GR translation: firm among the stoneswept hair

[Mike Jing]

I have a pretty good idea now.  Thanks all.

On Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 7:14 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net> wrote:
> Combine them, and the "white guardians" (here at least) might be Leshan Buddhas, Mt. Rushmore figures, or else "old [wo]men of the mountains": geological-scale figures whose "hair" is made up of ridges and gullies.
>
> Carved or natural? This is Pynchon: if he can get you asking the wrong questions, he doesn't have to worry about answers.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Kohut [mailto:markekohut at yahoo.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2012 7:03 AM
> To: Monte Davis; 'Mike Jing'; 'Pynchon Mailing List'
> Subject: Re: GR translation: firm among the stoneswept hair
>
> From Google Books:
> Encyclopedia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, ...
> Hugh Chisholm - 1911Falling rocks tend to form furrows in a mountain face, and these furrows (couloirs) have to be ascended with caution, their sides being often safe when the middle is stoneswept. Stones fall more frequently on some days than on others, ...
>
>     * The Alpine Journal
> 1943There can be no better test of steadiness under fire than moving safely and steadily in one's ice steps in a stoneswept gully, if the crossing of such a gully is unavoidable. Nor is there any better training in team work on a small scale than is ...
>
> There is a use in a translation of a poem from early Persian that uses the word on the metaphoric nonce, so to speak, in a way that mirrors TRP's. (Not that he knew this, but that, as Monte annotates, he constructs meaning like that poet) "A glass in a stone-swept way " is another similar idiom. "---hist of persian lit
>
> From: Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net>
> To: 'Mike Jing' <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>; 'Pynchon Mailing List' <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2012 5:04 AM
> Subject: RE: GR translation: firm among the stoneswept hair
>
>
> Tough one: P tests the limits of description whenever he talks about the "watchers," those half-seen figures at the horizon, the angel over Lubeck, the Kirghiz Light…
>
> I think "stoneswept" is his nonce word combining the fixity of stone and the lightness/mobility of windswept hair. I picture it something like the coiffures in this Arno Breker relief.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf Of Mike Jing
> Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2012 3:34 AM
> To: Pynchon Mailing List
> Subject: GR translation: firm among the stoneswept hair
>
> P221.13-20  Nora still carries on her Adventure, her “Ideology of the Zero,” firm among the stoneswept hair of the last white guardians at the last stepoff into the black, into the radiant. . . . But where will Leni be now? Where will she have wandered off to, carrying her child, and her dreams that will not grow up? Either we didn’t mean to lose her—either it was an ellipsis in our care, in what some of us will even swear is our love, or someone has taken her, deliberately, for reasons being kept secret, and Sachsa’s death is part of it too.
>
> What is the meaning of "stoneswept" in "stoneswept hair"?
>