An excerpt from The Plague
A word that conjured up in the doctor’s mind not only what science chose to put into it, but a whole series of fantastic possibilities utterly out of keeping with that gray and yellow town under his eyes, from which were rising the sounds of mild activity characteristic of the hour; a drone, rather than a bustling, the noises of a happy town, in short, If it is possible to be at once so dull and happy.
This whole sentence just eludes me. Could you please help me parse it?
In terms of syntax, I don’t know where is the predicate. I think the subject is "a word," which is then followed by a relative clause beginning with "that" and another relative clause starting with "from which."
As to the meaning, what does "but a whole series of fantastic possibilities utterly out of keeping with that gray and yellow town under his eyes" mean?
Also, what is "the sounds of mild activity characteristic of the hour”?
Answer
For those that don’t know the context, the previous sentence ends something like:
…the word that still echoed in the room: the plague.
I have divided up the passage into several clauses, and added a few words to indicate how they fit together.
A word
that conjured up in the doctor’s mind
not only what science chose to put into it
but [also] a whole series of fantastic possibilities[these possibilities were] utterly out of keeping with that gray and yellow town under his eyes.
from the town were rising the sounds of mild activity characteristic of the hour;
[the sounds were] a drone, rather than a bustling,
the noises [were] of a happy town, in short,if it is possible to be at once so dull and happy.
This is not a sentence: there is a subject, but no predicate. The rest of the passage starts off as a relative clause linked by the relative pronoun that, and then takes a few detours. From a literary perspective, it sketches out a scene beautifully, but in terms of sentence construction it’s a house of cards.
The sentence construction is the work of the translator: the sentence in Camus’ original version, page 43, contains exactly the same scene but is a lot easier to read.
"but a whole series of fantastic possibilities utterly out of keeping with that gray and yellow town under his eyes" means that he is imagining the terrible consequences that did not fit with the boring town that he is looking at.
"the sounds of mild activity characteristic of the hour” imagine waking up in a small town, and hearing the noises all of the little things people do when shortly after they wake up, before they settle into the routine of the day.
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : HypnoticBuggyWraithVirileBevy , Answer Author : JavaLatte