AtDTDA: 18 Pulses of Hell-colored light [516/517]

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

The stokers are shoveling coal into the boilers below deck:

            Down at the bottom of the ship, men worked skids 
            full of coal across the deck to be dumped in piles in 
            front of the boilers. Pulses of Hell-colored light lit up 
            the blackened bodies of the stokers each time the 
            firedoors were opened. [516]

. . . .where, despite warnings posted everywhere:

            Root Tubsmith had discovered this much from nosing             
            around in the lower spaces of the vessel, despite signs 
            posted in all major tongues warning of the dire fate 
            awaiting any who trespassed. [515/516]

We find out how two plans for two ships seemingly merge into a 
single vessel, only to subdivide while out at sea;

            . . . .Stupendica, this peaceful expression of high-bourgeois 
            luxury, had been constructed in Trieste, At the Austrian 
            Lloyd Arsenale. . . .

>From the 1911 Britannica:

            At the head of the industrial establishments of Trieste stand 
            the two ship-building yards of the Austrian Lloyd and of the 
            Stabilimento Tecnico Triestino, which are the largest of their 
            kind in Austria. The Stabilimento Tecnico is also fitted up for 
            the construction of war-ships. They are equipped with all the 
            latest technical innovations, and employ over 5000 workmen. 
            Petroleum refineries, iron-foundries, chemicals, soap-boiling, 
            silk-spinning and the production of ships' fittings, as marine 
            steam boilers, anchors, chains, cables, are the other principal 
            branches of industry. . . .

http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Trieste

            . . . .At the same time, in parallel, also in Trieste at the 
            neighboring Stabilimento Tecnico, the Austrian navy had 
            apparently building their dreadnought Emperor Maximilian. . . .

More from the 1911 Britannica:

            TRIESTE (Ger. Triest; Sla y. Trst; the Roman Tergeste, q.v.), 
            the principal seaport of Austria, 367 m. S.W. of Vienna by rail. 
            Pop. (1900), 132,879, of which three-fourths are Italians, 
            the remainder being composed of Germans, Jews, Greeks, 
            English and French. Trieste is situated at the northeast angle 
            of the Adriatic Sea, on the Gulf of Trieste, and is picturesquely 
            built on terraces at the foot of the Karst hills. The aspect of the 
            town is Italian rather than German. . . .

Note how Trieste has multiple national identities? Not to mention:

            Writer and poet, considered one of the greatest lyric poets of 
            modern Germany. Rilke created the 'object poem' attempting 
            to describe with utmost clarity physical objects, the "silence of 
            their concentrated reality." He became famous with such works 
            as DUINESER ELEGIEN and DIE SONETTE AN ORPHEUS. 
            They both appeared in 1923. . . .

            . . . .A crucial fact in Rilke's life was that his mother called him 
            Sophia [1]. She forced him to wear girl's clothes until he was 
            aged five - compensating for the earlier loss of a baby 
            daughter. . . .

            . . . .Duino Elegies was born in two bursts of inspiration separated 
            by ten years. In 1910-1912 Rilke was for some time the guest of 
            Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis-Hohenlohe at Duino, her 
            castle near Trieste. According to a story, Rilke heard in the wind 
            the first lines of his elegies when he was walking on the rocks 
            above the sea - "Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the 
            angels' / hierarchies?". . . .

            . . . .In 1913 Rilke returned to Paris but he was forced to return 
            to Germany because of the First World War. Duino Castle was 
            bombarded to ruins and Rilke's personal property was 
            confiscated in France. . . .

http://www.poetseers.org/spiritual_and_devotional_poets/rilke__rainer_maria

Rilke and his Duino Elegies in particular inform much of Gravity's Rainbow, 
though the Tristero is in many ways also related. Somehow the 
angelic orders and philatelic correspondance manage to get conflated in 
"Pynchonland", note the goings on page 1081:

               "What just happened?" Kit feeling dazed. He looked around a 
            little wildly. "I was in Lwow—"

               "Excuse me, but you were in Shambhala." He handed Kit the 
            glass and indicated one stamp in particular. . . .

Bilocation & stamp collection, "now that's hot."

1: It's not just the Stupendica that has a secret identity, Sophia as Rilke's 
anima:

             For the Gnostic Christians, the Sophia was a central element 
            in their cosmological understanding of the Universe. A Feminine 
            figure, analogous to the human soul but also simultaneously one 
            of the Feminine aspects of God and the Bride of Christ, she is 
            considered to have fallen from grace in some way, in so doing 
            creating or helping to create the material world. For the Gnostics, 
            the drama of the redemption of the Sophia through Christ or the 
            Logos is the central drama of the universe. The Sophia resides 
            in all of us as the Divine Spark. According to the Pistis Sophia, 
            Christ is sent from the Godhead in order to bring Sophia back into 
            the fullness of Pleroma following her repentance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_(gnosticism)

            The inferior God created by Sophia's desire, also referred to as
             the Demiurge, is the Creator God of the Old Testament. Due to 
            his inferiority, he is not seen as good but rather an evil, angry, 
            violent God. It is the fault of this God that the world is in the mess 
            that it is, and due to the fact that he created it, the world is 
            evil. 

            The higher transcendent God is not a creator of the material 
            world, and instead is a nurturer of the spiritual. The only hope for 
            humankind, while locked in this evil shell of a body is to 
            spiritually transcend this world and deny the body.

http://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/Religion/Projects/Reln91/Gender/Gnosticism.htm

            The goddess of wisdom has appeared in nearly every society 
            in a variety of different manifestations, including Athena, Greek 
            goddess of wisdom and military victory; Minerva, the Roman 
            goddess of wisdom and war; Tara, the Buddhist goddess of 
            compassion who teaches the wisdom of non-attachment; and 
            Inanna, an early Sumerian Goddess. Sophia, whose name in 
            Greek means "wisdom," is connected to the different 
            incarnations of sacred female knowledge and to those goddesses 
            listed above

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/dinner_party/place_settings/sophia.php