Re: GR translation: steel-blotched swan’s mouth

[Mark Kohut]

Back to Pynchon Day, (for not against)....
 
I'm gonna try this so-interesting (aren't they all?) phrase Mike brings us. 
 
Simple direct answer: "steel-blotched' means ...well, blotched with steel. What and why blotched? Why---cause steel is
predominantly (always)  a trope of bad shit in GR....steel and glass--the Crystal Palace in collapse...the rails..all the 
industrial creations that mangled so many lives in the making of ......(yes, standards of living rose for those who survived
and/or came after...NOT Pynchon's theme...or, perhaps, maybe the full collapse is still happening)
 
Now to what? "swan's mouth".......exploring such a phrase as this is where so much of Pynchon can be such an immediate
education....and so show his genius.............
 
Google it and google book explore it and you will see it can be slang for a mouth organ; can mean something like 'from the horse's mouth'
but about art or cultural stuff...expanding from the presence of swan sculptures in fountains at theaters and such---seems there may be
such at Stratford, England, from one very recent notice "from the swans mouth"...
 
But mostly it seems to be a description of small, slit-like openings in things [see 'mouth organ]...and here I go.......wild scholarly
insight or 90% bullshit...........
 
I think this swan's mouth image is of an English gas meter, frozen on the prvious page, now with "steam...["in tight brocade"--sheer Shakespearean genius since one of the root meanings of brocade is "small nail"! although now it 'means" what you know it means...but way back the pattern was created by tight lines of small nails....] starting to issue 
from it"............
what fun it was to look up references to English gas meters, pre-war, which were often above kitchen sinks.....had places
to insert coins....[steel-blotched?] .....were long more old-fashioned than US gas meters, which came w/ less steel somehow sez a gas indusrty journal....
(fewer coin deposit meters, I'd say, more 'meter readers'?)
 
Let's translate ALL of Pynchon, what say? 

From: Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
To: Pynchon Mailing List <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Thursday, November 24, 2011 12:59 PM
Subject: GR translation: steel-blotched swan’s mouth

P175.9-12  “You don’t see them,” steam in tight brocade starting to
issue from the steel-blotched swan’s mouth, “the blacks and Jews, in
their darkness. You can’t. You don’t hear their silence. You became so
used to talking, and to light.”

What is "steel-blotched"?
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