19 replies to this topic

[ggl]

I´m rereading Fleming and finding a lot of great surprises. First of all I have to say that my editions are in Spanish and not noted, so I have some trouble sometimes...

My question is about Fleming´s quotes of great writers. How many can we find and where?

I´ve just finished DAF and I was quite surprised with this quote, when Bond discovers that Wind and Kidd are on board the Queen Elizabeth:

Bond sat for a moment frozen to his chair. Suddenly, there flashed unwanted into his mind that most sinister line in all poetry: 'They reckon ill who leave me out. When me they fly, I am the wings.'

Of course, I googled the line and found the Emerson poem but, first, I don´t find it such "sinister" and, second, I wonder if this is a common English scholar poem like Hemans´Casabianca that Bond quoted in MR.

So, is Brahma so famous in Great Britain? or was it during the 50´s? and, why is it the "most sinister line in all poetry"?

Furthermore, do we know what were Ian Fleming´s favourite writers?

[Major Tallon]

There are a bunch of them.  One that I've always found amusing was the title of Chapter 11 of Doctor No ("Amidst the Alien Cane"), which was lifted from Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale" ("Amid the alien corn").

 

Perhaps a more familiar one is the title of Chapter 12 of You Only Live Twice -- "Appointment in Samarra."  The phrase was lifted by Somerset Maugham, apparently from a line in the Babylonian Talmud.  The subtlety of its use by Fleming is that the appointment referred to is an appointment with death.

[ggl]

Thanks a lot, Major!! Really interesting and I had no idea of these!

 

I´m really interested in this matter, but I guess a deep English literature knowledge is required.

 

Did you know about Brahma and its "sinister" meaning?

[Major Tallon]

Yes, I did.  Here's another -- the concluding line of chapter 11 of From Russia, With Love ("Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make bored") is modified from a speech by Prometheus in Longfellow's poem "The Masque of Pandora" ("Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad").  It's fun to be reading sometimes and stumble across one of these lines.

[ggl]

Thanks again! These are gems for me! I miss, once again, a well anotated Fleming edition...

[ggl]

Going on with my rereading. In FRWL, apart from the obvious (War and Peace or Eric Ambler), I found two references quite interesting:

A reference to O'Hara´s An Appointment in Samarra, when Kerim and Bond go looking for Krilencu;

and one about Lermontov, when M tells Bond that Tania felt in love with him because he reminded her about a Lermontov´s hero (A Hero of our time? Probably...)

[ggl]

In the last chapter of Dr. No we can read:

 

the 'heat waves, the cold spells—'The only country where you can take a walk
every day of the year'—Chesterfield's Letters?

 

Well, I googled "Chesterfield letters" and discovered the man and his work. The question remaining is: does the quote belong to a Chesterfield Letter? which one?

[Major Tallon]

I was browsing the card game in Casino Royale when I came upon another one:  "Sufficient unto the day had been its evil" (chapter 13).  It's derived from the Sermon on the Mount:  "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof" (Matthew, chapter 6, verse 34).

[ggl]

I was browsing the card game in Casino Royale when I came upon another one:  "Sufficient unto the day had been its evil" (chapter 13).  It's derived from the Sermon on the Mount:  "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof" (Matthew, chapter 6, verse 34).

Really subtle that one! And quite difficult for a non-English speaking!

 

I guess it´s a quite known one, because I haven´t found much of the Bible in Fleming...

[Revelator]

Another literary reference, this time from You Only Live Twice: when Blofeld attempts to justify having stolen nuclear weapons he says "Where lies the crime in this, except in the Erewhon of international politics?"

Erewhon is an anagram of "nowhere." It was devised and popularized by Samuel Butler in his satirical novel Erewhon, published in 1872.

[ggl]

Another literary reference, this time from You Only Live Twice: when Blofeld attempts to justify having stolen nuclear weapons he says "Where lies the crime in this, except in the Erewhon of international politics?"

Erewhon is an anagram of "nowhere." It was devised and popularized by Samuel Butler in his satirical novel Erewhon, published in 1872.

Thanks, Revelator.

 

Actually, I´ve finished my rereading of Fleming´s and I found quite a number of interesting references (even in Golden Gun, for example, I didn´t knew the Ebony magazine; or in Property of a Lady, that the Faberge book is real)

[Jeff007]

Another literary reference, this time from You Only Live Twice: when Blofeld attempts to justify having stolen nuclear weapons he says "Where lies the crime in this, except in the Erewhon of international politics?"

Erewhon is an anagram of "nowhere." It was devised and popularized by Samuel Butler in his satirical novel Erewhon, published in 1872.

Erewhon also features in Role of Honour.  

[Revelator]

Thanks, Revelator.

 

Actually, I´ve finished my rereading of Fleming´s and I found quite a number of interesting references (even in Golden Gun, for example, I didn´t knew the Ebony magazine; or in Property of a Lady, that the Faberge book is real)

 

You're very welcome, and thank you for creating this topic. Incidentally, someone in the press seems to have the same interest as you do in this topic. An article has just been published in The Spectator on literary references in the Bond books. I've reproduced it within a new thread on this forum, titled "James Bond, Author."

[ggl]

 

Thanks, Revelator.

 

Actually, I´ve finished my rereading of Fleming´s and I found quite a number of interesting references (even in Golden Gun, for example, I didn´t knew the Ebony magazine; or in Property of a Lady, that the Faberge book is real)

 

You're very welcome, and thank you for creating this topic. Incidentally, someone in the press seems to have the same interest as you do in this topic. An article has just been published in The Spectator on literary references in the Bond books. I've reproduced it within a new thread on this forum, titled "James Bond, Author."

 

Thanks! I´m reading it!

[Major Tallon]

I can't believe I didn't mention this one before:  You Only Live Twice is prefaced with the quotation "It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive."  That's taken from Robert Louis Stevenson's El Dorado:  "To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive."

[ggl]

I can't believe I didn't mention this one before:  You Only Live Twice is prefaced with the quotation "It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive."  That's taken from Robert Louis Stevenson's El Dorado:  "To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive."

Yes, thank you Major.

The last novels are specially rich. In YOLT you can find from Shakespeare to Stevenson, from Japan to Appointment in Samarra (again!)...

[Revelator]

Here's another one, though I can't take credit for it. In Goldfinger, we find the following:

 

 It hadn't been love, but a quotation came into Bond's mind as his cab moved out of Pennsylvania Station: 'Some love is fire, some love is rust. But the finest, cleanest love is lust.' 

 

This was taken from The Wild Party (1928), a book length narrative poem by Joseph Moncure March. Though now obscure, it was  a scandalous jazz-age success and even banned in Boston. 

 

The actual lines are:

Some love is fire, some love is rust:

But the fiercest, cleanest love is lust.

 

Credit for this discovery goes to John Griswold and his mind-boggling book Ian Fleming's James Bond: Annotations and Chronologies for Ian Fleming's Bond Stories.

Edited by Revelator, 18 January 2014 - 08:22 PM.

[Major Tallon]

Here's one from Moonraker, chapter 23:  "The boy stood on the burning deck," which is taken from the poem "Casabianca" by Felicia Hermans.  It's a Victorian-era poem about the pluck of a young British lad serving in the Royal Navy at the Battle of the Nile.

[Revelator]

I like Spike Milligan's version:

 

The boy stood on the burning deck

Whence all but he had fled

Twit.

[ggl]

Thanks, friends.

 

Now that I finished my re-reading, I should copy all the references that I have found and put them in order... sometime!