatures fell by as much as 1.2° Celsius. Weather patterns continued to be chaotic for years and temperature did not return to normal until 1888.
For more about 1883 eruption, map, pictures, current volcanic activities etc see Krakatau 1 and
Krakatau 2.

Krakatoa...child's story

The 21 Balloons? which could have been a Chums of Chance adventure!

the 'short-order' cook?

Page 507

I thought sunsets were just supposed to look like that...

Suggestive of the sentiments in Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood [7]

Also brought to mind The Orb's Little Fluffy Clouds (1990) in which Rickie Lee Jones answers the question.....

What were the skies like when you were young? [by saying]

They went on forever And they -- when I We lived in Arizona And the skies always had little fluffy clouds And they were long and clear And there were lots of stars, at night And when it rained it would all turn It -- they were beautiful The most beautiful skies as a matter of fact The sunsets were purple and red And yellow and on fire And the clouds would catch the colors everywhere That's -- it's neat Because I used to look at them all the time When I was little You don't see that'

Circling the rabbit hole....In this song, The Orb uses a harmonica sample from the song The Man With The Harmonica from the film Once Upon a Time in the West [8]. The film in turn seems to have strong Pynchon/AtD overtones, (pre-tones??) -- Frank vs. Harmonica, the railroads destroying the Old West...etc. Pynchon showing a strong preference for harmonicas, old movies and songs and protagonists named Frank.

how little I cared
(Blaming Krakatoa???)Seems to me she is saying that her feelings for Bert faded, as everything was, maybe, supposed to, as had the fantastic sunsets caused by Krakatoa when they got back to ordinary.

palm upward
One of many "old wives' tales" described in this web page.

Prospect Avenue
Once fashionable street in Cleveland, Ohio.

leaf-spring suspension
A form of suspension for wheeled vehicles. Still very occasionally used in automobiles, but more likely nowadays to be seen on a perambulator. A "leaf" here is a long thin strip of tempered steel (they may also be stacked for greater strength).

the excess kerosene when made.

lands around the Cuyahoga River.

Page 508

Major river in Ohio that goes around Cleveland. Famous in the 60's for literally catching on fire from the combustible pollutants in it. Here, Pynchon shows that industrial pollution and its effect on the river. "It's like looking down into the sky".

your exact face
(How common?)

allowing Erlys do the work
Error in first edition. Should be "allowing Erlys to do the work..."

Page 509

descending minor triad
in music, an interval of three half tones.
No, the triad is a chord, so it's three notes moving downwards (soh-mi-doh) forming a minor chord.

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
Yellow-orange roses.

any composite plant of the genus Cosmos, of tropical America, some species of which are cultivated for their showy flowers.

Page 510

first momentous glance
Page 349 only?

Yale University students, called so after founder Eli Yale.

the act of snubbing, treating scornfully or with disdain (OED)

tuned to a 440 A
the elusive 440 A. ... Today's A above middle C has been set at 440 cycles per second or 440 Hertz. ...

Page 511

Cf Rose in James Cameron's Titanic.

Root Tubsmith
Most likely a fictional character.

Lazarus Fuchs (1833-1902), a German mathematician. He worked on differential equations and the theory of functions, ordinary differential equations with complex functions as coefficients, elliptic integrals, etc. Fuchs.

Herman Schwarz (1843-1921), a German mathematician, known for his work in complex analysis. He worked in Halle, Göttingen and then Berlin, dealing with the subjects of function theory, differential geometry and the calculus of variation. Schwarz.

Ferdinand Frobenius (1849-1917), a German mathematician. [9], possibly important here for his contributions to Group Theory and to topology [10]. He received his doctorate from the Univeristy of Berlin supervised by Weierstrass. Later, he taught mathematics there as well. He combined results from the theory of algebraic equations, geometry and number theory, which led him to the representation theory and the character theory of groups. Frobenius.

Professor Manning
Henry Parker Manning (1859-1956) In 1889 he entered Johns Hopkins University to study mathematics, astronomy and physics. When he received his Ph.D. degree in 1891, his first printed paper had already appeared in the American Journal of Mathematics. He was appointed instructor in mathematics at Brown that same year, and “with his advent,” Professor Raymond C. Archibald would later write, “a new era in the development of mathematics at Brown was ushered in.” From 1893 to 1908 Manning offered courses in higher mathematics never previously available at Brown, courses with names like “Theory of functions: algebraic functions, Riemann surfaces, and Abelian functions,” “Substitutions and transformation groups,” and “Quaternions, non-Euclidean geometry, and hyperspace.” After 1908 there were others in the department able to teach higher mathematics. His publications included Non-Euclidean Geometry in 1901, the first English language text in this subject, Irrational Numbers and their Representation by Sequences and Series in 1906, and Geometry of Four Dimensions in 1914. [11]

language difference
Kit and Root both speak English, but in different mathematical dialects.

Second largest city of France; Mediterannean port, legendarily corrupt.

species of tarantella
Tarantella is a fast dance or dance tune in 6/8 time. Probably named for Taranto, not tarantula.

dreamed it

Page 349, at R.W. Vibe's "Italianate town house." Dally confirms this on page five hundred and twelve.

Cigar Deck
A deck on a luxury yacht, hotel or residence where 'gentlemen' went to smoke cigars.... "venue has everything - including a full bar, cigar deck, and dance floor. ..."

Page 512

how to stop looking
Cf p27.

Plant or flower of the genus Lobelia. At least one member of the genus is blue (Blue Lobelia.

Victor Herbert
Irish-born American composer (1859-1924) of songs, operettas, light classics.

Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (1876-1948), born in Venice, composer of many extremely popular operas.

Page 513

She smlled falsely
Error in first edition. Should be "She smiled falsely."

A hick, as in the carnie's cry, "Hey, Rube".

Maybe, but given that Kit's age is at issue, may refer to the fact that Reuben was the eldest of the twelve sons of Jacob/Israel (Genesis 29.32).

sailing along on Moonlight Bay
Apparently someone overheard Kit's dialog. This phrase would become part of the song "On Moonlight Bay," Madden (lyrics) and Weinrich (music), 1912.

Page 515

Snubbing, cutting.

memories of desert plateau, mountian peaks...some unexpected river
Instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with the back-country Rocky Mountains. Cf also the description of the landscape Frank's riding through on page 394/395.

twenty-knot push
The ship is making twenty knots (20 nautical miles per hour), hence generating a twenty knot wind toward the stern.

Featureless? ongoing present becoming the future as compared to his memories.

The watery void of Genesis, before creation of the land and life.

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.

The ship's displacement (measure of its size).

HMS Dreadnought gave her name to a new philosophy that governed the design of capital ships beginning in the 1890s and continuing past the 1920s: high speed, heavy armor, heavy investment in the "main battery" and de-emphasis of secondary battery, main battery comprising the largest practicable guns mounted in turrets on the ship's centerline.

Perhaps a deceptive name for the company; Slavonia was an inland province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, northwest of Croatia; Trieste would have been in Slovenia.

Apparently a maker of steamships' boilers.

Parsons turbines
Cf. The Steam Turbine, by Sir Charles A. Parsons ---The Rede Lecture, 1911. Was manufactured and named for Parsons--this lecture was after its extensive use.

British men-o'-war

Page 516

shell-rooms-to-be and giant powder magazines
Stupendica contains spaces that will belong to Maximilian on her transformation. (Indeed, she must contain the shells and powder too.)

circular cabins
A battleship turret extends several decks below the gunhouse. No doubt there were stacks of these circular cabins.

twelve-inch barrels
The typical main armament for dreadnoughts in this period (1904) was 12 inch guns - the guns having barrels. By WWI, newer dreadnoughts had 14-16" armament.

shelter deck

to fold upward
Transformer fashion.


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. [12] Camouflage techniques used in World War I were developed in part by magician Jasper Maskelyne, a descendant of the Astronomer Royal in Mason & Dixon.

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


less horizontally disposed
less level

Passenger liner has as many decks as possible above waterline. Warship has as many as possible below waterline, hence it's "taller."

Trieste is a city and port in northeastern Italy right on the border with Slovenia. It is located at the head of the Gulf of Trieste on the Adriatic Sea, about 70 miles east of Venice across the Gulf of Venice. The city had been occupied, administrated, annexed by various countries in the past. As late as early 19th century Napoleon took it for France, and in 1813 Austrian empire annexed it and kept it until the end of World War I. In 1920 it was transfered to Italy. During World War II German occupied the city until 1945 when Yugoslav partisans under Tito briefly occupied the city. Between 1947 to 1954 Trieste was governed by British and American. Finally, in 1954 the city of Trieste went to Italy and the southern suburb went to Yugoslavia (now Slovenia).

Lloyd Arsenale
Lloyd Shipyard, Austria's commercial counterpart of Stabilimento Tecnico. In 1833 a company with the name Lloyd Austriaco was founded as a maritime insurance organization. Three years later a new section, the Shipping Section was established and running company's own vessels. In 1853 Lloyd Austriaco started buidling its own shipyard, called Arsenale, both for building new ships and maintenance of the fleet. The shipyard was completed and fully operative in 1861. In 1919 Lloyd Austriaco changed its name to Lloyd Triestino, currently still operating in Trieste. [Lloyd Arsenale].

Stabilimento Tecnico
Technical Plant, a shipyard. Stabilimento Tecnico was an Austro-Hungarian shipbuilding company based in Trieste. It served the Austro-Hungarian Navy on a large scale and was the largest shipyard of that country. [Stabilimento]. Four Tegetthoff class dreadnoughts were built by Stabilimento Tecnico for the Austro-Hungarian Navy: SMS Viribus Unitis, SMS Tegetthoff, SMS Prinz Eugen and SMS Szent Istvan. They were of about 21,000 ton displacement and a speed of 20 kt with twelve 12-inch guns. Tegetthoff was a 19th century Austrian admiral.[Tegetthoff battleships].
Stabilimento Tecnico and Lloyd Triestino are both currently active. In fact these two establishments are the largest industrial organizations in Trieste.

Page 517

Pynchon writes about bilocation in a peculiar sense: not necessarily one person being in two places, but one place being two (or one language being two, Dutch/Flemish, Serbian/Croatian).

Different witnesses.....no longer in either, simply appearing unforseen...
Sounds a lot like the quantum mechanical measurement process. An electron can't be located until a measurement. May be easiest unerstood via the "Schroedinger's cat" picture. [13]

In Italian promontorio is headland, a small stripe of mountain-like terrain surrounded on all but one side by see.

O.I.C. Bodine
Gotta be Pig Bodine from V. and GR and descendant of Fender-Belly Bodine in Mason & Dixon.

Naw, three different Bodines. (1) Fender-Belly is the patriarch (flourished in the 1760s); (2) the stoker O.I.C. is in his prime in the decade around 1910; (3) Pig serves in WW2 and is still around to go roistering with Benny in the 1960s. The strangest thing about the Bodines—a family with saltwater in their DNA—is that they dropped anchor in Minnesota . . . or ever even visited such an inland spot as Albert Lea.

"O.I.C." is an initialism for Ohio Improved Chester, which is a breed of hog. Jack London actually raised them on his ranch. As has been pointed out, "O.I.C." standing for "Officer in Charge" in the Bodine context is a non-starter, as Bodine is neither an officer nor in charge of anything. He's a stoker, one of the lowest class of laborers aboard. Also, "oic" does have a piggish ring to it ("oink" without the "n"). And of course it also works as Internet slang: "Oh, I see," although this sounds a bit too cutesy for Pynchon, IMHO, and besides, as pointed out above, O.I.C. Bodine ain't the Bodine seen in other Pynchon novels, but most likely the father or uncle of Pig of V. and Gravity's Rainbow.

In V., Pig's first appearance in a Pynchon novel (he also appears in "Lowlands," a Pynchon short story — Flange's "big gaping idiot buddy"), he brags of his Harley motorcycle (called Hogs, in the vernacular): "Ain't an SP car made that can take my Harley." (p.15) Perhaps this Bodine was given the nickname "O.I.C." by his Navy buddies as a joke, because the initialism stands for a breed of hog and "Officer in Charge" (which he's far from) and sounds like a pig's utterance (We know his putative son's or nephew's laugh sounds like a pig ("Hyeugh, hyeugh ... it was, as Pig intended, horribly obscene" V., p.14 — so maybe it's inherited). And perhaps Pynchon gave him the last name of Bodine to connect him visually and/or temperamentally with the character Jethro Bodine of The Beverly Hillbillies (1962-1971), also a big, not-too-smart goofball.

fermented potato mash
Cf Veikko's vodka, page 82.

four shafts
Four propellers.

HMS Mauretania, launched 1907, sister ship of the ill-fated Lusitania (the sinking of the latter propelled the US into WW I). Served as Cunard liner, troopship, hospital ship in WW I.

Zu befehl, Herr Hauptheitzer
German: Ready for orders, Chief Stoker. (Should be Zu Befehl, Herr Hauptheizer.)

Black Gang
The stoking crew, turned black by coal dust.

German: Master Chief Stoker. (Should be: Oberhauptheizer.)

German military pistol.

"Dampf mehr!"
German for "more steam!" (Should be: Mehr Dampf!)

If this is an error, as it appears to be (and as it's marked by German native speakers), it may stem from a common phrase such as Wir haben keinen Dampf mehr, we have no more steam. Is there any remote possibility that Dampf mehr! was a form used in shipboard orders (spoken or telegraphed) at the time of the action?
Following up this nagging question, I have found some photos of engine room telegraphs with German on the dials: here and here. Neither refers to Dampf at all (instead volle Kraft = full power, volle Fahrt = full speed). These finds seem to eliminate the possibility that Dampf mehr is a phrase Pynchon collected in this context.


syntonic wireless

See p.397 and p. 229. The comparison of wireless communications with messages from the spirit world echoes Kipling's short story Wireless, Scribner's Magazine, August 1902. There are many Kipling echoes in AtD.

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ignorant off
Error in first edition. Should be "ignorant of".

Marconi room
Radio shack.

British and German battle groups were engaged off the Moroccan coast
This could be a reference to the First Moroccan Crisis (a.k.a. Tangier Crisis) taking place between March 1905 and May 1906. This would be in keeping with the timeline of the novel, however, there seems to have been no engagement of troops between British and German forces. On the other hand, this could also be a reference to the Agadir Crisis (a.k.a. The Second Moroccan Crisis) of 1911 where the German gunboat, Panther, was deployed to the Moroccan port of Agadir, threatening British naval supremacy. Although the later altercation seems unlikely given the timeline of the story, Pynchon notes that the S.S. Stupendica received its message "from somewhere else not quite in the world, more like from a continuum lateral to it."

design maximum of nine degrees
Maximilian will right herself from a nine-degree heel but may be in trouble if she leans over farther.

Stage in the life cycle of many insects, including the cockroach.

"Porca miseria"
Italian: good grief, for heaven's sake, dammit.

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tight circle
Military as inane as circus clowns.

southeast by east
The compass rose has 32 points, each 11 and a quarter degrees from the next. Southeast by east is one point to the east of southeast, i.e., 123 and three-quarters degrees clockwise from north.

deeper levels
(Eg particle vs wave?)

A "deeper level" where dualities are resolved
Engine room is far below the main deck, therefore a deeper level. The Stupendica/Maximilian duality is resolved there because it's a shared space.


Maybe the allusion refers to Chinese boxes, one box containing another box, containing another, etc? In the last box, at the "deeper level" dualities are resolved... don't know...

nicht wahr
German: aint it true?

Graz is the capital of the Austrian province of Styria. It is the second largest city, after Vienna, in Austria. Graz's old town is one of the best-preserved city centers in Central Europe and is on the UNESCO list of World Cultural Heritage Sites.

Most likely an insult meaning "below-decks crew".

Page 520

a Teutonic
Ethnically a German.

a seaport in Northern Morocco on the west end of the Strait of Gibralta, about 500 miles northeast from Agadir, another Atlantic seaport. (Casablanca is midway between them.)

Mulai Ahmed er-Raisuli
Infamous Morrocan outlaw/warlord. From this website: "Several decades before Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and Islamic insurgents, an international crisis ignited between the United States and the Middle East. In May 1904 Moroccan warlord Mulai Ahmed er Raisuli kidnapped Ion Perdicaris, a wealthy Greek-American resident of Tangier, in an attempt to extort money from the Sultan of Morocco. President Theodore Roosevelt responded with his "big stick" approach to diplomacy by dispatching a squadron of seven battleships to the Moroccan coast with the order: "Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead." The nine-week standoff, with US troops and ships in Tangier Bay and Raisuli holding fort in the mountains, exposed the impotence of emerging American power and a critical misunderstanding about Moroccan politics. When it was discovered that Perdicaris was not an American citizen after all, the US government kept the embarrassing episode a secret until 1933. Profiting royally from the conflict, Raisuli built his palace, which he called the "House of Tears"." another source

Agadir, Queen of the Iron Coast
Agadir is a city in southwest Morocco, capital of the Souss-Massa-Dra region. Wikipedia From the Encyclopedia Britannica: "Sixty miles farther south lies Mogador, beyond which the coast becomes more and more inaccessible and dangerous in winter, being known to navigators as the " Iron Coast." From Cape Sim (Ras Tagriwalt), to m. south of Mogador, the direction is due south to Cape Ghir (Ighir Ufrani), the termination of Jebel Ida u Taman, a spur of the Atlas. Beyond this headland lies Agadir (Agadir Ighir), the Santa Cruz Mayor or Santa Cruz de Berberia of the Spaniards, formerly known as the Gate of the Sudan.' It is a little town with white battlements three-quarters of a mile in circumference, on a steep eminence 600 ft. high." old postcards from Agadir

colonists...justify German interests...shadow-colonists
In July 1911, the german gunboat "Panther" approached the harbour of Agadir under the pretext to protect german citizens from Sus-tribesmen, resulting in the "Agadir-Crisis" and nearly triggering WW I three years early. As there were no german citizens to protect in Agadir, so one had to be dispatched from Mogador. See Morocco Crisis of 1911. and source

...destined for plantation...
Typo in First Edition. ???

Sus... Susi
The Sous Basin Wikipedia and it‘s inhabitants, probably.

Abdel Aziz
Sultan of Morocco 1894-1908 (aged 10-24yrs.) Wikipedia

Canary Islands, about 80 miles off Morocco‘s Atlantic coast Wikipedia

Many would go crazy and set out in small boats...
Another paramorpic mirror image of our century. The Canaries, a Spanish possession, are the goal of untold thousands of would-be African entrants to the EU, i.e. a route of illegal immigration.

Lübeck is the second-largest city in Schleswig-Holstein (northern Germany). Wikipedia

The Berbers (also called Amazigh people or Imazighen, "free men") are an ethnic group indigenous to Northwest Africa, speaking the Berber languages of the Afroasiatic family. In actuality, Berber is a generic name given to numerous heterogeneous ethnic groups that share similar cultural, political, and economic practices. It is not a term originated by the group itself. Wikipedia. Berbers of southwestern Morocco usually belong to the ones known as Chleuhs pics

Page 521

tree-climbing goats
Can be seen often, esp. in Morocco Pic

argan trees
The Argan (Argania spinosa, syn. A. sideroxylon Roem. & Schult.) is a species of tree endemic to the calcareous semi-desert Sous valley of southwestern Morocco. It is the sole species in the genus Argania. Wikipedia

The Gnawa or Gnaoua refers at once to a style of Moroccan music with sub-Saharan Africa origins or influence, an ethnic group and religious order at least in part descended from former slaves from Sub-Saharan Africa or black Africans migrated in caravans with the Trans-Saharan trade, or a combination of both Wikipedia more on Gnaoua Gnaoua music sample mp3 nicely made site on Gnawa

mlouk gnaoui
Mlouk is the plural of melk, a supernatural entity envoked in the Gnawa rituals. Various types are known and they are distinguished by colors. The following is a google translation of the relevant paragraph from this site: "The mlouk are of male or female sex, Moslems or Jews. Their color corresponds to their origins. Thus one distinguishes the mlouks from the sea (bahriyin) to which one allots the light blue; the celestial ones (samaouiyin), have as a color dark blue; the mlouk of the forest (rijal el ghaba), originating in Africa, have as a color the black just like the mlouk pertaining to the troop of Sidi Mimoun, finally the red mlouk (Al homar), related to blood and which haunt the slaughter-houses, have as a color the red. The white and the green, colors symbols of Islam sunnite, are reserved to the called upon saints, in particular Moulay Abdelkader Jilali and Chorfa. To the female mlouk three colors are allotted: the yellow for the coquettery of Lala Reflected, the red for Lala Rkia for its capacity to cure the menorrhagia and the black for Lala Aïcha Kendisha because of its Sudanese origin. The Jewish mlouks which are sometimes called upon after the troop of the female mlouk have the black color. Incense fumigations of various perfumes accompany the invocations by these mlouks, with a preference however for the benzoin or jaoui."

Seigneurs Noirs
French: Black Lords. According to the above translation, those most probably are jewish mlouks.

Bardo State
Tibetan Bhuddist belief in a state between two mortal incarnations, during which one has direct perception of reality--for better or worse, Karmically speaking. [14]

Habsburg navy
Austrian Navy

Mogador road
Mogador" is a city and tourist resort in Morocco, near Marrakech on the Atlantic coast. (31°30′47″N) Mogador is another name for Essaouira Wkipedia about 70 miles north of Agadir. old postcards Mogador

Tawil Balak
In the Liner Notes for the Album "Love Songs of Lebanon" downloadable from this site the song Tawil Balak Ya Habboub translates as "Patience, My Love" - Tawil Balak being the Patience part. (Thats one nice soundtrack, btw!)

"Tawil", according to web-searches, is arabic for "allegorical explanation/interpretation/exegese" (of the Qu‘ran and Sunna texts). "Balak" might refer to the according Tora reading (Parsah) Wikipedia. cf. Balaam‘s Ass p. 432. Do the cosmopolitan regulars at the bar like Moises spend their time interpreting holy texts?


a seaport in northwest Belgium. Ostende in German and French. It is the largest city at the Belgian North Sea coast. (It is about 1,700 miles from Agadir, Morocco.)

The Maritime Digital Encyclopedia lists a "Dutch Vessel" named "Formalhaut" pic.

According to several websites 1 2 3 Wikipedia etc. Fomalhaut is the 17th or 18th brightest star as seen from our planet and is located in the constellation called Pisces Austrinus (Southern Fish). The name derives from the Arabic Fum (or Fam) al-Hut, meaning "Mouth of the Fish" or according to a few web-resources the contributor has just visited, "Mouth of the Whale". The latter would mean its a strong connotation with the Biblical Legend of Jonah and the Whale (see annotations for this page below (not a spoiler, i hope).

Among most readers of Science-Fiction "Fomalhaut" is a location as common as "Aldebaran" or "Cassiopeia".

As per today (07 01 10) the Wikipedia-Entry on Demon Fomalhaut is just a stub. According to most sites the contributor just visited, claiming credibility in the Book of Enoch Wikipedia and due to some more non-canonical catergorizations, Fomalhaut seems to be a member of the infamous gang of Fallen Angels, a daredevil companero to Lucifer that is. This sub-summation in a hierarchy of angels might refer to some astrological/-nomical constellations of the star Fomalhaut as is.

As usual, with TP, we dont know for sure if theres some outlandish pun intended/-cluded in the name of a person or thing. What, to give variety to it, about a german compositive noun? Ger. "formal" = formal (like in formal behavior) + "haut" = skin; "Formal Skin".


Jonah... Massa
Jonah Wikipedia Entry "Jonah on the Web" From the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica website: "Some 60 m. farther south (from Agadir), at the mouth of a river known by the same name, is the roadstead of Massa, with a mosque popularly reputed the scene of Jonah's restoration to terra firma."

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Two Fishes, two Jonahs, two Agadirs?
The Jewish Encyclopedia 1901-1906 mentions rabbinic literature regarding two fishes - one male, one female - having swallowed Jonah: check out the "fish" paragraph here. Both Tarshish (Cadiz), the "Agadir" in southwestern Spain, and Agadir in Morocco likely were founded by the Phoenicians: "Cadiz bears a Phoenician name, a deformation of Gaddir (wall), which we find in the Berber city of Agadir in Morroco." source

Wikipedia entries on Kasbah and Casbah The Casbah of Agadir as seen from above

Ighir Ufrani
a.k.a Cape Ghir, a cape north of Agadir.

Mogador herring...alimzah...tasargelt
From the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica Morocco Entry: "Occasionally a small shoal (of mackarel) may be found as far south as Mogador. Soles, turbot, bream, bass, conger eel and mullet are common along the coast, and southern Morocco is visited occasionally by shoals of a large fish called the azlimzah (sciaena aquila), rough scaled and resembling a cod, and the tasargelt (Temnodon saltator), the "blue fish" of North America. Crayfish, prawns, oysters and mussels swarm in the rocky places, but the natives have no proper method of catching them, and edible crabs seem unknown. The tunny, pilchard and sardine, and a kind of shad known as the "Mogador herring," all prove at times of practical importance."

azlimzah (sciaena aquila) pic (the lower one).

tasargelt (Temnodon saltator) pic (not sure if this is the real thing!)


According to the Dutch Wikipedia and its link to the english site this means "pier". pic

Below-decks storage space in the stern of a vessel. [15].

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

Page 523

moon deck

lower orlop
Lowest deck of a multi-decked vessel (OED).

Boats or larger craft with triangular sails rigged fore-and-aft (picture: [16]common in the Mediterannean [17] after introduction by the Romans in the 3rd century.

Dally had expected Bria would be the first...
Editorial error? If one substitutes "Dally" with "Erlys" this sentence makes much more sense.

Page 524

Second occurrence of this misspelling of exhilarated. (Cf. page 236, line 38: "exhiliration".)

Piazza Grande
The central square in many Italian cities.

Cf page 353. Luigi Denza (1846-1922), Italian composer, most famous for his "Funiculi, funicula".

Antonio Smareglia
Italian opera composer (1854-1929).

Annotation Index

Part One:
The Light Over the Ranges


Part Two:
Iceland Spar


Part Three:


Part Four:
Against the Day


Part Five:
Rue du Départ


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