In the quote below, what does the first line mean?
"How comes this horrible world to exist?"
Catice did not answer.
"Who is Surtur?"
source: A Voyage to Arcturus
What I understand is: How come such a terrible world exists? But I am not sure.
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2Yes, I agree, strange way to put it.– Dale MCommented Aug 11, 2015 at 12:46
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Did you copy it correctly? Is this from a non-native speaker? It's not grammatical as far as I can tell.– JimCommented Aug 11, 2015 at 12:57
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5It's probably "mock archaic" rather than a faithful reflection of a once-common usage, but your paraphrasing is correct, if colloquial. More "standard" phrasing might be, for example, How does this terrible world come to exist?, or How does it come about that this terrible world exists? @Jim: it's perfectly grammatical - just an unusual dated/formal/poetic word order.– FumbleFingersCommented Aug 11, 2015 at 12:57
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@FumbleFingers- Ok, yes, agree. somehow my eye missed the 's' on comes. I see it now.– JimCommented Aug 11, 2015 at 13:00
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1This is perfectly normal Early Modern English - anyone who has read a book more than a century old can tell you that. It simply means how has this horrible world come to exist?– AnonymCommented Aug 11, 2015 at 16:42
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1 Answer
I would render it as “How does such a horrible world come into existence?” The inflected third-person-singular form of come would seem to preclude reading it with how as a form of the idiom how come meaning why, not that the difference in meaning is enormous.
Lurking in the background here may be the fallacious “Optimist” doctrine that the world we live in must be “the best of all possible worlds” simply because it exists. As the title character of Voltaire’s Candide (a satire on this doctrine) wonders, after suffering a grotesque series of horrors, “If this is the best possible world, what must the others be like?”
answered Aug 11, 2015 at 15:06
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Thank you so much for all the answers. The book was written in 1920s, so the archaic usage makes sense.– ckokCommented Aug 12, 2015 at 6:56