Aprendió a conocer ...

[Perikles]

Aprendió a conocer los barcos por sus voces, por el tamaño de sus luces en el horizonte, y a percibir que algo de ellos le llegaba de regreso en los relámpagos del faro.

El amor en los tiempos de cólera

Qué significa algo de ellos le llegaba ...... ?

Gracias

[aleCcowaN]

conocer.
(Del lat. cognoscĕre).

1. tr. Averiguar por el ejercicio de las facultades intelectuales la naturaleza, cualidades y relaciones de las cosas.
2. tr. Entender, advertir, saber, echar de ver.
3. tr. Percibir el objeto como distinto de todo lo que no es él.
....

Fuente: DRAE, 23a. edición

[Perikles]

OK, but

percibir que algo de ellos le llegaba de regreso en los relámpagos del faro.

[chileno]

Y la imagen fugaz que le daba la luz del faro.

La duración de la luz que iluminaba brevemente la embarcación.

[aleCcowaN]

I concur; the quick flash offered more visual information, subtle and blurry, all of it helping the character to spot each individual vessel. It's all showed as an estesia, sort of, this way to perceive is to sight the same way intuition is to intelligence, so, there's some activity of the id involved -and all the emotions potentially attached-.

[Perikles]

I feel brain-dead. How would you translate de regreso ?

[chileno]

Originally Posted by Perikles

I feel brain-dead. How would you translate de regreso ?

in return..

that returned...

that came back...

[aleCcowaN]

de regreso = back; backwards; the returning phase of a movement (a ball bounced, a beam reflected, a sound echoed)

The beacon swept the sea and the vessels flashed back its reflexion.

[Perikles]

Thanks guys, but it still doesn't quite make sense to me.

Originally Posted by aleCcowaN

The beacon swept the sea and the vessels flashed back its reflexion.

Why would anybody have to learn how to perceive this?

[aleCcowaN]

I didn't read the book -I don't use to read fiction- so, take the following just as an speculation, not even a hypothesis. From that paragraph I imagine -no reason whatsoever- that a lonely lighthouse keeper, or somebody that lives a lonely or troublesome existence near a lighthouse or a port, that such a person is describing how he developed sort of a sixth sense to guess distant vessels in the dead of the night and project himself into the distance, as if a certain familiarity should derive from it. I think this emotional aspect is what is trying to convey that explanation about how his perception works: it's through the atmosphere created by the depiction of his perception that we know how much and deep it means to him.