Re: GR translation: But it’s what’s dancing dead-white and scarlet at the edges of his sight

[Monte Davis]

I think he's afraid to complete the perception->thought, to proceed to your
(correctly inferred) "that occupies his attention" -- and he jumps
frantically to another sight, almost as disturbing

On Mon, Jul 17, 2017 at 4:43 PM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
wrote:

> OK, but I'm still confused about the sentence structure. Does it mean "But
> it’s what’s dancing dead-white and scarlet at the edges of his sight [that
> occupies his attention]"? Or just "But there is something dancing
> dead-white and scarlet at the edges of his sight"?
>
> Also, this part of the sentence is a statement, while the second part is a
> question, which seems a bit odd. Wouldn't it make more sense to remove the
> "it's" altogether? Of course, this is just me trying to make sense of the
> sentence, and I could be totally off the mark.
>
> On Mon, Jul 17, 2017 at 3:47 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> " But it’s what’s dancing dead-white and scarlet at the edges of his
>> sight" refers to his vision through his closed eyelids, which he is afraid
>> to open.
>>
>> David Morris
>>
>> On Mon, Jul 17, 2017 at 2:41 PM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com
>> > wrote:
>>
>>> V532.1-8, P540.40-541.7  When the lights come back on, Slothrop is on
>>> his knees, breathing carefully. He knows he will have to open his eyes. The
>>> compartment reeks now with suppressed light—with mortal possibilities for
>>> light—as the body, in times of great sadness, will feel its real chances
>>> for pain: real and terrible and only just under the threshold. . . . The
>>> brown paper bundle is two inches from his knee, wedged behind the
>>> generator. But it’s what’s dancing dead-white and scarlet at the edges of
>>> his sight . . . and are the ladders back up and out really as empty as they
>>> look?
>>>
>>> What is implied in this part of the sentence, since it seems
>>> structurally incomplete (I'm expecting a "that" clause at the end)? Or does
>>> "it" here refer to something specific?
>>>
>>
>>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20170717/fb1db22b/attachment.html>