The Facts on File Dictionary of Allusions - Green Valley High School

quisling
392
quisling (kwizling) A collaborator or traitor.
Vidkun Quisling (1887–1945) was a Norwegian
fascist politician who sided with Adolf Hitler’s
Germany prior to the German invasion of Norway
in 1940 and as a reward was made Germany’s
puppet president while the country remained
under German occupation. Reviled by most
Norwegians, he gave himself up in 1945 after the
defeat of the Nazis; he was tried by a Norwegian
court and shot later the same year. Winston
Churchill was the fi rst person to use Quisling’s
name as a synonym for treason. “While setting up
the calm surface of village life in a realistic manner,
the fi lm does so only as a contrast to the savagery
that ensues: a priest is shot while making a
stand against ‘the enemies and oppressors of mankind,’
the Post Offi ce lady kills a German with an
axe and is promptly bayonetted herself, and the
vicar’s daughter disposes of the Quisling squire, to
whom she had been amorously linked” (James
Park, British Cinema: the Lights that Failed, 1990).
quixotic See don quixote.
Quo vadis? (kwo vahdis) Whither goest thou?
This formal challenge comes directly from the
Vulgate version of John 13:36, in which the words
are addressed by Peter to Christ at the Last Supper.
(See also John 16:5.) According to one
legend, a variant origin of the phrase is when
Christ appears in a vision during Peter’s flight
from Rome to escape martyrdom. When Christ
replies “To Rome to be crucified again,” a chastened
Peter turns back to the capital to face
his own execution. <strong>The</strong> quotation was subsequently
used as a title for several major religious
paintings depicting the episode. A novel
of the same title (1895) by the Polish writer
Henryk Sienkiewicz, who depicted Rome during
the reign of Nero, has been staged and
filmed several times. <strong>The</strong> sentry leveled his rifle
and uttered the time- honored quo vadis as instructed
by his sergeant.