When, more than a week ago, I posted here the correct answer to the mom-and-pop quiz posted still earlier, I also made an offer to the winner, “reactionary,” that if he could find a non-obvious literary allusion in the text of that posting, he would be given the four extra points that he had been denied because of his failure to find “Rust…avelli” in the text of the post-scriptum postcard. He has not done so, so I will now post again that answer, with several allusions – but not, immediately, the right one – highlighted in bold.
Here is the original answer:
“The correct answer to that week-old mom-and-pop quiz is as follows:
The writer is Shota Rustaveli. He wrote what is now considered to be the national epic of Georgia, called “The Knight in a Tiger’s [or Leopard’s] Skin.” Rustaveli, is believed to have spent his last years in Jerusalem, the city which is the capital not of his own country, Georgia, but of another country, Israel.
[Here a Wikipedia article on Shota Rustaveli was quoted at length, but as it obviously did not contain my “non-obvious literary allusion” it need not be reprinted here]
“Reactionry” doled his winning answer out in bits and pieces. In an earlier posting he had suggested W. H. Auden but couldn’t quite make the “Letter from Iceland” become “national epic” of that land, and upon a quick consultation with the ghost of Viljalmur Stefansson must have realized his mistake. In his second, and successful, entry-post, he mentions the author-compiler of the Finnish “Kalevala,” but only to dismiss him: “Elias Lonnrot ain’t right.” He was having fun, alluding to a quiz some months ago about Longfellow and Lonnrot. Incidentally, the full-marks winner of that quiz, Paul Blaskowitz, was given credit – at first -- for having read the entire “Kalevala” in Latin. I suddenly realize I still haven’t found, and mailed to PB, the promised prize of a copy of a work slightly less-well-known than his compiled “Kalevala” – Lonnrot’s essay on education in Ostrobothnia.
“Reactionry” explains -- without telling us why -- that he googled “national epic of Georgia.” He undoubtedly googled the phrase "national epic" and "New English Review" and discovered that an expanded variant of it -- "national epic of Georgia" -- has appeared in past postings at NER. He then supplies the answers to each part of the quiz, but not all at once, and not straightforwardly, but by dropping various elements of that answer along the way.
First, he mentions the “[n]ational epic of Georgia.”
Then he supplies the name of the city, Jerusalem, obliquely and with pretend-uncertainty, by noting that the writer of that Georgian national epic lived for a time “in a Georgian monastery located in….now where was it? “Next year in Monrovia”? Nope. “Next year in Nairobi” [this lifted from a previous post by Rebecca Bynum] Nah…It’ll come to me.”
Then, alluding to still another past posting at NER, one about a quasi-Italian restaurant in Cambridge, England where “pene con crema” was advertised as the Day’s Special, he notes that at his own, invented “Buon Giorno Italia Café” he “didn't see any Rustaveli” on the menu.
And finally he supplies the author’s first name, and most of the title of that epic (enough to win the palm, the oak, the bays) in the form of a couplet:
“I Shota sorrow into the air,
It pierced a Knight in panther's hair.”
In the posting in which the mom-and-pop quiz was offered, readers were told that both the name of the country of that national epic, and the name of the city where the author of that epic had lived in later life had both been in the news. Georgia, in mid-January, had been much in the news because of its presidential election, but the incumbent's former allies, including the glamorous Salomé Zourabachvili (formerly of Paris and the French Foreign Ministry, with indiscreet conceivable billets-doux e-mailed to zourabachvili.gouv.fr), had abandoned him, and the 90% plus of the votes he had won in the previous election was reduced, in this election, to just over 50% of the votes. The city, Jerusalem, had also been in the news, even more than usual, alas, in mid-January because of proposals being considered by the Israeli government, the result of that fateful meeting in Annapolis and its heedless aftermath.
But there was also a postscriptum to that posting, containing what I regarded as the best clue of all. However, the winner apparently did not notice it. For if he had, he would certainly have found a way to mention it.
Here is that postscriptum:
[P. S.: Receipt of a postcard yesterday from a friend now travelling for two weeks in sunny southern Italy prompted this quiz. He'd been making his way slowly to Naples, had stopped for a brief rustication in Avellino, but when he fully took in the news of what has been going on in Naples, of how that fabled Parthenopean port, all pickpockets and pasta, had become -- one hopes temporarily -- a vast camorra-caused garbage dump, a regular Rifiutopoli, he changed his plans, and in the postcard he announced he'd instead turn northward. The next postcard I receive is likely to have a view of the Florentine skyline at sunset, or of the Ponte Vecchio and the corridoio vasariano in broad daylight, or of the Boboli Gardens at dewy dawn, and any one of those scenes, if that traveller up the boot plays his postcards right -- could trigger a tricky quiz similar to this one.]
Now the friend, his two weeks of travel in Italy, the news about the garbage piling up in Naples (the Parthenopean port now described as Rifiutopoli), and that friend’s hasty departure for Florence, were all made up, created for only one reason: to both contain, and disguise, the clue that I wanted to offer. Here is that clue, in the second sentence of the made-up vignette: “He’d been making his way slowly to Naples, had stopped for a brief rustication in Avellino, but when he fully took in the news of….” The sentence should have troubled, because it contains one word that is used in a slightly-off manner. That word is “rustication.” Ordinarily it was used to describe the practice of sending students at Cambridge or Oxford, whose behavior -- and more recently, whose academic performance -- left something to be desired, away from the university, and back to their families, for a time. Such students were said to be “rusticated.” The most famous student to be “rusticated” was John Milton, from Christ Church, in 1626 (I once visited a friend who lived in Milton's rooms at Christ Church, but I can't remember if they were Milton's before he was "rusticated" or after). I suppose that was why he had to offer that apology to Smectymnuus. But Dryden, Shelley (now lying statuesquely, in ci-gît marmoreal state at University College, Oxford) in the postscript to the postcard the word “rusticated” is clearly being used in a different sense, and the reader has to decide whether the writer is unaware of the word’s real meaning, or is deliberately using it as he wishes to use it, or whether that word possesses another, more general meaning, no doubt derived from the root “rus,” and was assumed to mean something like “settling for an undetermined period in a rural cot, or in rural surroundings.” Had you assumed or concluded any of that, then you might have missed the premeditated clue. But if you thought there was something untoward about that use, something that might merit further reflection, then you would re-read the sentence and find the clue: ““He’d been making his way slowly to Naples, had stopped for a brief rustication in Avellino, but when he fully took in the news of….” But no one, including the winner, did so.
The final clue was given in the same oblique fashion. Two musical interludes were put up on January 17. The first was “Daddy, Won’t You Please Come Home.” The second, “You’ve Got To See Mamma Ev’ry Night” was accompanied by a comment:
“The previous Musical Interlude was "Daddy, Won't You Please Come Home." The quiz put up, just before that Interlude, was described as "mom-and-pop." An article posted on Thursday night was called "Only Connect." All three prompted the choice of this song.”
One might have limited one’s use of that comment to the obvious: the “mom-and-pop quiz” gave rise to both the musical “Daddy” and to the musical “Mamma” amd thus we have done our bit to “Only Connect.” And my intent, to offer a clue and at the same time to to divert attention away from that offered clue, would have been fulfilled. For the performers of “You’ve Got to See Mamma Ev’ry Night (Or You Can’t See Mamma At All) were named “The Georgians.”
He was already alert to the many previous references at this website to the country of Georgia, the Georgia of the Caucasus. For example, there was. among many such postings, this one:
Une Autre Rive, Une Autre Vie [February 2006]
Nobody chose Shota Rustaveli's ??????????????(The Knight in the Panther's Skin)? ---- Mary Jackson
I have Rustaveli's national epic of Georgia, in a Soviet-era edition. But I didn't buy it - it was given to me by a Russian whose fondest memories are of Khvanchkara and Kindzmarauli, and toasts by tamadas, and "Georgian Nights." There is something unusual about this, the Georgian national epic. Care to try to guess?
And "tiger's" rather than "leopard's" skin is how the Rustaveli title should be rendered.
If you want to drag Shakespeare into this (and who doesn't?) and offer him a walk-on part, then you might go so far as to emend the second part of Robert Greene's cutting phrase and use it to translate the second part of Rustaveli's title: "wrapped in a tiger's hide."
But I don't want to be critical, corrosively or otherwise, on this occasion.
Instead, I wish to thank you for giving us the opportunity to bring the Republic of Georgia and its fine products and tourist-destination possibilities to the attention of the English-speaking world. The producers of the desert-island disque "Chansons de la Géorgie" ("ne pei, krasavitsa, pro mne...")* thank you. The Wine-Makers Association of Georgia thanks you. The Fondation Bagration thanks you. The Convention and Visitors Bureau of Greater Tbilisi thanks you. The Travel Agency of George Papashvili thanks you. The Committee to Elect Salomé Zourabachvili thanks you. The heirs and assigns of Paul Chavchavadze thank you.
A tamada's toast, a toast now, brat'ya, to....well, let's all, at least this once, hail Mary.
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*A Pushkin poem beautifully translated into French by Vladimir Nabokov decades ago, and ending, if memory agrees to serve, "ces chansons de la Géorgie/Leur amertume me rappelle/Une autre rive, une autre vie.”
Now, when “reactionry” saw that the second musical interlude was sung by “The Georgians,”he knew he was right. It did not matter that those singing “Georgians” were not the long-lived moustachioed karakul-hatted yogurt-eaters of the wild Caucasian kind, revelers sitting around the table (za stolom) as the not-impossible tamada directs the toasts, and still more Khvanchkara (Stalin’s favorite wine) is poured, but rather Georgians of the American kind, ces géorgiens-là of Peachtree Plaza and Peachtree Street and Peachtree Boulevard, the Georgians of Flannery O’Connor’s peacocks in asylum-haunted Milledgeville, the Georgians getting out of the way of Sherman when he exelaunically marched to the sea, the Georgia of “Sweet Georgia Brown” and “Two Tickets To Georgia.” “The Georgians” – that, for the winner, was the clinching clue.
In his wintry Vendée, “reactionry” receives almost full marks, a 96. Why do I deny him the last full measure of proud emotion, by begrudging him those remaining four points? In order to keep up standards, that's why. Had he discovered the “Rust…avelli” hidden in the mountebank’s postscribal patter about the contents of that non-existent postcard, and noted it, he would indeed have received that perfect score. But he didn’t.
Nonetheless, in a display of benevolence, and by way of further disproof of that silly insistence that "there are no second acts" in American life (all of American life, nowadays, appears to be full of second acts, third acts, tenth, even fifteenth acts) I will give him the chance to earn those four points. All he has to do is to identify, within a reasonable period -- et soyez raisonnable, M. Le Maistre, M. Reactionnaire! -- a certain non-obvious literary allusion that was embedded, akin to a CNN reporter in one of those superhypallagistic expeditionaryocious Bradley Fighting Vehicles, earlier, with malice aforethought, in this very posting.
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The Final Four-Possible-Points Answer To The Additional Question:
There are four literary allusions that I have highlighted in bold, and one – the correct one – that I did not put in bold enough.
The four emboldened bits are:
- “the palm, the oak, the bays.” This is an allusion to Andrew Marvell’s “The Garden,” the first stanza reads:
How vainly men themselves amaze
To win the Palm, the Oke, or Bayes;
And their uncessant Labours see
Crown'd from some single Herb or Tree,
Whose short and narrow verged Shade
Does prudently their Toyles upbraid;
While all Flow'rs and all Trees do close
To weave the Garlands of repose.
3. “wrapped in a tiger’s hide” –the Rustavelian title treated by me, with that mention to Shakespeare, as an avant-la-lettre allusion to a phrase that comes much later, in the attack on Shakespeare by Robert Greene in his “Groatsworth of Wit,” wherein he mocked Shakespeare, unnamed, in this passage:
There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.
4. “he exelaunically marched to the sea” – an allusion to a phrase in Xenophon’s “Anabasis” – Exelauno meaning “to march forth” and therefore used by classics wits to refer to March 4th. One such wit established at Roxbury Latin the tradition, some fifty years ago, of Exelaundo Day. I once heard from a Groton graduate that a similar Exelauno Day was, or still is, observed at Groton. And Exelauno Day is now observed at a few other schools, or possibly colleges, in this country.
5. “ superhypallagistic expeditionaryocious” is a jerry-built silly-season allusion to “supercalifragilistic expialodocious,” as any five-year-old will immediately recognize, in the movie (and in the book?) “Mary Poppins” by the Australian writer P. L. Travers (Helen Lyndon Goff)
Of these five literary allusions – to Marvell, Milton, Shakespeare, P. L. Travers, and to Xenophon – only the last can be said to be non-obvious. But that is not enough. The allusion here – via the suspiciously tautological adveb “exelaunically” -- requires recognition, if not knowledge, of Greek (these quizzes are hard enough, and I don’t want to make a knowledge of any foreign language, or the possession of any specialized knowledge, a prerequisite for entrants). So it is disqualified as the answer, it cannot be the “non-obvious literary allusion.”
Only one literary allusion meets the criterion of being both “non-obvious” and in English. It is contained in the following sentence:
The city, Jerusalem, had also been in the news, even more than usual, alas, in mid-January because of proposals being considered by the Israeli government, the result of that fateful meeting in Annapolis and its heedless aftermath.”
“Heedless aftermath” is a non-obvious allusion to a beautiful phrase in Robert Frost’s poem
“A Late Walk”:
When I go up through the mowing field,
The headless aftermath,
Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew,
Half closes the garden path.
And when I come to the garden ground,
The whir of sober birds
Up from the tangle of withered weeds
Is sadder than any words
A tree beside the wall stands bare,
But a leaf that lingered brown,
Disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought,
Comes softly rattling down.
I end not far from my going forth
By picking the faded blue
Of the last remaining aster flower
To carry again to you.
There, in line 2, is the “headless aftermath” which prompted my “heedless aftermath.”
And that concludes the answers to the Mom-and-Pop Quiz, and its heedful head-crammed aftermath.
