Hi guys, wondering if anyone can help me understand this sentence from Machado de Assis' Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas
“tudo isso é a dor crua e má que lhe róe á natureza as mais íntimas entranhas”
I understand the general meaning as something like:
“All this is the raw and evil pain that gnaws at nature’s most intimate entrails.”
(I'm definitely not a professional translator!)
But I'm struggling to understand the grammar, particularly two things:
1. What is “lhe” doing here?
I understand lhe as an indirect-object pronoun, roughly “to him/her/it.” For example:
Eu lhe disse = I said to him/her.
But in this sentence we have:
que lhe róe á natureza...
My understanding is that a natureza is the thing being gnawed by róe. So what is lhe referring to / doing here? It's like "I gnaw at it at the nature" ?!
2. What is the grammatical relationship between “à natureza” and “as mais íntimas entranhas”?
I initially read this as meaning:
“the most intimate entrails of nature”
So I would have expected something like:
róe as mais íntimas entranhas da natureza
But instead we have:
róe à natureza as mais íntimas entranhas
Is à natureza functioning as some kind of indirect object here, with as mais íntimas entranhas being the direct object?
If so, would the literal structure be something like:
“gnaws at/to nature its most intimate entrails”
And is lhe then somehow referring back to natureza?
I'd really appreciate an explanation of the grammar here, rather than just the translation, because I'm trying to understand how the original Portuguese construction works.
Sorry if this is a simple thing! Maybe I'm tired but it's just not clicking!