Camp Concentration/Book One: June 2 to June 15

Summary

Louis's journal has been interrupted by his removal from regular prison to a mysterious underground facility. Its administrators, Haast and Busk, tell him that he is there to document the behavior of the other prisoners, who are undergoing an intelligence-boosting treatment using a substance called Pallidine. His perspective as a writer is needed because the prisoners have been using their new mental abilities to pursue interests the researchers did not expect: George Wagner is directing a production of Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, and Mordecai Washington is attempting to revive the medieval pseudoscience of alchemy. When Wagner dies, Louis learns that the experiment is also a death sentence: Pallidine is actually an unusual form of syphilis that kills its victims within nine months.

June 2

foxy, like Larkin or Revere

Unclear, may be fictional characters. Philip Larkin avoided military service due to poor eyesight.

June 3

Camp Archimedes

Archimedes is credited with numerous inventions in physics and mathematics in the 3rd century BC.

Fred Berrigan ... a month before his suicide

Berrigan's name possibly refers to peace activists Philip and Daniel Berrigan, and to the Minnesota poet John Berryman, whose suicidal ghost appears in Disch's later novel The Businessman.

the Auaui campaign

Auaui is fictional and Haast's career doesn't correspond to that of any real World War Two general, although his superstitiousness and his aggressive optimism may be references to Patton, who believed himself to be the reincarnation of various military figures of the past.

the name Humphrey has the wrong associations

Hubert Humphrey, Johnson's first Vice President, was a prominent Democratic Party politician and multiple-time Presidential candidate.

white, Alphavillean hallways

Godard's science-fiction film noir Alphaville (1965). The sterile corridors that Sacchetti is thinking of were not built by a set designer; Godard filmed in existing industrial and office spaces in Paris.

Bluebeard's castle

Legendary serial wife-murderer who concealed the bodies of his victims behind the one locked door in his castle.

some deep Pellucidar

A fictional underground kingdom in the novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Acrilan carpet

Brand name for a type of acrylic fabric.

Gerard Winstanley, Puritan Utopist

The subject of Sacchetti's dissertation is a 17th-century political activist, founder of the Diggers.

Palgrave, Huizinga, Lowell, Wilenski ... Pascal

As is often the case with Sacchetti's name-dropping, he mentions only last names; the authors on his reading list are most likely Francis Turner Palgrave, Johan Huizinga, Robert Lowell, R.H. Wilenski, and Blaise Pascal.

June 5

produces, in another room ... impressions of everything I type

Reminiscent of Disch's short story "The Squirrel Cage" (1966), in which the author finds himself imprisoned for unknown reasons, with nothing to do but type his thoughts on a keyboard that produces no visible output; he thinks it may be transmitting his words elsewhere, but is never sure.

Limbo ... the Homer of this dark glade

In Dante's Inferno, Homer, like Virgil and other classical poets, resides in Limbo— the relatively pleasant outskirts of Hell, populated by historical figures who committed no sins, but could not enter Heaven since they were not Christian.

conchie

A conscientious objector— slang from the First World War.

the angels, of course

One of George's many references to Rilke's Duino Elegies, or in this case to one of Sacchetti's poems that referenced Rilke, possibly these lines from the First Elegy:

... Not that you could withstand
God's voice: far from it. But listen to the breath,
the unbroken message that creates itself from the silence.

Farmboys might recite Whittier perhaps, or even Carl Sandburg

The 19th-century poet John Greenleaf Whittier and the 20th-century one Carl Sandburg.

June 6

Dr. A. Busk

A busk is a rigid piece of metal, wood, or bone, used as the front fastening of a corset.

a WAC

An officer in the Women's Army Corps, a U.S. Army branch that was disbanded in 1978 when women were integrated (somewhat) into the regular Army.

June 7

rasp of a voice, like Punch

The volatile and murderous lead character of Punch and Judy shows has a garbled voice, a little like Donald Duck, traditionally done by talking through a kazoo-like "swazzle".

Donovan's Brain

Science-fiction novel by Curt Siodmak (1948), adapted into several movies, about a scientist who keeps a millionaire's brain alive in a glass tank until it starts taking over his body telepathically.

I am not full, I am not full

These lines appear in Disch's poem "A Bunch of Things", in The Right Way to Figure Plumbing.

Genius is an infinite capacity for pain

Mordecai is intentionally misquoting the maxim "Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains" (i.e., making effort), which is itself a misquote of this phrase from Thomas Carlyle: "'genius' (which means transcendent capacity of taking trouble, first of all)."

WASCs

White Anglo-Saxon Catholics (a play on the more common term WASP).

Wilenski's Flemish Painters

Flemish Painters: 1430-1830 by R.H. Wilenski (1960). The passage about van der Goes that Mordecai reads is from pages 59-60.

oscillating between Sic and Non

Latin: Yes and No— title of a theological work by Pierre Abélard (ca. 1121).

Are you being hermetic?

Hermetic in common usage means obscure or secret, but specifically refers to the occult writings of Hermes Trismegistus.

Like some watcher of the skies

From Keats's "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer".

June 8

Zu viel, zu viel

German: Too much, too much.

Wren's Chelsea

The Royal Hospital Chelsea, whose opulent chapel and dining hall were designed by Christopher Wren.

Tiepolo ... Douanier Rousseau

The painters Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and Henri Rousseau.

alchymical jabberwock

A reference to Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" from Through the Looking Glass, which contains many nonsense words.

Ossa on Pelion

A play on (or mistake for) the expression "heaping Pelion on Ossa," meaning to "add an extra difficulty to something which is already onerous." (Oxford Dictionaries)

June 9

Ahimé

Misprint of ahimè, Italian: "alas."

June 10

the Siegfried Line

A.k.a. "the Westwall", a system of German fortifications in World War Two that the Nazis claimed was unbreakable, but in reality was never completed and only partly effective.

Krebiozen

A pseudoscience cancer treatment of the 1950s, never shown to have any beneficial effect, though Haast apparently thinks otherwise.

the Magnum Opus

Latin: "great work"; in alchemy, refers to the process of creating the philosopher's stone, a mythical substance that could turn lead into gold and reverse aging.

his teacher, Albertus Magnus, was an even greater alchemist

Albertus Magnus was in fact one of Thomas Aquinas's teachers, but the rest is typical crankish embellishment by Haast. The popular idea that Albertus was an alchemist is generally thought to be a false rumor due to his interest in Aristotle and science; he taught Aquinas in a more mainstream capacity, at the theology department of the University of Paris. The various alchemical texts that are legendarily attributed to him are collectively known as the writings of "Pseudo-Albertus." Aquinas wrote very little on alchemy, and from a skeptical perspective rather than as a practitioner.

General Uhrlick

German: "Clock-lick."

Rene Alleau's Aspects de l'alchimie traditionelle

A 1953 book, never published in English.

June 11

Wieland Wagner

German opera director who directed many productions of his grandfather's works at the Bayreuth Festival. Sacchetti calls his work lutulent, that is, muddy.

Hell is murky

From Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking monologue, Macbeth, V.i.

to see Burton in the role

Richard Burton played Faustus in a 1966 stage production that he also co-directed and filmed.

Why this is hell, nor am I out of it

The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, scene III. Having summoned Mephistopheles to Earth, Faustus asks him how it's possible for a devil to leave Hell; Mephistopheles replies that for him, as a fallen angel who was once able to see the face of God, Earth is Hell.

Sheridan or Wilde

Comic playwrights Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Oscar Wilde.

eating magic apples

A double mythological reference. In the Norse mythology that inspired Wagner's Das Rheingold, golden apples provided by the goddess Freya keep the gods eternally young; trouble begins when the gods are deprived of the apples. In the book of Genesis, God expels Adam and Eve from Eden after they eat (an unspecified fruit, traditionally depicted as an apple) from the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil," to prevent them from also eating from the "tree of life."

June 12

Coleridge ... visitor from Porlock

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" (1797) was famously unfinished; Coleridge claimed that his attempt to write down images from a dream was interrupted by someone he described only as a person from Porlock.

Ripe as a cage of doves

These lines, in somewhat different format, make up part of the poem "The Pentagon" (in three sections: "The Procession", "The Sacrifices", "The Idol") in Disch's collection The Right Way to Figure Plumbing.

The jaw's jeweled hinge

Disch's fellow SF writer Samuel Delany named his first book of critical essays, The Jewel-Hinged Jaw, after this line.

June 13

hypogeum

An underground tomb or temple.

Who's Who

A once-popular reference publication with brief biographies of public figures.

the Nicols variety

There are two strains of T. pallidum known as Nichols strains (Nicols is a misprint). The more commonly referenced one is the pathogenic Nichols strain, which, as Busk says, was isolated in 1912 and has been grown in rabbits ever since. Attempts to grow T. pallidum in tissue cultures or on a non-living culture medium have only produced non-infectious varieties, one of which is the nonpathogenic Nichols strain.

Nelson and Mayer ... T.P.I.

The Nelson-Mayer Treponema pallidum immobilization reaction, which uses Treponema grown in rabbits, was the state of the art at the time of Disch's writing but has since been replaced by simpler antibody tests such as rapid plasma reagin.

the most active researcher ... has been the Armed Services

Busk does not mention the now-infamous syphilis studies/atrocities led by the U.S. Public Health Service in Guatemala (1946-1948) and Alabama (1932-1972), in which unwitting human test subjects were allowed to suffer the disease without treatment, and in some cases were deliberately infected with it. This isn't a case of the character withholding information: Disch, like most Americans at the time, simply didn't know about it, since the Tuskegee experiment in Alabama was not made public until 1972 and the Guatemala experiments not until 2005.

Donizetti, Gauguin ... Nietzsche

Many historical figures are said to have had syphilis, although prior to modern diagnostic tests this was impossible to verify, and its neurological effects were hard to distinguish from other mental disorders: Donizetti is thought to have had bipolar disorder, Nietzsche may also have been bipolar as well as possibly suffering from vascular dementia. Gauguin is a clearer case, having described himself as developing symptoms of syphilis after vising brothels.

the Goncourts, Abbé Galiani, Hugo Wolff ... Adolph Hitler

Jules de Goncourt's syphilis was documented in the writing of his brother Edmond. "Hugo Wolff" is a misprint for Hugo Wolf. The theory that Hitler had syphilis was originally based on a speculative note in his doctor's diary and might explain some of his physical and behavioral problems, but can't be verified.

I can find no documentation of Ferdinando Galiani either having, or writing about, syphilis. However, in Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, which is later referenced several times in Camp Concentration, there are two mentions of "the Goncourt diaries" and "the letters of Abbé Galiani" together; in context there's no indication that these are meant to be about the same subject, but Disch may have assumed so.

June 15

There is no Baal

A name used for Middle Eastern deities which, in Jewish and Christian tradition, came to mean a false god or devil. Also the title of a play by Bertolt Brecht (1918), about a charismatic nihilist poet whose philosophy is similar to that of "Louie II" here.