Re: literary references in music

[alfke@csvax.caltech.edu]

hsut@ec.purdue.edu (Tsun-Yuk Hsu) writes:
> There are also lines from T.S. Eliot's Waste Land in another Laurie
> Anderson song from Mister Heartbreak (I think it's Blue Lagoon). It's
> the part that goes "...those are pearls that were his eyes...", about
> a drowned man. I don't recall any quotes from Big Science (don't have
> the lyrics with me); anyone has pointers?
>   Bill Hsu

ummmm ... actually, that quote rather predates Eliot.  It's from Shake-
speare's "The Tempest".  About half of "The Wasteland" is literary ref-
erences of varying degrees of faithfulness, so attributing quotes from
it to Eliot is a risky thing to do; I suggest checking a good annotated
version of the poem first.  (I know; I've embarrassed myself on this
before...)
					--Peter Alfke
					  alfke@csvax.caltech.edu

PS: Another two-levels-of-quoting thing is Genesis' "The Cinema Show"
    (from "Selling England by the Pound"), which quotes the courtship
    scene from "The Wasteland", which is loosely based on the Greek
    legend of Tiresias . . .

"Everything is deeply intertwingled"  --Ted Nelson