http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyknBTm_YyM

This is the story of my mistake-assumption.

The Dance of Death or The Dance of Death was written by Camille Saint-Saens in 1874.

And in 1894-1895 Rudyard Kipling’s novel “The Jungle Book” (in the Russian translation of “Mowgli”) was published.

The other day, while washing dishes, I started humming this tune to myself.

(Actually, whistling is better, but my cats can’t stand whistling. It’s a forbidden sound for me!!!)

And suddenly, a mental microcosm: Yes, this is a musical illustration to describe the scene of a giant boa constrictor devouring monkeys!

Alas! I was mistaken! Look at the dates.

But, how exactly it fits the plot:

There are two main themes: The staccato jumping and fussy romp of monkeys and the powerful smooth twists of the huge snake body.

In the end, they merge into intermittent fragments: Leaps, death screams of devoured and crushed monkeys, Bandar-Log, and the sharp convulsive contractions of Kaa swallowing victims.

The clang of teeth, either monkeys shaking in mortal terror, or the mighty jaws of Kaa – this sound is clearly audible in the part of xylophones (probably) or castanets.

First, Kaa utters several hypnotic phrases to a herd of monkeys, obediently gathered for slaughter in the arena of an abandoned city (Harsh and commanding sounds of violins).

Do they hear him well?

Is it good to watch all the twists of his hypnotized body with horror?

Yes, O Kaa,– the Bandar-Logs reply in an obedient chorus of the doomed.

Then WATCH!!!

And in the end, one by one, they jump into the gaping mouth.

After getting drunk, Kaa quietly crawls away to sleep for more than a day, until everything he has swallowed is digested.

And then – DANCE again!

For some, it’s JUST A REGULAR GLUTTONY!!!

For others – THE DANCE OF DEATH!!!

And nothing has changed in two million years – how people look so much like Bandar-Logs!

And Kaa, too, as befits a snake, changes only the outer shell …

25 I 2021

P.S. Two assumptions that correct my “historical mistake” can be suggested:

The first, close to reality: Rudyard Kipling heard this Saint-Saens music more than once and, to its mental sound, consciously or unconsciously wrote the scene of Kaa’s death dance in front of a herd of Bandar-Log hypnotized by him (supposedly monkeys, if you perceive this story with a dull, purring directness) – PEOPLE, as is inexorably evident from the meaning of the entire episode and the real history of mankind.

The second one is a little more fantastic: As you know, according to my hypothesis about the existence of Temporal Waves, that is, waves of compressed and stretched time, which accurately reflect the nature of the process that created them, there are waves propagating from the past to the future and from the future to the past. Temporal Waves from the future, radiated by Kipling’s brain, drawing the scene of Kaa’s Death Dance in «The Jungle Book», entered Saint-Saens’ Superconsciousness and seeped into his Consciousness, causing the composition of the music of The Dance of Death