I've been a bit under the weather, and I awoke at 3:30 a.m. rather feverish from some disturbed dreams. As I lay there tossing and turning, I was overcome by a bizarre and wholly unaccountable compulsion to adapt Wilde's 'The Harlot's House' to the tune of Al's 'Black Danube.' I know Oscar will forgive me, and I hope Al does, too. This is certainly the greatest liberty I've ever taken with one of his songs; a simple parody seems to me much more tolerable because, after all, a joke's just a joke. At the moment I feel like Ted Turner *ought* to when he colourises some glorious old film. *Please* don't read it if you're inclined to be impressionable, and it might ruin the song for you forever. But I am emboldened by the fact that it's Aloween soon, and putting a brazen face on my audacity, I quote Wilde: 'The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.'

Brian

P.S. Wilde's original imagery is every bit as eerily reminiscent/premonitory of the Holocaust as I've tried to make it out here.

Moonlight on the Danube,
Down ancient streets
Silver-sandaled feet,
Through the shadows creep.
' . . . Nur ein selbstbertrug . . . '
' . . . Hort es denn auf?'
Echoes from the House,
Over strains of Strauss.

In the crowded room,
The dancers spin,
To the violin,
Black leaves in the wind.
Figures from a tomb
Flash death's-head smiles;
For a little while
Time stands beguiled.

Now and then a ghastly marionette,
Comes out to smoke his cigarette,
Or one of the wan-faced and clockwork forms
Clasps the shade
Of her love
To her breast
In her skeleton arms ...

Fleshless, starved grotesques,
In weird pavan,
Dance until the dawn
Heedless ling'ring on.
Slow, strange arabesques,
Like branches bare
Waving in the air
Beckoned us to share.

[musical interval]

Faceless figures formed a stiff quadrille,
Down the stair came their laughter thin and shrill.
I said, 'See! How the dust whirls with the dust!'
But my love
Left my side,
And was lost
In the House of Lust.

As I turn away,
The tune goes false,
And the music halts,
They have left the walz.
Shadows, steel-grey,
Come down the street,
March on iron-shod feet
To a new beat.

Over the Black Danube,
The sky grows red,
As I find my bed,
Even night has fled . . .

Brian L Chaffin (chaff002@maroon.tc.umn.edu)