austraLasia 1458
That Mago quiz - winners and losers
ROME: 21st February 2006 - There have been some valiant responses to "Of man's first disobedience and the fruit...". (#1456). It might be worth sharing some of them.
"Mel Gibson wrote it himself": Intelligent response; 'The Passion...' does share some of the key ideas in that line, but had Gibson written it, it would have been in Aramaic or Latin.
"Shakespearean Sonnet": Which one? Tricked by the blank verse, perhaps? Besides, wouldn't it be more like "To eat, or not to eat, that is the question"?
"T.S. Eliot": No, no, way off, that's not what I meant, not what I meant at all!
"Dan Brown": What, of Da Vinci Code fame? No, he'd be giving us the telephone number of the Garden of Eden: E81, I812,
"John Steinbeck": The phrase was "loss of Eden" not "East of Eden" and the plot is Adam and Eve not Cain and Abel. But warm - Genesis is certainly a clue.
We are getting closer obviously; people were homing in on the 'good and evil' bit without much difficulty. "Genesis" was not an acceptable answer though; only the idea for the lines came from Genesis. Besides we would need the author, because Genesis is also a Rock Band, and these are not rock lyrics!. Tolkien was another bright suggestion, but no sign of Hobbits in the quoted line. Heart skipped a beat when someone wrote in with "It's from Paradise Lost. 4 seconds. Thanks Google". Ooooh, so close, but not so fast. He (from Vietnam, Japan?) forgot to mention who the author was, and there's more than one Paradise Lost - the Opera, another Rock Band, a well-known British poet!! Just goes to show, you shouldn't rely on Google for everything.
Of course, someone did write in with the correct, most complete answer saying, to be precise, "These lines seem to have been quoted from John Milton's Paradise Lost". The winner added, "No tears shed for the trip to Mago island that can never be. We shall keep our fingers crossed for Paradise Regained". This man certainly knows his literature. Milton did write the sequel to Paradise Lost, though not, as one schoolboy wag put it: "after his wife died"! The winner, by the way, is a past pupil, living in Kolkata and, I believe, a journalist.
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AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome. For RSS feeds, subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/rssala.xml
That Mago quiz - winners and losers
ROME: 21st February 2006 - There have been some valiant responses to "Of man's first disobedience and the fruit...". (#1456). It might be worth sharing some of them.
"Mel Gibson wrote it himself": Intelligent response; 'The Passion...' does share some of the key ideas in that line, but had Gibson written it, it would have been in Aramaic or Latin.
"Shakespearean Sonnet": Which one? Tricked by the blank verse, perhaps? Besides, wouldn't it be more like "To eat, or not to eat, that is the question"?
"T.S. Eliot": No, no, way off, that's not what I meant, not what I meant at all!
"Dan Brown": What, of Da Vinci Code fame? No, he'd be giving us the telephone number of the Garden of Eden: E81, I812,
"John Steinbeck": The phrase was "loss of Eden" not "East of Eden" and the plot is Adam and Eve not Cain and Abel. But warm - Genesis is certainly a clue.
We are getting closer obviously; people were homing in on the 'good and evil' bit without much difficulty. "Genesis" was not an acceptable answer though; only the idea for the lines came from Genesis. Besides we would need the author, because Genesis is also a Rock Band, and these are not rock lyrics!. Tolkien was another bright suggestion, but no sign of Hobbits in the quoted line. Heart skipped a beat when someone wrote in with "It's from Paradise Lost. 4 seconds. Thanks Google". Ooooh, so close, but not so fast. He (from Vietnam, Japan?) forgot to mention who the author was, and there's more than one Paradise Lost - the Opera, another Rock Band, a well-known British poet!! Just goes to show, you shouldn't rely on Google for everything.
Of course, someone did write in with the correct, most complete answer saying, to be precise, "These lines seem to have been quoted from John Milton's Paradise Lost". The winner added, "No tears shed for the trip to Mago island that can never be. We shall keep our fingers crossed for Paradise Regained". This man certainly knows his literature. Milton did write the sequel to Paradise Lost, though not, as one schoolboy wag put it: "after his wife died"! The winner, by the way, is a past pupil, living in Kolkata and, I believe, a journalist.
____________________
AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome. For RSS feeds, subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/rssala.xml
