The meaning of a sentence
I found out a quote below in the web-page as follows:
http://thinkexist.com/quotation/virtue-s_admired-and_shivers_with_the/184792.html
“Virtue's admired - and shivers with the cold”
But this quote didn't make any sense to me so I checked over and found that this quote came from a book, The silver age of Latin literature from Tiberius to Trajan, as follows:
https://archive.org/stream/silverageoflatin00summuoft/silverageoflatin00summuoft_djvu.txt
They submit very unwillingly to the ordeal of transplantation, and my attempt to reproduce a few in English dress is made with but too acute a consciousness of its inadequacy. At its best, the English iambic is a poor substitute for the rolling, Lucretian hexameter of Juvenal — Virtue's admired— and shivers with the cold.
First, the former quote is absurd and doesn't make any sense as the subject of 'shivers' is not 'Virtue' but 'the English iambic'.
(Am I right?)
So the author seems to explain the difficulty of translating Juvenal's poem into English.
But I cannot figure ?what 'Virtue's admired' means and ?what 'the English iambic shivers with the cold'.
Regards.
Top answer
Hi I think the first sentence means that we can try to give ourselves a warm feeling by appearing virtuous but we find that it doesn't work and instead we end up feeling cold and isolated. People will congratulate us on our good deeds or good thoughts but they may not then relate to us as a warm person As I understand it, the thought is attributed to the Roman poet Juvenal who would have written in Latin hexameters In your second sentence, the narrator is saying that he tried to translate this into English iambic pentameters, but it didn't go very well I don't much like the second sentence at all, but maybe there is a point there: each language has it's own rhythms of speech. You lose some of the meaning in translation, not because you have got the words wrong, but because you are no longer preserving the rhythm of the original language Dave
- Hi I think the first sentence means that we can try to give ourselves a warm feeling by appearing virtuous but we find that it doesn't work and instead we end up feeling cold and isolated.
- People will congratulate us on our good deeds or good thoughts but they may not then relate to us as a warm person As I understand it, the thought is attributed to the Roman poet Juvenal who would have written in Latin hexameters In your second sentence, the narrator is saying that he tried to translate this into English iambic pentameters, but it didn't go very well I don't much like the second sentence at all, but maybe there is a point there: each language has it's own rhythms of speech.
- You lose some of the meaning in translation, not because you have got the words wrong, but because you are no longer preserving the rhythm of the original language Dave
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I think the first sentence means that we can try to give ourselves a warm feeling by appearing virtuous but we find that it doesn't work and instead we end up feeling cold and isolated. People will congratulate us on our good deeds or good thoughts but they may not then relate to us as a warm person
As I understand it, the thought is attributed to the Roman poet Juvenal who wo
0Your reply gave me the clear meaning of that tricky quote.
0
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