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Advanced English Skills

14 сентября 2024 13:48

Language Log
"We Await Silent Tristero's Empire"

Abbie VanSickle and Philip Kaleta, "Conservative German Princess Says She Hosted Justice Alito at Her Castle", NYT 9/9/2024: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/vonThurnUndTaxis.webp An eccentric German princess who evolved from a 1980s punk style icon to a conservative Catholic known for hobnobbing with far-right figures said on Monday that she hosted Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. and his wife at her castle during a July 2023 music festival.

Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis also told The New York Times that she viewed the justice as “a hero.”
As explained in one of the comments, the article puts "Princess" in the wrong place in her name, and arguably should not translate it, any more than the "von" should be translated as "from":

While the titles of Fürst (prince), Herzog (duke), Graf (count), Freiherr (baron) etc. do not give you any privileges and are not used ahead of the first name (as in e.g. "Prince Charles of so-and-so" or "Countess Lisl von Schlaf"), the former title has become part of the family/last name. So her official name is Gloria Fürstin (princess) von Thurn und Taxis. That doesn't mean one has to address her as "Fürstin", but it is part of her name. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/MutedPosthorn.png I was a bit surprised that none of the comments (nor any of the other mass-media stories) mention the central role of the Thurn-und-Taxis postal monopoly in Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, or that book's anticipatory echoes of today's political paranoia. As Wikipedia explains:

The shortest of Pynchon's novels, the plot follows Oedipa Maas, a young Californian woman who begins to embrace a conspiracy theory as she possibly unearths a centuries-old feud between two mail distribution companies. […]

In the mid-1960s, Oedipa Maas lives a fairly comfortable life in a northern Californian village, despite her lackluster marriage with Mucho Maas, a rudderless radio jockey and ephebophile, and her sessions with Dr. Hilarius, an unhinged German psychotherapist who tries to medicate his patients with LSD. One day, Oedipa learns of the death of an ex-lover, Pierce Inverarity, an incredibly wealthy and powerful real-estate mogul from the Los Angeles area, who has left her as the executor of his estate. Oedipa goes to meet Inverarity's lawyer, a former child actor named Metzger, and they begin an affair, which fascinates a local teenage rock band, the Paranoids, who begin following them voyeuristically. At a bar, Oedipa notices the graffiti symbol of a muted post horn with the label "W.A.S.T.E." and she chats with Mike Fallopian, a right-wing historian and critic of the postal system, who claims to use a secret postal service.

It emerges that Inverarity had Mafia connections, illicitly attempting to sell the bones of forgotten U.S. World War II soldiers for use as charcoal to a cigarette company. One of the Paranoids' friends mentions that this strongly reminds her of a Jacobean revenge play she recently saw called The Courier's Tragedy. Intrigued by the coincidence, Oedipa and Metzger attend a performance of the play, which briefly mentions the name "Tristero". After the show, Oedipa approaches the play's director and star, Randolph Driblette, who deflects her questions about the mention of the unusual name. After seeing a man scribbling the post horn symbol, Oedipa reconnects with Mike Fallopian, who tells her he suspects a conspiracy. This is supported when watermarks of the muted horn symbol are discovered hidden on Inverarity's private stamp collection. The symbol appears to be a muted variant of the coat of arms of Thurn and Taxis, an 18th-century European postal monopoly that suppressed all opposition, including Trystero (or Tristero), a competing postal service that was defeated but possibly driven underground. Based on the symbolism of the mute, [...]