“A narrow and deserted street in deep shadow, high houses, innumerable windows with venetian blinds, a dead silence, grass sprouting between the stones, imposing carriage archways right and left, immense double doors standing ponderously ajar. I slipped through one of these cracks, went up a swept and ungarnished staircase , as arid as a desert, and opened the first door I came to . Two women, one fat and the other slim, sat on straw-bottomed chairs, knitting black wool. The slim one got up and walked straight at me? stillknittingwith downcast eyes?and only just as I began tothink of getting out of her way, as you wouldfor a somnambulist, stood still , and looked up. . . .”
“. . . The head of the magistrate, delicately pale under the neatly arranged hair, resembled the head of a hopeless invalid after he had been washed and brushed and propped up in bed. He moved aside the vase of flowers?a bunch of purple witha few pink blossoms on long stalks?and seizing in both hands a long sheet of bluish paper, ran his eye over it, propped his forearms on the edge of the desk, and began to read aloud in an even , distinct , and careless voice. . . . ”
というわけで、あまり翻訳の話ができなかったが、これまで「笑えるコンラッド」という側面はあまり顧みられてこなかったと思うので、まずはこの点を訳においても再現することの重要性を強調しておきたい。何しろややこしい構文であることも多いので、これまた往々にしてEasier said than done（言うは易し行なうは難し）なのですが……
