From: Lars Porsena; or, the Future of Swearing and Improper Language

Type:

Book Chapter

Author:

Robert Graves

Published:

2024

Publisher:

Routledge

Gives a synopsis of a To-day and To-morrow book that might be called Lars Porsena about the future of swearing. But the present one is the nearest to such a book which could be published; since the taboo on swearing prevents it being fully printed; and at such time as the taboo is relaxed, swearing will no longer have a future. He teases us that the original manuscript has been checked and censored by a lawyer, but will be kept in a library for ‘a more enlightened posterity.’ ‘Posterity’ gets him thinking of posteriors. Graves imagines a ‘future historian’—like James Fraser writing about religious practices in The Golden Bough—trying to write about swearing in this period, and being frustrated by the lack of documentation. He gives ‘The Bottom Legend,’ about a practical joker inviting to a party everyone in a town with the word ‘Bottom’ as part of their name. He then gives a superb parody of the historian postulating a ‘secret language [. . .] generally known as “smut”’ in which a word like ‘bottom’ meant ‘buttocks’ and could then not be used in ordinary language for fear of double entendre. Swearing, says Graves, is in decline. The only effective form is one which preys on the listener’s psychology (i.e. by saying he is suffering from an unsuspected fatal illness). Concludes by discussing Ulysses, banned for obscenity. Graves argues that its intent is not pornography but the analysis of obscenity, and that it is no more obscene than Shakespeare’s sonnets. This leads to th…

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