Judith

            Sunday morning it was acid cold when I got up to pee at 4:43. I went back to bed for another fifteen minutes. 

            I finished posting my translation of “Baby Lou” by Serge Gainsbourg and memorized the first verse of his song “Privé" (Private). The music by Alain Chamfort seems to have been written to be played in dance clubs. As usual I have to make adjustments to my translation as I get a better sense of the rhythm. 

            For lunch I had Ritz crackers and a few slices of cheddar. 

            I finished reading Beowulf. I suspect that the non-rhyming Old English text from 12,000 years ago is based on actual songs that the author heard, probably in Danish. 

            I did my exercises while listening to the first half of the radio documentary, “The Real Amos and Andy”. The roots of the characters can be traced to the Minstrel Show and Vaudeville traditional characters of Jim Crow and Zip Coon. Jim Crow was created by Minstrel Show performer Thomas D Rice but based on a folk trickster of the same name in the stories told by African American slaves. The character was lazy, dumb and dishonest. What the character of Amos kept of Jim Crow was a certain happy and easy going naivety. The Zip Coon character was a depiction of how the freed slave was perceived as being conniving and always trying to take advantage of people. At first the character of Andy was very similar to Zip Coon but then later the character of Kingfish took on that role. But the portrayal of these character types in Amos and Andy was very different from the way they were presented in Minstrel shows. In Minstrel shows the characters were always made to look and sound ridiculous. But on the serialized radio show during the Depression forty million people tuned in because they identified with the characters and really cared about what was going to happen to them next. In movie theatres the film would stop so the audience wouldn’t miss the Amos and Andy broadcast. Department stores would play Amos and Andy for their shoppers when it aired because they knew they would stay home and not buy anything at that time if they didn’t. Later on when Amos and Andy became more normalized in the public's mind the character of Lightning was created to take over Amos’s lost naivety and Kingfish became the scheming Zip Coon character. In one story Lightning asks Andy what type of present he is taking to Kingfish for his Christmas Eve party. Andy says he’s taking him nothing. Lightning says he's very sorry to hear that because they are both taking him the same present. 

            I read a translation of the Old English poem “Judith”, based on the apocryphal Bible story of the defeat of the Assyrians by the Hebrews led by the beautiful Jewish warrior maiden Judith. She is brought as a captive to be bedded by the Assyrian leader but he is “Too Drunk to Fuck” as the Dead Kennedys song goes and so she draws her sword and cuts off his head. She takes the head back to her people as a symbol to rally them to battle and they win. Judith is treated as a heroine for her actions but I doubt that if a male warrior were to cut off the head of an unconscious enemy he would be revered as courageous. 

            I finished up my required reading for this week with Riddle 47 of the Exeter Book Riddles. A moth ate a song but was none the wiser. I assume this means that the moth ate the paper containing the written copy of a song. 

            I read the first few pages of Beowulf again out loud to tune into the oral tradition from which it came. 

            I grilled two burgers from some ground beef I bought and froze several weeks ago. I had one of them on a toasted bagel with a beer while watching The Count of Monte Cristo. 

            In this story set in 1836 Anna the Empress of Austria is making a secret journey to France. But there is a plot to assassinate Anna so as to start a war and so the Count of Monte Cristo has been sent by the King of France to protect her. They are following a rider who seems aware of their pursuit and they suspect he will set a trap. The count tells his friends to hold back while he enters the trap so they can spring him later. The count is jumped by someone from a tree and waked up a prisoner of Colonel Latour. He tells the count that two assassins are waiting outside to kill him, but when he opens the door to let them in he is attacked by Jacopo and Rico. From Latour the count learns where Ann will be sleeping that night. In her bedroom Anna recites lines from the poem "Earth" by William Cullen Bryant, “The horrid tale of perjury and strife, murder and spoil which men call history.” Suddenly a group of assassins burst into the chamber and one of them is ready to stab her when the count and his friends come through the window and attack. Most of the men are taken out but one escapes. The count insists that the empress and her handmaiden the Countess Eugenia leave with him now with no time to change from her nightgown. The count has to carry her away kicking and screaming. They take refuge in an abandoned mill while Jacopo and Rico go to find Anna some clothing. All they could get were the clothes of a farmer’s wife. The count says they will split into two groups with Anna travelling with him and they will meet at a certain location at 1:00 that night. Meanwhile the assassins led by Baron Buray notice the mill and are about to investigate when they see two men and a woman riding away. The pursue them while the count and Anna escape with a hay cart. When they see men on horseback ahead they head into the woods on foot. But the shoes borrowed from the farm woman have holes in them and Anna has trouble walking. The count leaves money for food that someone left unattended and they eat. They argue about going forward or going back. She says she says she comes from a long line of strategists and she insists that the assassins wouldn’t expect them to go back. But the count tells her he knows something about escape and they are going forward. The empress commands him to go back and he says she can go but he says he’ll have a sleep. She finally agrees to go forward but then Baron Buray arrives with one of his men. They draw swords and after a fight Buray is disarmed and the other man is splashing in the river. That night Anna collapses in exhaustion and so the count carries her to the barn where his friends and Eugenia are waiting. But then the assassins surround the barn and say they will burn down the building unless the empress gives herself up. Anna insists on surrendering and so a little later the door opens and a small figure emerges from the barn. As the assassins come to get her Jacopo reveals it is him in drag and he begins to fight and so do the count and Rico. The assassins are defeated and then the French cavalry arrives. 

            The Empress Anna was played by Jane Griffiths, who starred in “The Million Pound Note”, “The Durant Affair" and “The Third Alibi”. 

            The Countess Eugenia was played by Moira Lynd, who starred in "The Perfect Lady" and "Going Straight”. She was a leading lady in the 1930s but made her last film in 1940. She made several television appearances. 

            Maria Anna of Savoy was Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary by her marriage to Ferdinand I the Emperor of Austria. They portray her as being about ten years younger than she would have been at this time.