NP Kristallnacht

[Otto]

Hi Dave and Jeremy,
greetings to everybody

http://www.bap-fan.de/kristallnaach.html is indeed the right url. And BAP
(no idea what the acronym stands for) is no industrial band at all. The
picture you saw is Wolfgang Niedecken, the frontman and lead-singer, a
"good" guy, never afraid of picking up political topics in his songs and
with no "star"-habitus at all.
There's a short snip of that song at
http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00000I3C2/o/qid=988800739/sr=2-1/028-
6898260-1795717
(watch the url wrap!)

I don't think that there are interferences with Pynchon's works, I just came
across the "Kristallnacht" in one of the posts from the list and remembered
having played that song at the disco in the 80s, when we already had this
trouble with nazi-baldheads we're encountering now on a much larger scale.

When I discovered the original text I just wanted to show you this beautiful
"close-to-Dutch" Cologne dialect. Jeremy, phantastic translation into
English!

More interestingly is maybe that the term itself has been "banned" by pc
(like "negro" in your language) in German, because it had been invented by
the nazis and had made the "event" look more harmless than it had been. The
official German term now is "Reichspogromnacht" - but in the memory of the
people this night will stay the "Kristallnacht" - the real, obvious and open
beginning of the persecution of the Jews in Germany; the first step to, as I
believe inevitably, the war and to Auschwitz.

"Kristallnacht" of course originates from the sound of broken glass, the
breaking windows of Jewish shops in Germany. I'm not sure if Pynchon had
that in mind when he was referring to the Crystal Palace in London, as
Weisenburger says in his Companion.
Or isn't he reffering to that historical building at all, it's not written
in capitals?

Otto

> You know, based on Jeremy's translation, this is not
> entirely unreminiscent of the opening of a certain
> novel: "A screaming comes across the sky. It has
> happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to
> now"; "You didn't really believe you'd be saved. Come,
> we all know who we are by now. No one was ever going
> to take the trouble to save you, old fellow" ...
>
> Not to mention all those crystals: "the fall of a
> crystal palace"; "Underfoot crunches the oldest of
> city dirt, last crystallizations of all the city had
> denied, threatened, lied to its children"; "The great
> power station, and the gasworks beyond, stand
> precisely: crystals grown in morning's beaker";
> "around the curve of the Earth, farther east, the sun
> over there, just risen over in Holland, is striking
> the rocket's exhaust, drops and crystals, making them
> blaze clear across the sea ..."
>
> http://www.bap-fan.de/kristallnaach.html
>
> These actually scan as song lyrics? I figured this was
> some sort of industrial band until I backed up on the
> website here ...
>
> http://www.bap-fan.de/images/pratteln3.JPG
>
> Do thes lyrics come from elsewhere?  Are there
> references being made to earlier works?  Perhaps
> possible Pynchonian intertexts?  Let me know ...
>
> --- Otto <o.sell at telda.net> wrote:
>
> > Et kütt vüür, dat ich mein, dat jet klirrt, dat sich
> > irjendjet en mich verirrt, e Jeräusch, nit ens laut,
> > manchmol klirrt es vertraut, selden su, dat mer't
> > direk durchschaut.
>
> > Un dann rettet kein Kavallerie, keine Zorro kömmert
> > sich dodrömm. Dä piss höchstens e "Z" en der Schnie
> > un fällt lallend vüür Lässigkeit öm: "Na un? -
> > Kristallnaach!"
>