NP Frogs

[jbor]

on 2/12/02 1:07 PM, pynchonoid at pynchonoid at yahoo.com wrote:

> Pynchon's
> evocation of  Greek myth in TSR's ending makes
> Aristophanes a bit less arbitrary as a reference for
> the frog chorus soundtrack in this scene, imo.

How so? Where's the reference? What's the connection?

Why not:

    " ... So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the
    frogs came up and covered the land. ... "?

http://www.ashland.edu/~dhartzfe/exodus.html

Or "Mrs Leo Hunter's 'Ode to an Expiring Frog'":

    Can I view thee panting, lying
    On thy stomach, without sighing;
    Can I unmoved see thee dying
    On a log 
    Expiring frog!

    Say, have fiends in shape of boys,
    With wild halloo, and brutal noise,
    Hunted thee from marshy joys,
    With a dog, 
    Expiring frog!

http://www.ul.cs.cmu.edu/webRoot/Books/CMU_Classics/Browse_By_Title/P/The_Pi
ckwick_Papers/15Struct.html

Or Wallace Stevens' 'Frogs Eat Butterflies. Snakes Eat Frogs. Hogs Eat
Snakes. Men Eat Hogs.'

In each case, there are potential connections to be made: Levine being
Jewish; Dickens' _Bleak House_ being the prominent intertext for the _GR_
opening (as MalignD has pointed out); and Wallace Stevens being one of the
seminal American poets for contemporary American literature, a
proto-postmodernist. I don't, however, believe for a moment that any of
these connections are particularly valid or relevant to 'The Small Rain'.

Even when there is a definite allusion in the text, which there is with
Pasiphae and 'Pinafore', it's up to the reader or critic to make the
connection, to consider what the allusion is doing there, to *interpret* the
text. There doesn't need to be an overt allusion, of course, it could be
imbedded or unconscious, or else a reader or critic might make connections
off her or his own bat (as Hollander does - putting aside the question of
whether or not the connections he does attempt to make are valid or
relevant): nothing wrong with that either. But just cutting and posting a
chunk from a play isn't really anything.

best