CHEESE pointed out that he has his own tag in CookingSE. Well, now he has one here too, thanks to this topic challenge. Weird that it languished unloved for years in the proposal list and now has a respectable number of questions attached to it ....
Frans Laarmans, the protagonist of Willem Elsschot's Cheese, pursues and obtains a job as the Belgian sales representative for a large Dutch cheese manufacturing enterprise. Cultural and other differences between Netherlands and Belgium are often mentioned in the novel. For instance, here is Laar...
Towards the end of The Changeling (1653), after De Flores stabs Beatrice-Joanna and then reveals that the two of them have been murderers and lovers, the dying Beatrice-Joanna says to her shocked father:
O come not near me, sir, I shall defile you:
I am that of your blood was taken from you
For ...
@verbose I learnt about Korngold a long time ago and may even have listened to that opera (on a CD box borrowed from a library). It is based on or inspired by the Rodenbach novel in my most recent Cheese answer.
@Bookworm Yay, verbose has kicked off the Middleton challenge!
I've now improved it to eliminate most of them. There's still an unhidden spoiler, regarding the fact that Oliver dies (this happens halfway through the book). But the first line of the question does say "massive spoilers ahead".
Is there an English equivalent of this Russian version of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam?
В этом мире глупцов, подлецов, торгашей
Уши, мудрый, заткни, рот надежно зашей,
Веки плотно зажмурь - хоть немного подумай
О сохранности глаз, языка и ушей!
In Russian it sounds as a poem, very rhymed.
Automati...
I found this in a Sherlock Holmes book. It says "I object to rows, because my nerves are shaken" I can’t completely understand what it means.
Book bought from amazon kindle store named "Sherlock Holmes Complete Collection" This sentence is included in chapter 1 of "A Study in Scarlet" called "Mr....
Why does Romeo say that "Juliet is the sun"? Is it because Romeo can feel Juliet on his skin and through into his meat and flesh? Has anyone made this claim, as it makes total sense, both for adolescent pangs of sexuality and the sense that's all that matters.
In my poem, I express my thoughts this way:
What is it that I see?
You looked, you asked.
It was masked
As everything else
Hence, in the very same night
What lingers beyond my sight?
Asked I myself
Does it sound natural to say "What lingers beyond my sight?" instead of "What is it that lingers...
The Flemish author Willem Elsschot (1882–1960) went to school at a time when secondary education was in French instead of Dutch and started writing at a time when the Flemings were still fighting for greater recognition of the Dutch language. Flemish authors such as Nobel Prize laureate Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949), Émile Verhaeren (1855–1916), Jean Ray (also known as John Flanders) (1887– 1…
Help! I remember reading a short story (maybe novel) in African American lit class in way back in college that had a side character, a cool, feminist, commie aunt who was crashing on their couch who "could never work for any man." It was written or set in the 70s or 80s. I can't for the life of m...
@Bookworm I read a few dozen of Whinfield's translations and none of them rose to more than competence. Quatrain 452 is serviceable, despite the eye-rhyme:
> Give me a skin of wine, a crust of bread, A pittance bare, a book of verse to read; With thee, O love, to share my lowly roof, I would not take the Sultan’s realm instead!
But this has nothing on Fitzgerald's enjambment of "and Thou / Beside me":
> Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough, A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse—and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness— And Wilderness is Paradise enow.
And sometimes Whinfield evokes a sense of "will this do?", for example, quatrain 168 ends on the line "In truth his lot is wondrous well bested"
Is there an English equivalent of this Russian version of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam?
В этом мире глупцов, подлецов, торгашей
Уши, мудрый, заткни, рот надежно зашей,
Веки плотно зажмурь - хоть немного подумай
О сохранности глаз, языка и ушей!
In Russian it sounds as a poem, very rhymed.
Automati...
Why does Romeo say that "Juliet is the sun"? Is it because Romeo can feel Juliet on his skin and through into his meat and flesh? Has anyone made this claim, as it makes total sense, both for adolescent pangs of sexuality and the sense that's all that matters.
In my poem, I express my thoughts this way:
What is it that I see?
You looked, you asked.
It was masked
As everything else
Hence, in the very same night
What lingers beyond my sight?
Asked I myself
Does it sound natural to say "What lingers beyond my sight?" instead of "What is it that lingers...
