GR translation: vessels of steel

[Mike Jing]

Given the mention of "bodyhood" here, I would assume "vessel" means "body"
here, although OED has labelled this use obsolete. Of course, it has also
been used in this sense elsewhere in the book.


On Fri, Dec 19, 2025 at 7:13 PM Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
wrote:

> V702.18-28, P716.14-25   Soon he will come to know a circuit of aid
> stations and field hospitals, as good for postwar nostalgia as a circuit of
> peacetime spas—army surgeons and dentists will bond and hammer patent steel
> for life into his suffering flesh, and pick out what has entered it by
> violence with an electromagnetic device bought between the wars from
> Schumann of Düsseldorf, with a light bulb and adjustable reflector, 2-axis
> locking handles and a complete set of weird-shaped Polschuhen, iron pieces
> to modify the shape of the magnetic field . . . but there in Russia, that
> night with Wimpe, was his first taste—his initiation into the bodyhood of
> steel . . . no way to separate this from the theophosphate, to separate
> vessels of steel from the ungodly insane rush. . . .
>
> What does "vessel" mean here?
>
>
>