SLPAD - 81 - brekkek kekkek

[Michael Bailey]

I’m a little bit overwhelmed by the sadness of the L&B tryst, but I’ll
settle back in soon.

Wanted to wiggle around with The Frogs a little.

- skipping over to Aesop’s fable of the frogs who desired a king, for a
minute - first Zeus throws a log into their pond, & after initial shock &
awe they climb on it & make fun of it; then Zeus sends a predator who
begins to eat them, & denies any recourse when they complain, saying they
need to face the consequences of their prayers…
Not as germane to TSR as Aristophanes I’d say. But makes an important
statement about leadership.



Aristophanes (according to Wikipedia) wrote The Frogs to showcase a debate
(in part 2 where Dionysus shines, whereas part 1 I guess is the trip to
Hades, in which he doesn’t come off so well) between Euripides & Aeschylus.




- a modern day Dionysus now, sadly, might travel to Hades to referee a
debate between Janis Joplin and Sinéad O’Connor. Amy Winehouse might be
there -




Euripides in the Hadean debate represents the new wave of Grecian
dramaturgy, whereas Aeschylus promotes traditional values of heroism.

All Levine’s leanings seem like they are anti-heroic; yet he’s troubled by
the specter of what his actions are not.

If the swamp shanty maps to Hades, and the debate between Euripides and
Aeschylus maps to the eternal conflict between the search for Ms Right vs
that for Ms Right Now…

then the patent insufficiency of the moment (even though Pynchon does use
the word “virtuoso” w/r/t their lovemaking) mirrors old-school Aeschylus’s
victory.


I wanted to copy without cruft a little more of the Wikipedia material
about “Frogs” references in popular culture (the most relevant one imho is
the Cole Porter song):

“In the Gilbert light opera The Pirates of Penzance, Major-General Stanley,
in his introductory song, includes the fact that he "knows the croaking
chorus from *The Frogs* of Aristophanes" in a list of all his scholarly
achievements.

“Stephen Sondheim and Burt Shevelove freely adapted *The Frogs* to a 1974
musical of the same name, replacing the Greek playwright characters with
George Bernard Shaw and William Shakespeare.

“Hope Mirrlees’s “Paris: A Poem” (1920) cites the chorus in the opening of
her modernist poem: "Brekekekek coax coax we are passing under the Seine"
(line 10), which also performs the sound of the metro train.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/mobile-html/The_Frogs#cite_note-7>

“Finnegans Wake references this play with the words "Brékkek Kékkek Kékkek
Kékkek! Kóax Kóax Kóax! Ualu Ualu Ualu! Quaouauh!"

“The call of the Frog Chorus, "Brekekekéx-koáx-koáx" (Greek: Βρεκεκεκέξ
κοάξ κοάξ), followed by a few of Charon's lines from the play, formed part
of the Yale "Long Cheer", which was first used in public in 1884, and was a
feature of Yale sporting events from that time until the 1960s.Lake Forest
Academy’s teams are known as the "Caxys", a name derived from a similar
cheer.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/mobile-html/The_Frogs#cite_note-12>

“The Long Cheer was echoed in Yale graduate Cole Porter’s song "I, Jupiter"
in his musical Out of this World, in which Jupiter sings "I, Jupiter Rex,
am positively teeming with sex," and is answered by the chorus
"Brek-ek-ko-ex-ko-ex-SEX! Brek-ek-ko-ex-ko-ex-SEX!"
<https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/mobile-html/The_Frogs#cite_note-YAM2-10>
Other
colleges imitated or parodied the long cheer, including Penn, which adopted
the cry, "Brackey Corax Corix, Roree".
<https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/mobile-html/The_Frogs#cite_note-YAM1-9>One
of these parodies was the first Stanford Axe yell in 1899, when yell
leaders used it during the decapitation of a straw effigy: "Give 'em the
axe, the axe, the axe!" The Frog Chorus also figured in a later Axe Yell
rendering the last two segments "croax croax", which was used by
the University of California and Stanford University.

“In his book *Jesting Pilate*, author Aldous Huxley  listening to a
performance of a poem on the subject of Sicily by the Panjabi poet Iqbal,
recited by a Mohammedan of Arab descent at a party in Bombay. Huxley
summarized the performance with the statement: "And in the suspended notes,
in the shakes and warblings over a single long-drawn syllable, I seemed to
recognize that distinguishing feature of the Euripidean chorus which
Aristophanes derides and parodies in The Frogs.””