#into the replies. like 'oh yeah this is [standard literary construction xyz]'

[coquelicoq]

Sous la pergola courait en liseron sur toutes choses et sur les six infirmes le silence particulier des comploteurs fleuri du pavillon pâle et multiple des questions que l'on n'ose poser et qui attendent pour tomber le souffle du plus courageux. ("Le Café des Chasseurs", Daniel Boulanger)

my experience reading this sentence:

Sous la pergola courait en liseron sur toutes choses et sur les six infirmes le silence particulier des comploteurs

makes sense. this is a full sentence.

Sous la pergola courait en liseron sur toutes choses et sur les six infirmes le silence particulier des comploteurs fleuri du pavillon pâle

okay, maybe this makes sense? the silence particular to conspirators [which had] blossomed from the pale pavilion? kind of weird though...maybe it's related to the next part instead.

Sous la pergola courait en liseron sur toutes choses et sur les six infirmes le silence particulier des comploteurs fleuri du pavillon pâle et multiple

what

Sous la pergola courait en liseron sur toutes choses et sur les six infirmes le silence particulier des comploteurs fleuri du pavillon pâle et multiple des questions

WHAT????

richard coward translates this as

Beneath the pergola, convolvulus-like, the peculiar silence of the plotters spread over everything and over the six invalids, and the many questions that no one dared utter, and which waited to be asked for the breath of the bravest amongst them, fluttered above them like as many pale flags. (New Penguin Parallel Text Short Stories in French, p 115)

he also has an endnote after "courait" which reads

The subject of this verb is le silence particulier. Boulanger uses the inversion to convey stylistically the all-embracing secrecy of the meeting.

this is making me cuckoo. obviously the subject of courait is le silence particulier. what else could it possibly be!! that's the least confusing thing about the sentence!

what is actually confusing is everything that happens after le silence particulier. fleuri is a past participle which i would think is acting as an adjective because there's no auxiliary. what's it modifying? silence? are we saying [le silence [particulier des comploteurs] [fleuri du pavillon pâle]]? and where is the pavillon pâle coming from? this is the first use of the word pavillon. the translator takes it as figurative language, which maybe it is, but i can't figure out what it's doing in the sentence because...

what the fuck is going on with multiple? if it's an adjective modifying pavillon, then shouldn't it (and pavillon!) be plural? like by definition?? the translator has clearly interpreted it this way by the inclusion of "many pale flags". however, i originally interpreted pavillon not as flag (flags have not been mentioned in the story at all so far) but as outbuilding, because on the previous page the pergola was described as having "murs aveugles" which the translator thought was odd because pergolas don't have walls, let alone windowless ones, so he thought maybe it was referring to an outbuilding. also, if multiple is somehow modifying pavillon despite the fact that they're both singular, everything up to and including multiple is a complete sentence. what is des questions and everything after it doing? that's a completely new noun phrase. what verb phrase is it part of?

at one point i was thinking, could multiple be a verb? but it would have to be a verb in the 3rd person singular present indicative (or i guess subjunctive), so it can't parallel courait. there are present indicative verbs in this sentence, but they're both in the subordinate clause after "des questions". the subject would either have to be le silence (which doesn't make sense because courait also has silence as the subject and is in the imparfait) or le pavillon, which doesn't make sense because there's an et in between pavillon and multiple.

i can't say the translation is incorrect because i don't understand the original sentence. but if i start from the translation and try to work backward, the biggest problem i run into isn't "many pale flags" (maybe le pavillon pâle et multiple could be a plural noun phrase stylistically?) but rather "fluttered". he's added a completely new main verb that doesn't exist in the original. and at first i was assuming that he was getting fluttered from fleuri somehow, but i can't make that make sense either semantically or syntactically which maybe is a skill issue, i don't know!!

if we try to line up the correspondences between original and translation by color:

Sous la pergola courait en liseron sur toutes choses et sur les six infirmes le silence particulier des comploteurs fleuri du pavillon pâle et multiple des questions que l'on n'ose poser et qui attendent pour tomber le souffle du plus courageux.

Beneath the pergola, convolvulus-like, the peculiar silence of the plotters spread over everything and over the six invalids, and the many questions that no one dared utter, and which waited to be asked for the breath of the bravest amongst them, fluttered above them like as many pale flags.

it does seem like fluttered and fleuri have to be related somehow. maybe fleuri is actually supposed to be fleurit (most of the story is in the passé simple)...but if des questions is the subject, it would have to be fleurirent because questions is plural. and it still seems pretty weird not to have a conjuction in the french (he's added "and" in the translation). and where did the "above them" come from in "fluttered above them"? i am losing my mind. what am i missing.