[讨论]大虾指教：句子中多处有which, what,it指代如何理解？

作者在论述写作时删改佳段，可能会连原来最得意的中心段落也删去时，quote了Henry James的一段话。（比较怕quotation,一旦看不懂就连作者意图和态度也不明白了),还请牛人，耐心人指点一二了

Henry James knew it well, and said it best. In his preface to The spoils of Poynton, he pities the writer, in a comical pair of sentences that rises to a howl: “Which is the work in which he hasn’t surrendered, under dire difficulty, the best thing he meant to have kept? In which indeed, before the dreadful done, doesn’t he ask himself what has become of the thing all for the sweet sake of which it was to proceed to that extremity?”

which it was to 中的which和it都指什么呢？ 最后一句如何理解呢？rise to howl，代表了Henry J.的讽刺？还是作者认为是讽刺的

谢谢你的耐心，我还有点意见想跟您探讨下。

最后一句which it was to proceed to that extremity是不是整体做for the sake of的名词性成分呢，他应该是说“难道他没有问过自己这样子对待文章（应该是该删的不删）就是为了最终的一个甜蜜的目的？这个目的 which it was是去走极端。

我在词典上查到“proceed to extremeties
        走极端, 采取非常[极端]手段”

是这样理解吗？这样说来我又觉得which应该是修饰sake的，对吗？

PS：那个“振聋发聩”您翻译的太巧妙了。佩服不已

which这里是限制性代词，修饰前面的sake。it是指前面的thing。

rise to a howl并未隐藏任何高深的含义。只是简单的夸张形容而已。