This is not a translation-issue, but still I quote Herman Melville:
Redburn - - and feel stupid, as I don't understand, why (in the last
sentence) a reason is shockingly obvious. How can it be shocking, if
the reason is, that the man just needs to have a bath??? I am afraid,
I have missed a special point - for why is he scratching his back and
not for example his stomach? Sorry for my stupidity.

"It now remains to speak of the steerage passengers. There were not
more than twenty or thirty of them, mostly mechanics, returning home,
after a prosperous stay in America, to escort their wives and families
back. These were the only occupants of the steerage that I ever knew
of; till early one morning, in the gray dawn, when we made Cape Clear,
the south point of Ireland, the apparition of a tall Irishman, in a
shabby shirt of bed-ticking, emerged from the fore hatchway, and stood
leaning on the rail, looking landward with a fixed, reminiscent
expression, and diligently scratching its back with both hands. We all
started at the sight, for no one had ever seen the apparition before;
and when we remembered that it must have been burrowing all the
passage down in its bunk, the only probable reason of its so
manipulating its back became shockingly obvious."

yours

He's been lying flat on his back which got terribly bitten by bed-bugs?

But why on earth is Melville calling him an 'it'? Anti-irishness?

Puzzled,

Bettina

Bettina Price <bettina+usenet@pappnase.co.uk> wrote:

He's been lying flat on his back which got terribly bitten by bed-bugs?

But why on earth is Melville calling him an 'it'? Anti-irishness?

Puzzled,

Bettina

No bias here - the "it's" refers to "the apparition."

Dave

Ah, of course. But that kind of grammatical nicety is really that of a

"Dave Devine" <dave_devine@nospamcop.net> wrote in message
news:1iflrnd.1j1pyunzdj26N%dave_devine@nospamcop.net...
Bettina Price <bettina+usenet@pappnase.co.uk> wrote:

He's been lying flat on his back which got terribly bitten by bed-bugs?

But why on earth is Melville calling him an 'it'? Anti-irishness?

Puzzled,

Bettina

No bias here - the "it's" refers to "the apparition."

Dave

Ah, of course. But that kind of grammatical nicety is really that of a
bygone age, isn't it.

Bettina

Bettina Price <bettina+usenet@pappnase.co.uk> wrote:

He's been lying flat on his back which got terribly bitten by
bed-bugs?

But why on earth is Melville calling him an 'it'?
Anti-irishness?

Puzzled,

Bettina

No bias here - the "it's" refers to "the apparition."

Dave

Though parasites are inspirational of full martial reaction,
there
is a rather curious element in the
behavior of male bed bugs which has drawn the purely clinical
attention of more THAN one researcher, q.v.
Carayon, J. 1977 Insémination extragénitale traumatique. In
Traité
de Zoologie 8(V-A) (ed. P. P. Grassé),
pp. 351-390. Paris: Masson. Or, as Festus might say, "DANG, them
boys is bug nuts."