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Literary translation French into English - please help


Effie

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Hello,

Here are a few sentences in French, which I cannot make sense of... Could you please have a look at them and let me know how to decode them?

1. À l'autre bout de l'éternité dont l'histoire est un lit.  = On the other side of eternity where the history is the bed??? ... A bit of context: a person wakes up and sees a spider on the wall. He is scared of a spider, but cannot take his eyes off... Why is "the bed" = " the other side of eternity?

2.  Et puis on dirait qu'une même idée les touche, effleure l'une, entraine l'autre: d'un seul frisson les voilà qui détalent à toute vitesse, leurs seize pattes avalant la blancheur du mur, mais n'importe comment, en direction de la plinthe et du sol, écrivant sur le mur leur affreux caprice imprévisible, désordre poilu.  = This is about the same spiders (there are two of them now), but I cannot put these words together into a sentence... Could you help, please?

Thank you so much in advance!

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Hello Effie,

I'm not a native speaker but I'll try to help.

I believe the first phrase's expression probably refers to the bed on which the person was sleeping until he woke up and saw the spiders. At least, I do not know any other meaning of the word "lit".

I would translate the second sentence like this:

"And one could say that the same idea is touching them, brushing one, going to another: just one tremble and here they go, so quickly, their six legs devouring the whiteness of the wall, they go careless, towards the plinth and the floor, writing their horrible, unpredictable whims on the wall, all in their hairy disorder."

Or maybe better in Russian as it appears you are the native speaker:

Кажется, что к ним прикасается одна и та же мысль, нежно ласкает одного, переходит к другому: легкая дрожь - и вот они уже бегут изо всех сил, бросая тень на безукоризненную белизну стены. Они бегут вниз, беспорядочно - к плинтусу, к полу, и их мохнатые лапки пишут на стене свои причудливые, ужасающие секреты.

Something like that :)

Ania

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Спасибо большое, Анна!

Почему-то никак не могла понять, что это не человек на кровати о пауках думает, а просто какая-то мысль пришла одновременно обоим паукам...

Еще раз спасибо. Но вот "Кровать по ту сторону вечности" - что-то странное. Но у автора вообще много таких непонятностей.

Всего наилучшего!

 

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