This is a tough one.
Three well-known European writers – call them A, B, and C -- are linked, in different ways, to the same city X, a city which for centuries has been under Muslim rule. A was not aware of the work of B or C. B was aware of the work of A and C. C was aware of the work of B but not of A. Both B and C are much more famous in their respective countries than is A in the country with which he is identified. A and B both died young, and tragically (in the less strict, modern sense of that adverb). C’s death, too, could not be called an easy one.A contestant should attempt to:
1. Name that city X.
2. Name A, B, and C.
3. Describe the connections of A, B., and C to that same city X.
4. Supply as much detail as possible about A, B, and C, especially what B knew about A and C, what C knew about B, and why A did not know about B or C.To be considered, e-mailed entries must be received by midnight on the Ides of March. That applies to every contestant -- yes, you too, Brutus, you too.
Question for Hugh,
Your instructions are a little ambiguous as to whether the three writers are themselves linked to the Muslim period of the city. As you have phrased the question, they could, for example, be three Hellenistic period writers all linked to a city that, relative to us in the 20th Century, has been under Muslim rule for centuries. Probably you meant to indicate three writers who themselves lived when the city had been under Muslim rule for centuries, but from the phrasing of the question it's a little ambiguous. Would you be so kind as to clarify?
Do the writers' names begin with A, B, and C? In that case, they are obviously Aristophanes, Blake, and Chesterton, which leads me to the inescapable conclusion that the city X must be Xanadu.
Where do I collect my prize? :)
Professor Plum did it in the conservatory with the lead pipe!
The city is almost certainly Alexandria; if I am wrong, other not unlikely candidates would be Oran (birhplace of Albert Camus) and Jerusalem. Numerous Western poets are linked with Alexandria, including Callimachus, Lykophron and Apollonios of Rhodes - none of whom, so far as I am aware, died young - and the Roman prefect Gallius, the friend of Virgil, who did die relatively young and in tragic circumstances, being found to have plotted against Octavian and suffering damnatio memoriae, so that all his poems are now lost. Again, we have the Egyptian Claudian near the end of the pagan age, who, amazingly, wrote in Latin; and in the modern age, Ungaretti and Cafavy. The problem is that none of the poets I mentioned, so far as I can remember, died particularly young. If it is Jerusalem that we are talking about, then one of the poets who died young and tragically could be Torquato Tasso, author of an epic on the First Crusade and who died insane at 41.
Other than that, the likeliest single candidate is New Rome (Constantinople, Istanbul), but in that case, I do not remember any major European poetic figure connected with the city.
Shy Guy: My thoughts exactly!
A x B
______ = X
C
or would that be:
A x B x C = X
Flash back 30 years: Nun hits hand with ruler for not paying attention....ouch
There was a beginning but you cannot see it.
There will be an end but you cannot see it.
They will not turn their faces toward you though you call,
Who pace a logic merciless as light,
Whose law is their long shadow on the grass,
Sun at the back; who pace, pass
And passing nod in that glacial delirium
While the tight sky shudders like a drum
And speculation rasps its idiot nails
Across the dry slate where you did the sum.
The answer is in the back of the book but the page is gone.
And Grandma told you to tell the truth but she's dead.
And heedless, their hairy faces fixed
Beyond your call or question now, they move
Under the infatuate weight of their wisdom,
Precious but for the preciousness of their burden,
Sainted and sad and sage as the hairy ass, these who bear
History like bound faggots, with stiff knees;
And breath the immaculate climate where
The lucent leaf is lifted, land fingered, by not breeze,
Rapt in the fabulous complacency of fresco, vase or frieze
-Robert Penn Warren "The Ballad of Billy Potts"
When faced with a daunting question like this, a student has 3 general options.
1. Leave it blank. Don't even try.
2. Try to b.s. an answer for partial credit. Often possible on essay questions if one can call into question the nature of the question itself. Best executed with the whole nine-yards of post-modern gobbledygook.
Then, this question would depend on the definition of "city," and "writer." And "Europe."
Is Europe a place or a state of mind? Does this list include women? Descartes would say "yes," if they think they are. Indian philosopher Nagarjuna (token multicultural reference) would say none exist in the first place: Neither they, nor I, nor Hugh. Therefore, the question is moot, but I want full credit anyway.
3. A variant of #1: Vent one's frustration with being stumped by being a smartass.
A = Rip Taylor. B = 3.141592653. C = Harland Sanders. X = Cacapoopoopeepeeshire.
"Your instructions are a little ambiguous as to whether the three writers are themselves linked to the Muslim period of the city."
-- from a posting above
The instructions, carefully worded, need no amplification. I did not intend to indicate whether the period in which each of those three writers can be linked to that city X was when that city X was under Muslim rule, or not.
One more time: There is a city X. For a considerable period of its existence that city has been under Muslim rule. Three European writers are linked to that city in different ways, and linked to each other as well (or, rather, A and B have a connection, B and C have a connection, but A and C do not). B and C are much more famous in the countries with which they are identified than is A. Identify city X, writers A, B, and C, the nature of their links both to city X and to each other.
The answer is trivial, but the question clearly is a clever, treacherous, Muslim trap. I therefore stand mute.
Hugh wrote: "The instructions, carefully worded, need no amplification."
Then he proceeds to provide amplification.
I'm smirking like a chimpanzee.
Uh, Prize? What's in it for me, huh?
Otherwise, I'll just post my answer here.
I think the city is Constantinople, now Instanbul, formerly Byzantium.
The writers are
1 Anna Comnena, who wrote the Alexiad a biography of her father the Emporer Alexis Comnenus in 1148 (ish), and an account of the Crusaders in Constantinople which gives her the claim to be the first known and formal woman historian.
2 Umberto Eco who is connected to Anna by being a medaeiaval historian himself and who tranlated into English the work Constantinople by the Italian writer
3 Edmondo de Amicis whose work I am not familiar with. But I believe he wrote a popular children's book.
Otherwise I doubt that Terry Pratchett is involved anywhere.
I'm wrong.
I overloked the tragic early death factor.
Oops!
GW,
Terry Pratchett is involved everywhere.
Should I post my guess?
"he [De Amicis] wrote a popular children's book..."
-- from a posting, proferring an answer to the Spring 2006 Contest, above
Very popular. "Il Cuore." And he did write books on various exotic places, including one on "Constantinople."
As for Umberto Eco, he is many things, but not a medieval historian. He plays with bits and pieces of history for the purposes of his fiction. This is not sufficient to link him either to Anna Comnena or to Constantinople (Istanbul).
As for Eco's connection to De Amicis, as far as I know he has written several essays on De Amicis and il libro deamicisiano, but did not translate "Il Cuore" into English. When it comes to children's literature, Eco is most famous for his minimal diary entries on the celebrated Charlie Brown, and Lucy, and Snoopy. For several decades Charlie Brown and other creations of Charles Schulz were imprinted on the notebooks and the consciousnesses of small Italian children. In his popular variant on what Barthes's "Mythologies"- taking the things of everyday life -- olive oil, fashion advertisements, roadside stands, Mickey Mouse, and then subjecting them to highfalutin' (is there another kind?) of analysis, Eco famously took such themes as the long-lived Mike Bongiorno, mursery rhymes ("tre civette sul como'/che facevano l'amore/Con la figlia del dottore/Amberabaci-ci-coco," Tex Willer and the amazing appeal, to Italian schoolchildren, of thoroughly American (or were they?) characters -- Lucy, Snoopy, and Charlie Brown.
Anna Comnena's "Alexiad" (which can be obtained easily in the Penguin translation by E.R.A. (not Equal Rights Amendment) Sewter, is conclusive evidence of that writer's connection to Constantinople. But in what way is she, Anna Comnena, that Aphra Behn of the Black Sea, linked either to De Amicis or to Eco? Was there special mention of her by De Amicis in "Constantinople"? Did Eco use details from her "Alexiad" in any of his books? And while Anna Comnena and De Amicis are safely dead, Eco is alive and writing.
There is one more thing. Each of the three writers, the question's careful phrasing tells us, is to be identified with a particular national literature ("each of their respective countries" etc.). That means Eco and De Amicis cannot be two of the three.
The answer you suggested is imaginative but is not the correct one.
Well, since you asked...
All of this is based on a skritchy memory, but I concur with Granny on Constantinople as the site in question, but suggest instead Lord Byron, Shelley and Schiller. I won't BS on the connections, I can't remember them well at the moment, but IIRC, they all took a dip in the Hellespont, one drowned in it, another drowned elsewhere, and Schiller died of TB at 38.
What's damnable is that a recent article in New Criterion seemed to cover just such a concatenation of early 19th c. poets and Constantinople, but I can't recall a bit of it.
I hereby submit to my public humiliation.
I throw away my attempts at an answer, and range myself behind Longtime Lurker's. S/he seems to have got at least much closer to a likely response than my rather desperate fumblings. I do however have this to say, Hugh: behind the mani-faceted personality known as Paolo lies, among other things, a comics fan. Charles M.Schulz was a genius, and PEANUTS one of the greatest comics strips ever written. What Professor Eco (whose marvellous medieval novels, by the way, really ought to be read in the original Italian) had to say or not about them has neither much nor little to do with the fact that it is one of the many, many pieces of our great Western artistic heritage that must be defended from the new Vandals of Arabia at any cost.
"What's damnable is that a recent article in New Criterion seemed to cover just such a concatenation of early 19th c. poets and Constantinople, but I can't recall a bit of it."
-- from a posting above
If there is such an article, I am unaware of it.
but suggest instead Lord Byron, Shelley and Schiller
Which is one of the same points I overlooked; Byron and Shelly would both count as English.
Perhaps Byron,(or Shelly) Schiller and AN Other.
I give New Criterion credit for it, but it was possibly a review in National Review or Weekly Standard. The article showed a series of links between the early Romantic poets that I had been unaware of (but which I should have been). Since New Criterion had a piece on Schiller recently, I was assuming it was that piece. The only other book I've been reading is Between the Forest and the Sea (sic) by Patrick Leigh Fermor, so I know that wasn't my source.
Granny, perhaps Dumas, Byron/Shelley and Schiller? Just thinking aloud.
Did Dumas die tragically young? Or was that just his Lady of the Camellias
No, not young, like Schiller (38, IIRC). I think we're right to focus on Constantinople, but knowing Hugh's erudition, the three writers will be Magyar, Copt and Pashto. I think I'll bow out and await the Ides of March.
"Magyar, Copt and Pashto..."
-- from a posting above
The three writers are all identified with European literatures and languages. Coptic and Pashto do not qualify.
My bad. Magyar, Catalan and Romanisch.
Except for the "young death factor"
The City could be Smyrna, Turkey.
"A" Homer
"B" Plato
"C" Theon
Theon knew of Plato's work
Plato and Theon knew of Homer's work
However - Theon lived to 65 and Plato to 81,
KnightHawk
A = Al Tabari
B = Sirat Rasul Allah
C = Ibn Rushd
Hugh:
"a city which for centuries has been under Muslim rule"
Since you use "has" in present tense, we can assume the city is CURRENTLY under Muslim rule, eliminating any city in Spain or the European Balkans?
I try to connect Voltaire with Alexandria via his 'Candide', in Chapters XI & XII: The Old Woman's Story, when she is sold as a slave to Alex.
The other connections to Alex could be Kavafis and Durrrell, but the problem is that Voltaire died quit happy at 90 or something like that, so this thing does not work so far.
From the original description of the contest:
"Three well-known European writers – call them A, B, and C -- are linked, in different ways, to the same city X, a city which for centuries has been under Muslim rule."
From the First Restatement of that original description:
"One more time: There is a city X. For a considerable period of its existence that city has been under Muslim rule."
There is a Restatement 2nd of Contracts. There is no Restatement 2nd of Contests.
Dear Texasian and Ronin who are oversimple idiots.
Posted by: DefenderofIslam
___
It seems my reputation precedes me, thus I believe I will live with this compliment and not prove its validity or error by trying this one, yet.
Hugh wrote a cultural and historical archetype not a question.
Don't know the writers, but my first guess was Cordova/Granada in Spain. However, going by Hugh's re-statement, it seems like that city still is Muslim.
I surrender.
1. Constantinople.
Hugh’s wording suggests that city X remains within Islamic control so that would exclude cities like Jerusalem, Granada, Cordoba, Palermo, Syracuse, etc. Alexandria and Antioch are other possibilities but given that they have been under Muslim rule for 1300+ years I hope Hugh would have used a term like “millennia” rather than “centuries” to describe the duration of their time within Dar al Islam. Constantinople, of course, has been under Muslim (Ottoman) rule for a mere 550+ years.
Regarding the three European writers, my hunch is that they fall somewhere between the Enlightenment and the Twentieth Century. It seems unlikely that the three writers are ancient Greeks or Romans, who may be European in a geographic sense, but really are not so in a cultural sense--to label writers like Sophocles or Virgil as European is an anachronism. I suppose Hugh could be referring to medieval or modern writers, but if so I'm on the wrong track.
2. A = ???, B = Lord Byron, C = Adam Mickiewicz.
3 and 4. I’m stumped on A and don’t have time to do any more research into who he might be so I’m submitting an incomplete guess. Initially, I considered Bryon as A and Pushkin as B. Bryon (1788-1824) traveled to city X in 1810 during his Grand Tour and also died young and tragically at Missolonghi while preparing to fight for Greek independence against the Ottomans based, of course, in city X. Additionally, Byron was enormous on the Continent but less so at home. Pushkin (1799-1837) is tied to city X through his maternal great-grandfather, Ibrahim Petrovich Gannibal, an Abyssinian who was enslaved by the Ottoman sultan in city X before being brought to Russia. Pushkin, the national poet of Russia, died young and tragically in a duel. Mickiewicz (1798-1855) is the national poet of Poland. He died of a cholera epidemic in city X while trying to raise a Polish legion for the Crimean War.
Unfortunately, the above system breaks down because Mickiewicz (C) knew of and was inspired by Byron (A). Another potential candidate for C is Yeats, who wrote at least two poems on Byzantium (city X’s first name), but he, too, was well aware of Byron.
I tried reversing Bryon and Pushkin, making the Russian A and the Anglo-Scot B, but while Byron could conceivably fit as B, Pushkin does not match A—-he is hugely popular in his own country and should have been aware of Byron if not also Mickiewicz.
Given that A knows nothing of B and C, it seems likely that he predates the other two writers. The other possibility is that he lived in a provincial or confined setting, which would have made knowledge of B and C more challenging. This scenario, though, seems less likely. Marlowe, Wilmot (Earl of Rochester), Keats, Shelley, and Lermontov all died young and tragically, but they don’t qualify for other obvious reasons. Am I overlooking a lesser Continental writer? I don’t know. Again, I’m stumped on A. Perhaps I’m entirely off the mark.
"Wilmot (Earl of Rochester)..."
-- from a posting above
A movie about the Earl of Rochester, starring Johnny Depp's cheekbones and John Malkovich's acting, is to be released this week.
Addendum: Perhaps Schiller is A, though dying at 45 doesn't exactly qualify as "dying young" back in 1805 even if it is tragic. I'm also not clear on the connection to city X, though perhaps he wrote of it in his history "On the Barbarian Invasions, Crusaders and Middle Ages."
Re: The Libertine.
Was that a clue or a red herring?
This is a weak link, but here is a small connection between Dumas and Istanbul:
"In the memories of a doctor named F. Maynard, which was published in 1855 by Alexandre Dumas (1803-1870), this person was said to have found Istanbul incredibly beautiful when viewed from the sea."
Also, Flaubert has a link:
"Another famous French writer to visit Istanbul during the mid 19th century was Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880). He stayed in the city in the winter of 1850 for two months and tells us about it in sentences of telegraphic brevity: the old structure he liked most was "the ivy-draped walls of the city with greenery sprouting all over-they have never been praised sufficiently". He, too, mentions the incident of the golden coins falling into the Golden Horn, as recounted by Maxime de Camp. Although he explored even the most distant corners of Istanbul, he did not write any description of the city worthy of his fame in the literary world."
Finally, given Hugh's predilection for things Italian:
"Edmondo de amicis, mentioned in the previous paragraphs, was the author of "Constantinopoli", a classic in the Italian language printed in 1874 and published in all the major languages, including Turkish."
Alas, I'm probably only muddying the waters.
"I'm probably only muddying the waters."
-- from a poster above
Muddy the waters all you want. At the end of the day, during the night, and the later at night the better, we'll still be able to walk down Gosnold to Stony Beach, and watch the noctiluca shine.
BTW, Hugh, the article I was thinking of is in the February New Criterion, on Leigh Hunt.
"Leigh Hunt..."
-- from a posting above
Author of "Abou Ben Adhem" which gives him points, and model of Harold Skimpole, which takes them away again?
I'll take a look.