The Specter
Dave Monroe
monropolitan at yahoo.com
Mon Aug 22 11:11:10 CDT 2005
"'By golly,' Slothrop a little bit nervous, 'it's the
Specter.' You got it up around Greylock in the
Berkshires too. Around these parts it is known as the
Brockengespenst.
"God-shadows. Slothrop raises an arm. His fingers
are cities, his biceps is a province-of course he
raises an arm. Isn't it expected of him? The
arm-shadow trails rainbows behind as it rainbows
behind as it moves reaching eastward for a grab at
Göttingen. Not ordinary shadows,
either-three-dimensional ones, cast out on the German
dawn, yes and Titans had to live in these mountains,
or under them.... Impossibly out of scale...." (GR,
Pt. II, p. 330)
"... and through the blonde hair of the victim here's
a Brocken-specter, someone's, something's shadow
projected from out here in the bright sun and
darkening sky into the regions of gold, of whitening,
of growing still as underwater as Gravity dips away
briefly ..." (GR, Pt. IV, p. 759)
Brocken
329; mountain 20 miles NW of Mittelwerke in the Harz
Mountains; "plexus of German evil"; place where
God-shadows ("Brockengespenstphänomen" - p.331) occur
at sunrise, 330; specter, 759
http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/alpha/b.html
*V330.29 its the Specter
Another reference gleaned from The Berkshire Hills,
where Pynchon very likely first discovered the
Brockengespenst: "Of the stories and legends about Old
Greylock, the one about the "Specter" is most popular.
. . . The phenomenon of a gigantic shadow of an object
reflected in a cloud is so well known as to have a
German name, Brockengespenst (Specter of the Brocken)
from Brocken, the highest peak of the Hartz [sic]
Mountains. As Greylockgespenst would be a bit unwieldy
for Berkshire, here it is simply called the Specter"
(TBH 42). Mount Greylock is the highest point in
Massachusetts.
http://www.english.mnsu.edu/larsson/gr3.html
Specter of the Brocken
http://www.meteoros.de/glorie/br2.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brocken_bow
http://www.meteoros.de/glorie/gloriee.htm
http://www.polarization.com/rainbow/rainbow2.html
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=489195
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glory_(optical_phenomenon)
http://www.sacklunch.net/mythology/S/SpecteroftheBrocken.html
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/atmos/corona.html#c6
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