The thread for small questions of references etc

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I figure we all stumble upon small things in various books that we start wondering about and can't easily look up. So, this thread is for asking about these things, be they cultural references, quotes, even the meaning of certain passages... Whatever we can think of that feels to miniscule to devote a thread to, I suppose.

Anyhoo, I'm currently reading The Man Who Was Thursday, and stumbled upon this quote that I do not know the meaning of. Any chance someone here can translate it?
"païens ont tort et Chrétiens ont droit"
It is introduced with the sentence "There clanged in his mind that unanswerable and terrible truism in the song of Roland"

While Googling for it, I stumbled upon this site too The Man Who Was Thursday - Full Text, in case someone is curious about it.

― Øystein H-O (Øystein H-O), Monday, 7 June 2004 21:29 (twenty-one years ago)

Well, it's French. A little trip over to Babelfish suggests "Pagans are wrong and Christians are right".

― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 7 June 2004 23:34 (twenty-one years ago)

Arr, found someone else to ask too, and he offered the same, so mystery solved. Thanks. After having the joy of chatting with people who've used online English->Norwegian translators, I never dare to try using one of them myself for anything practical.

― Øystein H-O (Øystein H-O), Monday, 7 June 2004 23:42 (twenty-one years ago)

Well, yeah, you have to be a bit clever to make them work out, but they're made for situations like this.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 7 June 2004 23:50 (twenty-one years ago)

From Waiting for Godot:

ESTRAGON:
What about hanging ourselves?

VLADIMIR:
Hmm. It'd give us an erection.

ESTRAGON:
(highly excited). An erection!

So, is it true?

― Fred (Fred), Tuesday, 8 June 2004 11:24 (twenty-one years ago)

Whether it's true or not, it is widely believed (then again there was also the myth that a guillotined head lived long enough to see itself drop into the basket).

"Male prisoners can sometimes have penile erections and it is claimed, even orgasms on the rope. Some say this is a myth but it is notable that in the hand-written autopsy notes of a hanging by Sir Bernard Spilsbury (a very famous pathologist) he states that there was no "seminal effusion" which implies that he had found this on occasion. The original photograph of the execution of the Lincoln conspirators in America in 1865 appears to show one of the men, Lewis Powell had an erection after he was hanged."

http://www.richard.clark32.btinternet.co.uk/hanging2.html

― Sredni Vashtar, Tuesday, 8 June 2004 15:02 (twenty-one years ago)

Cool. Thanks a lot SV :-)

― Fred (Fred), Thursday, 10 June 2004 09:42 (twenty-one years ago)

Can someone tell me what 'tocsin' means? I could look it up of course, but where's the fun in that?

― Archel (Archel), Thursday, 10 June 2004 11:19 (twenty-one years ago)

A warning, I think?

― Gregory Henry (Gregory Henry), Thursday, 10 June 2004 11:49 (twenty-one years ago)

OK that would make sense in the context.

― Archel (Archel), Thursday, 10 June 2004 12:01 (twenty-one years ago)

four months pass...

Anyone familiar with what Cato's pride might be a reference to?
I stumbled upon it in one of G.K. Chesteron's Father Brown stories, "The Secret Garden," to be exact:
"and on the blind face of the suicide was more than the pride of Cato."

― Øystein H-O (Øystein H-O), Wednesday, 13 October 2004 22:10 (twenty-one years ago)

I love this story :-) http://eserver.org/fiction/innocence/secretgarden.html
Marcus Porcius Cato (234 - 149 BC), Roman statesman, surnamed "The Censor," Sapiens, Priscus, or Major (the Elder), to distinguish him from Cato the Younger (his great-grandson), was born at Tusculum.

To Cato the individual life was a continual discipline, and public life was the discipline of the many. He regarded the individual householder as the germ of the family, the family as the germ of the state. By strict economy of time he accomplished an immense amount of work; he exacted similar application from his dependents, and proved himself a hard husband, a strict father, a severe and cruel master. There was little difference apparently, in the esteem in which he held his wife and his slaves; his pride alone induced him to take a warmer interest in his sons.

― Fred (Fred), Thursday, 14 October 2004 10:37 (twenty-one years ago)

I believe a tocsin is a kind of deep-sounding horn.

― isadora (isadora), Friday, 15 October 2004 00:22 (twenty-one years ago)

Ah, neato! Thanks, Fred.
I really should read more history, as my ignorance is getting embarrassing.

― Øystein H-O (Øystein H-O), Friday, 15 October 2004 11:19 (twenty-one years ago)

I have no memory of knowing what 'tocsin' meant! How rare.

― Gravel Puzzleworth (Gregory Henry), Saturday, 16 October 2004 01:08 (twenty-one years ago)

one month passes...

What the hell does "Do not pass, go" mean? It might be the stupidest question but it's driving me crazy.

― Fred (Fred), Thursday, 2 December 2004 16:19 (twenty years ago)

Without the comma it is an instruction from one of the cards in the game of Monopoly.

― Ken L (Ken L), Thursday, 2 December 2004 16:47 (twenty years ago)

'Go' being the name of the starting square in that game. As you pass the square in each round you collect £200. The 'go to jail' cards read: 'go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect £200'.

― Archel (Archel), Thursday, 2 December 2004 16:54 (twenty years ago)

With the comma it was David Ginola's prime directive

― Matt (Matt), Thursday, 2 December 2004 19:45 (twenty years ago)

I thought the Prime Directive was not to interfere with developing civlizations? Until the end of the show at least.

― Ken L (Ken L), Thursday, 2 December 2004 20:06 (twenty years ago)

five months pass...

I have a wee favor to ask here of anyone who has an English (or Norwegian/Swedish/Danish) translation of Balzac's Far Goriot.
Could you please post the last sentence or two?
I've just bought a paperback of it from 1928, but the front and back covers were both loose and I'm not entirely sure if the last page is in fact the last page of the novel.

― Øystein (Øystein), Wednesday, 18 May 2005 14:53 (twenty years ago)

The Gutenberg version ends:

"Henceforth there is war between us."

And by way of throwing down the glove to Society, Rastignac went to
dine with Mme. de Nucingen.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 18 May 2005 15:05 (twenty years ago)

Ahh, thank you. Hooray, my copy's got the full text then!
Barring any evil tom-foolery, that is; Norwegian translators have a long history of abridging novels without giving any hint about it.

― Øystein (Øystein), Wednesday, 18 May 2005 15:17 (twenty years ago)

Really, Øystein? Do tell.

― Ken L (Ken L), Wednesday, 18 May 2005 15:24 (twenty years ago)

A few years ago I read a Norwegian translation of Gogol's Dead Souls, and had a fine old time with it. But last year a new translation appeared in the stores, with the rather too surprising exclamation that it's the first complete Norwegian translation of the book. I went back to my father's old copy and couldn't see any references to it being abridged, which I felt was odd.
The next day I asked a librarian about it, and she told me that this is true for a good number of [old?] Norwegian translations of novels.
I didn't try to get any more information about it though, so I don't know exactly *how* common it was - or is, for that matter - nor if it's something particular to Norwegian publishers.

― Øystein (Øystein), Wednesday, 18 May 2005 15:41 (twenty years ago)

three years pass...

I have a dorky 90s-indie reference question.

- In February 1997, Saint Etienne released an EP including an instrumental called "A Slavic Beauty with a Rose Between Her Teeth"

- Also in February 1997, Pavement released a record with a song containing the lyric "Slavic princess with a rose in her teeth"

My question: is the image/wording a reference to anything in particular? (Or is it just something like, I dunno, someone from Saint Etienne hearing the song live or pre-release or something and nicking the phrase as a song title?)

― nabisco, Wednesday, 18 March 2009 18:56 (sixteen years ago)

Oh crap -- sorry, everyone, I thought I'd searched this thread up on ILE, didn't realize it was here ... any moderators can feel free to delete and I'll go ask on one of the main boards

― nabisco, Wednesday, 18 March 2009 19:00 (sixteen years ago)

It's only half your image, but in Nick Cave & Kylie Minogue's 'Where the Wild Roses Grow' (autumn '95 or thereabouts, so possibly the right time to influence these two tracks) the narrator plants a rose between the teeth of his beloved - here meaning that he smashes her face in, rather than anything seductive

― Ismael Klata, Wednesday, 18 March 2009 21:29 (sixteen years ago)

Well the rose-in-teeth bit is a common enough image, but the Slavic princess/beauty bit seems too specific to be entirely coincidental

(I took this question to ILM -- sorry again for the mispost)

― nabisco, Wednesday, 18 March 2009 21:44 (sixteen years ago)

four years pass...

Anyone know what "steam clippers" in a prison kitchen might be? The thirteenth chapter of Don Carpenter's _Hard Rain Falling_ starts out "Jack spent his mornings mopping the dining hall, feeding one of the gigantic steam clippers, scouring pots ..." (page 164 in the NYRB Classics paperback)
If our man wasn't on kitchen duty, I would have guessed it was a typo for "chipper."

It's a terrific novel, by the way.

― Øystein, Tuesday, 25 June 2013 14:29 (twelve years ago)

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