For the last seven days I have been racking my mind with the given lines. Virginia Woolf’s famous novel TO THE LIGHTHOUSE starts with these.Could you please simplify the lines to me? I would be thankful and grateful both.
YES, OF COURSE, if it’s fine tomorrow," said Mrs. Ramsay. “But you’ll have to be up with the lark,” she added.
To her son these words conveyed an extraordinary joy, as if it were settled, the expedition were bound to take place, and the wonder to which he had looked forward, for years and years it seemed, was, after a night’s darkness and a day’s sail, within touch. Since he belonged, even at the age of six, to that great clan which cannot keep this feeling separate from that, but must let future prospects, with their joys and sorrows, cloud what is actually at hand, since to such people even in earliest childhood any turn in the wheel of sensation has the power to crystallise and transfix the moment upon which its gloom or radiance rests, James Ramsay, sitting on the floor cutting out pictures from the illustrated catalogue of the Army and Navy Stores, endowed the picture of a refrigerator, as his mother spoke, with heavenly bliss.
Could you please shed some light on the given lines?
as if it were settled,
*Since he belonged, even at the age of six, to that great clan which cannot keep this feeling separate from that, but must let future prospects, with their joys and sorrows, cloud what is actually at hand, since to such people even in earliest childhood any turn in the wheel of sensation has the power to crystallise and transfix the moment upon which its gloom or radiance rests…
For your first short quote I wrote an explanation.
For the second, longer quote I removed some of the “unnecessary” phrases and changed a couple of words. Can you understand it now? All of it is simply the first half of a sentence and gives you the reasons for what happens in the second half of the sentence. :shock:
Tom, my advice to you is that some books may be simply too difficult for you at this point. Even native speakers would have their share of trouble with this book. It’s definitely not easy to read. Here is what Wikipedia says about the book:
“… the plot is secondary to philosophical introspection, and the prose can be winding and hard to follow.”:!:
Were you planning to try to read this book in its entirety?
If so, you’ll need to learn to take sentences apart, turn them into multiple sentences, eliminate “extra information phrases” until you understand the basic sentences, etc., etc… :shock:
