.i“ * ^ / . . . . . ` `~

it is an unthinkable burden to put on my shoulders, to demand that I be as alert as I am, as fresh as one must be, while one’s insides, neglected by sleep, lay coiled within one like a tossed aside dirty shirt. …

A boor and a timeserver in life, but never a boor in his music… Strauss

Melville, the Encantadas, (sketch nine):

Brooding among the ruins of his hut, and the desolate clinkers and extinct volcanoes of this outcast isle, the insulted misanthrope now meditates a signal revenge upon humanity, but conceals his purposes.

Clinker.

Even after the enslaved people on whom their wealth was built were freed, Southern elites passed their advantages to their children through personal networks and social capital.… POST

,,, jusqu’aux chauffeurs qui abandonnèrent leurs fourneaux. {x} seems that ‘chauffer’ means literally ‘stoker’ — of a steam engine:

1896, “a motorist,” from French chauffeur, literally “stoker,” operator of a steam engine, French nickname for early motorists, from chauffer “to heat,” from Old French chaufer “to heat, warm up; to become hot” (see chafe). The first motor-cars were steam-driven. Sense of “professional or paid driver of a private motor car” is from 1902.

If Agamemnon, say, could be interpreted as a work of self-expression — toss out the characters and action and setting and then imagine these lines are from the pages of Rimbaud or from Walt Whitman, how would it look? Could you reverse engineer Leaves of Grass into a Greek Tragedy?

Stated otherwise: in order to turn Agammemnon into Saison Enfer, what would you need to do? In order to turn Agamemnon into An Octopus, what would you need to do?

Many are the horrors, dread and appalling, bred of earth, and the arms of the deep teem with hateful monsters. Likewise between heaven and earth lights hung high in the air draw near; and winged things and things that walk the earth can also tell of the stormy wrath of whirlwinds.

………………………..πολλὰ μὲν γᾶ τρέφει
………………………..δεινὰ καὶ δειμάτων ἄχη,
………………………..πόντιαί τ᾽ ἀγκάλαι κνωδάλων
………………………..ἀνταίων βρύουσι:
………………………..πλάθουσι βλαστοῦσι καὶ πεδαίχμιοι
………………………..λαμπάδες πεδάοροι,
………………………..πτανά τε καὶ πεδοβά–
………………………..μονα κἀνεμοέντ᾽ ἂν
………………………..αἰγίδων φράσαι κότον.

………………………..ἀλλ᾽ ὑπέρτολμον ἀν-
………………………..δρὸς φρόνημα τίς λέγοι
………………………..καὶ γυναικῶν φρεσὶν τλαμόνων καὶ
………………………..παντόλμους ἔρωτας
………………………..ἄταισι συννόμους βροτῶν;
………………………..ξυζύγους δ᾽ ὁμαυλίας
………………………..θηλυκρατὴς ἀπέρ-
………………………..ωτος ἔρως παρανικᾷ
………………………..κνωδάλων τε καὶ βροτῶν.

But who can tell of man’s overweening spirit, and of the reckless passions of women hardened of soul, partners of the woes of mortals? Inordinate passion, overmastering the female, gains a fatal victory over the wedded unions of beasts and humans alike.

Translation, Smyth, Libation Bearers 585–602 (English) ).