Laudator Temporis Acti

Robert Graves (1895-1985), But It Still Goes On: An Accumulation (London: Jonathan Cape, 1930), p. 160:

A strong case could be made out for excretion as a more classical literary subject than sex; the very paucity of defecatory plots should commend it. 'Incomplete elimination,' as the advertisements remind us, 'is the most powerful and universal poison of modern civilisation — (what does your mirror tell you?)'; and, they might add, successful elimination is, with sound sleep, one of the only two unassailably innocent recreations left to man in this increasingly God-awful world. . . . Tell me (in whispers, if necessary), did you ever hear of an ascetic who deliberately cultivated constipation?

Any society formed for the freedom of the bowels and for freedom of speech about freedom of the bowels can count on my whole-hearted support. I remember a most impressive lecture once delivered to me in the gymnasium at Charterhouse by the boxing-instructor. He said, poking me in the plexus with a rigid fore-finger, and fixing me with a little hard eye like a snake's, 'Now listen, Mr. Graves, to what I'm telling you, and don't you go away and forget it neither. Let nothing never stand between you and your daily duty! Remember, "England Expects." And what's more, sir, if you 'ad witnessed one 'alf the 'orrible sights I 'ave witnessed at Army post-mortems in this country and in Ireland, in a man's interiors, you wouldn't 'esitate, not if the mood came on you, to stop and loosen your braces, walking down Piccadilly, no, that you wouldn't! They tells me you write poitry. Well, Mr. Graves, now there's a subjeck for you.' This harangue provoked me to the following couplet:

O cut on my grave let the epitaph be:
'His bowels and manners were equally free.'

'

Labels: noctes scatologicae