Kinbote retranslated Shakespeare "into English prose from a Zemblan poetical version of Timon"  as:

" the sun is a thief, she lures the sea and robs it. The moon is a thief; he steals his silvery light from the sun. The sea is a thief: it dissolves the moon."

 

Kinbote curiously maintained the genders for Moon and Sun as they appear in German ( and in Zemblan?) a masculine Der Mond ( he steals...), a feminine Die Sonne ( she lures). The sea became "it" (Das!)

 

The moon is the scholar (masculine, until the modern C20th liberation of woman) gravely tethered by academic tenure to the earth, and only shining by light reflected from the female sun, Das Ewig-weibliche, round which the earth, and Life as we know it, Jim, revolves. We know what light is, but it is difficult to tell what it is.

 

Charles