Fenestrations

[jporter]

>Andrew Walser writes:
>" Which languages does Pynchon know, and how well does he know them?
>Perhaps Andrew Dinn, with his impressive Wagnerian signature, could
>comment on the German in GRAVITY'S RAINBOW, and perhaps another
>Rugglophile could analyze the Spanish in V. and VINELAND.
>        Mulling over FENSTER, FENETRE, and TRANSFENESTRATION led me to
>this question."
>
>I'd endorse such commentary too--and let'
>s not foget street-Italian in V.!
>
>But the whole transfestration notion might have been inspired by a rather well-
>known historical incident, The Defenestration of Prague.  I remember this being
>cited in 8th grade World History--as memory (or what's left of it) serves,
>it occured when a rep. of the Pope was pitched out the window by officials of
>one of the Electors of the Holy Roman Emperor.  Now I've probably gotten this
>all conflated with half a dozen other things--but I think it was a spark to
>light the Thirty Years War.  Too lazy to check my facts just now.
>
>But it being a memorable title of a slightly wacky historical incident, it
>could easily have caught TRP's (TP only to his detractors, Mike!) attention.
>It's typical of Our Boy to switch prefixes, suffixes and otherwise invert and
>fool around with familiar words and phrases.  Transfenestration certainly does
>have an elegance to it!
>
>Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)

FYI, from the pages of Enyclopedia Britannica Online:

"...In response, the defensors, appointed under the Letter of Majesty to
safeguard
Protestant rights, called an assembly of Protestants at Prague, where the
imperial regents, William [Index] Slavata and Jaroslav [Index] Martinic,
were tried and found guilty of violating the Letter of Majesty and, with
their secretary, Fabricius, were thrown from the windows of the council
room of [Index
Hradcany (Prague Castle) on May 23, 1618. Although inflicting no serious injury
on the victims, that act, known as the Defenestration of Prague, was a signal
for the beginning of a Bohemian revolt against the Habsburg emperor Ferdinand
II, which marked one of the opening phases of the Thirty Years' War..."

My own feeling here: the switch from de to trans is in keeping with TRP's
general movement to a possibly optimistic outlook for the next era in our
cultural progression, as hinted at in Vineland. Then again, I'm a Macintosh
person and have a limited understanding of windows.

Cheers, jp