AtD translation: his skepticism, which was seldom being addressed these days

[Mark Kohut]

Yes, Pynchon's argument here seems to imply that he is not being made less
skeptical...
"wondered what was happening to it"....addressed by horrible
specimens....[which therefore
do not decrease his skepticism]...."nonetheless, The Te Deum in
Commemoration of of Khaki Election",
had earned its own nickname [because it was so bad]; had become infamous in
itself..........which, implied,
is what famous hymns become........[which good and famous hymns reduce
skepticism]?....

I can't see anything in the text to lead us to believe that these are the
only ones Cyprian listens to regularly.
In fact, there is an awareness expressed---not by Cyprian directly---of the
whole hymn-writing trade which existed with Cyprian's skepticism.

On Sat, May 22, 2021 at 2:35 AM Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 497.33   Cyprian stood in the evenings, at the Compline hour, just outside
> the light cast from the chapel windows, and wondered what was happening to
> his skepticism, which was seldom being addressed these days except by such
> truly horrible specimens as the Te Deum in Commemoration of the Khaki
> Election by Filtham, which—although in the hymn-writing trade botching a Te
> Deum is thought to be next to impossible, the psalmodic formulæ being well
> established, even unto what notes to end on—nonetheless, from its
> stultifying length, in arguable violation of any number of child-labor
> statutes, as well as a relentless chromaticism that might have made even
> Richard Strauss uneasy, too “modern” to have retained any power to
> penetrate and sacredly stun, it was already known among schoolchild
> choristers from Stain-drop to St. Paul’s as “Filtham’s Tedium.”
>
> Why is his skepticism only being addressed by these "truly horrible
> specimens"? Are these the only ones he gets to listen to regularly? Since
> they lack the "power to penetrate and sacredly stun", I assume they can't
> really make him any less skeptical.
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>