artcetera

THE WEEKLY QUIZ THAT TESTS

YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE ARTS

1 What domicile has been the ruin of many a poor boy?

2 What institution was described in an autobiographical novel by Dostoevsky and set to music by Janacek?

3 What long sequence of poems has been interpreted as recording both a Pre-Raphaelite's grief for the loss of his wife and his passion for the wife of a friend?

4 In what decaying mansion - judging by its name, a place with fairly elaborate roofing arrangements - did Hepzibah Pyncheon live?

5 What other dilapidated pile witnessed the premature burial of one of its denizens, and then the death of both of them, before collapsing into the local tarn?

6 In what film, a well-known playwright's cinema debut, does a bestselling psychiatrist get mixed up with a bunch of conmen over a poker game?

ANSWERS:

1 "The House of the Rising Sun", according to the song. 2 The House of the Dead. Dostoevsky's account of life in a Siberian penal colony was the basis of Janacek's final opera. 3 Dante Gabriel Rossetti's sonnet- sequence The House of Life (the object of his passion was Jane Morris, wife of William). 4 The House of the Seven Gables, in the novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne. 5 The House of Usher, in Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher. 6 House of Games, written and directed by David Mamet.