Them Danged Swedes Again Yingle Yangle

[Sherwood, Harrison]

>From: 	Heikki Raudaskoski

>an *attempt* at translation; I'm no native. But what the hell:
>
[perfectly wonderful translation snipped]

Heka:

Kiitoksia paljon and aikaa hyvää! for your help. I realize you're no
native (mortal insult, I should think!) but I am grateful someone was
able to make some sense of that Swedish.

It seems I committed something of a bloomer yesterday in my response to
Charles' rapping of Pynchon's non-Swedish-speaking copy editors. Owing
to the fact that I was posting from work and didn't have my copy handy,
I, uh, failed to read the actual M&D passage in question (page 272).
This small oversight led to Certain Assumptions. When I got home and
looked it up I was slightly mortified to note that Oxenstjerna,
Gyllenstjerna, and Gyllenborg are plainly referred to as _historical_
people, and not fictional characters.

My triumphant if premature contribution to Pynchon scholarship will have
to be redacted somewhat: While the names Oxenstjerna, Gyllenstjerna and
Gyllenborg are spelled correctly in Mason & Dixon, they are not
characters in the work "Karolinerna" by Verner von Heidenstam or in a
poem by Carl Soilsky; rather, they are historical people _mentioned_ in
those writings. Please reset your decoder rings accordingly.

ALL THAT SAID...

By way of a little lunch-hour penance I ankled over to the Reston
Regional Library (known simply as "The Reedge" to its friends, among
whom I count myself the staunchest) to have a squint at the Britannica
and tha'. Here's what I came up with:

There are two Oxenstjernas (alt. sp. confirmed Oxenstierna, thanks
Heikki) who were big shots enough to make it into the Brit. The elder
(and far more likely to be the glowering down from the wall of the Fair
Anchor at Franklin's Glass Armonica recital) is Axel Oxenstjerna,
1583-1654, Chancellor 1612-54, who served as Swedish Regent twice: once
briefly during the minority of Gustav II Adolf, (1612) and again for
Queen Christina (1636-44). Most notable in his chancellorship were his
administrative reforms and his diplomacy and his military command during
the Thirty Years' War. 

In the Encyclopedia Americana, we find this pithy little passage:

[...] New Netherland was strong enough to conquer a little colony that
Sweden had planted on the banks of the Delaware River in 1638. The
patron of this project [i.e., the Swedish colony] was the celebrated
Chancellor Axel Oxenstierna, who was head of the regency during the
minority of Queen Christina. In 1637 he had influenced the founding of a
trading and colonizing agency, the New South Company, giving it a land
grant in the area of Delaware Bay. Fort Christina, at the present site
of Wilmington, Del., was erected in 1638, and Fort Gottenburg was built
in 1643.... In 1655 the governor of New Netherland, Peter Stuyvesant,
led an expedition to the forts on the Delaware, captured them with ease
[and that was the end of Swedish influence in America].

Gyllenstjerna refers to Johan Greve (Count) Gyllenstjerna, 1636-1680,
chief adviser to Charles XI. Advocated a strong royal authority and
opposition to the nobles of the Council of the Realm. Connection to
America zilch AFAIK.

Gyllenborg is almost certainly _not_ Gustav Fredrik Greve Gyllenborg,
1731-1808, a satirical poet from a political family who "attacked the
weaknesses of modern society in the spirit of Rousseau," and who was
probably an insufferable Fop. A penny gets you a pound of pig-offal it's
one of his immediate ancestors in M&D.

What ties at least Oxenstjerna and Gyllenstjerna together is that had
they been contemporaries they would have been political enemies.
Oxenstjerna's reforms weakened the King against the nobility (he
codified the power of the nobility and stabilized the constitution of
the Riksdag); in Britain he'd have been a Whig. Gyllenstjerna advocated
a strong royal authority and opposed the nobles of the Riksråd (Council
of the Realm). He'd have been a Tory.

Now Pynch's image acquires a little chewiness: "...beneath a portrait of
some Swedish Statesman too darken'd with Room-Smoke for anyone to be
sure who it is anymore." Wouldn't be unlike being unable to tell the
difference between Newt Gingrich and Barney Frank.

It's a reflection of the argument in the whole chapter: Of murky
political motivations, of conspiracies so ancient and deep no one can
tell whose side anyone is on anymore, of Franklin muddying the waters by
attempting to play Mason against Dixon and vice versa. Other reflections
of the tenor of this chapter abound: Franklin's opening speech in the
Apothecary's shop, about Demagoguery and Goblin words; "alchemists'
signs whisper'd (and some never written down)"; Franklin's claiming to
have been at the R.S. when M&D's letter arrived after the _Seahorse_
incident... And just why _is_ the King like a near-sighted gunner? Can't
for the life of me get that one.... And then there's this harping on
Franklin's having some occult power over Time.

Chapter 27 almost belongs more in Gravity's Rainbow than in M&D.

Scoffers Please Note: In this particular instance Pynch more than did
his homework. He got it one-hundred-percent, dead-solid-perfect Right.

GRATUITOUS HUMOROUS NOTES:

G.H.N #1) More Net-casting yielded the Dramatis Personae of "Kristina,"
a historical play by Strindberg, featuring the character Axel
Oxenstjerna. I also find in the same source a character named "Gustav II
Adolfs änka." Absent the tricky umlaut over the "a," that would be
"Gustav II Adolf's duck." Some play!

G.H.N #2) Would it be horribly insensitive of me to say that I laughed a
great big Homer Simpson, teeth-exposed, tongue-wagging horse laugh when
I stumbled across the web site of the Swedish Aphasia Society at
http://www.afasi.se/? Yingle yangle?

Harrison