Rainbow & Parabola (was NP)

[Mark Wright AIA]

Howdy
How about this:

The rainbow, symbol of God's Covenant with Noah and his children and
with the innocent of the age to come, is some segment of a circle, but
a circle none the less --- perfect, abstract, and otherworldly --- and
being circular holds within it the promise of return, a turning of time
about the fixed central origin which is God.

It is also luminous and pretty.

"Gravity's rainbow", the parabola, is NOT a section of a circle. It is
perverse, difficult to draw and comprehend; of a constantly changing
rate of change to its slope; defining no center point, only an eternal
succession of unique  and lonely tangents all looking past one another,
shifty-eyed, tied to no certain divine center. It is an open figure ---
perfect, abstract, and yet bound to the physical laws of the real world
--- and being an open figure holds within it a harsh denial of the
possibility of return. Not cyclical time in a devinely ordained scheme,
but linear time, who's arrow points into the screaming wind of chaos
and darkness. It is symbolic of the Diety's abandonment of the world.

Both/And,
Mark
--- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:

> >> ... or rather, the impressionistic rendering of the title
> >> into German from back in 1981 -- "Die Enden der Parabel",
> >> which translates into English as "the end of the
> >> rainbow/parable/parabola" -- that the theory derives from
> >> ...
> 
> on 28/7/04 7:00 PM, lorentzen-nicklaus at wrote:
> 
> > ° In German the word "Parabel" does not really have the
> > meaning of "Regenbogen" -
> 
> And nor is a rainbow a parabola, which is the NP observation that
> sent the
> p-list Hollander-infrastructure screaming into Homeland Security
> Alert mode
> yet again.
> 
> But I'm assuming that Chuck's contention, obviously working from the
> 1981
> German translation of the novel's title -- that, in German,
> "Parabel",
> meaning parabola, is an idiomatic synonym for rainbow -- is correct.
> He
> looked it up in Cassell's, after all. I think it's quite feasible
> that there
> is an intentional play on the phrase "the end of the rainbow" (i.e.
> where,
> proverbially, the pot of gold is buried -- of course, one can never
> actually
> locate the end of a rainbow because it's an observer-effect, so there
> is the
> connotation of chasing after an impossible dream, which is apt). It's
> interesting too that the German translators or publishers felt that
> they
> needed to advertise that their new title had been "authorised by the
> author"; obviously *they* were aware of the fact that it is a radical
> departure from the original phrase and not a "standard" translation
> at all.
> I wonder what process they went through to get that authorisation.
> 
> best
> 
> > "PARABEL (gr.-lat.), die; -, -n: 1. lehrhafte Dichtung,
> > die eine allgemeingültige sittliche Wahrheit an einem
> > Beispiel (indirekt) veranschaulicht; lehrhafte Erzählung,
> > Lehrstück; Gleichnis. 2. eine symmetrisch ins Unendliche
> > verlaufende Kurve der Kegelschnitte, deren Punkte von einer
> > festen Geraden u. einem festen Punkt gleichen Abstand haben
> > (Math.). 3. Wurfbahn in einem > Vakuum (Phys.)".
> > 
> > (Duden Band 5, Mannheim/Wien/Zürich 1982: p. 561.)
> > 
> > Except for meteorologists and Pynchon-Freaks nobody here
> > thinks of Regenbogen when s/he hears the word Parabel.
> > Which means that Elfriede Jelinek and Thomas Piltz
> > screwed up the title of their translation. The whole
> > dimension of Divine rescue (Noah's ark and all) as well
> > as the connotation of hippiesque counterculture-solidarity
> > ('Rainbow coalition') gets completely lost! And while
> > 'Rainbow' always also refers to water & light, 'Parabel'
> > is a sheer a-sensual abstraction ... When people hear the
> > title "Die Enden der Parabel" (me: "Ey Alter, das is',
> > zusammen mit dem Zauberberg, der beste Roman, den Du dir
> > geben kannst!") they usually make a face as having a bad
> > taste in their mouth and murmur something like "Oh, ok,
> > I put that on my list..." (The eight buddies I convinced
> > to give the novel an honest try, they all made their way
> > through it and are thankful till today.) Although it says
> > "Der Deutsche Titel wurde vom Autor autorisiert" (The
> > German title was authorized by the author), me I never
> > understood why they didn't bring it out under the
> > wonderful name of REGENBOGEN DER SCHWERKRAFT --
> > 
> > That being said, I might add that the translation in
> > general appears to be the best of all German
> > P-translations. If so, probably because an artist
> > (if you wanna read something by Elfriede Jelinek take
> > "Die Klavierspielerin" from 1983) took part in it. 
> 
> 
> 


		
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