kitewithfish

Moms are awesome, go hug yours. Or, someone else's! But don't pull an Oedipus, cause then she has to kill herself and you have to gouge out your own eyes. Not cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mScdJURKGWM

Oedipus Rex

It seems that most of the songs that you hear these days on the radio played by the disc-jockeys, apart from Rock-n-Roll and other childrens' records, tend to be motion-picture title-songs. Apparently producers feel that we will not attend their movies unless we have the titles well drilled into our heads in advance. Of course, we don't go anyway, but at least this way they make back on the song some of what they've lost on the picture. With the rise of the motion-picture title-song, we've had such hits in the past few years as The Ten Commandments Mambo, Brothers Karamazov Cha-Cha, Incredible Shrinking Man, I Love You. I'm sure you're all familiar with these, but a few years ago a motion picture version appeared of Sophocles' immortal tragedy Oedipus Rex. This picture played only in the so-called art theaters, and it was not a financial success. And I maintain that the reason it was not a financial success...

(You're away ahead of me.) ...was, that it did not have a title tune, which the people could hum and which would make them actually eager to attend this particular play. So, I have attempted to supply this need and here then is the prospective title song from Oedipus Rex.

From the Bible to the popular song,
There's one theme that we find right along.
Of all ideals they hail as good,
The most sublime is Motherhood.

There was a man, oh, who it seems,
Once carried this ideal to extremes.
He loved his mother and she loved him,
And yet his story is rather grim.

There once lived a man named Oedipus Rex.
You may have heard about his odd complex.
His name appears in Freud's index
'Cause he loved his mother.

His rivals used to say quite a bit,
That as a monarch he was most unfit.
But still in all they had to admit
That he loved his mother.

Yes he loved his mother like no other.
His daughter was his sister and his son was his brother.
One thing on which you can depend is,
He sure knew who a boy's best friend is!

When he found what he had done,
He tore his eyes out one by one.
A tragic end to a loyal son
Who loved his mother.

So be sweet and kind to Mother,
Now and then have a chat.
Buy her candy or some flowers or a brand new hat.
But maybe you had better let it go at that!

Or you may find yourself with a quite complex complex,
And you may end up like Oedipus.
I'd rather marry a duck-billed platypus,
Than end up like old Oedipus Rex.

The out-patients are out in force tonight, I see.

In other news: I've been reading Karl Kraus's Die letzten Tage der Menschheit (The last days of mankind), which is a truly massive and untranslatable Austrian anti-war play. It's got over 100 scenes. It's impressive, just let us say.

The untranslatable bit strikes me a lot as I'm reading it. Here is a very short snippet from Act 5, Scene 55, and it's English translation.

Ein süßer Ton Erklingt. Meerestille nach dem Untergang der Lusitania. Auf einem schwimmenden Brett zwei Kinderleichen.

DIE LUSITANIA-KINDER:
Wir schaukeln auf der Welle-
wir sind nun irgendwo-
wie ist das Leben helle-
Wie sind die Kinder froh-

(Der Erscheinung verschwindet)

My translation fails utterly to convey how creepy and still the poem above sounds, how much it rings likes something out of Mother Goose written in blood. (Those of you who don't speak German, the lines above rhyme abab, which I cannot preserve, and sounds utterly brutally simple.)

A sweet tone rings. The ocean lies still after the sinking of the Lusitania. On a swimming plank, the corpses of two children

THE LUSITANIA-CHILDREN:
We are rocking on the waves-
We are someplace now-
How is living bright-
How are the children glad-

(The scene changes)

Those of you bilingual people out there, this is an utterly fantastic and difficult play to read- much of it is written in the Viennese dialect, which is roughly as hard to understand as Mark Twain's dialectial passages, but it is just utterly wonderfully perfect on levels that I can't quite begin to even broach. I would honestly tell you to learn German to read this play, because the English translation cannot possibly work as well. Though now I have to go and try to find one and compare.