Translation--how to understand the following sentences?

I'm happy to help...but it's a bit daunting to just paraphrase the whole thing.

Can you cut and paste the translation you have so far, or let us know what you find it hard to "get", so we can see exactly what you are struggling with?

I think that text is pretty much crap. Good writing does not have to be as affected and convoluted as that.

S/he still has to translate it though.

I think it's funny!

Thanks a lot.
You don't have to paraphrase the whole thing, but just those sentences in quotation marks. I've put some sentences in quotation marks, and you can find them. For other sentences, they just provide as a context.
Will you still help me?

I agree with you. This sauce text is somehow Invalid, according to the Peter Newmark's view. But will you help me parapharase the sentences in quotation marks? Other sentences serve only for context.
Thanks anyway.

I'll give it a shot:

No, all that which I do here or refrain from doing lacks clarity, nor can I detect any symmetry anywhere, “such as living would assuredly display, I think, if my progress were directed by any particular motive”.

The author suggests (claims, rather dubiously) that the mere act of living provides clarity or symmetry when one attempts to progress toward a particular goal. That is to say, the author claims that when one lives with the motive of progressing to any particular goal, there is an inherent clarity or symmetry which reveals itself simply by having that motive. As an aside, i would point out that this is a claim which the author has not substantiated, and a doubtful proposition.

“Married people are not ever tender with each other, you will notice: if they are mutually civil it is much: and physical contacts apart, their relation is that of a very moderate intimacy”.

I am surprised that you need to have this paraphrased, because i find it straightforward. The author is saying that married couples do not indulge in a very great intimacy, that being civil to one another is as much as one can expect, apart from the intimacy of physical "love." This is a cynical statement on the part of the author, in which he reveals his own bitterness over childhood and adult relationships. This joker uses an awkward and stilted language which is not useful to understanding. For example, desiderate (if a word at all) is needless obfuscation--desire would work just fine. The expression "to my finding" is also stilted and needlessly complex. It would have worked as well to have written "I find that human beings don't like one another." This guy is a crap author.

We are all of us, as if by instinct, intolerant of that which is unfamiliar: we resent its impudence: “and very much the same principle which prompts small boys to jeer at a straw-hat out of season induces their elders to send missionaries to the heathen…”

The author is saying that people who decide that some group of people are heathen, and therefore need the guiding light of missionaries to be shown the error of their ways are acting in the same manner as little boys who ridicule someone for being out of style. At one time, straw hats were only worn during certain periods of the year, specifically in summer. So if someone were to wear a straw hat at any other time, Cabell is saying that small boys would mock them, and that the decision on the part of adult society that a failure share one's religious belief makes those who do not hold the belief heathen is motivated by the same abhorrence of non-conformity.

Cabell uses the example of a straw hat out of season because he attended university in the 1890s, and the most part of his body of work was written in the period from 1900 to 1930. In his lifetime, men commonly wore hats, and people would very likely have ridiculed anyone wearing a straw hat out of season (some women in the West to this day will ridicule another woman who wears white out of season, i.e., white is only worn in summer by fashion conscious women of a certain age). His work is very dated, and almost unread these days. I was obliged to read Jurgen in university, and am happy to say that i've never read another word of his work. Nevertheless, he was highly regarded by his contemporaries, and had a strong influence on the early writers of modern science fiction. From seeing these examples which you have provided here, i am glad to think that i never read any further in his opus.

My apologies alexliu...I didn't notice the quotation marks etc!!!

Setanta has done a great job...I'll do my interpretation too, so you have a couple to look at.

The piece is very ironic and meant to be funny and also quite provocative.

“such as living would assuredly display, I think, if my progress were directed by any particular motive”.


I think he is saying that he denies any soul, or spiritual element, or god.

Remember, he has started by saying that he would like life not to be dependent upon the physical.."the tyranny of matter"...(and the inclusion of books with food and flesh etc. is quite funny) but here, as in the other paragraphs, he goes on to deny the possibility of what he wishes for. That is, he is saying that we are just matter, after all, as he can see no evidence of anything else...

“Married people are not ever tender with each other, you will notice: if they are mutually civil it is much: and physical contacts apart, their relation is that of a very moderate intimacy”.


Again, he is talking about how little tenderness, which he says he desires, there is between humans, and using examples which would, in popular sentiment, have defined tenderness (parental bond, marital bond) to debunk its existence.

He says there is a brief period of tenderness (a truce in what he sees as the ongoing hostility between men and women, and indeed, between all adults) between adults when they are courting, but it does not survive much beyond marriage.

(Do you understand the meaning of "tender" here?

It is used in the sense of:

a. Considerate and protective; solicitous: a tender mother; his tender concern.
b. Characterized by or expressing gentle emotions; loving: a tender glance; a tender ballad.
c. Given to sympathy or sentimentality; soft: a tender heart.)

So, he notes that married people are seldom kind and solicitous of each other, and share little emotional or intellectual intimacy. He says they are intimate only physically (being "intimate" with someone can be used to mean thay have sex, as well as the other meanings of intimacy.)


and very much the same principle which prompts small boys to jeer at a straw-hat out of season induces their elders to send missionaries to the heathen…

This is wonderfully challenging!!

He says that people are naturally xenophobic and intolerant of anyone (or any culture) different from ourselves.

Popular sentiment at the time would have seen being a missionary as a sacred calling, noble in its intent to bring god's truth and civilization to the benighted heathens. (Including the Chinese!)

He delightfully punctures this view by saying it is impelled by the same motives that lead us to be critical of others for such ridiculous things as dressing a little unfashionably.



It's rather a bleak world that he sees for humans.

No meaning or purpose, no love, and no tolerance and critical self-awareness!

Thank you very much.
I actually want to choose Sentata's and dolwan's answers as best answers. But I find I can only choose one of you. So I choose Sentata, but I also want to say Thanks to dolwan for twice visiting my questions and giving his/her invaluable suggestions.
It's a wonderful experience to ask questions online.

You are welcome!!

And people who thank us make us work harder!

I thought my answer was the best.

And by the way, sauce is not source.

Oh, I mistyped the word source.