GR translation: Reminders of impotence and abstraction

[Mike Jing]

That's what I thought. Thanks for the reply, Mike.


On Fri, Aug 15, 2025 at 4:41 AM Mike Weaver <mike.weaver at zen.co.uk> wrote:

> Hi Mike,
>
> I'd say 'impotence' is metaphorical here and 'abstraction' mathematical,
> rather than the very literal translation made by your predecessors. The
> reality of flight is eternal but film, a simulation of motion, lacks
> real power, and the abstractions, when represented by the shape of the
> stone Treppengiebel, erode to nothing.
>
> cheers
> Mike
>
>
> On 15/08/2025 00:37, Mike Jing wrote:
> > V567.8-25, P577.3-19   The most persistent of these, which seem to show
> up
> > at the least real times of day, are the stairstep gables that front so
> many
> > of these ancient north-German buildings, rising, backlit, a strangely wet
> > gray as if risen out of the sea, over these straight and very low
> horizons.
> > They hold shape, they endure, like monuments to Analysis. Three hundred
> > years ago mathematicians were learning to break the cannonball’s rise and
> > fall into stairsteps of range and height, Δx and Δy, allowing them to
> grow
> > smaller and smaller, approaching zero as armies of eternally shrinking
> > midgets galloped upstairs and down again, the patter of their diminishing
> > feet growing finer, smoothing out into continuous sound. This analytic
> > legacy has been handed down intact—it brought the technicians at
> Peenemünde
> > to peer at the Askania films of Rocket flights, frame by frame, Δx by Δy,
> > flightless themselves . . . film and calculus, both pornographies of
> > flight. Reminders of impotence and abstraction, the stone Treppengiebel
> > shapes, whole and shattered, appear now over the green plains, and last a
> > while, and go away. . . .
> >
> > The published translation interpreted "impotence" as erectile
> dysfunction,
> > and "abstraction" as extraction. That can't possibly be correct, can it?
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>