"We Await Silent Tristero's Empire"
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Abbie VanSickle and Philip Kaleta, "Conservative German Princess Says She Hosted Justice Alito at Her Castle", NYT 9/9/2024:
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.
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, Oedipa thinks that Trystero exists as a countercultural secret society with unknown goals.
She researches an older censored edition of The Courier's Tragedy, which confirms that Driblette indeed made a conscious choice to insert the "Tristero" line. She seeks answers through a machine claimed to have psychic abilities but the experience is awkward and unsuccessful. As she feverishly wanders the Bay Area, the muted post horn symbol appears in many random places. Finally, a nameless man at a gay bar tells her that the symbol simply represents an anonymous support group for people with broken hearts. Oedipa witnesses people referring to and using mailboxes disguised as regular waste bins marked with "W.A.S.T.E." (later suggested to be an acronym for "We Await Silent Tristero's Empire"). Even so, Oedipa sinks into paranoia, wondering if Trystero exists or if she is merely overthinking a series of false connections.
There's more, for which you could read the rest of the extensive Wikipedia article (and its links)— or just the original novella, which might even be shorter…
AG said,
September 14, 2024 @ 8:36 am
Yes! Thanks for posting this. I also thought of Rilke, who enjoyed the patronage of a Thurn und Taxis noblewoman a century before the much-less-useful-to-society Alito. I believe the Duino Elegies are named after the castle she let Rilke live in. To bring it full circle, the Elegies are definitely cited by Pynchon somewhere, probably Gravity's Rainbow.
J.W. Brewer said,
September 14, 2024 @ 8:54 am
I'm not sure why current German word order conventions (conventions driven in part by Germany-specific legal rules – IIRC the situation may be different in Austria but I haven't gone back to check and it seems quite likely it was different in the former East Germany) should dictate AmEng word order conventions.
Note also that the lady's maiden name before she married into the v. T&T family was (stripping down her seven given names to just one for convenience …) Gloria Gräfin von Schönburg-Glauchau, yet her father's name (with the same editing) was Joachim Graf von Schönburg-Glauchau. Thus her "surname" differs from her father's in that the "title" lexeme is inflected for gender, but German surnames are otherwise not inflected for gender (unlike those in e.g. many Slavic and Baltic languages). It's all a post-1918 workaround for a political compromise whereby the old royal/noble titles were sort of abolished and sort of not. Plus if it really was just a surname, you wouldn't translate or calque the "title" part of it, would you? We don't refer in English to a German lady named Frau Zimmermann as Mrs. Carpenter.
Jim Mack said,
September 14, 2024 @ 12:04 pm
Thanks for this. As a long-time Pynchon reader, I too flashed immediately to *Crying* when I saw the Alito story
David Marjanović said,
September 14, 2024 @ 12:21 pm
It is: the titles, and even von, were abolished rather than made part of the name. Journalists consistently addressed the son of the last emperor as Herr Dr. Habsburg.
Marc said,
September 14, 2024 @ 12:39 pm
If this is about competition between postal services, surely we need Moist von Lipwig to help us sort it out.
Andrew Usher said,
September 14, 2024 @ 1:23 pm
I don't believe we need to follow German legal conventions when quoting someone's name; we are speaking English, and I doubt she particularly objects to the difference. Indeed, I'd have no problem with 'of Thurn and Taxis' for the same reason: titles can be translated. As also how they are used: DM just used Herr Dr., but we can't say Mr. Doctor in English., as only one is allowed.
Of course one can choose to not use the title but apparently this woman is known that way, so it wouldn't really do.
However – it is true _in English_ that the normal word order would be 'Gloria, Princess …' as the title precedes only when it is one word. 'Split titles' are awkward at best, and I think this writer went astray just because in America we're not used to dealing with noble titles at all. and so some of us have no ear in that case.
RfP said,
September 14, 2024 @ 4:21 pm
I’m reaching a bit here, I know, but there’s also the role played by Tilda Swinton in Wes Anderson‘s The Grand Budapest Hotel, as described by Wikipedia:
John Swindle said,
September 14, 2024 @ 4:53 pm
What about Roman Catholic cardinals, another set of princes? "Cardinal Francis Spellman" or "Francis Cardinal Spellman?" "Cardinal Avery Dulles" or "Avery Cardinal Dulles"?
Y said,
September 14, 2024 @ 7:52 pm
Well, these things happen.
Chips Mackinolty said,
September 14, 2024 @ 9:07 pm
Gotta love Language Log!
A new word for me: ephebophile! Never run into it before!