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. For strength of character in the race as in the individual consists mainly in the power of sacrificing the present to the future, of disregarding the immediate temptations of ephemeral pleasure for the more distant and lasting sources of satisfaction. 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.
‘Braced and strengthened with this belief, vain and false as it may be, that the blessings of freedom and truth are kept and won, that the character of the race and of the individual becomes higher and stronger by such self-restraint and sacrifice, he is particularly careful of the ephemeral temptation to abuse the sex-taboo.
‘While he speaks with bantering condescension of the poor savage who uses the navel-cord and severed genitals of his relatives for the magic purposes of agriculture, the language he chooses is blamelessly scientific. In other words, he gives himself the privilege of the priests who may treat of the holy mysteries plainly, but in the sacred language and not in the vernacular. Or else, as one of the people, he is exquisitely circumlocutory in his accounts of primitive orgies:
“A striking feature of the worship of Osiris as a god of fertility was the coarse but expressive symbolism by which this aspect of his nature was presented to the eye, not merely of the initiated, but of the multitude.... At Philae the dead god is portrayed lying on his bier in an attitude which indicates in the plainest way that even in death his generative virtue was not extinct, but only suspended.... One may conjecture that in this paternal aspect....”
And shortly afterwards, he gravely wonders at the savage dread of menstrual blood. Klein, in one of his essays, suggests that the whole book is satiric in intention, and in a private letter has charged me with having no sense of humour because I refuse to read it in this way. 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 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.
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.
You have not used obscene or threatening language, or expressed a wish that your adversary should suffer. You have not used God’s name. If you had done any of these things you would not only be putting yourself in danger of prosecution and alienating the sympathy of the other travellers, but you would further be weakening the effect of your curse. “God damn you,” says Jones to Brown. Brown says to himself: “Good; Jones is thoroughly annoyed with me, and afraid to do anything but curse.” And Brown considers himself on good terms with God, and cannot imagine the latter being influenced by any angry petitions of Jones. But “You will have a dangerous illness in three weeks’ time” is a different matter. 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. When eventually you part, he takes the curse home with him—not your curse, but his own. 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. 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. It is true that Ulysses is forbidden publication in England as indecent and that it contains more words classified by law as indecent than any other work published this century; but on the other hand it also contains more obscure poetic and religious references than any other work published this century and the choice of language in the blameless passages is as scholarly as Mr. Saintsbury’s and as English as Charles Doughty’s. So far from being a work of merely pornographic intention or even a serious work given the pornographic sugar-coating that Rabelais gave his politico-philosophic pills, it is a deadly serious work in which obscenity is anatomized as it has never been anatomized before. To call Joyce obscene, is like calling the Shakespeare of the Sonnets lustful: true, both have had the intimate experiences that their writing implies, but Joyce has brought himself as far beyond obscenity as Shakespeare got beyond the lust of which he makes frank confession. 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 and great literary capacity, he finds only emptiness. 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. 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; and in the spiritual conflict between an artist’s love of reality and an artist’s hatred of obscenity the plot of the book lies. The only character in the book with whom Daedalus has a strong natural sympathy is his father, the only one man who is able to harmonize religion, politics, and obscenity into something like an artistic reality. Old Daedalus swears admirably. Though most of his oaths are on the censored list there is no disgust stirred by them: