ATDTDA 720

[Michael Bailey]

720 6 Yevno Azeff, infiltrating revolutionary organizations for
the Okhrana, led those organizations into violent acts...

http://preview.tinyurl.com/25y2s5 is a contemporary account
(from 1909)

but the CIA library also has an article on it,
looks like it was declassified in 1993...
http://preview.tinyurl.com/25ywv4
(oboy, I've gotta pop some more questions to
that CIA search engine!)

The hero, to my mind, (shaped by the
CIA's story, entitled "The Sherlock Holmes of the Revolution")
was a newspaper man named Burtzev.

Burtzev was editor of the revolutionary organ "Byloe" ("The Post" -
rather a sedate name as revolutionary papers go, but anyway...)
who did a Woodward-Bernstein on Azeff, up to and
including a Deep Throat-type informant from the
Okhrana who confirmed his suspicions.

Burtzev himself was deeply involved in revolutionary politics,
so, not exactly of the William Allen White school...

Burtzev's work was why Azeff's name would be
familiar to Ratty, Cyprian and Yashmeen, and even
to well-read Americans (the P-listers of that time?)

Azeff himself brings to mind the FBI informer in the 1993 WTC affair,
who kept tapes of his bosses egging him on; as well as
Nixon's Cointelpro and Brock Vond's Rex 84.

--- if Yashmeen doesn't see the future, why was she
involved in the conclave (with all those sheer-smocked
seers?) -- One possible answer: if she had the ability to teleport,
could her talents be used to shift the historical track
away from danger?  I'm not enough of a TWIT to know for sure...

720 25 This is a flashback, I realized...
episode of cabin fever  // Darazsfeszek, Dobos torte,
and Rigo Jacsi are all pastry, and with excess coffee as
well, their food could be contributing to their jitters.
The Cohen was there as well...

Not much luck with the street name or with Angel's field,
except that Vaci Ut is a street, and Angel's Field is
a district in Budapest that has its own flag.
http://www.atlasgeo.net/fotw/flags/hu-bp-13.html

Pynchonwiki sez it's a working-class neighborhood
in the northern part of the city.

There's a Hungarian print artist whose name
was Lajos Kassak (close to Lajos Halasz, hmmmm,
the "local sensitive" asleep in the bathtub for 3 days)
http://www.lajos-kassak.com/
and it looks like we may have missed a chance
to buy a print of his entitled "Angel's Field"
http://preview.tinyurl.com/32ly97
(search engine found it but currently a dead link,
however Google still has a cache of it...
a bit pricey for me, though)

Britannica teaser on Kassak sez "1st working-class
Hungarian writer...Socialist"
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9044810/Lajos-Kassak

and here are some Dadaist picture-poems by him
presented at the Budapest autumn festival 1997
(same year as that Fritz Lang bio was published)

anyway, that looks like paydirt to me...
probably missed 720 other references on 720 tho



"I say, how jolly." - Ratty McHugh (720 14)