M & D Becky writes:

[Mark Kohut]

"Somebody somewhere in the world, watching the Planet go dark against
the Sun ... (quotes) from Sappho's Fragment 95...":
"Oh Hesperus, - you bring back all that the dark night scatter'd, -
you bring in the sheep, and the goat, - you bring the Child back to
her mother."
(Pynchon uses the H. T. Wharton translation):
http://classicpersuasion.org/pw/sappho/sape08u.htm

So what's Pynchon's reasoning in having "someone" misread/misinterpret
the Hesperus,  the *evening Venus*  as the Transit Venus of the
morning?  Showing the idea of misreading?  Misinterpreting?

Just prior to that quote there is the line that says this misread
interruption is  "...seeming to wreck the *Ob,*" - the "Ob"? -
Observation, of course, but which one?  1.  It could be the
observation of the Transit itself (perhaps as displayed in the orrery)
 or 2.  it could be Cherrycoke's observation about it with "Vector of
Desire" and all being so appropriate.  - The question is - are our #1
type  observations also misinterpretations?  What does that do to
history and/or events?

**
"A sort of long black Filament yet connects her to the Limb of the
Sun, tho' she be moved will onto its Face..."  "This, or odd behavior
like it, is going on all over the World all day long that fifth and
sixth of June..."

"... as if the Creation's Dark Engineer had purposedly arrang'd the
Intervals thus, to provoke a certain Instruction, upon the limits to
human grandeur by Mortality."


One simple level, i'd say, is that now that we can 'interpret' the
sky, we can make mistakes. Unlike when the non-empirical 'heavenly
cosmos' was "known" as if by declared truth.
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l