A Short Note on Translating Thomas Hardy’s Biblical Allusions

Abstract

In one of the many moving passages in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, the heroine baptizes her dying child Sorrow.  It is worth examining the following scene:  “Her figure looked singularly tall and imposing as she stood in her long white nightgown, a thick cable of twisted dark hair hanging straight down her back to her waist.  The kindly dimness of the weak candle abstracted from her form and features the little blemishes which sunlight might have revealed ─ the stubble scratches upon her wrists, and the weariness of her eyes ─ her high enthusiasm having a transfiguring effect upon the face which had been her undoing, showing it as a thing of immaculate beauty, with an impress of dignity which was almost regal.  The little ones kneeling round, their sleepy eyes blinking and red, awaited her preparations full of a suspended wonder which their physical heaviness at that hour would not allow to become active” (my emphasis, 94).