The curse may also have been inspired by the famous bilingual curse in <Tristram Shandy,> vol. 3, chap. 11 (technically an excommunication).
507.11: May its crops be given to the caterpillar and the fruits of its labor to the locust: cf. Psalm 74:46: "He [Yahweh] gave their crops to the caterpillar; the fruit of their labor to the locust."
Also, in Moby-Dick Melville mainlines the King James Bible directly into the prose bloodstream. Ahab’s rhetoric often carries such prophetic, imprecatory force with Old Testament thunder wrapped around obsession and blasphemous grandeur.
Absalom, Absalom! seems potentially relevant as it features a place/family under inherited biblical doom, generational judgment, land contamination, and quasi-scriptural fatalism. That said, it is more of a slow burn; I do not recall anything like this chapter's single-paragraph compressed rant with a huge blast radius.
The curse may also have been inspired by the famous bilingual curse in <Tristram Shandy,> vol. 3, chap. 11 (technically an excommunication).
507.11: May its crops be given to the caterpillar and the fruits of its labor to the locust: cf. Psalm 74:46: "He [Yahweh] gave their crops to the caterpillar; the fruit of their labor to the locust."
That's a much closer fit, thanks! Added both!
Also, in Moby-Dick Melville mainlines the King James Bible directly into the prose bloodstream. Ahab’s rhetoric often carries such prophetic, imprecatory force with Old Testament thunder wrapped around obsession and blasphemous grandeur.
Absalom, Absalom! seems potentially relevant as it features a place/family under inherited biblical doom, generational judgment, land contamination, and quasi-scriptural fatalism. That said, it is more of a slow burn; I do not recall anything like this chapter's single-paragraph compressed rant with a huge blast radius.