GR translation: her glassy wastes

[Mark Kohut]

It makes sense on a bunch of levels. How it makes sense, I contend, is
far more important to a translator than what it means. A translation
of WHAT it means will not be worth reading.
 
Yes, yes................................

From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2011 9:24 PM
Subject: Re: GR translation: her glassy wastes

> In the case of "social eye", I think I misread the sentence from the
> very beginning, so did many others, and that was why it was so hard to
> make sense of it.  Once it was read differently, the meaning became
> much more clear, and the translation easier.  Poetic resonance is all
> well and good, but even poetic language has to make sense on some
> level.

The evening sun goin down on the social eye and that surrender does
resonate with Faulkner's tale and the song from the father of the
blues. But this is only poetic dancers and the dance and has nothing
to do with Yeats or Faulkner or W.C. Handy.

The social eye is described with a simile, in space (the edge) and in
time (ten minutes) about the sun going down. The list after the colon
runs into elipsis then the light is said to diminish like certain
music.

It makes sense on a bunch of levels. How it makes sense, I contend, is
far more important to a translator than what it means. A translation
of WHAT it means will not be worth reading.
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