SLSL "TSR" frogs = death?

[jbor]

on 8/12/02 1:16 AM, Otto at ottosell at yahoo.de wrote:

> I think when it comes
> to masses of croaking frogs I believe Aristophanes' ghost frogs are haunting
> the literature maybe even more than the second plague mentioned by Rob,
> because in the "Exodus"-text I've got the frogs aren't especially known for
> intensive croaking.

I'd say that frogs and croaking go together automatically: no literary
mediation needed. I don't think any of Levine = Dionysus, or Buttercup =
Charon, or her car = the ferry boat across the Styx, or the shack in the
swamp = Hades, or "frogs intoned a savage chorus" = Greek chorus (there is
in fact a second chorus of "blessed mystics' in Aristophanes' play), or
Eliot and Hemingway (who were still living) = Euripides and Aeschylus (who
weren't), fit at all. "Little Buttercup" from 'H.M.S. Pinafore', being an
old woman, doesn't fit particularly well either, but the difference there is
that it's the characters who are making the reference in the dialogue,
joking around at each other's expense, rather than the narrator/Pynchon
trying to make a "literary" or profound allusion. Asserting that there has
to be an allusion to 'The Frogs' only makes the story even more crappy (if
not necessarily "crapulous") than it already is and further emphasises how
the 'Intro' is a frank and honest appreciation of the early work on
Pynchon's part.

In my opinion, the interesting sentence re. the frogs in the story is the
first one:

    Around them thousands of frogs chanted to themselves in an inexplicable
    set of chord changes, to the glory of certain ambiguous principles.
                                                                (49-50)

Leaving aside the specific connections which might be made here to the Old
Testament story ("thousands" = plague, "chant" and "glory" both have
specific religious connotations), for me it's the last part of this sentence
that, in the context of Pynchon's story's plot and theme/s, confirms the
connection between this (jazz-like) frog symphony and a conception of Nature
as bringing both life and death in a random and amoral way.

best