Analysis of Gravity's Rainbow, Part 3 - Chapter 11.2: Ilse's First Visit, Visions of the Moon, Kekulé's Dream, the Benzene Ring, Pökler and Weissmann, Ilse's Second Visit, to the Zwölfkinder
Learned from looking up the Greifswalder Oie that von Braun was there in 1937 (and this is one of the few times P. gives us a year: "Pölker moved to Peenemünde in 1937". von Braun lurks behind the text, his leadership occupied in the fictional realm by Weissmann; who is at most only partially inspired by von Braun... The details about Peenemunde and Griefswalder came to Pynchon via Walter Dornberger's 1954 V-2, which was likely an important source for P. In fact, this is interesting, Dornberger worked as a consultant at Boeing as an Operation Paperclip transplant from the Nazis; P. could have known him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Dornberger
This Rilke reference is not to one of the elegies, but to a quote as P. says, but he doesn't give the whole thing: "Everything once, only once, once and no more. Us too once. Never more often. But this having once been, even once only, this having been earthly seems irrevocable.”
I also dwelled on the open parenthesis. My edition -- the new penguin edition with the wrong page numbers--doesn't have the close parens you report in the Bantam.
Learned from looking up the Greifswalder Oie that von Braun was there in 1937 (and this is one of the few times P. gives us a year: "Pölker moved to Peenemünde in 1937". von Braun lurks behind the text, his leadership occupied in the fictional realm by Weissmann; who is at most only partially inspired by von Braun... The details about Peenemunde and Griefswalder came to Pynchon via Walter Dornberger's 1954 V-2, which was likely an important source for P. In fact, this is interesting, Dornberger worked as a consultant at Boeing as an Operation Paperclip transplant from the Nazis; P. could have known him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Dornberger
This Rilke reference is not to one of the elegies, but to a quote as P. says, but he doesn't give the whole thing: "Everything once, only once, once and no more. Us too once. Never more often. But this having once been, even once only, this having been earthly seems irrevocable.”
I also dwelled on the open parenthesis. My edition -- the new penguin edition with the wrong page numbers--doesn't have the close parens you report in the Bantam.
Asta Nielsen barely had any upper lip atall. ...