Sometimes authors know difficult foreign languages and aren’t ashamed to admit it. Sometimes, as if that weren’t enough, they even make them up. One hundred polyglot extracts to identify; bonus prizes available for translating where needed. Some non-fiction. Works marked [*] have had their base language translated into English.

The D.F.L.s with their frequency of occurrence (a few extracts use multiple languages):

French 24
Latin 24
German 10
Italian 9
Greek 8
Spanish 8
Arabic 2
Japanese 2
Chakobsa 1
Gaelic 1
Gujarati 1
Hindustani 1
Inuktitut 1
Lapin 1
Mandarin 1
Aboriginal 1
‘Old Tongue’ 1
Quenya 1
R’lyehian 1
Russian 1
Sanskrit 1
Scots 1
Unknown 1
Vogon 1
Welsh 1


The authors:

Douglas Adams, Richard Adams, Dante Alighieri

John Barth, Samuel Beckett, Lucia Berlin, John Berryman, Ambrose Bierce, Robert Bolt, Patrick O’Brien, Charlotte Bronte, Anthony Burgess, Edmund Burke, Robert Burns, Lord Byron

Thomas Carlyle, Raymond Chandler, Leslie Charteris, Michael Crichton, James Clavell, John Crowley

e. e. cummings

Helen DeWitt, Philip K. Dick, Joan Didion, Isak Dinesen, Charles M. Doughty, Arthur Conan Doyle, Lord Dunsany, Lawrence Durrell, George Eliot, T. S. Eliot

Ian Fleming, E. M. Forster, G. M. Fraser

William Gaddis, William H. Gass, W. S. Gilbert, William Golding, Richard Gordon, Robert Greene

Thomas Hardy, William Hazlitt, Joseph Heller, Ernest Hemingway, Frank Herbert, Patricia Highsmith

Thomas Ingoldsby

Henry James, Samuel Johnson, Robert Jordan, James Joyce, Ernst Junger

M. M. Kaye

R. A. Lafferty, D. H. Lawrence, H. P. Lovecraft, Malcolm Lowry

Thomas Mann, James Marshall, George du Maurier, Cormac McCarthy, Larry McMurtry, Freddie Mercury, Margaret Mitchell, Michel de Montaigne

Vladimir Nabokov

Joe Orton, George Orwell, Wilfred Owen

Walter Pater, Sylvia Plath, Edgar Allan Poe, Ezra Pound, Terry Pratchett, Thomas Pynchon

Thomas de Quincey

François Rabelais

Rafael Sabatini, J. D. Salinger, Arthur Schopenhauer, Walter Scott, William Shakespeare, Dan Simmons, Oswald Spengler, John Steinbeck, Laurence Sterne, Wallace Stevens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker

Amy Tan, W. M. Thackeray, Dylan Thomas, J. R. R. Tolkien, Leo Tolstoy, B. Traven, Mark Twain

Kurt Vonnegut

Evelyn Waugh, P. G. Wodehouse

1)
It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.

“Very good, Ali,” I quavered in Spanish through the closed door of the master bedroom. “Take him into the bar. Give him a drink.”

“Hay dos. Su capellan tambien.”

“Very good, Ali. Give his chaplain a drink also.”


2)
LEONINE, adj. Unlike a menagerie lion. Leonine verses are those in which a word in the middle of a line rhymes with a word at the end, as in this famous passage from Bella Peeler Silcox:

The electric light invades the dunnest deep of Hades.
Cries Pluto, ’twixt his snores: “O tempora! O mores!”

It should be explained that Mrs. Silcox does not undertake to teach pronunciation of the Greek and Latin tongues.


3)
Tom wondered if Dickie and Marge were having an affair, one of those old, faute de mieux affairs that wouldn’t necessarily be obvious from the outside, because neither was very enthusiastic. Marge was in love with Dickie, Tom thought, but Dickie couldn’t have been more indifferent to her if she had been the fifty-year-old Italian maid sitting there.


4)
. . . but, seeing he had been born
In a half savage country, out of date;
Bent resolutely on wringing lilies from the acorn;
Capaneus; trout for factitious bait;

“Ἴδμεν γάρ τοι πάνθ', ὅσ 'ένι Τροίη”
Caught in the unstopped ear;
Giving the rocks small lee-way
The chopped seas held him, therefore, that year.


5)
‘Gosh, that's certainly a drink,’ said Leiter.

Bond laughed. ‘When I’m... er... concentrating,’ he explained, ‘I never have more than one drink before dinner. But I do like that one to be large and very strong and very cold and very well-made. I hate small portions of anything, particularly when they taste bad. This drink’s my own invention. I’m going to patent it when I can think of a good name.’

He watched carefully as the deep glass became frosted with the pale golden drink, slightly aerated by the bruising of the shaker. He reached for it and took a long sip.

‘Excellent,’ he said to the barman, ‘but if you can get a vodka made with grain instead of potatoes, you will find it still better.’

‘Mais n’enculons pas des mouches,’ he added in an aside to the barman. The barman grinned.

‘That’s a vulgar way of saying “we won’t split hairs”,’ explained Bond.

6)
The animal communicates his feelings and moods by gesture and sound; man communicates thought to another, or conceals it from him, by language. Speech is the first product and the necessary instrument of his faculty of reason. Therefore in Greek and Italian speech and reason are expressed by the same word, *ό λόγος*, *il discorso*.

[*]


7)
Simon balanced the pad on his knee and wrote, taking his time:

Dear Mr Inverest,
I’ve seen Sue, and she’s still as good as new. So you’d better hurry up and meet Tony’s terms, even if it isn’t exactly “for the public good.” Perhaps that would sound better to you in Latin, but it all comes to the homo sequendum. Will report again as arranged.
Simon Templar.

He held out the pad. The man who had brought it carried it across to Unciello.
Unciello read it through slowly, and looked up again at the Saint.
“What’s that homo sequendum deal?” he demanded.
“Homo means ‘same,’ as in ‘homosexual,’” Simon explained patiently. “Sequendum is the same root as our words ‘sequel’ or ‘consequences.’ It just means ‘the same result.’ Inverest goes for that Latin stuff.”


8)
Do you like me, Kate?

Pardonnez-moi, I cannot tell vat is like me.

An angel is like you, Kate, and you are like an angel.

Que dit-il? que je suis semblable a les anges?


9)
“ . . . and it was their daughter or rather *her* daughter, Phyllis, you see, who later on, about the time I got married, met Stanley *Mouse*, which is how *that* family and *my* family get connected in a roundabout way. Phyllis. Who was a Hill on her mother’s side. George and Franz’s mother.”

“*Parturient montes*,” Smokey quipped into the void, “*et nascetur ridiculus mus*.”


10)
‘Look, darkie, we’re lost. We want water. You sabby water? War-tur. War-tur.’
He cupped his hands together, drew them up to his lips, and went through the motions of swallowing.
The bush boy nodded.
‘Arkooloola.”
His eyes were serious now. Understanding. Sympathetic. He knew what it meant to be thirsty.
‘Arkooloola.”
He said the word again. Softly, musically, like the rippling of water over rock. He pursed up his lips and moved them as though he, too, were drinking.
Peter hopped delightedly from foot to foot.
‘That’s it, darkie. You’ve got it. Arkooloolya. That’s the stuff we want. And food too. You sabby food? Foo-ood. Foo-ood.’
He went through the motions of cutting with knife and fork, then started to champ his jaws.
The cutting meant nothing to the bush boy; but the jaw champing did. Again his eyes were sympathetic.
‘Yeemara.’
His teeth, in unison with Peter’s, clicked in understanding.
The white boy was jubilant.
‘You’ve got it, darkie. Got it first time. Yeemara an’ Arkooloolya. That’s the stuff we want. Now where do we get’em?’

11)
This is my daughter Margaret, sir. She has not had the honor to meet Your Grace.

Why, Margaret, they told me you were a scholar.

Answer, Margaret.

Among women I pass for one, your Grace.

Antiquone modo Latine loqueris, an Oxoniensi?

Quern me docuit pater, Domme.

Bene. Optimus est. Graecamne linguam quoque te docuit?

Graecam me docuit non pater meus sed mei patris amicus, Johannes Coletus, Sancti Pauli Decanus. In litteris Graecis tamen, non minus quam Latinis, ars magistri minuitur discipuli stultitia.

Ho! . . . Take care, Thomas: ‘too much learning is a weariness of the flesh, and there is no end to the making of books.’


12)
FOR RENT: HORSES AND RIGS
FOR SALE: CATTLE AND HORSES
GOATS AND DONKEYS NEITHER BOUGHT NOR SOLD
WE DON’T RENT PIGS.

UVA UVAM VIVENDO VARIA FIT.


13)
That my pains had vanished, was now a trifle in my eyes:— this negative effect was swallowed up in the immensity of those positive effects which had opened before me — in the abyss of divine enjoyment thus suddenly revealed. Here was a panacea — a νηπενθές φάρμακον for all human woes: here was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered: happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat pocket: portable ecstasies might be had corked up in a pint bottle: and peace of mind could be sent down in gallons by the mail coach.


14)
‘*Doucemong*, *doucemong*,’ Sir Lancelot began again. ‘Gently, boy — you’re not making bread. Remember — his finger came up again warningly — a successful surgeon must have the eye of a hawk, the heart of a lion and the hands of a lady.’

‘And the commercial morals of a Levantine usurer,’ murmured Grimsdyke under his breath.


15)
Hermione lifted the cat and put the cream before him. He planted his two paws on the edge of the table and bent his gracious young head to drink.

“Sicuro che capisce italiano,” sang Hermione, “non l’avrà dimenticato, la lingua della Mamma.”

She lifted the cat’s head with her long, slow, white fingers, not letting him drink, holding him in her power. It was always the same, this joy in power she manifested, peculiarly in power over any male being. He blinked forbearingly, with a male, bored expression, licking his whiskers. Hermione laughed in her short, grunting fashion.

“Ecco, il bravo ragazzo, com’ è superbo, questo!”

16)
GERALDINE: I’m Geraldine Barclay. Looking for part-time secretarial work. I’ve been certified insane.

RANCE (TO MRS. PRENTICE): Ignore these random reflections. They’re an essential factor in the patient’s condition. (TO DR. PRENTICE) Does she have the same name as your secretary?

PRENTICE: She’s taken my secretary’s name as her ‘nom-de-folie’. Although morally reprehensible, there’s little we can do legally, I’m afraid.

RANCE (DRYING HIS HANDS): It seems a trifle capricious, but the insane are famous for their wild ways.


17)
There are vocal qualities peculiar to men, and vocal qualities peculiar to beasts; and it is terrible to hear the one when the source should yield the other. Animal fury and orgiastic licence here whipped themselves to daemoniac heights by howls and squawking ecstasies that tore and reverberated through those nighted woods like pestilential tempests from the gulfs of hell. Now and then the less organised ululation would cease, and from what seemed a well-drilled chorus of hoarse voices would rise in sing-song chant that hideous phrase or ritual:

― Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.


18)
At different times he would give fifty humorous and opposite reasons for riding a meek-spirited jade of a broken-winded horse preferably to one of mettle; — for on such a one he could sit mechanically, and meditate as delightfully *de vanitate mundi et fugâ saeculi*, as with the advantage of a death’s head before him; — that, in all other exercitations, he could spend his time, as he rode slowly along, to as much account as in his study . . .


19)
The best-laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!


20)
‘Why,’ said Jack, filling their glasses and smiling through his wine at the sun, ‘it seemed to me that in speaking to Spaniards, it was reasonable to use what Spanish I could muster.’

‘You were forgetting, of course, that Catalan is the language they speak in these islands.’

‘What is Catalan?’

‘Why, the language of Catalonia — of the islands, of the whole of the Mediterranean coast down to Alicante and beyond. Of Barcelona. Of Lerida. All the richest part of the peninsula.’

‘You astonish me. I had no notion of it. Another language, sir? But I dare say it is much the same thing — a putain, as they say in France?’

‘Oh no, nothing of the kind — not like at all. A far finer language. More learned, more literary. Much nearer the Latin. And by the by, I believe the word is patois, sir, if you will allow me.’

‘Patois — just so. Yet I swear the other is a word: I learnt it somewhere,’ said Jack.

21)
“Mr. Mindel, how many people do you know?”

“How know? Per se? A Se? Or In se? Per suam essentiam, perhaps? Or do you mean ab alio? Or to know as hoc aliquid? There is a fine difference there. Or do you possibly mean to know in subsiantia prima, or in the sense of comprehensive noumena?”

“Somewhere between the latter two. How many persons do you know by name, face, and with a degree of intimacy?”

“I have learned over the years the names of some of my colleagues, possibly a dozen of them. I am now sound on my wife’s name, and I seldom stumble over the names of my offspring — never more than momentarily . . . ”


22)
“Rafel Mayee Amech Zabee Almee!”
He roared – and no more pleasant song would suit
The savage mouth of such a thing as he.

My master then addressed him: “Witless brute!
Keep to thy horn, and vent through that, if stressed
By rage or other passion so acute.

Search on thy neck, buffoon whose mind’s possessed,
And thou shalt find the belt with which it’s tied,
And see the thing itself across thy chest.”

[*]


23)
”Don’t call for help,” advises Säure flashing his phony acid bottle, “or that pretty face goes flowing off of its bones like vanilla pudding.” But Minne calls his bluff, starts hollering for help to all the ladies of the same age in her building who feel that same motherly help-help-but-make-sure-there’s-time-for-him-to-rape-me ambivalence about nubile cat burglars. What she means to scream is “Hübsch Räuber! Hübsch Räuber!” which means “Cute-looking robber! Cute-looking robber!” But she can’t pronounce those umlauts. So it comes out “Hub-schrauber! Hubschrauber!” which means “Helicopter! Helicopter!” well, it’s 1920-something, and nobody in earshot even knows what the word means, Liftscrewer, what’s that?


24)
As his hat medallion, he had a fine piece of enameled work set in a gold plate weighing a hundred and thirty-six ounces, on which was displayed a human body with two heads turned towards one another, four feet and two rumps — the form, according to Plato in his Symposium, of man’s nature in its mystical beginnings; and around it was written in Ionian script: ΑΓΑΠΗ ΟΥ ΖΗΤΕΙ ΤΑ ΕΑΥΤΗΣ.

[*]


25)
“Slivok (some cream)? I hope you speak Russian?” Marina asked Van, as she poured him a cup of tea.

“Neohotno no sovershenno svobodno (reluctantly but quite fluently),” replied Van, slegka ulïbnuvshis’ (with a slight smile). “Yes, lots of cream and three lumps of sugar.”

“Ada and I share your extravagant tastes. Dostoevski liked it with raspberry syrup.”

“Pah,” uttered Ada.

26)
I went to Newport not long ago, to see the great stone *fin-de-siècle* “cottages” in which certain rich Americans once summered. The places loom still along Bellevue Avenue and Cliff Walk, one after another, silk curtains frayed but gargoyles intact, monuments to something beyond themselves; houses built, clearly, to some transcendental point. No one had made clear to me exactly what that point was. I had been promised that the great summer houses were museums and warned that they were monstrosities, had been assured that the way of life they suggested was graceful beyond belief and that it was gross beyond description, that the very rich were different from you and me and yes, they had lower taxes, and if “The Breakers” was perhaps not entirely tasteful, still, *où sont les croquet wickets d’antan*.


27)
— The memory of the dead, says the citizen taking up his pintglass and glaring at Bloom.
— Ay, ay, says Joe.
— You don’t grasp my point, says Bloom. What I mean is . . .
— Sinn Fein! says the citizen. Sinn Fein amhain! The friends we love are by our side and the foes we hate before us.


28)
“You’ll go in and say good-by to Miss Pinkerton, Becky!” said Miss Jemima to a young lady of whom nobody took any notice, and who was coming downstairs with her own bandbox.

“I suppose I must,” said Miss Sharp calmly, and much to the wonder of Miss Jemima; and the latter having knocked at the door, and receiving permission to come in, Miss Sharp advanced in a very unconcerned manner, and said in French, and with a perfect accent, “Mademoiselle, je viens vous faire mes adieux.”

Miss Pinkerton did not understand French; she only directed those who did: but biting her lips and throwing up her venerable and Roman-nosed head (on the top of which figured a large and solemn turban), she said, “Miss Sharp, I wish you a good morning.”


29)
A deafening roar filled the cavern, echoed and re-echoed. They were cheering and chanting: “Ya hya chouhada! Muad‘Dib! Muad’Dib! Muad’Dib! Ya hya chouhada!”

Jessica translated it to herself: “Long live the fighters of Muad’Dib!”


30)
“I’d forgotten about you,” he said in English. “I was afraid you were dead.”

“Dozo goziemashita, Anjin-san, nan desu ka?”

“Nani mo, Fujiko-san,” he told her, ashamed of himself. “Gomen nasai. Hai. Gomen nasai. Ma-suware odoroita honto ni mata aete ureshi.” Please excuse me . . . a surprise, neh? Good to see you. Please sit down.

“Domo arigato goziemashita,” she said, and told him in her thin, high voice how pleased she was to see him, how much his Japanese had improved, how well he looked, and how most very glad she was to be here.

He watched her kneel awkwardly on the cushion opposite. “Legs . . . ” He sought the word “burns” but couldn’t remember it, so he said instead, “Legs fire hurt. Bad?”

31)
The opinion of my Catholic acquaintance concerning my spiritual prospects was somewhat naïvely expressed to me on one occasion. A *pensionnaire*, to whom I had rendered some little service, exclaimed one day as she sat beside me: “Mademoiselle, what a pity you are a Protestant!”

“Why, Isabelle?”

“Parceque, quand vous serez morte — vous brûlerez tout de suite dans l’Enfer.”

“Croyez-vous?”

“Certainement que j’y crois: tout le monde le sait; et d’ailleurs le prêtre me l’a dit.”

Isabelle was an odd, blunt little creature. She added, sotto voce: “Pour assurer votre salut là-haut, on ferait bien de vous brûler toute vive ici-bas.”

I laughed, as, indeed, it was impossible to do otherwise.


32)
Here and there in the press small whirlpools formed about an unhorsed sowar, defending himself with all the ferocity of a wounded boar against the tribesmen who circled about him, waiting for an opportunity to slash at him with knife or tulwar. One such, Sowar Dowlat Ram, had become entangled with his fallen charger, and the three Khugianis who had brought the horse down rushed in to kill its rider as he struggled to free himself from the dying animal. But Wally had seen him fall and now he charged to the rescue, whirling his blood-stained sabre and shouting ‘*Daro mut, Dowlat Ram! Tagra ho jao, jawan! Shabash!*’


33)
‘You can read the Old Tongue?’ Moiraine asked, and when he nodded, she handed him the horn.

The Ogier took it as gently as she had, delicately tracing the script with one broad finger. His eyes went wider and wider, and his ears stood up straight. ‘*Tza mi aven Moridin isainde vadin*,’ he whispered. ‘The grave is no bar to my call.’


34)
Miss(believe it or)Gay is a certain Young Woman unacquainted with the libido
and pursuing a course of instruction at radcliffe college,cambridge,mass.
i try if you are a gentleman not to sense something un poco putrido
when we contemplate her uneyes safely ensconced in thick glass


35)
One other thing he did. He flung after those war-fevered enthusiasts a line of Horace — a poet for whose work he had early conceived an inordinate affection:

“Quo, quo, scelesti, ruitis?”

And now perhaps you guess why the hot, intrepid blood inherited from the roving sires of his Somersetshire mother remained cool amidst all this frenzied fanatical heat of rebellion . . .

36)
I rubbed my face dry and went back to the telephone.

“Yeah?”

“This is Candy, señor.”

“Good morning, Candy.”

“La señora es muerta.”

Dead. What a cold black noiseless word it is in any language. The lady is dead.

“Nothing you did, I hope.”

“I think the medicine. It is called demerol. I think forty, fifty in the bottle. Empty now. No dinner last night. This morning I climb up on the ladder and look in the window. Dressed just like yesterday afternoon. I break the screen open. La señora es muerta. Frio como agua de nieve.”


37)
The little merchant tore off the twentieth of the sheet and handed it to Dobbs. “It’s un número excelente, señor. A sure winner it is.”

“If it is such a sure winner, why the hell don’t you play it yourself?” Dobbs asked suspiciously and jokingly at the same time.

“Me? No, sir,” said the boy. “I can’t afford to play the lottery. I haven’t got the money.” He took the silver piece, bit on it to see if it was good, and said: “Muchas gracias! A thousand thanks, sir. Come again next time. I always have the winners, all the lucky numbers. Buena suerte, good luck!” And off he hopped like a young rabbit, chasing another patron he had just glimpsed.


38)
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.


39)
Moody was the word which would have described my aspect, as a few moments later I left the house and proceeded to the garden, feeling in need of a bit of air. I had kept up a brave front, but I had little real hope that anchovy paste would bring home the bacon. As I stood at the garden gate, staring sombrely before me, I was at a pretty low ebb.

I mean to say, I had been banking everything on that letter. I had counted on it to destroy the Wooster glamour in Florence’s eyes. And, lacking it, I couldn’t see how she was going to be persuaded that I was not a king among men. Not for the first time, I found myself musing bitterly on young Edwin, the fons et origo – a Latin expression – of all my troubles.


40)
The prayers in Inuktitut he’d heard in the past three months were not appropriate. But in his awkward attempt to learn the language — even though he would never be able to utter a syllable of it aloud — he’d played a game that summer trying to translate the Lord’s Prayer into Inuktitut.

That evening, standing by the cairn holding his crewmates’ bones, he’d tried to think the prayer.

Nâlegauvît kailaule. Pijornajat pinatuale nuname sorlo kilangme...

Our father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

That was as far as he’d been able to get two summers ago, but it felt like enough.

41)
— Ticket?

— Ja? He looked up from the paper with a great smile.

— Your ticket?

— Ahh, Sie wollen meine, meine . . . He rummaged in pockets, to come up with a cardboard square and offer it with a beaming smile.

— This is a half fare ticket, Mister.

— Bitte?

— I said this ticket, this is half fare ticket.

— Ja ja . . . he beamed, nodding, his eyes beginning to cross.

— Half fare, half. Kiddie. Child.

— Ja, wissen Sie . . .

— Look. You, man. Ticket, child ticket. Get it?

— In dem Bahnhof, ja, he commenced still beaming, eyes now firmly crossed, — in dem Bahnhof habe ich die . . .

— For Christ sake look. Where you buy ticket?

— Herr Teets, verstehen Sie? In dem Bahnhof, Herr Bahnhofmeister Teets, Gott-trunkener Mensch, verstehen Sie? Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens, he beamed, eyes abruptly straightened, — nicht?


42)
“Poor Da Capo” she said, “he was so terribly shocked and alarmed to be told he had raped me when I was a street arab, a child. I have never seen a man more taken aback. He had completely forgotten, it is clear, and completely denied the whole thing from start to finish. In fact, he was outraged and began to protest. I wish you could have seen his face! Do you know what slipped out in the course of his self-justifications? A marvellous phrase ‘*Il y a quinze ans que je n’ai pas fait ça!*’” She threw herself now face downward on to Pursewarden’s lap and stayed a moment, still shaking with laughter; and then she raised her head once more to wipe her eyes.


43)
This gentleman is seen,
With a maid of seventeen,
A-taking of his dolce far niente;
And wonders he’d achieve,
For he asks us to believe
She’s his mother —
And he’s nearly five-and-twenty!


44)
She quarreled; Rhett did not. He only stated his unequivocal opinion of herself, her actions, her house and her new friends. And some of his opinions were of such a nature that she could no longer ignore them and treat them as jokes.

For instance when she decided to change the name of “Kennedy’s General Store” to something more edifying, she asked him to think of a title that would include the word “emporium.” Rhett suggested “Caveat Emptorium,” assuring her that it would be a title most in keeping with the type of goods sold in the store. She thought it had an imposing sound and even went so far as to have the sign painted . . .


45)
I had been sitting with my lance at rest, the point six feet above my head, and some of the pi-dog’s blood dribbled down onto my hand; I gave an exclamation of disgust, and turning to Iqbal, who was sitting silently behind, I said:

“Khabadar, rissaldar! Larnce sarf karo, juldi!” which is to say,

“Look out, sergeant-major. Take this lance and get it clean, quickly.”

46)
The daily food and nourishment of the mind of an Artist is found in the great works of his predecessors. There is no other way for him to become great himself. *Serpens, nigi serpentem comederit, non fit draco.*


47)
The rays of the searchlight were kept fixed on the harbour mouth across the East Pier, where the shock was expected, and men waited breathless. The wind suddenly shifted to the north-east, and the remnant of the sea-fog melted in the blast; and then, *mirabile dictu*, between the piers, leaping from wave to wave as it rushed at headlong speed, swept the strange schooner before the blast, with all sail set, and gained the safety of the harbour.


48)
Easy come, easy go, will you let me go?
Bismillah!
No, we will not let you go!


49)
For the rest, when I wish to size a man up, I ask him how far he is satisfied with himself, and how much what he says and does pleases him. I want to cut short such fine excuses as: ‘I did it casually;

*Ablatum mediis opus est incudibus istud*;

I did not spend an hour over it; I have not looked at it since.’ ‘Well then,’ I reply, ‘let us put those pieces aside. Give me one that represents you fully, by which you would like to be judged.’

[*]


50)
Pleasure of every kind quickly satisfies; and, when it is over, we relapse into indifference, or, rather, we fall into a soft tranquillity which is tinged with the agreeable color of the former sensation. I own it is not at first view so apparent that the removal of a great pain does not resemble positive pleasure: but let us recollect in what state we have found our minds upon escaping some imminent danger, or on being released from the severity of some cruel pain. We have on such occasions found, if I am not much mistaken, the temper of our minds in a tenor very remote from that which attends the presence of positive pleasure; we have found them in a state of much sobriety, impressed with a sense of awe, in a sort of tranquillity shadowed with horror. The fashion of the countenance and the gesture of the body on such occasions is so correspondent to this state of mind, that any person, a stranger to the cause of the appearance, would rather judge us under some consternation, than in the enjoyment of anything like positive pleasure.

Ὡς δ' ὅταν ἄνδρ' ἄτη πυκινὴ λἁβῃ, ὅστ' ἐνὶ πἁτρῃ,
Φὢτα κατακτεἱνας, ἄλλων ἐξἱκετο δἢμον,
Ἁνδρὀς ἐς ἀφνειοὒ, θἁμβος δ' ἔcἑι εἰσορὀωντας.

Iliad, Ω. 480.

“As when a wretch, who, conscious of his crime,
Pursued for murder from his native clime,
Just gains some frontier, breathless, pale, amazed;
All gaze, all wonder!”

51)
I had so to speak only one leg at my disposal, I was virtually one-legged, and I would have been happier, livelier, amputated at the groin. And if they had removed a few testicles into the bargain I wouldn’t have objected. For from such testicles as mine, dangling at mid-thigh at the end of a meagre cord, there was nothing more to be squeezed, not a drop. So that non che la speme il desiderio, and I longed to see them gone, from the old stand where they bore false witness, for and against, in the lifelong charge against me.


52)
Madame Monce: ‘*Sacrée salope*! How many times have I told you not to squash bugs on the wallpaper? Do you think you’ve bought the hotel, eh? Why can’t you throw them out of the window like everyone else? *Espèce de traînée*!’

The woman on the third floor: ‘*Va donc, eh? vieille vache!*’


53)
He shouted; he broke a few chairs in a poolroom on Alvarado Street; he had two short but glorious fights. No one paid much attention to Danny. At last his wavering bowlegs took him toward the wharf where, at this early hour in the morning, the Italian fishermen were walking down in rubber boots to go out to sea.

Race antipathy overcame Danny’s good sense. He menaced the fishermen. “Sicilian bastards,” he called them, and “Scum from the prison island,” and “Dogs of dogs of dogs.” He cried, “Chinga tu madre, Piojo.” He thumbed his nose and made obscene gestures below his waist. The fishermen only grinned and shifted their oars and said, “Hello, Danny. When’d you get home? Come around tonight. We got new wine.”

Danny was outraged. He screamed, “Pon un condo a la cabeza.”

They called, “Good-by, Danny. See you tonight.”


54)
“I did not tell you that Mr. Lydgate was haughty; but *il y en a pour tous les goûts*, as little Mamselle used to say, and if any girl can choose the particular sort of conceit she would like, I should think it is you, Rosy.”


55)
The gun would be fired two days earlier this year for the pilgrims’ departure, because the season was lateward. We had ten marches through the northern highlands, and the first rains might fall upon us ere we descended to Arabia: in this soil mixed with loam the loaded camels slide, in rainy weather, and cannot safely pass. There was a great stillness in all their camp; these were the last hours of repose. As it was night there came the waits, of young camp-followers with links; who saluting every pavilion were last at the Persians’ lodgings, (their place as they are strangers and schismatics, doubtless for the avoiding of strifes, is appointed in the rear of all the great caravan) with the refrain *bes-salaamy Ullah yetow-wel ummrhu, hy el-âdy, hy el-âdy, Mohammed Aga!* “go in peace, good speed, heigho the largess! We keep this custom, the Lord give long life to him;” and the Persian, who durst not break the usage, found his penny with a sorry countenance.

56)
“You can’t!” said Uncle Joe.

“Yes, he can!” said Tinker Taylor.

“I’ll swear I can!” said Jude. “Well, come now, stand me a small Scotch cold, and I’ll do it straight off.”

“That’s a fair offer,” said the undergraduate, throwing down the money for the whisky.

The barmaid concocted the mixture with the bearing of a person compelled to live amongst animals of an inferior species, and the glass was handed across to Jude, who, having drunk the contents, stood up and began rhetorically, without hesitation:

“*Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem, Factorem coeli et terrae, visibilium omnium et invisibilium.*”

“Good! Excellent Latin!” cried one of the undergraduates, who, however, had not the slightest conception of a single word.


57)
Es ist wirklich Brach- und Neufeld, welches der Verfasser mit der Bearbeitung dieser Themas betreten und durchpflügt hat, so sonderbar auch diese Behauptung im ersten Augenblick klingen mag.

I had taught myself German out of *Teach Yourself German*, and I recognised several words in this sentence at once.

‘It is truly something and something which the something with the something of this something has something and something, so something also this something might something at first something.’


58)
He stepped up to the rock again, and lightly touched with his staff the silver star in the middle beneath the sign of the anvil.

Annon edhellen, edro hi ammen!
Fennas nogothrim, lasto beth lammen!

he said in a commanding voice. The silver lines faded, but the blank grey stone did not stir.


59)
. . . and maybe fly a plane like Raoul Lufbery and learn German so I could recite my Rilke during daring Immelmann turns, during any break between books or other coital excesses: *kannet du dir*, I’d chant, *kannst du dir denn denken dass ich jahre*, so . . . a stranger, a pelican in desert wilds, no to-fro angel, hiving verb, though poets were the bees of the invisible, Rilke said, and everybody religiously repeated it through my dubious youth — *ein Fremder unter Fremden fahre* — a stranger among strangers, myself the strangest . . .


60)
He reached the Watch House. It was an ancient and surprisingly large building, wedged between a tannery and a tailor who made suspicious leather goods. It must have been quite imposing once, but quite a lot of it was now uninhabitable and patrolled only by owls and rats. Over the door a motto in the ancient tongue of the city was now almost eroded by time and grime and lichen, but could just be made out:

FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC

It translated — according to Sergeant Colon, who had served in foreign parts and considered himself an expert on languages — as ‘To Protect and to Serve.’

Yes. Being a guard must have meant something, once.

61)
To this day, I believe my mother has the mysterious ability to see things before they happen. She has a Chinese saying for what she knows. *Chunwang chihan*: If the lips are gone, the teeth will be cold. Which means, I suppose, one thing is always the result of another.
But she does not predict when earthquakes will come, or how the stock market will do. She sees only bad things that affect our family.


62)
Oh frettled gruntbuggly [...] thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee.


63)
From allusions in the sonnets, we may divine that when they first approached each other he had debated much with himself whether this last passion would be the most unsoftening, the most desolating of all — *un dolce amaro, un si e no mi muovi*; is it carnal affection, or, *del suo prestino stato* (Plato's ante-natal state) *il raggio ardente*?


64)
. . . for there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart wrapped in a Players hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute *Johannes fac totum*, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.


65)
“Hold thy tongue, boîte sèche!” growled the French woman. “I know Captain Scurry swived you for your freight, what time he fetched you off the streets and shipped you hither!”
“No more than Slye did you,” cried the dealer, “though God alone knows why a man would swive a sow!”
“I beg your pardon,” Ebenezer interrupted. “If you are servants of the house — ”
“Non, certainement, I am no servant!”
“The truth is,” said the dealer, “Grace here’s a hooker.”
“A what?” asked the poet.
“A hooker,” the woman repeated with a wink. “A quail, don’t ye know.”
“A quail!” the woman named Grace shrieked. “You call me a quail, you — gaullefretière!”
“Whore!” shouted the first.
“Bas-cul!” retorted the other.
“Frisker!”
“Consoeur!”
“Trull!”
“Friquenelle!”
“Sow!”
“Usagère!”
“Bawd!”
“Viagère!”
“Strawgirl!”
“Sérane!”
“Tumbler!”
“Poupinette!”
“Mattressback!”
“Brimballeuse!”
“Nannygoat!”
“Chouette!”
“Windowgirl!”
“Wauve!”
“Lowgap!”
“Peaultre!”
“Galleywench!”
“Baque!”
“Drab!”
“Villotière!”
“Fastfanny!”
“Gaure!”
“Ringer!”
“Bringue!”
“Capercock!”
“Ancelle!”
“Nellie!”
“Gallière!”
“Chubcheeker!”
“Chèvre!”
“Nightbird!”
“Paillasse!”
“Rawhide!”
“Capre!”
“Shortheels!”
“Paillarde!”
“Bumbessie!”
“Image!”
“Furrowbutt!”
“Voyagère!”
“Pinkpot!”
“Femme de vie!”
“Rum-and-rut!”
“Fellatrice!”
“Ladies! Ladies!” the Laureate cried, but by this time the cardplayers, including the two disputants, were possessed with mirth, and paid him no heed.

66)
Come now, drift up the dark, come up the drifting sea-dark street now in the dark night seesawing like the sea, to the bible-black airless attic over Jack Black the cobbler’s shop where alone and savagely Jack Black sleeps in a nightshirt tied to his ankles with elastic and dreams of . . .

. . . chasing the naughty couples down the grassgreen gooseberried double bed of the wood, flogging the tosspots in the spit-and-sawdust, driving out the bare bold girls from the sixpenny hops of his nightmares.

Ach y fi!
Ach y fi!


67)
*No se puede vivir sin amar*, were the words on the house. In the street there was now not a breath of wind and they walked a while without speaking, listening to the babel of the fiesta which grew still louder as they approached the town. Street of the Land of Fire. 666.


68)
You are getting angry, but you are trying not to show it; you resolve to keep on asking your question till she changes her answer, or at least her annoyingly indifferent manner. Therefore, if your case be like mine, you two fools stand there, and without perceptible emotion of any kind, or any emphasis on any syllable, you look blandly into each other’s eyes, and hold the following idiotic conversation:
“How much?”
“Nach beliebe.”
“How much?”
“Nach beliebe.”
“How much?”
“NACH BELIEBE.”
“How much?”
“Nach beliebe.”
“How much?”
“Nach beliebe.”
“How much?”
“Nach beliebe.”


69)
And he led me back with him into his house, cried out to some one whom I could not see that he would be engaged all morning, and brought me into a little dusty chamber full of books and documents. Here he sate down, and bade me be seated; though I thought he looked a little ruefully from his clean chair to my muddy rags. “And now,” says he, “if you have any business, pray be brief and come swiftly to the point. Nec gemino bellum Trojanum orditur ab ovo — do you understand that?” says he, with a keen look.

“I will even do as Horace says, sir,” I answered, smiling, “and carry you in medias res.” He nodded as if he was well pleased, and indeed his scrap of Latin had been set to test me.


70)
Bolkónski, very modestly without once mentioning himself, described the engagement and his reception by the Minister of War.

“They received me and my news as one receives a dog in a game of skittles,” said he in conclusion.

Bilíbin smiled and the wrinkles on his face disappeared.

“*Cependant, mon cher*,” he remarked, examining his nails from a distance and puckering the skin above his left eye, “*malgré la haute estime que je professe pour* the Orthodox Russian army, *j’avoue que votre victoire n’est pas des plus victorieuses*.”

He went on talking in this way in French, uttering only those words in Russian on which he wished to put a contemptuous emphasis.

[*]

71)
Toda luna, todo año
Todo día, todo viento
Camina, y pasa también.
También, toda sangre llega
Al lugar de su quietud.

(Books of Chilam-Balam)

Automatically, Eloise Gore began to translate the poem in her head. *Each moon, each year*. No. *Every moon, every year* gets the fricative sound. *Camina*? Walks. Shame that doesn’t work in English. Clocks walk in Spanish, don’t run. *Goes along, and passes away*.

She snapped the book shut. You don’t read at a resort.


72)
They saw the old men heavy in their chairs and heard the children singing in the fields. They saw far wars and warriors and walled towns, wisdom and wickedness, and the pomp of kings, and the people of all the lands that the sunlight knew.

And the worm spake to the angel saying, “Behold my food.”

“βη δ’ακεων παρα θινα πολυφλοισβοιο θαλασσης,” murmured the angel, for they walked by the sea, “and can you destroy that too?”


73)
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patri mori.


74)
. . . The result is that I’m often accused of not having ‘story’ enough. I seem to myself to have as much as I need — to show my people, to exhibit their relations with each other; for that is all my measure. If I watch them long enough I see them come together, I see them placed, I see them engaged in this or that act and in this or that difficulty. How they look and move and speak and behave, always in the setting I have found for them, is my account of them — of which I dare say, alas, que cela manque souvent d’architecture. But I would rather, I think, have too little architecture than too much — when there’s danger of its interfering with my measure of the truth.


75)
“What does my medical — ”

“They say you’re completely cuckoo.”

Fred (as best he could) shrugged. “Completely?”

*Wie kalt ist es in diesem unterirdischen Gewolbe!*

“Possibly two brain cells still light up. But that’s about all. Mostly short circuits and sparks.”

*Das ist natürlich, es ist ja tief.*

“Two, you say,” Fred said. “Out of how many?”

76)
As language was at its beginning merely oral, all words of necessary or common use were spoken before they were written; and while they were unfixed by any visible signs, must have been spoken with great diversity [...] The powers of the letters, when they were applied to a new language, must have been vague and unsettled [...]

From this uncertain pronunciation arise in a great part the various dialects of the same country, which will always be observed to grow fewer, and less different, as books are multiplied; and from this arbitrary representation of sounds by letters proceeds that diversity of spelling observable in the Saxon remains, and I suppose in the first books of every nation, which perplexes or destroys analogy, and produces anomalous formations, which, being once incorporated can never be afterward dismissed or reformed.

Of this kind are the derivatives *length* from *long*, *strength* from *strong*, *darling* from *dear*, *breadth* from *broad*, from *dry*, *drought*, and from *high*, *height*, which Milton, in zeal for analogy, writes highth. ‘Quid te exempta juvat spinis de pluribus una?’ To change all would be too much, and to change one is nothing.


77)
The villagers were quite astonished that we simple soldiers could all speak more or less fluent French. The circumstance gave rise to the occasional droll incident. Once, for instance, I was at the village barber’s with Clement, when one of the waiting Frenchmen called out in his thick Champagne accent to the barber, who was just shaving Clement: ‘Eh, coupe la gorge avec!’ complete with sawing motions at his throat.

To his horror, Clement calmly replied: ‘Quant a moi, j’aimerais mieux la garder,’ showing the kind of sang-froid that a warrior ought to have.

[*]


78)
A little bell rang, then the elevator said, “Yonjūsan kai.”
Graham glanced at the glowing numbers above the door. “Can you believe that shit?”
“Yonjūyon kai,” the elevator said. “Mōsugu de gozaimasu.”
“What'd it say?”
“‘We’re almost at the floor.’”
“Fuck," Graham said. “If an elevator’s going to talk, it should be English. This is still America.”
“Just barely,” Connor said, staring out at the view.
“Youjūgo kai,” the elevator said.
The door opened.


79)
The floor swayed like the floating raft at the beach and the stitches on the inside of his thigh bit into his flesh like fine sets of fish teeth as he limped across the aisle to peruse the name on the temperature card on the foot of Dunbar’s bed, but sure enough, Dunbar was right: he was not Dunbar any more but Second Lieutenant Anthony F. Fortiori.


80)
Nights run. Tes yeux bizarres me suivent
when loth at landfall soft I leave.
The soldiers, Coleridge Rilke Poe,
shout commands I never heard.
They march about, dying and absurd.
Toddlers are taking over. O

ver!

81)
The devastation of Dresden was boundless. When Goethe as a young student visited the city, he still found sad ruins: “Von der Kuppel der Frauenkirche sah ich diese leidigen Trummer zwischen die schone stadtische Ordnung hineingesat; da ruhmte mir der Kuster die Kunst des Baumeisters, welcher Kirche und Kuppel auf einen so unerwunschten Fall schon eingerichtet und bombenfest erbaut hatte. Der gute Sakristan deutete mir alsdann auf Ruinene nach allen Seiten und sagte bedenklich lakonisch: Das hat der Feind gethan!”


82)
She woke while he was dressing. He pulled on his boots and crossed to the bedside and sat and put his hand against her cheek and smoothed her hair. She turned sleepily and looked up at him. The candles in their holders had burned out and the bits of wick lay blackened in the scalloped shapes of wax.

Tienes que irte?

Sí.

Vas a regressar?

Sí.

She studied his eyes to see if he spoke the truth. He leaned and kissed her.

Vete con Dios, she whispered.


83)
“Let us sit here, and look on, as though in a dream. For it is like a dream to me, that we are sitting like this — *comme un rêve singulièrement profond, car il faut dormir très profondément pour rêver comme cela. Je veux dire — c’est un rêve bien connu, rêvé de tout temps, long, éternel, oui, être assis près de toi comme à présent, voilà l’éternité*.”

“*Poète!*” she said. “*Bourgeois, humaniste, et poète — voilà l’allemand au complet, comme il faut!*”

[*]


84)
At last Mr Pedigree shut the door but did not look at Matty. Instead, he began to move restlessly round the room, muttering half to himself and half to the boy. He said the most terrible thing in the world was thirst and that men had all kinds of thirst in all kinds of desert. All men were dypsomaniacs. Christ himself had cried out on the cross, “ΔιΨάω.” The thirsts of men were not to be controlled so men were not to blame for them. To blame men for them would not be fair, that was where Ghastly was wrong, the foolish and beautiful young thing, but then he was too young to understand.


85)
“You reasoned it out beautifully,” I exclaimed in unfeigned admiration. “It is so long a chain, and yet every link rings true.”

“It saved me from ennui,” he answered, yawning. “Alas! I already feel it closing in upon me. My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so.”

“And you are a benefactor of the race,” said I.

He shrugged his shoulders. “Well, perhaps, after all, it is of some little use,” he remarked. “‘L’homme c’est rien — l’oeuvre c’est tout,’ as Gustave Flaubert wrote to George Sand.”

86)
Suddenly Woundwort spoke.

“Thlayli,” he said, “why do you want to throw your life away? I can send one fresh rabbit after another into this run if I choose. You’re too good to be killed. Come back to Efrafa. I promise I’ll give you the command of any Mark you like. I give you my word.”

“Silflay hraka, u embleer rah,” replied Bigwig.


87)
“Is that paid for?” (The box of a hundred cabinet Partagas on the sideboard.) “Or those?” (A dozen frivolous, new books on the table.) “Or those?” (A Lalique decanter and glasses.) “Or that peculiarly noisome object?” (A human skull lately purchased from the School of Medicine, which, resting in a bowl of roses, formed, at the moment, the chief decoration of my table. It bore the motto Et in Arcadia ego inscribed on its forehead.)

“Yes,” I said, glad to be clear of one charge. “I had to pay cash for the skull.”


88)
The birds are singing in the yellow patios,
Pecking at more lascivious rinds than ours,
From sheer Gemüthlichkeit.


89)
As they talked, an incredible solution came into Lucy’s mind. She rejected it, and said: “How like Charlotte to undo her work by a feeble muddle at the last moment.” But something in the dying evening, in the roar of the river, in their very embrace warned them that her words fell short of life, and George whispered: “Or did she mean it?”

“Mean what?”

“Signorino, domani faremo uno giro — ”

Lucy bent forward and said with gentleness: “Lascia, prego, lascia. Siamo sposati.”

“Scusi tanto, signora,” he replied in tones as gentle and whipped up his horse.

“Buona sera — e grazie.”

“Niente.”

The cabman drove away singing.

“Mean what, George?”

He whispered: “Is it this? Is this possible? I’ll put a marvel to you . . . ”


90)
For us, however, whom a Destiny has placed in this Culture and at this moment of its development — the moment when money is celebrating its last victories, and the Caesarism that is to succeed approaches with quiet, firm step — our direction, willed and obligatory at once, is set for us within narrow limits, and on any other terms life is not worth the living. We have not the freedom to reach to this or to that, but the freedom to do the necessary or to do nothing. And a task that historic necessity has set will be accomplished with the individual or against him.

*Ducunt Fata volentem, nolentem trahunt.*

[*]

91)
Why prolong the painful scene? — Joe Washford was tried — Joe Washford was convicted — Joe Washford was hanged!!

The fearful black gibbet, on which his body clanked in its chains to the midnight winds, frowns no more upon Orlestone Hill; it has sunk beneath the encroaching hand of civilization; but there it might be seen late in the last century, an awful warning to all bald-pated gentlemen how they wear, or accept, the old wig of a Special Attorney,

Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes!


92)
Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee. He smiled and stood before a bar with a shining steam pressure coffee machine.

“What’s yours?” asked the barman.

“Nada.”

“Otro loco más,” said the barman and turned away.


93)
Ach! those breaks and runs and sudden leaps from darkness into light and back again — from earth to heaven! . . . those slurs and swoops and slides à la Paganini from one note to another, like a swallow flying! . . . or a gull! Do you remember them? how they drove you mad? Let any other singer in the world try to imitate them — they would make you sick! That was Svengali . . . he was a magician!

And how she looked, singing! do you remember? her hands behind her — her dear, sweet, slender foot on a little stool — her thick hair lying down all along her back! And that good smile like the Madonna’s so soft and bright and kind! Ach! *Bel ucel di Dio*! it was to make you weep for love, merely to see her (*c’était à vous faire pleurer d’amour, rien que de la voir*)! That was Trilby! Nightingale and bird-of-paradise in one!


94)
. . . . I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
*Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam ceu chelidon* — O swallow swallow
*Le Prince d'Aquitaine à la tour abolie*
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
. . . . Shantih shantih shantih


95)
‘ . . . D———, at Vienna, once did me an evil turn, which I told him, quite good-humouredly, that I should remember. So, as I knew he would feel some curiosity in regard to the identity of the person who had outwitted him, I thought it a pity not to give him a clue. He is well acquainted with my MS., and I just copied into the middle of the blank sheets the words —

“ ——— Un dessein si funeste,
S’il n’est digne d’Atrée, est digne de Thyeste.”

They are to be found in Crébillon’s “Atrée”.’

96)
Esmé stood up. ‘*Il faut qu je parte aussi*,’ she said, with a sigh. ‘Do you know French?’


97)
His eyes were closed — the dark red flush was still on his brow. As they looked on him in astonishment, the eyes opened — but they were fixed and glazed. The flush passed from his brow, and gave way to the pallid hue of death. Unscathed by the lance of his enemy, he had died a victim to the violence of his own contending passions.

“This is indeed the judgment of God,” said the Grand Master, looking upwards — “‘Fiat voluntas tua!’”


98)
It was the finale of the night: resuming their pipes; in the highest enthusiasm, amid volumes of tobacco-smoke; triumphant, cloud-capt without and within, the assembly broke up, each to his thoughtful pillow. *Bleibt doch ein echter Spass- und Galgen-vogel*, said several; meaning thereby that, one day, he would probably be hanged for his democratic sentiments. *Wo steckt doch der Schalk?* added they, looking round: but Teufelsdrockh had retired by private alleys, and the Compiler of these pages beheld him no more.


99)
Maid of Athens, ere we part,
Give, oh give me back my heart!
Or, since that has left my breast,
Keep it now, and take the rest!
Hear my vow before I go,
Ζωή μου, σᾶς ἀγαπῶ.


100)
The dog suddenly sat up with a jerk. It threw its head back, its ears flattened and its nose in the air, and gave a low whine.

‘Hush, Passup,’ said Miss Malin, who had learned its name from the fishermen.

She took one of the actor's hands in hers. ‘Wait a moment,’ she said softly, so as not to waken the sleepers. ‘I want to tell you. I, too, was once a young girl. I walked in the woods and looked at the birds, and I thought: how dreadful that people shut up birds in cages. I thought: if I could so live and so serve the world that after me there should never again be any birds in cages, they should all be free — ’

She stopped and looked toward the wall. Between the boards a strip of fresh deep blue was showing, against which the little lamp seemed to make a red stain. The dawn was breaking.

The old woman slowly drew her fingers out of the man’s hand, and placed one upon her lips.

‘*À ce moment de sa narration,*’ she said, ‘*Scheharazade vit paraître le matin, et, descrète, se tut.*’

File: Blossom.jpg (229 KB, 900x1200)

229 KB JPG

13) Confessions of an English Opium Eater
17) The Call of Cthulu
19) Robert Burns giving us a taste of Scots, but I don't recall if this poem has a title.
25) I shall guess Nabokov's Ada solely based on the last name.
27) Ulysses? I know that Sinn Fein is the name of a political party, but I don't know how it translates.
29) Dune
39) One of the Jeeves stories. My rusty memory of Latin would suggest that "fons et origo" translates as "source and origin".
48) Bohemian Rhapsody
58) Lord of the Rings (trying to open the door of Moria?)
73) Wilfred Owen on the topic of WWI ("it is sweet and proper to die for one's country")

23. Gravity's Rainbow
41. J R

>>23306863
1 - that Anthony Burgess novel. Heavenly something?
20 - Master and Commander
t. book reader and therefore recognizer

81. Slaughterhouse 5 i'm guessing

File: Quite Right!.gif (471 KB, 300x164)

471 KB GIF

>>23307310

A fine 10/10 here plus a 10/10 duck.


>13) Confessions of an English Opium Eater
Thomas de Quincey. The Greek just means "cure-all" or "universal medicine".

>17) The Call of Cthulu
H. P. Lovecraft. “In his house at R‘lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”

>19) Robert Burns giving us a taste of Scots, but I don't recall if this poem has a title.
It's “To A Mouse”. “Gang aft agley” = “Goes oft awry” which isn’t a million miles from English.

>25) I shall guess Nabokov's Ada solely based on the last name.
Right. Ada doesn’t think much of D. because Nabby didn’t, I think.

>27) Ulysses? I know that Sinn Fein is the name of a political party, but I don't know how it translates.
Right. ‘Bloom’ providing a useful clue of course. "Sinn Fein" = "We ourselves". "amain" = "alone".

>29) Dune
Right, Frank Herbert.

>39) One of the Jeeves stories. My rusty memory of Latin would suggest that "fons et origo" translates as "source and origin".
Right. It's Joy in the Morning. Jeeves brought up a Latin phrase earlier that Bertie didn't undertand, so he's echoing him.

>48) Bohemian Rhapsody
Right, bit of a curveball. It means "By the grace of Allah", I believe.

>58) Lord of the Rings (trying to open the door of Moria?)
Correct. Quenya Elvish I think.

>73) Wilfred Owen on the topic of WWI ("it is sweet and proper to die for one's country")
Right. Horace wrote the original that he's mocking.

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>>23307375

>23. Gravity's Rainbow
Correct.

>41. J R
Right. William Gaddis. A well-known strategy for bluffing your way past ticket-collection.

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>>23307740

>1 - that Anthony Burgess novel. Heavenly something?
Correct, more or less. It's the AB novel famous for having this first line (although not famous for much else). "Earthly Powers". "There are two; the chaplain as well" the guy says.

>20 - Master and Commander
Patrick O'Brien, right. Stephen is of course too polite to point out that "putain" = "whore".

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>>23309105

>81. Slaughterhouse 5 i'm guessing
Correct. Apparently when Kurt Vonnegut was captured in WWII he became a de facto leader for the prisoners because he could speak a little German.

>>23306902
>30)
Shogun

>>23309314
Oh and the bonus translation
Here you go. Mr. Anjin, what is it?
Everything Funijo. Sorry. Yes. Sorry. It's a surprise but I'm truly happy to have met you.
Thank you.

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>>23309314
>30)
>Shogun
Right. Poor Fujiko, she just wants to die honourably and she has to keep marrying people and stuff.

>>23306855
Not playing but I have a game based around the Bible story

>>23309355
I hope it involves building a fine tower like the elaborate mechanical contraption in Mousetrap.

Bump.

>>23306863
1. Earthly Powers by Burgess ["There are two. His chaplain too.]
>>23306880
15. Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence ["Of course he understands Italian, he hasn't (something), the language of his Mamma. (...) Look, the good boy, how he is superb, this one!]
>>23306891
19. Robert Burns ["go oft astray"]
>>23306902
27. Ulysses by Joyce
>>23306925
48. Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen
>>23306931
54. Middlemarch by George Eliot ["There is something for all tastes"]
>>23306937
64. Robert Greene ["Jack-of-all-trades"]
65. The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth [(not even attempting)]
>>23306947
73. Wilfred Owen
>>23306966
94. The Waste Land by Eliot
>>23306971
98. Sartor Resartus by Carlyle [He remains still a real something fun and gallows-bird ... Where sticks the rogue?" (? - overly literal translation)

>>23306863
>5)
This is definitely a James Bond novel by Iam Flemming. Not sure which but he's ordering a drink so I will wager it's the first James Bond book establishing Bond's preferred beverage
>>23306937
>61)
This might be cheating since I don't recognize the quote and am going of your hints but Mandarin appears only once so it must be here. And Amy Tan is the author you listed who would be the Chinese rep. And Amy Tan only has written of note The Joy Luck Club.
So through sheer power of deduction I have reached my answer

>>23306855
I won the linguistic lottery by having English be my native language. The only babble I have to worry about is when I'm in a line and the teller and the people ahead of me are ESLs.

>>23306925
50 is also from one of Samuel Johnson's essays, I'm guessing

I'm going to say 12) is e e cummings because it is all capital letters and I'd find it funny if you wrote the mister no capitalized letters quote in all caps

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>>23311352

All correct although others already named them:

>1. Earthly Powers by Burgess ["There are two. His chaplain too.]
>19. Robert Burns ["go oft astray"]
>27. Ulysses by Joyce
>48. Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen
>73. Wilfred Owen


Correct and you got there first:

>15. Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence ["Of course he understands Italian, he hasn't (something), the language of his Mamma. (...) Look, the good boy, how he is superb, this one!]
What a bitch Hermione is. Based on some woman DHL knew, I think.

>54. Middlemarch by George Eliot ["There is something for all tastes"]
Right.

>64. Robert Greene ["Jack-of-all-trades"]
Right. He’s not known for much but ‘upstart crow’ these days.

>65. The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth
Correct.
>[(not even attempting)]
It's just a hundred synonyms for ‘whore’, haha.

>94. The Waste Land by Eliot
Right.
Italian (Dante) = "Then he entered the refining fire"
French (Nerval)= "The Prince at the abolished tower"
and Sanskrit prayer for peace. Plus a line from the Spanish Tragedy.
He really was a ‘cut-and-paste man’ (how James Joyce described himself, IIRC).

>98. Sartor Resartus by Carlyle [He remains still a real something fun and gallows-bird ... Where sticks the rogue?" (? - overly literal translation)
Right. T.C. was the big German enthusiast. “Close your Byron and open your Goethe!”

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>>23311403

>5)
>This is definitely a James Bond novel by Iam Flemming. Not sure which but he's ordering a drink so I will wager it's the first James Bond book establishing Bond's preferred beverage
Correct, it’s Casino Royale, but it’s not quite his ‘signature drink’. In the films that’s a vodka martini, ‘shaken but not stirred’, of course, but in the books he most often has whisky and soda. This drink is his own invention, a variant on a martini, which he names the ‘Vesper’ (after the girl in the book, Vesper Lynd). You never hear about it again. Probably he stops drinking it because of the tragic memories .
The expression means something like ‘But we won't bugger fleas’.

>61)
>This might be cheating since I don't recognize the quote and am going of your hints but Mandarin appears only once so it must be here. And Amy Tan is the author you listed who would be the Chinese rep. And Amy Tan only has written of note The Joy Luck Club.
>So through sheer power of deduction I have reached my answer
Correct. The whole theme of the Joy Luck Club is these half-caring half-tyrannical Chinese “tiger mothers”.

>>23311455

>50 is also from one of Samuel Johnson's essays, I'm guessing
Incorrect. Similar style I guess, because similar period.

>>23312066
>I'm going to say 12) is e e cummings because it is all capital letters and I'd find it funny if you wrote the mister no capitalized letters quote in all caps
Incorrect but that's not a bad idea. I've always honoured his wishes to have his name written in lower-case but it's beginning to seem a bit pretentious. Might be about time to give him a good dose of caps lock.

>>23306855
>4
Risking outing myself as a pleb who doesn't recognize poetic style, I'm guessing this is from Pound's Cantos.
>12
Lonesome Dove
>17
Lovecraft
>20
Hemingway?
>22
Divine Comedy. Nimrod, if I remember correctly.
>27
Ulysses
>29
Dune
>50
Montaigne
>58
The Fellowship of the Ring
>90
The Decline of the West
>94
The Waste Land

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>>23312841

Correct but others already got them:

>17
>Lovecraft

>27
>Ulysses

>29
>Dune

>58
>The Fellowship of the Ring

>94
>The Waste Land


Incorrect:
>20
>Hemingway?
Already ID’d as Patrick O’Brien.


New territory:

>4
>Risking outing myself as a pleb who doesn't recognize poetic style, I'm guessing this is from Pound's Cantos.
Pound, yes. Cantos, no.

>12
>Lonesome Dove
Correct. Gus’s sign for the ranch. “A grape ripens when it sees another grape”, or something (it’s a bit garbled). Not sure what that means. (Neither is anyone in the book.)

>22
>Divine Comedy. Nimrod, if I remember correctly.
Correct, Inferno. Incomprehensible babbling (like Pluto’s earlier).

>50
>Montaigne
Nope. (Montaigne will have a [*] since he wrote in French.)

>90
>The Decline of the West
Correct, Spengler. The very end of the second volume, so not reached by many. It's Seneca IIRC. “Fate drags us unwilling”. He says something very similar in “The Hour Of Decision”.

Bump
Waiting on the pity hints

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>>23314306
>hints

There are lots of helpful character names. (Inevitable if we don’t want to mutilate the excerpts with redaction, given that the D.F.L.s are often being spoken.)

Unusual names are a dead giveaway (7, 9, 33, 42, 44, 60, 70, 79, 86, 93). Everyday names can be famous characters, sometimes even title drops (28, 37, 56, 96).

I also just noticed #37 should be marked [*] as it was originally written in German.


These I think are tricky:

6 — A long non-fiction work. Being in translation (extra hint: from German) doesn't help.
21 — Short story. Moderately obscure author, and not one of his best-known works either.
46 — An essay by a man who wrote dozens of them but gets overlooked these days.
55 — A much-praised-but-little-read Arabian travel book by one of those mad English adventurers (a sort of Richard Burton / T. E. Lawrence character). The weird archaic English is misleading — it sounds a couple of centuries older than it is.
57 — A modern novel by a w***n.

>>23315773
>86)
Oh Watership Down. Obvious as hell now with the rabbits dying in battle.

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>>23315869

>86)
>Oh Watership Down
Correct. ‘Lapin’ is the language. “Eat shit you f***ing dictator” is more-or-less what he says.