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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/17134-8.txt b/17134-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a81ad0b --- /dev/null +++ b/17134-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1123 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Taboo, by James Branch Cabell + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Taboo + A Legend Retold from the Dirghic of Sævius Nicanor, with + Prolegomena, Notes, and a Preliminary Memoir + +Author: James Branch Cabell + +Release Date: November 22, 2005 [EBook #17134] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TABOO *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Sankar Viswanathan, and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + _TABOO_ + + _A Legend Retold from the Dirghic of Sævius + Nicanor, with Prolegomena, Notes, + and a Preliminary Memoir_ + + + + + By + + James Branch Cabell + + * * * * * + + _At melius fuerat non scribere, namque tacere + Tutum semper erit._ + + * * * * * + + + + NEW YORK + + ROBERT M. McBRIDE & COMPANY + + 1921 + + _This edition is limited to nine hundred and + twenty numbered copies, of which one hundred + copies have been signed by the author._ + + _Copy Number __893__ + + + Copyright, 1921, by + + JAMES BRANCH CABELL + + * * * * * + + Revised and reprinted, by permission of the + Editors, from THE LITERARY REVIEW + + + + +CONTENTS. + + +THE DEDICATION + +MEMOIR OF SAEVIUS NICANOR + +PROLEGOMENA + +THE LEGEND: + _How Horvendile Met Fate and Custom_ + _How the Garbage-Man Came with Forks_ + _How Thereupon Ensued a Legal Debate_ + _How There Was Babbling in Philistia_ + _How It Appeared to the Man in the Street_ + +COLOPHON + +A POSTSCRIPT + + * * * * * + + + + +THE DEDICATION + +_Laudataque virtus crescit_ + + * * * * * + + "Buttons, a farthing a pair! + Come, who could buy them of me? + They're round and sound and pretty, + And fit for girls of the city." + + + + +TO JOHN S. SUMNER + +(_Agent of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice_) + + +For no short while my indebtedness to you has been such as to require +some sort of public acknowledgment, which may now, I think, be +tendered most appropriately by inscribing upon the dedication page of +this small volume the name to which you are daily adding in +significance. + +It is a tribute, however trivial, which serves at least to express my +appreciation of your zeal in re-establishing what seemed to the less +optimistic a lost cause. I may to-day confess without much +embarrassment that after fifteen years of foiled endeavors my +(various) publishers and I had virtually decided that the printing of +my books was not likely ever to come under the head of a business +venture, but was more properly describable as a rather costly form of +dissipation. People here and there would praise, but until you, +unsolicited, had volunteered to make me known to the general public, +nobody seemed appreciably moved to purchase. + +One by one my books had "fallen dead" with disheartening monotony: +then--through what motive it would savor of ingratitude to +inquire,--you came to remedy all this in the manner of a philanthropic +sorcerer, brandishing everywhither your vivifying wand, and the dead +lived again. At once, they tell me, the patrons of bookstores began to +ask, not only in whispers for the _Jurgen_ which you had everywhere so +glowingly advertised, but with frank curiosity for "some of the +fellow's other books." + +Whereon we of course began to "reprint," with, I rejoice to say, +results which have been very generally acceptable. Barring a few +complaints as to the exiguousness of my writing's salacity,--a +salacity which even I confess you amiably exaggerated in attributing +to my literary manner all qualities which the average reader most +desires in novelists,--there has proved to be in point of fact, as my +publishers and I had dubiously believed for years, a gratifying number +of persons, living dispersedly about America, prepared to like my +books when these books were brought to their attention. The difficulty +had been that we did not know how to reach these widely scattered, +congenial readers. But you--like Sir James Barrie's hero--"found a +way." + +I cannot say, in candor, that your method of exegetical criticism has +always and in every respect appealed to me. Its applicability, for one +thing, seems so universal that it might, for aught I know, be +employed to interpret the dicta of Ackermann and Macrobius, or even +the canons of Doctors Matthews and Sherman herein cited, and thus open +dire vistas wherein critic would prey on critic, and the most +respectable would be locked in fratricidal strife. Moreover, I have +applied your method to many of the Mother Goose rhymes with rather +curious results.... But happily, I have here to confess to you, not +any disputable literary standards I may harbor, but only my unarguable +debt. + +In brief, your aid obtained for me overnight the hearing I had vainly +sought for a long while; and of such thaumaturgy my appreciation will +never be, I trust, inadequate. I therefore grasp at the first chance +to express this appreciation in--as I have said,--a form which seems +not quite inept. + +_Dumbarton Grange_ +_December, 1920._ + + +Of _The Mulberry Grove_ the following editions have been collated: + +(1) The _editio princeps_ of Mansard 1475. An excellent edition, +having, says Garnier, "nearly all the authority of an MS." This +edition served as the basis of all subsequent editions up to that of +Tribebos, 1553, which then took the lead up to the time of Bülg, who +judiciously reverted to that of Mansard. + +(2) Bülg, in 4 vols. Strasburg. 1786-89. And in 2 vols. Strasburg. +1786. Both editions containing the Dirghic text with a Latin version, +and the scholia and indices. + +(3) Musgrave, concerning whose edition Garnier is of opinion that, +though it appeared later, yet it had been made use of by Bülg. 2 vols. +Oxon. 1800. Reprinted, 3 vols. Oxon. 1809-10. + +(4) Vanderhoffen, with scholia, notes, and indices. 7 vols. London. +1807-25. His notes reprinted separately. Leipsic. 1824. + + + + +MEMOIR OF SÆVIUS NICANOR + +_Saevius Nicanor Marci libertus negabit_ + + "She went to the tailor's + To buy him a coat; + When she came back + He was riding the goat." + + +Sævius Nicanor, one of the earliest of the Grammarians, says +Suetonius, first acquired fame and reputation by his teaching; and, +besides, made commentaries, the greater part of which, however, were +said to have been borrowed. He also wrote a satire, in which he +informs us that he was a free man, and had a double cognomen. + +It is reported that in consequence of some aspersion attached to the +character of his writing, he retired into Sardinia, and, says +Oriphyles, devoted the remainder of his days to the composition of +sardonic[1] literature. + +[Footnote 1: Ackermann reads "Sardinian." It is not certain whether +the adjective employed is [Greek: sardanios] or [Greek: sardanikos]. I +suspect that Oriphyles here makes an intentional play upon the words.] + +He is quoted by Macrobius, whereas divers references to Nicanor in _La +Haulte Histoire de Jurgen_ would seem to show that this writer was +viewed with considerable esteem in mediæval times. Latterly his work +has been virtually unknown. + +Robert Burton, for the rest, cites Sævius Nicanor in the 1620 edition +of _The Anatomy of Melancholy_ (this passage was subsequently +remodeled) in terms which have the unintended merit of conveying a +very fair notion of the old Grammarian's literary ethics:-- + +"As a good housewife out of divers fleeces weaves one piece of cloth +(saith Sævius Nicanor), I have laboriously collected this Cento out of +divers Writers, and that _sine injuria_, I have wronged no authors, +but given every man his own; which Sosimenes so much commends in +Nicanor, he stole not whole verses, pages, tracts, as some do +nowadays, concealing their Authors' names, but still said this was +Cleophantus', that Philistion's, that Mnesides', so said Julius +Bassus, so Timaristus, thus far Ophelion: I cite and quote mine own +Authors (which howsoever some illiterate scribblers account +pedantical, as a cloak of ignorance and opposite to their affected +fine style, I must and will use) _sumpsi, non surripui_, and what +Varro _de re rustica_ speaks of bees, _minime malificæ quod nullius +opus vellicantes faciunt deterius_, I can say of myself no less +heartily than Sosimenes his laud of Nicanor." + + + + +PROLEGOMENA + +_Nec caput habentia, nec caudam_ + + "I had a little husband, no bigger than my thumb, + I put him in my pint-pot, and there I bid him drum." + + +Pre-eminently the most engaging feature of a topic which pure chance +and impure idiocy have of late conspired to pull about in the public +prints,--I mean the question of "indecency" in writing,--is the patent +ease with which this topic may be disposed of. Since time's beginning, +every age has had its literary taboos, selecting certain things--more +or less arbitrarily, but usually some natural function--as the things +which must not be written about. To violate any such taboo so long as +it stays prevalent is to be "indecent": and that seems absolutely all +there is to say concerning this topic, apart from furnishing some +impressive historical illustration.... + +The most striking instance which my far from exhaustive researches +afford, sprang from the fact, perhaps not very generally known, that +the natural function of eating, which nowadays may be discussed +intrepidly anywhere, was once regarded by the Philistines, of at all +events the Shephelah and the deme of Novogath, as being +unmentionable. This ancient tenet of theirs, indeed, is with such +clearness emphasized in a luckily preserved fragment from the Dirghic, +or pre-Ciceronian Latin, of Sævius Nicanor that the readiest way to +illustrate the chameleon-like traits of literary indecency appears to +be to record, as hereinafter is recorded, what of this legend +survives. + +Bülg and Vanderhoffen, be it said here, are agreed that it is to this +legend Milton has referred in his _Areopagitica_, in a passage +sufficiently quaint-seeming to us (for whom a more advanced +civilization has secured the right of free speech) to warrant an +abridged citation:-- + +"What advantage is it to be a man, over it is to be a boy at school, +if serious and elaborate writings, as if they were no more than the +theme of a grammar lad under his pedagogue, must not be uttered +without the cursory eyes of a temporizing and extemporizing licenser? +whenas all the writer teaches, all he delivers, is but under the +tuition, under the correction of his patriarchal licenser, to blot or +alter what precisely accords not with the hide-bound humor which he +calls his judgment? What is it but a servitude like that imposed by +the Philistines?" + + + + +THE LEGEND + +_Fit ex his consuetudo, inde natura_ + + "I love little pussy, + Her fur is so warm." + + + + +I--How Horvendile Met Fate and Custom + + +Now, at about the time that the Tyrant Pedagogos fell into disfavor +with his people, avers old Nicanor (as the curious may verify by +comparing Lib. X, Chap. 28 of his _Mulberry Grove_), passed through +Philistia a clerk whom some called Horvendile, travelling by +compulsion from he did not know where toward a goal which he could not +divine. So this Horvendile said, "I will make a book of this +journeying, for it seems to me a rather queer journeying." + +They answered him: "Very well, but if you have had dinner or supper by +the way, do you make no mention of it in your book. For it is a law +among us, for the protection of our youth, that eating[2] must never +be spoken of in any of our writing." + +[Footnote 2: Such at least is the generally received rendering. +Ackermann, following Bülg's probably spurious text, disputes that this +is the exact meaning of the noun.] + +Horvendile considered this a curious enactment, but it seemed only one +among the innumerable mad customs of Philistia. So he shrugged, and he +made the book of his journeying, and of the things which he had seen +and heard and loved and hated and had put by in the course of his +passage among ageless and unfathomed mysteries. + +And in the book there was nowhere any word of eating. + + + + +2--How the Garbage Man Came with Forks + + +Now to the book which Horvendile had made comes presently a +garbage-man, newly returned from foreign travel for his health's sake, +whose name was John. And this scavenger cried, "Oh, horrible! for here +is very shameless mention of a sword and a spear and a staff." + +"That now is true enough," says Horvendile, "but wherein lies the +harm?" + +"Why, one has but to write 'a fork' here, in the place of each of +these offensive weapons, and the reference to eating is plain." + +"That also is true, but it would be your writing and not my writing +which would refer to eating." + +John said, "Abandoned one, it is the law of Philistia and the holy +doctrine of St. Anthony Koprologos that if anybody chooses to +understand any written word anywhere as meaning 'to eat,' the word +henceforward has that meaning." + +"Then you of Philistia have very foolish laws." + +To which John the Scavenger sagely replied: "Ah, but if laws exist +they ought to fairly and impartially and without favoritism be +enforced until amended or repealed. Much of the unsettled condition +prevailing in the country at the present time can be traced directly +to a lack of law enforcement in many directions during past years." + +"Now I misdoubt if I understand you, Messire John, for your +infinitives are split beyond comprehension. And when you talk about +the non-enforcement of anything in many directions, even though these +directions were during past years, I find it so confusing that the one +thing of which I can be quite certain is that it was never you whom +the law selected to pass upon and to amend all books." + +This Horvendile says foolishly, not knowing it is an axiom among the +Philistines that literary expression is best controlled by somebody +with no misleading tenderness toward it; and that it is this custom, +as they proudly aver, which makes the literature of Philistia what it +is. + +But John the Garbage-man said nothing at all, the while that he +changed nouns to "fork" and "dish," and carefully annotated each verb +in the book as meaning "to eat." Thereafter he carried off the book +along with his garbage, and with--which was the bewildering part of +it--self-evident and glowing self-esteem. And all that watched him +spoke the Dirghic word of derision, which is "Tee-Hee." + + + + +3--How Thereupon Ensued a Legal Debate + + +Now Horvendile in his bewilderment consulted with a man of law. And +the lawman answered a little peevishly, by reason of the fact that age +had impaired his digestive organs, and he said, "But of course you are +a lewd fellow if you have been suspected of writing about eating." + +"Sir," replies Horvendile, "I would have you consider that if your +parents and your grandparents had not eaten, your race would have +perished, and you would never have been born. I would have you +consider that if you and your wife had not eaten, again your race +would have perished, and neither of you would ever have lived to have +the children for whose protection, as men tell me, you of Philistia +avoid all mention of eating." + +"Yes, for the object of this most righteous law," declares the lawman, +"is to protect those whose character is not so completely formed as to +be proof against the effect of meat market reports and grocery +advertisements and menu folders and other such provocatives to +gluttony." + +"--Yet I would have you consider how little is to be gained by +attempting to conceal even from the young the inevitability of this +natural function, so long as dogs eat publicly in the streets, and the +poultry regale themselves just as candidly, and the house-flies also. +Instead, the knowledge that this function is not to be talked about +induces furtive and misleading discussion among these children, and, +though lack of proper instruction in the approved etiquette of eating, +they often commit deplorable errors--" + +To which the man of law replied, still with a bewildering effect of +talking very wisely and patiently: "Ah, but it does not matter at all +whether or not the function of eating is practised and is inevitable +to the nature and laws of our being. The law merely considers that any +mention of eating is apt to inflame an improper and lewd appetite, +particularly in the young, who are always ready to eat: and therefore +any such mention is an obscene libel." + + + + +4--How There Was Babbling in Philistia + +Now Horvendile, yet in bewilderment, lamented, and he fled from the +man of law. Thereafter, in order to learn what manner of writing was +most honored by the Philistines, this Horvendile goes into an academy +where the faded old books of Philistia were stored, along with +yesterday's other leavings. + +And as he perturbedly inspected these old books, one of the fifty +mummies which were installed in this Academy of Starch and Fetters, +with a hundred lackeys to attend them, spoke vexedly to Horvendile, +saying, as it was the custom of these mummies to say, before this +could be said to them, "I never heard of you before." + +"Ah, sir, it is not that which is troubling me," then answered +Horvendile: "but rather, I am troubled because the book of my +journeying has been suspected of encroachment upon gastronomy. Now I +notice your most sacred volume here begins with a very remarkable myth +about the fruit of a tree in the middle of a garden, and goes on to +speak of the supper which Lot shared with two angels and with his +daughters also, and of the cakes which Tamar served to Amnon, and to +speak over and over again of eating--" + +"Of course," replies the mummy, yawning, because he had heard this +silly sort of talking before. + +"I notice that your most honored poet, here where the dust is +thickest, from the moment he began by writing about certain painted +berries which mocked the appetite of Dame Venus, and about a repast +from which luxurious Tarquin retired like a full-fed hound or a gorged +hawk, speaks continually of eating. And I notice that everybody, but +particularly the young person, is encouraged to read these books, and +other ancient books which speak very explicitly indeed of eating--" + +"Of course," again replies the mummy (who had been for many years an +exponent of dormitive literacy)--"of course, young persons ought to +read them: for all these books are classics, and we who were more +obviously the heirs of the ages, and the inheritors of European +culture, used frequently to discuss these books in Paff's +beer-cellar." + +"Well, but does the indecency of this word 'eating' evaporate out of +it as the years pass, so that the word is hurtful only when very +freshly written!" + +The mummy blinked so wisely that you would never have guessed that the +brains and viscera of all these mummies had been removed when the +embalmers, Time and Conformity, were preparing these fifty for the +Academy of Starch and Fetters. "Young man, I doubt if the majority of +us here in the academy are deeply interested in this question of +eating, for reasons unnecessary to specify. But before estimating your +literary pretensions, I must ask if you ever frequented Paff's +beer-cellar?" + +Horvendile said, "No." + +Now this mummy was an amiable and cultured old relic, unshakably made +sure of his high name for scholarship by the fact that he had written +dozens of books which nobody else had even read. So he said, +friendlily enough: "Then that would seem to settle your pretensions. +To have talked twaddle in Paff's beer-cellar is the one real proof of +literary merit, no matter what sort of twaddle you may have written in +your book, or in many books, as I am here in this academy to attest. +Moreover, I am old enough to remember when cookery-books were sold +openly upon the newsstands, and in consequence I am very grateful to +the garbage-man, who, in common with all other intelligent persons, +has never dreamed of meddling with anything I wrote." + +"But, sir," says Horvendile, "do you esteem a scavenger, who does not +pretend to specialize in anything save filth, to be the best possible +judge of books?" + +"He may be an excellent critic if only he indeed belongs to the +forthputting Philistine stock: that proviso is most important, though, +for, as I recently declared, we have very dangerous standards +domiciled in the midst of us, that are only too quickly raised--" + +Says Horvendile, with a shudder: "You speak ambiguously. But still, in +criticizing books--" + +"Plainly, young man, you do not appreciate that the essential +qualifications for a critic of Philistine literature are," said this +mummy bewilderingly, "to have set off fireworks in July, to have +played ball in a vacant lot, and to have repeated what Spartacus said +to the gladiators."[3] + +[Footnote 3: It is a gratifying tribute to the permanence of æsthetic +canons to record that Dr. Brander Matthews (connected with Columbia +University) has, in an article upon "Alien Views of American +Literature," contributed to the _New York Times_ of 14 November, 1920, +accepted these three qualifications as the essential groundwork for a +literary critic even to-day; although Dr. Matthews is inclined, as a +concession to modernism, to add to the list an ability to recite +Webster's Reply to Hayne. Since Dr. Matthews frankly states that he +has been incited to this recital of a critic's needs by (in his happy +wording) "the alien angle" of "standards domiciled in the midst of +us," it is sincerely to be hoped that his requirements may be met +forthwith.] + +"No, no, the essential thing is not quite that," observed an attendant +lackey, a really clever writer, who wrote, indeed, far more +intelligently than he thought. He was a professor of patriotism, and +prior to being embalmed in the academy he had charge of the +postgraduate work in atavism and superior sneering. "No, my test is +not quite that, and if you venture to disagree with me about this or +anything else you are a ruthless Hun and an impudent Jew. No, the +garbage-man may very well be an excellent judge: for by my quite +infallible test the one thing requisite for a critic of our great +Philistine literature is an ability to induce within himself such an +internal disturbance as resembles a profound murmur of ancestral +voices--" + +"But, oh, dear me!" says Horvendile, embarrassed by such talk. + +"--And to experience a mysterious inflowing," continued the other, "of +national experience--" + +"The function is of national experience undoubtedly," said Horvendile, +"but still--" + +"--Whenever he meditates," concluded this lackey bewilderingly, "upon +the name of Bradford and six other surnames.[4] At all events, I have +turned wearily from your book, you bolshevistic German Jew--" + +[Footnote 4: Sævius Nicanor does not record the wonder-working +surnames employed to produce this ancient, ante-Aristotlean [Greek: +_katharsis_], and they are not certainly known. But, quite unaided, I +believe, by old Nicanor's hint, Dr. Stuart Pratt Sherman (the +accomplished editor of divers contributions to literature, and the +author of several books) has discovered, through a series of +interesting experiments in vivisection, that the one needful endowment +for a critic of American letters is the power to induce within himself +"a profound murmur of ancestral voices, and to experience a mysterious +inflowing of national experience, in meditating on the names of Mark +Twain, Whitman, Thoreau, Lincoln, Emerson, Franklin, and Bradford." +Compare "Is There Anything To Be Said for Literary Tradition," in _The +Bookman_ for October, 1920. Any candid consideration of Dr. Sherman's +phraseology, here as elsewhere, cannot fail to suggest that he has +happily re-discovered the long-lost critical abracadabra of +Philistia.] + +"But I," says Horvendile feebly, "am not a German Jew." + +"Oh, yes, you are, and so is everybody else whose literary likings are +not my likings. I repeat, then, that I have turned wearily from your +book. Whether or not it treats of eating, its implication is clearly +that the Philistia which has developed Bradford and six other +appellations perfectly adapted to produce murmurings and inflowings in +properly constituted persons,--and which Philistia, as I have +elsewhere asserted, is to-day as always a revolting country whenever +it condemns,--has had no civilised cultural atmosphere worth +mentioning. So your book fails to connect itself vitally with our +great tradition as to our literature, and I find nowhere in your book +any ascending sun heralded by the lookouts." + +"No more do I," said Horvendile; "but I would have imagined you were +more interested in lunar phenomena, and even so--" + +"Moreover," now declared another mummy (this was a Moor, called +P.E.M., or the Peach,[5] who through some oversight had not been +embalmed, but only pickled in vinegar, to the detriment of his +disposition),--"moreover, I am not at all in sympathy with any protest +whatever against the scavenger, for it might be taken as an excuse for +what they are pleased to call art." + +[Footnote 5: Codman annotates this: "Synonyms, since P.E.M. is +obviously _Persicum Esculentum Malum_--that is, the peach; 'which,' +says Macrobius, 'although it rather belongs to the tribe of apples, +Sævius reckons as a species of nut.'"] + +All groaned at this abominable word. And then another lackey cried, +"You are a prosperous and affected pseudo-littérateur!" and all the +mummies spoke sepulchrally the word of derision, which is "Tee-Hee": +and many said also, "The scavenger has never meddled with us, and we +never heard of you," and there was much other incoherent foolishness. + +But Horvendile had fled, bewildered by the ways of Philistia's adepts +in starch and fetters, and bewildered in particular to note that a +mummy, so generally esteemed a kindly and well-meaning fossil, +appeared quite honestly to believe that all literature came out of +the beer-cellar of Paff, or Pfaff, or had some similarly Teutonic +sponsor; and that handball was the best training for literary +criticism; and that the cookery-books of fifty years ago had something +to do with Horvendile's account of his journeying, from he did not +know where toward a goal which he could not divine, now being in the +garbage pile. It troubled Horvendile because so many persons seemed to +regard the old fellow half seriously. + + + + +5--How It Appeared to the Man in the Street + +Still, Horvendile was not quite routed by these heaped follies. "For, +after all," says Horvendile, in his own folly, "it is for the normal +human being that books are made, and not for mummies and men of law +and scavengers." + +So Horvendile went through a many streets that were thronged with +persons travelling by compulsion from they did not know where toward a +goal which they could not divine, and were not especially bothering +about. And it was evening, and to this side and to that side the men +and women of Philistia were dining. Everywhere maids were passing hot +dishes, and forks were being thrust into these dishes, and each was +eating according to his ability and condition. No matter how +poverty-stricken the household, the housewife was serving her poor +best to the goodman. For with luncheon so long past, all the really +virile men of Philistia were famished, and stood ready to eat the +moment, they had a dish uncovered. + +So it befell that Horvendile encountered a representative citizen, who +was coming out of a representative restaurant with a representative +wife. + +And the sight of this representative citizen was to Horvendile a tonic +joy and a warming of the heart. For this man, and each of the +thousands like him, as Horvendile reflected, had been within this hour +sedately dining with his wife,--neither of them eating with the zest +and vigor of their first youth, perhaps, but sharing amicably the more +moderate refreshment which middle-age requires,--without being at any +particular pains to conceal the fact from anybody. Here was then, +after all, the strong and sure salvation of Philistia, in this quiet, +unassuming common-sense, which dealt with the facts of life as facts, +the while that the foolish laws, and the academical and stercoricolous +nonsense of Philistia, reverberated as remotely and as unheeded as +harmless summer thunder. + +"Sir," says elated Horvendile, "I perceive that you two have just been +eating, and that emboldens me to ask you--" + +But at this point Horvendile found he had been knocked down, because +the parents of the representative citizen had taught him from his +earliest youth that any mention of eating was highly indecent in the +presence of gentlewomen. And for Horvendile, recumbent upon the +pavement, it was bewildering to note the glow of honest indignation in +the face of the representative citizen, who waited there, in front of +the restaurant he usually patronized.... + + + + +COLOPHON + + +Here, rather vexatiously, the old manuscript breaks off. But what +survives and has been cited of this fragment amply shows you, I think, +that even in remote Philistia, whenever this question of "indecency" +arose, everybody (including the accused) was apt to act very +foolishly. It has attested too, I hope, the readiness with which you +may read ambiguities into the most respectable of authors; as well as +the readiness with which a fanatical training may lead you to imagine +some underlying impropriety in all writing about any natural function, +even though it be a function so time-hallowed and general as that to +which this curious Dirghic legend refers. + + + + +A POSTSCRIPT + +(_French of C.J.P. Garnier_) + + The swine that died in Gadara two thousand years ago + Went mad in lofty places, with results that all men know-- + Went mad in lofty places through long rooting in the dirt, + Which (even for swine) begets at last soul-satisfying hurt. + + The swine in lofty places now are matter for no song + By any prudent singer, but--_how long, O Lord, how long?_ + + +_EXPLICIT_ + + + + +BOOKS _by_ MR. CABELL + + +_Biography_: + +BEYOND LIFE +FIGURES OF EARTH +DOMNEI +CHIVALRY +JURGEN +TABOO +THE LINE OF LOVE +GALLANTRY +THE CERTAIN HOUR +THE CORDS OF VANITY +FROM THE HIDDEN WAY +THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK +THE EAGLE'S SHADOW +THE CREAM OF THE JEST + + +_Genealogy_: + +BRANCH OF ABINGDON +BRANCHIANA +THE MAJORS AND THEIR MARRIAGES + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Taboo, by James Branch Cabell + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TABOO *** + +***** This file should be named 17134-8.txt or 17134-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/7/1/3/17134/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Sankar Viswanathan, and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Taboo + A Legend Retold from the Dirghic of Sævius Nicanor, with + Prolegomena, Notes, and a Preliminary Memoir + +Author: James Branch Cabell + +Release Date: November 22, 2005 [EBook #17134] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TABOO *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Sankar Viswanathan, and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + +<h1><i>TABOO</i></h1> + +<h3><i>A Legend Retold from the Dirghic of Sævius<br /> +Nicanor, with Prolegomena, Notes,<br /> +and a Preliminary Memoir</i></h3> + + +<h3> </h3> +<h3> </h3> +<h3>By</h3> +<h2>James Branch Cabell</h2> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p class="center"><i>At melius fuerat non scribere, namque tacere +Tutum semper erit.</i></p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p class="center"> </p> +<p class="center"> </p> +<p class="center">NEW YORK</p> +<p class="center">ROBERT M. McBRIDE & COMPANY</p> + +<p class="center">1921</p> + +<p class="center"> </p> +<p class="center"><i>This edition is limited to nine hundred and + twenty numbered copies, of which one hundred + copies have been signed by the author.</i></p> +<p class="center"><i>Copy Number __893__</i> </p> + + +<p class="center"> </p> +<p class="center">Copyright, 1921, by</p> +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">James Branch Cabell</span></p> +<p class="center">Revised and reprinted, by permission of the +Editors, from <span class="smcap">The Literary Review</span></p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + + + + + + +<h2>CONTENTS.</h2> + + + + +<table summary="Contents"> + <tr> + <td> </td> + <td> </td> + <td class="tocpg">PAGE</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap"><a href="#THE_DEDICATION">The Dedication</a></span> </td> + <td> </td> + <td class="tocpg">11</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap"><a href="#MEMOIR_OF_SAEVIUS_NICANOR">Memoir of Saevius Nicanor</a></span></td> + <td> </td> + <td class="tocpg">17</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap"><a href="#PROLEGOMENA">Prolegomena</a></span> </td> + <td> </td> + <td class="tocpg">21</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap"><a href="#THE_LEGEND">The Legend</a></span>:</td> + <td> </td> + <td> </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i><a href="#How_Horvendile_Met_Fate_and_Custom">How Horvendile Met Fate and Custom</a></i> </span></td> + <td> </td> + <td class="tocpg">25</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i><a href="#How_the_Garbage_Man_Came_with_Forks">How the Garbage-Man Came with Forks</a></i> </span></td> + <td> </td> + <td class="tocpg">26</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i><a href="#How_Thereupon_Ensued_a_Legal_Debate">How Thereupon Ensued a Legal Debate</a></i> </span></td> + <td> </td> + <td class="tocpg">28</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i><a href="#How_There_Was_Babbling_in_Philistia">How There Was Babbling in Philistia</a></i> </span></td> + <td> </td> + <td class="tocpg">29</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i><a href="#How_It_Appeared_to_the_Man_in_the_Street">How It Appeared to the Man in the Street</a></i> </span></td> + <td> </td> + <td class="tocpg">36</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap"><a href="#COLOPHON">Colophon</a></span> </td> + <td> </td> + <td class="tocpg">39</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap"><a href="#A_POSTSCRIPT">A Postscript</a></span> </td> + <td> </td> + <td class="tocpg">40</td> + </tr> +</table> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="THE_DEDICATION" id="THE_DEDICATION"></a>THE DEDICATION</h2> + +<p class="center"><i>Laudataque virtus crescit</i></p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">"Buttons, a farthing a pair!<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Come, who could buy them of me?<br /></span> +<span class="i8">They're round and sound and pretty,<br /></span> +<span class="i8">And fit for girls of the city."<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2><a name="TO_JOHN_S_SUMNER" id="TO_JOHN_S_SUMNER"></a>TO JOHN S. SUMNER</h2> + +<p class="center">(<i>Agent of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice</i>)</p> + + +<p>For no short while my indebtedness to you has been such as to require +some sort of public acknowledgment, which may now, I think, be +tendered most appropriately by inscribing upon the dedication page of +this small volume the name to which you are daily adding in +significance.</p> + +<p>It is a tribute, however trivial, which serves at least to express my +appreciation of your zeal in re-establishing what seemed to the less +optimistic a lost cause. I may to-day confess without much +embarrassment that after fifteen years of foiled endeavors my +(various) publishers and I had virtually decided that the printing of +my books was not likely ever to come under the head of a business +venture, but was more properly describable as a rather costly form of +dissipation. People here and there would praise, but until you, +unsolicited, had volunteered to make me known to the general public, +nobody seemed appreciably moved to purchase.</p> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span></p> + + + +<p>One by one my books had "fallen dead" with disheartening monotony: +then—through what motive it would savor of ingratitude to +inquire,—you came to remedy all this in the manner of a philanthropic +sorcerer, brandishing everywhither your vivifying wand, and the dead +lived again. At once, they tell me, the patrons of bookstores began to +ask, not only in whispers for the <i>Jurgen</i> which you had everywhere so +glowingly advertised, but with frank curiosity for "some of the +fellow's other books."</p> + +<p>Whereon we of course began to "reprint," with, I rejoice to say, +results which have been very generally acceptable. Barring a few +complaints as to the exiguousness of my writing's salacity,—a +salacity which even I confess you amiably exaggerated in attributing +to my literary manner all qualities which the average reader most +desires in novelists,—there has proved to be in point of fact, as my +publishers and I had dubiously believed for years, a gratifying number +of persons, living dispersedly about America, prepared to like my +books when these books were brought to their attention. The difficulty +had been that we did not know how to reach these widely scattered, +congenial readers. But you—like Sir James Barrie's hero—"found a +way."</p> + +<p>I cannot say, in candor, that your method of exegetical criticism has +always and in every respect appealed to me. Its applicability, for one +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> + +thing, seems so universal that it might, for aught I know, be +employed to interpret the dicta of Ackermann and Macrobius, or even +the canons of Doctors Matthews and Sherman herein cited, and thus open +dire vistas wherein critic would prey on critic, and the most +respectable would be locked in fratricidal strife. Moreover, I have +applied your method to many of the Mother Goose rhymes with rather +curious results.... But happily, I have here to confess to you, not +any disputable literary standards I may harbor, but only my unarguable +debt.</p> + +<p>In brief, your aid obtained for me overnight the hearing I had vainly +sought for a long while; and of such thaumaturgy my appreciation will +never be, I trust, inadequate. I therefore grasp at the first chance +to express this appreciation in—as I have said,—a form which seems +not quite inept.</p> + +<p style="margin-left:2em; "> +<i>Dumbarton Grange</i><br /> +<i>December, 1920.</i><br /> +</p><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span></p> + +<p> </p> +<p>Of <i>The Mulberry Grove</i> the following editions have been collated:</p> +<p>(1) The <i>editio princeps</i> of Mansard 1475. An excellent edition, +having, says Garnier, "nearly all the authority of an MS." This +edition served as the basis of all subsequent editions up to that of +Tribebos, 1553, which then took the lead up to the time of Bülg, who +judiciously reverted to that of Mansard.</p> + +<p>(2) Bülg, in 4 vols. Strasburg. 1786-89. And in 2 vols. Strasburg. +1786. Both editions containing the Dirghic text with a Latin version, +and the scholia and indices.</p> + +<p>(3) Musgrave, concerning whose edition Garnier is of opinion that, +though it appeared later, yet it had been made use of by Bülg. 2 vols. +Oxon. 1800. Reprinted, 3 vols. Oxon. 1809-10.</p> + +<p>(4) Vanderhoffen, with scholia, notes, and indices. 7 vols. London. +1807-25. His notes reprinted separately. Leipsic. 1824. </p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="MEMOIR_OF_SAEVIUS_NICANOR" id="MEMOIR_OF_SAEVIUS_NICANOR"></a>MEMOIR OF SÆVIUS NICANOR</h2> + +<p class="center"><i>Saevius Nicanor Marci libertus negabit</i> </p> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">"She went to the tailor's<br /></span> +<span class="i8">To buy him a coat;<br /></span> +<span class="i8">When she came back<br /></span> +<span class="i8">He was riding the goat."<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + + + + +<p>Sævius Nicanor, one of the earliest of the Grammarians, says +Suetonius, first acquired fame and reputation by his teaching; and, +besides, made commentaries, the greater part of which, however, were +said to have been borrowed. He also wrote a satire, in which he +informs us that he was a free man, and had a double cognomen.</p> + +<p>It is reported that in consequence of some aspersion attached to the +character of his writing, he retired into Sardinia, and, says +Oriphyles, devoted the remainder of his days to the composition of +sardonic<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> literature.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Ackermann reads "Sardinian." It is not certain whether +the adjective employed is σαρδανιος or σαρδανικος. I +suspect that Oriphyles here makes an intentional play upon the words.</p></div> + +<p>He is quoted by Macrobius, whereas divers references to Nicanor in <i>La +Haulte Histoire de Jurgen</i> would seem to show that this writer was +viewed with considerable esteem in mediæval times. Latterly his work +has been virtually unknown.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> +Robert Burton, for the rest, cites Sævius Nicanor in the 1620 edition +of <i>The Anatomy of Melancholy</i> (this passage was subsequently +remodeled) in terms which have the unintended merit of conveying a +very fair notion of the old Grammarian's literary ethics:—</p> + +<p>"As a good housewife out of divers fleeces weaves one piece of cloth +(saith Sævius Nicanor), I have laboriously collected this Cento out of +divers Writers, and that <i>sine injuria</i>, I have wronged no authors, +but given every man his own; which Sosimenes so much commends in +Nicanor, he stole not whole verses, pages, tracts, as some do +nowadays, concealing their Authors' names, but still said this was +Cleophantus', that Philistion's, that Mnesides', so said Julius +Bassus, so Timaristus, thus far Ophelion: I cite and quote mine own +Authors (which howsoever some illiterate scribblers account +pedantical, as a cloak of ignorance and opposite to their affected +fine style, I must and will use) <i>sumpsi, non surripui</i>, and what +Varro <i>de re rustica</i> speaks of bees, <i>minime malificæ quod nullius +opus vellicantes faciunt deterius</i>, I can say of myself no less +heartily than Sosimenes his laud of Nicanor."</p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="PROLEGOMENA" id="PROLEGOMENA"></a>PROLEGOMENA</h2> + +<p class="center"><i>Nec caput habentia, nec caudam</i> </p> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">"I had a little husband, no bigger than my thumb,<br /></span> +<span class="i8">I put him in my pint-pot, and there I bid him drum."<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<p>Pre-eminently the most engaging feature of a topic which pure chance +and impure idiocy have of late conspired to pull about in the public +prints,—I mean the question of "indecency" in writing,—is the patent +ease with which this topic may be disposed of. Since time's beginning, +every age has had its literary taboos, selecting certain things—more +or less arbitrarily, but usually some natural function—as the things +which must not be written about. To violate any such taboo so long as +it stays prevalent is to be "indecent": and that seems absolutely all +there is to say concerning this topic, apart from furnishing some +impressive historical illustration....</p> + +<p>The most striking instance which my far from exhaustive researches +afford, sprang from the fact, perhaps not very generally known, that +the natural function of eating, which nowadays may be discussed +intrepidly anywhere, was once regarded by the Philistines, of at all +events the Shephelah and the deme of Novogath, as being +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> + +unmentionable. This ancient tenet of theirs, indeed, is with such +clearness emphasized in a luckily preserved fragment from the Dirghic, +or pre-Ciceronian Latin, of Sævius Nicanor that the readiest way to +illustrate the chameleon-like traits of literary indecency appears to +be to record, as hereinafter is recorded, what of this legend +survives.</p> + +<p>Bülg and Vanderhoffen, be it said here, are agreed that it is to this +legend Milton has referred in his <i>Areopagitica</i>, in a passage +sufficiently quaint-seeming to us (for whom a more advanced +civilization has secured the right of free speech) to warrant an +abridged citation:—</p> + +<p>"What advantage is it to be a man, over it is to be a boy at school, +if serious and elaborate writings, as if they were no more than the +theme of a grammar lad under his pedagogue, must not be uttered +without the cursory eyes of a temporizing and extemporizing licenser? +whenas all the writer teaches, all he delivers, is but under the +tuition, under the correction of his patriarchal licenser, to blot or +alter what precisely accords not with the hide-bound humor which he +calls his judgment? What is it but a servitude like that imposed by +the Philistines?"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="THE_LEGEND" id="THE_LEGEND"></a>THE LEGEND</h2> + +<p class="center"><i>Fit ex his consuetudo, inde natura</i> </p> + +<div class="center"> +"I love little pussy,<br /> +Her fur is so warm." +</div> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="How_Horvendile_Met_Fate_and_Custom" id="How_Horvendile_Met_Fate_and_Custom"></a>I—How Horvendile Met Fate and Custom</h2> + + +<p>Now, at about the time that the Tyrant Pedagogos fell into disfavor +with his people, avers old Nicanor (as the curious may verify by +comparing Lib. X, Chap. 28 of his <i>Mulberry Grove</i>), passed through +Philistia a clerk whom some called Horvendile, travelling by +compulsion from he did not know where toward a goal which he could not +divine. So this Horvendile said, "I will make a book of this +journeying, for it seems to me a rather queer journeying."</p> + +<p>They answered him: "Very well, but if you have had dinner or supper by +the way, do you make no mention of it in your book. For it is a law +among us, for the protection of our youth, that eating<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> must never +be spoken of in any of our writing."</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Such at least is the generally received rendering. +Ackermann, following Bülg's probably spurious text, disputes that this +is the exact meaning of the noun.</p></div> + +<p>Horvendile considered this a curious enactment, but it seemed only one +among the innumerable mad customs of Philistia. So he shrugged, and he +made the book of his journeying, and of the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> +things which he had seen +and heard and loved and hated and had put by in the course of his +passage among ageless and unfathomed mysteries.</p> + +<p>And in the book there was nowhere any word of eating.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="How_the_Garbage_Man_Came_with_Forks" id="How_the_Garbage_Man_Came_with_Forks"></a>2—How the Garbage Man Came with Forks</h2> + + +<p>Now to the book which Horvendile had made comes presently a +garbage-man, newly returned from foreign travel for his health's sake, +whose name was John. And this scavenger cried, "Oh, horrible! for here +is very shameless mention of a sword and a spear and a staff."</p> + +<p>"That now is true enough," says Horvendile, "but wherein lies the +harm?"</p> + +<p>"Why, one has but to write 'a fork' here, in the place of each of +these offensive weapons, and the reference to eating is plain."</p> + +<p>"That also is true, but it would be your writing and not my writing +which would refer to eating."</p> + +<p>John said, "Abandoned one, it is the law of Philistia and the holy +doctrine of St. Anthony Koprologos that if anybody chooses to +understand any written word anywhere as meaning 'to eat,' the word +henceforward has that meaning."</p> + +<p>"Then you of Philistia have very foolish laws."</p> + +<p>To which John the Scavenger sagely replied: "Ah, but if laws exist +they ought to fairly and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> +impartially and without favoritism be +enforced until amended or repealed. Much of the unsettled condition +prevailing in the country at the present time can be traced directly +to a lack of law enforcement in many directions during past years."</p> + +<p>"Now I misdoubt if I understand you, Messire John, for your +infinitives are split beyond comprehension. And when you talk about +the non-enforcement of anything in many directions, even though these +directions were during past years, I find it so confusing that the one +thing of which I can be quite certain is that it was never you whom +the law selected to pass upon and to amend all books."</p> + +<p>This Horvendile says foolishly, not knowing it is an axiom among the +Philistines that literary expression is best controlled by somebody +with no misleading tenderness toward it; and that it is this custom, +as they proudly aver, which makes the literature of Philistia what it +is.</p> + +<p>But John the Garbage-man said nothing at all, the while that he +changed nouns to "fork" and "dish," and carefully annotated each verb +in the book as meaning "to eat." Thereafter he carried off the book +along with his garbage, and with—which was the bewildering part of +it—self-evident and glowing self-esteem. And all that watched him +spoke the Dirghic word of derision, which is "Tee-Hee."</p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="How_Thereupon_Ensued_a_Legal_Debate" id="How_Thereupon_Ensued_a_Legal_Debate"></a>3—How Thereupon Ensued a Legal Debate</h2> + + +<p>Now Horvendile in his bewilderment consulted with a man of law. And +the lawman answered a little peevishly, by reason of the fact that age +had impaired his digestive organs, and he said, "But of course you are +a lewd fellow if you have been suspected of writing about eating."</p> + +<p>"Sir," replies Horvendile, "I would have you consider that if your +parents and your grandparents had not eaten, your race would have +perished, and you would never have been born. I would have you +consider that if you and your wife had not eaten, again your race +would have perished, and neither of you would ever have lived to have +the children for whose protection, as men tell me, you of Philistia +avoid all mention of eating."</p> + +<p>"Yes, for the object of this most righteous law," declares the lawman, +"is to protect those whose character is not so completely formed as to +be proof against the effect of meat market reports and grocery +advertisements and menu folders and other such provocatives to +gluttony."</p> + +<p>"—Yet I would have you consider how little is to be gained by +attempting to conceal even from the young the inevitability of this +natural function, so long as dogs eat publicly in the streets, and the +poultry regale themselves just as candidly, and the house-flies also. +Instead, the knowledge +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> + +that this function is not to be talked about +induces furtive and misleading discussion among these children, and, +though lack of proper instruction in the approved etiquette of eating, +they often commit deplorable errors—"</p> + +<p>To which the man of law replied, still with a bewildering effect of +talking very wisely and patiently: "Ah, but it does not matter at all +whether or not the function of eating is practised and is inevitable +to the nature and laws of our being. The law merely considers that any +mention of eating is apt to inflame an improper and lewd appetite, +particularly in the young, who are always ready to eat: and therefore +any such mention is an obscene libel."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="How_There_Was_Babbling_in_Philistia" id="How_There_Was_Babbling_in_Philistia"></a>4—How There Was Babbling in Philistia</h2> + +<p>Now Horvendile, yet in bewilderment, lamented, and he fled from the +man of law. Thereafter, in order to learn what manner of writing was +most honored by the Philistines, this Horvendile goes into an academy +where the faded old books of Philistia were stored, along with +yesterday's other leavings.</p> + +<p>And as he perturbedly inspected these old books, one of the fifty +mummies which were installed in this Academy of Starch and Fetters, +with a hundred lackeys to attend them, spoke vexedly to Horvendile, +saying, as it was the custom of these +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span> +mummies to say, before this +could be said to them, "I never heard of you before."</p> + +<p>"Ah, sir, it is not that which is troubling me," then answered +Horvendile: "but rather, I am troubled because the book of my +journeying has been suspected of encroachment upon gastronomy. Now I +notice your most sacred volume here begins with a very remarkable myth +about the fruit of a tree in the middle of a garden, and goes on to +speak of the supper which Lot shared with two angels and with his +daughters also, and of the cakes which Tamar served to Amnon, and to +speak over and over again of eating—"</p> + +<p>"Of course," replies the mummy, yawning, because he had heard this +silly sort of talking before.</p> + +<p>"I notice that your most honored poet, here where the dust is +thickest, from the moment he began by writing about certain painted +berries which mocked the appetite of Dame Venus, and about a repast +from which luxurious Tarquin retired like a full-fed hound or a gorged +hawk, speaks continually of eating. And I notice that everybody, but +particularly the young person, is encouraged to read these books, and +other ancient books which speak very explicitly indeed of eating—"</p> + +<p>"Of course," again replies the mummy (who had been for many years an +exponent of dormitive literacy)—"of course, young persons ought to +read them: for all these books are classics, and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> +we who were more +obviously the heirs of the ages, and the inheritors of European +culture, used frequently to discuss these books in Paff's +beer-cellar."</p> + +<p>"Well, but does the indecency of this word 'eating' evaporate out of +it as the years pass, so that the word is hurtful only when very +freshly written!"</p> + +<p>The mummy blinked so wisely that you would never have guessed that the +brains and viscera of all these mummies had been removed when the +embalmers, Time and Conformity, were preparing these fifty for the +Academy of Starch and Fetters. "Young man, I doubt if the majority of +us here in the academy are deeply interested in this question of +eating, for reasons unnecessary to specify. But before estimating your +literary pretensions, I must ask if you ever frequented Paff's +beer-cellar?"</p> + +<p>Horvendile said, "No."</p> + +<p>Now this mummy was an amiable and cultured old relic, unshakably made +sure of his high name for scholarship by the fact that he had written +dozens of books which nobody else had even read. So he said, +friendlily enough: "Then that would seem to settle your pretensions. +To have talked twaddle in Paff's beer-cellar is the one real proof of +literary merit, no matter what sort of twaddle you may have written in +your book, or in many books, as I am here in this academy to attest. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> +Moreover, I am old enough to remember when cookery-books were sold +openly upon the newsstands, and in consequence I am very grateful to +the garbage-man, who, in common with all other intelligent persons, +has never dreamed of meddling with anything I wrote."</p> + +<p>"But, sir," says Horvendile, "do you esteem a scavenger, who does not +pretend to specialize in anything save filth, to be the best possible +judge of books?"</p> + +<p>"He may be an excellent critic if only he indeed belongs to the +forthputting Philistine stock: that proviso is most important, though, +for, as I recently declared, we have very dangerous standards +domiciled in the midst of us, that are only too quickly raised—"</p> + +<p>Says Horvendile, with a shudder: "You speak ambiguously. But still, in +criticizing books—"</p> + +<p>"Plainly, young man, you do not appreciate that the essential +qualifications for a critic of Philistine literature are," said this +mummy bewilderingly, "to have set off fireworks in July, to have +played ball in a vacant lot, and to have repeated what Spartacus said +to the gladiators."<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> It is a gratifying tribute to the permanence of æsthetic +canons to record that Dr. Brander Matthews (connected with Columbia +University) has, in an article upon "Alien Views of American +Literature," contributed to the <i>New York Times</i> of 14 November, 1920, +accepted these three qualifications as the essential groundwork for a +literary critic even to-day; although Dr. Matthews is inclined, as a +concession to modernism, to add to the list an ability to recite +Webster's Reply to Hayne. Since Dr. Matthews frankly states that he +has been incited to this recital of a critic's needs by (in his happy +wording) "the alien angle" of "standards domiciled in the midst of +us," it is sincerely to be hoped that his requirements may be met +forthwith.</p></div> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span></p> + + +<p>"No, no, the essential thing is not quite that," observed an attendant +lackey, a really clever writer, who wrote, indeed, far more +intelligently than he thought. He was a professor of patriotism, and +prior to being embalmed in the academy he had charge of the +postgraduate work in atavism and superior sneering. "No, my test is +not quite that, and if you venture to disagree with me about this or +anything else you are a ruthless Hun and an impudent Jew. No, the +garbage-man may very well be an excellent judge: for by my quite +infallible test the one thing requisite for a critic of our great +Philistine literature is an ability to induce within himself such an +internal disturbance as resembles a profound murmur of ancestral +voices—"</p> + +<p>"But, oh, dear me!" says Horvendile, embarrassed by such talk.</p> + +<p>"—And to experience a mysterious inflowing," continued the other, "of +national experience—"</p> + +<p>"The function is of national experience undoubtedly," said Horvendile, +"but still—"</p> + +<p>"—Whenever he meditates," concluded this lackey bewilderingly, "upon +the name of Bradford +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> + and six other surnames.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> At all events, I have +turned wearily from your book, you bolshevistic German Jew—"</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Sævius Nicanor does not record the wonder-working +surnames employed to produce this ancient, ante-Aristotlean <i>καθαρσις</i>, and they are not certainly known. But, quite unaided, I +believe, by old Nicanor's hint, Dr. Stuart Pratt Sherman (the +accomplished editor of divers contributions to literature, and the +author of several books) has discovered, through a series of +interesting experiments in vivisection, that the one needful endowment +for a critic of American letters is the power to induce within himself +"a profound murmur of ancestral voices, and to experience a mysterious +inflowing of national experience, in meditating on the names of Mark +Twain, Whitman, Thoreau, Lincoln, Emerson, Franklin, and Bradford." +Compare "Is There Anything To Be Said for Literary Tradition," in <i>The +Bookman</i> for October, 1920. Any candid consideration of Dr. Sherman's +phraseology, here as elsewhere, cannot fail to suggest that he has +happily re-discovered the long-lost critical abracadabra of +Philistia.</p> +</div> + +<p>"But I," says Horvendile feebly, "am not a German Jew."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, you are, and so is everybody else whose literary likings are +not my likings. I repeat, then, that I have turned wearily from your +book. Whether or not it treats of eating, its implication is clearly +that the Philistia which has developed Bradford and six other +appellations perfectly adapted to produce murmurings and inflowings in +properly constituted persons,—and which Philistia, as I have +elsewhere asserted, is to-day as always a revolting country whenever +it condemns,—has had no civilised cultural atmosphere worth +mentioning. So your book fails to connect itself vitally with our +great tradition as +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span> + to our literature, and I find nowhere in your book +any ascending sun heralded by the lookouts."</p> + +<p>"No more do I," said Horvendile; "but I would have imagined you were +more interested in lunar phenomena, and even so—"</p> + +<p>"Moreover," now declared another mummy (this was a Moor, called +P.E.M., or the Peach,<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> who through some oversight had not been +embalmed, but only pickled in vinegar, to the detriment of his +disposition),—"moreover, I am not at all in sympathy with any protest +whatever against the scavenger, for it might be taken as an excuse for +what they are pleased to call art."</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Codman annotates this: "Synonyms, since P.E.M. is +obviously <i>Persicum Esculentum Malum</i>—that is, the peach; 'which,' +says Macrobius, 'although it rather belongs to the tribe of apples, +Sævius reckons as a species of nut.'"</p></div> + +<p>All groaned at this abominable word. And then another lackey cried, +"You are a prosperous and affected pseudo-littérateur!" and all the +mummies spoke sepulchrally the word of derision, which is "Tee-Hee": +and many said also, "The scavenger has never meddled with us, and we +never heard of you," and there was much other incoherent foolishness.</p> + +<p>But Horvendile had fled, bewildered by the ways of Philistia's adepts +in starch and fetters, and bewildered in particular to note that a +mummy, so generally esteemed a kindly and well-meaning fossil, +appeared quite honestly to believe that all +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> +literature came out of +the beer-cellar of Paff, or Pfaff, or had some similarly Teutonic +sponsor; and that handball was the best training for literary +criticism; and that the cookery-books of fifty years ago had something +to do with Horvendile's account of his journeying, from he did not +know where toward a goal which he could not divine, now being in the +garbage pile. It troubled Horvendile because so many persons seemed to +regard the old fellow half seriously.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="How_It_Appeared_to_the_Man_in_the_Street" id="How_It_Appeared_to_the_Man_in_the_Street"></a>5—How It Appeared to the Man in the Street</h2> + +<p>Still, Horvendile was not quite routed by these heaped follies. "For, +after all," says Horvendile, in his own folly, "it is for the normal +human being that books are made, and not for mummies and men of law +and scavengers."</p> + +<p>So Horvendile went through a many streets that were thronged with +persons travelling by compulsion from they did not know where toward a +goal which they could not divine, and were not especially bothering +about. And it was evening, and to this side and to that side the men +and women of Philistia were dining. Everywhere maids were passing hot +dishes, and forks were being thrust into these dishes, and each was +eating according to his ability and condition. No matter how +poverty-stricken the household, the housewife was serving her poor +best to the good +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> +man. For with luncheon so long past, all the really +virile men of Philistia were famished, and stood ready to eat the +moment, they had a dish uncovered.</p> + +<p>So it befell that Horvendile encountered a representative citizen, who +was coming out of a representative restaurant with a representative +wife.</p> + +<p>And the sight of this representative citizen was to Horvendile a tonic +joy and a warming of the heart. For this man, and each of the +thousands like him, as Horvendile reflected, had been within this hour +sedately dining with his wife,—neither of them eating with the zest +and vigor of their first youth, perhaps, but sharing amicably the more +moderate refreshment which middle-age requires,—without being at any +particular pains to conceal the fact from anybody. Here was then, +after all, the strong and sure salvation of Philistia, in this quiet, +unassuming common-sense, which dealt with the facts of life as facts, +the while that the foolish laws, and the academical and stercoricolous +nonsense of Philistia, reverberated as remotely and as unheeded as +harmless summer thunder.</p> + +<p>"Sir," says elated Horvendile, "I perceive that you two have just been +eating, and that emboldens me to ask you—"</p> + +<p>But at this point Horvendile found he had been knocked down, because +the parents of the representative citizen had taught him from his +earliest +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> +youth that any mention of eating was highly indecent in the +presence of gentlewomen. And for Horvendile, recumbent upon the +pavement, it was bewildering to note the glow of honest indignation in +the face of the representative citizen, who waited there, in front of +the restaurant he usually patronized....</p> + + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="COLOPHON" id="COLOPHON"></a>COLOPHON</h2> + + +<p>Here, rather vexatiously, the old manuscript breaks off. But what +survives and has been cited of this fragment amply shows you, I think, +that even in remote Philistia, whenever this question of "indecency" +arose, everybody (including the accused) was apt to act very +foolishly. It has attested too, I hope, the readiness with which you +may read ambiguities into the most respectable of authors; as well as +the readiness with which a fanatical training may lead you to imagine +some underlying impropriety in all writing about any natural function, +even though it be a function so time-hallowed and general as that to +which this curious Dirghic legend refers.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="A_POSTSCRIPT" id="A_POSTSCRIPT"></a>A POSTSCRIPT</h2> + +<p class="center">(<i>French of C.J.P. Garnier</i>)</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">The swine that died in Gadara two thousand years ago<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Went mad in lofty places, with results that all men know—<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Went mad in lofty places through long rooting in the dirt,<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Which (even for swine) begets at last soul-satisfying hurt.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">The swine in lofty places now are matter for no song<br /></span> +<span class="i8">By any prudent singer, but—<i>how long, O Lord, how long?</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h3><i>EXPLICIT</i></h3> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="BOOKS_by_MR_CABELL" id="BOOKS_by_MR_CABELL"></a>BOOKS <i>by</i> MR. CABELL</h2> + + +<p class="center"><i>Biography</i>:</p> + +<p class="center"> +<span class="smcap">Beyond Life</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">Figures of Earth</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">Domnei</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">Chivalry</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">Jurgen</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">Taboo</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">The Line of Love</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">Gallantry</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">The Certain Hour</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">The Cords of Vanity</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">From the Hidden Way</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">The Eagle's Shadow</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">The Cream of the Jest</span><br /> +</p> + + +<p class="center"><i>Genealogy</i>:</p> + +<p class="center"> +<span class="smcap">Branch of Abingdon</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">Branchiana</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">The Majors and Their Marriages</span><br /> +</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Taboo, by James Branch Cabell + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TABOO *** + +***** This file should be named 17134-h.htm or 17134-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/7/1/3/17134/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Sankar Viswanathan, and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Taboo + A Legend Retold from the Dirghic of Saevius Nicanor, with + Prolegomena, Notes, and a Preliminary Memoir + +Author: James Branch Cabell + +Release Date: November 22, 2005 [EBook #17134] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TABOO *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Sankar Viswanathan, and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + _TABOO_ + + _A Legend Retold from the Dirghic of Saevius + Nicanor, with Prolegomena, Notes, + and a Preliminary Memoir_ + + + + + By + + James Branch Cabell + + * * * * * + + _At melius fuerat non scribere, namque tacere + Tutum semper erit._ + + * * * * * + + + + NEW YORK + + ROBERT M. McBRIDE & COMPANY + + 1921 + + _This edition is limited to nine hundred and + twenty numbered copies, of which one hundred + copies have been signed by the author._ + + _Copy Number __893__ + + + Copyright, 1921, by + + JAMES BRANCH CABELL + + * * * * * + + Revised and reprinted, by permission of the + Editors, from THE LITERARY REVIEW + + + + +CONTENTS. + + +THE DEDICATION + +MEMOIR OF SAEVIUS NICANOR + +PROLEGOMENA + +THE LEGEND: + _How Horvendile Met Fate and Custom_ + _How the Garbage-Man Came with Forks_ + _How Thereupon Ensued a Legal Debate_ + _How There Was Babbling in Philistia_ + _How It Appeared to the Man in the Street_ + +COLOPHON + +A POSTSCRIPT + + * * * * * + + + + +THE DEDICATION + +_Laudataque virtus crescit_ + + * * * * * + + "Buttons, a farthing a pair! + Come, who could buy them of me? + They're round and sound and pretty, + And fit for girls of the city." + + + + +TO JOHN S. SUMNER + +(_Agent of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice_) + + +For no short while my indebtedness to you has been such as to require +some sort of public acknowledgment, which may now, I think, be +tendered most appropriately by inscribing upon the dedication page of +this small volume the name to which you are daily adding in +significance. + +It is a tribute, however trivial, which serves at least to express my +appreciation of your zeal in re-establishing what seemed to the less +optimistic a lost cause. I may to-day confess without much +embarrassment that after fifteen years of foiled endeavors my +(various) publishers and I had virtually decided that the printing of +my books was not likely ever to come under the head of a business +venture, but was more properly describable as a rather costly form of +dissipation. People here and there would praise, but until you, +unsolicited, had volunteered to make me known to the general public, +nobody seemed appreciably moved to purchase. + +One by one my books had "fallen dead" with disheartening monotony: +then--through what motive it would savor of ingratitude to +inquire,--you came to remedy all this in the manner of a philanthropic +sorcerer, brandishing everywhither your vivifying wand, and the dead +lived again. At once, they tell me, the patrons of bookstores began to +ask, not only in whispers for the _Jurgen_ which you had everywhere so +glowingly advertised, but with frank curiosity for "some of the +fellow's other books." + +Whereon we of course began to "reprint," with, I rejoice to say, +results which have been very generally acceptable. Barring a few +complaints as to the exiguousness of my writing's salacity,--a +salacity which even I confess you amiably exaggerated in attributing +to my literary manner all qualities which the average reader most +desires in novelists,--there has proved to be in point of fact, as my +publishers and I had dubiously believed for years, a gratifying number +of persons, living dispersedly about America, prepared to like my +books when these books were brought to their attention. The difficulty +had been that we did not know how to reach these widely scattered, +congenial readers. But you--like Sir James Barrie's hero--"found a +way." + +I cannot say, in candor, that your method of exegetical criticism has +always and in every respect appealed to me. Its applicability, for one +thing, seems so universal that it might, for aught I know, be +employed to interpret the dicta of Ackermann and Macrobius, or even +the canons of Doctors Matthews and Sherman herein cited, and thus open +dire vistas wherein critic would prey on critic, and the most +respectable would be locked in fratricidal strife. Moreover, I have +applied your method to many of the Mother Goose rhymes with rather +curious results.... But happily, I have here to confess to you, not +any disputable literary standards I may harbor, but only my unarguable +debt. + +In brief, your aid obtained for me overnight the hearing I had vainly +sought for a long while; and of such thaumaturgy my appreciation will +never be, I trust, inadequate. I therefore grasp at the first chance +to express this appreciation in--as I have said,--a form which seems +not quite inept. + +_Dumbarton Grange_ +_December, 1920._ + + +Of _The Mulberry Grove_ the following editions have been collated: + +(1) The _editio princeps_ of Mansard 1475. An excellent edition, +having, says Garnier, "nearly all the authority of an MS." This +edition served as the basis of all subsequent editions up to that of +Tribebos, 1553, which then took the lead up to the time of Buelg, who +judiciously reverted to that of Mansard. + +(2) Buelg, in 4 vols. Strasburg. 1786-89. And in 2 vols. Strasburg. +1786. Both editions containing the Dirghic text with a Latin version, +and the scholia and indices. + +(3) Musgrave, concerning whose edition Garnier is of opinion that, +though it appeared later, yet it had been made use of by Buelg. 2 vols. +Oxon. 1800. Reprinted, 3 vols. Oxon. 1809-10. + +(4) Vanderhoffen, with scholia, notes, and indices. 7 vols. London. +1807-25. His notes reprinted separately. Leipsic. 1824. + + + + +MEMOIR OF SAEVIUS NICANOR + +_Saevius Nicanor Marci libertus negabit_ + + "She went to the tailor's + To buy him a coat; + When she came back + He was riding the goat." + + +Saevius Nicanor, one of the earliest of the Grammarians, says +Suetonius, first acquired fame and reputation by his teaching; and, +besides, made commentaries, the greater part of which, however, were +said to have been borrowed. He also wrote a satire, in which he +informs us that he was a free man, and had a double cognomen. + +It is reported that in consequence of some aspersion attached to the +character of his writing, he retired into Sardinia, and, says +Oriphyles, devoted the remainder of his days to the composition of +sardonic[1] literature. + +[Footnote 1: Ackermann reads "Sardinian." It is not certain whether +the adjective employed is [Greek: sardanios] or [Greek: sardanikos]. I +suspect that Oriphyles here makes an intentional play upon the words.] + +He is quoted by Macrobius, whereas divers references to Nicanor in _La +Haulte Histoire de Jurgen_ would seem to show that this writer was +viewed with considerable esteem in mediaeval times. Latterly his work +has been virtually unknown. + +Robert Burton, for the rest, cites Saevius Nicanor in the 1620 edition +of _The Anatomy of Melancholy_ (this passage was subsequently +remodeled) in terms which have the unintended merit of conveying a +very fair notion of the old Grammarian's literary ethics:-- + +"As a good housewife out of divers fleeces weaves one piece of cloth +(saith Saevius Nicanor), I have laboriously collected this Cento out of +divers Writers, and that _sine injuria_, I have wronged no authors, +but given every man his own; which Sosimenes so much commends in +Nicanor, he stole not whole verses, pages, tracts, as some do +nowadays, concealing their Authors' names, but still said this was +Cleophantus', that Philistion's, that Mnesides', so said Julius +Bassus, so Timaristus, thus far Ophelion: I cite and quote mine own +Authors (which howsoever some illiterate scribblers account +pedantical, as a cloak of ignorance and opposite to their affected +fine style, I must and will use) _sumpsi, non surripui_, and what +Varro _de re rustica_ speaks of bees, _minime malificae quod nullius +opus vellicantes faciunt deterius_, I can say of myself no less +heartily than Sosimenes his laud of Nicanor." + + + + +PROLEGOMENA + +_Nec caput habentia, nec caudam_ + + "I had a little husband, no bigger than my thumb, + I put him in my pint-pot, and there I bid him drum." + + +Pre-eminently the most engaging feature of a topic which pure chance +and impure idiocy have of late conspired to pull about in the public +prints,--I mean the question of "indecency" in writing,--is the patent +ease with which this topic may be disposed of. Since time's beginning, +every age has had its literary taboos, selecting certain things--more +or less arbitrarily, but usually some natural function--as the things +which must not be written about. To violate any such taboo so long as +it stays prevalent is to be "indecent": and that seems absolutely all +there is to say concerning this topic, apart from furnishing some +impressive historical illustration.... + +The most striking instance which my far from exhaustive researches +afford, sprang from the fact, perhaps not very generally known, that +the natural function of eating, which nowadays may be discussed +intrepidly anywhere, was once regarded by the Philistines, of at all +events the Shephelah and the deme of Novogath, as being +unmentionable. This ancient tenet of theirs, indeed, is with such +clearness emphasized in a luckily preserved fragment from the Dirghic, +or pre-Ciceronian Latin, of Saevius Nicanor that the readiest way to +illustrate the chameleon-like traits of literary indecency appears to +be to record, as hereinafter is recorded, what of this legend +survives. + +Buelg and Vanderhoffen, be it said here, are agreed that it is to this +legend Milton has referred in his _Areopagitica_, in a passage +sufficiently quaint-seeming to us (for whom a more advanced +civilization has secured the right of free speech) to warrant an +abridged citation:-- + +"What advantage is it to be a man, over it is to be a boy at school, +if serious and elaborate writings, as if they were no more than the +theme of a grammar lad under his pedagogue, must not be uttered +without the cursory eyes of a temporizing and extemporizing licenser? +whenas all the writer teaches, all he delivers, is but under the +tuition, under the correction of his patriarchal licenser, to blot or +alter what precisely accords not with the hide-bound humor which he +calls his judgment? What is it but a servitude like that imposed by +the Philistines?" + + + + +THE LEGEND + +_Fit ex his consuetudo, inde natura_ + + "I love little pussy, + Her fur is so warm." + + + + +I--How Horvendile Met Fate and Custom + + +Now, at about the time that the Tyrant Pedagogos fell into disfavor +with his people, avers old Nicanor (as the curious may verify by +comparing Lib. X, Chap. 28 of his _Mulberry Grove_), passed through +Philistia a clerk whom some called Horvendile, travelling by +compulsion from he did not know where toward a goal which he could not +divine. So this Horvendile said, "I will make a book of this +journeying, for it seems to me a rather queer journeying." + +They answered him: "Very well, but if you have had dinner or supper by +the way, do you make no mention of it in your book. For it is a law +among us, for the protection of our youth, that eating[2] must never +be spoken of in any of our writing." + +[Footnote 2: Such at least is the generally received rendering. +Ackermann, following Buelg's probably spurious text, disputes that this +is the exact meaning of the noun.] + +Horvendile considered this a curious enactment, but it seemed only one +among the innumerable mad customs of Philistia. So he shrugged, and he +made the book of his journeying, and of the things which he had seen +and heard and loved and hated and had put by in the course of his +passage among ageless and unfathomed mysteries. + +And in the book there was nowhere any word of eating. + + + + +2--How the Garbage Man Came with Forks + + +Now to the book which Horvendile had made comes presently a +garbage-man, newly returned from foreign travel for his health's sake, +whose name was John. And this scavenger cried, "Oh, horrible! for here +is very shameless mention of a sword and a spear and a staff." + +"That now is true enough," says Horvendile, "but wherein lies the +harm?" + +"Why, one has but to write 'a fork' here, in the place of each of +these offensive weapons, and the reference to eating is plain." + +"That also is true, but it would be your writing and not my writing +which would refer to eating." + +John said, "Abandoned one, it is the law of Philistia and the holy +doctrine of St. Anthony Koprologos that if anybody chooses to +understand any written word anywhere as meaning 'to eat,' the word +henceforward has that meaning." + +"Then you of Philistia have very foolish laws." + +To which John the Scavenger sagely replied: "Ah, but if laws exist +they ought to fairly and impartially and without favoritism be +enforced until amended or repealed. Much of the unsettled condition +prevailing in the country at the present time can be traced directly +to a lack of law enforcement in many directions during past years." + +"Now I misdoubt if I understand you, Messire John, for your +infinitives are split beyond comprehension. And when you talk about +the non-enforcement of anything in many directions, even though these +directions were during past years, I find it so confusing that the one +thing of which I can be quite certain is that it was never you whom +the law selected to pass upon and to amend all books." + +This Horvendile says foolishly, not knowing it is an axiom among the +Philistines that literary expression is best controlled by somebody +with no misleading tenderness toward it; and that it is this custom, +as they proudly aver, which makes the literature of Philistia what it +is. + +But John the Garbage-man said nothing at all, the while that he +changed nouns to "fork" and "dish," and carefully annotated each verb +in the book as meaning "to eat." Thereafter he carried off the book +along with his garbage, and with--which was the bewildering part of +it--self-evident and glowing self-esteem. And all that watched him +spoke the Dirghic word of derision, which is "Tee-Hee." + + + + +3--How Thereupon Ensued a Legal Debate + + +Now Horvendile in his bewilderment consulted with a man of law. And +the lawman answered a little peevishly, by reason of the fact that age +had impaired his digestive organs, and he said, "But of course you are +a lewd fellow if you have been suspected of writing about eating." + +"Sir," replies Horvendile, "I would have you consider that if your +parents and your grandparents had not eaten, your race would have +perished, and you would never have been born. I would have you +consider that if you and your wife had not eaten, again your race +would have perished, and neither of you would ever have lived to have +the children for whose protection, as men tell me, you of Philistia +avoid all mention of eating." + +"Yes, for the object of this most righteous law," declares the lawman, +"is to protect those whose character is not so completely formed as to +be proof against the effect of meat market reports and grocery +advertisements and menu folders and other such provocatives to +gluttony." + +"--Yet I would have you consider how little is to be gained by +attempting to conceal even from the young the inevitability of this +natural function, so long as dogs eat publicly in the streets, and the +poultry regale themselves just as candidly, and the house-flies also. +Instead, the knowledge that this function is not to be talked about +induces furtive and misleading discussion among these children, and, +though lack of proper instruction in the approved etiquette of eating, +they often commit deplorable errors--" + +To which the man of law replied, still with a bewildering effect of +talking very wisely and patiently: "Ah, but it does not matter at all +whether or not the function of eating is practised and is inevitable +to the nature and laws of our being. The law merely considers that any +mention of eating is apt to inflame an improper and lewd appetite, +particularly in the young, who are always ready to eat: and therefore +any such mention is an obscene libel." + + + + +4--How There Was Babbling in Philistia + +Now Horvendile, yet in bewilderment, lamented, and he fled from the +man of law. Thereafter, in order to learn what manner of writing was +most honored by the Philistines, this Horvendile goes into an academy +where the faded old books of Philistia were stored, along with +yesterday's other leavings. + +And as he perturbedly inspected these old books, one of the fifty +mummies which were installed in this Academy of Starch and Fetters, +with a hundred lackeys to attend them, spoke vexedly to Horvendile, +saying, as it was the custom of these mummies to say, before this +could be said to them, "I never heard of you before." + +"Ah, sir, it is not that which is troubling me," then answered +Horvendile: "but rather, I am troubled because the book of my +journeying has been suspected of encroachment upon gastronomy. Now I +notice your most sacred volume here begins with a very remarkable myth +about the fruit of a tree in the middle of a garden, and goes on to +speak of the supper which Lot shared with two angels and with his +daughters also, and of the cakes which Tamar served to Amnon, and to +speak over and over again of eating--" + +"Of course," replies the mummy, yawning, because he had heard this +silly sort of talking before. + +"I notice that your most honored poet, here where the dust is +thickest, from the moment he began by writing about certain painted +berries which mocked the appetite of Dame Venus, and about a repast +from which luxurious Tarquin retired like a full-fed hound or a gorged +hawk, speaks continually of eating. And I notice that everybody, but +particularly the young person, is encouraged to read these books, and +other ancient books which speak very explicitly indeed of eating--" + +"Of course," again replies the mummy (who had been for many years an +exponent of dormitive literacy)--"of course, young persons ought to +read them: for all these books are classics, and we who were more +obviously the heirs of the ages, and the inheritors of European +culture, used frequently to discuss these books in Paff's +beer-cellar." + +"Well, but does the indecency of this word 'eating' evaporate out of +it as the years pass, so that the word is hurtful only when very +freshly written!" + +The mummy blinked so wisely that you would never have guessed that the +brains and viscera of all these mummies had been removed when the +embalmers, Time and Conformity, were preparing these fifty for the +Academy of Starch and Fetters. "Young man, I doubt if the majority of +us here in the academy are deeply interested in this question of +eating, for reasons unnecessary to specify. But before estimating your +literary pretensions, I must ask if you ever frequented Paff's +beer-cellar?" + +Horvendile said, "No." + +Now this mummy was an amiable and cultured old relic, unshakably made +sure of his high name for scholarship by the fact that he had written +dozens of books which nobody else had even read. So he said, +friendlily enough: "Then that would seem to settle your pretensions. +To have talked twaddle in Paff's beer-cellar is the one real proof of +literary merit, no matter what sort of twaddle you may have written in +your book, or in many books, as I am here in this academy to attest. +Moreover, I am old enough to remember when cookery-books were sold +openly upon the newsstands, and in consequence I am very grateful to +the garbage-man, who, in common with all other intelligent persons, +has never dreamed of meddling with anything I wrote." + +"But, sir," says Horvendile, "do you esteem a scavenger, who does not +pretend to specialize in anything save filth, to be the best possible +judge of books?" + +"He may be an excellent critic if only he indeed belongs to the +forthputting Philistine stock: that proviso is most important, though, +for, as I recently declared, we have very dangerous standards +domiciled in the midst of us, that are only too quickly raised--" + +Says Horvendile, with a shudder: "You speak ambiguously. But still, in +criticizing books--" + +"Plainly, young man, you do not appreciate that the essential +qualifications for a critic of Philistine literature are," said this +mummy bewilderingly, "to have set off fireworks in July, to have +played ball in a vacant lot, and to have repeated what Spartacus said +to the gladiators."[3] + +[Footnote 3: It is a gratifying tribute to the permanence of aesthetic +canons to record that Dr. Brander Matthews (connected with Columbia +University) has, in an article upon "Alien Views of American +Literature," contributed to the _New York Times_ of 14 November, 1920, +accepted these three qualifications as the essential groundwork for a +literary critic even to-day; although Dr. Matthews is inclined, as a +concession to modernism, to add to the list an ability to recite +Webster's Reply to Hayne. Since Dr. Matthews frankly states that he +has been incited to this recital of a critic's needs by (in his happy +wording) "the alien angle" of "standards domiciled in the midst of +us," it is sincerely to be hoped that his requirements may be met +forthwith.] + +"No, no, the essential thing is not quite that," observed an attendant +lackey, a really clever writer, who wrote, indeed, far more +intelligently than he thought. He was a professor of patriotism, and +prior to being embalmed in the academy he had charge of the +postgraduate work in atavism and superior sneering. "No, my test is +not quite that, and if you venture to disagree with me about this or +anything else you are a ruthless Hun and an impudent Jew. No, the +garbage-man may very well be an excellent judge: for by my quite +infallible test the one thing requisite for a critic of our great +Philistine literature is an ability to induce within himself such an +internal disturbance as resembles a profound murmur of ancestral +voices--" + +"But, oh, dear me!" says Horvendile, embarrassed by such talk. + +"--And to experience a mysterious inflowing," continued the other, "of +national experience--" + +"The function is of national experience undoubtedly," said Horvendile, +"but still--" + +"--Whenever he meditates," concluded this lackey bewilderingly, "upon +the name of Bradford and six other surnames.[4] At all events, I have +turned wearily from your book, you bolshevistic German Jew--" + +[Footnote 4: Saevius Nicanor does not record the wonder-working +surnames employed to produce this ancient, ante-Aristotlean [Greek: +_katharsis_], and they are not certainly known. But, quite unaided, I +believe, by old Nicanor's hint, Dr. Stuart Pratt Sherman (the +accomplished editor of divers contributions to literature, and the +author of several books) has discovered, through a series of +interesting experiments in vivisection, that the one needful endowment +for a critic of American letters is the power to induce within himself +"a profound murmur of ancestral voices, and to experience a mysterious +inflowing of national experience, in meditating on the names of Mark +Twain, Whitman, Thoreau, Lincoln, Emerson, Franklin, and Bradford." +Compare "Is There Anything To Be Said for Literary Tradition," in _The +Bookman_ for October, 1920. Any candid consideration of Dr. Sherman's +phraseology, here as elsewhere, cannot fail to suggest that he has +happily re-discovered the long-lost critical abracadabra of +Philistia.] + +"But I," says Horvendile feebly, "am not a German Jew." + +"Oh, yes, you are, and so is everybody else whose literary likings are +not my likings. I repeat, then, that I have turned wearily from your +book. Whether or not it treats of eating, its implication is clearly +that the Philistia which has developed Bradford and six other +appellations perfectly adapted to produce murmurings and inflowings in +properly constituted persons,--and which Philistia, as I have +elsewhere asserted, is to-day as always a revolting country whenever +it condemns,--has had no civilised cultural atmosphere worth +mentioning. So your book fails to connect itself vitally with our +great tradition as to our literature, and I find nowhere in your book +any ascending sun heralded by the lookouts." + +"No more do I," said Horvendile; "but I would have imagined you were +more interested in lunar phenomena, and even so--" + +"Moreover," now declared another mummy (this was a Moor, called +P.E.M., or the Peach,[5] who through some oversight had not been +embalmed, but only pickled in vinegar, to the detriment of his +disposition),--"moreover, I am not at all in sympathy with any protest +whatever against the scavenger, for it might be taken as an excuse for +what they are pleased to call art." + +[Footnote 5: Codman annotates this: "Synonyms, since P.E.M. is +obviously _Persicum Esculentum Malum_--that is, the peach; 'which,' +says Macrobius, 'although it rather belongs to the tribe of apples, +Saevius reckons as a species of nut.'"] + +All groaned at this abominable word. And then another lackey cried, +"You are a prosperous and affected pseudo-litterateur!" and all the +mummies spoke sepulchrally the word of derision, which is "Tee-Hee": +and many said also, "The scavenger has never meddled with us, and we +never heard of you," and there was much other incoherent foolishness. + +But Horvendile had fled, bewildered by the ways of Philistia's adepts +in starch and fetters, and bewildered in particular to note that a +mummy, so generally esteemed a kindly and well-meaning fossil, +appeared quite honestly to believe that all literature came out of +the beer-cellar of Paff, or Pfaff, or had some similarly Teutonic +sponsor; and that handball was the best training for literary +criticism; and that the cookery-books of fifty years ago had something +to do with Horvendile's account of his journeying, from he did not +know where toward a goal which he could not divine, now being in the +garbage pile. It troubled Horvendile because so many persons seemed to +regard the old fellow half seriously. + + + + +5--How It Appeared to the Man in the Street + +Still, Horvendile was not quite routed by these heaped follies. "For, +after all," says Horvendile, in his own folly, "it is for the normal +human being that books are made, and not for mummies and men of law +and scavengers." + +So Horvendile went through a many streets that were thronged with +persons travelling by compulsion from they did not know where toward a +goal which they could not divine, and were not especially bothering +about. And it was evening, and to this side and to that side the men +and women of Philistia were dining. Everywhere maids were passing hot +dishes, and forks were being thrust into these dishes, and each was +eating according to his ability and condition. No matter how +poverty-stricken the household, the housewife was serving her poor +best to the goodman. For with luncheon so long past, all the really +virile men of Philistia were famished, and stood ready to eat the +moment, they had a dish uncovered. + +So it befell that Horvendile encountered a representative citizen, who +was coming out of a representative restaurant with a representative +wife. + +And the sight of this representative citizen was to Horvendile a tonic +joy and a warming of the heart. For this man, and each of the +thousands like him, as Horvendile reflected, had been within this hour +sedately dining with his wife,--neither of them eating with the zest +and vigor of their first youth, perhaps, but sharing amicably the more +moderate refreshment which middle-age requires,--without being at any +particular pains to conceal the fact from anybody. Here was then, +after all, the strong and sure salvation of Philistia, in this quiet, +unassuming common-sense, which dealt with the facts of life as facts, +the while that the foolish laws, and the academical and stercoricolous +nonsense of Philistia, reverberated as remotely and as unheeded as +harmless summer thunder. + +"Sir," says elated Horvendile, "I perceive that you two have just been +eating, and that emboldens me to ask you--" + +But at this point Horvendile found he had been knocked down, because +the parents of the representative citizen had taught him from his +earliest youth that any mention of eating was highly indecent in the +presence of gentlewomen. And for Horvendile, recumbent upon the +pavement, it was bewildering to note the glow of honest indignation in +the face of the representative citizen, who waited there, in front of +the restaurant he usually patronized.... + + + + +COLOPHON + + +Here, rather vexatiously, the old manuscript breaks off. But what +survives and has been cited of this fragment amply shows you, I think, +that even in remote Philistia, whenever this question of "indecency" +arose, everybody (including the accused) was apt to act very +foolishly. It has attested too, I hope, the readiness with which you +may read ambiguities into the most respectable of authors; as well as +the readiness with which a fanatical training may lead you to imagine +some underlying impropriety in all writing about any natural function, +even though it be a function so time-hallowed and general as that to +which this curious Dirghic legend refers. + + + + +A POSTSCRIPT + +(_French of C.J.P. Garnier_) + + The swine that died in Gadara two thousand years ago + Went mad in lofty places, with results that all men know-- + Went mad in lofty places through long rooting in the dirt, + Which (even for swine) begets at last soul-satisfying hurt. + + The swine in lofty places now are matter for no song + By any prudent singer, but--_how long, O Lord, how long?_ + + +_EXPLICIT_ + + + + +BOOKS _by_ MR. CABELL + + +_Biography_: + +BEYOND LIFE +FIGURES OF EARTH +DOMNEI +CHIVALRY +JURGEN +TABOO +THE LINE OF LOVE +GALLANTRY +THE CERTAIN HOUR +THE CORDS OF VANITY +FROM THE HIDDEN WAY +THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK +THE EAGLE'S SHADOW +THE CREAM OF THE JEST + + +_Genealogy_: + +BRANCH OF ABINGDON +BRANCHIANA +THE MAJORS AND THEIR MARRIAGES + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Taboo, by James Branch Cabell + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TABOO *** + +***** This file should be named 17134.txt or 17134.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/7/1/3/17134/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Sankar Viswanathan, and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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