Jonah’s Captain


I'm rereading Moby Dick, in Italian of course. Sometimes I try to read a few pages from the original version, but I do not understand much. Often I can not understand the meaning of the sentence. Actually Google translator does not help much,

Of this phrase, for example, I would never have been able to understand its meaning:
Now Jonah's Captain, shipmates, was one whose discernment detects crime in any, but whose cupidity exposes it only in the penniless. In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.

Italian translation (by Piero Meneghelli publisher Newton Compton):
Ora, il capitano di Giona, compagni, era uno di quei tipi pieni di furbizia che riescono a scoprire subito se uno ha fatto qualcosa di male, ma che per cupidigia, lo smascherano solo se è squattrinato. A questo mondo, compagni, il peccato che può pagarsi il tragitto può viaggiare liberamente, e senza passaporto, mentre la Virtù, se è povera, viene fermata a tutte le frontiere.

I imagine that even today the situation is the same: those who can never pay passport or border problems, but poor people must make a lot of effort to seek a better life. Many of them die in the attempt...

If someone wanted to take a reference to “Captain” Salvini and his effective contribution to make life impossible for the poor immigrants... yes, I was thinking of him.

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