Reading The Secret Glory by Arthur Machen, I find much to admire in it, and it may end up for me being even more of a key work than The Hill of Dreams, despite the constant use of Latin phrases I don't understand. Anyway, there is also much to amuse me in it. I wondered if someone translating the text from English into their own native tongue (say, Mandarin), would understand what this really means:
The cat had come in with the tea-tray.
I couldn't help laughing when I read this because of the image it conjured up. Of course, it doesn't actually mean that the cat is carrying a tea-tray into the room. The 'tea-tray' here is actually a person, or rather, the tea-tray is being conveyed by a person, but it's the tea-tray that is considered important rather than the person (in this sentence). The cat came in when the person carrying the tea-tray opened the door. I understand that. I don't know what to make of the following at all:
There, in the land of the Crowned Immortal Tosspots was that wine of ours vintaged…
all the dead potters grumbling over sour grapes?
I must confess that my focus on that particular line was a bit juvenile, as “tosspot” is slightly rude in British slang.
i knew i didn’t know what it really meant. i assume that it goes back to chamber pot days. 💡
I understand the first line and therefore can translate it properly into Chinese. Not the second line without knowing first what a tosspot is.
Hello.Been a bit busy of late.I know what the slang version of ‘tosspot’ means, but not what appears to be the original meaning used in the excerpted text, except that I guess it’s something to do with fermenting wine.
I now know. I have read that in literary sense it means a habitual drinker.