Jiří Šalamoun's Tristram Shandy (5)

 

I had now the whole south of France, from the banks of the Rhône to those of the Garonne to traverse upon my mule at my own leisure——at my own leisure——for I had left Death, the lord knows——and He only——how far behind me——“I have followed many a man thro’ France, quoth he—but never at this mettlesome rate”——Still he followed,——and still I fled him——but I fled him chearfully——still he pursued——but like one who pursued his prey without hope——as he lag’d, every step he lost, softened his looks——why should I fly him at this rate?

 

Vol. VII, Chap. XLII

 

——Bon jour!——good morrow!——so you have got your cloak on betimes!——but ’tis a cold morning, and you judge the matter rightly——’tis better to be well mounted, than go o’foot——and obstructions in the glands are dangerous——And how goes it with thy concubine——they wife——and thy little ones o’both sides? and when did you hear from the old gentleman and lady—your sister, aunt, uncle and cousins——I hope they have got better of their colds, coughs, claps, tooth-aches, fevers stranguries, sciaticas, swellings, and sore-eyes.——What a devil of an apothecary! to take so much blood—give such a vile purge—puke—poultice—plaister—night-draught—glister—blister?——And why so many grains of calomel? and such a dose of opium! periclitating, pardi! the whole family of ye, from head to tail——By my great aunt Dinah’s old black velvet mask! I think there was no occasion for it.

Vol. VIII, Chap. III

 

—— “And drink nothing ?—nothing but water?”

——Impetuous fluid! the moment thou pressest against the flood-gates of the brain,——see how they give way!——

In swims Curiosity [zvědavost], beckoning to her damsels to follow——they dive into the centre of the current——

 Fancy [obraznost] sits musing upon the bank [břeh], and, with her eyes following the stream [řeka], turns straws and bulrushes into masts and bowsprits.——And Desire [touha], with vest held up to the knee in one hand, snatches at them, as they swim by her, with the other——

O ye water-drinkers! is it then by this delusive fountain that ye have so often governed and turned this world about like a mill-wheel,——grinding the faces of the impotent,—bepowdering their ribs—be-peppering their noses, and changing sometimes even the very frame and face of nature——

Vol. VIII, Chap. V  

 

——No; I shall never have a finger in the pie (so here I break my metaphor)——

Crust [kůrka] and crumb [střída]
Inside [dužina] and out [slupka]

Top and bottom——I detest it, I hate it, I repudiate it——I'm sick at the sight of it——

’Tis all pepper,

        garlic,
        staragen,
        salt, and  

        devil’s dung——by the great arch-cook of cooks, who does nothing, I think, from morning to night, but sit down by the fire-side and invent inflammatory dishes for us,I would not touch it for the world——

Vol. VIII, Chap. XI

In love !——said the Corporal,—your Honour was very well the day before yesterday, when I was telling your Honour the story of the King of Bohemia—Bohemia! said my uncle Toby - - - - musing a long time - - - What became of that story, Trim ?

We lost it, an’ please your Honour, somehow betwixt us—but your Honour was as free from love then as I am——’Twas just whilst thou went'st off with the wheel-barrow—with Mrs. Wadman, quoth my uncle Toby——She has left a ball here—added my uncle Toby, pointing to his breast——

Vol. VIII, Chap. XXVIII

Though the Corporal had been as good as his word in putting my uncle Toby's great Ramallies wig into pipes, yet the time was too short to produce any great effects from it: it had lain many years squeezed up in the corner of his old campaign trunk; and as bad forms are not so easy to be got the better of, and the use of candle-ends not so well understood, it was not so pliable a business as one would have wished. The Corporal, with cheery eye and both arms extended, had fallen back perpendicular from it a score times, to inspire it, if possible, with a better air——had Spleen given a look at it, ’twould have cost her ladyship a smile——it curl’d every where but where the Corporal would have it; and where a buckle or two, in his opinion, would have done it honour, he could as soon have raised the dead. 

Vol. IX, Chap. II

Jiří Šalamoun's Tristram Shandy (4)

The corporal put his hat under his left arm, and with his stick hanging upon the wrist of it, by a black thong split into a tassel about the knot, he marched up to the ground where he had performed his catechism; then touching his under jaw with the thumb and fingers of his right hand before he opened his mouth,——he delivered his notion thus.

Vol. V, Chap. XXXVIII

koule - sphere; krychle - cube

 

Tristam, said, he, shall be made to conjugate every word in the dictionary, backwards and forwards the same way;——every word, Yorick, by this means, you see, is converted into a thesis [téze] or an hypothesis [hypotéza];——every thesis and hypothesis have an offspring of propositions;—and each proposition [propozice] has its own consequences [důsledek] and conclusions [záver]; every one of which leads the mind on again, into fresh tracks of enquiries and doubtings [pochybnosti].

Vol. VI, Chap. II

in no one moment of my existence, that I remember, have ye once deserted me, or tinged the objects which came in my way, either with sable, or with a sickly green; in dangers ye gilded my horizons with hope, and when DEATH himself knocked at my door—ye bad him come again; and in so gay a tone of careless indifference, did ye do it, that he doubted of his commission——

“—There must certainly be some mistake in this matter,” quoth he.

Vol. VII, Chap. I 

 

Jiří Šalamoun's Tristram Shandy (3)

If ’tis wrote against any thing,——’tis wrote, an’ please your worships, against the spleen; in order, by a more frequent and a more convulsive elevation and depression of the diaphragm [bránice], and the succussations of the intercostal and abdominal muscles in laughter [smích], to drive the gall [zlač] and other bitter juices, from the gall bladder [žlučník], liver [játra] and sweet-bread [brzlík] of his majesty’s subjects, withal the inimicitious passions which belong to them, down in their duodenums [dvanácník].

Vol. IV, Chap. XXII

příbuznost - kinship, otec - father, matka - mother, dcera - daughter, syn - son

myšlenka - idea, thought, Anglie - England, Francie - France, Řím - Rome, Řecko - Greece

The first thing which entered my father’s head, after affairs were a little settled in the family, and Susannah had got possession of my mother’s green sattin night-gown,—was to sit down coolly, after the example of Xenophon, and write a TRISTRA-pœdia, or system of education for me.

 Vol. V, Chap. XVI

zevně - outside, uvnitř - inside, nos - nose

 smutný pes - sad dog

Now the radical moisture is not the tallow or fat of animals, but an oily and balsamous substance; for the fat and tallow, as also the phlegm or watery parts are cold; whereas the oily and balsamous parts are of a lively heat and spirit, which accounts for the observation of Aristotle, “Quod omne animal post coitum est triste.”

Vol. V, Chap. XXXVI

 

Jiří Šalamoun's Tristram Shandy (2)

Here a Devil of a rap at the door snapp’d my father’s definition (like his tobacco-pipe) in two,---and, at the same time, crushed the head of as notable and curious a dissertation as ever was engendered in the womb of speculation.

Vol. II, Chap. VIII

My uncle Toby had scarce a heart to retaliate upon a fly. 

—Go,---says he, one day at dinner, to an over-grown one which had buzz’d about his nose, and tormented him cruelly all dinner-time,—and which, after infinite attempts, he had caught at last, as it flew by him,---I'll not hurt thee, says my uncle Toby, rising from his chair, and going a-cross the room, with the fly in his hand,---I’ll not hurt a hair of thy head:---Go, says he, lifting up the sash, and opening his hand as he spoke, to let it escape,—go poor Devil, get thee gone, why should I hurt thee?----This world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me.

Vol. II, Chap. XII 

“May he be damn’d in his mouth, in his breast, in his heart and purtenance, down to the very stomach. May he be cursed in his reins, and in his groin,” (God in heaven forbid, quoth my uncle Toby)—“in his thighs, in his genitals,” (my father shook his head) “and in his hips, and in his knees, and feet, and toe-nails.”

Vol. III, Chap. XI

He consider’d rather Ernulphus’s anathema, as an institute of swearing, in which, as he suspected, upon the decline of swearing in some milder pontificate, Ernulphus, by order of the succeeding pope, had with great learning and diligence collected together all the laws of it;——fir the same reason that Justinian in the decline of the empire, had ordered his chancellor Tribonian to collect the Roman or civil laws all together into one code or digest,—lest through the rust of time,—and the fatality of all things committed to oral tradition, they should be lost to the world for ever.

Vol. III, Chap. XII

“Good God!” cried my uncle Toby, “are children brought into the world with a squirt?”

Vol. III, Chap. XV

“Nihil me poenitet hujus nasi,” quoth Pamphagus;——“My nose has been the making of me.”—“Nec est cur poeniteat,” replies Cocles; that is, “How the duce should such a nose fail?”

Vol.III, Chap. XXXVII

With all this learning upon Noses running perpetually in my father's fancy—with so many family prejudices—and ten decads of such tales running on for ever along with them—how was it possible with such exquisite—was it a true nose?—

Vol. IV, Chap. I

My father instantly exchanged the attitude he was in, for that in which Socrates is so finely painted by Raffael in his school of Athens; which your connoisseurship knows is so exquisitely imagined, that even the particular manner of the reasoning of Socrates is expressed by it—for he holds the fore-finger of his left-hand between the fore-finger and thumb of his right, and seems as if he was saying to the libertine he is reclaiming—“You grant me this—and this: and this, and this, I don’t ask of you—they follow of themselves in course.”

 Vol. IV, Chap. VII

Though man is of all others the most curious vehicle, said my father, yet at the same time ’tis of so slight frame and so totteringly put together, that the sudden jerks and hard jostlings it unavoidably meets with in this rugged journey, would overset and tear it to pieces a dozen times a day—was it not, brother Toby, that there is a secret spring within us—Which spring, said my uncle Toby, I take to be Religion.

Vol. IV, Chap. VIII

There is something, Sir, in fish-ponds—but what it is, I leave to system builders and fish pond diggers betwixt ’em to find out—but there is something, under the first disorderly transport of the humours, so unaccountably becalming in an orderly and a sober walk towards one of them, that I have often wondered that neither Pythagoras, nor Plato, nor Solon, nor Licurgus, nor Mahomet, nor any of your noted lawgivers, ever gave order about them.

Vol. IV, Chap. XVII