hello again my friends, have you forgotten me? a little introduction to refresh your memory then, i’m a novelist and a translator, i’m translating virginia woolf last novel into arabic, but i’m not a native speaker, i’m still a learner, i’m good at english, but not good enough, as for Arabic though, you can try me, anyway, as always i have a bunch of puzzling questions that need answers, thanks in advance to all those who help to make the english literature known to the arabic reader ( not just arabs here, but those who speak arabic but not arab as well )…
1 – in this passage :
” nor did her figure, seen against the dark roll of trousering in a shop window, please her.
Thick of waist, large of limb, and, save for her hair, fashionable in the tight modern way, she never looked like Sappho, or one of the beautiful young men whose photographs”
What does it mean to have a tight hairstyle? Can somebody provide a link to an image in the comments? It would be better if the image is from that time.
2 – Is she wishing to have the appearance of men?
3 – in this passage : “Books are the mirrors of the soul.”
In this case a tarnished, a spotted soul. For as the train took over three hours to reach this remote village in the very heart of England.
Does ‘tarnished’ here mean that there was dust on the books, or did the shiny appearance of the newly bought books disappear during the train travel?
4 – also in this passage : “Nobody could pretend, as they looked at the shuffle of shilling shockers that week-enders had dropped”
this is what i got out of this… his woman, who lives in a remote village, asks people who come to visit (weekenders?) to bring books of their choosing. I looked up the meaning of ‘shuffle’ and found that it means, among other things, to mix randomly. Is this the correct meaning? The people she requested books from choose books randomly, which is why they sometimes bring cheap novels with them.”
5 – now this passage is so beatiful but i have a problem in the last line in it :
“The fire greyed, then glowed, and the tortoiseshell butterfly beat on the lower pane
of the window; beat, beat, beat; repeating that if no human being ever
came, never, never, never, the books would be mouldy, the fire out and the
tortoiseshell butterfly dead on the pane”
I understand the writer’s perspective that the fire and the books would cease to exist or be ruined without human intervention. However, I’m wondering why the butterfly would be dead?
6 -” the dog at his feet–the Afghan hound. His nose on his paws, his haunches drawn up, he looked a stone dog, a crusader’s dog guarding even in the realms of death the sleep of his master.”
I didn’t quite understand the position the dog is in here. I’m more of a cat person and not around dogs too often. When you mention ‘his haunches up,’ does it mean his head is on the ground, and he’s raising his back, similar to how cats stretch? As for the ‘stone dog’ and the ‘crusader’s dog,’ I did some research, and in some cultures, there are stone dogs or similar creatures believed to ward off evil spirits. Is this what is being referred to here? Additionally, I couldn’t find any specific historical reference to ‘crusader’s dogs.’ Did crusader soldiers have dogs?
7 – “But the master was not dead; only dreaming; drowsily, seeing as in a glass, its lustre
spotted, himself, a young man helmeted; and a cascade falling. But no water; and the hills, like grey stuff pleated; and in the sand a hoop of ribs”
a cascade falling but no water? lemme picture that… a few hours later… my imagination commited suicide she was so confident in its skill which was hoaned and sharpened through reading a lot of fiction until virginia woolf came and hurt its ego, she couln’t live with failure so… where am i going with this?… what the hell is cascade with no water, it’s like saying rainbow with no colors, or is it meant that that there was a cascade path where the water used to fall from but it was dry? alright, forgive my utmost stupidity…
8 – a hoop of ribs is like the leftovers of corpses, right, is he walking through a battle field or something similar?
9 – ” a bullock maggot-eaten in the sun; and in the shadow of the rock, savages; and in his hand a gun. The dream hand clenched; the real hand lay on the chair arm, the veins swollen but only with a brownish fluid now. ”
so here what is the brownish fluid exactly? also the contrast between the dream hand and the real hand is so amazing, i wrote about dreams a lot but never tried that before
10 – The door opened.
“Am I,” Isa apologized, “interrupting?”
Of course she was–destroying youth and India. It was his fault, since she had persisted in stretching his thread of life so fine, so far. Indeed he was grateful to her, watching her as she strolled about the room, for continuing.Many old men had only their India–old men in clubs, old men in rooms off Jermyn Street. She in her striped dress continued him”
so here ” she had presisted in stretching his thread of life ” and “she continued him” is he talking about the offspring, like the idea of the person dies but the kind continue living, and you spread your genes so you continue living as part of your decendents, it’s like a way to survive death, i think it’s a stupid way to cling to life, and i think you die when you die doesn’t matter how many children you have or what your great accomplisments that you’ll be remembered through them, because you won’t have a conncetion to this world so you would feel anything or hear anything from this world anymore, you’re just in a diffrent domain, but doesn’t matter what my beliefs are right? so the question is : is this what is meant by those expressions?
11 – “The library’s always the nicest room in the house,” she quoted”
did she just quoted herself? can you do that? because that’ her phrase, she came up with it.
anyway, that’s it for this post, thank you all to those who answered my previous posts, and to those who will answer my future posts, gotta make sure i don’t forget anyone, til the next one
​
by SaidNadir2021