so many vaginas, stomachs, cocks, snouts, and flies you don’t know what to do with them … shovelsfull! … but hearts? … very rare! in the last five hundred million years too many cocks and gastric tubes to count … but hearts? … on your fingers!…
~Céline
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"flies?" not a body part. Guess I would have to find the original French to know why he mentioned flies (zippers, buttons or flying insects)?
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I assumed, looking at the context of how the word is used, he is talking about the kind with zippers or buttons on a pair of pants (or trousers)
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Yes that's how I interpreted it at first. Now I'm inclined to think it's about the flying insects. I haven't managed yet to Google that passage in the original French.
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Let me know if you find out. There are some atrocious translations of Celine's work floating around the Internet.
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I found the original passage and used Google Translate to get a literal translation. It doesn't tell me what kind of flies to imagine (Lord of the Flies or Sticky Fingers.) Somehow the word "flies" strikes me as incongruous (as does "gear ratio".)
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Thanks, Mr Ellis. But I'm gonna go with 'flies' as in 'zippers' on trousers as that fits the context of the quote.
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