GR translation: her glassy wastes

[Mike Jing]

Well, that is indeed the question.  I think Alice made a valid point.
What I need here is interpretation.  Rather than trying to pick the
words apart, I am trying to figure out what the author is referring to
by "her glassy wastes".  Obviously, my own reading of the world, and
of the book, is inadequate.  Thus I need your help.

Since I am asking, what does it mean that each of them was "_used_ for
the ideology of the Zero"? (P152.16)  What is the "ideology of the
Zero" anyway?  And what is "Nora's great rejection" and why is it so
great? (P152.17)  What is the "Outer Radiance" that Nora saw?
(P153.13)  Clearly these things are closely related to each other and
to "her glassy waste", and may have been discussed countless times
before.  Or maybe not.  In any case, this this the most difficult
episode in part 1 and I might as well ask all the questions now.


On Sat, Oct 29, 2011 at 3:08 PM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net> wrote:
> On 10/29/2011 1:37 PM, alice wellintown wrote:
>>>
>>> So perhaps "glassy" means not amounting to much, fragile, breakable--or,
>>> might it be a substitute for glossy, implying a cheap attractiveness?  In
>>> either case, of illusory value. (Cherrycoke is not fooled)
>>> "Wastes" probably refers to areas of desolation and damnation.
>>> (wastelands)
>>>  Or maybe it just means emanations.
>>> Would Pynchon himself be able to parse these passages of the book in any
>>> straight forward way?
>>
>> I never know what people mean by "parse" when they discuss a passage
>> from imaginative literature (prose fiction, poetry, etc.); the word
>> has so many meanings, even in literary circles, that one is easily
>> confused by its use. If by "parse" we understand "interpret" and then
>> add the "straight forward way" phrase to this meaning, we might ask
>> why an author or anyone else would bother to make literate sense of
>> figurative language. This exercise, even for a translator, has a very
>> limited value and is riddled with pitfalls and wastes. The better
>> question is how the author makes sense. Of course, this sense of
>> parsing the text is what excellent translation must start from. Then,
>> the translator, not in any straigh foward manner, must play the poet's
>> part and hold up, as it were, not the mirror to the text to be
>> translated, but to his own reading of the world.
>
> Which brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to the question
> of what in the heck the author is talking about.
>
>
> P
>