GRGR(18): Notes on the first episode

[Jeremy Osner]

One general note concerning Argentinian political history: I'm pretty
ignorant on this subject, and would appreciate if anyone reading along
is better acquainted with it, and has info they think is relevant,
hearing about it. Whatever I do know in this regard comes from V. S.
Naipaul's excellent essay, "The Return of Eva Peron" -- if you're
interested in finding out about that, check out my note on it at
http://www.readin.com/books/evaperon.

 p. 383 "tristes and milongas": Argentine folk song styles

p. 383 "El laberinto de tu incertidumbre/ Me trama con la disquietante
luna": Weisenburger's translation, which I got from Heikki's essay on
"The Feathery Rilke Mustaches", is "The labyrinth of your uncertainty/
Detains me with the disquieting moon"; he says the lines are not from a
real poem by Borges.

p. 383 "El Ñato" -- translation? "caña" -- my friend Jim tells me the
best translation, when this word is used by itself, is "a tall cold
glass of beer". "Beláustegui" -- I can't figure out how this name should
be pronounced, so I trip over it when I'm reading. Could someone post
the proper pronunciation?

p. 384 "Bremerhaven": A port in northern Germany, at the mouth of the
Weser.

p. 384 "Ibargüengoitia": again, I'm not clear on pronunciation here. I
was having a hard time, too, figuring out just who this was; but thanks
to the diligence of Khachig Tölölyan, Clay Leighton, and Bernard
Duyfhuizen in compiling an index to Gravity's Rainbow (available from
Pynchon Notes), I know that it is the contact Slothrop met in Zürich.

p. 384 "harmonica factory": oh boy!

p. 385 "Caligari gloves": is there a connection here to Wiene's The
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari? I am told Siegfried Kracauer's book From
Caligari to Hitler is an excellent resource for understanding German
cinema -- however it went right over my head.

p. 385 "Bob Steele": an actor in Westerns. for a list of his films you
can look at http://us.imdb.com/Name?Steele,+Bob+(I).

p. 385 "Edouard Sanktwölke": his name means "sacred clouds". The funny
hyphenation in the Penguin edition kept me, at first, from seeing this.

p. 386 "'Haven't you got a kis for the Gaucho Bakunin?'/ 'You look more
like a Gaucho Marx...'": This is a really well-done jump between tenses;
moving from pre- to post-von Göll.

p. 386 "Martin Fierro": any of those hypothetical Argentine history
experts I appealed to above wanna lay some analysis on us? The complete
text (in Spanish, natch) is online at
http://www.interserver.com.ar/host/raggio/egmf.htm.

p. 386 "I Promessi Sposi": an opera by Alessandro Manzoni; title in
English is "The Betrothed". My appeal here is to scholars of the Italian
19th century. The essay "Donna Prassede e il massacro di Waco" by
Marcello Gardani, which I can't understand because it's in Italian, see,
looks rilly interesting; it purports to explore the parallels between "I
Promessi Sposi" and the killings in Waco. You can read it at
http://www.christusrex.org/www1/gardani/waco.htm.

p. 388 "wipes": I am assuming this is some kind of film terminology.

p. 388 "Lüderitzbucht": a port in Namibia -- presumably when the
continents had not separated, the east coast of Argentina would be
snuggled up against the west coast of Namibia. Rio de la Plata is the
river separating Argentina from Uruguay.

p. 388 "Lüneberg heath": near Bremerhaven.

p. 388 What mania inspires Beláustegui to fire the torpedo at a passing
ship? Or is it an accidental firing?

--
Mortals are immortals, and
immortals are mortals, the one
living the other's death and
dying the other's life.

Heraclitus, quoted by Bertrand Russell
http://www.readin.com/books/westernphilosophy/