Atd : page 542---starts on page 524.Big Ass Spoiler

Mon Dec 11 08:10:01 CST 2006

Meanwhile, back at der platz:

http://www.thesquaretable.com/Spring03/trieste.htm.

"Duino Castle is, unfortunately, inaccessible to the public, but closer in to the city is a royal residence even more stunning: Mirimar. Built in the 1860s for Prince Maximilian, brother of Emperor Franz Joseph, it is a lean white tower set at the edge of a cliff overlooking the Adriatic; behind it sits 54 acres of gardens and forest. Maximilian planned Miramar after he retired his command of the Austrian navy, but he never got to see it complete. In 1864 he left for Mexico to head up an ill-fated, French-led attempt to establish a new colonial regime there; they failed, and Maximilian was captured and executed. His wife Carlotta went insane with grief, and it is said that anyone who spends a night in Miramar will do the same."

http://www.turismo.fvg.it/turismo2004/proposte/proposta.asp?L=2&ID=28

THE LEGEND OF THE WHITE LADY

According to the legend in a very remote period in the castle of Duino lived a wicked knight who despised his genteel and virtuous bride. She loved him so much that she forgave him all his offences and hoped she could move his heart with loving words. The man instead was annoyed by his wife's attitude and had thought of a plan to kill her. One evening he attracted her to a narrow rock under the castle walls to shove her into the sea. The lady of the castle, horrified, turned her eyes towards the sky asking for help. A choked cry escaped her throat and was interrupted: in her enormous grief she had become petrified.
>From that day at the hour of spirits the White Lady breaks loose from the rock and begins to wander. Three times she appears and three times she disappears in the dark rooms of the castle. She goes through locked doors and wanders from room to room until she finds again the cradle in which her son used to sleep. Here the White Lady remains in deep silence until dawn, when she leaves the cradle and goes back to her rock, where the grief again turns her into a rock.
Others, instead, tell the story of a Roman candelabrum which stands in a room of the castle and which burns every night and wanders through the rooms, while doors open by themselves. It is the White Lady who holds it in her hand when, invisible and desperate, she wanders through the castle.

CURIOSITIES 

The family von Thurn und Taxis has inseparably linked its name to postal and transport services, in fact the word taxi comes from their family name. Already at the end of the 13th century the Tassis - family of Italian origin - worked as couriers between the Italian city-states, but only with Franz (1459-1517) this posting system became so efficient that the Habsburg decided to use it in the broad territory under their rule. The emperor Friedrich III offered the Tassis (only around the middle of the 17th century they became Thurn und Taxis and from 1695 princes of the Holy Roman Empire according to the will of Leopold I) the monopoly on the post, which they held uninterruptedly for 355 years: they were active in Italy, Austria, Germany, Hungary, Spain and the Netherlands. This family enterprise had a staff of up to 20000 persons, not only for postal services but also for the distribution of newspapers and it was nationalized by the Prussian government in 1867 (against payment of a 
compensation of over 3 million mark). In the end it is worth mentioning that prince Maximilian Karl was the inventor of the first postal codes. 

http://www.davenezia.it/wedding_in_venice/Castles.htm
 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Dave Monroe <monropolitan at yahoo.com>
> I'm sure the Rilke/Thurn & Taxis connection has come
> up here before, but ... 
> 
> Anyway, I pride myself on having the best bathroom
> reading in the tristate area, amongst which is a ca.
> 1972 lives of the authors/artists/et al. published by
> teh Atlantic or somesuch.  Flipping through, couldn't
> help but spot the conjuction of Rilke, Thurn & Taxis,
> Duino and Trieste, so ...
> 
> --- robinlandseadel at comcast.net wrote:
> 
> > I was turned on to Rilke on account of "Gravity's
> > Rainbow",  and the poem has become my favorite.
> > Obviously it left a deep impact upon Pynchon and
> > the notion of revelation=terror found just about 
> > everywhere in Pynchon is clearly echoed in the
> > Duino Elgies.
> 
> And  ...
> 
> > By the way, found this as well, on page 144 of my
> > copy (1999 "First perennial Classics edition"):
> > 
> > ""Oedipa knew them by heart. In the 15 (cent) dark
> > green from the 1893 Columbian Exposition Issue
> > ("Columbus Announcing His Discovery"), the faces
> > of the three courtiers, reciving the news at the
> > right-hand side of the stamp, had been subtly
> > altered to express uncontrollable fright"
> 
> http://www.uwekarsten.de/mediac/400_0/media/15~c.JPG
> 
> May also be one of the, uh, settings of at least the
> opening pages of Claude Simon's Conducting Bodies ...
> 
> 
>  
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