Sunday, July 05, 2020

But I Cannot Hum a Fugue of Which I've Heard the Music's Din Afore...

The Croaking Chorus from The Frogs by Aristophanes:

The rage! The cardiac tumult! Psychic disasters!
The fury of the thunder kissing bard when he perceives
His piddling opponent picking his dentures with dactyls!
Regard his orbs:  how they roll; one this way, one the other!
Ah, the logotomy! Verb breasting adverb, the cristate nouns
Plunging ‘gainst pavid pronouns!  Let the bull stylistic
(Husband of cows) rise up and whirl his whiskers!
Ah the lambent raiding of verse, the (my God) tripsis
Of boant anapaests leaping in lucent line
Against the skiaphagous luculent relulant 
Phalanges of the foe! – Yet must we bear in mind
The hepatic ingenium of the adversary, whose
Herpetic tongue knows too well how to rive
The hyaline dynamics of our arch-architect!
The Rest is SILENCE!

– translation by Dudley Fitts, 1955

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