Re: AtDtDA23: The Sanatorium Böpfli-Spazzoletta

Sun Dec 2 23:31:46 CST 2007

Why did the wiki poster think The Sanatorium Bopfli-Spazzoletta
was an allusion to the Davos sanatorium in The Magic Mountain?

Maybe, but that seems a more positive place than another of Pynchon's
satiricly named places, no?

----- Original Message ----
From: Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
To: pynchon list <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sunday, December 2, 2007 5:36:29 PM
Subject: AtDtDA23: The Sanatorium Böpfli-Spazzoletta

"Yashmeen had arranged to re-connect with elements of the T.W.I.T. at
the fabled Sanatorium Böpfli-Spazzoletta ..." (AtD, Pt. III,

T.W.I.T.

219; True Worshippers of the Ineffable Tetractys, headquartered in
London, north of Hyde Park; The Tetractys is a triangular figure
consisting of ten points arranged in four rows: one, two, three, and
four points in each row. As a mystical symbol, it was very important
to the followers of the secret worship of the Pythagoreans; 591; 896
...

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=T

Cf. ...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=TSqkdcT25ss

http://www.ibras.dk/montypython/episode12.htm#7

"the fabled Sanatorium Böpfli-Spazzoletta"

Allusion to the Davos tuberculosis sanatorium of Thomas Mann's The
Magic Mountain, which was indeed the anteroom of death for its
protagonist, Hans Castorp, who goes on to be "cured" to serve in World
War I, a personification of the death of Europe. Note that, at the
sanatorium, Castorp falls in love with a Russian named Madame
Chauchat, to whom Yashmeen's presence here may allude. Alchemy is also
a leitmotif of The Magic Mountain, with the sanatorium as an enclosed
system in which something is turned to gold (Castorp's enlightenment).

I might be wrong, but I've found no evidence that a "Sanatorium
Böpfli-Spazoletta" ever existed. The name is a compound of a (mock?)
Swiss-German word and an Italian-sounding one and thus recalls the
Simplon passage.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_644-677#Page_664

Böpfli

Cf. (?) ...

Adolf Wölfli (1864-1930)

http://www.adolfwoelfli.ch/

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Adolf Wölfli, a former
farmhand and laborer, produced a monumental, 25,000-page illustrated
narrative in Waldau, a mental asylum near Bern, Switzerland. Through a
complex web of texts, drawings, collages and musical compositions,
Wölfli constructed a new history of his childhood and a glorious
future with its own personal mythology. The French Surrealist André
Breton described his work as "one of the three or four most important
oeuveres of the twentieth century"....

http://www.adolfwoelfli.ch/index.php?c=e&level=17&sublevel=0

Adolf Wölfli (1864 - 1930) ... was a prolific Swiss artist who is
regarded as one of the foremost artists in the Art Brut or outsider
art traditions.

Wölfli had a troubled childhood. He suffered abuse and molestation and
was orphaned at the age of 10, thereafter growing up in a series of
state-run foster homes. He worked as a farm labourer and briefly
joined the army but was later convicted of attempted child molestation
for which he served prison time. Sometime after being freed he was
arrested for a similar offence and was admitted in 1895 to the Waldau
Clinic in Berne, Switzerland, a psychiatric hospital where he spent
the rest of his adult life....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_W%C3%B6lfli

The important outsider artist Adolf Wölfli spent his entire life in
and around Bern, Switzerland.

After a troubled youth, in 1895 he was diagnosed as schizophrenic and
spent the following decades in the city's Waldau Psychiatric Clinic.
The clinic staff encouraged Wölfli's pursuit of the arts as
therapeutic in controlling his violent behavior....

http://www.mam.org/collections/folk_detail_wolfli.htm

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/wolfli_adolf.html

Spazzoletta

Scovolar -  scopettare, spazzolare.
Scovoleta -  spazzola, spazzolino, spazzoletta; scopella: piccola
granata di filo di saggina.
Scovolin -  spazzola di padule.
Scovolo -  piccola granata.

http://www.dfstermole.net/piccio/dicty.php?l=a
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~stermole/piccio/dicty.php?l=a

spazzola f. (plural spazzole)

brush
hairbrush

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/spazzola

spazzolare (transitive)

To brush.
To polish off.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/spazzolare

spazzolata f. (plural spazzolate)

brush
dare una spazzolata ai capelli - to give one's hair a brush

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/spazzolata

Scovolar -  scopettare, spazzolare.
Scovoleta -  spazzola, spazzolino, spazzoletta; scopella: piccola
granata di filo di saggina.

http://www.dfstermole.net/piccio/dicty.php?l=a
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~stermole/piccio/dicty.php?l=a

"high-crowned black Borsalino"

http://www.borsalino.com/

Borsalino is the name of a hat company known particularly for its
fedoras. Established in 1857, Borsalino produces felt from Belgian
rabbit fur at its factory in Alessandria, Italy....

Borsalino (1970)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065486/

Borsalino & Co. (1974)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071241/

"Deep Europe"

Cf. Deep Germany (p.

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0711&msg=123293

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0711&msg=123294

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