ATDTdA : 12 "My Native land is not a country" #1, 326

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

Tesla speaks:

          "My native land is not a country but an artifact of 
          Habsburg foreign policy, known as 'the Military 
          Frontier,' and to us as Granitza. The town was 
          very small, above the Adriatic coast in the 
          Velebit range, where certain places were better 
          than others for . . . what would you call them? 
          Visual experiences that might prove useful."

The real impetus for this psudo-quote is in the start of this little episode:

          They sat in a masonry transmitter "shack" designed 
          by McKim, Mead and White, gradually getting used 
          to being alive and on dry land again. A workman's 
          wife had brought them blankets and coffee. Dr Tesla 
          had imported from Trieste. The rainlight came in 
          through a series of high arched windows.

Lots of significant arrows pointing to that little anti-postal anti-empire 
whose name shall not be spoken. That 'masonry transmitter "shack" '
---reminding us of Radio, the "Ray Rush" in progress---that team 
name---like 'Warpe, Wistful, Kubitschek, and McMingus,' [here it's 
'McKin, Mead and White'] and cofffee from Trieste, followed by a 
most melancholy vision; 'rainlight came in through a series of high 
arched windows'. These are all little pointers to and reminders of 
The Crying of Lot 49 and also reminders of Rilke's relation to Trieste, 
an element that ties into the prescence of Angels and other related 
entities in all of Pynchon's books. Most importantly [and right on the 
top layer of this reading] this episode serves to undermine the 
general notion of the exact location of Scientific Knowledge, as 
Tesla's great Vision of the transmitting tower is in fact a Vision: 

          ". . . . As if time had been removed from all equations, 
          the Magnifying Transmitter already existed in that 
          moment, complete, perfected. . . .Everything since, 
          all you have seen in the press, has been theatrical 
          impersonation---the Inventor at Work. To the 
          newspapers I can never speak of that time of simply 
          waiting." 327

Somehow, this all strikes me as a parallel to Rilke and the Duino Elegies:

          Existence in itself is of course valid  because it's there. 
          And validity is enough  maybe meaning is unnecessary. 
          How appropriate then to get a call, a revelation: a 
          pre-Christian, pre-Mosaic, pre-Everything angel to 
          dictate a few lines about this truly terrifying subject, 
          giving the lost poet both license and direction.
          Such an event took place around the 20th or 21st of 
          January 1912, when Rilke visited the princess Marie von 
          Thurn und Taxis-Hohenlohe at the castle Duino just 
          outside Trieste. He was in a crisis and even considered 
          psychoanalytical treatment. However, during a walk 
          alongside the cliffs, sloping some 200 feet down to the 
          sea, words suddenly came to him: "Wer, wenn ich schriee, 
          höre mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen?" Rilke was 
          actually contemplating his bookkeeping at the time, and 
          he knew immediately that this impulse was the beginning 
          of something remarkable. He took notes of the words, 
          and during the rest of his stay at Duino, Rilke wrote the 
          beginnings of most of his ten elegies. 

http://art-bin.com/art/oduinocontents.html

Tesla's description of his vision of the transmitting tower has many parallels 
with Rilke's experience of 'receiving' the Duino Elegies, and Pynchon is 
deliberately undermining the sceintific method in the process, as he does
many times in AtD and all his other books.