#Koax

[blackkatmagic]

I'm coming to realize that my SW-specific type is "dangerous alien lady who is armed at all times" and honestly I'm okay with that.

[tracksampm]

45 Minutes of Bass House, UK Garage, Breaks, Drum & Bass Mentally In Miami Gene Farris, Basura Boyz Bass Echo Jack Walker (UK) Run It MPH That Was Fresh Kolter Control The Media Anti Up Pillow Scream Koax Overstayed Break Somebody Audiojack Killa Chris Avantgarde, Kevin de Vries

[mntds]

Why have I posted about this three separate times

[icestorming]

is your title an aristophanes's "the frogs" reference

Yes!! I also have it tattooed on my left arm! I love that play so much, I always laughed in class reading it!

[counttwinkula]

the best thing about spring is that when i step out the door in the evening i immediately hear a chorus of frogs

[i-spilled-my-soup]

pov you and your bf aristophanes wanna split the bill but the total is an odd number of obols and he pulls half a coin out of his robes

[efemeridi]

a volte sei tu e la tua maschera da rana contro il mondo

[fdelopera]

Welcome to the 21st installment of 15 Weeks of Phantom, where I post all 68 sections of Le Fantôme de l’Opéra, as they were first printed in Le Gaulois newspaper 115 yeas ago.

In today’s installment, we have Part V of Chapter 8, “Où MM. Firmin Richard et Armand Moncharmin ont l’audace de faire représenter « Faust » dans une salle « maudite » et de l’effroyable événement qui en résulta” (“Where MM. Firmin Richard and Armand Moncharmin Have the Audacity to Have ‘Faust’ Performed in a ‘Cursed’ House and the Horrifying Event Which Thereby Ensued”).

This section was first printed on Tuesday, 26 October, 1909.

For anyone following along in David Coward's translation of the First Edition of Phantom of the Opera (either in paperback, or Kindle, or from another vendor -- the ISBN-13 is: 978-0199694570), the text starts in Chapter 8 at, “When Marguerite finished singing the ballad of the King of Thule, she was given an ovation,” and goes to the end of the chapter, “Two Hundred Thousand Kilos Land on Concierge's Head!' It was her only epitaph.”

There are some differences between the Gaulois text and the First Edition. In this section, these include (highlighted in red above):

1) This sentence was added in the First Edition, and did not appear in the Gaulois (indicated by the red arrow above):

Car vous pensez bien qu'il ne faut parler de crapaud qu'au figuré. On ne le voyait pas mais, par l'enfer ! on l'entendait. Couac !

Translation:

You must understand, of course, that we are only speaking of a toad in the figurative sense. It could not be seen, but by the devil, it could be heard! Couac!

2) Compare the Gaulois text:

"Elle chantait cela sans effort" ("She sang this effortlessly")

To the First Edition:

"Elle chantait sans effort" ("She sang effortlessly")

3) Minor differences in punctuation.

ALSO NOTE:

I) "Couac" is a French onomatopoeic word meaning a wrong or discordant note. It sounds roughly like the English word, "quack." Note, however, that in French, "couac" is not the onomatopoeia for a toad's croak, or a duck's quack for that matter. In French, a toad's sound is "côa côa" and a duck's sound is "coin-coin." (An animal whose onomatopoeic sound is "couac couac" is the crow or raven — "caw caw" in English.) The French do however have the phrase, "avoir un crapaud dans la gorge," which is the equivalent of the English phrase "to have a frog in your throat," and this is the idea that Leroux was playing with in describing the sounds that Erik was projecting over Carlotta’s voice.

II) There is, however, an older theatrical association between the word "couac" — or rather, "koax" — and the onomatopoetic sound that a frog makes. In the the popular play The Frogs by Ancient Greek comedic playwright Aristophanes, the Chorus of Frogs annoy the god Dionysos by singing a refrain of "Βρεκεκεκὲξ κοὰξ κοάξ", which is transliterated as "Brekekekex koax koax" (read this section from The Frogs here). Aristophanes' Frogs was still a standard part of the European literary curriculum in the 19th century. So, within Leroux's 19th century theatrical and literary setting, this sound, "koax", was associated both with frogs and with an annoying, discordant sound.

III) David Coward in his translation renders the word "couac" as "skaark". This is a bizarre translation choice, since "skaark" is not associated with any onomatopoetic sound in English (or French for that matter). Instead, it appears to be a sound that Coward made up himself to describe the noise that he imagined Erik was projecting over Carlotta's voice.

IV) Leroux "borrowed" this description of Carlotta's voice (highlighted in blue above) from Le Nouvel Opéra: Monument - Artistes, by X.Y.Z. (i.e. "Anonymous"). This was the same source Leroux used to develop Christine Daaé's backstory (based on Christine Nilsson's history), as well as the source of his description for Carlotta's voice earlier in this chapter (based on the description of Gabrielle Krauss). In this section, Leroux has again drawn from Christine Nilsson's biography, except here he's used it to describe Carlotta's voice. Here is the paragraph that he used:

V) Leroux took the headline announcing the chandelier accident from the newspaper, Le Matin, where he had been working as a journalist at the time of the incident. On 20 May, 1896, during a production of Hellé, a counterweight from the chandelier (not the whole chandelier) fell into the auditorium and killed a concierge named Mme Claudine Chaumet.

Of course, being Leroux, he significantly exaggerated the weight of the chandelier debris, increasing its mass from five hundred kilos, to two hundred thousand kilos! (And that said, if the whole chandelier, weighing several tons, had crashed into the auditorium, it would have killed more than one person!)

Here is a link to the article in Le Matin on 21 May, 1896. Below is an image of the headline that ran in Le Matin, announcing the accident:

Click here to see the entire edition of Le Gaulois from 26 October, 1909. This link brings you to page 3 of the newspaper — Le Fantôme is at the bottom of the page in the feuilleton section. Click on the arrow buttons at the bottom of the screen to turn the pages of the newspaper, and click on the Zoom button at the bottom left to magnify the text.

[blaineskindagay]

I regret to inform the entirety of everybody that I have picked up “Brekekekex koax koax” as a vocal stim so I’ll be approximately 32% more insufferable until it leaves

[lesbiansagainsttheatre]

at the the river styx straight up brekekekexing it. and by it. well let’s juts say. My Koax

[tyrantisterror]

ok since people keep telling me about their goblins now it's only fair I share mine

They're frog people of varying degrees of anthropomorphism. Their tadpoles are called poligobs, and their nurseries are ponds and lakes (natural or artificially created) lying near their swampy homes. They're intelligent and crafty, with a cultural knack for thinking up complex machinery (goblins invented the first clocks). They're generally low in the Fair Folk caste system, though individual goblins like Robin Goodfellow (aka Puck) have risen to positions of prominence. Their names tend to be the names of birds or onomatopoeias of frog noises (Rebbet, Brekekek, Koax, Bud, Wyz, Err, etc.).

[mntds]

Girl help I can’t stop making the frog noise from The Frogs

[dapurinthos]

i don't know what your frogs are saying but mine are saying:

Brekekekex koax koax Brekekekex koax koax.                                                                           Children of the marsh and lake harmonious song now sweetly make, our own enchanting melodies                                                            koax koax. The songs we sang for Nysa’s lord, for Dionysus, son of Zeus, in Limnai at the Feast of Jars as people in their drunken glee thronged into our sanctuary. Brekekekex koax koax. 

[trans. ian johnston, 2008]

[blueoncemoon]

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