Morning name with scorpion
My morning name on 5/6 was a misremembered word — I report to you, regularly, on the fragility of memory, including my own — that evoked an excellent political portmanteau from the autumn of 2016, as the Presidential elections (HC vs. DT) were heating up, these words together taking me to a bit of prescient song-writing by Gilbert & Sullivan in 1882 — involving loud braying, vulgar display, and open contempt for their inferiors — a character sketch of the moral monster of 2016, who has over the ensuing decade transfigured into a foolish but vindictive scorpion, with a deadly sting in its tail and no control over its instincts.
Now come with me back to the morning of 5/6. As I woke, what dinged in my mind was the repeated:
tarentara tarentara
which I recalled with pleasure as a chorus of peers from G&S’s Iolanthe, imitating the sound of brasses, specifically of trumpets, as they marched. I went to the net to recover the rest of the chorus, only to discover that I had misremembered the marching noise; it was actually
tantantara tantantara
And so began the journey that ends with all of us embrangled in the animal tale The Frog and the Scorpion.
The fragility of memory. What I recovered was close, phonologically, to Gilbert’s marching noise, as set to Sullivan’s brassy tune; in fact, it’s an entirely possible marching-noise lyric, just not the one that Gilbert wrote. It’s got pretty much the right content — the gist — with pretty much the right sound — the lilt, if you will. A lot of memories are like that, the gist and the lilt, and that’s good enough for most everyday purposes. But quotation is different; close isn’t good enough.
I am wretched at exact verbal quotation (much much better at reproducing musical phrases and lines, and even some entire compositions). I was, however, sort of married to a man who was a whiz at reproducing poetry, passages from literature, and especially the lyrics of songs, all with great fidelity. He could patter-speak the words to the songs from several musicals (he was notably fond of The Fantasticks, but could produce all sorts of stuff), a huge number of popular songs, and almost all of Tom Lehrer’s well-known comic songs (though I don’t think he could do “The Elements” from memory).
If I want to quote any of this stuff — even if I think I have a very clear recollection of how the words go — I have to look it up. Recently, I wanted to quote a famous put-down by Dorothy Parker, which I remember as:
Tonstant Weader fwowed up
Only four words, but the spelling is important. I was besieged by doubts about this spelling: was it maybe Tonthtant? or frowed? To my amazement, I had it perfect right off the bat. Sometimes I’m lucky.
Susan Fischer’s portmanteau. I searched on my tarentara, got the correct tantantara, plus a link to my 8/5/16 posting “Politically prescient G&S”:
a political portmanteau (about Herr Drumpf) committed by Susan Fischer on Facebook:
So when Donald goes off on a rant, is it a tantrump?
To which I replied, bowing to [W.S. Gilbert]:
Loudly let the trumpet bray!
Tantantarump, tantantarump
The allusion is to Gilbert & Suillivan’s Iolanthe (1882), Act 1 No. 6, Entrance and March of Peers:
Loudly let the trumpet bray,
Tantantara, tantantara!
Watch the number here, in a 2012 performance by the Hereford Gilbert & Sullivan Society (other videos are available), to appreciate the haughtiness of the peers and catch their later lines:
Bow, bow, ye lower middle classes!
Bow, bow, ye tradesmen, bow ye masses!
G&S saw it all, over 130 years ago: the loudly braying Tr**p-et, the attachment to vulgar extravagant display, and the open contempt for (those he sees as) his inferiors.
And now we are up against a moral monster, a thick tissue of pathologies of many kinds, who I was still referring to in 2016 as Herr Drumpf but soon came to prefer to call Helmet Grabpussy, usually just Grabpussy, for short. Totally lacking in empathy or self-reflection; barely capable of impulse control; viciously vindictive; unable to admit error or weakness; incapable of comprehending relationships not based on winning (either through power / dominance or through financial advantage); needing to win so badly that he reflexively, endlessly lies and cheats and steals; unable to distinguish persons from their roles and responsibilities; baffled by commitments to service or social allegiances of any kind (professional, religious, military, whatever); a preening, whimsy-driven, bullying, adoration-seeking thin-skinned injustice collector capable of astounding cruelty. And that’s just the beginning of it; study, for example, the stories of the Central Park Five and of E. Jean Carroll.
From 2016 to 2025. A dark transfiguration of the monster and its embedding into a highly structured organization that feeds the monster’s worst instincts while embarking on a wholesale takeover of government and civil society. Red-alert alarms on a daily basis; listen to the warnings.
Meanwhile, I see the monster’s nature crystallized in the folk figure of the scorpion from the animal fable. From Wikipedia:
The Scorpion and the Frog is an animal fable which teaches that vicious people cannot resist hurting others even when it is not in their own interests and therefore should never be trusted. This fable seems to have emerged in Russia in the early 20th century.
A scorpion wants to cross a river but cannot swim, so it asks a frog to carry it across. The frog hesitates, afraid that the scorpion might sting it, but the scorpion promises not to, pointing out that it would drown if it killed the frog in the middle of the river. The frog considers this argument sensible and agrees to transport the scorpion. Midway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog anyway, dooming them both. The dying frog asks the scorpion why it stung despite knowing the consequence, to which the scorpion replies: “I am sorry, but I couldn’t help myself. It’s my character.”
Note that the scorpion in the fable appreciates the moral dimensions of relationships and understands that it has failed in them (it’s self-aware). Grabpussy does neither. Which is the greater monster?
This entry was posted on May 10, 2025 at 4:55 pm and is filed under Language and poitics, Memory, Mistakes, Morality, Morning names, Music, Nicknames, Portmanteaus, Quotation, Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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May 10, 2025 at 7:00 pm |
I wish I were better acquainted with Iolanthe; but your original memory brings to my mind, rather, the marching policemen of Pirates of Penzance.
May 11, 2025 at 4:00 am |
Sorry to have forgotten Pirates. But yes, “When the foeman bares his steel” with the marching line ta-ran ta-ran ta-ran ta-ran.
May 11, 2025 at 7:03 am |
Dorothy Parker’s putdown, if I remember correctly, was of A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the Pooh books, which just goes to show that Ms. Parker had forgotten what it was like to be a child.
The police in Pirates sing tarantara, without a final n, so, even closer to the Peers’ fanfare. (Spellcheck wanted that to be tarantula, unsurprisingly.)
May 11, 2025 at 7:08 am |
To tie together two of the threads in this post, could J reproduce the Lord Chancellor’s “Nightmare song”? (Which, by the way, I performed here at my retirement community sometime last year.)
May 11, 2025 at 8:00 am |
J came to G&S through me; I’m not sure how much he picked up. But my Princeton roommate Frank Carr (who introduced me to G&S, to DGO, and much more) was a patter-song performer without peer, including with the semi-professional Princeton Savoyard company. He would perform any of the songs, for any audience — even just me — on request, without any preparation (though he preferred to put on his stage makeup, so that he could get fully into the character). He was — surprise! — an English major, and, apparently without intending to, committed to memory large numbers of his favorite poems, plus passages from his favorite novels, which he would reel out when the mood took him. As a result, I can quote significant bits of Franklyn J. Carr’s Favorite Moments from English Literature (the beginning of “The Eve of Saint Agnes” will be with me until I die; just a mention of the noun owl is likely to trigger for all his feathers).
May 12, 2025 at 12:09 pm
I wasn’t an English major, but I share the tendency (ability?) to memorize chunks of text that appealed to me in some way, with or without intention. It’s both a gift and a curse.
He would perform any of the songs, for any audience … on request
Unlike some people, who don’t wait for the request.