Pages 371-383

2014-03-26T03:10:26Z

Dweissma: Allusion to Faust?

{{GR PbP Text}}

==Page 372==
'''Berliner Luft''' 
German: "air of Berlin." It is an often-used phrase, in the sense of the special Berlin atmosphere.

==Page 375==
375.21 '''something in that rocket needed potassium permanganate''' 
The turbopump used ''calcium'' permanganate. Whatever caused the shortage of the purple stuff, it wasn't the rocket.

==Page 376==
376.31-33 '''the knight who leaps perpetually -- across the chessboard of the zone''' 
In ''Through the Looking Glass,'' Alice attempts to get to the other end of the chessboard to become a queen herself. Along the way she is helped, without much success by the White Knight. 
The conversation and reactions here between Saure and Slothrop are almost a pastiche of the Alice stories. By 1973, when ''GR'' appeared, "acid" and Alice were of course linked forever in the popular consciousness -- largely thanks to Jefferson Airplane.

[[image:zorro-poster.jpg|thumb|100px|right]]376.36 '''Zorro? The Green Hornet?''' 
[[XYZ#zorro|Zorro]] and the Green Hornet are two masked superheroes Slothrop would know from comics and movies. Douglas Fairbanks starred in ''The Mark of Zorro'' in 1920, not 1932, as in [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger's first ''Companion'' edition, corrected in the second ed.]]. Tyrone (!) Power starred in a sound remake in 1940. Britt Reid, the secret identity of The Green Hornet, was the son of Dan Reid, the nephew of the [[L#loneranger|Lone Ranger]].

==Page 377==
377.1-2 '''The wrong word was Schwarzgerat.''' 
Yes, the mythical White Woman is scared away by mention of the "black tool." Clever innuendo/double entendre here. Also possiblly underscoring that the White Woman relates to Virgo(?).

377.31-35 '''photo...long, stiff sausage of very large diameter being stuffed into his mouth...though the hand or agency...is not visible''' 
Reminiscent of the photos of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret%2C_Duchess_of_Argyll Margaret, Duchess of Argyll] fellating a naked man where only the man's face and torso, not his head, is shown.

==Page 378==
'''Jubilee Jim''' 
Slothrop’s song evokes the pre-industrial peddler Jim Fisk mentioned in [[Pages 20-29#Page 27|''The Berkshire Hills'']].

==Page 379==
'''A stork flies over, going home...''' 
Could this be an allusion to Goethe's Faust, line 746: "Der Kranich nach der Heimat strebt." (The crane endeavors to reach the homeland.)?

==Page 380==
'''Hauptstufe!''' 
Compare the radio Superman’s words as he is about to fly: "Up, up, and away!"

==Page 382==
382.3 '''Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree''' 
A 1942 hit song for the Andrews Sisters.

382.15 '''Mickey Rooney''' 
Rooney was in Germany, attached to an Army entertainment unit, at the time of the Potsdam Conference but was unable to go to Potsdam and meet Truman himself. However, there is a more likely, if more obscure, reason for the movie star’s presence here: Rocketman’s second magazine, ''Hello, Pal Comics'', only lasted for three issues. ''The Comic Buyer’s Guide'' notes, though, that the comic was unusual because it featured a photograph of a movie star on the cover of each issue. The cover of issue #1 was devoted to Mickey Rooney! Also see my article: "Rooney and the Rocketman" [http://www.ham.muohio.edu/~krafftjm/pynchon.html ''Pynchon Notes''] n 24-25 (1989): 113-115. [[Pages 359-371#Page 366|See note at 366]].

382.15-16 '''Judge Hardy's freckled madcap son''' 
Rooney's most famous role was Andy Hardy in a series of 16 films.

382.21-22 '''more tits than they got at Minsky's''' 
The four Minsky brothers, Abe, Billy, Herbert and Morton, staged burlesque shows at a number of theaters in New York City. Although the shows were declared obscene and outlawed, they were rather tame by modern standards.

{{GR PbP}}

Pages 397-433

2014-03-26T02:57:24Z

Dweissma: Explanation of a triode

{{GR PbP Text}}

==Page 398==
[[image:hansel-gretel.jpg|thumb|''Hansel and Gretel''|100px|right]]'''dog with the saucer eyes . . . beard of the goat on the bridge . . . the troll below . . . plastic witch . . . Hansel . . . Gretel''' 
Features at Zwolfkinder, all evoking children’s fairy tales: "The Tinder Box," the Billy Goats Gruff, Hansel and Gretel.

'''398:29 Zwölfkinder '''
"Twelve Children" - the name evokes Jacob's twelve sons (and the daughter who is not one of the official twelve). This pattern is self-consciously repeated in the Grimms' tale [http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm009.html "The Twelve Brothers"], where the boys are to die if their mother gives birth to a girl. 

The camp, which is also a quasi-town, may be modelled after Theresienstadt, the Jewish town/Lager set up by the Nazis in what is now the Czech Republic. This is suggested by themes like transit, phoney children's paradise, as well as the large orchestra, or the number 60,000 (the number of those who "passed through" Zwölfkinder as well the population of Theresienstadt at its peak). It also recalls another totalitarian institution, that of the communist "children's towns" (large, town-like, somewhat militarized holiday camps for Young Pioneers), whose prototype was [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artek_(camp) Artek] in the Soviet Union. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsches_Jungvolk Deutsches Jungvolk] also had its summer camps.)

==Page 402==
'''The Spree''' 
A river, not a canal, that runs through Berlin.

'''who would eat an apple in the street''' 
A phrase of German/Yiddish origin, suggesting a poor person of no breeding.

==Page 403==
[[image:kyudo-target.jpg|thumb|Zen Target|150px|right]]'''Zen bow and roll of pressed straw''' 
Archery is a sport often associated with Zen discipline in Japan, where it is known as ''kyūdō''. Many archers practice ''kyūdō'' as a sport, with marksmanship being paramount. However, the goal most devotees of kyūdō seek is ''seisha seichu'', "correct shooting is correct hitting". The archer seeks not to hit a target but (according to some sources) to become one with the arrow as it flies, as Fahringer advocates becoming "one with the Rocket." One of the earliest introductions of ''kyūdō'' in the west was by a German, Eugen Herrigel, who studied Zen and archery in Japan in the 1930s. His ''Zen in the Art of Archery'' (1953) remains a classic in its field. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyudo Wikipedia entry]

'''bodhisattva''' 
In Mahayana Buddhism, a bodhisattva is a "Buddhist saint," one who has nearly attained nirvana but delays it in order to aid others. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhisattva Wikipedia entry]

==Page 404==
'''In the name of the cathode, the anode, and the holy grid?''' 
Weisenberger (2006) incorrectly identifies these as components of an electrolytic cell connected to a power grid. Instead they refer to the 3 parts of the triode vacuum tube mentioned a few lines earlier. Electrons flowing from the cathode to the anode have to pass through a charged screen or grid. A slight amount of charge on the grid can have a big effect on the current flowing between the cathode and the anode. Thus the triode is a simple amplification device, since a small signal charging the grid controls a large flow of current. It is, btw, an analogue and not a digital device.

==Page 405==
'''good company at Herr Halliger’s Inn''' 
Note the echo of the title of von Goll’s perverse film.

==Page 411==
'''411.16 Atlantes''' 
An [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_(architecture) Atlas] or Atlant (named after the Greek mythological figure which it it represents) is a column, pillar, or pilaster in the shape of a man, who bears the weight on his head or shoulders. It was a popular element in continental Beaux-Arts architecture (that is, in Kekulé's time.)

==Page 412==
'''"I lost my heart in Heidelberg"''' 
Although [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] asserts that the song derives from Tony Bennet’s recording "I Left My Heart in San Francisco," there are more likely origins. The title suggests the lyrics to "I Left My Heart at the Stage Door Canteen" (see note at V134.27) or "Avalon" ("I found my love in Avalon") by Al Jolson and Vincent Rose. In addition, the lyric suggests Sigmund Romberg’s venerable operetta ''The Student Prince'', about the heir to a throne who falls in love with a barmaid in the university town. The show also features the song "Gaudeamus Igitur" (V432.13).

:Igor Zabel offers a more a concrete reference: "I lost my heart in Heidelberg": a popular German song from the twenties: "Ich hab' mein Herz in Heidelberg verloren". The song was written for a musical of the same name by German composer Fred Raymond. [[I Lost My Heart in Heidelberg|Read the lyrics...]]

==Page 413==
'''"once, only once"''' 
What Rilke poem is this?
*Rilke sometimes (often?) addresses the reader with "you" ("Weren’t you always distracted by expectation, as if every event announced a beloved? - ''Duino Elegies''), which Pynchon does often in these surrounding pages.

==Page 421==
'''Juch-heiereasas-sa! O-tempo-tempora!''' 
From the song "Ein lustger Musikante marschierte am Nil" by Emmanuel Geibel (1815-1884). [http://ingeb.org/Lieder/einlustg.html German words and midi music]

==Page 422==
'''love something like the persistence of vision''' 
"The notion of 'persistence of vision' seems to have been appropriated from psychology". From Herbert's essay below. 
The term "persistence of vision" is still in popular use, and fits Pynchon’s (and Pokler’s) needs well in this context.

The phrase "persistence of vision:" has long been misapplied to explanations of how the spectator perceives motion from the sequential flashing of still images on film. The term which usually refers to the positive afterimage retained by the retina of the eye has been rejected by psychologists and students of perception as imprecise and misleading. The illusion of motion is actually a much more complicated process, involving several elements of cognition. A very good synopsis of the problems with the term by Stephen Herbert is available [http://www.grand-illusions.com/percept.htm here].

==Page 425==
'''425.24ff you go and sit exactly on the target...one is safest at the center of the target area''' 

Major-General Dr. Walter Dornberger, head of Peenemünde rocket development and von Braun's superior, actually made this suggestion when the airburst problem resisted solution: "the bull's eye is the safest spot on the map." Instead of sending a sacrificial underling such as Pokler to do the sitting, Dornberger and von Braun, to their credit, sat their own personal asses down on the target. They did this every day for about a week. On the very last rocket observed from the target, von Braun
:"was standing in an open field [and]... beheld the rocket coming out of the blue sky." To his horror, he realized it was pointed straight at them [Dornberger, v.B] -- it would be a direct hit. "I threw myself down to the ground, but a moment later a terrific explosion hurled me high into the air. I landed in a ditch and noted with some amazement that I...had not suffered as much as a scratch." quoted in Neufeld, ''Von Braun'', p.181.

'''425.32-33 Ground Zero''' 
Another, apparently ironic, anachronism (or anatopism). The term [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_zero Ground Zero], originally the hypocenter of an atomic bomb explosion, was coined by participants of the Manhattan Project, after the test stand at Trinity Site. It had, of course, no equivalent in pre-1945 German military slang. But the starting point in time for the Pökler detour is preceded by the first nuclear explosion, as the Trinity device was tested on July 16, 1945, the opening day of the Potsdam Conference.

==Page 429==
'''429.5 searchlights... in Wismar and in Lübeck''' 
That would locate Zwölfkinder in present-day Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, near the Bay of Lübeck, and also between the bright and dark aspects of the continental tradition. Lübeck, apart from being vitctimized in the raid which is prominent in "Beyond the Zero", was Thomas Mann's city, while Wismar is the port where Nosferatu embarks for England.

==Page 432==
'''"Gaudeumus igitur"''' 
Igor Zabel elaborates further on Weisenburger's note:

:"The song is a symbol of the university (as such) and its anthem (e.g., it is sometimes performed at ceremonial occasions). The mentioning here refers to the "feeling of graduation". ''Gaudeamus igitur'' is traditionally sung by the students of the final class of Gymnasium (i.e., university students to-be) as they celebrate their graduation."

'''Obersturmbannfuehrer''' 
A rank in the SS, which corresponds to the Lieutenant Colonel.

{{GR PbP}}

Thomas Pynchon Wiki - User contributions [en]

Pages 371-383

Pages 397-433