AtDTDA: 19 Back to Normal [519]

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

. . . .whatever the hell that means down here. Kit is below decks as the 
Stupendica/Maximilian stabilizes. Kit finds himself on the His Majesty's 
dreadnought, "Emperor Maximillian". Googling this offical name of the 
ship[s?] gives us a straight lead to the Wiki entry for:

            The Kaiserliche Marine or Imperial Navy was the German Navy 
            created by the formation of the German Empire. It existed between 
            1871 and 1919, growing out of the Prussian Navy and Norddeutsche 
            Bundesmarine. Kaiser Wilhelm II greatly expanded the Navy, causing 
            a naval arms race between the German Empire and the British Empire. 
            The navy was largely destroyed at Scapa Flow in 1919 by its own 
            officers after the loss of the land war on the Western Front of 
            World War I.

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

            "There are no staterooms, it is no longer the Stupendica 
            up there. . . .        . . . .it is true that for a while the two 
            ships did share a common engine room. . . .    
            . . . .A Chinese sort of situation, nicht wahr?"

Well, now that you mention it, I don't understand what "A Chinese sort of 
situation" is or would be, though "Black Gang jollification" yielded up:

            Black-Hand Gang - See SNIPE. Older (ca. WW II), less 
            politically-correct form is 'Black Gang.’ Originally, it 
            referred to the appearance of men who had been handling 
            or working around coal, but the term has come to 
            refer to the engine room crew. During WWII, members of the 
            Black Gang were issued black "Dixie Cups" instead of white 
            ones, and were therefore sometimes called "Black Hats."

http://www.hazegray.org/faq/slang1.htm

. . . .in other words, the shuck & jive of the proles shoveling coal in the 
engine room. I'm sure it's not hard at all to find mystical aspects to these
figures:

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

Mannlicher:

            The namesake of the society, Ferdinand Ritter von Mannlicher 
            was one of history’s most prolific designers of firearms.

http://www.mannlicher.org/index.html

http://www.steyr-mannlicher.com/index.php?id=3

Graz:

            Graz has a long tradition as a student city: its six universities 
            have over 40,000 students. 

            Nikola Tesla studied electrical engineering at the Polytechnic in 
            Graz in 1875. 

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

Kit is now Phantom of the lower decks, under the occasional observance 
of O.I.C. Bodine. And that outta be tellin' ya somethin' right there:

             If you hear, a "box" so sweet,
             Play-in' tunes-with, a peppy beat,
             That's just MY DOPER'S, CADEN-ZA-A-A-A!

             Mel-o-dees, that getcha so,
             Where'd they come from? I don't know!
             (h-ha) It's just MY DOPER'S CADEN-ZA(A)A-A-A!

             this is the cadenza part:

             Now I know it's not as keen as old Rossini
             [snatch of La Gazza Ladra here],

             Nor as grand as Bach, or Beethoven-or-Brahms
             (bubububoo[oo] [sung to opening of Beethoven 5th, with full band])

             But I'd give away the fames, of a hundred Harry James
             ...wait, fame? of a hundred Jame? Jameses...
             uh...fameses? Hmm...

             [scherzoso]
             
             I-hi-hif this little-song, can-bring, you-to-my arms!

             Dum de dum, de-dum de dee,
             Oh, it's better than a symphonee--
             It's MY DOPER'S CADENZA, to yooouuu!
             [GR P. 699, V. 685, B. 799 and the page lay-out in the original
             Is Joycean (or proto-Danielewskian) in its typography.]

Kit's escape from the clutches of "Them" is analogous to Slothrop's moment of 
escape from "Them", where he too enters a world of anarchists [of course for Kit 
it feels like a "welcome home, and where the hell have you been", not Masonic 
signs, more like a howdy, how you been, don't you know—you wouldn't believe 
the sorts of freaks that would come up to me right out of the blue, folks who 
knew my mom in her salad days and somehow picked me out of the crowd 
(or I them), but as sombody once said, "those who know, know"]

. . . .and Slothrop's "escape' happens somewhere after his juant at the Casino 
Hermann Goering [mirroring the Casino in Ostend], and seems to involve the 
Octopus Grigori and a crab [1] .

But Kit's story is also and at the same time the story of Jonah:

          Instead of the poetry and prophetic prose of Isaiah or Lamentations, 
          this book tells the story of a reluctant prophet who arguably becomes 
          one of the most effective prophets in the entire Bible.

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

Now, if we look ahead to where Kit winds up,  "reluctant prophet" would 
certainly apply. And as O.I.C. Bodine mentions [upon his entrance in the 
novel] "This is beginning to sound like a sea story", which it certainly does, 
thus insuring a high degree of fictiousness:

          New Testament
          The earliest Christian interpretations of Jonah are found in the 
          Gospel of Matthew (see Matthew 12:38-42 and 16:1-4) and the 
          Gospel of Luke (see Luke 11:29-32). . . .

          . . . .the credibility of a human being surviving in the belly of a 
          great fish has long been questioned. In c. 409 AD, Augustine of Hippo 
          wrote to Deogratias concerning the challenge of some to the miracle 
          recorded in the Book of Jonah. He writes:

          "The last question proposed is concerning Jonah, and it is put as if 
          it were not from Porphyry, but as being a standing subject of ridicule 
          among the Pagans; for his words are: “In the next place, what are we 
          to believe concerning Jonah, who is said to have been three days in 
          a whale’s belly? The thing is utterly improbable and incredible, that 
          a man swallowed with his clothes on should have existed in the inside 
          of a fish. If, however, the story is figurative, be pleased to explain 
          it. Again, what is meant by the story that a gourd sprang up above the 
          head of Jonah after he was vomited by the fish? What was the 
          cause of this gourd’s growth?” Questions such as these I have seen 
          discussed by Pagans amidst loud laughter, and with great scorn." 
          (Letter CII, Section 30)

          Augustine responds that if one is to question one miracle, then one 
          should question all miracles as well. . . .

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

. . . .and later on the Two Stupendica proplem will be discussed by Kit and 
Moises ["jewish mystic'] alongside the two Jonahs, two Adagirs—which might 
also be pointing to the two source problem for the New Testament:

          The Gospel of Q remains a hypothetical document. No intact 
          copy has ever been found. No reference to the document in 
          early Christian writings has survived. Its existence is inferred 
          from an analysis of the text of Matthew and Luke. Much of 
          the content of Matthew and Luke were derived from the 
          Gospel of Mark. But there were also many passages which 
          appear to have come from Q. . . .

http://www.religioustolerance.org/gosp_q.htm

. . . .you could call "Q" the gospel of the cynics:

http://tinyurl.com/ypmzvw

. . . .but in any case it's another "when you see a fork in the road, 
take it"  moment in a book full of 'em.

1. Slothrop figures it's all a set-up when he realizes he was purposefully 
handed a crab by Teddy Bloat [P.190, V. 118, B. 220], similar to Zoyd
hitting the "stunt windows of clear sheet candy" in Vineland [pg. 12. and 
don't tell me there's another edition, I don't wanna know].