GR translation: booming over air-shafts

[Paul Mackin]

On 5/12/2012 7:02 AM, jochen stremmel wrote:
> By the way, Mike, I looked up this passage as well, and the
> translators of the German edition, Austrian Nobel Prize winner
> Elfriede Jelinek and/or Thomas Piltz (one of the best), choose for
> "booming": »bebend über den Klangsäulen der Lüftungsschächte«,
> slightly dodging the problem, and for "chase" the other word, like I
> would have done, too: »in gläsern kurvenangepaßter Jagd über Dachfirst
> und silberne Hügel gepeitscht«

I think I hear chase more in the sense of a random scampering or 
darting, or maybe racing.

Like, say, the children were seen in a helter-skelter haphazard chase 
across the lawn.

assuming spirits move in an unrestrained almost random manner

They could of course be hunting for something, but that wouldn't be my 
first reaction.

P

>
> J
>
> 2012/5/12 Mike Jing<gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>:
>> P140.32-35  Now ghosts crowd beneath the eaves. Stretched among snowy
>> soot chimneys, booming over air-shafts, too tenuous themselves for
>> sound, dry now forever in this wet gusting, stretched and never
>> breaking, whipped in glassy French-curved chase across the rooftops,
>> along the silver downs, skimming where the sea combs freezing in to
>> shore.
>>
>> Does "booming" mean "making a deep, prolonged, resonant sound" here?
>> The published translation went with the other meaning, which doesn't
>> feel quite right to me.  I could be very wrong, of course.
>>
>> Also, what exactly is "chase" here?  I have found:
>>
>> 1. a rectangular iron frame in which composed type is secured or
>> locked for printing or platemaking.
>> 2. Building Trades . a space or groove in a masonry wall or through a
>> floor for pipes or ducts.
>> 3. a groove, furrow, or trench; a lengthened hollow.
>>
>> and I am leaning towards #3.
>