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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 224 responses total. |
gelinas
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response 75 of 224:
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Nov 4 06:01 UTC 2003 |
Do #72 and #74 really refer to #71? If, instead, they refer to the previous
quote, identifed as from Hawthorne's "The Custom House", then the "late 1700s"
isn't too far off.
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md
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response 76 of 224:
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Nov 4 11:46 UTC 2003 |
Hawthorne wrote "The Custom House" in probably in the 1840s, when he
was actually wroking there. The current mystery quote is:
"Frank has acknowledged the safe return of the galleys I had been sent
here and has asked me to mention in my Preface -- and this I willingly
do -- that I alone am responsible for any mistakes in my commentary.
Insert before a professional. A professional proofreader has carefully
rechecked the printed text of the poem against the phototype of the
manuscript, and has found a few trivial misprints I had missed; that
has been all in the way of outside assistance."
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remmers
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response 77 of 224:
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Nov 4 12:25 UTC 2003 |
Walt Whitman?
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tod
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response 78 of 224:
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Nov 4 18:23 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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md
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response 79 of 224:
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Nov 4 19:52 UTC 2003 |
True story: I thought I might give "The Custom House" another read, so
I took down my LoA _Complete Tales and Sketches_ and looked it up in
the ToC. Not there. I slapped my forehead as I realized that "The
Custom House" was the standalone introduction to _The House of the
Seven Gables_. So, I replaced my LoA _Complete Tales and Sketches_,
took down my LoA _Complete Novels_, and turned to H7G. *Still* not
there. Getting seriously alarmed now. As a last resort, I turned to
the beginning of _The Scarlet Letter_, thinking that surely can't be
it, and there it was. It was like arriving at a familiar intersection
from an unfamiliar direction. Anyway, some Hawthorne fan.
Not Walt Whitman. Not Stephen King. I'd've thought "Insert before a
professional" gave it away. Here's another excerpt from the same work:
"Let me state that without my notes [...]'s text simply has no human
reality at all since the human reality of such a poem as his (being too
skittish and reticent for an autobiographical work), with the omission
of many pithy lines carelessly rejected by him, has to depend entirely
on the reality of its author and his surroundings, attachments and so
forth, a reality that only my notes can provide. To this statement my
dear poet would probably not have ascribed, but, for better or worse,
it is the commentator who has the last word."
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tod
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response 80 of 224:
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Nov 4 23:47 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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md
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response 81 of 224:
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Nov 5 00:16 UTC 2003 |
More of same book:
"What if we awake one day, all of us, and find ourselves utterly unable
to read? I wish you to gasp not only at what you read but at the
miracle of its being readable (so I used to tell my students).
Although I am capable, through long dabbling in blue magic, of
imitating any prose in the world (but singularly enough not verse -- I
am a miserable rhymester), I do not consider myself a true artist, save
in one matter: I can do what only a true artist can do -- pounce upon
the forgotten butterfly of revelation, wean myself abruptly from the
habit of things, see the web of the world, and the warp and the weft of
that web. Solemnly I weighed in my hand what I was carrying under my
left armpit, and for a moment I found myself enriched with an
indescribable amazement as if informed that fireflies were making
decodable signals on behalf of stranded spirits, or that a bat was
writing a legible tale of torture in the bruise and branded sky."
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md
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response 82 of 224:
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Nov 5 00:17 UTC 2003 |
"bruised and branded sky" sorry.
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goose
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response 83 of 224:
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Nov 5 01:47 UTC 2003 |
Pynchon
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md
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response 84 of 224:
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Nov 5 02:52 UTC 2003 |
Not Pynchon.
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slynne
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response 85 of 224:
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Nov 5 03:30 UTC 2003 |
Well damn. YOu have stumped me. I dont even have a good guess. So I
will take a bad guess. = Virginia Wolfe
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jep
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response 86 of 224:
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Nov 5 03:36 UTC 2003 |
I haven't got the foggiest. It's nothing I've read, I'm sure of that.
T. H. White?
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other
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response 87 of 224:
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Nov 5 05:12 UTC 2003 |
H. L. Mencken
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remmers
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response 88 of 224:
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Nov 5 13:52 UTC 2003 |
The "Insert before a professional" didn't give it away to me, and I'm
still puzzling over what it means.
In the last quote the author refers to his "students", which strongly
suggests that he's an academic. The guy also seems excessively fond
of alliteration: "utterly unable", "the web of the world, and the
warp and the weft of that web" (sheesh!), "stranded spirits", etc.
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gelinas
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response 89 of 224:
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Nov 5 17:04 UTC 2003 |
I interpreted the "Insert before a professional" as a proof-reading note that
got incorporated into the text.
But I've not read the piece (before), nor do I know the author.
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md
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response 90 of 224:
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Nov 5 18:28 UTC 2003 |
One more quote from the same book:
"I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane;
I was the smudge of ashen fluff -- and I
Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky."
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remmers
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response 91 of 224:
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Nov 5 19:33 UTC 2003 |
Still stumped.
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slynne
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response 92 of 224:
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Nov 5 20:52 UTC 2003 |
All I know is that I havent read it. Maybe you could give us some non-
literary clues. *shrug*
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md
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response 93 of 224:
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Nov 5 21:48 UTC 2003 |
Nope. One more.
"English was not taught in Zembla before Mr. Campbell's time. Conmal
mastered it all by himself (mainly by learning a lexicon by heart) as a
young man in 1880, when not the verbal inferno but a quiet military
career seemed to open before him, and his first work (the translation
of Shakespeare's _Sonnets_) was the outcome of a bet with a fellow
officer. He exchanged his frogged uniform for a scholar's dressing
gown and tackled _The Tempest_. A slow worker, he needed half a
century to translate the works of him whom he called "dze bart," in
their entirety. After this, in 1930, he went on to Milton and other
poets, steadily drilling through the ages, and had just completed
Kipling's "The Rhyme of the Three Sealers" ("Now this is the Law of the
Muscovite that he proves with shot and steel") when he fell ill and
soon expired under his splendid painted bed ceil with its reproductions
of Altamira animals, his last word in his last delirium being "Comment
dit-on 'mourir' en englais?" -- a beautiful and touching end."
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polygon
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response 94 of 224:
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Nov 6 06:43 UTC 2003 |
Anyone mention Kipling yet?
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mcnally
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response 95 of 224:
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Nov 6 07:19 UTC 2003 |
Yes, but not in relation to this quote.. :-)
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remmers
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response 96 of 224:
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Nov 6 13:14 UTC 2003 |
In one of the quotes, the author says that he's a lousy poet.
Would Kipling have said that?
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goose
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response 97 of 224:
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Nov 6 13:51 UTC 2003 |
Heh...
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bru
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response 98 of 224:
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Nov 6 17:45 UTC 2003 |
I had not read this either, so I looked it up. I only read one of his books,
and I would be surprised if most of us had not read that one at some point
beyond high school.
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md
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response 99 of 224:
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Nov 6 18:29 UTC 2003 |
Last quote:
"_Dim Gulf_ was my first book (free verse); _Night Rote_
Came next; then _Hebe's Cup_, my final float
In that damp carnival, for now I term
Everything "Poems" and no longer squirm.
(But *this* thransparent thingum does require
Some moondrop title. Help me, Will! _Pale Fire_.)"
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