The Reading Room

Q: What is the meaning of "for" in this sentence?

1:53 AM

In Adolf Hitler's biography the usage of "for" is one which I'm not very used to. For example, the next fragments are from Adolf Hitler's biography and I'm not sure about the meaning, I heard somewhere that it means "because" But these qualities always exist and operate through the heroic virtues...

history-of-literature german-literature

@Bookworm It dawned on me only after I commented. Mein Kampf?? For realzzzzz?

1 hour later…

historical-context literary-criticism

3:08 AM

Q: What is Cultural Marxism?

So, Cultural Marxism, or post-modern neo-Marxism (which is basically as ridiculous as The Invisible Pink Unicorn) is an evil agenda of the left to destroy western civilization by destroying its culture. At least according to /pol/ and the people who visit it. Now, I have a feeling that there is m...

Q: Where in the Tale of Genji does it say Genji's affair offends Amaterasu?

3:58 AM

From Doris Bargen, The Search for Things Past in the Genji monogatari: The beginning of the Genji, as established by literary tradition, is indeed deceptively matter-of-fact about events of grave impact. Genji and his stepmother Fujitsubo commit symbolic incest. Since it is said that the Emperor...

japanese-literature murasaki-shikibu the-tale-of-genji

3 hours later…

Rand al'Thor

7:10 AM

@Bookworm HNQ.

@Bookworm the-lord-of-the-rings just hit 50 questions. No new Taxonomist badge though, so the tag must have been created by someone who either already has Taxonomist or deleted their account.

@Bookworm Is this really about literature? I wonder if we should push it to Politics, but it's probably too low-quality to migrate.

2 hours later…

9:41 AM

@EddieKal I think I'll skip writing the tag wiki excerpts this time ...

@Randal'Thor I asked the question owner to explain how it's relevant. It is potentially relevant because it refers to the Frankfurter Schule, whose Critical Theory has some relevance to literary theory.

9:59 AM

Were poems “A girl” and “In a station of Metro” were written only for poetic beauty and didn’t have any underlying deep meaning?

Deep meaning = something that Eliot tried to convey in his poems, or what Yeats had to convey. Deep meaning means a deep thought which got matured over the years and burnt through some fuels over all these years. For example, Yeats always had a deep meaning whenever he mentioned love (Maud Gonne) or when Eliot mentioned the corrupt modern life.

("In a Station of the Metro" is by Erza Pound.)

@Knight You can look for explicit statements by the poets about what they had in mind with these poems; as a rule, such statements are hard to find. Or you can look for literary manifestos by the author and check to what extent the poem corresponds with that manifesto; this would probably work with Pound's imagist manifesto.

Or you can ignore all that and look at the text itself and make sense of it. The only thing that counts is that the interpretation works for that text, i.e. accounts for what you find without working against the text.

@Tsundoku I want to be honest with you, I feel Pound had some deep meaning in those poems because Pound and Eliot were admirers and editors of each other’s works and I had a great admiration and respect for Eliot. So, it’s natural for me to expect Pound to have a deep meaning in it instead of just some beautiful poetry.

But yes, he needed not to put deep meanings in his poems, after all he was a free man.

It is possible that Eliot put some deep meaning into Macavity: The Mystery Cat but maybe it is just a humorous poem ;-)

See “A Retrospect” and “A Few Don’ts” for Ezra Pound's ideas on poetry around the time (I think) he wrote "In a Station of the Metro".

10:16 AM

Oh thanks (as always you help me)! I shall read it.

See also A Brief Guide to Imagism on poets.org.

Okay

Q: Is there a version of Beauty and the Beast where the bad sisters get punished?

10:36 AM

According to Wikipedia, there are several versions of the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast. Does any of them punish the bad sisters? Should the bad sisters get punished?

story-identification

1 hour later…

Q: How did the Frankfurt School's Critical Theory influence literary theory?

11:51 AM

The Frankfurt School is a school of social theory and philosophy associated with the University of Frankfurt's Institute for Social Research (German: Institut für Sozialforschung, IfS). It is known for its Critical Theory, which Wikipedia describes as follows: In Traditional and Critical Theory ...

theory

12:07 PM

@Bookworm That question on Cultural Marxism was based on statements read on 4chan's /pol/, which "has been characterized as predominantly racist and sexist, with many of its posts taking explicitly alt-right and neo-Nazi points of view." And we got a question about Məin Kɑmpf. Let's hope this isn't the beginning of a trend.

1 hour later…

Q: Does "trampling" here means "violence" or "attack"?

1:31 PM

In "The Touchstone" in Dr. Thorndyke's Case-Book by R. Austin Freeman, Thorndyke went to an old disused chalk-pit, where a dead man found after he fall from above path, the edges of which were covered by bushes and branches: Well, apart from the robbery, a clear fall of over thirty feet is enou...

meaning short-stories r-austin-freeman

user185131

Can the exact-duplicates tag be merged into the duplicate-questions tag on Meta?

4:50 PM

@Tsundoku Yeah I was actually going to ask you to write that one because I'm not comfortable with writing tags for those

I want to flag it for deletion, but there's nothing wrong with the question... it's just the entire book is f*cked up

@NorthLæraðr Surprised you even read it.

@EddieKal Never read it, but I know what it contains

You know, "Kill Jews, French are pigs, etc. etc."

1 hour later…

5:59 PM

Can I propose that we actually remove Mein Kampf from Lit. SE?

I can't speak for everyone, but I definitely feel uncomfortable even discussing it. I feel as though allowing that question to exist almost acts as an unintended endorsement of the book?

Well not endorsement but like

I just don't think it's appropriate for this site.

Based on what rule can we delete that question?

Perhaps "rude or abusive"? The question isn't particularly offensive though

It feels taboo I guess is what I'm trying to say

But is that prejudiced?

6:15 PM

@NorthLæraðr I don't think banning is any use. We just have to make sure that any discussion involving it is properly contextualized.

@Mithical Okay

Wait, can you elaborate on contextualized?

As in, make sure that the question and answers treat as like what it is: a racist, vile work by one of the worst people of all time. Don't just treat it like any other work; make sure to make it clear what you're dealing with

@Mithical Okay, that's fair.

Napoleon Wilson

And don't call it, let alone mistake it for, a "biography".

Is a question about a single simple word like "What is the meaning of “for” in this sentence?" really on topic?

6:21 PM

@FadedGiant That's a fair point

Yes, it's on-topic

There's nothing significant within the question

@FadedGiant I flagged it as off topic soon as it surfaced

Napoleon Wilson

Yeah, the question itself is already bad and, frankly, off-topic disregarding the book. It's just English language comprehension.

@NapoleonWilson Isn't it more of just a rant?

user185131

6:22 PM

@Tsundoku I decided to bite...

It'd be square on-topic on ELL though. But please don't migrate.

user185131

If the question gets closed/deleted/migrated for being off-topic etc. then that's alright, but I'm not sure banning any particular work is a good idea. I agree with Mithical, we shouldn't give any leeway in interpreting that book as anything other than what it is...

@NapoleonWilson We have precedence for allowing questions asking to understand the simple English meaning of a line here.

@Brahadeesh Seconded. Singling any particular text out is a bad policy. It'd be a breach of our own principles. We don't burn books any more. And by the same token we don't jail people for reading any books.

I have just checked that these passages really are in the German original. 😐

Napoleon Wilson

6:30 PM

In English?

Because otherwise it's also a translation issue.

In German.

I was back-translating and looking for some particular words.

I gave the question a quick edit

@FadedGiant I am a tad curious what conjunction word(s) is used in the German original in place of "for"

one "for" originally was a da

the other one was a denn