Mr Al-Khapoun's Christmas Quiz, 1995

Mr Al-Khapoun's Christmas Quiz, 1995 In a drear-nighted December, Mr Al-Khapoun, of the Philistine/Liberace Organisation, likes to think of the literary-minded being gradually driven up the wall as they try to identify the quotations below, by author and, if possible, title. There are no prizes as such and it is at least as meritorious to give entertaining wrong answers as right ones. All the quotations are given in the language they were written in, and translations for the non-English ones are included, not that they are likely to be of much help. The translations are Mr Al-Khapoun's own and are neither literary nor literal, but broadly accurate. Spelling and punctuation (not necessarily capitalisation) are as given in the editions used by Mr Al-Khapoun; they may not always be those of the writer. It would be a bit much to say that the writers are all famous, but the only one who is really obscure is famous for being obscure.
  1. Near the peak there were no more trees, just rocks and grass. Cattle were grazing on the top of the coast. There was the Pacific, a few more foothills away, blue and vast and with a great wall of white advancing from the legendary potato patch where Frisco fogs are born. Another hour and it would come streaming through the Golden Gate to shroud the romantic city in white, and a young man would hold his girl by the hand and climb slowly up a long white sidewalk with a bottle of Tokay in his pocket. That was Frisco; and beautiful women standing in white doorways waiting for their men; and Coit Tower, and the Embarcadero, and Market Street, and the eleven teeming hills.

    Clue
    Answer

  2.                       Greek was free from rhyme's infection,
                          Happy Greek by this protection,
                                                                      Was not spoiled.

                          Whilst the Latin, queen of tongues,
                          Is not yet free from rhyme's wrongs,
                                                                      But rests foiled.

    Clue
    Answer

  3. At last the hymn was announced. The organ struck up, played with great feeling by a prisoner who until his conviction had been assistant organist at a Welsh cathedral.

    Clue
    Answer

  4. Un secondo di ritardo poteva essere un mese di ritardo: corsi senza risparmio, per la vita, scavalcai due siepi e lo steccato, e mi avventai sui ciottoli mobili della massicciata mentre il treno mi sfilava davanti. Il mio vagone era già passato: mani pietose si tesero verso di me dagli altri, agganciarono le cinture e il secchio, altre mani mi avvinghiarono per i capelli, le spalle, gli abiti, e mi issarono di peso sul pavimento dell'ultimo carro, dove giacqui semisvenuto per mezz'ora.

    [A second's delay might be a month's delay: I ran flat out, for my life, I vaulted two hedges and the fence, and hurled myself onto the quaking ballast as the train passed by in front of me. My car had already gone: charitable hands reached towards me from the others and hauled up the belts and the bucket, more hands clutched my hair, my shoulders, my clothes and lifted me bodily onto the floor of the last car, where I lay semiconscious for half an hour.]

    Clue
    Answer

  5. Duffill grasped the rails beside the door and as he did so the train began to move and he let go. He dropped his arms. Two train guards rushed behind him and held his arms and hustled him along the platform to the moving stairs of Car 99. Duffill, feeling the Italians' hands, resisted the embrace, went feeble, and stepped back; he made a half-turn to smile wanly at the fugitive door. He looked a hundred years old. The train was moving swiftly past his face.

    Clue
    Answer

  6. `I am at the end of my invention. My son is corrupt. He was corrupt at Harrow, he was corrupt at King's College, Cambridge. He's incorrigibly corrupt. Now that there is this drinking it is more and more obvious how he is, and there is continual scandal. I have tried everything - I worked out a plan with a doctor friend of mine, sent them together for a tour of Spain. Every evening Francisco had an injection of cantharides and then the two went together to a reputable bordello - for a week it seemed to work but the result was nothing.'

    Clue
    Answer

  7.                       Ô lâches, la voilà! dégorgez dans les gares!
                          Le soleil expia de ses poumons ardents
                          Les boulevards qu'un soir comblèrent les Barbares.
                          Voilà la Cité belle, assise à l'occident!

                          Allez! on préviendra les reflux d'incendie,
                          Voilà les quais! voilà les boulevards! voilà,
                          Sur les maisons, l'azur léger qui s'irradie,
                          Et qu'un soir la rougeur des bombes étoila.

    [Cowards! There it is! Out into the stations! The sun, with his burning lungs, has atoned for the streets that the Barbarians one evening overran. There is the beautiful City, seated in the West! Go on! We shall forestall the return of the fire. There are the docks! There are the streets! There, above the houses, is the pale shining blue that the bombs once lit red with stars.]

    Clue
    Answer

  8. Now his brother was master of the country, whether as president, dictator or even as Emperor - why not as an Emperor? - he meant to demand a share in every enterprise - in railways, in mines, in sugar estates, in cotton mills, in land companies, in each and every undertaking - as the price of his protection. The desire to be on the spot early was the real cause of the celebrated ride over the mountains with some two hundred llaneros, an enterprise of which the dangers had not appeared at first to his impatience.

    Clue
    Answer

  9. Der Diktator wünschte, daß das Land aufgeschlossen werden sollte, um es einzureihen in die Reihe der hochzivilisierten Nationen. Der Diktator einer hochzivilisierten Nation ist angesehener und seines Platzes in der Weltgeschichte sicherer als der Diktator einer Horde von Barbaren. Die Mexicaner waren nach Ansicht ihres Dikators unfähig, ihr Land selbst aufzuschließen, weil sie, wie er meinte, nicht zu arbeiten verstünden und auch nicht arbeiten wollten.

    [The dictator wanted to open up the country so as to allow it to join the ranks of the highly civilised nations. The dictator of a highly civilised nation is more admired and more certain of his place in world history than the dictator of a horde of barbarians. As the dictator saw it, the Mexicans were not capable of opening up their own country because, in his opinion, they didn't know how to work and didn't want to.]

    Clue
    Answer

  10. Allowing, therefore, this remark to be just, that Europe is become warmer than formerly; how can we account for it? Plainly by no other method than by supposing, that the land is at present much better cultivated, and that the woods are cleared, which formerly threw a shade upon the earth, and kept the rays of the sun from penetrating to it. Our northern colonies in America become more temperate in proportion as the woods are felled; but in general, every one may remark, that cold is still much more severely felt, both in North and South America, than in places under the same latitude in Europe.

    Clue
    Answer

  11.                       Rain on Rahoon falls softly, softly falling,
                          Where my dark lover lies.
                          Sad is his voice that calls me, sadly calling,
                          At grey moonrise.

                          Love, hear thou
                          How soft, how sad his voice is ever calling,
                          Ever unanswered, and the dark rain falling,
                          Then as now.

                          Dark too our hearts, O love, shall lie and cold
                          As his sad heart has lain
                          Under the moongrey nettles, the black mould
                          And muttering rain.

    Clue
    Answer

  12. The wayes to the Bath are all difficult, the town lyes low in a bottom and its steep ascents all ways out of the town; the houses are indifferent, the streets of a good size well pitched; there are severall good houses built for Lodgings that are new and adorned and good furniture, the baths in my opinion makes the town unpleasant, the aire thicke and hot by their steem, and by its situation so low, encompassed with high hills and woods.

    Clue
    Answer

masgks@bath.ac.uk