EN-RU Про жениха Кристины Россетти

[novayadoroga.livejournal.com]

Помогите, пожалуйста перевести одно место, вызвавшее дискуссию у переводчиков биографии Кристины Россетти.
Этот кусок выделен:

this abstract and erudite man who shuffled about the world in a state of absent-minded dishabille, and translated the gospel into Iroquois, and asked smart ladies at a party “whether they were interested in the Gulf Stream”, and for a present gave Christina a sea mouse preserved in spirits, was, not unnaturally, a free thinker.

вопрос вот в чем: действительно ли этот человек (жених Россетти) слонялся по миру или же путешествовал (как Паганель) лежа на диване?

Спасибо!

Comments

Not a translation but something to consider...

[weird-penguin.livejournal.com]

Obituary.

These anniversary meetings seldom return without bringing some vacant places to remind us that one or more of our fellow-workers have during the year gone over to the great majority. On the present occasion we miss the face of a member of the Society, and a member of the Council, who was seldom absent from our meetings, Mr. Charles Bagot Cayley. So regular indeed was Mr. Cayley in his attendance, that it was with no little surprise, that on assembling on the 7th of December last to hear a paper read by him upon one of the branches of Greek philology, to which he devoted his attention, we found ourselves waiting for his appearance. He never came : unknown to any of us then, he had expired on the morning of the preceding day, apparently of heart disease, and during sleep. Mr. Cayley, who was the son of Henry Cayley, a Russia merchant, and a younger brother of the well-known Sadlerian Professor at Cambridge, was born near St. Petersburg in 1823; educated at Mr. Pollecary's school, Blackheath, King's College, London, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took a second class in the Classical Tripos in 1845. Several of his earlier years bad been spent in Russia, and he would seem to have there acquired something of the facility as a linguist which the Russians are commonly supposed to possess.
...
"A more complete specimen than Mr. Charles Cayley of the abstracted scholar in appearance and manner—the scholar who constantly lives an inward and immaterial life, faintly perceptive of external facts and appearances —could hardly be conceived. He united great sweetness to great simplicity of character, and was not less polite than unworldly...

Source -
Transactions of the Philological Society
Philological Society (Great Britain)
Published for the Society by B. Blackwell., 1885

[misha-b.livejournal.com]

Думаю, что если бы он лежал на диване, то вряд ли кто-то обратил бы внимание на то, что он не слишком аккуратно одет.

[weird-penguin.livejournal.com]

Ну тут же не буквально про диван. Судя по найденным описаниям, он выделялся своей рассеянностью и небрежением ко всему окружающему даже среди других подобных. Я ставлю ставку на его не-путешествия. :)

[novayadoroga.livejournal.com]

да, я тоже ставлю на это:)

[misha-b.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I was treading the fine line between dense and facetious. I agree that there is no evidence for his travels.

[oryx_and_crake]

Он так по жизни шел. (А по жизни идти можно и в пределах собственной квартиры.)

[novayadoroga.livejournal.com]

да, думаю, что все-таки именно "шел по жизни" Спасибо!

[n0p0x.livejournal.com]

кмк, "shuffled" здесь дословно "влачил", как в "влачил жалкое существование" :)

[novayadoroga.livejournal.com]

Спасибо! Но мне кажется, что тут нет настолько негативной коннотации - скорее просто "шел по жизни"

[mymymiaow.livejournal.com]

shuffle, по-моему, говорят, о картах - тасуемых. Поэтому это что-то вроде тусоваться или таскаться - двигаться без строго выбранного направления, бродить, чтобы отделаться от плохих ассоциаций.