VV(18): Itague

[Dave Monroe]

"M. Itague stood, half-stooping, holding the handle of the traveling bag." 
(V., Ch. 14, Sec. i, p. 395)

>From David Cowart, Thomas Pynchon: The Art of Allusion (Carbondale: Souther 
Illinois UP, 1980), Ch. 4, "'Unthinkable Order': Music in Pynchon," pp. 
63-95 ...

"Though not an ex-bartender like Pynchon's character, the famous impresario 
Serge Diaghilev provides the model for Itague." (p. 75)

And from John Dugdale, Thomas Pynchon: Allusive Parables of Power (London: 
Macmillan, 1990; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990), Ch. 2, "V." pp. 76-123 
...

"One of the chapter's narrative centres, Itague, is a combination of two 
figures in Sartre, the waiter and the anti-semite ..." (p. 96)

Both these passages are referenced in J. Kerry Grant, A Companion to V. 
(Athens: U of Georgia P, 2001), p. 172, by the way, though he doesn't 
elaborate much beyond them.  Itague = Diaghilev makes perfect sense, of 
course, given the elaborate parody of Igor Stravinsky's Sacre du Printemps 
underway (and I will post on that at some length, be patient ...), though I 
can't find that Diaghilev was in any way anti-semitic; indeed, his longtime 
designer and cofounder of the Ballet Russes ("and Crepes Suzette ..."), Leon 
Bakst, was Jewish ...

http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Bookstore/3496/gallery/bakst/biography.html

Itague, on the other hand ...

"He read La Libre Parole, had stood among the crowds to spit at Captain 
Dreyfus." (p. 399)

"Itague stopped at a kiosk to buy a copy of La Patrie, the closest he could 
get to an anti-Semitic paper in the evening." (p. 406)

Well, at least he keeps up on current events.  But that Sartre angle is 
interesting.  Not quite a waiter ...

"Not long ago he'd been a bartender near Place Pigalle." (p. 397)

... but is this like how every waiter in Hollywood is "really" an actor (and 
how every actor "really wants to direct")?  Don't have either Being and 
Nothingness (the waiter) or, apparently, Reflections on the Jewsih Question 
(though I think the anti-semite might also come up in B&N--if anyone has the 
text at hand ...), but, in handy online outline form ...

5. Then Sartre presents the case of the waiter in the cafe.
   a. Sartre says his movements are too precise, too rapid, he
      bends forward too eagerly, he is a little too solicitous for
      the customer's order.
   b. He has escaped from his freedom into acting a part,
      playing a social role, as if his essence were to be a perfect
      mechanism.
   c. Sartre says that he has escaped from his freedom as a
      person into becoming a mechanism from which he will gain
      social approval for the perfection of the performance of his
      role.
   d. This type of bad faith consists in the pretense of being
      identified with a role.

7. Another type of bad faith is anti-Semitism,
   i.e. Reflections on the Jewish Question by Sartre
   a. Sartre says that the key to the problem is to understand
      the Frenchman who is an anti-Semite.
   b. Anti-Semitics are usually mediocre persons of low social
      status, who try to compensate for their insignificance by
      making a scapegoat of the Jews.
   c. They become thinglike, rocklike claiming to have a
      mystical state of superiority over the Jews.  Even though
      Jews may be more intelligent, hardworking, and achieving
      much more.
   d. But this is self deception, the pretense of having a
      rocklike foundation, i.e., to be a stone is not to be human.

http://www.hoocher.com/Philosophy/existentialism.htm

But I'm interested here as well in another possibility ...

ITAGUE: Manoeuvre courante permettant de hisser quelque chose.  L'itague est 
un palan composé d'une poulie dans laquelle passe un codage.  Une de ses 
extrémités fait dormant à un point fixe (une vergue par exemple), et l'autre 
constitue le courant sur lequel on tire. Les bras des vergues, les drisses 
des vergues mobiles, les drisses de voiles latines de grande surface sont à 
itague.  L'itague peut être en fil d'acier ou en chaîne.

Which Google helpfully (?) translated for me as ...

TIE: Current operation allowing to hoist something.  The tie is a hoist made 
up of a pulley in which a coding passes. One of its
ends makes door frame at a fixed point (a yard for example), and the other 
constitutes the current on which one draws. The arms of the yards, the ropes 
of the mobile yards, the ropes of lateen sails of great surface are with 
tie.  The tie can be in steel wire or chain.

http://perso.club-internet.fr/cborzeix/GlossaireMarine/i.htm

I'm sure someone out there can clean that up a bit, but ... but given the 
various meanings of "Jarretiere" ... okay, gots to go, but will be back on 
that one, not to mention (although I most certainly will), "fetiche," 
"L'Enlevement des Vierges Chinoises," "Satin," "Porcepic," "Su Feng," et 
al., as soon as (humanly or otherwise) possible, so, please, bear with ...
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