Klaus Bung:
Morningale
An extravaganza
Laura! Laura! She is not a witch, but she always goes to bed with a broomstick. That is neither her husband nor her lover. She uses it to silence her battery of alarms. But last night she had broken it on her husband's back. That had silenced him, too. He is now a battered husband and, mercifully, an absent one.
As the starlings start their car alarm dawn chorus, chasing all car owners of the quarter out of 'the rank sweat of their enseamëd beds', her eighteen alarm clocks go off one by one, starting fortissimo, several minutes apart, then overlapping and continuing into a great crescendo, to ffff, with different sounds and radio stations on each. She has carefully placed them at precise angles in all parts of her room. They must ffforce her out of bed, however short or lively her night may have been. This is her morning concert. She lets it go on for several minutes before she furies out of bed, races from one to the next, dives under the bed from various angles, jumps to the ceiling where three systems are suspended and tries to shut them all up before they start again. She does not succeed and lets her systems have their way. Music, as she keeps saying, plays an important part in her life.
She drops back into bed. Here struggle giants like Luigi Nono with dwarfs like Albi Noni, Mo Zart with Boulez Bruital, Master Singers with Bloody Beginners, Hinde Mith with Herda Mith, Wegda Mith and Hinde Ohne. It was she who commissioned Beethoven to write his atrocious Battle Symphony. In her quarters, Malbrough s'en va en guerre against A jolly good fellow. Beethoven called her his heroic a'. Bach listening to her morning concert suffered there, in her bedroom, his Sin Matthew Passion. His Sleepers-wake was wilfully ignored. No wise virgins in this house, no bloody virgin at all, but a smart woman, thank Devil. No oil neither, but plenty of vaseline.
In her bedroom, Edgar Varèse derridas Foucault. Gustav Mahler's children died of her vibrations, while his penguin clamoured for aunt Arctica. Here her cock Thomas Mann witnessed the morning cacophony, which inspired him to write
Dr Faustus (Adrian's solitary pleasures): This '
durch fünfzig Takte hinfegende, mit dem Gekicher einer Einzelstimme beginnende und rapide um sich greifende, Chor und Orchester erfassende, unter rhythmischen Umstürzen und Konterkarierungen zum Tutti-Fortissimo grauenhaft anschwellende, überbordende, sardonische Gaudium Gehennas, dieser aus Johlen, Kläffen, Kreischen, Meckern, Röhren, Heulen und Wiehern schauderhaft gemischten Salve (Regina) von Hohn- und Triumphgelächter der Hölle' (Thomas Mann, Doktor Faustus, S. 502)
She does not jump out of bed when the concert restarts. A battery of cuckoo clocks joins in the racket. She hugs her lover more tightly and cocks a snook at her absent husband. She calls him 'Der gehörnte Siegfried'. Sirens go off, flapping their wings. Somebody rings storm on the doorbell. Neighbours bang on walls, floor and ceiling to complain. She is oblivious to it all.
The cacophony has now been going on for two hours. Her cat and her canary have both died. Battle-wary, some of her alarms have packed up. She has a standing order with a catalogue firm and three new alarms are sent to her every week, at a quantity discount. Every Christmas, that company, having grown big through her custom and her recommendations among the Portuguese aristocracy, sends her a cuckoo clock from Germany. The cuckoos have been programmed to rock 'around-the-clock'. She calls them 'my jolly good Rockefellows'. She likes cocks and cuckoos.
Such are her weekday mornings. Only on Sunday does she become piously erudite and superimposes the disk with her Latin Rock Christmas Oratorio (it used to be spelt 'roque') on the general mêlée. She has installed a quadrophonic loudspeaker system, each set the size of a fridge, the sound makes you stagger when it hits you, and from all sides the ancient calls attack her, incessantly, fugato, and randomly repeated: '
puella, tibi dico: surge', '
surge et ingredere civitatem', '
surgens vade in vicum', '
surge et sterne tibi'. Half an hour passes, she ignores the divine commands (this is called Latin culture), and at last he, the fucking believer, to add insult to injury, jeers: '
exsurge baptizare et ablue' (Arise, and be baptized and get washed), and, fearing that he might baptize her in her slumber, a form of child abuse practised on babies by paedobaptists and the fate worse than death for adult heathens, she gets up. 'Even a bad fuck is better than a good baptism any day,' she mutters. But that, surely, is blasphemy.
Note (for publication)
- 'puella, tibi dico: surge' (Damsel, I say unto thee, arise) (Mark 5:41)
- 'surge et ingredere civitatem' (Arise, and go into the city) (Acts 9:6),
- 'surgens vade in vicum' (Arise, and go into the street) (Acts 9:11),
- 'surge et sterne tibi' (Arise, and make thy bed) (Acts 9:34).
- 'exsurge baptizare et ablue' (Arise, and be baptized and get washed) (Acts 22:16)
These overboarding, sardonic highjinks of hell, sweeping through fifty bars, starting with the giggling of a single voice, rapidly spreading, catching hold of choir and orchestra, with rhythmical overturns and counter-attacks horribly swelling into a tutti fortissimo; this salvo (Regina) of hell's laughter of scorn and triumph, a horrific mixture of hooting, barking, screeching, nannying, belling, howling and neighing. (translated by Klaus Bung)
E-mail: klaus.bung@rtc-idyll.com
Copyright 2001: Klaus Bung
Notes for the Editor, and for the author, lest he forget (not for publication)
- Sleepers, wake: Bach's cantata 'Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme' (Sleepers, wake, a voice is calling).
- the rank sweat: from Hamlet 3,4
- This 'durch fünfzig Takte... : Thomas Mann, Doktor Faustus, S. 502; the word (Regina) is a deliberate misquote. I presume that a short quote like this can be made without applying for copyright permission.
Footnotes
These overboarding, sardonic highjinks of hell, sweeping through fifty bars, starting with the giggling of a single voice, rapidly spreading, catching hold of choir and orchestra, with rhythmical overturns and counter-attacks horribly swelling into a tutti fortissimo; this salvo (Regina) of hell's laughter of scorn and triumph, a horrific mixture of hooting, barking, screeching, nannying, belling, howling and neighing.(translated by Klaus Bung)
-'puella, tibi dico: surge' (Damsel, I say unto thee, arise) (Mark 5:41)
- 'surge et ingredere civitatem' (Arise, and go into the city) (Acts 9:6),
- 'surgens vade in vicum' (Arise, and go into the street) (Acts 9:11),
- 'surge et sterne tibi' (Arise, and make thy bed) (Acts 9:34).
- 'exsurge baptizare et ablue' (Arise, and be baptized and get washed) (Acts 22:16)
- Sleepers, wake: Bach's cantata 'Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme' (Sleepers, wake, a voice is calling).
- the rank sweat: from Hamlet 3,4
- This 'durch fünfzig Takte... : Thomas Mann, Doktor Faustus, S. 502; the word (Regina) is a deliberate misquote. I presume that a short quote like this can be made without applying for copyright permission.
- I have not translated the Thomas Mann passage because it is terribly difficult to put into equally effective English, but I will try to do so if required.