GR translation: her European darkness

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

On 20.06.2012 06:09, Mike Jing wrote:

> P211.3-14   She shakes her head. He understands that it’s something
> back in Holland, before Arnhem—an impedance permanently wired into the
> circuit of themselves. How many ears smelling of Palmolive and Camay
> has he crooned songs into, outside-the-bowling-alley songs,
> behind-the-Moxie-billboard songs, Saturdaynight open-me-another-quart
> songs, all saying, honey, it don’t matter where you’ve been, let’s not
> live in the past, right now’s all there is. . . .
> Fine for back there. But not in here, tapping on her bare shoulder,
> peering in at her European darkness, bewildered with it, himself with
> his straight hair barely combable and shaven face without a wrinkle
> such a chaste intrusion in the Himmler-Spielsaal all crowded with
> German-Baroque perplexities of shape...
>
> What does "her European darkness" refer to exactly?
>
>

Perhaps there is no exact reference here.
Perhaps the word "darkness" is primarily there for poetic reasons.
It sounds very good in the sentence.
Better than "weariness" or "decadence".
Something like that it needs to contrast with the "straight hair barely
combable and shaven face without a wrinkle such a chaste intrusion"
of US origin.
Immediately, "European darkness" refers back to "But now and then ...
too insubstancial to get a fix on, there'll be in her face a look,
something not in her control, that depresses him, that he's even
dreamed about and so found amplified there to honest fright:
the terrible chance that she might have been conned too."
(pp. 207-8, Picador edition)
So the "European darkness" Slothrop recognizes is at least partly
a projection of his own fear and depression.