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If I take the famous line which describes how the souls of the dead stood waiting by the river, imploring a passage from Charon: Tendebantque manus ripae ulterioris amore, and if I translate it, "and were stretching forth their hands in longing for the further bank," the charm of the original has fled. Why has it fled?
And it does so partly because this picture and this sense are conveyed not only by the obvious meaning of the words, but through the long-drawn sound of "tendebantque," through the time occupied by the five syllables and therefore by the idea of "ulterioris," and through the identity of the long sound "or" in the penultimate syllables of "ulterioris amore" all this, and much more, apprehended not in this analytical fashion, nor as added to the beauty of mere sound and to the obvious meaning, but in unity with them and so as expressive of the poetic meaning of the whole.
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