Comment by Peter Shor on What do "fünf Tage Dicken" and "fünf Tage Kahn" mean...
This isn't quite right: Kahn (a flatboat) is slang for prison— In German WIktionary, it gives for Kahn: [3] "umgangssprachlich: Gefängnis", meaning "colloquially: prison".
View ArticleComment by Peter Shor on Who is the "creature" in the final verses of this poem?
@tgdavies: It's the "smooth steel" part that I think implies horseshoes. But maybe there are other kinds of steel shoes.
View ArticleWhat was the clue that let Carla find the missing papers in The Poet's House?
In Jean Thompson's novel, The Poet's House, towards the end, the heroine, Carla, is looking for some missing papers:(the last poems that Mathias wrote before he died, and that Viridian—his lover—hid...
View ArticleAnswer by Peter Shor for What was the clue that let Carla find the missing...
The answer was hard for me to figure out because you need to put together clues that occur at three places in the book, and if you miss just one, it doesn't really make sense.When Carla is talking with...
View ArticleAnswer by Peter Shor for Why did the alexandrine become the "natural" metre...
There are two parts to this question: why does English use iambic meter while French doesn't, and why does English have 10 syllables in each line of iambic pentameter, while French has 12 syllables per...
View ArticleAnswer by Peter Shor for Technical term for "internal inconsistency"
This has been called aporia.Collins dictionary defines it as:a difficulty, as in a philosophical or literary text, caused by an indeterminacy of meaning for which no resolution seems possible,In his...
View ArticleAnswer by Peter Shor for Michael Field’s ‘To Christina Rossetti’
I don't completely understand the poem, but I have some observations.Let's start with the nymphs at the end.Syrinx was a nymph who was being sexually pursued by Pan, and was changed into reeds to...
View ArticleWhat evidence do we have that, after her death, Christina Rossetti's brother...
It is widely believed that Christina Rossetti had lesbian inclinations, although it is unclear whether she ever acted on them.In several places, I have seen references to the fact that her brother,...
View ArticleAnswer by Peter Shor for What is the "pride of a soul that has conquered fate"?
This is not a complete answer, but maybe it will inspire somebody to find one.There is a parallelism between the two stanzas, especially in the last half of the stanzas. Here is the last part of the...
View ArticleAnswer by Peter Shor for Pronouns in Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a...
The subject is such.What it means is that the owl is complaining about the people (or animals) who wander near her secret bower and disturb her solitude.Here, ye is the vocative case of you. The...
View ArticleAnswer by Peter Shor for What did W M Praed mean by 'see if he turns out his...
Looking at 19th century books in Google books, it seems that turning out one's toes was the fashionable way to walk.From Little Pedlington and the Pedlingtonians, by John Poole (1860), we haveIn...
View ArticleAnswer by Peter Shor for Meaning of "the field was found to be plowed as...
This is a punning comparison, likeHe lies like a rug,He'll fold faster than a lawn chair.We still use them in English, but they were considerably more common in previous centuries.There's actually...
View ArticleAnswer by Peter Shor for What does "The Shampoo" written by Elizabeth Bishop...
This is a love poem, written to Elizabeth Bishop's lover Lota de Macedo Soares.I am going to give a very impressionistic interpretation of it. A more literal close reading may not yield the same...
View ArticleAnswer by Peter Shor for Full English or French online translation of "De...
There is an English translation entitled The Battle of the Birds in the transcript of this podcast. [Note: this link is now dead, but the full translation is included in the book Poetry of the...
View ArticleAnswer by Peter Shor for is it possible to adapt ancient graeco-roman...
Classical Greek and Latin had poetry based on syllable length, and not on syllabic stress, which is what modern English poetry is based on. The meters of Greek and Latin poetry are thus called...
View ArticleWho is the "lady weeping at the crossroads" in W. H. Auden's poem?
... and why does she need to go to the end of the world to plunge a penknife into her false heart?W. H. Auden's poemLady Weeping at the Crossroadsstarts with the stanza“Lady, weeping at the...
View ArticleAnswer by Peter Shor for Who is the "lady weeping at the crossroads" in W. H....
I have an answer to this question that I suspect will be controversial, but it addresses more aspects of the poem than any I've seen on the web: My answer: the lady weeping at the crossroads is Lord...
View ArticleWhat is this children's book referenced in Little Dorrit?
In Little Dorrit, Dickens writes:A communication of great trap-doors in the floor and roof with the workshop above and the workshop below, made a shaft of light in this perspective, which brought to...
View ArticleAnswer by Peter Shor for Why is the last title in Proust's "Search For Lost...
TLDR: Why is the last volume of Proust's masterpiece Le Temps retrouvé not consistently titled Time Found Again in English? Essentially, because if you change the title of the series from In Search of...
View ArticleAnswer by Peter Shor for Which story from 'One Thousand and One Nights' does...
This picture can be found in the book Illustrations du Livre des Mille et Une Nuits, by Léon Carré and Mohamed Racim. This book reprints the illustrations that Léon Carré made for Les Mille et Une...
View ArticleAnswer by Peter Shor for Rumi quotation on how dancing is not painless
I don't know any Persian, but this web page has the Persian text:واماشعرمولانايعظيمالشانرقصاننبودكههرزمانبرخيزيبيدردچوگردازميانبرخيزيرقصانباشدكزدوجهانبرخيزيدلپارهكنيوزسرجانبرخيزيديوانشمستبريزيalong...
View ArticleAnswer by Peter Shor for British Duke is murdered in elevator. Title is...
This sounds very much like Ngaio Marsh's book Surfeit of Lampreys, titled Death of a Peer in the United States.From Wikipedia:Lord Wutherwood storms out of the Lampreys' top-floor flat and into the...
View ArticleAnswer by Peter Shor for Understanding the plotline of “The Smile” by Ted Hughes
This answer isn't going to cover every aspect of this poem, and does not contradict the other answers. However, let me point out an aspect of this poem that the other answers have not mentioned: Ted...
View ArticleAnswer by Peter Shor for What is the effect of using “silver” to describe the...
I would say that all of the SAT's choices of answers for this question are wrong. The poem clearly contrasts the silver horn with the golden pillow. The second stanza (with my interpolation)...
View ArticleAnswer by Peter Shor for What does it mean to "wear my decoration" in the...
TLDR: The thrust of the poem is that the mother treats the daughter as an adornment. Similarly, the father treats his wife and children as adornments.The poem is complaining that people are being...
View ArticleAnswer by Peter Shor for In Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, why are there...
John Steinbeck wrote the book as a "novel-play". Wikipedia saysit is intended to be both a novella and a script for a play. ... Steinbeck wanted to write a novel that could be played from its lines, or...
View ArticleComment by Peter Shor on Meaning (likelihood, credibility) of "but the only...
@MattThrower: You have to balance the likelihood that Frank Gibbs is exaggerating here with the likelihood that he married a girl that he'd literally never seen before. I think the first case is by far...
View ArticleComment by Peter Shor on Francis Bacon's "The Advancement of Learning"
@gidds: I think that's simply an error on Wiktionary's part.
View ArticleComment by Peter Shor on In Lord Byron's "Don Juan," what was the lead...
So this question actually had an answer appropriate for English.SE, even though it was migrated here.
View ArticleComment by Peter Shor on Scene from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy...
The HHGttG was originally a radio play, and I believe that some things were omitted in the transition to books. Did you ever listen to it?
View ArticleComment by Peter Shor on Are there crossword puzzle clues in Roy Fuller's...
If you're writing poetry as crossword puzzle clues, there's absolutely no reason to include letter counts. But I agree ... I think there aren't any crossword clues in this poem.
View ArticleComment by Peter Shor on What was the name of this story referring to 17-year...
To further show that seven is a mistake,, there is no such thing as a seven-year locust in the U.S. We only have seventeen-year locusts and thirteen-year locusts.
View ArticleWhat was the name of this story referring to 17-year cicadas?
Several decades ago, I read a short story where a woman sees 17-year cicadas emerging. This leads her to recall several vignettes from her life, from the previous times she encountered 17-year cicadas...
View ArticleComment by Peter Shor on Meaning of description of Jim waking in "The Gift of...
What part of the description are you having difficulty understanding?
View ArticleComment by Peter Shor on Why are songs no longer performed as part of...
Are you talking about Macbeth, or are other Shakespeare plays relevant to this question. The songs are sung in this production of Twelfth Night. (Start listening around 33:15.
View ArticleComment by Peter Shor on What arguments have scholars used to characterise...
I've reread Le Grand Meaulnes since I wrote my comment above, and I still don't see how it can be classified as magical realism. it does have an exotic/rarefied atmosphere, but that wouldn't be enough...
View ArticleComment by Peter Shor on Meaning of "It is the ego, demanding its feed" in...
@Silent Sojourner: Looking at the context (from Google books), I would think it would refer to both of them, actually.
View ArticleComment by Peter Shor on The incomplete sonnets at the beginning of Don...
I don't believe the abbaaccddc pattern helps at all in filling in the missing syllable. The pattern tells you that Panza and Mancha have the same vowel in their stressed syllable, as do presto and...
View ArticleAnswer by Peter Shor for Who is the "creature" in the final verses of this poem?
Thinking about this poem some more, I have come to the conclusion that the creature is indeed the Devil, and Elinor Wylie is either unaware of or is disregarding the folklore about the Devil and...
View ArticleComment by Peter Shor on 20th century poem ending with "-baby?"
@bobble: The full poem, which according to this website is called Pictures of the Gone World 15, is here in Google books. If jamesismynamo doesn't complete his answer, this will let somebody else do it.
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