Tell me about the word Pontesowna, what is it? A literary character?
Will pay $20 for information re this word

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Request for Question Clarification by secret901-ga on 23 Jul 2002 18:48 PDT

It would probably help if you provide info about where you found this
word.  Also, how sure are you of the spelling?

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Request for Question Clarification by blader-ga on 23 Jul 2002 20:20 PDT

Dear pershing-ga:

Is that the exact spelling or is it an approximation of a word you
heard? Do you mean "Botswana?"

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Clarification of Question by pershing83-ga on 24 Jul 2002 15:51 PDT

Indeed Pontesowna is a "handle" or alias...but he has declined to
define the word but rather suggests that it does have a meaning. Which
of course it may not. Nevertheless the $20 offer stands

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Clarification of Question by pershing83-ga on 24 Jul 2002 15:52 PDT

And I do appreciate efforts to decipher. Pershing83-ga

What a fascinating hunt!!!  I think this is my favourite question so
far.
Pontesowna is another spelling of Pandesowna, the character of the
Gypsy Chief in "The Manuscript Found in Saragossa" by Jan Potocki
(1761-1815)

The clue to the mystery lies in the Yahoo messages by Pontesowna
identified by pinkfreud. One of these messages is a challenge for
people to find where the name comes from, and some clues are provided:

""It is 1739 and Alphonse van Worde, a Walloon officer serving the
King of Spain, spends the night in a haunted inn in the Sierra Morena
where he is plunged into a series of adventures, by turns mysterious,
erotic and nightmarish. Convinced that he is being hunted by the
Inquisition, he joins a band of wanderers-including a GYPSY
chief(eh,eh, eh???? clue clue clue!!!)... "

http://search.messages.yahoo.com/search/messages?tag_M=pontesowna&fname_M=txt_author

This is a reference to The Manuscript Found in Saragossa by Jan
Potocki (1761-1815)

This is available on Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140445803/102-2145965-0856903

The index of the book is provided by Amazon at
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/books/0140445803/reader/14/102-2145965-0856903#reader-link
There is an entry for the Gypsy Chief, whose name is Pandesowna.  The
Gypsy Chief has among the largest number of page references in the
book.  Note that pontesowna's message capitalises the word "gypsy" and
follows it with the comment: clue, clue, clue!!!

The newsletter of the The Association of Literary Scholars and
Critics, Vol 6, no 3, Summer 2000
http://www.bu.edu/literary/newsletter/archive/6/6-3summer2000.pdf has
an extensive article on Potocki’s book by Michael Weingard, in which
he says that Pandesowna “seems to advocate a life of freedom and
unpredictability”.

A search on Pandesowna also brought up a page in Polish by Micha³
Otorowski, which analyses the book. 
http://www.arsregia.home.pl/9-10,%20Otorowski,%20Klucz.htm

It states that Potocki brought a lot of kabbalistic ideas into his
book, and also that he was very interested in systematizing
everything.  Otorowski notes that there are ten main characters who
move through the stories, and suggests that they are associated with
the sephiroth (spheres) of the kabbalistic Tree of Life, with
Pandesowna the Gypsy Chief in position 6, that of the sphere
Tiphareth.  He then discusses two of the characters (Paszeko and
Emina), showing how their stories could exemplify the attributes of
their respective spheres (Yesod and Malkuth), but unfortunately does
not continue this exposition for the remaining characters.

Search strategy on Google: 1. Sierra Morena, stories, six days  2.
"manuscript found in Saragossa"  3. Pandesowna

Good work and the $20 belongs tehuti-ga...he did the final work. I discovered
the answer today also. Anyway I want to pay someone. Pershing-ga

A search for   ponte sow na    in Google resulted in the following
results:

http://www.goOGLe.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=ponte+sow+na

Clicking on the link is a page in portuguese that can be translated by
Google refering to the sculptures of an artist
named Ousmane Sow and his sculptures on a bridge ("Ponte" in
Portuguese) in Paris.  Ousmane Sow's official website is

http://www.ousmanesow.com/mac/index.htm

Maybe this is your word.  It seems a stretch but I thought I would
share this result with you. Thanks.

Bowler...well, a good try. But I doubt it. The word is used as a name
and I do have an additional clue. It might be a character in European
literature. I have made a fairly detirmined effort to work it out.

Any other ideas will, of course, be appreciated. 

pershing83-ga

And BTW, spelling is correct. It is used as a proper name but with
some unknown meaning

Dear pershing:

Where did you come across the word?

indeed the word can be broken down into its roots, the first: "ponte",
was correctly identified as meaning "bridge," while "sowna" is
seemingly derived from polish.  I do not speak polish myself, but it
appears as if "sowna" is some sort of slang or common as it does not
appear in polish dictionaries.  It could also have roots in latin when
likened to "sono," to sing.  This combination would make for a
soniferous name like "bridge of song" which would effectively be used
in literature.

Here, I believe is where pershing found this "word"... 
http://messages.yahoo.com/bbs?.mm=FN&action=m&board=7076494&tid=abt&sid=7076494&mid=24294&thr=24290&cur=24290&dir=d

This will most likely be helpful in this search
-Rebekah

Since "pontesowna" is evidently a Yahoo username, perhaps the easiest
way to find out the name's origin is simply to ask the individual who
chose that name as his handle.

As Rebekah points out, this person has posted numerous messages on
Yahoo messageboards.

http://search.messages.yahoo.com/search/messages?tag_M=pontesowna&fname_M=txt_author