The Reading Room

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1:26 AM

Q: Repeated mentions of eggs in poems by Allen Ginsberg

I've been listening to Allen Ginsberg reading his own poetry, and I've noticed a repeated mention of eggs in them. For examples: who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg "Howl", Pt I America when will you send your eggs to India? "America" While India starved and screamed ...

3 hours later…

Bookworm

4:22 AM

Q: Song (perhaps from around World War II) about a young woman being offered a coat, and requesting "just the sleeves"

Recently, I was recounting to me wife various songs that my grandmother used to sing, because I'm trying to ensure they get passed on to our child, and one of them popped up that I have not been able to track down. My grandmother has since passed, and my grandfather does not remember the song. Th...

identification-request song-lyrics

2 hours later…

bobble

6:14 AM

Sure please move to meta. — Isa Nov 28 at 12:03

Was never done...

I've got an idea for the title of The Rithmatist, just need a free hour or two in the right headspace to write it up. And that's going at a premium right now...

Mithical

@bobble migrated

3 hours later…

Bookworm

9:48 AM

Q: What did Philip Larkin write about his poem "The Importance of Elsewhere"?

What did Larkin write about his poem "The Importance of Elsewhere"? I'm trying to find out what Larkin had in mind when he wrote that poem. I had assumed it referred to (the Republic of) Ireland as a whole, but some have suggested here (Was Philip Larkin factually correct when he implied that in ...

philip-larkin

Librarian

10:10 AM

Q: Would it be on-topic to ask on Literature what was the URL of and what happened to that Philip Larkin online forum that seems to have disappeared?

Would it be on-topic to ask on Literature what was the URL of and what happened to that Philip Larkin online forum that seems to have disappeared from the internet? I saw it in about the year 2000 plus or minus less than five years, I think. People were posting questions about what a particular L...

support

1 hour later…

CowperKettle

11:14 AM

1 hour later…

Bookworm

12:44 PM

Q: When did Macbeth kill Duncan's chamberlains?

In Macbeth, at the end of Act 2, Scene 3 Macbeth reveals that he killed Duncan's servants O, Yet I do repent me of fury That I did kill them However, doesn't this appear as a plot hole when we take Lady Macbeth's reaction into account ("Help me hence, ho!")? I see 2 interpretations:- Macbeth k...

william-shakespeare macbeth

4 hours later…

Tsundoku

5:11 PM

@Bookworm While I was rereading Macbeth.

Tsundoku

5:29 PM

@CowperKettle The plays, without the poems, that is. Those book store clerks are clueless about literature, nowadays.

CowperKettle

@Tsundoku It's a clipping from a 1886 newspaper ))

Tsundoku

@CowperKettle Nothing has changed. ;-)

3 hours later…

Tsundoku

8:51 PM

@Bookworm Macbeth killed them before reaching HNQ.

Bookworm

9:05 PM

Q: Since when is the Shahnameh considered the national epic of Greater Iran?

According to the Wikipedia article about the Shahnameh, this work by the Persian poet Ferdowsi "is the national epic of Greater Iran". The article adds that Iran, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and the greater region influenced by Persian culture such as Armenia, Dagestan, Georgia, Turkey, ...

persian-literature shahnameh ferdowsi

Rand al'Thor

9:21 PM

I saw a long answer with "TL;DR" and "Deets" near the start, and got excited thinking @verbose was back, but only for a moment before scrolling down :-(

@Librarian How do we feel about this? I think it'd be somewhat new territory for our site, there's not much precedent to rely on.

Tsundoku

@Randal'Thor To make up for your disappointment, I have posted two questions about the Shahnamah :-)

@Randal'Thor I'm not a fan of this type of questions. The first part is only answerable if a copy has survived on Archive.org; the second part only if we're lucky, i.e. if someone wrote about it somewhere.

Bookworm

Q: When and where was the Shahnameh printed for the first time?

According to the Wikipedia article about the Shahnameh, the Persian poet Ferdowsi wrote this epic "for Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni between c. 977 and 1010 CE". This was long before the introduction of the printing press in Persia or Iran. According to the Wikipedia article Global spread of the printi...

persian-literature shahnameh ferdowsi

Rand al'Thor

@Tsundoku Seems like it could be a useful resource if it has survived on the Internet Archive or anywhere else.

@Tsundoku And I've upvoted both :-)

Mithical

@Randal'Thor I'm inclined to say off-topic. It's not a question about a literary work, or even about the author of a literary work; it's about a website about an author. Feels more akin to a resource request.

Rand al'Thor

9:38 PM

@Mithical Meta consensus was not entirely against resource requests. This one surely wouldn't lead to opinionated answers like an open-ended list question.

My personal feeling is that the proposed Larkin question would be OK. It's akin to other resource request questions that could be answered using online resources like Google Scholar: someone seeking a useful resource that they can't track down. Only this one is about a specific source rather than a more general list, so more like an identification-request than recommendation.

Bookworm

9:55 PM

Q: Did Dorothy Parker really say Ayn Rand's Altas Shrugged should be thrown with great force?

According to some internet sources, Dorothy Parker did not think highly of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. For example, Brian Leiter (University of Chicago Law School), tweeted the following as 'Dorothy Parker's review of "Atlas Shrugged"': This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be...

quote-source dorothy-parker

Bookworm

10:20 PM

Q: Has any opera ever made a successful transition to the theatre stage?

Some operas are based on plays. For example, Shakespeare's Othello was the source for Rossini's Otello (1816) and Verdi's Otello (1887). Romeo and Juliet inspired Berlioz's Roméo et Juliette (1839) and Gounod's Roméo et Juliette (1867). Verdi's Falstaff (1893) was based on Shakespeare's The Merry...

history-of-literature opera

Tsundoku

I have asked four questions today; our QPD is now at 3 :-)

Bookworm

10:45 PM

Q: What does "royalty in nature" in Macbeth mean?

In Macbeth (Act 3, Scene 1), Macbeth says about Banquo: in his royalty of nature Reigns that which would be feared. What does "royalty of nature" mean here? Surely, Banquo is no "king of nature"?

meaning william-shakespeare macbeth

Tsundoku

11:17 PM

The site has passed the threshold of 10,000 users.

Q: Is Gandalf really on 'du' terms with the Balrog? (Odd 'duzen' example)

Gandalf's line "You shall not pass!" from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring is something of a meme, so I naturally wondered how it was translated into German. This video has the relevant dialog (once at :40, and again at 1:15). Gandalf says "Du kannst nicht vorbei!" There are a fe...