GR translation: patches will flash up now and then

David Morris fqmorris at gmail.com
Sat Sep 5 20:33:32 CDT 2015


I think Mike's translation challenge with Pynchon is in NOT interpreting
the text. Be literal, because poetry should be translated prior to
interpretation.

David Morris

On Saturday, September 5, 2015, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> Getting specific, patches flashing up on the visible mountainsides
> resembles a divisional patch.  That association is the point. But it
> shouldn't be explicit in translation. Indeed it can't be translated.
>
> David Morris
>
> On Saturday, September 5, 2015, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com
> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','fqmorris at gmail.com');>> wrote:
>
>> This passage is trying to relate a drug induced experience, and thus is
>> impossible to translate into a normal experience, except by extreme
>> analogies, which is what Pynchon so often does. So throw out normal
>> analogies.
>>
>> In extreme drug-induced experience, "patches" of perception will flash
>> brightly. Messages from the paranoid beyond, which might, or might not, be
>> crucial to survival. And which you might forget having received in the next
>> second.
>>
>> David Morris
>>
>> On Saturday, September 5, 2015, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> V640.30-641.2   On the mountainsides, patches will flash up now and
>>> then, bright as dittany in July at the Zippo’s ceremonial touch. Pfc. Eddie
>>> Pensiero, a replacement here in the 89th Division, also an amphetamine
>>> enthusiast, sits huddling nearly on top of the fire, shivering and watching
>>> the divisional patch on his arm, which ordinarily resembles a cluster of
>>> rocketnoses seen out of a dilating asshole, all in black and olive-drab,
>>> but which now looks like something even stranger than that, which Eddie
>>> will think of in a minute.
>>>
>>> Are these patches of vegetation, or something else entirely?
>>>
>>
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