Tags
Amarante Durand, Charles Bridge, Corbeau, crow, Garcia Ferrara, JJ Abrams, magpie, merlin, Ostrero, oystercatcher, Pfeifer, Reinhold Feuerbach, Stenfalk, The Territory, Torsten Ekstrom, V.M. Straka, Vaclav Straka, VM Straka
In Chapter 9, The Territory, S. approaches the governor’s mansion (p354, p367 French). He is following the path that he discovered after Anca told him Follow the monkey. He finds the semblance of a simian face carved in tree bark and discovers a path. While on the path, he hears a howler monkey off in the distance. And then, he hears something else.
The air is full of birdsong, though the singers are unseen. Some of the songs sound out of place to him, and he catalogues them: a merlin; a crow; an oystercatcher; and a magpie tanager twicking heatedly.
The birds whose songs sound out of place are…
Merlin: the Swedish word for merlin is Stenfalk
Crow: the French word for crow in the French translation of S (p367) is Corbeau (ravens and crows are in the same family)
Oystercatcher: the Spanish word for oyster catcher is Ostrero
Magpie Tanager: The Czech word for magpie is Straka (Yen makes a good point below in the comments suggesting that this bird represents Filomela Caldeira.)
Here we have an outright reference to three of the characters from the book (Stenfalk, Corbeau, and Ostrero) – the three that were with S. as he fled from B__ to G__ after the wharf bombing. The only person missing is Pfeifer (sandpiper), and it is obvious why he is not present. His birdsong has been lost, and S. has an unpleasant rendezvous with him at the top of the hill he is climbing.
What is truly interesting about this list is that it seems to explicitly imply that S. is Straka – the magpie.
If you return to the margin notes of p124 (p129 in French), you will see that Amarante Durand and Torsten Ekstrom checked into the Hotel Voliery in Prague on October 30, 1910 – the day Vaclav Straka (the factory worker) is purported to have jumped from the Charles Bridge and never been seen again. They check into the hotel under the aliases A. Corbeau and T. Stenfalk and guest. The next day, Garcia Ferrara (Ostrero) and Reinhold Feuerbach (Pfeifer) check into the hotel.
And guest is implied on p364 to be Straka, the magpie. And yet neither Eric nor Jen have anything to say in the margins regarding this.
Was this nugget left for us to discover on our own? And, if so, does it strengthen the argument that Vaclav Straka is V.M. Straka? What do you think?
Thoughts On "S" 
Hmm…very interesting. Apparently those things that have been hidden are starting to make themselves known in S. I must investigate this further. 🙂
As I said long ago if you want to hide something from people put it in plain sight, no one will ever see it. Lex parsimoniae.
Page 84 the page of birds. “there’s a Wallace Stevens paper that has to get written.”
Wallace Stevens poet writes in symbols uses colors, blue meaning imagination. He writes 13 ways looking at a blackbird, designs the Mercury dime with the twist of adding a Phrygian cap to the model (his wife).
The Phrygian cap a long time symbol associated with alchemy symbol of transmutation. Adding wings to the cap makes the connection to the ktiwyateh the Assyrian symbol/talisman of a winged disk. Stevens follows perspectivism – “no way of seeing can be taken as definitively true.”
Greek myth Jason’s golden fleece originated in Phrygia. So we have a poet that writes in colors, designs a winged disk with a symbol of transmutation people interpret as mercury the messenger and likes blackbirds and tells us not to believe everything you see.
That’s how to hide something in plain site I think.
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p. 364 says nothing about Straka or magpies. Are you sure that’s what you meant?
The text above says p354 – not 364.
Just one correction. Magpie Tanager is a South American species of tanager, so this bird is probably not Straka but rather Sola/Filomela as a Magpie, who later confirms her viewing herself thus by changing her name from Nightingale(Filomela)) to Magpie(Pega).
If he had heard himself, he should have heard the call of the Common/Eurasian Magpie (which the Czech Straka is).
Good point. Very good, actually. I think you’re right. I also think the magpie a bit later that gets shot by the guard and dies represents the death of S’s soul. We just witnessed him go from the kind of man that would save Pfeifer’s life (in the cave) to the kind of man that would kill him. The destruction of the ship reinforces that.