Waking the Braves

[Keith Brecher]

At 12:27 AM 3/21/97 GMT, Mike Weaver wrote:
> Keith Brecher wrote
>> My original point about
>>the title's link to TRP is that it's an unusual phrase and appears in GR as
>>"the breaking of the wave."
>
> I'll bet three keys of Super Skunk to Bodine's roach clip that Keith lives
>a long way from the sea.  I was never much of a surfer so didn't stick
>around that scene long but I'm sure it's a common metaphor among amateur
>poets in those circles.  
>
> Looking in my old dictionary of quotations I find:
>
>For while the tired waves, vainly breaking
>Seem here no painful inch to gain,
>Far back through creeks and inlets making
>Comes silent, flooding in, the main.
>
>That's Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-61)
>
>Then more recent is Sir Henry John Newbolt (1862-1938)
>
>Admirals all, for England's sake, 
>Honour be yours, and fame!
>And honour, as long as waves shall break,
>To Nelson's peerless name
>
I'm writing from Providence so consequently I'm surrounded by water and
breaking waves, but despite that evidence and the samples of distinguished
verse from Arthur Hugh Clough and Sir Henry John Newbolt, I'm still not
convinced that the title of Von Trier's film couldn't have come from GR.
For one thing, how do we know that TRP didn't borrow the phrase from those
poetic luminaries himself? After all, he lifted a little Thomas Nashe, so
why not Sir Newbolt? With regard to the origin of the phrase "breaking the
waves," your suggestion that it may be a common surfer's metaphor also
points to TRP. Jules Siegel's TRP memoir wherein describes TRP's friendship
with one of the Beach Boys. A-and then there's Zoyd's beachfront idyll in
VINELAND. It seems to me that if TRP didn't hang ten himself, he may have
suffered exposure to a few surfing metaphors. It seems more likely than Von
Trier using surf metaphor, though who knows what harmful material the
director of THE ELEMENT OF CRIME and THE KINGDOM has been exposed to in his
time. With all due respect to Nelson's peerless name, I still think
breaking the waves is an unusual expression that, though not by any means
definitely from GR, is at least suggestive of its influence.