GR translation: will it still go on emanating its hooded cold

[Monte Davis]

Primary: as if the cold itself were dressed for winter. Secondary: hoods are
associated with monks, Black Riders, mysterious and sinister people who
don't want to be identified - like the denizens of the White Visitation.

 

By the way, this use of "hypergolic" always struck me as odd: it describes
chemicals that ignite spontaneously when combined, needing no spark or flame
to start the reaction. There were tests of hypergolic propellants at
Peenemunde, but (1) the A4/V-2 didn't use them, and (2) the "set the water
on fire" defense scheme against German invasion wasn't hypergolic: once the
oil coated the water, it would have needed a flare or other ignition source
to burn.

 

Maybe he just liked the sound of the word.       

 

From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
Of Mike Jing
Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2012 1:35 AM
To: Pynchon Mailing List
Subject: GR translation: will it still go on emanating its hooded cold

 

P240.4-25   At "The White Visitation," days along the chalk piece of
seacoast now are fine and clear. The office girls are bundling into fewer
sweaters, and breasts peaking through into visibility again. March has come
in like a lamb. Lloyd George is dying. Stray visitors are observed now along
the still-forbidden beach, sitting among obsolescent networks of steel rod
and cable, trousers rolled to the knee or hair unsnooded, chilly gray toes
stirring the shingle. Just offshore, underwater, run miles of secret piping,
oil ready at a valve-twist to be released and roast German invaders who
belong back in dreams already old . . . fuel waiting hypergolic ignition
that will not come unless now as some junior-bureaucratic rag or May
uprising of the spirit, to Bavarian tunesmith Carl Orff's lively
                 O, O, O,
                 To-tus flore-o!
                 lam amore virginali
                 Totus ardeo . . .
all this fortress coast alight, Portsmouth to Dungeness, blazing for the
love of spring. Plots to this effect hatch daily among the livelier heads at
"The White Visitation"-the winter of dogs, of black snowfalls of issueless
words, is ending. Soon it will be behind us. But once there, behind us-will
it still go on emanating its hooded cold, however the fires burn at sea? 

Why is the cold "hooded"?

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