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<h1 class="center">Under the Volcano Study Guide - Chapter 5</h1>
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<td valign="top">130</td>
<td><p>Behind the ... Himavat<br>
<br>
From the first section of the 17th song (the Mahaprasthanika Parva) of the Mahabharata. Here, after the abdicating, King Yudhishthira, the just, sets out on a great journey to reach Indra's heaven beyond Mount Himavat. He is accompanied by his 4 brothers, Drapadi (the wife of all of them), and a faithful dog.</p>
<p>The rest of the italicized paragraph appears to be a representation of the Consul's dream. Lowry inteneded the opening words to have "an ironic bearing on the last words of IV" (SL, 73).</p></td>
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<td valign="top">133</td>
<td>LE GUSTA ... DESTRUYAN:<br>
<br>
The words on the sign mean: "Do you like this garden that is yours? See to it that your children do not destory it". The Consul gets the first line right, reads the relative 'que' as the interjection 'que' ('what', 'why'), perhaps because the sign has too many question marks, and makes a complete wreck of the last line. His misreading seems, at first, a terrible threat, but, as Lowry pointed out (SL, 74), "The real translation can be in a certain sense even more horrifying", . Lowry went on to say, "The garden is the Garden of Eden ... It is the world too. It also has all the cabbalistic attributes of 'garden'. (Though all this is buried far down in the book, so that if you don't want to bother about it, you needn't ...)" (SL, 74). </td>
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<td valign="top">135</td>
<td>Parian ... Cyclades:<br>
<br>
The island of Paros in the Cyclades was famous for its marble in antiquity. There may also be a reference to the "Parian Chronicale", a marble tablet found in the island of Paros in 1627, known as the "Parian Marble". </td>
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<td valign="top">135</td>
<td>Thou mighy gulf ... chops:<br>
<br>
From John Marston's poem "To Everlasting Oblivion". </td>
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<td valign="top">136</td>
<td>Tartarus:<br>
<br>
One of the regions of Hades where the most impious and guilty among mankind were supposed to be punished. It houses the monster Typhoeus. </td>
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<td valign="top">136</td>
<td>Johnsonian prospect:<br>
<br>
See also Boswell's account of Dr. Johnson's reply (Wed 6 July 1763) to the Reverend Mr. John Ogilviee's argument that Scotland had a great many noble wild prospects. JOHNSON, "I believe, Sir, you have a great many. Norway, too, has noble wild prospects; and Lapland is remarkable for prodigious noble wild prospects. But, Sir, let me tell you, the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England!" <em>Life of Johnson</em>, Vol. I, p. 425. </td>
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<td valign="top">137</td>
<td>Soda Springs<br>
<br>
Town in Idaho, where Quincey comes from. </td>
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<td valign="top">137</td>
<td>Rousseau ... on a tiger:<br>
<br>
"Geoffrey refers to a precise picture, <em>Storm in the Forest</em> (1891)" by the French painter Henri Rousseau. </td>
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<td valign="top">138</td>
<td>punishment ... <em>go on living there</em>:<br>
<br>
Kilgallin sees a parody of "the ennui expressed by Shaw's Adam in <em>Back to Methuselah</em>: 'If only I can be relieved of the horror of having to endure myself forever! If only the care of this terrible garden may pass on to some other gardener!'" (TK, 171) </td>
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<td valign="top">139</td>
<td>Liccentia vatum:<br>
<br>
(Latin) 'licentia vatium', 'licentia poetarum', ('poetic licence'). The Consul's form 'vatum' may be an instance of the phenomenon referred to. </td>
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<td valign="top">139</td>
<td>J'adoube:<br>
<br>
(French, in chess). Spoken when a player wishes to touch a piece (e.g. to adjust its position on the boad) without intending a move. </td>
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<td valign="top">139</td>
<td>-my-little-snake-in-the-grass-my-little-anguish-in-herba:<br>
<br>
See also Virgil's Eclogues, III, 93: Frigidus ... latet anguis in herba (a chill snake lurks in the grass).</td>
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<td valign="top">140</td>
<td>Xicotancatl:<br>
<br>
or Xicotencatl, name of the Tlaxcalan chief. </td>
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<td valign="top">140</td>
<td>another William Blackstone<br>
<br>
William Blackstone (1723-80), professor of English law at Oxford and author of <em>Commentaries on the Laws of England</em>, 1765 - 9. </td>
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<td valign="top">140</td>
<td>Abraham:<br>
<br>
i.e., Taskerson</td>
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<td valign="top">141</td>
<td>De Quincey ... Macbeth:<br>
<br>
References to Thomas De Quincey's essay "On the Knocking at the Gate in <em>Macbeth</em>" (1823), and to <em>Macbeth</em>, II, ii - iii. "In <em>Macbeth</em> ... the retiring of the human heart and the entrance of the fiendish heart was to be expressed and made sensible. ... The murderers and the murder must be insulated ... and all must pass self-withdrawn into a deep syncope and suspension of earthly passion" (<em>The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey</em>).</td>
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<td valign="top">141</td>
<td>katabasis:<br>
<br>
(Greek) 'a going down, descent', with pun on 'cat abysses'. Cathartes atratus: word play. 'Cathartes' is the zoological name of a variety of vultures. 'Atratus': 'clothed in mouring'. </td>
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<td valign="top">143</td>
<td>Que t- :<br>
<br>
'Que tal' (Span.) 'how are you' </td>
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<td valign="top">143</td>
<td>katzenjammer<br>
<br>
(Germ.) 'caterwauling' </td>
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<td valign="top">144</td>
<td>progression ... a <em>ratos</em><br>
<br>
(Span. in reference to the Pope's illness): 'intermittent progress', with a pun on 'rats' (Span. 'ratas') to refer to the Consul' delirious hallucinations. </td>
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<td valign="top">146</td>
<td>suppose he's ... adamant:<br>
<br>
Yvonne is talking to Hugh about the possibility of persuading the Consul to leave Mexico. </td>
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<td valign="top">146</td>
<td>sitting in the bathroom<br>
<br>
"It should be clear that the Consul has a blackout and that the seecond part in the bathroom is concerned with what he remembers half deliriously of the missing hour. Most of what he remembers is again disguised exposition and drama which carries on the story to the question: Shall they go to Guanajuato (life) or Tomalin, which of course involves Parian (death)" (SL, 74) </td>
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<td valign="top">147</td>
<td>the new moon ... arms:<br>
<br>
See also the "Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens" (and Coleridge's Dejection: An Ode"):<br>
<br>
Late, late yesteern I saw the new Moon, <br>
With the old Moon in her arms. </td>
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<td valign="top">147</td>
<td>Tarsius spectres:<br>
<br>
'Tarsius specturm': "A small lemuroid [monkey-like] quadruped ... of Sumarta, Borneo, Celebes, and the Philippines, called also ... spectre." (OED) </td>
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<td valign="top">148</td>
<td>Bougainville:<br>
<br>
Louis-Anoine de Bougainville (1729-1811), navigator who explored areas of the South Pacific as leader of the first French naval force to sail around the world (1766-9). Author of <em>Voyage autour du monde</em> (1771). </td>
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<td valign="top">148</td>
<td>botica:<br>
<br>
(Span.) 'pharmacy'; favor de servir ...: (Span.) 'please make me a dose of quinine wine or if you do not have any a dose of <em>nux vomica</em>, but -' </td>
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<td valign="top">149</td>
<td>tennis - with -:<br>
<br>
With Laurelle</td>
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<td valign="top">149</td>
<td>Thou art the grave where buried love doth live:<br>
<br>
From Shakespeare's sonnet 31 </td>
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<td valign="top">150</td>
<td>a mesh ... an eclectic systeme:<br>
<br>
"The nervous system [described] in the mystical terms of Abbe de Villars." Dr. Vigil means 'electric system'. </td>
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<td valign="top">150</td>
<td>un poco descompuesto:<br>
<br>
(Span.) 'a little out of water'</td>
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<td valign="top">150</td>
<td>eclampsia:<br>
<br>
'Epileptiform convulsions dependent on some actual disturbance of the nervous centers caused by anatomical lesion' (OED)</td>
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<td valign="top">151</td>
<td>Mene-Tekel-Peres:<br>
<br>
"Numbered-Weighed-Divided" (see also <em>Book of Daniel</em>, V, 25-8) </td>
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<td valign="top">151</td>
<td>that other Geoffrey:<br>
<br>
Yvonne's dead son </td>
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<td valign="top">152</td>
<td>The uncontrollable mystery on the bathroom floor:<br>
<br>
Reference to Yeat's "The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor" form "The Magi".</td>
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<td valign="top">152</td>
<td>bury everybody standing up: <br>
<br>
A reference to the (standing) 'mummies' exhibited in the Pantheon in Guanajuato.The 'mummies' are well-preserved bodies that have escaped putrefaction because of the nature of the soil and the dry climate. </td>
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<td valign="top">153</td>
<td><p>the dream of dark magician<br>
<br>
See Shelley's "Alastor, 11, 681-6:<br>
<br>
O, that the dream<br>
Of dark magician in his visioned cave,<br>
Raking the cinders of a crucible<br>
For life and power, even when his feeble hand<br>
Shakes in its last decay, were the true law<br>
Of this so lovely world! </p>
<p>(<em>The Complete Poetical works of Shelley</em>) </p></td>
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<td valign="top">153</td>
<td>frighful 'poulps' Merops of Theopompus .... And the <em>ignivome</em> mountains<br>
<br>
'<em>igivome</em>', 'i.e., 'fire spewing'. From Jules Verne's <em>20,000 Leagues Under the Sea</em>. "Theopompus, a Greek historian (400 B.C.) who described an imaginary land by the name of Meropis, supposed later to be Atlantis"</td>
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<td valign="top">155</td>
<td>Abe<br>
<br>
i.e., Abraham Taskerson </td>
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