AtDtDA23: Leaving Göttingen

[Dave Monroe]

   "Kit had one of those moments of extralogical grasp more
appropriate to mathematical work.  'Then leaving Göttingen ...'
   "'Leaving Göttingen.  No.  It was never my choice,' as if trying to
explain to Riemann ..." (AtD, Pt. III, p. 663)


"moments of extralogical grasp"

Cf., e.g., ...

"the direct, epileptic Word, the cry that might abolish the night"
(Lot 49, p. 87)

"She could, at this stage of things recognize signals like that, as
the epileptic is said to--an odor, color, pure piercing grace note
announcing his seizure" (Lot 49, p. 95)

http://books.google.com/books?id=vp2Sv9KO1VUC
http://www.innternet.de/~peter.patti/thomaspynchon-thecryingoflot49.htm


"the ζ-function"

The Riemann zeta function is an extremely important special function
of mathematics and physics that arises in definite integration and is
intimately related with very deep results surrounding the prime number
theorem. While many of the properties of this function have been
investigated, there remain important fundamental conjectures (most
notably the Riemann hypothesis) that remain unproved to this day....

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/RiemannZetaFunction.html

In mathematics, the Riemann zeta function, named after German
mathematician Bernhard Riemann, is a function of great significance in
number theory because of its relation to the distribution of prime
numbers. It also has applications in other areas such as physics,
probability theory, and applied statistics.

[...]

Neal Stephenson's 1999 novel Cryptonomicon mentions the zeta-function
as a pseudo-random number source, a useful component in cipher design.

The zeta-function is a major part of the plot of Thomas Pynchon's
novel Against the Day (2006)....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_zeta_function


"Now in a smooth enough World-Line comes this terrible discontinuity"

In physics, the world line of an object is the unique path of that
object as it travels through 4-dimensional spacetime....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_line

World lines are convenient ways of drawing out the history of an
entity through space as well as time....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A3086039

Linear History, not the ATD 'line', with a verbal pairing to
'World-Island', that Pynchonian way of naming the Earth....

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_644-677#Page_663


"We depart, wondering if now, perhaps, we will not be in a state of
departure forever"

Cf. (?) ...

"Rue du Départ" (AtD, Pt. V, pp. 1063-85)

Emmanuel Levinas, " "La trace de l'autre" (1994)

The heteronomous experience we are seeking is an attitude that cannot
be converted into a category, whose movement toward the Other is not
recuperated through identification, and does not return to its point
of departure....

But this would require us to think of the Work [penser l'Oeuvre] not
as the apparent agitation of a content or ground [fond] that afterward
remains identical to itself, in the manner of an energy that remains
equal to itself through all of its transformations. Neither could we
think of it as the technique whose famous negativity reduces a foreign
world [un monde étranger] to a world whose alterity has been converted
to my idea. Both of these conceptions continue to affirm being as
identical to itself, and reduce its fundamental event to the thought
that is--and here we see the ineffaceable lesson of idealism--thought
of itself, thought of thought. The Work radically thought is in
essence a movement of the Same toward the Other that never returns to
the Same. To the myth of Ulysses returning to Ithaca, I would oppose
the history of Abraham leaving his country forever for an unknown
land, and forbidding his servant to lead even his son back to this
point of departure.

http://152.1.96.5/jouvert/v3i12/mcnult.htm

Erich Auerbach, "Odysseus' Scar," Mimesis (1953)

http://www.westmont.edu/~fisk/Articles/OdysseusScar.html


Monte Rosso

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monterosso_al_Mare (?)


"'I had no choice, but, Kit, you ...'"

Cf. ...

"'But you.  Rocky.  You....'" (GR, Pt. IV, p. 741)

http://books.google.com/books?id=iPDGp7VT8H8C&pg=PA741

too late

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/extra/too-late.html