December 4, 2006

  • Umkehrung (Spin)

    180, 932 -
    The Musical!

    "You gotta be
    true to your code."
    -- Sinatra

    NY Lottery, 2006:

    Dec. 3 Mid-day - 180
    Dec. 3 Evening - 932


    Yesterday's entry     suggested that
    the date, December 3, might be
    appropriate for some sort of
    Broadway production.

    Yesterday evening's NY lottery
    number, 932, suggests*
    (via Google) that a visit to
    the castle Wildeck
    is in order.

    This castle is now the home
    of the Buchdruck-Museum
    honoring Johannes Gutenberg.

    For an appropriate Broadway
    production, see today's
    New York Times:

    Gutenberg! The Musical!

    Yesterday's mid-day NY lottery
    number, 180, suggests, in the
    above context, the German term
    Umkehrung.  A casual web search
    on this term (+ "reversal,"
    then, refining the search,
    + "Theocritus") leads
    to the following material,
    which I personally find of
    much greater interest than
    the above Broadway production.

    (Such web searches are made
    possible by a technological
    revolution comparable to that
    of Gutenberg... Broadway may
    perhaps look forward to...
    "Google! The Musical!")

    Google Search 12/4/06
    Results 1 - 2 of about 14
    for umkehrung theocritus. (0.07 seconds) 

    JSTOR: Theocritus

    I12: on 'transference' by Theocritus of refined motifs to uncouth peasants,
    ... is in reality a parody, a devastating 'Umkehrung' of the real thing, ...


    JSTOR: A Theophany
    in Theocritus


    A THEOPHANY IN THEOCRITUS IN a masterly study of the language
    and motifs of ... epithet I The completeness and precision of the
    Umkehrung (for this term cf. ...

    * "ZSCHOPAU, a
    town in the kingdom of Saxony, on the left bank of the Zschopau.... It
    contains... a castle (Wildeck), built by the Emperor Henry I in 932." --From the classic 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911)

    (The date 932 may or may not be accurate, but still serves nicely as what has been called elsewhere "an instance of the fingerpost.")