Robert Graves

“ The only really effective form of swearing that I know is this: Suppose you quarrel violently with a fellow-traveller in a crowded railway-carriage, perhaps about opening windows or the disposition of luggage. You get worsted. “Very well”, you say, with a sigh, “have it your own way.” “By the way”, you add, with a peculiar intensity, “I happen to know that in three weeks’ time you will have a dangerous illness.” If the quarrel has been very violent, you may even sentence your adversary to death. ”

“ When a future historian comes to treat of the social-taboos of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in a fourteen-volume life-work, his theories of the existence of an enormous secret-language of bawdry and an immense oral literature of obscene stories and rhymes known, in various degrees of initiation, to every man and woman in the country, yet never consigned to writing or openly admitted as existing, will be treated as a chimerical notion by the enlightened age in which he writes. ”

“ I am informed that the legal view of abusive swearing is that, unless calculated to cause a breach of the peace, it is no offence. So that it is just possible to call a man a blasted fool in public. On the other hand, there is an offence in calling him plain and unqualified fool: that constitutes a libel and a penalty can be exacted. ”

“ The Elizabethan Age may have been richer in far-fetched profanities and wild conceits than the Augustan Age, but swearing is an art that cannot trust to mere adventure for its success; it must have a controlled purpose, and always flourishes most strongly in a pure aristocracy, particularly a leisured town-dwelling aristocracy. ”

“ There is no surer way of testing the current of popular religious opinion than by examining the breaches of the taboos in swearing. At the present day the First Person of the Trinity is not taken too seriously. “O God!” has become only a low-grade oath and has crept into the legitimate vocabulary of the drawing-room and the stage. The second Person, since the great evangelical campaigns of the last [10] century overturned a despotism and inaugurated a spiritual republic, is far more firmly established. To swear by Jesus Christ is an oath with weight behind it. ”

“ But I prefer for once to have no sense of humour.’
To conclude, swearing as an art is at present in low water. National passion seldom runs high, invention is numbed, and there is no appeal of a politico-religious nature which will meet everywhere with the same respect. The [71] only taboo strong enough to be worth breaking is the sexual one, and swearing shows every sign of continuing standardized on that basis for some time. It may be that “bastard”, and similar words, may gradually creep into legitimate speech, but only because obscener equivalents have been found. ”

“ To curse effectively one must invoke a reality or, at the least, a possibility. Any swearing that fails to wound the susceptibility of the person sworn at or of the witness [13] to the oath, is mere play. Few people enjoy being sworn at, but there are no forms of humour more boring than guaranteed non-alcoholic substitutes for the true wine of swearing. ”

“ Daedalus, who makes his living by schoolmastering in an old-fashioned school, is philosophically inclined to the obscene life because Bloom and Mulligan, who live it seriously, are in this respect at least superior to the priests, the schoolmasters and the little Celtic-Twilight poets (Joyce himself began as one) whose lives have no such absorption in a ruling idea. Yet as a sensitive person Daedalus is utterly repelled by the badness and rankness which obscenity exudes ”

“ Thus so common a word as “bottom” meaning a base, a bed, a fundament, a cause, owing to its use in smut as an equivalent for “buttocks”, could never be used in the legitimate language in any context where a double entendre might be understood. ”

“ The nice person is one who good-humouredly criticizes the absurdities of the taboo in good-humoured conversation with intimates; but does not find it necessary to celebrate any black masses as a proof of his emancipation from it. This book is written for the Nice People. Then, though it is in its first intention a detached treatise on swearing and obscenity, it cannot claim a complete innocence of obscenity, while consenting to the publishers’ limitations of what is printable and what is not. ”

“ Again, it is only a minor taboo that forbids mention of lice, fleas, and bugs. But the imputation of lousiness (except in the trenches, where it was a joke) carries serious implications with it; and the metaphorical “You louse!” is ripe with hatred.
Now, the odd combinations that a witty and persistent mind could contrive from the breach of several of these taboos at once are far more numerous than appears at first sight. The lewd fellow who can go on swearing, without repetition, for a mere hour or more should not deserve the high popular esteem that he wins by the feat. ”

“ It is difficult to determine how far this taboo is governed by the sense of reverence, and how far the feeling is one of disgust and Puritanic self-hate. But in any case the double function of the tabood organs, the progenitive and excretory principles, has confused the grammatic mind of civilization.
The words “whore” and “harlot” are among the angriest properties of swearing in any class: in the governed classes they are taken realistically, the conditions of life being often so difficult under industrialism that the temptation for a woman to embark on this career is a serious one. ”

“ An old hedge-schoolmaster one day came as a stranger to the Inn in South Wales where the poet was drinking, and sat down at a corner table. Presently he cried out twice in a loud voice: “Aristotle was the pupil of Plato.” After a moment’s silence the men at the bar protested: “Keep silence, you there!” Their wives caught their skirts tightly to them: “We are respectable married women and did not come here to be insulted.” The publican threatened to throw the speaker out if he uttered any further obscenity. ”

“ Bound up with the taboo on the mention of God, of Heaven His throne, and Earth His footstool, and of all His other charges and minions, is the complementary taboo on the Devil, His ministers, and His prison-house. At one time the vain invocation of the Devil was an even more dangerous misdemeanour than the breach of the third Commandment. God, though He would not hold him guiltless who took His Name in vain, might forgive an occasional lapse; but the Devil, if ever called in professionally, would not fail to charge heavily for His visit. ”

“ Irish nationalist politics are no better. The only life that has any appearance of reality to him is the obscene life as lived by Bloom the middle-aged married commercial traveller and by Mulligan a forceful young medical student who lodges with Daedalus. ”

“ The taboo on vain mention of God or Gods is also extended to the divine mysteries, to the sacraments and sacred writings, and to the human representatives of Heaven where they are permitted direct communion with the Absolute. In Catholic countries, Saints and Prophets are, therefore, used for swearing in a low key, and it has meant a serious lessening of the dignity of the Almighty in England that Protestantism and Dissent have removed these [6] valuable intermediaries from objurgation as from adoration. ”

“ Though heretics within Christianity are ridiculed by him for having claimed divinity for themselves, the divinity of Jesus Christ is nowhere directly impugned: who is permitted to have been immaculately conceived, to have cast out devils, taken over the burden of human sin, and risen again. ”

“ For this is an individualistic age: the community has little power over the individual, and, if you would curse effectively, it must not be done in the name of the community or the formula of the community. ”

“ Of the necessity for swearing there is more than one opinion: large numbers both of the educated and the uneducated stand for the rigour of the taboo and for self-control: for them yea must always be yea, and nay, nay. Yet in practice they permit a few sterilized ejaculations, such as “you silly beggar”, which is the drawing-room synonym for the double b. ”

“ Though clearly a great force in the contemporary movement for the breaking of taboos that had outlasted their use, he never makes a direct attack upon them. It may indeed be said that he clings to the very superstition which he records among primitive tribes, that to dispatch the tribal god by indirect means is not blasphemy in the first degree: that is, he treats facetiously the beliefs and ceremonies of almost every religion but that of contemporary English Protestantism, but points out the common [66] resemblances and leaves the reader to take the inevitable step. ”

“ For all the traveller knows, you may be a specialist, giving a free diagnosis of his condition. Pride will keep him from asking you on what grounds you said what you did. If he does ask, he cannot force a reply from you without assault. Keep silence for the rest of the journey, and watch his nerves gradually go. He is pinned in that corner-seat with you opposite him: he has no refuge from your curse because he does not understand it. The more often he tells himself that he should pay no attention to you, the more irritating will be the superstitious reactions. ”

“ The Third Person is seldom appealed to, and makes a very serious oath, partly because of the Biblical warning that the sin against the Holy Ghost is the one unforgivable offence, and partly because the word Ghost suggests a sinister spiritual haunting. “God” to the crowd is a benevolent or a laughable abstraction; Jesus Christ is a hero for whom it is possible to have a warm friendly feeling ”

“ Silence under suffering is usually impossible. The nervous system demands some expression that does not affect towards cowardice and feebleness, and, as a nervous stimulant in a crisis, swearing is unequalled. It is a Saturnalian defiance of Destiny. Where rhetorical appeals to Fatherland, Duty, Honour, Self-respect, and similar idealistic abstractions fail, the well-chosen oath will often save the situation. ”

“ The word “parts” becoming a synonym in Smut of the organs of generation had to be used with great care, and these are merely two isolated instances [51] of a principle so strong that when two persons who had been initiated into the third or fourth degree of the secret language began a conversation, practically not a single phrase could be used by them without this double entendre, causing hysterical laughter. ”

“ The more the power is exercised, the higher and stronger becomes the character; till the height of heroism is reached in men who renounce the pleasures of life itself for the sake of keeping or winning for others, perhaps in distant ages, the blessing of freedom and truth. ”

“ Bloom, gross obscenity incarnate, is presented in Ulysses directly without the prejudice of tenderness or harshness. Stephen Daedalus whose early history had been given (semi-autobiographically) in “A portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” is presented as a type of the over-sophisticated intellectual, a poet who has failed as a poet because he is unable to find any strong enough reality to make foundation for his poetry. In the contemporary religious and literary scene, though a man of strong natural religious feelings [75] and great literary capacity, he finds only emptiness. ”

“ But the lasting and painful results of venereal disease are now generally realized, so “pox-ridden” and “clap-stricken” are daily gaining in offensiveness as epithets.
It is only a minor taboo that prevents reference to human excrement, but major swearing is strengthened by lavatory metaphors implying worthlessness or noisome disgust. ”

“ You must put it into your adversary’s mind to curse himself with his own fears. “Injuries only come from the heart” quoth my uncle Toby.
A final word and a most important one. No critic of this essay will be satisfied unless fuller mention is made of James Joyce’s Ulysses than has here been given. But they must remain unsatisfied. Though Ulysses could be studied as a complete manual of contemporary obscenity, such a study will get no encouragement here. ”

“ In the governing classes the accusation is one of aesthetic coarseness: to have a liaison is excusable, and sometimes, if the lover chosen is sufficiently distinguished, even admirable; but the amateur status must be strictly maintained in love as in sport. (It may [16] be noticed in passing that the word “pro.” is a deadly insult among Public School soccer players, and the greatest compliment in village or waste-ground football.) ”

“ And this brings us to the sex-taboo, from the violation of which abusive swearing draws its chief strength; mention even of the privy parts of the body is protected by a convention which has lost little of its rigidity since mid-Victorian times. The soldier, shot through the buttocks at Loos, who was asked by a visitor where he had been wounded, could only reply [15] “I’m so sorry, ma’am, I don’t know: I never learned Latin.” Public reference to a man’s navel, thighs, or arm-pits, even, is a serious affront; from which the size of the “breeches of fig-leaves” tailored in Eden may be deduced. ”

“ Our author also feels the academic necessity for an occasional platitude in the ancient “moral progress” superstition to round off an over-argumentative chapter; it seems to weigh as heavily upon him as [68] the necessity of sacrificing black wallabies (or were they black cockatoos?) in time of drought weighed on the Australian blackfellow. He writes:
The fallacy of such a belief is plain to us; yet perhaps the self-restraint which these and the like beliefs, vain and false as they are, have imposed on mankind has not been without its utility in bracing and strengthening the breed. ”

“ Now, among primitive peoples no man will utter common words which coincide with or merely resemble in sound tabood names, and, though the twentieth century refused to admit itself primitive, we cannot now understand on what grounds this refusal could have been plausibly justified. The principle I have italicized is a direct quotation from a contemporary treatise on taboo. ”