Fwd: GR p.4 "with blue shadows to seal its passage"

[Jonathan Post]

I'm with you on the smells, and that in general the subject is the
"knotting into", and now I can see that the "knotting into" is what brings
events to Absolute Zero (the caravan halt. The "end of the line" we see in
the next paragraph), but I still believe "its passage" to refer to the
dawn, because I don't see how "blue shadows" can in any way "seal" a road
with any definition of the word seal, whereas I can see how the casting of
"blue shadows" can seal (as in, authenticate) the passage of dawn.


On Sat, Sep 7, 2013 at 11:18 PM, Mitchell Nisonoff <mitchnis at yahoo.com>wrote:

>
> "No, this is not a disentanglement from, but a progressive knotting into
> ['knotting into' italicizes in original']...." This is the beginning of
> this long, carefully constructed Proustian sentence.
>
> As I suggested before, the middle of the sentence parses well so that both
> "coral-like and mysteriously vital growth" and the "maturing rust," each
> prefaced by the preposition, "of'" makes sense as the continuation of the
> certain trestles listing and not referring to smells at all. The references
> to smells makes sense as asides or interpolations (pretend that they are in
> parentheses or footnotes or even the ends of hyperlinks). You will notice
> that all the nouns in the sentence are plural so that "it" at the end of
> the sentence in "its passage" clearly refers to the gerund phrase near the
> beginning, "a progressive knotting into."
>
> "Blue shadows" should not be considered a poetic reference but rather a
> literal description.
>
>
> Sent from Yahoo! Mail for iPad
>
>  ------------------------------
> * From: * Jonathan Post <jonfpost at gmail.com>;
> * To: * <pynchon-l at waste.org>;
> * Subject: * Fwd: GR p.4 "with blue shadows to seal its passage"
> * Sent: * Sun, Sep 8, 2013 4:12:55 AM
>
>
> I'm returned. I made a few posts on AtD a few years ago and have lurked.
> Hope to post more frequently.
>
> I've read the Jing post and the comments, all of which are helpful, but
> nobody has nailed what exactly is bringing events to Absolute Zero or has
> tackled the shadows. After reading the sentence probably 50 times since my
> last post, here are some new thoughts:
>
> "blue shadows" are the shadows cast by the rising sun (dawn) in the
> previous clause, what they are "sealing" (authenticating) is the passage of
> "those emptying days". Could the days (time) be bringing events to Absolute
> Zero. That would make perfect sense, but would be grammatically off/awkward
> (would be: emptying days brilliant and deep to bring events to Absolute
> Zero).
>
>
> On Sat, Sep 7, 2013 at 10:02 PM, Michael Bailey <
> michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Jonathan, not sure if you are new, if you are - welcome!  if not,
>> please pardon my obliviousness!
>>
>> Mike Jing, a fellow p-lister, is doing a translation into Chinese of
>> GR, and periodically writes in with a question.
>>
>> He asked about this phrase awhile back and initiated the following thread:
>>
>> http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=1112&msg=160884&keywords=maturing%20rust
>>
>> unfortunately, it does contain some of my own bloviating on the topic,
>> but if you skip those contributions, some worthwhile ideas were
>> offered, iirc
>>
>
>
>
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