The Reading Room

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6:51 AM

@Tsundoku Done

@Tsundoku was it François de la Rochefoucauld who said of Switzerland, "Quelle pays sanguinaire, même le fromage est plein de trous"?

Bookworm

7:17 AM

Q: What is the source of this cheesy quote?

Many years ago, I came across this quote regarding Switzerland: Quelle pays sanguinaire, même le fromage est plein de trous. What a bloody country, even the cheese is full of holes. I seem to remember it was attributed to François, duc de la Rochefoucauld. And I might have read it in one of Nig...

verbose

7:40 AM

Current topic challenges. April–May : Carlo Goldoni. May–June : Cheese.

Bookworm

8:03 AM

Q: What does "no shadow of another parting" mean?

In the last paragraph of Great Expectations: I took [Estella's] hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I s...

charles-dickens great-expectations

1 hour later…

Clara Diaz Sanchez

9:19 AM

@verbose We read "Travesties" in school, with a certain amount of merriment, since "travestis" is the Spanish word for "transvestites".

2 hours later…

Gareth Rees

10:49 AM

@ClaraDiazSanchez It's similar in English where one of the senses of "travesty" is "dressing as a member of the opposite sex, esp. in order to play a particular dramatic or theatrical role" (OED sense 2). I don't recall anything in the Stoppard play indicating that its title alludes to this sense of the word, but it is a long time since I saw it.

6 hours later…

Tsundoku

4:36 PM

@Bookworm Like Swiss cheese, HNQ is full of holes.

Bookworm

5:11 PM

Q: What does this allusion to the French mean in Gogol's "The Overcoat"?

In Gogol's short story The Overcoat (or The Cloak) there is an allusion to the French people that I cannot understand. In the translation into English found in the book Short story classics (Foreign) - Russian, Vol. 1 at Project Gutenberg, you can read (emphasis mine): Akakiy Akakievitch gazed u...

short-stories russian-language nikolai-gogol

Peter Shor

5:38 PM

@Bookworm Possibly François du Roquefort?

verbose

6:03 PM

@PeterShor that one had me literally LOL

verbose

6:17 PM

@PeterShor Not one to shy away from controversy, is our Dr Shor. BTW I thought the speaker was talking about the second hand moving round the clock ("stop for a second," "instantaneous," etc) rather than the hours of the day. Re-reading my answer, I see that that isn't super clear, but I don't wanna open up a can of worms by revising and bumping it. Thanks for the nomination!

Peter Shor

@verbose Even after reading your answer, I didn't consider anything than the hours on the clock. After all, there are 12 hours and 60 seconds.

Either way, whatever Pablo Neruda intended, it's a great observation.

verbose

@PeterShor that is true. I guess that I was thinking that the second hand going around the clock also counts to twelve.

oh thanks, very kind of you

@GarethRees Here you go. Travesties, p. 51:

> CARR: What on earth makes you think that I am qualified to play the leading role in *The Importance of Being Earnest*?
GWEN: It was my suggestion, Henry. You were a wonderful Goneril at Eton.

Peter Shor

7:18 PM

@verbose Did Stoppard put that line in just so he could cover all the possible meanings of travesties?

This would be reminiscent of Tim Power's fantasy novel The Drawing of the Dark, where there are at least half a dozen things that could be interpreted as Drawing of the Dark, including tapping a keg of magical dark beer, and an artist adding so many details to a picture that it becomes completely black.

verbose

@PeterShor Carr's being cast as Algy in a performance of The Importance of Being Earnest drives the play's plot, so maybe it's more organic than that? But without thinking through things more clearly (which would entail re-reading the play), I can't say one way or another whether the line is (a) Stoppard's attempt to cover all meanings of the title (b) thematically relevant (c) some combination of these two (d) coincidence.

1 hour later…

verbose

8:55 PM

@ClaraDiazSanchez Merriment is an appropriate response to Stoppard's play anyway; it's hilarious:

> JOYCE: ... Tzara's demanding?
TZARA: The right to urinate in different colours.
JOYCE: Each person in different colours at different times, or different people in each colour all the time? Or everybody multi-coloured every time?

page 61.

1 hour later…