Not P but Moby-Dick (26)

[Mike Jing]

OK. I was asking because all the previous translations treated it as the
whale, which didn't feel right to me.

Thanks, Ian.


On Sat, Oct 14, 2023 at 11:58 AM Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
wrote:

> The whale ship. It’s mastheads are synecdoche of the ship itself.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> > On Oct 13, 2023, at 7:51 PM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > From Chapter 44:
> >
> > Though, in these cases, the direction taken by any one whale be straight
> as
> > a surveyor’s parallel, and though the line of advance be strictly
> confined
> > to its own unavoidable, straight wake, yet the arbitrary vein in which at
> > these times he is said to swim, generally embraces some few miles in
> width
> > (more or less, as the vein is presumed to expand or contract); but never
> > exceeds the visual sweep from the whale-ship’s mast-heads, when
> > circumspectly gliding along this magic zone.
> >
> > What's doing the gliding in "when circumspectly gliding along this magic
> > zone"? i.e. Whats' the subject of the verb "gliding"?
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>