Crocodile

Peggotty and I were sitting one night by the parlour fire, alone. I had been reading to Peggotty about crocodiles. I must have read very perspicuously, or the poor soul must have been deeply interested, for I remember she had a cloudy impression, after I had done, that they were a sort of vegetable.

In due season the amphibious crocodile
Rose from the waves and clambered on the bank
And clothed himself, having cleansed his toes which stank
Of bayous of Florida and estuaries of Nile.

And if he had not water on his brain,
Remember what joys were his. The complete landlubber
In a green mackintosh and overshoes of rubber -
Putting his umbrella up against the rain

For fear of the influenza – sleeking his curls -
Prowling among the petticoats and the teacups -
Visiting the punchbowl to the verge of hiccups -
Breaching his promises and playing with the girls.

At length in grey spats he must cross the ocean.
So this is Paris? Lafayette, we are here.
Bring us sweet wines but non of your French beer!
And he weeps on Notre Dame with proper emotion.

This is Rive Gauche, here´s the Hotel Crillon.
Where are the brave poilus? They are slain by his French.
And suddenly he cries, I want to see a trench!
Up in the North eventually he sees one

Which is all green slime and water; whereupon lewd
Nostalgic tremor assail him; with strangled oaths
He flees; he would be kicking off his clothes
And reverting to his pre-Christian mother´s nude.

Next on the Grand Tour is Westminster, and Fleet Street.
His Embassy must present him to King George.
Who is the gentleman having teeth so large?
That is Mr. Crocodile, our renowned aesthete.

To know England really one must try the country
And the week-end parties; he is persuaded to straddle
A yellow beast in a red coat on a flat saddle.
Much too gymnastical are the English gentry.

Surely a Scotch and soda with the Balliol men.
But when old Crocodile rises to speak at the Union
He is too miserably conscious of his bunion
And toes too large for the aesthetic regimen.

It is too too possible he has wandered far
From the simple center of his rugged nature.
I wonder, says he, if I am the sort of creature
To live by projects, travel, affaires du coeur?

Crocodile ponders the marrying of a wife
With a ready-made fortune and ready-made family;
The lady is not a poem; she is a homily,
And he hates the rectangular charms of the virtuos life.

Soberly Crocodile sips of the Eucharist.
But as he meditates the obscene complexes
And infinite involutions of the sexes,
Crocodile could be a psychoanalyst.

But who would ever have thought it took such strength
To whittle the tree of being to its points
While the deep-sea urge cries Largo, and all the joints
Tingle with gross desire of lying at length?

Of all the elements mixed in Crocodile
Water is principal; but water flows
By paths of least resistance; and water goes
Down, down, down; which is proper and infantile.

The earth spins from its poles, and is glared on
By the fierce incessant suns, but here is news
For a note in the fine-print column of Thursday Reviews:
Old Robert Crocodile has packed and gone.

His dear friends cannot find him. The ladies write
As usual but their lavender notes are returned
By the U.S. Postmaster and secretively burned.
He has mysteriously got out of sight.

Crocodile hangs his pretty clothes on a limb
And lies with his fathers, and with his mothers too,
And his brothers and sisters as it seems right to do;
The family religion is good enough for him.

Full length he lies and goes as water goes,
He weeps for joy and welters in the flood,
Floating he lies extended nearly a rood,
And quite invisible but for the end of his nose.


(John Crowe Ransom, 1888-1974, Crocodile 1925)

'Now let me hear some more about the Crorkindills,' said Peggotty, who was not quite right in the name yet, 'for I an't heard half enough.'

I couldn't quite understand why Peggotty looked so queer, or why she was so ready to go back to the crocodiles. However, we returned to those monsters, with fresh wakefulness on my part, and we left their eggs in the sand for the sun to hatch; and we ran away from them, and baffled them by constantly turning, which they were unable to do quickly, on account of their unwieldy make; and we went into the water after them, as natives, and put sharp pieces of timber down their throats; and in short we ran the whole crocodile gauntlet.

"Watch out, Caspar !
The crocodile !"
(the most appropriate words in puppet theatres)

For me it's a symbol for that thing that we often can see in daily soaps (and daily politics and mass-media) for example.
The danger is shown to the viewer, and the people behind the scenes pretend to do not know anything about; so that the viewer get's in the role of doing what the manipulator wants him to, while thinking he is just drawing the others atention to his demands.
(understood?)


"Vorsicht, Kasper !
Das Krokodil !"
(die einschlägigste Zeile im Puppentheater)

When my kids were four years old, they asked me what I thought was the most dangerous of animals. I told them I was pretty sure it was the crocodile. I had a vivid picture in my mind of the long, dagger-toothed snout closing around a thigh, then twisting and drawing one under the murky Nile. Well, I was wrong. Turns out the most dangerous animal, the one that kills more humans than any other (not counting those that kill indirectly by spreading disease), is the hippopotamus. My kids are older now, much less interested in delineating their fears, so I'm glad I don't have to tell them this.