Difference between revisions of "Chapter 10: 94-104"

Latest revision as of 13:37, 10 April 2012

Page 94

We feel as components of Gravity, His Love
Gravity's [real] Rainbow then.

Orrery
or·re·ry NOUN: Inflected forms: pl. or·re·ries A mechanical model of the solar system. ETYMOLOGY: After Charles Boyle, Fourth Earl of Orrery (1676–1731), for whom one was made.

Page 95

having travers'd the Sea
Traverse is the family name in ATD and Vineland. Metaphor, fer sure. For more, see ch. 3, p. 14

"Georgian"
Uranus. [1]

Mappemondes
mappemond map-ð-mõnd a map of the world (obs.) the world itself (hist.) [ L.L. mappa mundi ] Mappemond: the representation of real and artificial worlds. First used, it seems as the name Les Mappemodes for a book of maps, 1200-1500, published in the sixteenth Century.

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June 6, 1761

Vector of desire
telescope; with oeuvre allusion to lots of vectors in ATD and reflected, refracted light.

Sappho's Fragment 95
Greek female poet most of whose work only survives in fragments. Pynchon uses the most modern translation. Below are others. [Cut if too much, please]. This fragment captures a sentiment TRP seems to like--daylight and what evening can mean. See ATD, passim
Fr. 95 Evening, thou that bringest all that bright morning scattered; thou bringest the sheep, the goat, the child back to her mother. H. T. Wharton Thus imitated by Byron:--

O Hesperus, thou bringest all good things-- Home to the weary, to the hungry cheer, To the young bird the parent's brooding wings, The welcome stall to the o'erlaboured steer; Whate'er of peace about our hearthstone clings, Whate'er our household gods protect of dear, Are gathered round us by thy look of rest; Thou bring'st the child too to its mother's breast. Byron's Don Juan, iii. 107. And by Tennyson:--

The ancient poetess singeth, that Hesperus all things bringeth, Smoothing the wearied mind: bring me my love, Rosalind. Thou comest morning or even; she cometh not morning or evening. False-eyed Hesper, unkind, where is my sweet Rosalind? Leonine Elegiacs, 1830-1884. Hesperus brings all things back Which the daylight made us lack, Brings the sheep and goats to rest, Brings the baby to the breast. Edwin Arnold, 1869

Hesper, thou bringest back again All that the gaudy daybeams part, The sheep, the goat, back to their pen, The child home to his mother's heart. Frederick Tennyson, 1890. Evening, all things thou bringest Which dawn spread apart from each other; The lamb and the kid thou bringest, Thou bringest the boy to his mother. J. A. Symonds, 1883.
Hesper, whom the poet call'd the Bringer home of all good things.
Tennyson,Locksley Hall Sixty Years After
1886 From the Etymologicum Magnum, where it is adduced to show the meaning of aiôs, 'dawn.' The fragment occurs also in Demetrius, as an example of Sappho's grace. One cannot but believe that Catullus had in his mind some such hymeneal ode of Sappho's as that in which this fragment must have occurred when he wrote his Vesper adest, juvenes, consurgite: Vesper Olympo, etc. (lxii.), part of which was imitated in the colloquy between Opinion and Truth in Ben Jonson's The Barriers.

Page 97

Dutch Ado about Nothing
Needless to annotate, maybe, but this is wordplay on Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing which has the major characters scurrying about in amorous pursuits and confusions. So unlike the usually "stolid" Dutch, as the text has it.

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Page 99

Ridottoes of Excess
see Ridottoes, ch. 7, p. 71

Page 100

False Bay

Body of water defined by Cape Hangklip (Dutch/Afrikaans for "Hang-cliff") and the Cape Peninsula in the extreme South-West of South Africa, see WIKI.

monomaniackal in her Pursuit
Possible allusion to Moby Dick and Ahab's own insane quest for something white (a whale vs a baby)? Additionally, in Moby Dick, the Pequod crew hear the story of the "Town-Ho" while off the coast of South Africa. It is the story of a 1st mate mistreating a lower deck hand and an eventual uprising and mutiny. Eventually the mutiny is quelled and the leaders of the mutiny are beaten. But in the end Moby Dick kills the 1st mate.

when Wesley came to preach at Newcastle
John Wesley, founder of Methodism. Scene on following page follows this lead, in that Wesley tried to come up with a "method" to where anyone could understand and reach an experience providing them with the truth of his own religious experience and awakening. See WIKI.

Since Harry Clasper out-keel'd the Lad from Hetton-le-Hole
An anachronism. Harry Clasper (5 July 1812 – 1870) was a famous British professional rower and boat-builder. He is credited with having invented the outrigger and spoon-shaped oars.

Clasper was a professional oarsman and an innovative boat-builder in the middle of the 19th century, based on the River Tyne in the north of England. In the early 1840s, he developed the first working outrigger, which helped him win the Royal Thames Regatta in 1844. The following year, he won the "Championship of the World" prize, again on the River Thames.

Page 101

waiting for a direct experience of Christ
See note on Wesley on previous page, 100.

White Horsemen, carrying long Rifles styl'd "Sterloops," each with an inverted Silver Star upon the Cheek-Piece.
See page 342.

Page 103

Barbary Pirates
See WIKI.

Levant Company
See WIKI.

twas Inconvenience which provided the recurring Motrix
Inconvenience again, see previous definition seeming apt here: Fender-Belly Bodine's ship, the H.M.S. Inconvenience appears again in 2006 in Against the Day.

Page 104

Ditters von Dittersdorf
Austrian composer and violinist, see WIKI.

Annotation Index