AtDtDA(28): For a While after the Event ...

[Dave Monroe]

"For a while after the Event ..." (AtD, Pt. IV, p. 784)


"crazed Raskol'niki"

Russian: schismatics, dissenters. Raskol'nikov in Crime and Punishment
derives his name from this word.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_768-791#Page_784

Raskolnik \Ras*kol"nik\, n.; pl. Raskolnikior Raskolniks.
   [Russ. raskol'nik dissenter, fr. raskol dissent.]
   The name applied by the Russian government to any subject of the
Greek faith who dissents from the established church. The Raskolniki
embrace many sects, whose common characteristic is a clinging to
antique traditions, habits, and  customs....

http://dictionary.die.net/raskolniki

Raskolniks

(Russian raskolnik, a schismatic, a dissenter; from raskol, schism,
splitting; that in turn from raz, apart, and kolot', to split; plural,
raskolniki).

A generic term for dissidents from the Established Church in Russia.
Under the name Raskolniki, the various offshoots and schismatic bodies
originating from the Greek Orthodox Church of the Russian Empire have
been grouped by Russian historians and ecclesiastical writers.
Strictly speaking, the name Raskolniki refers merely to those who have
kept the outward forms of the Byzantine Rite ...

The Raskolniks represent in the Russian Church somewhat the antithesis
of Protestantism toward the Catholic Church. Protestants left the
Catholic Church because they claimed a desire to reform it by dropping
dogmas, beliefs, and rites; the Raskolniks left the Russian church
because they desired to keep alive the minutest rites and practices to
which they were accustomed ...

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12648b.htm

OLD BELIEVERS. The name given to the schismatic group that separated
from the Russian Orthodox Church at the time of the great religious
schism that occurred in the seventeenth century during the reign of
Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich.

The Old Believers (Starovery), or Old Ritualists (Staroobriadtsy),
were officially known as Raskol'niki (schismatics) until 1905.
Although there were many variations among them, they constituted the
adherents of a sect which broke with the established Russian Orthodox
Church, ostensibly over liturgical reforms imposed in the
mid-seventeenth century. This schism (Raskol) in Russian Orthodoxy has
been interpreted at least at three levels: as a socio-political revolt
against the centralizing authority of the Tsarist government and
Church, as a bona fide split in Russian Orthodoxy over profound
matters of faith and piety and as a superstitious response to changes
in what had become traditional, albeit corrupted, religious forms. The
Raskol was perhaps all of these things and more.

The backdrop for the Raskol was the evolution of Russian Orthodoxy
through the sixteenth century....

http://www.synaxis.info/old-rite/0_oldbelief/history_eng/nicoll.html


"Tchernobyl, the destroying star known as Wormwood"

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

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

Now rendered more commonly as Chernobyl (Russian), Chornobyl (Ukrainian).

Wormwood, a star that falls onto the Earth poisoning the fresh water
sources per Book of Revelation 8:10-11.

Dostoyevsky explores Tchenobyl/Wormwood, the meaning of the Book of
Revelation in The Idiot, where Wormwood is also linked to the newly
built net of railroads.

Absinthe, Neville and Nigel's favourite spirit, "comes from the
medicinal plant Artemisia absinthium, also called grand wormwood or
Absinth wormwood."

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_768-791#Page_784

The name of the star is called Wormwood; and a third of the waters
became wormwood, and many men died from the waters, because they were
made bitter.
--Rev 8:11

http://bible.cc/revelation/8-11.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormwood_(star)

According to one view, the city name comes from a combination of
chornyi (чорний, black) and byllia (билля, grass blades or stalks);
hence it literally means black grass or black stalks. It is named
after the Ukrainian word for the plant wormwood. Wormwood, which is
used in absinth, grows abundantly in the Chernobyl area. However,
another view states that contrary to the widely-held belief, the
Russian word for wormwood is not "Chernobyl." Stating that
"chornobyl," / "black stalks," refers to mugwort (artemisia vulgaris),
not to wormwood (artemisia absinthium). In addition, the fable that
Chernobyl = wormwood originates from a 1986 New York Times article
that quoted an unnamed "prominent Russian writer" as claiming the
Ukrainian word for wormwood was "chernobyl." This erroneous
attribution took root in the popular imagination, because it enabled
associations with the famous verse in the Apocalypse of St. John
(Revelation 8:11) Folk etymologies have appeared after the 1986
nuclear incident, which represent attempts to link the accident to
prophecies in the Book of Revelation in the Christian New Testament.
For these, see Chernobyl in the popular consciousness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl#Origin_of_the_name_Chernobyl


"ancient powers of flight"

http://www.bartleby.com/248/27.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_reindeer
http://mymerrychristmas.com/2005/reindeer.shtml

Aerotarandusdynamics: The Science of Flying Reindeer

http://www.edwardwillett.com/Columns/aerotarandusdynamics.htm


"an epidermal luminescence"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolph_the_Red-Nosed_Reindeer
http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/rudolph.asp
http://www.rankinbass.com/rudolphhome.html
http://youtube.com/watch?v=GDKP7epNr6w
http://www.cbs.com/specials/rudolph/

In other words, Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer and his airborne
squadron mates. Seriously: magic and the possibility of change is
reintroduced into the world.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_768-791#Page_784


"Mosquitoes lost their taste for blood"

?


"Clocks and watches ran backwards.... heat in general tended to flow
unpredictably"

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/seclaw.html#c4
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/therm/entrop.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy
http://www.entropylaw.com/


"fluent Slavonic"

Old Church Slavonic was the first literary Slavic language, developed
from the Slavic dialect of Thessalonica by the 9th century Byzantine
missionaries, Saints Cyril and Methodius, who used it for translation
of the Bible and other texts from Greek and for some of their own
writings. It played a great role in the history of Slavic languages
and evolved into Church Slavonic ...

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

Before the eighteenth century, Church Slavonic was in wide use as a
general literary language in Russia....  During the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries it was gradually replaced by the Russian language
in secular literature and retained its use only in church....

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

Although the Latin holds the chief place among the liturgical
languages in which the Mass is celebrated and the praise of God
recited in the Divine Offices, yet the Slavonic language comes next to
it among the languages widely used throughout the world in the liturgy
of the Church....

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14041b.htm


Matthew 7:15

http://bible.cc/matthew/7-15.htm

Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the law
and the prophets.
Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road broad
that leads to destruction, and those who enter through it are many.
How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life. And
those who find it are few.
Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but
underneath are ravenous wolves.  --Matthew 7:12-15

http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/matthew/matthew7.htm


"Aspects of the landscape"

Tierra del Fuego

http://www.tierradelfuego.org.ar/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tierra_del_Fuego

"sea ernes, gulls, terns, and petrels"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-tailed_Eagle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gull
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tern
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrel

"screaming with distaste"

Why?  But "com[ing] across the sky," no doubt ...

And cf. in general ...

... a novel "double-whammy" theory suggesting that an impact on one
side of the earth could produce massive volcanic activity at the
antipode -- a point directly opposite on the far side -- and that the
combined effect would cause disaster....

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,537675,00.html


"Granite rose sheer and unexpected," "Oceangoing ships," "Entire villages"

Were there any such reports? Of any of the above?  Not having library
access @ the moment, but wanting to get on with this as much as
possible ...