MDMD Ch. 25 : The Business of the World

[Dave Monroe]

This, of course, was my compulsion ...

--- Bandwraith at aol.com wrote:

> maybe inspector Monroe can help us out here with a
> quick check that Diderot...?

Well, Diderot, his Encyclopedia, I don't know (though
another source worth looking into here, there,
everywhere, no doubt, a la Boswell's Life of Johnson),
I think what we're getting here is Mason's
disillusionment about the presumed Purity of science
during the presumed Enlightenment, but ...

"...(Mr. [Jackie?] Mason was in the Habit of
delivering even his gravest Speeches, with the Rhythms
and Inflections of the Taproom Comedian).  'I was
loading an unreasonable weight of Hope uopn that
Mission, upon the Purity of the Event.  Look ye at
what I intended to escape.  Rebekah lost, my Anchor to
all I knew of Birth and Death,-- I was adrift in
Waters unknown, Intrigues and Faction within the Royal
Society, as among Nations and Charter'd Companies.  
[...]  Foolishly seeking in the Alignment of Sun,
Venus, and Earth, a moment redeem'd from the Impurity
in which I must ever practice my Life,-- instead, even
this pitiable Hope is interdicted by the deadly
l'Grand,-- '...not at war with the sciences,'-- Poh. 
In Plain Text, that Brass Voice announc'd,-- 'The
Business of the World is Trade and Death, and you must
engage with all that unpleasantness, as the price of
your not-at-all-assur'd Moment of Purity.-- Fool.'"
   "Eeh! Tha were trans-lating all thah' French
Jabber?" (M&D, Ch. 25, p. 247)

"all thah' French jabber" being ...

"Ooh,
  La,
    Fran...
      -Ce-euh! [with a certain debonair little Mordant
      upon 'euh'],

Ne
Fait-pas-la-Guerre,
Con-truh les Sce-
       -en-
         ceuhs!" (M&D, Ch. 4, p. 40)

"Had the Frenchman really signal'd, 'France is not at
war with the sciences'?  Words so magnanimous, and yet
..." (M&D, Ch. 4, p. 39)

   "This attack was counter to the spirit of the
unwritten protocol that scientific expeditions were
exempt from hostile engagement."  (Edwin Danson,
Drawing the Line [NY: Wiley, 2001], p.56)

"Brass Voice"?  While at first I took this as some
sort of prosopopoeia involving an inscription on a
brass plaque or somesuch ...

http://m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=prosopopoeia

... "Brass," I think, here means "brazen," as in
"brazenly self-assured" ...

http://m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=brass

"'I'm westing my time,' he says, 'You are leetluh
meennow,-- I throw you back.  Perhaps someday we meet
when you are biggair Feesh, like me.  Meanwhile, I
sail away.  Poohpooh!  Adieu!'" (M&D, Ch. 4, p. 39)

http://www.montypython.net/cgi-bin/dl2/grail.cgi?french.wav

http://www.montypython.net/cgi-bin/dl2/grail.cgi?pigdog.wav

http://www.montypython.net/cgi-bin/dl2/grail.cgi?fart.wav

http://www.montypython.net/cgi-bin/dl2/grail.cgi?taunt.wav

http://www.montypython.net/grailsounds2.php

But I can't find a source "La France ne fait pas la
guerre contre les sciences" (?), either with regard
specifically to the Seahorse vs. l'Grand bout, as
French naval/military policy of the time in general,
or anywhere else for that matter.  Then again, i just
barely recognize words in French, so ...  

> In a message dated 12/21/01 9:18:42 AM,
> michel.ryckx at freebel.net writes:
> 
> If someone has a CD with Diderot's Encyclopédie,
> that might help, I think

Perhaps there's a more or less presnt-day analogue? 
Certainly, something of that military-industrial
complex about "the Business of the World is Trade and
Death," no?  Esp. in an age (ours) where big science
often yields bid death at big prices ...

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