AtDtDA(28): A Circassian Slave in Old Araby

[Dave Monroe]

"Dally Rideout, still moping around about Kit, not that she expected
any word from him, had gone on maturing into an even more desirable
young package, negotiable on teh Venetian market as a Circassian slve
in old Araby ..." (AtD, Pt. IV, p. 797)


"a Circassian slave in old Araby"

http://www.circassianworld.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circassians

The Circassians - self-designation Adyge - are the oldest indigenous
people of North Caucasus. Their language belongs to the North-West of
the Caucasian family of languages. It's unusual phonological system -
an overabundance of consonants and scarcity of vowels has stimulated
much interest among linguists ....

Attempts at reducing the language to writing in the 19th and early
20th century had also failed....

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/540/handouts/ussr/circass.htm
http://www.geocities.com/Eureka/Enterprises/2493/circlang.html

Common figure in European literature about the "Lustful Turk."
Circassia is a region in the Caucasus.

In the early 1860s, after Russian conquest of their region of the
Caucasus, nearly half a million Circassians migrated to Turkey. Many
Circassian women, prized for their beauty, were sold into slavery.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_792-820#Page_797

Circassian beauties were women of the Circassian people of the
Caucasus mountain range in Circassia, Northern Caucasus. A fairly
extensive literary history suggests that Circassian women were
unusually beautiful, spirited and elegant, and as such were desirable
as slave concubines.

This reputation dates back to the Ottoman Empire when Circassian women
living in the Sultan's Harem started to build their reputation as
extremely beautiful and genteel. As a result of this reputation,
American showman P. T. Barnum exhibited women whom he claimed were
Circassian beauties.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circassian_beauties
http://chnm.gmu.edu/lostmuseum/searchlm.php?function=find&exhibit=star&browse=star

The Circassians are poor, and their daughters are beautiful, and
indeed, it is in them they chiefly trade. They furnish with beauties
the seraglios of the Turkish Sultan, of the Persian Sophy, and of all
those who are wealthy enough to purchase and maintain such precious
merchandise. These maidens are very honourably and virtuously
instructed to fondle and caress men; are taught dances of a very
polite and effeminate kind; and how to heighten by the most voluptuous
artifices the pleasures of their disdainful masters for whom they are
designed. These unhappy creatures repeat their lesson to their
mothers, in the same manner as little girls among us repeat their
catechism without understanding one word they say.

--Voltaire, "Letter XI: On Inoculation," Letters to the English (1778)

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1778voltaire-lettres.html
http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Lettres_philosophiques

Maturin Murray Ballou, The Circassian Slave, or, the Sultan's
favorite: a story of Constantinople and the Caucasus (1851)

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/4795
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=T21jCn4vnBAC

"Horrible Traffic in Circassian Women—Infanticide in Turkey"
New York Daily Times, August 6, 1856

http://chnm.gmu.edu/lostmuseum/lm/311/

http://www.circassianworld.com/circassiangenocide.html

Shenfield, Stephen D.  "The Circassians--A Forgotten Genocide?"
   The Massacre in History.  Ed. Mark Levene and Robert Penny.
   New York: Berghahn Books, 1999.

http://www.circassianworld.com/A_Forgotten_Genocide.pdf


"bruisable skin inviting violent attention"

Blaming the victim?  And/or ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master-slave_morality

Cf., e.g., ...

"dark little curved welts over fading earlier bruises on her buttocks"
(GR, p. 445)

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/extra/sadomasochism.html
http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Sado-Masochism


"a blazing announcement of desire"

Cf. "A heavenwide blast of light" (p. 779)?  And see as well, e.g., ...

Roach, Marion.  Roots of Desire: The Myth, Meaning and Sexual Power
   of Red Hair.  New York: Blooomsbury, 2005.

http://www.marionroach.com/
http://www.bloomsburyusa.com/catalogue/details2.asp?isbn=9781582343440&cf=0&search=roach&isbns=&page=1
http://www.bloomsburyusa.com/catalogue/details2.asp?isbn=9781582345901&cf=0&search=roach&isbns=&page=1


Ca' Spongiatosta

582; semi-notorious aquaintance of H. Penhallow; Spongia Toasta
("roasted sponge") is a homeopathic remedy for goitre and other
thyroid problems; 730-31; family arms, 731; 798; "regular associate"
of Theign's, 867;

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=S


"the usual 1894 Bodeo"

Bodeo 10.4 mm

 A mass-produced Italian-made service revolver, initially made around
1889. Demand for them as guns was low, causing thousands of the
weapons to be converted to table lamps. An interesting Pynchonian
connection ....

[Cached, at least, in the wiki, but can' find it there]


teppisti

Italian: hooligans, hoodlums, thugs

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_792-820#Page_797