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Scene
61 (449.21-463.17) 451.44] two white crows: a takeoff on Two Black Crows, a blackface comedy act popular in the 1920s and 1930s. 455.2] I just want to make that perfectly clear: no doubt an echo of then-President Nixon’s frequent use of that phrase before lying. {Peter Wolfe} 456.7] Herkahm: Heraclitus? (see 486.11). Gibbs facetiously suggested the quotation was from Empedocles (see 45.6), though as noted elsewhere the quotation is from Marx. transition (463.18-.26) Scene
62 (463.27-475.27) 463.37]
a man’s mind can turn loose and soar:
possibly a quotation; repeated a few more times in the novel. 463.41]
He that loves a rosy cheek:
from Thomas Carew’s (1595?-1640) poem
“Disdain Returned”: “He that loves a rosy cheek, / Or a coral
lip admires, / Or, from star-like eyes, doth seek / Fuel to maintain
his fires; / As old Time makes these decay, / So his flames must waste
away” (ODQ). 463.41]The
cheek that doth not fade too much gazed at: from
Keats’s “Fancy”:
“Where’s the cheek that doth not fade, / Too much gaz’d at? Where’s
the maid / Whose lip mature is ever new?” (ODQ). 464.3] resting on one white hand a warm wet cheek: from Walter Savage Landor’s (1775-1864) “Proud Word You Never Spoke”:
464.13]
bracelet of bright hair about the bone:
from Donne’s “The
Relic,” first stanza (ODQ). 464.15]
hide myself not hide my face in thee:
from “Rock of Ages” (see 318-19).
464.16]
what never was can have no end: source
unknown. 464.17]
How her pure and eloquent blood spoke in her cheeks and so distinctly
wrought:
“[...] That one might almost say, her body thought”—from Donne’s “Of
the Progress of the Soul, Second Anniversary,” ll. 244-46 (ODQ).
464.19]
One moment of happiness, the Russian said? [...] enough to last the
whole of a man’s life:
the concluding lines of Dostoyevsky’s novella White Nights
(1848). 464.20]
blow winds and crack your cheeks:
from King Lear (3.2.1). 471.9] Erebus: personification of darkness; in Greek mythology, the son of Chaos and brother of Night; also, a ship mentioned near the beginning of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Scene 63 (475.27-483.31) Massapequa to New York Amy runs into Gibbs at train station, and ride together to her Manhattan apartment; unsuccessful attempt at sex. 476.5]
Pope says to get away: in a 1993 letter to his Italian translator, Vincenzo Mantovani, Gaddis wrote: "There was a Pope early this century I forget which (he was Italian) who kept on his bedside table a picture of [a] railway station & would repeat 'to get away' wistfully wishing himself back home."
476.43]
chance favors the prepared mind: French
chemist Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) once said, “In the fields of observation,
chance favors only the mind that is prepared.” 477.9]
went to the woods to live deliberately Thoreau says: Walden, chap. 2. 477.31] Lin Yutang:Chinese writer and philologist (1895-1976). Gaddis is quoting from Cyril Connolly's essay "Blueprint for a Silver Age: Notes on a Visit to America" (Harper's, December 1947, pp. 537-44); noting the insecurity in New Yorkers, the British essayist notes that "books on how to be happy, how to attain peace of mind, how to win friends and influece people, how to breathe, how to achieve a cheap sentimental humanism at other people's expense, how to become a Chinaman like Lin Yutang and make a lot of money, how to be a B'hai or breed chickens (The Ego and I) all sell in millions" (541). Gaddis quotes most of this sentence in "The Rush for Second Place" (RSP 41). 479.1]
I see crowds of people [...] pockets full of currants:
from Eliot’s The
Waste Land.
479.9]
We won’t worry what to do [...] won’t go home when it: from the song by Klipstein and Krumpacker
in Eliot’s “Fragment of an Agon” (Sweeney Agonistes), p. 82
in The Complete Poems and Plays. {Joseph Tabbi} 480.26] déjeuner sur l’herbe: title of a famous painting by Edouard Manet (1832-83) depicting a nude woman having lunch on the grass with several clothed men; caused a scandal when first shown and still still considered to have multiple and controversial meanings as this recent critical work attests. A large image of the painting is here. Scene
64 (483.32-491.9) 484.9]
Butterfield eight: a
Manhattan telephone exchange, used by John O’Hara as the title of
a novel (1935). 485.20]
B F Skinner:
American psychologist and writer (1904-1990), a behaviorist who advocated
“operant conditioning” to control human behavior (see his novel Walden
Two [1948]). His “mechanization” of education outraged most humanists.
485.23]
nature’s symmetry [...] Physical Review Letters: later identified as an article entitled “Flaw
in Nature’s Symmetry?” and similar to a front-page New York Times
article by Walter Sullivan entitled “Physicists Uphold Change in Theory”
(27 June 1966, 1, 70). The article in Physical Review Letters
appeared the same day. 486.1] The unswerving punctuality of chance: a phrase appearing near the end of Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel (1929)
Gaddis told Steven Moore he heard the phrase used by a fellow Harvard
classmate in the 1940s; it appears in all five of his novels: R
9.5, JR 486.1, CG 233.3, FHO 50.34, 258.4, AA
63.1. – Travis Dunn 486.2]
A bat as a mouse’s idea of an angel: source
unknown. 486.3]
How less like anyone we can be than unlike ourselves: identified below as a quotation from Pascal,
but actually from Montaigne’s “On the Inconstancy of Our Actions”
(book 2, chap. 1 of the Essays). Also quoted in R (553.21)
and FHO (545.4). 486.4]
A friendliness, as of dwarfs shaking hands, was in the air: from E. M. Forster’s Passage to India
(1924), chap. 29. The phrase describes the final meeting in India
of Cyril Fielding and Adela Quested, at which a superficial reconciliation
is reached. 486.5] The total depravity of inanimate things - E. M. Forster: in fact though this has been attributed to various hands, it seems to be the title of a well-known essay in the Atlantic Monthly magazine of September 1864 by Katharine Kent Child Walker, the fuller quotation being:
It
appears in various collections of quotations. The full text is
on line is here,
and a brief biography of the author is here.
[VH] 486.6]Taine's
"le con d’une femme” as the axis round which everything turns:
Hippolyte Adolphe Taine (1828-93), French philosopher and critic.In Frank Harris's My Life and Loves (1922-27), the American journalist's sexually explicit memoirs reprinted by Grove Press in 1963, Harris recalls an occasion when someone asked "what Taine thought of the idea that all the worlds and planets and solar systems were turning round one axis and moving to some divine fulfillment (accomplishment) . Taine, who always disliked windy rhetoric, remarked quietly, 'The only axis in my knowledge round which everything moves to some accomplishment is a woman's cunt (le con d'une femme)" (197). 486.8]
Who uses whom? (LENIN?): Bertram Wolfe records Russian politician Vladimir Lenin's observation "that in every alliance or agreement of disparate groups the ultimate political question is Kto kogo? (pronounced kto kovó--who whom? Since Russian is a highly inflected language no verb is needed, but Lenin's implied verb was: Who beats whom? or Who uses whom?)"-- Khrushchev and Stalin's Ghost (NY: Praeger, 1957), 49. 486.9]
Of the soul being set before its maker [...] (K. MANSFIELD):
a passage from Mansfield’s review of E. V. Lucas’s novel Verena
in the Midst in the Atheneum for 10 September 1920, reprinted
in her Novels and Novelists, ed. J. Middleton Murray (1930).
Quoted three times in The Recognitions; see my Reader’s
Guide, p. 156, for the full quotation. 486.11] To see clearly and be able to do nothing (HERACLITUS):
not from the Greek philosopher but from the Histories of Herodotus, in which a resigned Persian states on the eve of battle, "There’s no more terrible pain a man can endure than to see clearly and be able to do nothing" (9.16).
486.12]
As if the roots of the earth [...] Keats, from a letter to J.
H. Reynolds dated 9 April 1818, commenting on the rainy weather in
Devonshire (ODQ). 486.13]
Lady Brute: that may be an error in the translation: in Sir John Vanburgh’s (1664-1726) play The
Provok’d Wife, Belinda remarks, “Ay, but you know we must return
good for evil,” to which Lady Brute replies, “That may be a mistake
in the translation” (ODQ). 486.14]
Growing up as a difficult thing which few survive (HEMINGWAY?):
untraced. 486.17]
The melancholia of things completed:
from section 277 of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil; quoted
twice in The Recognitions. 486.18]His
heart yearning [...] (T. E. LAWRENCE):
chap. 57 of Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926) ends:
“The crowd wanted book-heroes, and would not understand how more human
old Auda was because, after battle and murder, his heart yearned towards
the defeated enemy now subject, at his free choice, to be spared or
killed: and therefore never so lovely.” Auda abu Tayi, one of the
most celebrated warriors of his time, worked closely with Lawrence
to mount the Arab Revolt. 486.23]Beware
women who blow on knots:
the sign of a witch; the advice is given in the Koran (sura 113) and
is noted in Frazer’s Golden Bough (chap. 21 in the abridged
edition). 486.24]
That a work of art has a beginning, middle and end, life is all middle:
Aristotle writes: “A whole is that which has beginning, middle, and
end” (Poetics,
chap. 7); the riposte is untraced. 486.26]
There is a saying [...] (C. M. DOUGHTY, TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA):
Charles M. Doughty’s (1843-1926) famous Travels (1888) recounts
his travels in a baroque, unique style; the present quotation is from
chap. 2, which gives this description of the inhabitants of Maan (a
small town in Jordan, a rest station Doughty stayed at on the Haj—the
annual pilgrimage from Damascus to Mecca): There is a saying, if any stranger
enquire of the first met of Maan, were it even a child, “Who is here
the sheykh?” he would answer him “I am he.” They are very factious
light heads, their minds are divided betwixt supine recklessness and
a squalid avarice. When I formerly lodged here I heard with discomfort
of mind their hourly squabbling, as it were rats in a tub, with loud
wrangling over every trifle as of fiends in the end of the world.”
(New York: Random House, 1947, p. 73) The
quotation was originally intended as the epigraph to J R. 486.30]
It is true [...] cheated into some fine passages, but:
assessing himself in a letter to B. R. Haydon (dated 8 March 1819),
Keats wrote: “I am three and twenty with little knowledge and middling
intellect. It is true that in the height of enthusiasm I have been
cheated into some fine passages; but that is not the thing” (so reads
ODQ, Gaddis’s source; other editors read the last three words
as “nothing”). 486.32]
Gogol’s character [...] gaping hole in humanity: Nikolai Gogol thus describes the miser Plyushkin
in chap. 6 of his novel Dead Souls (1842). 490.17]
all her eloquent blood spoke in her cheeks:
see 464.17. 490.34]
Lawrence’s old warrior Auda [...] yearning toward the defeated enemy:
see 486.18. Scene 65 (491.10-501.11) 493.4]
what immortal hand or eye:
from Blake’s “The Tyger,” first stanza. 494.8]
love means being able to say you’re sorry:
a take-off on Erich Segal’s line in Love Story (1970), “Love
means never having to say you’re sorry.” 494.29]cleaner
greener maiden [...] neater sweeter land:
the British soldier in Kipling’s poem “Mandalay,”
disappointed after returning to England, boasts: “I’ve a neater, sweeter
maiden in a cleaner, greener land!” (ODQ). 495.8]
one hand resting white on a warm cheek wet:
see 464.3. 496.20]
Tripler’s:
an exclusive men’s haberdashery on 44th and Vanderbilt
in Manhattan. {Peter Wolfe} 498.5]
sending people by telegraph [...] recreated somewhere else: a notion advanced at the end of chap. 5 of
Wiener’s The Human Use of Human Beings. 498.39]Minuet
in G:
a popular piece from Bach's "Notenbüchlein für Anna Magdalena Bach" (BWV Anh. 114). [AZ] 501.5]
too much gazed at:
see 463.41. 502.1] the English suicide left the note too many buttons to button and unbutton: probably from Jean Cocteau's novel The Grand Écart (trans. Lewis Galantière [NY: Putnam's, 1925]). Near the beginning, as the protagonist unbuttons his jacket, "He is still thinking of that Englishman who committed suicide after having written: 'Too many buttons to button and unbutton: I'm through'" (p. 9). [Alex Van Heest] 504.25]
sculptor [...] who called beauty the promise of function: American sculptor Horatio Greenough (1805-52)
announced his manifesto as “By Beauty I mean the promise of function.
/ By action I mean the presence of function. / By character I mean
the record of function” (The Travels, Observations, and Experiences
of a Yankee Stonecutter [1852]). 504.31] bracelet of dark hair: see 464.13. Scene 66 (501.11-508.31)
Scene
67 (509.13-543.38) 515.19]
I CHOSE ROTTEN GIN [...] —D O’Lobeer:
the titles are approximate anagrams of The Recognitions, and
most of the quotations are from its original reviews: see In Recognition
of William Gaddis, p. 18, n.28 for details. 516.8]
Ethan Frome:
title of a short novel by Edith Wharton (1911). 516.16]
The Blood in the Red White and Blue: the
title of the Civil War film in FHO. 518.39]
bringing the world into the classroom [...] educator Thomas Dewey:
American philosopher and educator (1859-1952), whose scientific realism
springs from William James’s pragmatism; source of quotation untraced;
perhaps from his Democracy and Education (1916).
521.10]
middle of winter: sounds
plagiarized from Cheyenne Winter by Mari Sandoz (1953),
made into a popular movie in 1964. 524.42]
the Blue Danube:
the well-known Strauss waltz. 526.9]
Bradley and Ike: Omar
Nelson Bradley (1893-1981) served under Eisenhower in World War II.
527.10]
Frigicom: the notion of sounds frozen and then allowed to
thaw out at sea is anticipated in Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel;
in book 4, chaps. 55-56, the voyaging Pantagruel reaches the Frozen
Sea, where the clamor of a battle, frozen into sound shards during
the previous winter, thaws out with noisy results similar to those
reported later in J R (673).
527.36]
Pater's line [...] Venice as frozen music: untraced;
ODQ records F.W.J. Schelling's observation “Architecture in
general is frozen music.” 529.19]
clean well lighted place:
title of a famous short story by Hemingway. 536.24]
all’s right with the world:
from part 1 of Browning’s drama Pippa Passes (ODQ). Scene 68 (543.39-548.14) 545.7]
Tristan: Wagner’s
opera Tristan
und Isolde (1859, first performed 1865). 545.7]
Charon:
in Greek mythology, the ferryman who transported the spirit across
the river Styx into Elysium. 545.36]
Crabbed age and youth:
“Crabbed age and youth cannot live together: / Youth is full of pleasance,
age is full of care”—Shakespeare, The Passionate Pilgrim (ODQ).
Crabbed Age and Youth is also the title of a book by Robert
Louis Stevenson (ODQ). 545.37]
South Wind [...] Nepenthe:
Norman Douglas’s 1917 novel South Wind is set on the island
of Nepenthe (modeled after Capri). 547.5]
Rameau [...] The Gnat:
Jean Philippe Rameau (1683-1764), French composer. “The Gnat” (Le
Moucheron) is actually by Rameau’s contemporary, François Couperin
(1668-1733), from his Pièces de Clavecin, book 2. 547.35]
Beethoven [...] heartrending will [...] Second Symphony:
the will is translated in Thayer’s Life (304-5) and is indeed
heartrending; at one point the composer writes: “But what a humiliation
for me when someone standing next to me heard a flute in the distance
and I heard nothing, or someone heard a shepherd singing
and again I heard nothing. Such incidents drove me almost to despair,
a little more of that and I would have ended my life—it was only my
art that held me back. Ah, it seemed to me impossible to leave
the world until I had brought forth all that I felt was within me.” Scene
69 (548.14-565.16)
Scene
70 (565.17-580.21)
571.40]
Spencer’s immutable law:
survival of the fittest—from Herbert Spencer’s (1820-1903) Principles
of Biology. Spencer’s popularity in nineteenth-century America
is discussed throughout Hofstadter’s Social Darwinism in American
Thought (see 393.23).
571.40 "Give me the fact, man! The irrefragable fact!": in the first chapter of Jack London’s The Iron Heel (1908), the socialist protagonist argues with group of uninformed ministers:
The phrase “the irrefragable fact” also appears at the beginning of chap. 4. Portions of this passage from Jack Gibbs’s manuscript was reused in Gaddis’s essay “The Rush for Second Place” (RSP 9).
571.42] Maggie the Girl of the Streets:
Stephen Crane’s 1893 novella about Bowery slum life (but A
rather than the). 573.16]
Madame Bernhardt [...] photographed in a yellow mackintosh as ungainly
as his [...] Wilde:
more from “Impressions of America” (see 288.45).
573.40]
thing of Granados:
Enrique Granados Campina (1867-1916), Spanish pianist and composer.
575.29]
Horatio Alger [...] Ragged Dicks:
see 21.41; Ragged Dick
was the boy-hero of a number of Alger’s novels. 575.42]
a century labeled one of the most fascinating chapters [...]
by [...] Reverend Newell Dwight Millis:
actually Hillis:
American clergyman and activist (1858-1929), author of over two dozen books;
source of quotation unknown (cf. AA 83.18, where his surname is spelled correctly,
as it is in RSP 11).
. 576.7]
Mark Twain saw them through a glass eye, darkly:
apparently a reference (via 1 Cor. 13:12) to the misanthropy that
darkens Twain’s later writings. 577.19]
the first book he took:
Broch’s Sleepwalkers: see 629.40.
578.9]
place is like Kafka’s:
in The Castle (see 418.6),
the official Sordini works in a similar chaotic room (chap. 5). 579.9]
tripods of Hephaestus: see
585.22. |
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