GR translation: A touch of whatever it was they wanted, though

[David Morris]

I agree with Monte.  Her willingness to be whatever they wanted makes her a
"doll," implying without a will of her own.

David Morris

On Sat, Jun 17, 2017 at 6:32 AM Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I read it as "whatever the directors [and implicitly the audience] DESIRED
> [but weren't getting from Dietrich and Heim]". So I'd call the published
> translation not wrong, but... roundabout.
>
> "Wanted" in the sense of "lacked" has been fading in idiomatic English for
> a long time, surviving mostly in "for want of X".
>
> On Sat, Jun 17, 2017 at 5:31 AM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> V393.33-394.3, P400.315   She’s passing through: another of the
>> million rootless. Looking for her daughter, Bianca, bound east for
>> Swinemünde, if the Russians and Poles will let her. She’s in
>> Neubabelsberg on a sentimental side-trip—hasn’t seen the old studios
>> in years. Through the twenties and thirties she worked as a movie
>> actress, at Templehof and Staaken too, but this place was always her
>> favorite. Here she was directed by the great Gerhardt von Göll through
>> dozens of vaguely pornographic horror movies. “I knew he was a genius
>> from the beginning. I was only his creature.” Never star material, she
>> admits freely, no Dietrich, nor vamp à la Brigitte Helm. A touch of
>> whatever it was they wanted, though—they (Slothrop: “They?” Erdmann:
>> “I don’t know. . . .”) nicknamed her the Anti-Dietrich: not destroyer
>> of men but doll—languid, exhausted. . . .
>>
>> The published translation interpreted the word "wanted" here as
>> "lacked", and "they" to mean Dietrich and Brigitte Helm. That's not
>> right, is it?
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>
>
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