英文をいかに読むか
第2編9 Somerset Maugham
The dawn*1 crept in*2 among the wooden pillars of the hut*3 and looked*4 at those lovely children sleeping in one another's arm*5. The sun hid behind the great tattered*6 leaves of the plantains*7 so that it*8 might not disturb them, and then, with playful malice*9, shot a golden ray, like the outstretched paw*10 of a Persian cat, on their faces. They opened their sleepy eyes and they smiled to welcome another day. The weeks lengthened into months, and a year passed. They seemed to love one another as - I hesitate to say passionately*11, for passion has in it always a shade of sadness, a touch of bitterness or anguish*12, but as*13 whole-heartedly*14, as simply and naturally as on that first day on which, meeting*15, they had recognised that a god was in them*16.
If you had asked them I have no doubt*17 that they would have thought*18 it impossible to suppose their love could ever cease. Do we not know that the essential element of love is a belief in its*19 own eternity?*20
Red by Somerset Maugham
物語の一節。なので、これまでとは段落構造が違っています。
*1:dawn: 暁
*2:creep in: 這って入る、忍び入る
*3:hut: 小屋
*4:crept...and look...で並列
*5:one another: 2人の場合、each otherの方が普通だが、one anotherを好む作家もいる
*6:tatter: ぼろぼろにする
*7:plantain: プランテーン。熱帯産のバショウ科バショウ属の多年草
*8:it=sun
*9:malice: 敵意、悪意。根深い卑劣さに基づくが、ここではplayfulと組んで、「いたずら」
*10:paw: 動物の脚
*11:as passionately...と書こうとして止めたことを記している
*12:anguish: 苦痛。ここまでが、forで始まるI hesitate...の理由
*13:but: not A but Bのような、打ち消したものの言い換え
*14:whole-heartedly: 心から
*15:on whichで始まる関係節。中心が後ろにあるので分詞構文的に流している。会い、･･･した最初の日
*16:them=each other
*17:以下、Iが確信しているif...に対する主節で、askの答え
*18:they would have answered they thought...とした方が意味がとりやすい
*20:反語的表現
