Thought dump re: #houseofleaves
(I haven’t finished the book yet)
Started reading Chapter XI and noted some sections with (what I think is) #hebrew written phonetically. I don’t speak Hebrew but if anyone who reads this does, I’d be interested in your thoughts!
I spent *such* a long time searching these phrases without much luck, but wanted to share what I found anyway.
1/4
The first phrase I looked up was the section pictured below. After web searches and half a dozen translation apps/sites failed, I turned to chatGPT who advises the words here are “nonsensical”.
(I don’t know if I necessarily agree with this, i think it’s more likely that the phoenetic spelling is just ‘off’, but what do I know 😅)
This phrase stood out to me because most other non-english quotes in the book include a translation in the footnotes, so I felt like this was interesting.
2/4
The second phrase I looked up is also pictured below. I only got one result from my search, which was the book (pictured) which uses almost the exact same wording as HoL. This section is referencing Genesis 25:22. From what I can tell “va- yitrozzu” is consistent with Genesis (though phonetic spellings and literal interpretations differ) but “rzz” as the root word is (possibly) made up.
3/4
I found this really interesting, given the use of “rzz” in the formatting for this section. Also thought it was interesting since it hardly seems like old man Z would turn down the chance to add another literary reference/footnote (especially one that discusses Jacob and Esau at such length).
Anyway! I have no insight on the meaning of any of this yet (assuming there is any deeper meaning) 😅
Just wanted to share!
/Thread
Fink