AtD translation: a busy development of small trailside shapes tumbling . . .

Joseph Tracy brook7 at sover.net
Mon Jan 15 09:46:36 CST 2018


Could the word Tao/Dao or some variation on it be useful? That seems close to the religious connotations.  Pynchon seems to me to use the word grace as a correlate of nibbana/nirvana, enlightenment. 

When westerners discuss Zen they often use the word flow which also is close. 
> On Jan 15, 2018, at 9:45 AM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Indeed, the word "grace" is going to cause a lot of problems for the translation. Even the religious meaning is quite foreign to the Chinese language. It would be even harder to translate if it's transformed into something secular. I'll have to think it over carefully.
> 
> But the part of the book that's most difficult to translate is probably the title, and I consider the currently adopted Chinese title to be seriously wrong. I'm hoping I can come up with something decent when I go through more of the book, but I'll definitely have to start a thread on that at some point.
> 
> 
> On Mon, Jan 15, 2018 at 5:59 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> Can't be said better...I say lamely. 
> 
> and, with the move into relationships with some others--"unrecognized halves"--is a vision of an organic human American community that can--did-- "make that American [then]", as Monte says, that is secular 'grace', or religiously-infused 'grace' within the the natural world, TRP avers. I suggest. 
> 
>  Read this great passage along with others on grace in his works and see TRP's transformed meanings to the concept. 
> 
> (If only our last President knew THIS passage instead of Marilyn Robinson's Olde Religious History meanings of 'grace' when he borrowed her words for one of 
> his great "healing" speeches.) 
> 
> On Sun, Jan 14, 2018 at 7:26 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> That passage (69-72) is one of my favorite in all Pynchon. I wrote in 2007: "Like Annie Dillard in the ecstatic _Pilgrim at Tinker Creek_ and _Holy the Firm_, Pynchon here insists that we *look* at every leaf, at the bridal secrets in the moss, at evanescent sparks when the iron wheel-rim and the rock and the shadow in the rut are all just so. If this be exile [from Dally's "princess" memories of the White City], make the most of it... And somehow it isn't exile any more, it's a home three states high and wide. Years are going by. This density of detail, these undescribed exchanges with the wildcrafters, are adding up: they're a childhood, a stroboscopic study of the heart of a continent -- and a Dally who will grow into a queenly confidence that's all in the details. Where does that come from? Right here."
> 
> The lines you quote are describing the making of an American, from the ground up.Call it another version of "Roots." 
> 
> https://i4.imaiges.com/wallpaper/771/464/835/leaves-meadow-nature-forest-floor-1920x1080.jpg
> 
> On Sun, Jan 14, 2018 at 6:59 AM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com> wrote:
> P70.19-29   —flowers in bells and clusters, purple and white or yellow as butter, star-shaped ferns in the wet and dark places, millions of green veilings before the bridal secrets in the moss and under the deadfalls, went on by the wheels creaking and struck by rocks in the ruts, sparks visible only in what shadow it might pass over, a busy development of small trailside shapes tumbling in what had to be deliberately arranged precision, herbs the wildcrafters knew the names and market prices of and which the silent women up in the foothills, counterparts whom they most often never got even to meet, knew the magic uses for. They lived for different futures, but they were each other’s unrecognized halves, and what fascination between them did come to pass was lit up, beyond question, with grace.
> 
> What is this sentence describing? Just wondering.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

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