Mr Al-Khapoun's Christmas Quiz, 2001

Mr Al-Khapoun, of the Philistine/Liberace Organisation, has lost a lot of sleep lately and is in a bad mood. As usual, he is taking this out on the literary-minded, hoping that they will lose some sleep as well as they try to identify the quotations below. No fewer than five of them are in foreign languages, and in four cases Mr Al-Khapoun has appended free translations. In the fifth case that would be inappropriate. Some clues will be made available in the middle of January and the answers will be revealed at the end of January.
  1. Candidates for the degree of Bachelor of Arts were allowed credits for commercial studies; courses in book-keeping, experimental farming, domestic science, dress-making and what not. Every year the regents tried to diminish the number of credits required in science and the humanities. The liberal appropriations, the promotions and increases in salary, all went to the professors who worked with the regents to abolish the purely cultural studies. Out of a faculty of sixty, there were perhaps twenty men who made any serious stand for scholarship, and Robert Crane was one of the staunchest. He had lost the Deanship of the College of Science because of his uncompromising opposition to the degrading influence of politicians in university affairs. The honour went, instead, to a much younger man, head of the department of Chemistry, who was willing "to give the taxpayers what they wanted".

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  2. Nimm ein Thema wie das Haydnsche (Choral St. Antons), nimm den Teil einer der Brahmsschen Variationen, der dem ersten Teil des Themas entspricht, und stell die Aufgabe, den zweiten Teil der Variation in Stil ihres ersten Teiles zu konstruieren. Das ist ein Problem der Art der mathematischen Probleme. Ist die Lösung gefunden, etwa wie Brahms sie gibt, so zweifelt man nicht; - dies ist die Lösung.

    Take a theme such as Haydn's (the St Anthony chorale), and take that part of one of Brahms's variations that corresponds to the first part of the theme. The task is to construct the second part of the variation in the style of its first part. That is a problem like a mathematical problem. Once the solution is found, as for instance Brahms gives it, then there is no doubt: this is the solution.

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  3. Estaba compilando, me dijo, una copiosa antología de la obra de Baruch Spinoza, aligerada de todo ese aparato euclidiano que traba la lectura y que da a la fantástica teoría un rigor ilusorio.

    He was, he told me, compiling a large anthology of the works of Baruch Spinoza, purged of all that Euclidean machinery that impedes the reader and gives an illusory rigour to the imaginative theory.

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  4. ...there has recently been published a new and authoritatively annotated edition of the works of the philosopher Spinoza.

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  5. Non enim ad libitum, sed secundum certum et determinatum jussum legis licebat arare, seminare, metere; item nec aliquid comedere, induere, neque caput et barbam radere, neque laetari, nec absolute aliquid agere licebat nisi secundum jussa et mandata in legibus praescripta.

    Ploughing, sowing and reaping were not even freely permitted, but only according to certain laid down legal regulations. Similarly, eating anything, wearing anything, having a haircut or shave, partying or doing absolutely anything at all were not allowed except according to regulations issued in due legal form.

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  6. Rondelitius says, That at his being at Rome, he saw a great cure done by applying a Tench to the feet of a very sick man. This he says was done after an unusual manner by certain Jews. And it is observed that those people have many secrets, yet unknown to Christians; secrets that have never yet been written, but have been since the days of their Solomon (who knew the nature of all things, even from the Cedar to the Shrub) delivered by tradition from the Father to the Son, and so from generation to generation without writing, or (unless it were casually) without the least communicating them to any other Nation or Tribe: for to do that they account a profanation.

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  7.                       If it should be true that reality exists
                          In the mind: the tin plate, the loaf of bread on it,
                          The long-bladed knife, the little to drink and her

                          Misericordia, it follows that
                          Real and unreal are two in one: New Haven
                          Before and after one arrives or, say,

                          Bergamo on a postcard, Rome after dark,
                          Sweden described, Salzburg with shaded eyes
                          Or Paris in conversation at a café.

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  8. Toute opinion est assez forte pour se faire espouser au pris de la vie.

    Any belief is powerful enough to be died for.

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  9. He puts down the phone. "I am prepared to accept immediate assignment with Islam Incorporated. It seems the electronic brain went beserk playing six-dimensional chess with the Technician and released every subject in the R.C. Leave us adjourn to the roof. Operation Helicopter is indicated."

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  10.                       War, one war after another,
                          Men start 'em who couldn't put up a good hen roost.
                          Also sabotage...

                          Sabotage? Yes, he took it up to Manhattan,
                          To the big company and they said: Impossible.

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  11.      'The northern is very long; the centre, through the Hazara country, is very difficult; the way by Kandahar is very hot. We are still awaiting the young American, Winant. He set off to come here by the northern route in May'.
         'But today's the second of July.'
         'There was a Swedish nurse with him. Also he was very religious. It was a great mistake - a dangerous combination. Now we shall never see them again. In some respects it is a disagreeable country.'

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  12.                       Ed io...io sarò avvolto in un'amaca, e giù,
                          sempre più giù, in un fondo sonno sarò calato.
                          E il sonno viene. Sei tu sentinella?
                          Allenta un poco le manette, ch'io
                          mi sporga appena.
                          Ho sonno e l'alghe viscide faranno
                          Presto ad attorcigliarsi su di me.

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