to scroll its focus

B

babi1960

Member
italian
Buon pomeriggio!

I need your help with the following sentence, please:
"Fret not as the sun falls behind the hills. The light will return come the morrow. But we must allow the tapestry to scroll its focus. To bring us the sweet sorrow of the fall of day"

Some context: we are in a fantastic world, whose Emperor is called "Smiling Sun". In this scene the emperor is giving his final evening address to the people, keeping in the meanwhile an eye on the sunset. My translation (not definitive, of course): "Non abbiate timore se il sole si eclissa dietro le colline. La luce tornerà a risplendere domani. Ma noi dobbiamo permettere a the tapestry to scroll its focus. Di portarci il dolore soave del tramontare del giorno."

Thank you in advance for any suggestion!
 
    • Babi, I'm afraid this doesn't make any more sense to a native English speaker (or at least not to this one) than it does to you. Are there computers and touchscreens in this fantastic world? It sounds like the writer is using "to scroll" in the recent sense of "to move through a sequence of items on a screen" -- in which case I can see a not very good writer thinking that you can "scroll" a "focus" in the sense of focusing on first one item and then another in sequence: in this case, the "tapestry" of the light and the landscape is first focusing on the day, and then the sunset, and then the night, and so forth.

    If the relevant technology doesn't exist in this world and your writer is importing this meaning of word without realizing it's an anachronism, well . . . it happens. :)
     
    theartichoke said:
    Babi, I'm afraid this doesn't make any more sense to a native English speaker (or at least not to this one) than it does to you. Are there computers and touchscreens in this fantastic world? It sounds like the writer is using "to scroll" in the recent sense of "to move through a sequence of items on a screen" -- in which case I can see a not very good writer thinking that you can "scroll" a "focus" in the sense of focusing on first one item and then another in sequence: in this case, the "tapestry" of the light and the landscape is first focusing on the day, and then the sunset, and then the night, and so forth.

    If the relevant technology doesn't exist in this world and your writer is importing this meaning of word without realizing it's an anachronism, well . . . it happens. :)
    Click to expand...
    I thank you so much for your contribution! :)

    Actually it's an ancient, "fantastic" world, called "The Old Country". No computers, no modern or contemporary tools. What I feel is that it could mean "let the scenery/the landscape to unwind /uncoil/unroll to its core" in order to show (and bring) the sweet melancholy of the sunset.
    The Emperor is compared to the Sun: some sort of fulcrum or focus of that specific old world.
    I know, I'm probably interpreting a bit too much, a bit too much in between the lines, probably, but I'm really lost in it.
    Another bit of the context: this is part of a story told during a performance in a theater called "The Inverted Theater".
     
    Are you able to let us know the author / title of the piece? It would help to know if we're dealing with someone who writes in complex metaphors or someone who doesn't really have good control of their language. "To scroll," according to the OED, can mean "to roll or curl up": but used this way, the verb is intransitive, so a tapestry could scroll [itself], but it couldn't, grammatically speaking, scroll its focus.
     
    Could the author have used "scroll" as a synonyms for "unroll"? A tapestry can be rolled/unrolled... (?)
     
    babi1960 said:
    yes, it could be possible... this is what I thought too, due to the context - but....
    Click to expand...
    I think the context might in the end be the only thing to go on for a translation. The meaning is most likely what we've all suggested: the tapestry of the landscape / time / light has to unroll so that we can see each part of it in sequence, the night as well as the day. I doubt anything would be gained by trying to translate "scroll its focus" in any more direct way.
     
    theartichoke said:
    I think the context might in the end be the only thing to go on for a translation. The meaning is most likely what we've all suggested: the tapestry of the landscape / time / light has to unroll so that we can see each part of it in sequence, the night as well as the day. I doubt anything would be gained by trying to translate "scroll its focus" in any more direct way.
    Click to expand...
    Absolutely, I do agree! I'll work it out and let you know the possible outcome - thank you so much! :thank you:
     
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