It is a photo of a
family. The wind puffs out the huge stiff curved sleeve of the woman’s
dress, and brushes back off his forehead the long hair of the father’s boy
who is turned towards the drama of his parents’ faces; though he is holding
his father’s hand, he is separate from the group, and l...
Hans Christian Andersen was a nineteenth-century Danish writer who wrote fairy tales about various events. In his short fairy tale "What the Moon Saw", in the part named "First Evening" he writes,
“Last night”, I’m quoting the Moon’s own words, “I was gliding through the cloudless Indian sky. My...
The plot of War and Peace involves more than 500 characters. More than 200 of them are real historical figures put to life on the pages of Tolstoy’s novels. The novel is set 60 years before Tolstoy's day, but he had spoken with people who lived through the 1812 French invasion of Russia. He read ...
Pierre’s friend Andrei was shown to have great respect for Napoleon, as his view on historic events being the will of a few important people is embodied best by Napoleon. While lying wounded on the Austerlitz battlefield, Andrei meets Napoleon and realizes the true nature of his hero, who is exci...
I often hear people using the words “stanza” and “verse” interchangeably, the small quotes of The Holy Bible are also called verses, and even the non-chorus part of songs are also called verses.
I’m in need of an explanation of the actual meaning of verse and what can be and what cannot be called...
I came across this quote of T.S. Eliot
There are a large number of people… who believe that all ills are fundamentally economic.
I’m craving to know Eliot’s view on it and for that I need to find the source and full quote.
Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “To a Skylark” is not only a beautiful ode but a very realistic view of human nature as compared to the “blithe spirit”. Shelley all throughout the poem is sure that Skylark was in joy, he was not in dilemma as Wordsworth when he saw a highland lass and said
Will no one te...
Shelley was admiring the “profuse strains” of the “blithe spirit” and when he compares human songs with the skylark’s
Waking or asleep,
Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?
He was of strong view that Skyla...
The two funny characters, Stephano and Trinculo, in Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, fight with each other when Ariel was speaking behind Trinculo when Caliban and Stephano were talking. I want to know what was the relation between Stephano and Trinculo? Was Stephano more powerful just in matter o...
In Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, when Ferdinand was carrying up the logs, Miranda came up to him and tried to help him. They talked a little and then the conversation went as follows:
Ferdinand: I do beseech you, what is your name?
Miranda: Miranda. Oh my mother, I have broke your hest to say ...
The Model Millionaire is a short story about a young man, named Hughie Erskin, who although does not have much money himself, is moved to pity by the sight of an elderly beggar who is posing as model for his artist friend. Although, he can barely afford to do so, the young man gives the beggar th...
Norman McKinnel’s play “The Bishop’s Candlestciks” is an adaptation of the opening chapter of Victor Hugo’s celebrated novel Les Miserable.
The play is based on the concept that no man is a born offender. It is the circumstances that force him to be so. Punishment or conviction is not the way to ...
Shelley’s poem “To a Skylark” is one of the glories of English Literature. The poet calls it a “blithe spirit” rather than a bird, for its song comes from Heaven.
I was reading a book and they said about the stanzas, rhyming scheme, meter of the poem but there was this line
The first four lines ...
“The Silver Box” was a play produced by John Galsworthy in 1906 and it gained huge popularity. It is not about comedy, Livens dialogues shows so much of reality of how big shots keep judges in their pockets. It is a three act play, and the author called it “A Comedy in Three Acts”.
“The Dear Depa...
Honore de Balzac’s masterpiece “Father Goriot” tells the story of a father who loves his two beautiful daughters as forms of God. The daughters, Delphine and Anastasie, didn’t ever truly cared for their father and all they wanted was money.
In his play ‘’The Dear Departed”, Houghton satirizes the...
The play, “The Dear Departed” by William Stanley Houghton, is about the essencelessness of love by the daughters for their old father. In the play, there is an old man named Abel who one day slept few hours more than usual to which his daughters, Mrs. Slater and Mrs. Jordan, thought him dead. The...
Robert Browning’s first poem, written when he was 20 years old, Pauline was successful. But even in that very first poem there were few things which were not clear, and J.S. Mill wrote about the lack of exact theme in Pauline. When Browning became 28 years old he published a long poem named ‘Sord...
I was reading a blog, which was shared to me on a virtual platform, where it was written that “XYZ called Shelley as ‘beautiful and ineffectual angel’”. I don’t remember who was that XYZ but that blog was quite reliable because the other profuse informations which in it were quite of intellectual...
In Act IV, Scene I of The Merchant of Venice, Portia says to Shylock these lines (rendered in blank verses)
The quality of mercy is not strained
It droppers as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
….
His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute t...
The plays of Shakespeare resembles the play of other playwright like those of Bernhard Shaw, John Galsworthy, Stanley Houghton, Norman McKinnel in many aspects, like those number of characters, events, and sometimes length also. But the dialogues of Shaw, Galsworthy and others are in simple prose...
Sarojini Naidu was an Indian poetess and by chance I came upon one of her poems which was titled “The Soul’s Prayer”. The last stanza of the poems goes like this
I, bending from sevenfold height
Will teach thee of My quickening grace,
Life is a prism of My light,
And death the shadow of my face
...
Maximillian Robespierre was one of the revolutionary of French Revolution of 1789, he was a lawyer (by profession) from Arras. Eugene De Rastignac was also moved to Madame Vaquer’s house in order to study Law. Maximillian Robespirre had sisters and a younger brother, so did Balzac’s Rastignac had...
I was reading a Grammar book in which the discussion was going on about whether to treat “none” as singular or plural, then the book gave this quote by T.S. Eliot
I would suggest that none of the plays of Shakespeare has a meaning.
And observed that Eliot regarded “none” as singular. But the qu...
We all know that humans evolved (if we were to follow Darwin) to the present anatomy some hundreds of thousands of years ago. Men invented fire, began hunting, some 10,000 BC ago (movie is my source) they started sowing seeds for their food. But when their knowledge began to take shape, their wis...
I’m a big fan of P.G. Wodehouse, his novels have a very different way of humoring the readers and the narrative style is almost awesome. But his vocabulary and especially the conversational part of his books are quite uneasy to comprehend. It could be because he used many colloquial phrases of UK...
In the novel Thank You, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse, Bertie was telling Jeeves that he saw J. Washburn Stoker and his daughter Pauline along with Sir Roderick Glossop. To this Jeeves asked him if he entered into conversation with them but Bertie replies
Who, me? No, Jeeves. I was out of the room li...
One of the main characters of transcendental novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, Basil Hallward was a painter. One of the characters (can be called main) in his tory “The Model Millionaire”, Alan Trevor was an artist.
It must be noted here that by artist I’m specifically referring to those who d...
In Shakespeare’s play The Tempest Prospero’s slave Caliban is depicted in a humorous manner. He is described by Prospero to her daughter Miranda as the one who always speaks ill. But there is something in his cursing, Shakespeare makes him to say
You taught me language, and my profit on ’t
Is I ...
In archaic literature, like those of Shakespeare, Milton, and even very old ones like those of Herodotus, ’tis and ’twas seems very common, how removing a single i could help them? In the case of Shakespeare sometimes it helps him to maintain the iambic pentameter, but he uses it the dialogues of...
The metrical feet like Iamb, Trochee and others are based on the sound made when someone utters those words, for example a trochee is a two-syllable metrical pattern in which a stressed syllable is followed by an unstressed syllable, e.g. :- “Garden”, “highway”. An Iamb which is the most common m...
Antoni Malczewski was a Polish romantic poet, known for his only work, “a narrative poem of dire pessimism, Maria (1825). Wikipedia writes
Maria was also influential on later Polish poets, especially Adam Mickiewicz, and on writer Joseph Conrad.
As Conrad was not a romantic writer I’m unable to...
Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade” last stanza is
When can their glory fade?
Oh, the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made!
Honor the Light Brigade -
Noble six hundred!
Brigade means army, what would “Light Brigade” refer to? As the...
Jude was in his Aunt’s room, he was a little heavy with his head due to Arabella’s leaving, and on a table he found a photo of a beautiful little girl. Upon inquiring with his Aunt, he came to know that she was his cousin, Susanna Bridehead.
We know only this much that Sue’ father and mother had ...
Little Father Time was son of Jude Fawley and Arabella Donn in the novel Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy.
When Jude went to Donn’s for the first time, he met with Arabella on the first floor of the house. Arabella’s friends suggested her to compel Jude to marry her by getting pregnant. Arabella’...
Jude the Obscure was one of the most controversial novel of Thomas Hardy and people even that far as calling it “Jude the Obscene”. It’s quite a complex novel, we cannot simply say what actually caused the problems in Jude’s life, I don't like to call them problems but rather God’s doom, the seem...
I have recently completed the novel Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy and as always the tile left me baffling. In the whole novel it was Sue who seems (if one just uses his own viewpoint and judges her on the basis of society he lives in) to be obscure, Jude was fine plain man with all those chara...
Martin Luther’s auspicious life on earth began in 1483 A.D. and he got salvation in the year 1546 A.D. John Milton’s scared life began in 1608 and he went to God’s abode in the year 1674 A.D.
As far as I know, Mr. Luther’s ideas were very much accepted and celebrated, as of evangelists themselves...
Here is a dialogue from Shakespeare’s one of the most celebrated and adopted play Hamlet
Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportion’d thought his act.
Be thou familiar; but by no mean vulgar.
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul, with hopes of steel;
B...
Francis Bacon wrote formal essays and Joseph Addison wrote periodical essays (Periodical essays mean those essays that are written to be published in a periodical publication).The style of the periodical essays is different from that of the formal essays of Bacon and Moantaigne, which are almost ...
Although, Pliny the Younger is regarded as the starter of ghost stories but I think these stories went under 360 degrees turn during 19th century when Charles Dickens or Oscar Wilde started to writing humorous ghost stories. Charles Dickens’ many stories are quite humorous (it may or may not invo...
Ever since I began reading Thomas Hardy the thing that quite struck me is his titles for his works. In the novel Far from the madding crowd (usually called his first major literary success), Gabriel Oak (the main male character, I shouldn’t say it as the novel is too complex to say who is main an...
I was reading a book and there appears something like this
A reader or auditor is at liberty to remain passive.
— Ezra Pound
I want to understand the full meaning of this quote and want to know its source (the book or poem or essay where it has been said by Pound). My try at the meaning is: A r...
In a school book it is written
Dramatic Irony or Irony of situation: It involves a situation in a play or story in which the audience knows the reality which the speaker or character is ignorant of.
Shakespeare’s tragedies, Macbeth and Hamlet abound in scenes which provide good examples of dra...
William Wordsworth’s poem Daffodils reads like this
For oft, when on my couch I lie,
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
which is bliss of solitude.
I suspect that soul is called as “inward eye”. What he meant by “inward eye”?
I was reading a book and in that it was written
Shakespeare has used this poetic form (the blank verse) skillfully in his dramas because it is closest to the natural rhythms of English speech, and can be adopted to various levels of discourse.
A simple google search showed me that blank verse c...
A while ago I got this quote on an online social platform
Humans have progressed so much, now they can even fly like a bird in the sky. The only thing remaining for the humans is to live with each other like humans.
And this quote was signed as Bernhard Shaw. I’m not claiming the verbatim, but ...
The very first lines
From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were—I have not seen
As others saw—I could not bring
My passions from a common spring—
seems to suggest the very symptom of Existential Loneliness
Existential loneliness is the result of a broader separation related to the na...
In the poem The Brook, Tennyson speaks about the journey of a small brook which later joins a mighty river. In this poem we come across the journey of the brook till it merges in a bigger river. The poem is narrated in the first person by the small brook
I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I ma...
The poem A Lament by P.B. Shelley goes like this
O world! O Life! O Time!
On whose last steps I climb,
Trembling at that where I stood before;
When will return the glory of your prime?
No more, —O never more!
Out of the day and night
A joy has taken flight;
Fresh spring, and summer, and winter h...
Mathilde was a young, charming woman and beautiful at an extent which was unaffordable by a clerk family. She was married to Monsieur Loisel who was also a clerk of Ministry of Public Instructions.
M. Loyal was quite satisfactory with his life, this was proved when he was having his soul and said...
I was reading “The Diamond Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant.
It is a story about the irony of the fate in the life of a. woman who in order to show her off as a ‘lady’ borrows a diamond necklace and in the end, after long tribulations, finds that it was artificial.
However, the very first lines of ...
In the essay, which stimulates the living feelings in the reader, “Dream Children:A Reverie” by Charles Lamb, the last few lines by the children read
I found myself quietly seated in my bachelor arm-chair where I had fallen asleep, with the faithful Bridget unchanged by my side - but John L (or ...
In a fine essay named “Dream Children: A Reverie” Charles Lamb has hypnotized the reader and has left an everlasting impression on both mind and heart of the reader. Although, the essay is personal and written when Lamb was 44 years old then also his love hor his lover seems ever-fish and vigorou...
In the 9th paragraph (according to the version I’m reading) of Charles’ Lamb’s essay “Dream Children: A Reverie” it is written
I told how, though their great-grandmother Field loved all her grand-children, yet in an especial manner she might be said to love their uncle, John L —-
Why ‘Lamb’ is ...
The first paragraph of the essay is quite comprehensible, he is telling the children about the nature of children and a brief introduction of his grandmother and of Blakesware House. However, the second paragraph of the essay seems very out of blue, it goes like this
Certain it is that the whole...
Charles Lamb is famous as the Prince of English essayists. After studying for seven years at Christ’s Hospital, where he earned the friendship of Coleridge, Lamb obtained clerkship in South Sea House. But soon he left his job and joined the East India Company.
Lamb’s life span was from 1775 unto ...
I was reading “Hymns from the Vedas”, book of selected translations from the Vedas by Dr. Abinash Chandra Bose, a noted Oriental Scholar. The particular hymn I was reading has been to the seer Atharva and occurs as Hymn 52 in book VII of the Atharva Veda.
For that particular hymn a commentary was...
Anna Karenina, the first novel of Count Leo Tolstoy is about the life of Anna (mainly) and her lover Vronsky (I know it is not possible to say what the novel is about but for this particular discussion we can assume that the novel is about Anna and Vronsky).
In the earlier parts of novel (earlier...
If we talk about the one literary production which could be argued to have affected the literature of 20th-century the most, I am sure The Waste Land will be considered by many critics, scholars and students. Did The Waste Land really change English literature of the 20th century? If yes, then how?
I have read this on many occasions that Alexander Pope was a second rank poet. How far do you agree with this claim? Many intellectuals and commentators even disagree when it comes to recognising Pope as a poet. I am a little perplexed about it. I would love the views of members on this.
Sting is a celebrated writer of England, the song ‘Fragile’ by him was released in 1988. It’s an English song but it was sung in Spanish and Portuguese too.
Wikipedia gives only this much information about the description of the song:
The song is a tribute to Ben Linder, an American civil engine...
Poets of the Fall is a Finnish musical band who mainly releases the philosophical romantic songs. The song “Moonlight Kissed” was released on YouTube on 22nd September 2017. The song is marvelous and admirable both vocally and lyrically.
However, I don’t get the central meaning of the song. Accor...
Poets of the Fall released their charismatic song “Moonlight Kissed” on 22nd September 2017 along with a video. The voice of Marko was angelic and the lyrics surpassed every lyrics of lyricists. However, the very first line of the song
I see shadow and light stroking the mist
is quite poetic an...
Poets of the Fall have this wonderful song named “Illusion and dreams” and in the last verse they sing
So can you name your demon?
Understanding its scheming
I raise my glass and say “Here’s to you”
Those are some strange lines regarding the whole theme of the song. What they mean and how are t...
The song, “Illusion and Dreams” by Poets of the Fall, have this line in the second verse
A stone will not need you to guess if, you’re still going to drown.
What is the meaning of above lines in the context of the song?
In Act II of the play Arms and the man by Bernhard Shaw, when Paul saw Bluntschli through th elibrary window he at once asked him to stay with him and Sergius, who also seem to be acquainted with Bluntschli. How they knew him?
‘After Apple-Picking’, collected in North of Boston is a well-known poem on man’s encounter with natural world, probing the dilemma of his existence.
The first two lines of the poem are
My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Towards heaven still,
How do those lines have biblical r...
I’m hoping someone will be able to tell me the name of a Alfred Hitchcock story I read part of a long long time ago.
It was about a guy who would see movement out of the corner of his eye, but when he looked there was nothing there. Spoiler alert: It tuned out he was seeing creatures. I don’t rem...
I've started reading Grapes of Wrath and I've run into some old-time phrases that I'm not sure of the meaning. I suppose these must date from the 1920s-1940s.
My dogs was pooped out.
From context I take it to mean his feet are tired from walking, but I'm curious as to the origin of this phrase....
I’m having a lot of trouble comprehending one particular line from The Shadow Over Innsmouth:
But at last I am going to defy the ban on speech about this thing. Results, I am certain, are so thorough that no public harm save a shock of repulsion could ever accrue from a hinting of what was found...
When Raina went upstairs, Sergius started flirting with the maid, Louka. When Sergius was just about to kiss her, she said (no verbatim claimed) that Raina might be doing the same thing behind him what he is doing behind her. After hearing that, Sergius at once got changed and didn’t kiss Louka. ...
Raina was informed that there will be shootings on the street and she should close every doors and windows. She left the main balcony window unlocked and suddenly came in a Serbian/Swiss soldier (Bluntschli). In fact he was seen by the Bulgarin/Russian soldiers and they came in Raina’s room searc...
Anton Chekhov was a famous Russian short story writer and dramatist. Early in his career, he mastered the form of the one-act play and produced several masterpieces of this genre.
I remember I borrowed a book from one of my friends (it was a miscellaneous book of proses and poetries) and in that ...
“Lines Written in the Early Spring” is English Romantic poet William Wordsworth’s meditation on the harmony of nature and on humanity’s failure to follow nature’s peaceful example.
However, in the very first stanza, these lines occur
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
bring sad thoughts t...
“A Prayer for My Daughter” is a poem written by W.B. Yeats on the birth of his daughter. The main theme of the poem is contrasting his daughter’s future with the life of Maud Gonna, his lover. In the last stanza these lines occur
How but in custom and in ceremony
Are innocence and beauty born?
...
In the novel The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas HArdy, Michael Henrichard auctioned his wife in a bar and sold her to a sailor named Newson for five guineas along with his infant daughter.
As far as critics are concerned, Henrichard sold his wife because ehe got drunk and lost his control over h...
In the novel ‘The Sword and the Distaff” by William Gilmore Simms and Joseph De Maistre, this line occurs
The brow of Colonel Moncrieff clouded as he read.
As far as I know it is the eyes that do get cloudy, but how the brows? What’s the meaning behind that?
Robert Frost stopped by a wood on a snowy evening and thought whose woods they were, he thought he knew, the owner lives in his village. Then in the poem he talks about how the woods look with snow on them and their dark color.
Then suddenly he remembered that he had miles to go before he could g...
John Keats, in Ode to Autumn, writes
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun.
Who is close bosom-friend of the maturing sun?
The following is the verse from Mahabharata’s Anusasanaparva
Here there is nothing save a wheel turning only one way.
I have this feeling that the above verse tells about a very deep spiritual concept of Hinduism. I remember reading something about spirituality that wheel represents this whole ...
John Keats, in the Preface to Endymion, wrote:
Knowing within myself the manner in which this poem has been produced, it is not without a feeling of regret that I make it public.
Why did he express regret in the very first lines of the book? What was the reason for his regret?
The context is the novel Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy.
Gabriel Oak was saintly. Bathsheba Everdene was beauty. One day Gabriel, a good shepherd, saw a beautiful girl coming in his village and he couldn’t know when he was engulfed by love for her.
Another day, Gabriel got himself unk...
In the novel Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy, Sue was broken after the death of her children. She went to their graves and wept even on the insistence of Jude to go back to the lodge. Jude was broken too but he understood that he had to care for Sue.
However, after these events Jude thought that...
Jude Fawley was living in Marygreen and went to Chirstminster, Christminster was a place of wisdom for him and due to some other details we infer that Hardy’s Chrisminster was intact Oxford.
Far From the Madding Crowd is set is Wessex, an imaginary city in Southwest England. The Mayor of Casterbr...
The poem ‘Gerontion’ by T.S. Eliot is about an old man and his life. The very first lines if the poem, viz
Here I am, an old man in a dry month,
Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.
, shows clearly that the narrator of the poem is the old man himself. In some of the well-known poems of TS...
I was reading A.G. Gardiner’s On Umbrella Morals and in the second paragraph occurs these lines
In fact he is a thoroughly honest man who allows his honesty the benefit of the doubt.
I want the explanation of the above lines.
In Canto XI of Lord Byron’s magnificent work Don Juan, romantic poet Keats is mentioned as a poet
who was kill’d off by one critique.
Why he was referred to like that? And which critique was it?
I was hearing Frank Schubert’s musical concert of Der Erlkönig , and the music was perfect. The lyrics were quote plain and simple, but why is it so famous? I read the poem, heard Schubert and to me it seems to be meant for children but that contradicts my thoughts that such a fine piece of music...
Bernhard Shaw in the Act I of his play “Arms and the man” give this introduction of Catherine
Catherine Petkoff, a woman over forty, imperiously energetic with magnificent black hair and eyes, who might be a very splendid specimen of the wife of a mountain farmer, but is determined to be a Viens...
In Act III of the play “Arms and the man” everyone gets to know each other’s doings. Louka got engaged to Sergius, and Catherine agreed with Bluntschli’s and Raina’s relationship. But then Bluntschli spoke these lines
Why, look at our ages! I’m thirty four. I don’t suppose the young lady is much...
Bernhard Shaw’s very subtle play “Arms and the man” have a title which needs some attention. Wikipedia says that it is a reference to Virgil’s work, but why the reference? What similarity do they have?
The title seems quite consistent if it is seen through the events of play: the play involves di...
I remember a short story but can't remember the name of the story or author. It is about alien/robotic beings that have been hunted to the edge of extinction because they are an exceptional fuel source. Fairly certain the hunters are us (humans), thoguh they hardly appear in the story. However t...
Look, Raina’s maid, had somewhat bitter feelings for her mistress Raina, why? From the first Act the dialogues of Louka do show her resentment (although it is subtle) for her. It’s my personal observation that in the whole play Raina never treated Louka badly unless she started it.
I want to know...
William Butler Yeats was one of those poets who passed through the transcendental stages of love, resentment, hatred and love again. I was reading his poem “A Prayer for My Daughter” and as a fanatic reader and admirer of emotionalism I felt extreme acquaintance with dark and bright human nature....
I discovered something quite interesting today in John Milton's Paradise Lost.
Here is John Milton...(this is the Archangel Raphael relating to Adam and Eve the creation of the world)
(Paradise Lost, Book 7: Lines 438-440)
the Swan with Arched neck
Between her white wings mantling proudly, Rowes
...
I was hearing Frank Schubert’s musical concert of Der Erlkönig , and the music was perfect. The lyrics were quote plain and simple, but why is it so famous? I read the poem, heard Schubert and to me it seems to be meant for children but that contradicts my thoughts that such a fine piece of music...
Here's the context:
The three of us, Jack Brennan, Soldier Bartlett, and I were in Hanley’s. There were a couple of
broads sitting at the next table to us. They had been drinking.
“What do you mean, kike?” one of the broads says. “What do you mean, kike, you big Irish
bum?”
“Sure,” Jack says. “Th...
