ATDTDA 697-723 "Against the Day"
Michael Bailey
michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com
Tue Jan 22 03:40:19 CST 2008
New section, new opportunity to wonder, "why against the day,
against what day?"
economical pastiche of imagery-in-response,
might include a (sepia-toned) photo of people
taken with broad daylight in the background,
to indicate the "contra jour" sense of the phrase...
and a series of people preparing for various eventualities
(Vibe trying to prepare a business succession plan,
Renfrew/Werfner preparing for war, Lew preparing to
change jobs again, Webb preparing for world revolution,
(all afterimages from previous chapters,
of course) - to stress the [store up] [make ready for] implications
of "against the day"
Kicking off the eponymous section of this still somewhat
puzzlingly-titled work, the development of Cyprian.
We know that Cyprian's father sent him to Paris with
a gay uncle (p497), apparently as a test of sorts...which C
had failed (or passed, from a different POV - not
that of his father, though)
So, synoptically: Cyprian, amid a gay life in Vienna...
the Russians Misha and Grish recruit him as a spy, but
also as a sex/sadism toy for their colonel...
his old friend Ratty hooks him up with a British spy,
Derrick Theign, for whom he serves much the same ends...
lots of adventures ensue, with references that I am probably
going to miss by the scads.
Interjections, additions, corrections, most welcome, one and all!
So without further ado:
697 - "Cyprian's first post was at Trieste" -
p 698 will reveal that it took a year to zig-zag into that position from
his louche activities in Vienna, which themselves (flashing back to
p 697) apparently were the culmination of "a few years of false
uttering in a number of hands"
(double entendre there. How many more references
have I missed already?)
Trieste - on the back of the top (northeast) of the boot of Italy,
on the border of Slovenia. James Joyce was teaching English
there from 1904-1915, give or take, off and on...
port, crossroads, cultural centre, part of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire until WWI
--- Cyprian is "monitoring the docks"
with an "operative's notebook" but not, I guess,
in uniform or in a customshouse: he's "loitering at dockside"
and _such_ an eye has he, that it's up to him to keep tabs
on those "traveling in disguise"
(He must be nearly as observant as Lew)
but that's not all he does, monitor the docks and the emigrant
traffic; there are also "side trips"
"Fiume and newcomer's rounds at the Whitehead torpedo factory"
...this guy Whitehead was an engineer who in 1864
was already in Fiume, managing some other kind of factory.
After the Austrian Navy rejected the primitive torpedo presented for
their consideration by their officer Giovanni Luppis in 1860, Luppis
turned to Whitehead to perfect the invention. By 1866 they had
a self-propelled model that passed muster, and the world's
first torpedo factory was built in Fiume (today, Rijeka, Croatia)
newcomer's rounds would entail Cyprian doing a security
check on new hires (again, this would seem to indicate a
keen eye and an encyclopedic internal rogue's gallery)
"Zengg" - (oh, yes, a very present help in time of trouble -
Pynchonwiki has a nice rundown on the Uskoks and
the Macedonian question)
"never allowing themselves more than half a minute before
deliverance into light"
But who or what are they delivering into light, and how?
Are they lighting the beacons?
And what does it mean, to allow themselves half a minute?
Maybe that's a point of discipline in their manual of arms:
when you detect a spark, you have 30 seconds to light the beacon?
If so, pretty tight organization...what do they do, once the beacons
are lit? Attack the exposed Turks?
But there aren't any actual Turks invading, are there?
At this point, I'm thinking maybe that Cyprian made up the New Uskoks
to pad his expense vouchers.
Much obliged for any clarification here.
Istrian Peninsula - Pynchonwiki has a map link
(I'm not a doctor, but Trieste & Fiume look sort of
like 2 adenoids athwart a uvula) -- but importantly,
Trieste is on the West side, so the sea is to the west and south;
whereas the sea is east and south of Fiume.
(698) ATD already being used as a Wiktionary cite:
Wolve
Of an organ, to make a hollow whining sound like that of a wolf.
2006, Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day, Vintage 2007, p. 784:
he had returned to his schoolboy's script, to distant Evensongs,
to the wolving of the ancient chapel organ as the last light is
extinguished and the door latched for the long night.
"http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wolve"
I think those old organs had to be pumped up, and the wolving
would emanate after the pumper quit as the bellows ran out of air.
That would happen after Evensong as the organist packed up
to go home.
(cf. 497 "Cyprian stood in the evenings, at the Compline
hour, just outside the light cast from the chapel windows..."
quite amusing list of caveats, disclaimers etc surrounding his
flirtation with faith...ending in strong and funny criticism of even
the music that drew him in the 1st place...but I think it's significant
that religion is significant to him, and significant that although
most people wouldn't see his occupation on the docks ("Sailors,
it went without saying...") as a soul-cleansing return to a faith of his youth,
for him maybe it is.)
the only other literary cites I found on several search engines were:
"What an awful storm! The room trembles. Don't you like the sound?
What they used to call 'wolving' in the old organ at Dorminster!'" -
http://www.ucc.ie/celt/online/E860000-001/text026.html
from a story by 19th century pioneering horror author
Sheridan LeFanu.
also, "wolving the ulvertones" from
Finnegans Wake (Wikipedia cites LeFanu as an acknowledged
influence on Joyce; "Wolfe Tone" is a further overtone in that quote)
without reading too much in,
just want to nod at the possibility of an undercurrent
of terror/horror in Cyprian's post (not just because of LeFanu.
You wouldn't apply "wolving" to an intensely cheerful sound, eg)
and at conjuration of Wolfe Tone's name in the port of New Orleans
being reflected (though twice removed, via wolving conjuring
LeFanu conjuring Joyce) in the port of Trieste -- maybe...
even without the Joyce connection, an organ wolving is making
a tone, innit?
so I had to look at the Wikipedia article on Wolfe Tone again,
and like this quote:
"He rises," says William Lecky the 19th century historian, "far
above the dreary level of commonplace which Irish conspiracy
in general presents. The tawdry and exaggerated rhetoric;
the petty vanity and jealousies; the weak sentimentalism;
the utter incapacity for proportioning means to ends, and
for grasping the stern realities of things, which so commonly
disfigure the lives and conduct even of the more honest members
of his class, were wholly alien to his nature. His judgement of men
and things was keen, lucid and masculine, and he was alike
prompt in decision and brave in action."
and so may we all (be)!
My loquaciousness is becoming insupportable -
more (and more succinct) tomorrow night!
--
"to keep the Menai bridge from rust, by boiling it in wine" - Lewis Carroll
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