AtD translation: invested in, invested by

[ish mailian]

What is going on in this episode? What are the ideas? The tropes? The
Joaks? The Pynchon slights of hands, the hystericals (James Wood)?  We
get the fanatic priests/scientists/professors, a Pynchon standard, and
here we get a deliberate satirical erudition. We get minds and maps
and the hated straight line and the gyre and the monster . . .and so
much that Pynchon does over and over, so knowing what he does, has
done, is up to, may be more helpful than an OED lens into a word or
two.

In any event, what will readers in Chinese make of it, why that will
be another opening of interpretation and an education for those who
can engage them.

Ever read about teaching Wallace Stevens in China? Might be useful.
Or just reading The Snowman or the one about the Blackbirds.

My primitive method of reading the odd use of a word or phrase in a
text like this one is to read before it an after it, say from where
the episode begins on page 451 with "One day under a sky. . . "



On Fri, Feb 5, 2021 at 5:44 AM Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I probably didn't make myself quite clear. My primitive reading is that:
>
> 1. The conferees are laying siege, or at least trying to, lay siege to
> "Time and its mysteries", with the aim of learning these mysteries, for
> whatever purpose they may have in mind.
> 2. Thus the conferees, and by extension their spirits, are invested in the
> art of this siege, or "the
> siegecraft of Time and its mysteries", meaning they care about it deeply
> and are willing to devote time, energy, etc. in order to pursue it.
> 3. They are so obsessed with this pastime of theirs that it is as if they
> are surrounded by it and cannot escape, thus they, or their spirits, are
> invested by "the siegecraft of Time and its mysteries."
>
> Since the two military terms are directed at different parties, I do not
> consider them redundant, or "laying it on thick" as you call it. And there
> is a paradox in there as well, since the party laying siege is in turn
> besieged by their own obsession.
>
> And I'm not sure what "words are invested by the passing of time" means,
> but I'll take your word for it.
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 5, 2021 at 2:55 AM Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > That depends on how you read that phrase – if words are invested by the
> > passing of time they very well could be invested, endowed, by the
> > siegecraft of time. (One military term would normally suffice, I'd say; you
> > don't have to lay it on thick.)
> >
> > Am Fr., 5. Feb. 2021 um 01:18 Uhr schrieb Mike Jing <
> > gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>:
> >
> >> You probably could be invested by time in other ways. The original text,
> >> however, is that their spirits are invested by the "siegecraft of time",
> >> not by time itself, and that seems an important enough distinction to me.
> >>
> >>
> --
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