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Content
SCATOLOGY IN MODERN DRAMA
by
Sidney Shrager
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
, ('C ommunic at i on - -Dr ama )
October 4^ .1978
UMI Number: DP22924
All rights reserved
INFORMATION TO ALL USERS
The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted.
In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript
and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed,
a note will indicate the deletion.
Dissertation Publishing
UMI DP22924
Published by ProQuest LLC (2014). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author.
Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC.
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unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code
ProQuest LLC.
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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY PARK
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■PK.X>.
D
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S S 4 1
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This dissertation, written by
..........Sidney__Shra5_er_.............
under the direction of hxs.... Dissertation Com
mittee, and approved by a ll its members, has
been presented to and accepted by The Graduate
School, in partial fulfillm ent of requirements of
the degree of
D O C T O R O F P H I L O S O P H Y
Dean
D a te..
DISSERTATION/COMMITTEE
Chairman
TABLE OF CONTENTS
i
Chapter Page
I. THE PROBLEM ..............................
Introduction, and Statement
of the Problem
Significance and Limitations
of the Study-
Out line of Remaining Chapters
1
II. APREVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ............. 6
III. A SHORT HISTORY OF SCATOLOGY:
FROM PRIMITIVE MAN TO UBU ROI ........
19
IV. SCATOLOGY: THE PSYCHOANALYTICAL VIEW,
AMBIVALENCE, AND GOOD TASTE........... 50
V. SMASHING THE TABOOS: JARRY'S
UBU ROI . ..............................
69
VI. REALISM, NATURALISM, AND THE
SCATOLOGICAL .......................... 82
VII. SCATOLOGY: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND
PHILOSOPHICAL USES ...................
101
VIII. SCATOLOGICAL SATIRE ..................... 117
IX. CONCLUSION ..............................
143
BIBLIOGRAPHY .....................................
153
ii
CHAPTER I
THE PROBLEM
Introduction and Statement
of the Problem
There has been a profuse outpouring of scatology in
modern drama, hut it has not received any detailed analy
sis. This is probably due to traditional taboos about dis
cussing such subject matter openly, and even scholars have
been reluctant to discuss it in print. However, this re
luctance is breaking down and scholars have now published
thorough scatological studies of the classical Greek drama,
Swift, and Rabelais. This dissertation attempts to do a
similar treatment of modern drama. For there are literally
hundreds of modern plays which contain scatology, and play
wrights have used the scatological in many different ways.
In fact, scatological dramatic elements have become the
most used and abused ones in modern drama, so much so that
audiences have rioted over the more explicit and extreme
uses. Their first modern use in Alfred Jarry's Ubu Rdl (1896)
caused riots, and its more recent use in Jean Genet's The
Screens (1 96 6) also caused riots. Furthermore, its boun
tiful presence in modern drama has probably driven more
1
2
people out of the theater than any other single element*
and Its use has been repeatedly denounced as obscene and
vulgar* and unfit for a public audience. These denuncia
tions may have been too swift* too easy* and too conven
tional* and this study attempts to examine and evaluate
those views by doing a serious and objective study of
scatology in modern drama.
Significance and Limitations
of the Study
The specific purpose of this study is to consider
and evaluate the various uses of scatology in modern drama:
shock* naturalistic* psychological* and satirical. The
study is mainly confined to noted or major playwrights such
as Alfred Jarry* LeRoi Jones (Baraka)* Samuel Beckett* John
Osborne* Fernando Arrabal* Michel de Ghelderode* Jean Genet,
and Stanislaw Witkiewicz. An attempt is also made to see
the scatological in the light of its historical tradition*
and from the psychoanalytical point of view. The study
concentrates on the most noted scatological plays of modern
dramatists* and these plays are discussed in terms of their
dramatic impact and effectiveness upon audiences and crit
ics. The study will then focus on the reasons for the
prolific use of scatology in modern drama.
3
Outline of Remaining Chapters
Chapter II gives a review of the literature. It
cites scholarly works that deal with the scatology in life
and literature. It also cites important scholarly studies
of the main dramatists considered in the dissertation.
Since so little has been written about the scatological as
pects of life and literature* a number of studies are re
viewed* for one has to cull out of these studies the pages
that are valuable for this dissertation.
The remainder of the dissertation -is divided into
seven key sections* Chapters III through IX. Chapter III
is titled , r A Short History of Scatology: From Primitive Man
to Ubu Roi." This section describes the positive attitudes
of primitive and ancient peoples toward the scatological
aspects of lifej it then discusses the development of
shame* guilt* and taboos about anality. This section also
discusses the uses of scatology in literature from Aris
tophanes down to Swift.
The next section* Chapter IV* Is entitled ''Scatol
ogy: The Psychoanalytical View* Ambivalence* and Good
Taste." Here the major psychoanalytical views concerning
man's attitudes about his anality are summarized* and man’s
neurotic ambivalence about his anality is stressed. This
is related to the reactions of audiences to the scatologi
cal* and the question of the relationship of good taste to
obscenity is considered.
■4
The next four chapters deal with modern playwrights
In terms of their most scatological productions. First.,
Jarry's Ubu- Hoi is credited with smashing the eighteenth-
and nineteenth-century taboos about what could be said on
stage. Next., the naturalistic use of scatology is dis
cussed and LeRoi Jones’s The Toilet is cited as the prime
example of it. This use is the most common, prolific, and
overdone one in modern drama. The psychological and philo
sophical portrayal of the scatological is analyzed next.
Here Osborne's Luther and Beckett's Krapp1s Last Tape are
specifically considered. Osborne sees Luther as an anal
erotic, and Beckett views modern man as constipated
"Krapp," lacking any real moral, spiritual, and creative
vitality. A chapter on scatological satire then follows,
and here the satirical plays of Ghelderode, Arrabal, Genet,
and Witkiewicz are analyzed. The passionate contempt of
these playwrights for certain aspects of life--religious,
military, and political--is stressed. The satiric use of
scatology is seen as the most traditional literary one, and
the most brilliant modern one.
The final chapter discusses the reasons for the use
of scatology in modern drama, and summarizes those uses.
Scatology is seen as being there for several reasons: a
revolt against the lifeless conventions of the bourgeois,
the personal neuroses of the authors, the desire of authors
5
to be considered avant garde* the modern worship of the
body and the unconscious, the Theatre of Cruelty approach
to drama, and the desire for naturalistic language. Fi
nally, scatology is seen as reflecting the modern play
wright's rage against the deity and the pitiful condition
of man in a God-is-dead, grotesque universe.
CHAPTER II
A REVIEW OP THE LITERATURE
No specific book-length study of scatology In drama
has been published, but some secondary works exist that are
helpful In assembling such a study. The most famous study
of scatology among ancient and primitive peoples Is
Bourke's classic compilation, The Scato..logic Rites Of All
Nations.^ The importance of Bourke is that he clearly
shows that primitives do not feel guilty about the scato
logical aspects of the body. In fact, Bourke thoroughly
illustrates that the anal aspects of the body have been .
used for practical and religious purposes by peoples all
over the world. Another helpful book on scatology is
2
Theodore?Rosebury1 s Life On Man, a study which examines the
biological aspects of scatology and then goes on to explain
the development of man’s repugnance about his anality.
Rosebury traces this development from the positive accept
ance of the body by primitive man to the guilt and shame
culture of today. G. Rattray Taylor's Sex In History-^ is
also a good source for the studying of man's attitudes con
cerning his body. Taylor cites many examples of the taboos
society has developed concerning the bodily functions. He
6
is particularly good in citing examples of the condemning
of the body by religious fanatics in the Middle Ages, but
he also gives many examples of the fastidious attitudes of
society down through the ages.
Almost all the psychoanalysts have stressed the im
portance of anality in the development of the individual..
Their views about the scatological aspects of anality have
been excellently treated in Martin Borneman's The Psycho-
4
analysis Of Money. While Borneman’s main concern is with
the relationship between scatology and money, he has as
sembled much of the findings of Freud, Ferenczi, Abraham,
and others concerning the excremental aspects of the body.
His work is an important one for those who wish to study
scatology, for it stresses the ambivalent feelings Western
man has about his anal functions. Alan Schneider's essay
"The Nature and Origins of Guilt" is also helpful in its
stressing of the development of man's guilt feelings con-
5
cerning his anal functions.
While there are no published book-length studies of
the history of scatology in literature, there are several
helpful studies of particular authors and historical peri
ods. Jeffrey Henderson's The Maculate Muse is a very valu-
6
able consideration of anality in Greek literature. He
clearly points out the abundance of scatology in Greek
comedy; obviously Western society has been reading a lot of
8
expurgated editions of Greek plays. Jae Num Lee's Swift
and Scatological Satire is also an important study, for it
cites and documents some of the satiric scatological tradi-
7
tion from the Greeks down to Swift. Another interesting
work on the history of scatology is G. Legman's No Laughing
8
Matter: Rationale of the Dirty Joke. Legman's monumental
work unmistakably establishes the long history and popu
larity of the scatological joke among men. Norman 0.
Brown's brilliant defense of Swift's "Excremental Vision"
in his Life Against Death is also required reading for any-
q
one who works in the scatological. Brown relates Swift's
individual neurosis to the universal neurosis of man. An
other key point Brown makes is that there is a traditional
religious association between the Devil and the scatologi
cal, and' he cites Luther as a prime example of one who saw
the Devil as totally scatological. Besides these studies,
there is Bakhtin's Rabelais and His World, an outstanding
examination of Rabelais and easily the best study of his
use of scatology.'*^ Bakhtin ties Rabelais's excremental
vision to the comic festival and folk scatological tradi
tions of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Bakhtin clearly
and unmistakably shows how ancient, widespread, and popular
the comic scatological tradition was. Edmund Wilson's
essay on "Morose Ben Jonson" in his The Triple Thinkers is
also an interesting anal analysis of a great writer.'*"'*'
Wilson calls Jonson an "anal erotic^" a fascinating al
though highly speculative classification.
There are many works on obscenity* but most of them
tend to concentrate on sexual obscenity rather than the
scatological obscene. However* much of what is said about
the sexual applies to the scatological too. An excellent
essay on the relationship of obscenity to art and society
is Irving Buchen's introduction to The Perverse Imagina-
12
tion. There are many books which deal particularly with
the legal and moral aspects of obscenity. Three of the
best studies are Ludwig Marcuse's Obscene* Harry Clor's
14
Obscenity and Public Morality* and Felice Lewis' Litera-
1B
ture* Obscenity and Law. These books deal with some of
the famous writers accused of obscenity--James Joyce* D. H.
Lawrence* Henry Miller* Jean Genet* etc.* and they depict
and discuss the reactions of societies* judges* and juries
to their works. From these studies* one can see there is a
thin line between what is considered "pornography" and "a
work of art." Another helpful consideration of obscenity
is Abraham Kaplan's essay* "Obscenity As An Esthetic Ap-
16
praisal." In this essay* Kaplan Insists that obscenity
is part of the work of art itself and not just in the eye
of the beholder. Another interesting essay is Martin
Esslin's "Theatre of Violence" in his Reflections.^ While
Esslin is not dealing directly with obscenity* his defense
10
of using shock techniques In drama is provocative and re
warding .
Alfred Jarry Is now considered a landmark author
and Ubu Roi a landmark play,, for the play smashed the
Victorian taboos about what could be said on stage. The
play also attacked realism and the well-made play„ and it
led to the theatre of the absurd. One of the best studies
of Jarry's life and influence is the chapter on him in
1 R
Roger Shattuck's The Banquet Years. Shattuck shows the
close relationship between Jarry1s rebellious life and his
anti-bourgeois literature., and he also cites valuable con
temporary descriptions and critical opinions of Ubu Roi.
There is also excellent commentary on Jarry's plays and
19
influence in Martin Esslin's Theatre of the Absurd ^ and
20
George Wellwarth’s The Theater of Protest and Paradox.
David Grossvogel's debunking opinion of Jarry in his 20th
Century French Drama is also interesting; Grossvogel sees
Jarry as an adolescent who uses the single device of
21
shock. Arthur Symons' description of the performance of
Ubu Roi in his Memoirs is valuable as a primary source
22
about the staging and reaction to the play.
Critical opinions concerning the dramas of LeRoi
Jones (Baraka) vary greatly. Kimberly Benston in Baraka
24
and Theodore Hudson in From LeRoi Jones to Amiri Baraka
ardently defend his use of obscenity. They read great
11
symbolic meanings into his plays and feel that his scato
logical drama is justified on artistic and philosophical
grounds. Other critics are not so sure of Jones's artistic
abilities of his views; for example., Robert Brustein in
25 „
Seasons of Discontent ^ and Langston Hughes in That Boy
26
LeRoi" believe Jones's obscenities are sado-masochistic
and in poor taste. The violently differing opinions con
cerning the dramatic effectiveness of Jones's obscenities
are fascinating examples of the still ambivalent opinions
of modern men about what constitutes obscenity.
There are several good studies of John Osborne,,
both critical and appreciative. Alan Carter's John Osborne
is a splendid study of Osborne and his works from the point
27
of view of their effectiveness in the theater. It con
tains a chapter on Osborne's use of language and stresses
Osborne's desire to give the playwright total freedom in
his choice of words. Simon Trussler's The Plays of John
28
Osborne is another valuable study. Trussler attempts to
evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each play.
Trussler cites Osborne's depen'dence on Erikson's Young Man
Luther as a source for his anal characterization of Luther.
29
Ronald Hayman1s John Osborne is also worth consulting.
Hayman takes a critical look at Osborne's angry heroes and
their attacks upon society.
There are numerous scholarly studies of Jean Genet,
12
but the scatological aspects of his work are not stressed.
Although Genet Is powerful when he uses scatology, he em
ploys it sparingly and effectively. Dramatically speaking,
he uses it best in The Screens. Jean Paul Sartre's monu
mental study Saint Genet is indispensable for anyone study
ing Genet; Sartre has many insights into Genet's scatologi
cal vision,which Sartre relates to the rejection of Genet
SO
first by his mother and then later by society. Richard
SI
Coe's works on Genet, The Theatre of Jean Genet^ and The
S2
Vision of Jean Genet, are also especially helpful as he
discusses the furor caused by the performances of The
Screens. Coe cites documents relating to the attacks on'
and defenses of the play, and he views Genet's scatology as
reflecting Genet's philosophy of life. Lewis Cetta's Pro
fane Play, Ritual, and Jean Genet is also a valuable treat
ment of Genet's work, particularly in showing Genet's kin-
ship to Artaud's advocacy of a Theatre of Cruelty.
Another useful study is Phillip Thody's Jean Genet, which
shows how much Genet's work displays his contempt for bour-
•34
geois society. Two other rewarding studies of Genet are
Bettina Knapp's Jean Genet^ and Joseph McMahon's The Imag
ination of Jean Genet.^ Knapp points out how much of
Genet's work expresses his life experience and how com
pletely honest Genet is in expressing his total self. Mc
Mahon shows the growth of Genet's artistic imagination and
13
thinking about life. Genet may fail artistically at times,,
but he is continually breaking new ground in looking for
fresh dramatic concepts.
Scholarship on Samuel Beckett abounds, but little
of it deals with his scatological aspects except for a
paragraph here and there. In fact, there are considera
tions of Beckett's scatological Krapp's Last Tape which
never mention its scatological aspects. One of the best
introductions to Beckett and his comic mode and view of
life is The Testament of Samuel Beckett by Josephine Jacob-
17
sen and William Mueller. They tie Beckett's scatology
directly to his existential view of life. Richard Goe's
Samuel Beckett also does an excellent job of probing into
Beckett's pessimistic philosophy, and Coe sees Beckett as
James Eliopolus' Samuel Beckett's Dramatic Language is
helpful in that he cites different aspects of Beckett's
language,•including a couple of pages on Beckett's scato
logical language. ^ Colin Duckworth's Angels of Darkness
is also stimulating in its analysis of why Beckett's plays
40
succeed with empathetic audiences. Duckworth finds Beck
ett's plays intense, his imagery suggestive, and his struc
tures simple. Two other helpful studies of Beckett's plays
are John Fletcher and John Spurling's Beckettj , A Study of
4l , 4 2
the Plays and Eugene Webb's The Plays of Samuel Beckett.
14
Both studies analyze the plays and show some of Beckett's
philosophy and dramatic development. Another useful treat-
40
ment of Beckett is John Fletcher's Samuel Beckett's Art. J
In this work, Fletcher attempts to evaluate Beckett's im
portance and his possible lasting influence. He also cites
influences and sources for Beckett's work. Frederick Hoff
man's Samuel Beckett: The Language of Self is another worthy
44
study. Hoffman sees Beckett as exploring the language of
self, the language of the underground man and the dislo
cated' intellect in a purposeless world.
Two excellent short studies of Arrabal are found in
Martin Esslin's Theatre of the Absurd and John Killinger's
4h
World in Collapse. ^ Esslin stresses particularly Arra
bal ' s questioning of all moral standards. Killinger's
study contains helpful insights into Arrabal's use of sca
tology, and it was his citing of latrine plays that was the
inspiration for this study. Both books are indispensable
for anyone working with absurdist playwrights.
There are two good essays on Ghelderode that give
insights into his use of scatology, both in the works by
George Wellwarth and David Grossvogel previously cited.
On the one hand, Wellwarth's criticism clearly relates
Ghelderode's plays to the scatological and Rabelaisian
festival tradition. Grossvogel, on the other hand, finds
Ghelderode's obscenity sometimes excessive.
15
An excellent consideration of Stanislaw Witkie-
wicz's plays Is by Jan Kott In his "introductions" to Wit-
46
kiewicz's plays. Kott clearly delineates Witkiewicz's
rejections of all systems and it is apparent that his sca
tology is related to his absurdist philosophy.
Thus., in order to deal with scatology in modern
drama* one has to consult many scholars and secondary
sources. However* there is no substitute for studying the
use of scatology in the plays themselves. For the scato
logical is there in the plays--in one form or another— in
hundreds of them.
16
NOTES
Captain John G. Bourke, Scatologic Rites Of All
Nations (Washington, D.C.: W. H. Lowdermilk & Co., 1 8 9 1)•
2
Theodore Rosebury, Life On Man (New York: The
Viking Press, 1 9 6 9).
^ G. Rattray Taylor, Sex in History (New York: Bal-
lantine Books, 195^)•
4 ,
Ernest Borneman, The Psychoanalysis of Money (New
York: Urizen Books, 1973)•
^ Alexander A. Schneiders, "The Nature and Origins of
Guilt," in Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences
(New York: Bill Boland, 1975), PP. 704-15.
6
Jeffrey Henderson, The Maculate Muse (New Haven:
Yale Univ. Press, 1975)•
Jae Num Lee, Swift and Scatological Satire (Albu
querque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1971).
O
G. Legman, No Laughing Matter: Rationale of the
Dirty Joke, 2nd ser" (New York: Breaking' Point, Inc.,
1975).
^ Norman 0. Brown, Life Against Death (Middletown:
Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1959)•
10
Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans.
Helene Iswolsky (Cambridge: The M.I.T. Press, 1 9 6 5).
^ Edmund Wilson, The Triple Thinkers (New York: Ox
ford Univ. Press, 19 68).
12
Irving Buchan, "Introduction," in The Perverse
Imagination (New York: New York Univ. Press! 1970).
“ *"3 Ludwig Marcuse, Obscene (London: MacGibbon & Kee,
1965)•
14 .
Harry Clor, Obscenity and Public Morality (Chicago:
Univ. of Chicago Press, 19 6 9). '
IB
Felice Lewis, Literature, Obscenity, and Law
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1976).
17
16
Abraham Kaplan, "Obscenity as an Esthetic Category,"
in Law and Contemporary Problems, ed. Robert Kramer, XX
(Durham: The Seeman Printery, 1955)•
17
Martin Esslin, Reflections: Essays on Modern The
atre (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1951).
" 1 ^
Roger Shattuck, The Banquet Years (New York: Har-
court. Brace and Co., 1955)•
^ Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd, rev. ed.
(New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1959)•
20
George Wellwarth, The Theater of Protest and Para
dox (New York: New York Uni v. Press, 1954).
PI
David Grossvogel, 20th Century French Drama (New
York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1958).
22 /
Arthur Symons, Memoirs, ed. Karl Beckson (Univer
sity Park: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1977).
23 Kimberly Benston, Baraka (New Haven: Yale Univ.
Press, 1976).
24
Theodore Hudson, From LeRoi Jones to Amiri Baraka
(Durham: Duke Univ. PressT 1973)•
Robert Brustein, Seasons of Discontent (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1962).
26
Langston Hughes, "That Boy LeRoi," in Anthology of
the American Negro in the Theater, ed. Lindsay Patterson
(New York: Publishers Co., 1957).
Alan Carter, John Osborne (New York: Harper and
Row, 1 9 7 3)•
Simon Trussler, The Plays of John Osborne (London:
Victor Gallancz Ltd., 1959)•
Ronald Hayman, John Osborne (London: Heinemann Edu
cational Books Ltd., 1 9 8 8).
Jean-Paul Sartre, Saint Genet (New York: Braziller,
1963).
Richard Coe, The Theatre of Jean Genet (New York:
The Grove Press, 197077
18
3^ Richard Coe., The Vision of Jean Genet (New York:
The Grove Press, 1968"]7
33 Lewis Cetta, Profane Play, Ritual and Jean Genet
(Alabama: Univ. of Alabama Press, 1978).
24 /
Phillip Thody, Jean Genet (London: Hamish Hamilton,
1968) .
33 Bettina Knapp, Jean Genet (New York: Twayne, 1 9 6 8).
3^ Joseph McMahon, The Imagination of Jean Genet (New
Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1 96 3).
Q7
J Josephine Jacobsen and William Mueller, The Testa
ment of Samuel Beckett (New York: Hill and Wang, 1984).
3® Richard Coe, Samuel Beckett (New York: The Grove
Press, 1988).
33 James Eliopulos, Samuel Beckett's Dramatic Language
(Paris: Mouton, 1975).
40 r
Colin Duckworth, Angels of Darkness (New York:
Barnes & Noble, 1 9 6 7).
41
John Fletcher and John Spurling, Beckett, A Study
of His Plays (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972).
42 /
Eugene Webb, The Plays of Samuel Beckett (Seattle:
Univ. of Washington Press, 1972).
4 2 t
J John Fletcher, Samuel Beckett's Art (New York:
Barnes & Noble, 1 9 6 7).
44
Frederick J. Hoffman, Samuel Beckett: The Language
of Self (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1964)•
^"3 John Killinger, World in Collapse (New York: Dell,
1971).
46
Jan Kott, "Introductions," in The Madman and the
Nun and Other Plays by Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (Seattle:
Univ. of Washington Press, 1 9 6 6).
CHAPTER III
A SHORT HISTORY OP SCATOLOGY:
PROM PRIMITIVE MAN TO UBU ROI
In 1896j the first famous "merdre" of Ubu Roi
caused the audience to riot for fifteen minutes., and since
the polite society of the nineteenth century hardly acknowl
edged the bodily functions on stage, it was to be expected.
Por it was this'euphemistically oriented, super-bourgeois
century that put curtains on piano legs, fig leaves on
ancient statues, and published expurgated editions of Aris
tophanes, Rabelais, and Swift. To express their disgust at
what they considered a filthy word was necessary and impor
tant to them. To any historian their reaction was also
easily understandable, for the repression of the body, the
degrading of natural body functions, had gone hand-in-hand
with the growth of the Hebraic-Christian influence in the
Western world. The Puritan notions that the scatological
functions are shameful and sinful are, based on religious
assumptions fostered by the early Christian Fathers. De
nial was spiritual, and the carnal joys became evil accord
ing to their teachings. Heaven was for those who denied
the pleasures of the body. While it is true that St.
19
20
Aquinas spoke of evacuating as one of the few pleasures a
monk had, St. Paul and St. Augustine attacked sexual in
dulgence, and later Luther strongly associated the Devil
with everything scatological. Gradually these natural func
tions were linked with original sin and pollution, taboos
arose concerning them, and society became quite euphemistic
about'everything connected with them. Personal purity and
cleanliness became next to godliness. In fact, the reli
gious and social mania for repressing natural actions be
came so powerful in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
that books which realistically dealt with the body were
repressed, placed on the Index, and burnt. Shakespeare was
expurgated, Elizabethan translations of Rabelais were
locked up in the public libraries, Swift's scatology led
to his being called a "filthy little atheist," and many
words describing bodily functions were classified as ob
scene .
Scatology is part of an ancient dramatic tradition,
and its use in primitive rites and rituals has been well
documented, especially in the classic work on the subject,
John Bourke's Scatologic Rites of All Nations.About his
bodily excretions, primitive man felt little of the rela
tively modern guilt cited by Alexander A. Schneiders.
To explain the ontogeny of guilt {.f ]irst let
us note that all excremental as well as excretory
functions are quite generally regarded as bad, dirty,
21
shameful, foul, and self-debasing. Thus we carefully
close the bathroom door and turn both taps so as to
exclude all sights, sounds, and odors connected with
excremental functions. We feel guilty If we are
caught picking our nose. We hesitate to spit In pub
lic. We use under-arm deodorants, body powders,
after-shave lotion, and many other devices to reduce
the possibility of anyone detecting excremental or
excretory indicators. In all these instances, one
or another of the feelings of alienation are in-
volved--guilt, shame, anxiety, hostility, or self-
hate. And for good reason. All excremental and ex
cretory functions involve body cast-offs, foul
smelling, ugly in appearance, or disagreeable to the
touch, and all tend to evoke negative feelings.
Easily discerned are shame, repugnance, embarrassment,
disgust, and guilt. The criticism, disgust, and re
jecting attitudes of other persons help to bring
about a change in feelings of the child toward such
functions; but this facile explanation must not ob
scure the fact that these functions are inherently
repulsive and thus tend to generate-guilt because of
negative self-reference. We might note in this con
nection the peculiar relationship between words with
strong emotional meanings and their logical equiva
lents. Thus, while expectorate, defecate, fornicate,
urinate, osculate, and copulate can be used with im
punity, their emotional equivalents cause a great
deal of uncomfortable feeling. So-called "four-
letter" words are distasteful and offensive because
they reflect the repugnant qualities of the function
referred to rather than the objective process.2
In fact, primitive man accepted the scatological aspects of
his body freely, and he often developed a spiritual atti
tude about them. Theodore Rosebury in his book on scatology
Life On Man states, "Before abnegation changed Man's early
attitude toward his excretions into the one we have today,
he felt awe and reverence toward them. 1 1 ^
Some of the basis for primitive man's acceptance of
faeces and urine was probably founded on his discovering
their usefulness. Faeces were.used as fertilizer and urine
22
to clean. Human and animal manure were used for agricul
tural purposes by many peoples, such as the Chinese, Japa
nese, Persians, Jews, French, Peruvians, and Germans.
Pliny stated that human manure was best for fields. Human
ordure was used in tanning hides by groups such as the
Indian tribes of Mexico, the Yakuts of Russia, the Kiowas
of the Great Plains, and the Apaches of Arizona. Dung was
used as plaster for housing by the Monguls, the Turks, the
Roman farmers, the Zambesi, and others. It was also used
in curing tobacco, feeding fish in China, adulterating
opium, making smudges to drive away insects, and for fuel
and medicinal preparations. Evidences of these uses have
been found as late as the nineteenth and twentieth centu-
4
ries.
Man also found urine to be useful in many different
ways. For example, Havelock Ellis said of urine:
It certainly is not possible to separate the religious
uses of urine from its industrial and medical uses.
. . . Probably nearly everywhere it has been the first
soap known. Does not this aspect of the matter need
to be insisted on, even from the religious point of
view? . . . In England and France, and probably else
where, the custom of washing the hands in urine, with
an idea of its softening and beautifying influence,
still subsists among ladies, and I have known those
who constantly made water on their hands with this
idea.5
Urine was also used by the Eskimos and others in
tanning hides. Other practical uses were by the Roman
fullers for bleaching, and the ancient Irish and Mediter
ranean peoples for dyeing. Urine was also used by the
23
Germans and French in the preparation of cheeses as late as
the nineteenth century; this process was based either on
its ancient uses as a fermenting agent or protecting agent
from witches. Urine was also used medically,, and Galen,
Dioscorides, Avicenna, and others advocated its use. The
Roman emperors thought it so useful in many things that
they imposed a tax upon it. Another prime use of urine was
in tattooing, and evidence of this use is widespread: for
example, among the American Indians, the Australian abori
gines, the Dyaks of Borneo, the Hindus, the Persians, and
many others. Urine was also used in the manufacture of
salt and the preparation of phosphorus, sal ammoniac, and
the solution of indigo.
Primitive and ancient peoples regarded their sca
tological excretions with considerable reverence and often
used them in their dramatic rites and bituals. Their spir
itual aspect is emphatically stated by Bourke: "That these
disgusting rites are distinctively religious in origin, no
one, after a careful perusal of all . . . , will care to
6
deny." For example, the Alaskan Eskimos use urine in
their ceremonial steam baths.
During the Kashim ceremony, a native "performed the
disgusting operation of urinating over the back and
shoulders of the person seated next to him,, after
which he jumped down and began to dance. . . . The
one urinated on then repeated the operation on his
next neighbor, and this continued until the last man
urinated on the.first. . . . The fire is usually
24
drawn from the hot stones on the hearth. . . . A
kantog of chamber-lye poured over [the hot stones]
which., rising in dense clouds of vapor, gives notice
by its presence and its horrible ammoniacal odor to
the delighted inmates that the bath is on. The kashga
is heated to suffocation; it is full of smoke; and the
outside men run in from their huts with wisps of dry
grass for towels and bunches of alder twigs to flog
their naked bodies.
"They throw off their garments; they shout and
dance and whip themselves into profuse perspiration
as they caper in the hot vapor. More of their dis
gusting substitute for soap is rubbed on, and pro
duces a lather, which they rub off with cold water.
. . . This is the most enjoyable occasion in an Indi
an’s existence, as he solemnly affirms."7
Another ceremonial use of human excretions is in
the "Urine Dance1 ' of the Zunis of New Mexico, which Bourke
observed in 1881. In this rite the Zunis actually drank
large bowls of urine and ate excrement. These kinds of
rites may be based on actual events. The Bible mentions
the Jews drinking urine in times of extremity, and the
Crusaders did it when under siege by the Moslems. Primi
tive tribes recorded these events by dramatic representa
tions which then would gradually be encrusted "with all the
O
veneration that religion could impart." Scholars believe
dancing and other dramatic aspects of rites to be religious
in origin, and the actual events and the dramatic religious
traditions comingled.
In India and Tibet there was also a considerable
use of sacred cow dung and cow urine in their religious
acts and rituals. The Hindus used tbe sacred cow urine as
25
a mouthwash, and the dung was eaten as an atonement for sin.
In some ceremonies the Hindu monks would "smear their faces,
breasts, and arms with the ashes of cow dung . . . [and]
Q
run through the streets demanding alms. There was a
similar veneration for cow dung among the Israelites, the
Persians, the Hottentots, and other races. Even Plutarch,
citing the superstitious rites of the Greeks, speaks of
them "rolling themselves in dung-hills.
The’use of urine in ceremonial ablutions was true
of many peoples besides the Eskimos and Hindus; for ex
ample, it was used for this purpose by the Indians of the
northwest coast of America, the people of Iceland, the
people of Siberia, the Celtiberii of Spain, the natives of
the Upper Nile, and many other peoples.
Since primitive and ancient peoples felt little
shame generally about the body and its functions, it is
not surprising to find that these peoples had excremental
gods. They regarded human decay as magical--matter which
quickly changed Its form awed them--and this confirmed
their belief in the supernatural. Rosebury comments on
this phenomenon, "It is certainly significant that in such
widely scattered developing civilizations as the Mexican
and those of our Mediterranean ancestors, early notions
about supernatural qualities of feces and urine crystalized
In deification.""^ The Mexicans had various goddesses who
26
were associated with excrement, such as Suchiquecal, mother
of the human race (seen eating faeces), Tlacolquani, god
dess of ordure, and Tlazeoltecotl, goddess of carnal love,
whose name translates as "eater of filthy things." The
Canaanites and Moabites also had the Baal gods, those which
were associated with orgiastic fertility rites; they were
dung-gods who could bring on a good harvest. The Egyptians
also worshipped dung-gods, and the Assyrians placed offer
ings of dung upon the altars of their Venus.
The Romans also had excrement gods, the foremost
being the fertility dung-god Stercus.
Stercus was Saturnes father, hee that invented manur
ing of the ground with dung, which of him was called
Stercus: Some say they called him Stercutius. Well
howsoever he gotte the name of Saturne, he was the
same Stercus or Stercutius whom they deified for his
husbandry.12
The Romans also had a goddess called Cloacina who was god
dess of the "stools, the jakes, and the privy, to whom, as
to every of the rest, there was a peculiar temple edified,"
and had Crepitus, the farting god whose origin Bourke
traces back to the Egyptian goddess Le Pet.^
Because they associated excremental matters with
religion, many ancient superstitions arose concerning the
magical powers of urine and faeces, and these superstitions
affected the natural lives of people. For example, they
were often used in courtship and marriage.
27
"To multiply and replenish the earth" was the first
command given to man; to love, and to desire to he
loved in return, is the strongest impulse of our na
ture, and therefore it need surprise no student who
sets about investigating the occult properties at
tributed to the human and animal egestae to find them
in very general use in the composition of love-
philters, as antidotes to such philters, as aphro
disiacs, and as aids to delivery.14.
Besides being used in love potions, urine had other social
and holy uses. Among others cited by Bourke are the fol
lowing .
Among the Tchuktchees of Siberia,
it is a well known custom to use the urine of both
parties as a libation in the ceremony; and likewise
between confederates and allies, to pledge each other
and swear eternal friendship.15
In Hottentot marriages,
the priest, who lives at the bride’s kraal, enters
the circle of the men, and coming up to the bride
groom, pisses a little upon him. The bridegroom
receiving the stream with eagerness rubs it all over
his body, and makes furrows with his long nails that
the urine may penetrate the farther. The priest
then goes to the outer circle and evacuates a little
upon the bride, who rubs it in with the same eager
ness as the bridegroom. To him the priest then re
turns, and having streamed a little more, goes again
to the bride and again scatters his water upon her.
Thus he proceeds from one to the other until he has
exhausted his whole stock, uttering from time to time
to each of them the following wishes, till he has pro
nounced the whole upon both: "May you live long and
happily together. May you have a son before the end
of the year. May this son live to be a comfort to
you in your old age. May this son prove to be a man
of courage and a good huntsman."16
Various varieties of urine and dung were also thought to be
a cure for sterility. In the initiation and confirmation
rites of warriors, dung and urine were also used, espe-
28
cially among the Australian tribes. Even in the Middle
Ages, warriors rubbed their swords with a magic mixture of
dung and urine.
Down through history, excremental compounds have
been recommended for cures of various diseases and ailments.
In a related manner, they have also been used in amulets
and talismans as antidotes to the effects of witchcraft.
Bourke cites many cases of urine and faeces being used in
this way in many parts of the world down through the ages.
Bourke also gives examples of excrement being associated
with charms for prostitutes and being connected with
cuckolding.
Obviously, there is a great deal of evidence that
primitive peoples looked upon their bodily excretions prag
matically, favorably, superstitiously, and religiously--
unlike modern man who places a negative and odious taboo
upon them. However, there was some duality about primitive
man's attitudes about scatology. Flatulence in public and
before strangers was considered an insult by some primitive
groups. The throwing of urine and ordure on some enemies
was also considered the grossest insult. Later, of course,
some of this attitude was fostered among primitive groups
*
by the influence of Western civilized man.
In literature, scatology is part of an ancient tra
dition, especially in the drama. The ancient Greeks felt
29
little was obscene about the body and its functions* ran
naked in the Olympic games* and freely expressed themselves
in their language. Obscenity played an important part in
ancient Greek festivals* and the Greeks could obviously de
light in it when comic masters such as Aristophanes used
scatology to censure* ridicule* and debunk all they thought
ridiculous in Greek society.
Despite the above facts* however* an honest ap
praisal and consideration of obscenity in Greek literature
was lacking until Jeffrey Henderson published his The Macu
late Muse in 1975. In his "Introduction*'’ Henderson ably
summarizes the previous taboo nature of the subject.
Obscene humor has always been something of an embar
rassment to writers on ancient comedy* from Aristotle*
Plutarch* and Longinus to scholars of the present day.
Everyone knows that Aristophanes and his fellow comic
poets included in their works a great abundance of
obscene words* allusions* double entendres and visual
bawdiness* but to this day there has been no study
that attempts comprehensively to elucidate* evaluate*
or even to discuss the nature and function of sexual
and scatological language in Attic Comedy. Occasion
ally an article will appear explaining an obscene
word or passage. The older commentaries* when they
take note of obscenities at all* usually follow the
scholiast's laconic and often inaccurate defini
tions. 17
Henderson goes on to state that the Greeks did re
gard some language with a feeling that it. could be mainly
private* and thus with a little shame or modesty* but
nothing was really regarded as obscene. Thus when Aris
tophanes used scatology in its most traditional literary
30
function--to satirize— it was perfectly acceptable to the
audience. In his monumental work on dirty jokes* No Laugh
ing Matter* G. Legman states* "Under the mask of humor* All
18
men are enemies." In satire this is true* for satire
aims to kill. The target is fair game* and anything goes.
At least to the free society of' the Athenians* this was
true.
Thus* since the Greek audience did not regard lan
guage and actions as obscene or dirty* they were "free to
enjoy the exposure of other people* particularly people
whose political* intellectual* or even divine authority in
the community wap so great that open attack or ridicule in
itlQ
any other form would be out of the question. Obscenity
was a beautiful tool in a dramatic art form whose comic
purpose was ridicule and caricature.
Of course* all scholars agree that the licentious
ness of the Greek comedy goes back to the celebration of
ancient fertility cults. In the saturnalian spirit* any
thing is permitted* and it is significant that the Greek
plays were staged during festival periods. The traditional
freedom of the festivals was developed and enhanced by the
dramatic authors of the Old Comedy.
Defecation* crepitation* constipation* befouling*
bed pan* and other scatophagous jokes run through Greek
comedy. For example* in The Clouds* Aristophanes satirizes
31
Socrates and the Sophists by having Socrates ponder the
great question of whether gnats "hummed through their
20
mouth* or backwards* through the tall." A student of
Socrates later relates how a lizard shit upon Socrates.
While some of Aristophanes' scatological humor Is in the
spirit of slapstick joy and indirectly preaches the total
acceptance of the body* he used scatology mainly to sati
rize political targets and he often centered his attack on
famous people. Henderson cites a typical attack in the
play Peace.
The world without peace presented to us in the pro
logue is visualized in images of excrement* evil
smells* and the total absence of heterosexual sex
(sterility). If in Acharnians "perverse" homosexu
ality represents the opposite of healthy sexual re
lease* in Peace the dung-beetle embodies a more
complete reversal of the proper order of things: he
eats rather than excretes excrement* his foul-smell
ing mouth is like an anus* he loves what we natu
rally abhor. Fully consonant with this disgusting
state of affairs is the presence of Cleon amidst the
excrement. . . . Aristophanes makes an Ionian (i.e.*
a debauchee) guess that the dung-beetle actually rep
resents Cleon* and Aristophanes does not deny it—
like the dung-beetle* Cleon has become powerful by’
eating excrement. . . .. He . . . stinks like a seal*
has unwashed private parts and the anus of a camel*
and behaves like a degenerate. . . . He is thus the
ideal human symbol for the present disastrous state
of the world. 21
To Aristophanes* the stupidity of war and its leaders was
the true obscenity.
The Greeks did not have any particular term for
scatological language* and the modern notion of the obscene
32
comes from the Latin obscenus. Henderson ably discusses the
term as used by the Romans and what it meant to later gen
erations .
Obscenus, whether originally from caenum . . . or
scaena . . . , means filthy, repulsive, hateful, dis
gusting, offensive, and possessed of the power to
stain and contaminate. In the moral realm it meant
exactly what most of us mean when we say obscene:
filthy. Indecent, offensiye.... Thus it could describe
lewd pleasures . . . , a: dulteryi. . . , pictures . . . ,
verses . . . , gestures . . . , jokes . . . , shameful
things generally . . . , even the genitals themselves.
. . . Obviously, the Roman word shared with ours the
notion that words which describe tabooed sexual or ex-
cremental organs or functions are somehow dirty as
well as shameful; the natural induction is that the
organs and functions are themselves dirty and shame
ful. It is no secret that such a feeling was present
In Roman culture, though perhaps not in the degree to
which the stringent prohibitions of Puritanism and
Victorianism have Influenced modern feelings. Un
doubtedly the term obscenus entered popular speech
from its original use as an augural term meaning in
auspicious, unfavorable, or evil-boding; thus the
Idea of res mail ominis passes to the tabooed areas,
which then became, along with the words which de
scribe them, obscena.22
While it is clear that the Romans began to frown
upon the scatological facts of life, some of their great
writers, Lucilius, Catullus, Martial, and Juvenal, used
scatology in their poetry and lampooned both people and
vices with it. For example, Jae Num Lee cites a passage
of personal attack from Catullus.
. . . nothing is worse than-senseless laughter from
a foolish face. But you're a Spaniard,
and we already know the Spanish custom: how Spaniards
clean their teeth and scour their gums with the same
water that issues from their bladders.
33
So if your teeth are clean* my friend* we know how
you have used your urine. 23 (Poem XXIX)
Probably the most scatological of all the Roman writers was
Juvenal* who used scatological language to censure and
satirize social evils and men who abused their power. For
example* he has the statue of Sejanus* the favorite of Ti
berius* torn down and made into excremental chamber pots.
In one of his most powerful scatological passages* he at
tacks the immorality of the Roman ladies.
Come now* you wonder why Tullia with puckered face
sniffs the air*
What Maura says in her vile Moorish foster sisters'
ear
When they pass the ancient shrine of Chastity? It's
here
They stop their litters at night and piss on the
goddesses' form*
Squirting like siphons* and ride each other like
horses* warm
And excited* with only the moon as witness. Then
home they fly.
And you* setting out to greet fine friends with dawn
in the sky*
Will tread on the traces of your wife's urine as you
go by.24 (Satire VI)
The Romans also used scatology to poke fun at puri
tanical taboos in the paratheatrical ceremonies of the
Roman Saturnalia. The licentiousness of the Saturnalia
parallels much earlier burlesque survivals of serious cere
monies which Bourke cites among various primitive peoples.
This kind of scatological burlesque of puritanical
taboos continued even Into the Medieval period in the form
of the licentious festivals of the Boy's Bishop* the
34
Asses1 Mass, and the Feast of Fools (which lasted until the
French Revolution).
This ritual was written out In 13^9 at Viviers In
France . . . : "In the Feast of Fools they put on
masks, took the dress, etc., of women, danced and
sang In the choir, ate fat cakes upon the horn of
the altar, where the celebrating priest played at
dice, put stinking stuff from the leather of old
shoes in the censer, jumped about the church, with
the addition of obscene jests, songs, and unseemly
attitudes. Another part of this indecorous buffoon
ery was shaving the precentor of fools upon a stage,
erected before the church, in the presence of the
people,- and during the operation he amused them with
lewd and vulgar discourses and gestures. They also
had full carts full of ordure which they threw occa
sionally upon the populace. This exhibition was al
ways in Christmas time or near it, but was not con
fined to a particular day."25
The scatological comic aspects of the Medieval fes
tival celebrations can also be seen in Medieval and Renais
sance drama, particularly in the German festival plays, the
Fastnachtspiel. Eckehard Catholy in his study Fastnacht-
spiel points out that they are full of obscene humor, bru
tal coarseness, and filthy jokes. The Fastnachtspiel
satirize farmers, Jews, and knights with all kinds of
scatological jokes. There are many comic solos which end
26
in fecal fare such as, "I don't give a shit about work."
Catholy calls fecal obscenity "one of the vital character
istics of the Fastnachtspiel."2^ Catholy also contends
that the carnival atmosphere was responsible for the sca
tology in the plays. In their daily work, the journeyman
workers of the Middle Ages observed strict codes in their
35
masters' houses. Then when they got a chance to celebrate*
they were extreme in their fecal reactions to their sup
pressed lives. The scatological was a reflection of their
animalistic joy in the release from the strict codes of
their daily lives.
Generally speaking, of course, it was the Medieval
Church which condemned the natural bodily functions and de
sires, and tried to enforce strict sexual and scatological
taboos. The Church, in fact, associated the scatological
with the Devil and evil. Traditionally, of course, the
Devil had always been associated with black filth and evil
sulfuric smells. As is well known, Luther actually be
lieved he once routed the Devil in a contest using the
Devil's own weapon, "De crepitu Diaboli.'r
Due to their view of the body as evil, the guilt-
ridden religious fanatics of the Middle Ages practiced
flagellation, and the scatological aspects of life were
strongly associated with the mortification of the flesh.
On the one hand, many Church fanatics such as John Custance
loved to dwell on faeces because this mortified the flesh,
freed the soul, and brought them nearer to God. Witches,
on the other hand, were thought to have kissed the Devil's
arse.
All readers of Dante's Divine Comedy have been
struck and perhaps even shocked by his use of scatologyj
36
however., they have accepted it because he uses excrement as
the traditional religious metaphor for sin. His hell is
really one big scatological cesspool. All the sinners
Dante despises the most wallow in filthy mire--for example,
the flatterers and sorcerers. Satan himself is frozen in
an excremental pool.
The Renaissance rebelled against some of the Medie
val taboos and a few of the Renaissance writers such as
Shakespeare and the Elizabethan dramatists employed some
scatology in their literary works, as Partridge shows in
his Shakespeare1s Bawdy. Like the Greeks, the Elizabethans
were amused by characters breaking wind and by sexual and
scatological obscenities. Shakespeare plays with flatu
lence and puns in different ways upon nwind." He also re
fers to "Jakes, butt, bum, bottocks, holland, posteriers,
. . - j . .|(28
tail, rump, ass, urine, etc.
Of the other Elizabethan-Jacobean playwrights, Ben
Jonson was the most anal--so much so, in fact, that Edmund
Wilson has called him "an obvious example of a psychologi
cal type which has been described by Freud and designated
OQ
by a technical name, anal erotic." Wilson finds Jonson's
"hoarding and withholding instinct" one of the key traits
exhibiting the anal neurosis. Thus.his learned pedantry,
his fear of failure, his defiance of the audience, his
"strong interest in food, both from the deglutitionary and
37
the excretory points of view., and the passionate inter
est in money shown by Volpone and other characters are all
evidence of his anal problems. The anal erotic also has
ambivalent feelings about his excremental functions. He
likes to store possessions up in a constipated fashion, but
he also likes to expend them in "sudden bursts.” Jonson's
scatology Wilson sees as an example of those sudden bursts.
Karl Abraham . . . "cites, in proof of the close as
sociation between sadistic and anal impulses instances
in his experiences with neurotics when an explosive
bowel evacuation has been a substitute for a dis
charge of anger or rage, or has accompanied it." Cer
tainly Jonson seems to explode in this fashion. The
directness with which he gives way to the impulse is
probably another cause of his chronic unpopularity.
The climax of The Poetaster is the administering of
emetic pills, the effects of which take, in this case,
the form of a poetic joke. The comic high point of
The Alchemist comes with the locking of one of the
characters in a privy, where he will be overcome by
the smell. This whole malodorous side of Jonson was
given its fullest and most literal expression in the
poem called The Famous Voyage which was too much for
even Gifford and Swinburne, in which he recounts a
nocturnal expedition made by two London blades in a
wherry through the roofed-over tunnel of Fleet Ditch,
which was the sewer for the public privies above it.
A hardly less literal letting-go is the whole play of
Bartholomew Fair. . . . He dumps out upon his central
group of characters, for.the most part pusillanimous
examples of the lower middle class, puritan parsons
and petty officials, with, of course, a young spend
thrift from the country, what must have been a life
time's accumulation of the billingsgate and gutter
practices of the pickpockets, booth-keepers, peddlers,
pimps, ballad-singers and professional brawlers of
the Elizabethan underworld. . . . This comedy, novel
in its day, anticipates both Hogarth and Dickens; but
Jonson's impulse to degrade his objects is something
not shared by either. Hogarth and Dickens both, for
all their appetite for rank vulgarity, are better-
humored and more fastidious.31
38
Wilson's contentions concerning Jonson's ”anal eroticism”
are highly speculative, since he knows nothing of Jonson's
childhood or toilet training.. However, his citing of Jon
son's scatology in his plays is factual and accurate. Ac
tually, Bartholomew Fair is in the merry, scatological
tradition of the Festival plays and does not necessarily
reflect Jonson's personal anality to any great degree.
Two of the greatest scatologists in literature, of
course, are Rabelais in the sixteenth century and Swift in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. One of the best
and most penetrating studies of Rabelais, and by far the
most brilliant thesis concerning the use of the scatologi
cal in Medieval and Renaissance literature, is that of
Mikhail Bakhtin in his Rabelais and His World. Bakhtin is
able to see the scatological in its historical perspective,
in its social, literary, and religious traditions. He
especially ties the scatological to the traditions of folk
humor, folk comic cults, and the traditions of festival
and carnival celebration.
And yet, the scope and the importance of this cul
ture were immense in the Renaissance and the Middle
Ages. A boundless world of humorous forms and mani
festations opposed the official and serious tone of
medieval ecclesiastical and feudal culture. In spite
of their variety, folk festivities of the carnival
type, the comic rites and cults, the clowns and fools,
giants, dwarfs, and jugglers, the vast and manifold
literature of parody--all these forms have one style
in common: they belong to one culture of folk carnival
humor. 32
39
He also points out how all the people at all levels
of society took part in these festivals and how they all
participated In the comic, revelry.
Let us say a few initial words about the complex
nature of carnival laughter. It is, first of all, a
festive laughter. Therefore it is not an individual
reaction to some isolated "comic1 ’ event. Carnival
laughter is the laughter of all the people. Second,
it is universal in scope; it is directed at all and
everyone, including the carnival's participants. The
entire world is seen in its droll aspect, in its gay
relativity. Third, this laughter is ambivalent: it
is gay, triumphant, and at the same time mocking, de
riding. It asserts and denies, it buries and revives.
Such is the laughter of carnival.
Let us enlarge upon the second important trait of-
the people's festive laughter: that it is also di
rected at those who laugh. The people do not exclude
themselves from the wholeness of the world. They,
too, are incomplete, they also die and are revived
and renewed. This Is one of the essential differences
of the people's festive laughter from the pure satire
of modern times. The satirist whose laughter is nega
tive places himself above the object of his mockery,
he is opposed to it. The wholeness of the world's
comic aspect is destroyed, and that which appears
comic becames [sic] a private reaction. The people's
ambivalent laughter, on the other hand, expresses the
point of view of the whole world; he who is laughing
also belongs to it.33
Bakhtin thus stresses the ambivalent nature of folk humor.
He also links the scatological to the prevalence of "gro
tesque realism" in the Middle Ages and subsequent ages. In
grotesque realism, bodily elements are not severed or di
vided from the rest of the body or the world. All elements,
including the scatological ones, are universal and part of
the whole world and all Its people. Grotesque realism de
grades, but it is part of the cycle of life. "The essen
40
tial principle of grotesque realism is degradation, that
is, the lowering of all that is high, spiritual, ideal, ab
stract; it is a transfer to the material level, to the
„•? 4
sphere of earth and body in their indissoluble unity. J
Officially, of course, the high seriousness of the
religion in the Middle Ages eliminated laughter from all
important ceremonies, but the Church leaders well under
stood its universal nature, and they virtually licensed it
in festivals, medieval drama, and the outpouring of medieval
perodical literature. Bakhtin puts forth this view.
Summing up, we cap say that laughter, which had
been eliminated in the Middle Ages from official cult
and ideology, made its unofficial but almost legal
nest under the shelter of almost every feast. There
fore, every feast in addition to its official, eccle
siastical part had yet another folk carnival part
whose organizing principles were laughter and the ma
terial bodily lower stratum. This part of the feast
had its own pattern, its own theme and imagery, its
own ritual. The origin of the various elements of
this theme is varied. Doubtless, the Roman Satur
nalia continued to live during the entire Middle Ages.
The tradition of the antique mime also remained alive.
But the main source was local folklore. It was this
folklore which inspired both the imagery and the rit
ual of the popular, humorous part of the feast.35
Bakhtin also declares that grotesque elements such
as the scatological helped debase the fear and suffering so
much a part of medieval life. They are a way of attacking
the gloomy realities and theories of Medieval religion,
economics, and politics. One cannot understand and appre
ciate the verve, gusto, and lusty joie de vivre of Rabelais
41
unless one understands the traditions and views handed down
from the Middle Ages.
It would he a mistake to think that the Rabelaisian
debasement of fear and suffering was prompted by
coarse cynicism. We must not forget that the image
of defecation, like all the images of the lower stra
tum, is ambivalent and that the element of reproduc
tive force, birth, and renewal is alive in it. We
have already sought to prove this, and we find here
further substantiation. Speaking of the masochism
of the gloomy slanderers, Rabelais also mentions sexr-
ual stimulus together with defecation.
At the end of the Fourth Book Panurge, who defe
cated from fear and was mocked by his companions, fi
nally rids himself of his terror and regains his
cheerfulness. He exclaims:
Oh, ho, ho, hoi What the devil is this? Do
you call this ordure, ejection, excrement,
evacuation, dejecta, fecal matter, egesta,
copros, scatos, dung, crap, turds? Not at
all, not at all: it is but the fruit of the
shittim tree, "Selahl Let us drink. 1 1 (Book
4, Chapter 6 7)
These are the last words of the Fourth Book, and
actually the last sentence of the entire book that
was written by Rabelais' own hand. Here we find
twelve synonyms for excrement, from the most vulgar
to the most scientific. At the end it is described
as a tree, something rare and pleasant. And the ti
rade concludes with an invitation to drink, which in
Rabelaisian imagery means to be in communion with
tru th.
Here we find the ambivalent image of excrement,
its relation to regeneration and renewal and its spe
cial role in overcoming fear. Excrement is gay mat
ter; in the ancient scatological images, as we have
said, it is linked to the generating force and to
fertility. On the other hand, excrement is conceived
as something intermediate between earth and body, as
something relating the one to the other. It is also
an intermediate between the living body and dead dis
integrating matter that is being transformed into
earth, Into manure. The living body returns to the
earth its excrement, which fertilizes the earth as
does the body of the dead. Rabelais was able to dis
tinguish these nuances clearly. As we shall see fur-
42
ther, they were not alien to his medical views. More
over, as an artist and an heir to grotesque realism,
he conceived excrement as both joyous and sobering
matter, at the same time debasing and tender; it com
bined the grave and birth in their lightest, most
comic, least terrifying form.
Therefore, there is nothing grossly cynical in
Rabelais' scatological images, nor in the other images
of grotesque realism: the slinging of dung, the drench
ing in urine, the volley of scatological abuse hurled
at the old, dying, yet generating world. All these
images represent the gay funeral of this old world;
they are (in the dimension of laughter) like handfuls
of sod gently dropped into the open grave, like seeds
sown in the earth's bosom. If the image is applied to
the gloomy, dlsincarnated medieval truth, it symbol
izes bringing it "down to earth" through laughter. 3^
Another important view of Rabelais is that of Erich
Auerbach.
The revolutionary thing about his way of thinking is
not his opposition to Christianity, but the freedom of
vision, feeling, and thought which his perpetual play
ing with things produces, and which invites the reader
to deal directly with the world and its wealth of phe
nomena. On one point, to be sure, Rabelais takes a
stand, and it is a stand which is basically anti-
Christian; for him, the man who follows his nature is
good, and natural life, be it of men or things, is
good: we should not even need the express confirmation
of this conviction which he gives us in the constitu
tion of his Abbey of Theleme, for it speaks from every
line of his work. Connected with this conviction is
the fact that his creatural treatment of mankind no
longer has for its keynote, as does the corresponding
realism of the declining Middle Ages, the wretchedness
and perishableness of ithe body and of earthly things
in general; in Rabelais, creatural realism has acquired
a new meaning, diametrically opposed to medieval crea
tural realism— that of the vitalistic-dynamic triumph
of the physical body and its functions. In Rabelais,
there is no longer any Original Sin or any Last Judg
ment, and thus no metaphysical fear of death. As a
part of nature, man rejoices in his breathing life,
his bodily functions, and his intellectual powers,
and, like nature's other creatures, he suffers natural
dissolution. The breathing life of men and nature
43
calls forth all Rabelais' love., his thirst for knowl
edge and his power of verbal representation. It makes
him a poet--for he Is a poet., and Indeed a lyric poet,
even though he lacks sentiment. It Is triumphant
earthly life which calls forth his realistic and
super-realistic mimesis.37
Rabelais uses his complete scatological freedom to express
his joy, vigor, gusto, and love of the natural life, and he
also uses scatology to satirize those who would restrict
that joie de vivre. At the age of five, Gargantua invents
a rump-wiper, later his mare drowns armies with her urine,
and still later dogs urinate all over a pretentious lady of
Paris. Dirty jokes abound'throughout Gargantua and Panta-
gruel. Legman in his Rationale of the Dirty Joke re
peatedly cites Rabelais.
Rabelais also* uses scatology to repeatedly attack
what he considered the sick and absurd religious restric
tions and taboos placed upon the natural life of man on
earth. For example, he has Gargantua explain "Why It Is
Monks Are Shunned by Everybody."
There is nothing truer than that the robe and cowl
draw down upon themselves all sorts of hard feelings,
insults, and curses, on the part of everybody, just
as the wind known as Caecias draws the clouds. The
chief reason is that monks feed upon the excrement
of the world, that is to say on human sins, and like
excrement-eaters, they are always being driven back
to their privies, that is, to their convents and ab
beys, which are isolated from polite Intercourse as
are the privies of a house. . . . All he does is be-
dung and defile everything, which is the reason why
he receives only mockery and blows from everybody.
(Book I, ch. xxii)
44
Rabelais also continually parodies Medieval scholastic
learning, as he does in his hilarious take-off on the li
brary of St. Victor, and some of his mock titles are sca
tological .
The Gentle Art of Farting in Company
Of Scholarly Dungchafers by Tarteretus
A Treatise on Crappings by Pierre Tartaret
The Most Subtile Question as to whether the Chimera,
Fartwhooshing in the Void may Eat its Second
Intentions, Debated for Ten Weeks at the Council
of Constance
The 'Papshit of Virgins
The Bald Arse of Widows
Of the Crapifications of Canonic Horrors in Forty
Books by our learned Master Lickstewpanus
Antipericatametaanaparcicumvolutiorectumgustpoops
of the Coprofied
The Shitsters* Fathingale
The Poopdrawer of Apothecaries
The Arsekisser of Surgery
(Book II, ch. vil)
The most free-wheeling, scatological writer in history, and
the most iconoclastic, Rabelais used his excremental sa
tiric weapons on everyone and everything In his society.
Swift is also famous for his scatological satire,
his "excremental vision." Jae Num Lee in his Swift and
Scatological Satire points out that Swift used scatology in
"traditional ways." He used it for personal satire,
socio-political satire, religio-moral satire, and intellec
tual satire. He also used it with Rabelaisian gusto and
his famous "Oh! Caelia, Caelia, Caelais ----" speaks to
our merry acceptance of our animal natures.
The greatness of Swift's scatology is the brilliant
45
wit and irony with which he uses it to attack major
targets--man’s physical, moral, and spiritual corruptions.
In GulliverTs Travels he identifies Gulliver (the typical
man) with the swinish and odious Yahoos and shows what he
thinks of them by having the Yahoos defecate on the previ
ous leaders and on Gulliver. In the poem The Legion Club
he attacks the politicians he considered corrupt, evil, and
demonic. He lampoons them with lines such as these.
Such a Noise, and such haranguing,
When a Brother Thief is hanging.
Such a Rout and such a Rabble
Run to hear Jackpudding gabble;
Such a crowd their Ordure throws
On a far less Villain’s Nose
In his great religio-moral satire A Tale of a Tub Swift
uses scatology to help attack the "Abuses” and "Corrup
tions” in religion. For example, he attacks Papist con
fession thusly.
The Erecting of a Whispering-Office, for the Publick
Good and Ease of all such as are Hypochondriacal, or
troubled with the Cholick; as likewise of all Eves-
droppers, Physicians, Midwives, small Politicians,
Friends fallen out, Repeating Poets, Lovers Happy or
in Despair, Bawds, Privy-Counsellours, Pages, Para
sites and Buffoons; in short, of all such as are in
Danger of bursting with too much Wind. (pp. 107-
(11. 15-20)
While they never hold their Tong,
Let them dabble in their Dung;
We may, while they strain their throats.
Wipe our A-s with their'V-.
(11. 51-52, 61-62)
Dear Companions hug and kiss
Toast Old Glorious in your Piss
(11. 151-52)
108
46
Another example of the potent use of scatology in A Tale of
a Tub occurs when Swift scores the materialism of Catholi
cism in his take-off on the greed of the Papal Bulls.
If Peter sent them abroad, though it were only upon a
Compliment, they would Roar, and Spit, and Belch, and
Piss, and Part, and Snivel out Fire, and keep a per
petual Coyl, till you .flung them a Bit of Gold.
(p. 1 1 2)
Swift uses scatology to attack many abuses and
abusers of man's body, mind, and spirit: critics, bad writ
ers, social pretensions, excessive pride, materialists,
snobs, absurd morality, lechers, romantic love, politics,
religion, scientific pretensions, atheism, censorship of
many kinds, etc., etc., etc.--so much so, in fact, that he
has been repeatedly attacked as "insane" and "filthy."
Even men of genius such as Middleton Murray, Aldous Huxley,
and D. H. Lawrence condemned him for being too preoccupied
with his excremental satire. Norman A. Brown in his bril
liant essay on Swift, "The Excremental Vision," ably an
swers all critics when he states that it Is the proper aim
of all thinking men to diagnose the universal neurosis of
mankind. Thus, instead of attacking Swift's individual
neurosis, we should "seek to appreciate his insight into
O
the universal neurosis of mankind." -5
While characters break wind In Restoration come
dies, scatology began to disappear from literature during
the eighteenth century, the century par excellence for
47
bienserance, decorum, and bon gout, good taste. Censorship,
formal and informal, took hold, and by the Victorian nine
teenth century, scatological references in literature and
in polite society were strictly taboo. For example, "As
late as 1790.* The Times could print the word ’piss’— a
O Q
thing which would have been unthinkable in 1825. The
puritan attacks upon the body made it shameful and filthy,
euphemistic attitudes and language became common, and the
works of the great scatologists were banned or expurgated.
Civilized Western society entered into its most restrictive
period of conventional, middle-class morality, a period
that Montaigne, in "Of Presumption," could see starting
hundreds of years earlier.
We have taught Ladies to blush only by hearing that
named they nothing fear to do. We dare not call our
members by their proper names, and fear not to employ
them in all kinds of dissoluteness. Ceremony forbids
us by words to express lawful and natural things; and
we believe it. Reason willeth us to do no bad or un
lawful things, and no man giveth credit unto it. Here
I find myself entangled in the laws of Ceremony, for
it neither allows a man to speak ill or good of him
self.
Montaigne’s words were to prove prophetic, for by the early
twentieth century, the social taboos concerning the body
were so strong as to induce a feeling of guilt whenever the
taboos of society were violated. This guilt Freud was to
pronounce "the most important problem in the development of
civilization.
1
NOTES
See Bourke, Satire.
48
2
Schneiders* p. 704.
3
Rosebury* p. 1 2 3.
4
Most of the data cited about primitive and ancient
peoples are based on Bourke's classic work.
5
Bourke* p. 171.
6
Bourke* p. 2.
7
Bourke, pp. 207-208.
8
Bourke* p. 24.
9
Bourke* p. 113•
10
Bourke* p. 118.
11
Rosebury* p. 109.
12
Rosebury* p. 111.
13
Bourke* p. 128.
14
Bourke* p. 216.
15
Bourke* p. 228.
16
Bourke* pp. 228-29.
17
Henderson* p. ix.
18
Legman* p. 10.
19
Henderson* p. 11.
20
Lee* p. 8 .
21
Henderson* p. 6 3.
22
Henderson* pp. 2-3.
^3 Lee., pp. 13-14.
oh.
^ Lee, p. 15.
20
^ Bourke, p. 15*
Ekehard Catholy, Fastnachtspiel (Stuttgart: Metzler,
1 9 6 6), p. 4 3.
Catholy, p. 41.
pQ
Eric Partridge, Shakespeare1s Bawdy (New York: E. P.
Dutton & Co., 1969)^ pp. 8-11.
Wilson, p. 217.
3^ Wilson, p. 218.
31 Wilson, pp. 227-28.
32 Bakhtin, p. 4.
33 Bakhtin, pp. 11-12.
3^ Bakhtin, pp. 19-20.
33 Bakhtin, p. 82.
3^ Bakhtin, pp. 174-76.
3^ Erich Auerbach, Mimesis (Princeton: Princeton Univ.
Press, 1953)? P* 2 6 7.
33 Brown, p. 1 8 5.
39 Taylor, p. 2 0 3.
Schneiders, p. 705.
CHAPTER IV
SCATOLOGY: THE PSYCHOANALYTICAL VIEW,
AMBIVALENCE, AND GOOD TASTE
Psychoanalytic theories about anality have had an
influence on dramatic criticism--as witness Wilson's essay
on Ben Jonson. Another prime example would be Sartre's
Saint Genet, a psychiatric study in which Sartre claims
Genet regarded himself as a bit of his ^mother's excre
ment. Everything In Genet's life proceeds from there.
While it is fashionable today to decry Freudian
theories, and while the biochemical successes in the treat
ment of mental disorders place doubt upon all psychoana
lytical theories, there can be little doubt that the anal
period of development in the child is an important and in
fluential one. Whether or not one accepts the psychoana
lytical contention that the ultimate characters of individ
uals are formed by the timing and type of their toilet
training, both may play vital roles in an author's use of
scatology and the audience's reaction to it.
As is well known, Freud maintained that the child
passes through a basic, instinctual anal stage which could
become sublimated or repressed due to social and environ
50
51
mental Influences and reaction formations. Norman 0. Brown
sums up the Freudian theses:
According to Freudian theory the human infant
passes through a stage--the anal stage— as a result
of which the libido,, the life energy of the body,
gets concentrated in the anal zone. This infantile
stage of anal erotism takes the essential form of at
taching symbolic meaning to the anal product. As a
result of these symbolic equations the anal product
acquires for the child the significance of being his
own child or creation, which he may use either to ob
tain narcissistic pleasure in play, or to obtain love
from another (feces as gift), or to assert independ
ence from another (feces as property), or to commit
aggression against another (feces as weapon). Thus
some of the most important categories of social be
havior (play, gift, property, weapon) originate in
the anal stage of infantile sexuality and--what is
more important--never lose their connection with it.
When infantile sexuality comes to its catastrophic
end, non-bodily cultural objects inherit the symbol
ism originally attached to the anal product, but only
as second-best substitutes for the original (subli
mations) . Sublimations are thus symbols of symbols.
The category of property is not simply transferred
from feces to money; on the contrary, money is feces,
because the anal erotism continues in the unconscious.
The anal erotism has not been renounced or abandoned
but repressed.2
Virtually all the schools of psychiatry and psy
chology place considerable importance on the anal, toilet-
training phase of childhood, and they agree it has an in
fluence on the child's character, personality, and
attitudes. It is during this period that the child becomes
aware of the power of his surroundings and of his own
power. Ernest Borneman clearly states this new awareness.
The child's belief in the omnipotence of its desires
(when it cries, it is fed; when it wets itself, it is
dried) continues into this relatively late developmen-
52
tal phase because in its excrement it sees the first
proof that it can produce something. At the same
time., its feces gives [sic ] it power over its parents:
if the child defecates when and where the mother
wishes (into the pot rather than the diaper), it is
praised as an intelligent, good, and clean child. If
it wets its bed, it is chided for being stupid, dirty,
and backward. The first influence the child exerts on
its surroundings is thus due to the regulation of its
stool. The child discovers: if I defecate promptly,
as soon as mother places me on the chamber pot, I can
please her; I can make her fondle me, give me delica
cies, and rewards. But if I defy her and either wet
my bed or refuse when she wants me to, I can provoke
anger. So I can do with that great being on whom I
was dependent up to now whatever I please.3
Freud also pointed out that anal eroticism is more highly
developed in the child than in the adult. Because of this
the child learns that the retention and expulsion of
faeces and urine are pleasurable acts. The anal period
personality development in the child generally lasts, from
the end of the first year to the fourth year; however, the
effects of the anal training and trauma last a lifetime.
The timing of the anal training is a key factor in these
effects.
Generally speaking, Freud and most analysts since
him have held that Western cultures over the last few hun
dred years have interfered with the child's anal phase too
soon, and they contend that the early toilet training and
intense suppression of natural anal desires have led to a
society with many obsessive-compulsive anal neurotics.
Late anal training can also’ have unfortunate neurotic ef-
53
fects* and both early and late toilet training can cause
problems with the later genital phase and pleasures.
Freud contended that the child had a natural* In
herited anal instinct; the environmental forces caused the
sublimation of this instinct* and then there was often a
reaction formation against it. Sublimation of the anal in
stinct generally led to thrift. In the case of the anal
neurotic* Borneman aptly states the position of the Freudian
analysts.
In such a person* the qualities that cluster
around the focus of thrift may take one of two direc
tions. In the first* we find miserliness* envy* mis
trust* doubt* a tendency toward brooding* inwardness*
a tendency toward complex rationalizing* prudishness*
sexual repression. In the other direction* we get
conscientiousness* cleanliness* orderliness* thor
oughness* rigidity* willfulness* obstinacy. The re
action formation is the opposite of all these quali
ties: disorderliness* prodigality* unscrupulousness*
and so on. In their rudimentary form* all these ele
ments already show aspects of an obsessive-compulsive
character* but in their developed and exaggerated
form* they represent an unmistakable obsessive-com
pulsive neurosis.^
Of course* these qualities are passed down from
parents to children and from generation to generation.
Freud held that the anal character was generally conserva
tive and the resulting conservative tendencies define the
bourgeois societies. This is so true that Erich Fromm
stated that the "oral culture" of the feudal period was
based on the permissive* late toilet training of the Middle
Ages* and that capitalism and bourgeois society were based
54
on early and strict toilet training. The resulting tradi
tion that "cleanliness was next to godliness" became one
of the dominant ones In Western society. So much so, for
example * that H. L. Mencken's famous twentieth-century hoax
that "America Invented the bathtub" was eagerly popularized
by all levels of American society.
One of the important results of the sublimation and
repression of anal eroticism has been the creation of am
bivalent feelings., conscious or unconscious, about the anal
functions. Even in the so-called "free society" of today
where total acceptance of the body is preached by many,
"the uninhibited, unsublimated, unrepressed anal erotic
individual has no place in bourgeois society."^ The
bearded, dress-as-I-please, natural barefoots are classi
fied as "dirty hippies." Probably if Christ himself were
to reappear with beard, robe, and dirty feet, he would be
called one. This ambivalence can also be seen by the para
dox that while we shout that the natural, naked body is
good, we spend billions of dollars on deodorants because
we have been convinced that the natural smells of it are
bad. It is also somewhat amusing to note the colossal
amounts of money spent on the glamorized, modern bathrooms,
a far cry from the Victorian outhouses.
One of the most fascinating ambivalences about
anality proposed by psychoanalysts has been in our contra
55
dictory attitudes toward money. Prom Preud on, analysts
have linked money with anality. Ernest Borneman has gath
ered together,, summarized* and brilliantly discussed their
views in his book The Psychoanalysis of Money. Preud*
Ferenczi, Coriat* Abraham* Harnik* Desmonde* Roheim* and
many others--from their case histories and studies of his
tory and societies--have pointed out the strong and inti
mate ambiguous relationship between anality and money or
property. Analysts are so convinced that this is true that
one can put their views in the equation faeces=money=love*
good* or filth. Borneman states this view as follows:
The most persuasive proofs for the validity of
the equation feces = money come from the analysis
and therapy of neurotics and psychotics. During the
manic phase* excreta are often collected and quite
seriously offered as means of payment* while during
the depressive stage entire sheaves of bills are taken
for feces and thrown into the toilet. The therapy of
melancholia taught us long ago that the reason for
mourning is almost always a lost love object which is
experienced by the subconscious as an anal loss. To
compensate for it* the melancholiac attempts to re-
ingest the expelled love object in the form of money
(resembling the anal neurotic in this respect). Con
versely, the destruction of an'object is often experi
enced by the unconscious as the anal process of ex
pulsion. °
Karl Abraham also stresses this relationship between anal
ity and property* and the development of ambivalent feel
ings about it in the individual’s feelings. These
ambivalent feelings obviously cause tremendous problems
and dangers for the individual and society.
56
The original unchecked voiding of bodily excre
tions was accompanied by stimulation of the apertures
of the body which was undoubtedly pleasurable. If the
child adapts itself to the demands of training and
learns to retain its excretions this new activity also
gets to be accompanied by pleasure. The pleasurable
sensations in the organ connected with this process
form the foundation upon which the mental pleasure in
retention of every kind of possession is gradually
built up. More recent investigations have shown that
the possession of an object originally signified to
the infantile mind the having incorporated it into its
own body. Whereas to begin with., pleasure was only as
sociated with taking in something coming from without
or with expelling bodily contents, now there is added
the pleasure in retaining bodily contents, which leads
to pleasure in all forms of property. The relation in
which these three sources of physical and mental grat
ification stand to one another is of the greatest prac
tical significance for the later social conduct of the
individual. If the pleasure in getting or taking is
brought into the most favourable relation possible
with the pleasure in possession, as well as with that
in giving up, then an exceedingly important step has
been made in laying the foundations of the individual's
social relations. For when such a relationship be
tween the three tendencies is present, the most im
portant preliminary condition for overcoming the am
bivalence of the individual's emotional life has been
established.7
The conscious or unconscious relationship between
man's anal feelings and property has been rather convinc
ingly supported by language studies of metaphors in various
tongues. For example, Theodore Thass-Thienemann in his
study The Subconscious Language cites illustrations of this
sort:
The Latin Stercutius, from stercus, "dung excre
ments, ordure,1 ' is an attribute of Saturnus, ruler of
the Golden Age. We recall, in this context, the
often-quoted words of Francis Bacon: "Money is like
manure, very little use except it be spread." Ref
erence to the deification of manure and excrements is
57
found also in the Old Testament. It Is said about
Egypt: "And ye have seen their abominations., and their
idols ..." (Deut. 29:17). The Hebrew text properly
says instead of "idols": "dung-gods."
Gold and Iron
How do these fantasies about the inside "pleasure
garden" correspond to the names of the metals--gold,
silver, iron--that Hesiod used to denote the ages?
Hesiod designated as "golden" the age that was sup
posed to be farthest from present reality. We are
condemned, he says, to live in the Iron Age.- "I
would that I were not living in the fifth age of men,
but that I had either died before them or been born
later" . . . says the text of the translator. The
formula "golden age" thus denotes time by space, as
verbal expressions always do; it also denotes the most
remote past by the name of the metal that is supposed
to be found in the deepest parts of Mother Earth.
This Indicates once more and in a concrete way that
these mythical ages are just as inaccessible to human
experience as is the inside of the earth or the garden
or city "fenced up to heaven."
These metals are extracted from the "entrails of
the earth." Their patently Plutonian character may
serve as a connecting link with the previous terms of
the pleasure garden, which also refers to the intes
tines. Infantile fantasies about the internals of the
body became projected upon the inside of the earth.
The meaning of "gold" has been thoroughly investi
gated by clinical research. Gold is considered to be
the most precious of metals. The small child consid
ers In the struggle of toilet training his excrements
as the most precious gift to his mother; thus, an
equation of "gold" and "excrement" isjneaningful to
his mind. In Old English gold-hord-hus, properly
"gold-hoard-house," Is the proper term for the toilet.
Many associations connected with "business," "job,"
"currency"--the unconscious fantasies about capital-
ism--still center around this basic equation of gold
and excrements.
On the other hand, the Greek kakos, "bad, evil,"
refers to kakke, "excrements," and kakkao, "void."
Consequently, ’ "gold" took on the meanings of "sweet,
pleasure, lust," while Iron became associated with the
various attributes of excrement. The smell is "cast"
like iron. The words smell, smelt, and melt show a
conspicuous structure despite their independence of
58
one another in ph8nerai.cs as well as in their meaning.
Thus, we may suppose some hidden coherence in the im
plied unconscious fantasies. In summing up all these
observations, it may be stated that the age called
"golden" refers to an age of mankind which corresponds
to the earliest stage of infancy.8
Borneman also cites many such examples of popular metaphors
and images concerning anality.
Thus the equation money = feces seems to be very wide
spread. How is it to be explained? Freud believed
that through polarization or reaction formation, man
had everywhere equated the least (feces) with the most
(money) valuable. According to the laws of ambivalence
which govern our childhood, this would be perfectly
logical. Since fairy tales are lodged deep in the un
conscious, it would also explain the countless stories
of the golden donkey, the goose that lays golden eggs,
the "Dukatenscheisser," and similar themes.
The popular dream interpretations where feces al
ways means [sic] wealth, the forms of superstition
where a bird, for example, that defecates on one's
head is considered a lucky omen, belong here. And
this is also true of the custom of thieves who leave
something at the scene of their crime, that "something"
being a pile of excrement which they refer to as an
"item. "
The metaphors of all languages known to me contain
allusions to this equation. During the eleven years I
worked on the two parts of my anthology of the scato
logical vocabulary of colloquial German . . . , I came
across more than one hundred examples, of which only a
few can be quoted here. The most telling one has al
ready been mentioned in passing and probably not been
noticed by most readers as falling into this category.
It Is the term used by children: "to do one’s business."
The person who expels his excrement makes a pile, a
person who urinates only produces a dribble. Regional
expressions are less well known. Examples would be "a
golden deal" or "a silver deal" for defecation, or "to
lay golden eggs" for defecating. In other regions,
defecating is called "devaluing" or "to lay In a stock,'
and diarrhea is a "rain of gold."
The anus Is a "gold mine." A person with hemor
rhoids has a "golden vein." The toilet is called "gold
mill," "office," "bank," "stock exchange," or Juli-
usturm. This word refers to the tower of the former
59
citadel at Spandau where the reparations paid by the
French after the 1870-1871 war were kept until 1914.
The chamber pot is often called "piggy bank." Toilet
paper is "securities," "treasury bill," or "invoice."
A person who breaks wind is referred to as someone who
leaves a "safe" or a "strong-box" behind. The feces
stains left in a hotel bed are called "legacies" by
chambermaids. The lavatory attendant is a "gold dig
ger," his female counterpart a "gold miner" (cf., the
English "gold finder" as a colloquial term for someone
who empties public toilets)19
Obviously our attitudes about possessions are ambivalent:
they are "golden eggs" or "filthy lucre."
That scatological expressions abound in the German
language is to be expected, for they reflect the ambiva
lence one so often finds in civilized societies where the
taboos are strong. Robert M. Adams in his book Bad Mouth
stresses this view.
In any case, the obscene is a breaking open, a
breaking out, a countering of norms and surfaces im
posed by society or our societally-conditioned selves.
If it is not against, it is nothing. For each nation,
the debris points to the weapon of destruction, and
vice versa. Of all peoples, the French, whose train
ing in their polite speech is toward the sparse, for
mal, and lucid, are most'given ■ to Rabelaisian profu
sion in their obscenity. Eugene Robert's massive
Dictionnaire des injures, though ostensibly devoted
to the art of insult, includes an immense array of
general obscenities, offering to the verbal duellist
or displayman an incredible range of alternatives and
optional combinations. (Cartesian duality is carried
to almost parodic lengths by French dictionaries of
argot, with their scholastically precise distinctions
between innumerable words implying different varieties
and tonalities of whores, pricks, and asses.) By con
trast, the Spaniard, whose normal speech includes a
good deal of the ceremonious and whose pride in family
is legendary, often conveys his ultimate obscene sen
timent with a gesture of the head and a curt,- contemp
tuous phrase-- Tu madre," thy mother. Not saying the
60
operative word seems a particularly devious and deadly
form of obscenity., since it forces the victim to con
taminate his own mind, to call up the expression that
the speaker does not even deign to voice. In an
equivalent way, the Italian forces into violent con
junction the two poles of his moral outrage in. the ex
pletive, "Porca madonna11; and the German, whose values
are cleanliness, efficiency, and order, almost always
expresses his sense of the obscene with the scatologi
cal. 10
The ambivalent reactions of society toward scatol
ogy in modern times can be seen in many ways--for example,
in the reactions of audiences and critics concerning (the
now common) scatological aspects of popular films. Even in
the darkened theater, one can detect reactions that vary
from stony silences and half-suppressed titters to loud and
raucous laughter as audiences respond to the "shits" issu
ing from the lovely mouth of Paye Dunaway in films such as
Oklahoma Crude and Network. In Annie Hall, Woody Allen's
desire to hit a talkative man in line "over the head with
a sack of manure" produced similar audience reactions, and
so did Robert Ue Niro in Taxi Driver when he disgustedly
wanted to take the sordid mess of sin and violence he saw
in the streets of New York City and "flush it down the
toilet." In several 1930s films, Charlie Chaplin had audi
ences and critics react in a similar manner to his simple
but funny scatological scenes. In City Lights (l93l)j,one
of the tramp's adventures is that in which he does a shift
as a municipal manure-sweeper, gazing in despair at a
parade of horses followed by an elephant. In another movie*
Charlie lifts his leg like a dog urinating. In another* he
scrapes dog faeces off his shoes* gets some on his finger
nails* and shines and polishes them with It.
Film critics have repeatedly expressed their am
bivalent attitudes concerning the scatological in motion
pictures. Joseph Gelmis shows this ambivalence in his re
view of Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975).^ Gelmis
refers to the humor in the film as sophomoric* with excru
ciatingly funny visual gags* calculated excess* and stylish
bad taste. He notes that you can watch half the gags with
the movie silent. The movie is a parody on King Arthur and
his knights' quest for the Holy Grail. In one episode*
insolent Frenchmen empty chamber pots on royal British
heads. Gelais obviously finds scatological gags of this
sort funny but vulgar. Another film reviewer* Richard
Schickel* reacted in a similar manner to Mel Brooks's film
Blazing Saddles*and "the scene where everyone is grouped
around the chuck wagon enjoying a good old-fashioned bean
dinner is in itself a high point in the short history of
12
screen scatology." While Schickel admires Brooks more
than other reviewers of this and other movies done by him*
he too speaks of Brooks's "bad taste" in general.
From these and many other examples one could cite*
it is obvious that even in the twentieth century* viewers
62
and reviewers of movies generally equate scatological words
and acts with "bad taste." Generally, no doubt., this is a
holdover from the anal views of previous centuries, and
from Victorian attitudes in particular. Victorian houses
were generally very elegant both on the inside and the out
side, and probably every room was in contrast to the smells
and decor of the outhouse bathroom. In bedrooms, there was
a piece of furniture which "hid" the chamber pot. Modern
plumbing came In late Victorian times, but still the sca
tological act, like the sexual act, was and is considered a
private one.
It Is clear from a study of the psychoanalysts and
Bakhtin's work that the ambivalent feelings and attitudes
fostered by societies and individuals toward the scatologi
cal are actually responsible for Its dramatic power. If
the scatological were not regarded as obscene, vulgar, and
In bad taste, the scatological would lose its power to
shock, to satirize, to satisfy basic emotions, to vividly
depict the nature of man. Because the scatological has
been so suppressed at times, it has become one of man’s
favorite ways of raucously shaking his fist at the rulers
of society and the universe. In countries where the sca
tological has been accepted as part of the norm, such as in
Japan, scatological expressions are kept to a minimum; how
ever, in Western civilization over the last thousand years,
63
the instinctive scatological aspects of man have been sup
pressed by high society, but they periodically break forth
in the form of scatological literature.
Modern drama contains a profuse outbreak of sca
tology, and modern dramatists have deliberately chosen to
capitalize on the ambivalent feelings of audiences toward
the obscene. They have deliberately assaulted their audi
ences; they have preferred a "theatre of cruelty" to the
traditional theater of bon gout and bienseance. These
dramatists "conceive of audiences as dart boards or pro
jection screens on which they can hurl artistic abuse and
sometimes excrement in some non-cathartic orgy.
This violent assault upon the audience's sensibili
ties and sense of good taste, of course, raises the key
question of whether such an assault is dramatically effec
tive in terms of popular success or art. Some modern dra
matists are seemingly in love with obtaining a succes de
scandale with a very limited audience rather than a long
run with a vast audience. Historically speaking, success
ful good drama has not violated the sensibilities of its
audience. Audiences differ from generation to generation
in their sensibilities, but almost all ages have some sense
of good taste, and it is dangerous to the success of most
plays to offend that taste. We laugh sometimes at how the
eighteenth-and nineteenth-century producers of Shakespeare
64
changed, lines, scenes, and endings of his plays, but in
terms of the tastes of much of their audience they were
probably right. The Greeks loved war and battle, but they
preferred not to show violence on stage; the poetic recita
tion of horrors was enough for their imaginations. While
the Elizabethans accepted violence on stage, Shakespeare
knew Lady Macbeth's "who would have thought the old man to
have so much blood in him" would work on the audience's
imaginations better than the naturalistic murder of Duncan
on stage. Some modern dramatists seemingly will tolerate
any grotesqueries on stage, but maybe that is one of the
reasons for the death of successful long-run drama in our
day. The playwright who has contempt for his audience or
considers its sensibilities irrelevant is asking for a one-
night stand.
Most literature is a private matter, but the drama
is a public one, a communal one. Individuals do not riot
after reading literature, but theater audiences have rioted
during and after performances. For example, Genet's The
Screens could not be performed in France until the Algerian
conflict had been settled, and its harsh view of the French
military offended many in the audience when it was finally
staged. However, it could be and was published and read as
literature during the Algerian rebellion. People will tol
erate and read things in private that they will not toler
ate in a public forum.
65
The question of whether obscenity is art is a dif
ficult one, and probably a relative one. It depends on
one's conception of art. Obviously, some great authors
have used obscenity, and some ages have tolerated and ac
cepted its use on stage. Perhaps it is well to recall the
Greek conception of beauty in art, as stated by Sir Maurice
Bowra.
The Greeks interpreted the beautiful in a very
wide sense. If its first and most obvious application
was to whatever might attract and hold the senses,
whether in the human form or in natural things, it was
equally relevant to elements of character and conduct
which are no less enthralling and obsessing. The
Greeks made no attempt to restrict it to certain ac
cepted categories, nor did they assume that certain
classes of things are in themselves essentially and
always beautiful. What matters is precisely the
unique illumination which comes on each occasion to
the poet and stirs him to write poetry. This generous
and well-founded conception enabled them to write
about many matters which might in ordinary opinion be
thought ugly or painful. Whatever throws its enchant
ment on us is a fit subject for poetry, and both Homer
and the Attic tragedians are equally j'ustified in tell
ing of dark and troubling events.1^
The generous, broad view of beauty the Greeks had is cer
tainly related to that of modern times, except that today
"anything goes," whereas the Greeks controlled their views
with some conventions.
Another point one might argue concerning obscenity
in art is that each play has a soul of its own, and
whether the scatological is part of that soul depends on
how well the scatological is dramatically integrated into
66
the play. If obscenity calls too much attention to itself
and dominates the play, It Is Ineffective and grotesque.
The drama does not need scatology for the sake of scatology.
Even today in the so-called era of free speech, large num
bers of theater goers consider scatology for the sake of
scatology in very bad taste. For example, at the 1977 Los
Angeles production of Michael Christopher's Ice, the ob
scenities quickly emptied the theater of a good part of its
audience. Even though one could argue that Christopher's
scatological obscenities were tied to the theme of the
degradation of man, some members of the audience did not
see them that way and were strongly offended. Modern dram
atists have proclaimed that they are entitled to total and
complete artistic freedom; perhaps they should have more
ambivalence about that position, for they have often abused
the privilege of freedom. Not everything and anything are
fit subject matter for the drama. As Irving Buchen states
in his The Perverse Imagination, "If an artist works with
IT 1 5
junk or garbage, his work may turn out to just that.
At the very least, the ambivalences men feel con
cerning the scatological aspects of life pose enormous
problems for any- dramatist who wants to reach large seg
ments of the potential dramatic audience. Possibly more
than any other element in the drama, the obscene has to be
handled with finesse, control, power, and dramatic sub-
67
tlety; it should reflect theme* it should reflect charac
ter* and it should he fully integrated into the cohesive
unity of the play. It should never he there for its own
sake. Otherwise* the author himself* rather than society*
becomes the subject for psychoanalysis. In the parlance of
the therapists of today* it is time for some dramatists "to
get their shit together."
68
NOTES
1 o
Sartre, p. o.
^ Brown, p. 191.
Borneman, p. 3-
4 .
Borneman, p. 4.
^ Borneman, p. 18.
6
Borneman, p. 51.
^ Borneman, pp. 8-9.
Q
Theodore Thass-Thievemann, The Subconscious Lan-
;uage (New York: Washington Square Press, 1987) * PP• 178-
>1.
^ Borneman, pp. 49-50.
Robert Adams, Bad Mouth (Berkeley: Univ. of Cali
fornia Press, 1977)* pp. 72-73*
Stuart Byron and Elizabeth Weis, The National Socl-
ty of Film Critics On Movie Comedy (New York: Penguin
Books, 1977), p. 245.
l 2
Byron and Weis, p. 120.
^ Buchan, p. l6.
14 ,
Sir Maurice Bowra, The Greek Experience (New York:
New American Library, 1957)1 pp. l4 "8 '—' 4 ' 9 ' •
^ Buchan, p. 5-
CHAPTER V
SMASHING THE TABOOS: JARRY'S UBU ROI
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the
scatological disappeared from the European stage and from
the public conversations of polite European society. While
the scatological still abounded in private conversations
and letters--Mozartrs letters, for example, contain excre-
mental remarks--one could not imagine Garrick uttering a
"shit" loudly at Drury Lane. The one exception to this was
the German drama, in which popular scatological expressions
were still used. "Kiss my ass" is one of Goethe’s expres
sions in Gotz Von Berlichingen. Buechner’s somewhat re
alistic play Woyzeck also uses scatological remarks: "You
are created of dust, sand, and dung. . . . You pissed in
the street. . . . It stinks enough to smoke the angels out
of heaven. . . . I’ll screw his nose up his own ass."
These scatological expressions are a continuation of an
old German dramatic tradition going back to German' folk,
literature and the festival plays of the Middle Ages and
Renaissance.
Euphemistic dramatic taboos concerning the body
reached their height during the Victorian period, but
6 9
70
despite this the body could not be denied forever, and on
December 10, 18 9 6, scatology returned to the stage with a
bang. On that now famous night in theatrical history, at
Lugne-Poe's Theatre de L'Oeuvre, Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi
opened with its shocking first word"merdre," the thinly dis
guised French word for "shit. 1 1 As George Wellwarth puts it,
"The theatre was never the same again."'*" After the first
"shit" the audience rioted for fifteen minutes, and after
each subsequent scatological reference a new sensation
arose. Roger Shattuck, in The Banquet Years, describes the
actor Gemier (Ubu) uttering that "merdre" and relates in
some detail the subsequent events.
Gemier, swollen and commanding his pear-shaped
costume (but without a mask, despite Jarry's cam
paign), stepped forward to speak the opening line--
a single word. He had not known how to interpret the
role until Lugne-Poe had suggested he imitate the
author's own voice and jerky stylized gestures. The
midget Jarry truly sired the monster Ubu. In a voice
like a hammer, Gemier pronounced an obscenity which
Jarry had appropriated to himself by adding one letter.
"Merdre," Gemier said. "Shite."
It was fifteen minutes before the house could be
silenced. The mot de Cambronne* had done its work;
the house was pandemonium. Those who had been lulled
by Jarry's opening speech were shocked awake; several
people walked out without hearing any more. The rest
separated into two camps of desperately clapping en
thusiasts and whistling scoffers. Fist fights started
in the orchestra. The critics were on. the spot, their
reactions observed by both sides. Edmond Rostand
smiled Indulgently; Henry Fouquier and Sarcey, repre
senting the old guard, almost jumped out of their
seats. A few demonstrators simultaneously clapped and
whistled in divided sentiments. Mallarme sat quiet,
waiting to see more of the "prodigious personage" to
71
whose author he addressed a letter the following day.
Jarry’s supporters shouted, "You wouldn't understand
Shakespeare either." Their opponents replied with
variations on the mot of the evening. Fernand Herold
in the wings startled the audience into silence for a
moment by turning up the house lights and catching
people with their fists raised and standing on their
seats. The actors waited patiently, beginning to be
lieve that the roles had been reversed and they had
come to watch a performance out front.
Finally, Gemier improvised a Jig and sprawled out
on the prompter's box. His diversion restored enough
order to allow the action to proceed to the next
"merdre," when the audience took over once more. The
interruptions continued for the rest of the evening,
while Pere Ubu murdered his way to the throne of
Poland, pillaged the country, was defeated by the
king’s son aided by the czar's army, and fled cra-
venly to France, where he promised to perpetrate fur
ther enormities on the population. The story of Ubu
Roi is no more than this. Pere Ubu and Mere Ubu use
language more scatological than erotic, and Rachilde
maintains that the audience whistled because they
"expected this Punch and Judy of an Ubu to function
sexually" and were disappointed. The curtain rang
down that night on the sole performance of Ubu Roi
until it was revived by Gemier in 1908* For the The
atre de 1'Oeuvre it was the catastrophe that made'it
famou s.
*0ne of Napoleon’s officers at the Battle of Wa
terloo, General Cambronne, heard a report that one of
his companies of guards was surrounded. His heroic
response of "Merde" became the mot de Cambronne. Sub
sequently, the word achieved a paradoxical existence
as an acceptable talisman of good luck said to a
friend going on a Journey. Still, public utterance
of the word was, in 189 6, unthinkable. 2
In a similar fashion to the ambivalent reactions of
the audience, the next morning and following weeks saw the
critics divided over the merits of this avant-garde play.
Five critics wrote favorable reviews and ten conservative
ones attacked the play. One' of the latter began his review
with, "Despite the late hour, I have Just taken a shower."
72
Another conservative view was that of Arthur Symons, who
was shocked by the obscenity and wrote, "A literary Sans
culotte has shrieked for hours that unspeakable word of the
gutter.
Jarry, of course, was a great pioneer in the modern
drama, and we now look at^ Ubu. Ro'i) as the avant-garde fore
runner of the theatre of the absurd. In fact, Wellwarth
calls Jarry "the Sower of the Avant-garde Drama.Leonard
Pronko says he "founded the avant-garde drama,and Artaud
later named his theater after him in 1927 j Theatre Alfred
Jarry. For Ubu Roi was not only an attack upon all re
spectable bourgeois conventions, both on and off stage; it
also attacked the basic realistic and naturalistic tenets
of Antoine's Theatre Libre. The settings and acting were
nonrealistic and as Jarry, appearing before the curtain
went up, stated, the play owed something to "Guignol the
atre," the time was "eternity," and the "action, which is
about to begin, takes place in Poland, that is to say:
6
Nowhere." Both Arthur Symonds and Yeats were present at
the first-night performance and have left us descriptions
and comments on it.
The play is the first Symbolist farce: it has the
crudity of the schoolboy or a savage: what is, after
all, most remarkable about it is the insolence with
which a young writer mocks at civilization itself,
sweeping all art, along with all humanity, into the
same inglorious slop-pail. That it should ever have
been written is sufficiently surprising: but it has
73
been praised by Catulle Mendes, by Anatole Prance;
the book has gone through several editions, and now
the play has been mounted by Lugne-Poe (whose mainly
Symbolist Theatre de l'1 ''Oeuvre has so significantly
taken the place of the mainly Naturalist Theatre
Libre) and it has been given twice over, before a
crowded house, howling but dominated, a house buf
feted into sheer bewilderment by the wooden lath of
a gross undiscriminating, infantile Philosopher-
Pantaloon.
Jarry's idea in this symbolical buffoonery, was
to satirise humanity by setting human beings to play
the part of marionettes, hiding their faces behind
cardboard masks, tuning their voices to the howl and
squeak which tradition has considerately assigned to
the voices of that wooden world, and mimicking the
rigid inflexibility and spasmodic life of puppets by
a hopping and reeling gait. The author, who has writ
ten an essay, "De 1-*Inutility du Theatre au Theatre,"
has explained that a performance of marionettes can
only suitably be accompanied by the marionette music
of fairs; and therefore the motions of these puppet-
people were accompanied from time to time, by an or
chestra of piano, cymbals, and drums, played behind
the scenes, and reproducing the note of just such a
band as one might find on the wooden platform outside
a canvas booth in a fair. The action is supposed to
take place "in Poland, that is to say, in the land of
Nowhere"; and the scenery was painted to represent,
by a child's conventions, indoors and out of doors,
and even the torrid, temperate, and arctic zones at
once. Opposite to you, at the back of the stage, you
saw apple trees in bloom, under a blue sky, and
against the sky a small closed window and a fireplace,
containing an alchemist's crucible, through the very
midst of which (with what refining intention, who
knows?-) trooped in and out these clamorous and san
guinary persons of the drama. On the left was painted
a bed, and at the foot of the bed a bare tree, and
snow falling. On the right were palm trees, about one
of which coiled a boa-constrictor; a door opened
against the sky, and beside the door a skeleton dan
gled from a gallows. Changes of scene were announced
by the simple Elizabethan method of a placard, roughly
scrawled with such stage directions as this: "La scene
represente la province de Livonie couverte de neige."
A venerable gentleman in evening dress, Father Time,
as we see him on Christmas-trees, trotted across the
stage on the points of his toes between every scene,
74
and hung the new placard on Its nail. And before the
curtain rose, in what was after all but a local mock
ery of a local absurdity, two workmen backed upon the
stage carrying a cane-bottomed chair and a little
wooden table covered with a sack, and Jarry (a small,
very young man, with a hard, clever face) seated him
self at the table and read his own "conference'' on
his own play.7
I go to the first performance of Alfred Jarry1s
Ubu Roi, at the Theatre de L*Oeuvre, with the Rhymer
who had been so attractive to the girl in the bi
cycling costume. The audience shake their.fists at
one another, and the Rhymer whispers to me, "There
are often duels after these performances," and he ex
plains. to me what is happening on the stage. The
players are supposed to be dolls, toys, marionettes,
and now they are all hopping like wooden frogs, and
I can see for myself that the chief personage, who is
some kind of King, carries for Sceptre a brush of the
kind that we use to clean a 'closet. Peeling bound to
support the most spirited party, we have shouted for
the play, but that night at the Hotel Corneille I am
very sad, for comedy, objectivity, has displayed its
growing power once more. I say, "After Stephane
Mallarm^, after Paul Verlaine, after Gustave Moreau,
after Puvis de Chavannes, after our own verse, after
all our subtle colour and nervous rhythm, after the
faint mixed tints of Conder, what more is possible?
After us the Savage God. "8
King Ubu set the pattern for savage rebellion
against the twentieth-century Ubunesque world. Ubu, the
protagonist of the play, is a caricature of all the worst
in bourgeois society. Ubu is cruel, vicious, animalistic,
sadistic, greedy, and foul-mouthed. Using grotesque lan
guage and scenes, Jarry launched a powerful dramatic attack
upon staid respectability and status quo complacency. He
rebelled against all the hypocritical conventions— on and
off stage. He shocked the audience out of their seats, and
75
he meant to do so. In his essay on "Theatre Questions,"
he ironically commented,
It would have been easy to alter Ubu to suit the
taste of the Paris public by making the following minor
changes: the opening word would have been Blast (or
Blasttr), the unspeakable brush would have turned into
a pretty girl going to bed, the army uniforms would
have been First Empire style, Ubu would have knighted
the Czar, and various spouses would have been cuck-
olded--but in that case it would have been filthier.
I intended that when the curtain went up the scene
should confront the public like the exaggerating mir
ror in the stories of Madame Leprince de Beaumont, in
which the depraved saw themselves with dragons’ bodies,
or bulls' horns, or whatever corresponded to their par
ticular vice. It is not surprising that the public
should have been aghast at the sight of its ignoble
other self, which it had never before been shown com
pletely. This other self, as Monsieur Catulle Mendes
has excellently said, is composed "of eternal human
imbecility, eternal lust, eternal gluttony, the vile
ness of instinct magnified into tyranny; of the sense
of decency, the virtues, the patriotism and the Ideals
peculiar to those who have Just eaten their fill."
Really, these are hardly the constituents for an amus
ing play, and the masks demonstrate that the comedy
must at the most be the macabre comedy of an English
clown, or of a Dance of Death.9
Since scatology was taboo In polite society, Jarry began
his play with his famous "shit," and in essence by showing
a grotesque, absurd world with continued scatological ref
erences, he implied it was shit. Jarry's scatological hero
Ubu is an id-like animal who might as well behave that way
in a hopelessly irrational world (appropriately, in one
production of Ubu, his scepter is a toilet plunger), and in
a later play, Ubu Cuckolded, when his conscience berates
him, Ubu shoves him headfirst down the latrine.
76
Psychoanalysts no doubt could have a field day
probing Into Jarry's anal life, and even the scholars and
critics cannot resist It. Jarry developed a life style of
total rebellion against the conventions of society, became
a "drunken psychotic," turned himself into a Ubu, and died
amidst filth and squalor. Wellwarth says of Jarry's excre-
mental vision, "The various scatological references sprin
kled through the play represent rebellion on its most in
stinctive and elementary level— that of a child's refusal
to bow to bathroom training.Another excellent scholar,
George Shattuck, states that in Ubu Jarry "had found his
Other, the flesh of his hallucination" and that "the school
boy imagination had succeeded in throwing dung in the pub-
11
lie eye." Still another scholar, David Grossvogel, feels
that Jarry's achievements have been overestimated, and that
Jarry's plays are a product of his personal neuroses.
It is hard to see Jarry's plays as anything beyond
more or less felicitous formalizations of the author's
personality— an effort at self-projection which he
carried on throughout most of his life, according to
the accounts of his intimates. Such self-projection
into the drama invalidates another part of it, for it
points to an exclusive concept of laughter--if laugh
ter there is indeed— limited to the single device of
shock. It has been noted that shock, within certain
limits, might be a trigger of laughter. However,
Jarry relied too exclusively on this single trick,
jeopardizing the very mirth he appears to have sought
and, incidentally, availing himself of only a handful
of the many Farce modes.12
Grossvogel's stressing of the "single device of
shock" is important to consider, for it probably consti-
77
tutes the single most common criticism of obscenity in
drama. Martin Esslin has ably considered the question.
Most kinds of aggression on the stage have a shock
effect, and one often hears people say, ,f0h well, they
are cheap effects if they are shocks., r I would say,
and here we come to the core of the whole problem,
shock effects are part of the artistic experience it
self. Ionesco once gave a lecture in London in which
he made a very interesting point that I'm sure is cor
rect, yet it has never been so clearly put: if a
writer is to have an impact, obviously -he cannot have
it by saying what has been said before— he would then
be merely a parrot, not a creative writer--therefore
what he says must surprise or appear novel to the
audience. But if it does, it must act as a kind of
shock. It must be something that makes them sit up.
And so we come finally to the position that in fact
all art that is alive, while it is alive, must have
shock effect. And if you look at the history of art,
whether it is Ibsen or Wagner or whatever, this is
precisely the impression that it makes. We come near
to a point where you can say that anything that makes
an impact is a form of violence. Certainly in the
theatre violence is an integral part of any kind of
artistic effect. There is no effect that is not, in
some form, violence. Of course, if you have audiences
who don't really want art but merely somnolence--what
Brecht called a "culinary theatre" that you can con
sume and excrete without its leaving any trace inside
you--then you don't have these effects, but you don't
have art either.
When the great French prophet of a new kind of
drama, Antonin Artaud, coined the term "the Theatre
of Cruelty," this is the point he was making: you can
have two kinds of theatre--the nice, easy kind for
tired businessmen, or the kind where shocks are ad
ministered to you. And he believed that to have any
kind of artistic effect you must make the audience
sit up and, if possible, undergo a really harrowing
experience because art is essentially a waking-up,
not a putting-to-sleep process.13
Jarry's shock treatment certainly made "the audience sit
up." Actually, Grossvogel's criticism would apply better
to a limited play such as LeRoi Jones's The Toilet. King
78
Ubu contains too many imaginative and absurdist elements to
be limited to the "single device of shock."
A psychoanalytic study of Jarry would probably
stress his ardent love of his mother and hatred,of his
father. Since it is well known and documented that King
Ubu developed from a schoolboy satire on one of Jarry's
professors at the Lycee at Rennes* one M. Hebert* one could
say that Jarry was venting his hostile anality on father
figures. He certainly showed a venomous hostility and con
tempt for all authoritarian figures and organizations
throughout his life. He strove mightily to live an unre
pressed* erotic* and uninhibited life* a life that showed
an absolute contempt for bourgeois society* and his plays
show his scatological contempt for that society.
In terms of his influence upon the drama* Jarry has
had praise heaped upon him. Barbara Wright* for example*
in her "introduction" to her translation of Ubu Roi* cred
its Jarry with being the main influence on extremism' in
modern poetry* making "an immense impression on the often
highly intelligent originators of Pauvism* Cubism and
„l4
Dadaism in painting* literature and music* and influ
encing Gide* Picasso* Satie* Cocteau* and Appollinaire. In
fact* the scholars credit Jarry with an influence on just
about every modern creative artist. Martin Esslin sums up
his impact thusly: "Jarry . . . must be regarded as one of
79
the originators of the concepts on which a good deal of con
temporary art, and not only in literature and the theatre,
is based.
Thus in the history of modern art and scatology,
Jarry's was an immortal "shit"; for without the riots caused
by its utterance, it is doubtful that Ubu Roi would have
gotten the same notoreity. And on the stage, that one
"merdre1 1 had a colossal impact. It smashed to pieces all
the Victorian taboos about what could and could not be said
before a live audience. That process, of course, had been
carried out in many ways by Antoine's Theatre Libre, and
although Jarry's characters, decor, and staging were ab
surdist, the "merdre" itself was the ultimate in realism
and naturalism. The street language of the common man, and
the most basic emotional language of all men, had finally
come back to the drama. Seen in historical perspective,
Jarry's "merdre" may be the most important and telling word
in all drama.
Still another view of Jarry is that he represents a
new outbreak of the romantic tradition which was suppressed
during the nineteenth century. Bakhtin mentions this in
his brilliant study of Rabelais. Certainly Jarry's ab
surdist plays display the breakdown of traditions of law
and order in drama and life. His are the language and
images of dreams, and the uninhibited totality of the indi-
80
victual’s complete life, particularly his animality. His
drama is that of the unconscious aspects of the personality
breaking through all the repression of the social order.
His absurdist scatology is the "romantic agony" erupting in
full force.
81
NOTES
^ Wellwarth, p. 1.
^ Shattuck, pp. 161-62.
3 Symons, p. 202.
4
Wellwarth, p. 1.
^ Leonard Pronko, Avant-Garde: The Experimental The
atre In France (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1-962),
p. ' 4 ' .
^ Shattuck, p. l6l.
^ Symons, pp. 199-200.
O
William Butler Yeats, Autobiography (New York: The
Macmillan Co., 1916), p. 210.
^ Alfred Jarry, Selected Works, ed. Roger Shattuck
(New York: The Grove Press, 1985) j > p. 8 3.
Wellwarth, p. 5-
Shattuck, p. 1 6 3.
1 2
Grossvogel, p. 27.
Esslln, Reflections, pp. 1 6 6-6 7.
Barbara Wright, trans., "Introduction," In Ubu Roi
(Norfolk: New Directions, 1 9 6 1), p. 8.
Esslln, Theatre of the Absurd, p. 313*
CHAPTER VI
REALISM, NATURALISM, AND THE SCATOLOGICAL
The artistic credo we call Realism holds that art
should depict life as it really is, and should show things
as they really are with thorough and objective honesty. An
artist's subjective interpretation of the facts is there
fore less important than the facts themselves. Realism was
an obvious reaction to the emotionalism of Romanticism, and
it was also an outgrowth of the tremendous advance of sci
ence and philosophical rationalism in the last hundred
years. The Realist relies highly upon the use of detail,
and he is concerned more with the events of everyday life
than he is with the unusual and bizarre. The Realist at
tempts to present character objectively and to depict and
understand the real motivations of people. Following along
this line, prose became the medium of Realism,and poetry
was looked upon as artificial and arty.
Fostered by Zola's famous Preface to Therese Raquin,
Naturalism, the extreme form of Realism, was an attempt to
apply the principles of detached scientific study to life
as studied in literary forms. Following its principle of
82
83
imitating the laboratory scientists the dramatist became a
camera. He observed everything* down to the smallest de
tail* and he told all. He tried to show the environment
exactly as it was* and no subject or theme or language was
taboo; everything was a fit subject for literature. The
actions of characters were dictated by their heredity and
environment* and took place in a deterministic universe in
which free will really did not exist. The universe was
seen as mechanistic* and the fate of man was seen as based
upon materialistic factors--both human and nonhuman. The
purpose of the dramatist was to make his characters "not
play* but rather .live, before the audience." Therefore*
the dramatist should use settings* scenery* costuming* and
dialogue which were, as true to life as possible.
Countless modern playwrights have used Naturalism
in their works; however* most of them have used just
touches of it here and there. Since Naturalism is theo
retically a non-artistic approach and technique* it has to
deal with extremely powerful subject matter* themes* and
language to sustain itself. It is also a difficult tech
nique to maintain throughout an entire play--that is why
there are so few really good Naturalistic plays. Further
more* Naturalism ironically both frees and handicaps the
playwright in his use of language. The playwright can say
what he pleases* but almost all great plays employ a
84
heightened, language, a poetical language— great drama can
not live on prosaic naturalistic prose.
The constant use of scatology in modern drama is
certainly an outgrowth of the use of Realism and Naturalism
in the drama. In the slangy parlance of today,, "It's tell
ing it like it is,i r and the scatology is always partly used
this way in the drama, from the "merdre" of King Ubu to the
latest absurdist drama. However, in the eight decades be
tween King Ubu and today, scatology has become all too
common — so commonplace, in fact, that it is losing its
power to shock. Verbal and intellectual freedom have
brought powerful language and themes to the stage, but
sometimes the scatological aspects of this new power have
not been used with much restraint. This is particularly
true of the drama of the last twenty years. Fortunately,
however, some modern dramatists have used scatology in in
teresting and exciting ways to make telling statements
about the human condition. Certainly, many playwrights are
fascinated by the use of the scatological. John Killinger
in his book on absurdist drama, World in Collapse, comments
on this fact.
There is a curious preoccupation with latrines in
contemporary theater. Murray Mednick's Sand, Lee
Baxandall '.s Potsy, or The Human Condition, and LeRoi
Jones's The Toilet are all set in them, Jones's being
in a public urinal. Happenings are also frequently
staged in public rooms. In recent American plays
there has likewise been some repetition of flatus
85
incidents. In Jean-Claude van Itallie's I'm Really
Here, for example, Doris (patently the all-American
movie star Doris Day) emits "a long thin fart" in the
presence of Rossano, the Italian movie type who is ro
mancing her; and in Arthur Kopit's The Day the Whores
Game Out to Play Tennis there is a scene in which
eighteen bare-bottomed ladies on the tennis court tilt
their bottoms up to the astonished faces of the con
servative old gentlemen in the exclusive clubhouse and
fart in unison, "like the Rockettes." In Tom Sankey's
The Golden Screw, or That's Your Thing, Baby, there is
a poet who carries a hundred-dollar bill around in his
rectum until his rent is due and then excretes it into
the hands of his landlord. 1
LeRoi Jones is an interesting study in the use of
2
scatology, particularly in his latrine play The Toilet.
Superficially, the play seems a purely naturalistic treat
ment of black-white teenage hatreds, but actually it has
deep symbolic love-hate implications. While one might not
want to meet Mr. Jones In a dark alley, a black cradles a
beaten white at the end of the play.
By setting the play In a school toilet, Jones
achieves a kind of grim ironic naturalism. Here, the sub
merged blacks of the ghetto are in their element--where
whitey has put them--and their suppressed animal hatreds
have free reign. To accent the naturalism,- various char
acters shit and piss at times during the play. For ex
ample, at the very beginning of the play, Ora, a black,
"takes out his joint and pees, still grinning, into one of
the commodes, spraying urine over the seat" (p. 37). Even
the urinals are whitey.
86
Throughout the play there are many uses of scato
logical language, but they are there for many reasons.
First, of course, they are there to accent the feeling of
strong realism and naturalism. The ghetto blacks talk as
they should--when they feel free to do so— and the "shits,"
"pees," "sonofabitch.es," "asses," and "cocksuckers" flow
freely. This language not only naturally expresses man's
basic feelings, but It also represents telling the dominant
white snobs to go to hell; the blacks will not accept the
euphemistic, phoney language imposed upon them. In the
natural sense, we get lines like these.
Sheet! I'll catch that bastid in a second. . . .
Shit. Boy, all you slow ass cats .... Boy, if
you kick me, you'll die just like that . . .with
your skinny ass leg up. . . . Shit. Why didn't you
hit Big Shot, you bastard? He brought the shit up.
. . . Goddamn it, Ora, why don't you cut the shit?
(p. 39)
It is also well known now that while scatological
language can express all the pent-up hostility of the
ghetto, it also has been turned around to express affection
when the blacks use it on each other. For example, if you
call a fellow black "a lousy, black-assed, shitty mother
fucker, " you are really saying "I like you, pal." Jones
uses scatology in this sense also, and even has the blacks
joke about it.
ORA (flushing all the commodes and urinals in the row
as he walks past): Sheet! I'll catch that bastid
in a second. (Ducks under LOVE's arm to go out.)
Why the hell don't you get up there. You supposed
to be faster than me.
87
LOVE: I'm s’posed to stay here and keep the place
clear. (Making a face.) Damn. This place
smells like hell.
ORA (without turning around): Yeh (giggling)* this
must be your momma’s house. (p. 3 7)
HINES (timing blows so they won’t strike anyone):
Goddamn, Johnny Boy, you a crooked muthafucka.
You cats think you can mess, with the kid?
The two spar against HINES and then LOVE turns
against HOLMES.
LOVE: Let's get this little assed cat.
HOLMES kicks at them, then jumps up on the com
modes in order to defend himself more ''heroically."
HOLMES: I’m gonna get your ass, Willie. I'm just
trying to help you out and you gonna play wise.
Ya’ bastid.
HINES: Listen to that cat. (Runs after HOLMES.)
I'm gonna put your damn head in one of those damn
urinals.
He and LOVE finally grab HOLMES and he begins
struggling with them in earnest.
Let’s put this little bastard's head In the god
damn urinal I
HOLMES: You bastids! Let me go I I’m gonna cut some
body. Bastids!
The door opens and ORA comes in. His shirt Is
torn. But he rushes over laughing and starts
punching everyone, even HOLMES.
HINES: Goddamn it, Big Shot, get the hell out of here.
HOLMES: Get ’em, Big Shot.
ORA (punches HOLMES who’s still being held by LOVE):
I’m gonna punch you, you prick. Hold the cock-
sucker, Love.
88
LOVE (releasing HOLMES immediately): I ain't gonna
hold him so you can punch him.
ORA and HOLMES square off., both laughing and faking
professional demeanor. (pp. 3 8“3 9)
Of course, this kind of scatological word play is
really thinly disguised hostility, and perhaps unconsciously
the blacks have some hatred for each other. It also asserts
their masculinity.
No such unconscious irony exists when the blacks
use scatological sarcasm on whitey, and whitey can reply in
kind.
FARRELL (white character): What the hell's gonna hap
pen then?
ORA (turning from door): Man, what the hell you care,
huh? Pee-the-bed-muthafucka! (p. 47)
FARRELL: Ora, you dirty cocksucker.
ORA: Boy, you better shut up before I stomp mudholes
in your pissy ass. (p. 48)
ORA (rushing at FARRELL from the side and punching
him): Goddamn it! Didn't you hear somebody say
leave, pee ass? (p. 48)
At the end of the play, the blacks beat a white
teenager, Karolis, and a hostile black wants to "stick the
sonofabitch's head in the damn toilet." But at the very
end another black, Foots, comes in. "He stares at Karolis'
body for a second, looks quickly over his shoulder, then
runs and kneels before the body, weeping and cradling the
head in his arms."
89
In The Toilet Jones has created a scatological hell,
savage and naturalistic, but he also implies that the shit
blacks and whites pour on each other is really a cover-up
for the unconscious love, homosexual and brotherly, that
they have for each other.
Another latrine play is Murray Mednick's Sand.
Featuring three main characters--The Mother, The Father,
and The Ambassador--the play seems to be saying everything
is shit. The characters have become isolated from any real
communication with each other. The Father spends his time
trying to flush the shit of life down the commode, but
there are ! t miles and miles of shitty pipes." The Mother
plays in a sandbox, but one cannot hide there. The play
especially attacks war and the- crass materialistic world
Mednick sees everywhere. The Ambassador has come to tell
them of their dead son, and he has reduced life to con
crete, chemicals, and "thirty-three dollars and ninety
cents a body." The Ambassador promises the world "The
Second Coming."
AMBASSADOR: We fill the holes. We create a free and
solid order among men. A grey, concrete, secure
. . . temple! Freedom! Founded on goodwill, on
a universal respect for cement! For the hard eco
nomic facts! (p. 114)
That kind of philosophy, says Mednick, reduces life to
hostile isolation; it creates a monstrous society which
sacrifices its young to Mammon. The following bitter and
90
pathetic exchanges take place between the characters., and
the first one to get scatological is The Mother.
The MOTHER sits in the sandbox, playing in a desul
tory manner with the things there. The FATHER
works the toilet bowl with a plumber's helper.
The two are oriented by these activities through
out. There is a considerable pause before the
MOTHER speaks.
MOTHER: I can't wait 'til your son gets here., I
can't wait. He'll fix you--you'11 see!
FATHER: He ain't no son of mine.
MOTHER: Whose is he, then?
FATHER: Yours.
MOTHER: You had nothing to do with it, I suppose?
FATHER: Could've been anybody. Didn't have to be me.
It's a big hole. Could've been a dog . . . Or a
telephone pole . . . For all I know.
MOTHER: Shit! I haven't been out of your sight long
enough to get wet!
FATHER: So big, the only thing I remember is the fear
of drowning in it.
MOTHER: Not even a little wet. . . . (Remembers.) It
tickled.
FATHER: Swore I'd never go back in there. (Plunges
harder.) And I never will! Never! Never! Never!
MOTHER: Well who invited you, anyway? You stink!
FATHER (struck): A troll! A troll invited me! (He
laughs at her.)
MOTHER: Oh I hope he kicks you down the stairs!
FATHER: Who? Who will?
MOTHER: Your son!
91
FATHER: Hah. . . . You know what a troll Is? . . .
Huh? . . . You know what a troll is? . . . It's a
bugl . . . It’s a big bug on its hind legs. . . .
That’s right I
MOTHER: I hope he stomps on you.
FATHER: Yes!--That was one time too many! Never
again! (Threatening with plunger.) I'm on my
guard!
MOTHER: And you better let him go to the bathroom.!
He's my only child!
FATHER: 0 no I He'll have to pay! Like everyone else!
MOTHER: That's not fair!
FATHER: Who does he think he is? It's MY fuckin'
latrine! That's all there is to it!
MOTHER: What if he has to do a No. 2 in the middle of
the night?
FATHER: 0 no! 0 no! The more he contributes, the
harder I have to work. He'll have to go next door
and use theirs.
MOTHER: They're liable to kill him . . . if he does
a No. 2 in their latrine . . . In the middle of
the night. . . . They might kill him!
FATHER: That's his problem, not mine. (pp. 104-105)
Thus Sand uses scatology In various ways: to ex
press the frustrations and subsequent hostility of people
in the appropriate realistic manner, to stress Mednick's
contempt for the kind of world the ruling classes have
created, and as a metaphor for the human condition Itself.
As concerns the use of scatology in modern drama,
one of the most interesting reactions has been that of
critics to plays like The Toilet and Sand. For example,
92
Jones's use of scatology In The Toilet and other plays has
produced some powerful reactions. In his Seasons of Dis
content, Robert Brustein calls The Toilet , T a psychodrama,
designed for the acting out of sado-masochistic racial
fantasies. Of another Jones play which stresses anality,
The Slave, he states., i r He has shown little theatrical pur
pose beyond the expression of a ragged chauvinism, and few
theatrical gifts beyond a capacity to record the graffiti
scrawled on men's room walls.Granted, Mr. Jones is not
a great playwright, but one wonders if Mr. Brustein is ob
jecting to the "graffiti” more on a personal basis than a
critical one. In a similar manner, Richard Gillman also
attacks these two plays and Jones as a "dramatist who uses
obscenities and wrath to mask a poverty of ideas and a
painfully immature emotional structure. . . . The two plays
are united by Jones' need to have his cake and eat it, to
seem to be arguing for peace and reconciliation while flay-
r 6
ing whites with every weapon his limited arsenal contains.
Again one wonders if the critic is objecting to Jones's
obscenity on a personal rather than critical basis.
Another attack upon Jones's scatological obsceni
ties, perhaps the most interesting one of all, comes from
the sensitive and gifted black poet Langston Hughes in his
article "That Boy LeRoi."
It is the fashion for young authors of Negro
plays nowadays to make their heroes all villains of
93
the darkest hue, or crazy, living in crazy houses.
The whites are for the most part villains or neurotics,
too, so I gather that contemporary Negro playwrights
do not like anybody any raore— neither their stage
characters, their audiences, their mothers, nor them
selves. For poetry in the theater, some of them sub
stitute bad language, obscenities of the foulest sort,
and basic filth which seemingly is intended to evoke
the sickest of reactions in an audience.
Certainly, "times do change," as the saying goes.
I remember a quarter of a century ago when a few scat
tered damns in the theater were considered most ad
vanced. When the word God was coupled with damn in
Broadway's What Price Glory? it caused consternation.
But .in this Year of our Lord, 1965* four-letter words
are flung across the footlights with impunity. A few
seasons ago, such words might have been taken as add
ing a bit of spice to the dramatic cake. But nowa
days bad words are in danger of becoming the whole
cake. Why Lenny Bruce should go to jail alone while
playwrights and actors from Broadway to Off-Broadway
are having a field day with graffiti, I do not know.
Since many novelists and playwrights, white and Negro,
nowadays make no bones about printing the unprintable
and speaking the unspeakable (insofar as good taste,
decency and good manners go), why, in nightclubs,
where the risque has long been acceptable, should
Lenny Bruce be shackled, muzzled and put behind bars?
Did Mr. Bruce invent some new bad words?
In a talk I made in Paris concerning American
Negro poetry, I said that I am glad Negro poets are
doing everything other American poets are doing, and
that their styles range from Harlemese to Villagese,
from the conventional to the beatnik, from Pulitzer
Prize winning Gwendolyn Brooks to Obie Award winner
LeRoi Jones. Mr. Jones is currently the white-haired
black boy of American poetry. Talented in other forms
of writing as well, particularly theater, Mr. Jones
might become America's new Eugene GfNeill--provided he
does not knoc'k himself out with pure manure. His cur
rent offering, The Toilet, is full of verbal excrement.
I remember•that much vaunted realism of David
Belasco in my youth. None of the Belasco productions
I saw on Broadway can hold a candle to The Toilet,
scenic or acting-wise. The set for The Toilet consists
largely of a series of urinals, and the first thing
the first actor does when he comes onstage is to use
one. All the facilities of a high school toilet are
used by the other performers, too, at various times.
94
The bold and brilliant bunch of young Negro actors
look as if they all come directly from Shirley Clark's
roughneck film, The Cool World, whose leading man now
plays, as If to the manner born, the leading role In
The Toilet. So realistic is both acting and direction
in this play that the leading white boy, beaten to his
knees by a gang of Negroes, drools spittle upon the
stage as he tries to rise. The triumphant black boys
end up sticking the white student's head into a urinal.
What all this does for race relations (as if it mat
tered at this late date) I do not know.7
Obviously, Hughes is disgusted by Jones's scatological lan
guage, and "his obscenities of the foulest sort, and basic
filth which seemingly is intended to evoke the sickest of
reactions in an audience." Again one wonders if Hughes is
reacting on a strictly personal basis, for he can hardly
speak for the rest of the audience. Is he embarrassed that
a black dramatist used such obscenities? Would he react
the same way to the obscenities in Aristophanes? However,
his point about "such words . . . are in danger of becoming
the whole cake" do hit home.
Other critics have defended Jones and his obsceni
ties. For example, Martin Gottfried in his A Theatre Di
vided defends the playwright's right to use any language he
feels is appropriate to his task.
An incidental left-wing aspect of Negro plays in
volves language. Until i9 6 0, drama had been written
in the stultified tongue of the right wing. This
meant a fair approximation of everyday language, in
clining away from the poetic (which was dismissed as
"artificial") and toward the stage-realistic, as revo
lutionized by Ibsen. To be sure, some slang was al
lowed; in fact the average right-wing comedy would
have-been a scene shorter if each "son of a bitch"
95
were deleted. But the language of the street was
forbidden.
It Is preposterous to deny a writer specific
words. Words are his tools. Words are his choice.
The natural reaction of the right-wing critic to
street language is to accuse the writer of "trying to
shock., , f but such an accusation is only a rationaliza
tion of the critic's discomfort and embarrassment.
Such discomfort and embarrassment is the critic's
problem and not the writer's. If an artificial envi
ronment has created taboos, the environment must be
corrected. An art form must not be limited because
of the backward traditions of right-wing morality.
Yet such traditions, such morality rule our the
ater. The right wing’s violent resentment of the lan
guage in Blues for Mr. Charlie and, to a far greater
extent, in The Toilet, indicates the extremity of the
right-wing syndrome.
The introduction of street language seemed to come
with the Negro theater left-wing movement because of
the themes and milieus with which these playwrights
were dealing. The sidewalk'in any big city is clut
tered with Anglo-Saxonisms, especially in slum areas.
By the time you get to Harlem at least every other
word is an obscenity and it would be silly for a play
set there to avoid them. How silly this can become
was exemplified by West Side Story, whose hoodlums
sang Stephen Sondheim's ersatz-dirty lyrics (, r When
the spit hits the fan"; "Krup you!").
There is no need to defend any language in the '
theater. Nor is there any need to defend a play
wright's right to use it. I cannot think of a single
instance in which a left-wing playwright used it gra
tuitously. I would add the same for right-wing plays
except that the "bastards" and "sonoof a bitches" in
the comedies are largely unnecessary and should be
minimized because they are such cliches. 8
Gottfried's points are provocative, particularly his state
ment, "The natural reaction of the right-wing critic to
street language is to accuse the writer of 'trying to
shock,' but such an accusation is only a rationalization of
the critic's discomfort and embarrassment." However, one
could hardly accuse Brustein, Gillman, and Hughes of being
96
"right-wing" critics, and they would no doubt reply that
what they object to is the poor artistic use of such ob
scenities. Street language and shock are not dramatic vir
tues in themselves, although some playwrights obviously
think they are.
Two somewhat different reactions to Jones’s scatol
ogy come from the authors of books on him: Theodore R.
Hudson in his From LeRoi Jones to Amiri Baraka, and Kimberly
¥. Benston in his Baraka. Both authors read great meaning
and symbolism into his plays and ardently defend his use of
obscenities.
In The Toilet Baraka has carried the possibilities of
fourth-wall naturalism to their extreme. The language
of the play is entirely the type of talk actually
found in such places, and in this the play touches
upon that particular strain of modern art that at
tempts to make a cult of raw life of any kind, ignor
ing or denying ahy differences between art and life.
The dialogue of The Toilet could well be the unedited
accumulation of a tape recorder; only the situation,
the issue, of the play is contrived. But it is pre
cisely this shaping of plot that saves The Toilet
from becoming simply realistic and tumbling out of
art into life, giving it the vividness of living ac
tion rather than the dullness of "art" that is not
artful.
The effect of this combination of completely nat
uralistic language and setting and a carefully chosen
situation is the arousing of pathos, the sensations of
pity (for the victims) and fear (of their environment
and fate). We pity the hero-victims because they are
recognizably like ourselves, in power and in tempera
ment; we fear what happens because we are repelled by
what we see. The basic root of pathos in The Toilet,
especially as it relates to Ray, is twofold: first,
his inability to articulate any aspect of his own
tragic dilemma; and second, his exclusion from the
social groups (black gang, white friendship) to which
97
he is trying to belong. In The Toilet Baraka has se
verely taxed the tools of naturalism in his effort to
give expression to the black leader's conflict between
inner and outer world., between the possibility of ten
derness and the reality established by the harsh neces
sities of the social world.9
Love is the subject of The Toilet. Jones poses
the question: Can only the calloused survive in a so
ciety so inhuman that one cannot openly express love?
In the vicious society that he finds himself, Foots/
Ray could be honest with neither his gang nor Karolis
nor himself. As Jones conceives it, the play Is about
"how they love and hate and desire and suffer in the
limited world they know." The fact that the love in
this play is homosexual is to an extent irrelevant,
except for the dramatic staging. The fact that the
love in this play is biracial is also irrelevant. One
need only imagine the racial identities reversed, with
Karolis a black and the others Caucasians, to under
stand that race does not control the narrative line
and the play's inherent drama. As much as some Jones
admirers might want to object to its being said, The
Toilet is universal.
Negative reactions to the play are not so much
directed at what the play says as they are directed at
how Jones says it. Controversial, or objectionable,
language abounds. Measured in terms of intensity and
frequency of controversial idioms, The Toilet is Jones'
most "obscene” play. And Jones' characters are not
using this language exclusively for any symbolic con
tent. Jones here is striving for linguistic fidelity,
for realism. The question, then, is how much realism
Is art? The answer to this depends upon one's orien
tation and one's concept of the purposes and the na
ture of literature. Clearly, Jones has attempted to
portray the brutal aspects of modern life and its re
sultant constriction of human expressions of love.
The language which men use to control others' lives
is in a sense "profane,” no matter how "acceptable"
this language is to society. (One must remember Jones'
dicta on language and laws.) In this sense, "decent"
language used to pervert man's attempts to love is
"indecent."
The same principle applies to the physical setting
and physical action of the play. A toilet is symbolic
of the world that Jones Is trying to describe through
drama. It is a world of "peeing people who go about
their business of dehumanizing other people in the
98
least pleasant "rooms” of the world. A dirty toilet
is most compatible to their purposes, and they are so
intent on their evil purposes that they are oblivious
to the room's filth and stench. The actions of the
boys in the microcosmic toilet are reflections of the
vacant, ego-boosting, cruel, and finally useless ac
tions that pass for human relations in a vicious soci
ety, a society where humans find personal fulfillment
in predatory acts upon other humans.10
Thus one can readily see that the reactions of
critics to violently scatological plays which are violent
and forceful are as ambivalent as the psychoanalysts say the
general population is trained to feel about the scatological
aspects of the body. The problem, of course, is also an
esthetic one. It is a question of how well the dramatist
can use one of the prime tools at his command-~language,
verbal and visual. It is also a question of how well the
playwright can use the naturalistic technique. Realism and
naturalism in themselves are not necessarily virtues on
stage. Raw life slapped on paper and on the stage does not
of itself make for great drama. Too much obscenity spoils
its power and effect, and the obscenities become cliches
by the end of the play. The great weakness of the realis
tic and naturalistic scatological techniques is that they
are sometimes used in a nonselective manner, and then they
lose the power the playwright wants them to have. That is
essentially what happens in plays such as The Toilet and
Sand. Pounding one scatological metaphor to death does not
99
make for great drama. The realistic and naturalistic use
of scatology in the drama is by far the most common one—
the most overdone one, and consequently the most abused one.
100
NOTES
^ Killinger, p. 5 5.
^ LeRol Jones (Baraka), The Baptism & The Toilet (New
York: The Grove Press, 1 9 6 6). All subsequent references to
The Toilet will be by page numbers.
3 Murray Mednlck, Sand, in The New Underground The
atre , ed. Robert Schroeder (New York: Bantam Books, 19517) .
All subsequent references to this play will be by page
numbers.
4 ^
Brustein, p. 306.
^ Brustein, p. 307.
6
Richard Gilman, Common and Uncommon Masks (New York:
Random House, 1971)j p. 2 3 1.
^ Hughes, pp. 205-206.
O
Martin Gottfried, A Theater Divided (Boston: Little,
Brown and Company, 1 9 6 7)^ pm 81.
Q
^ Benston, p. 193«
10 Hudson, p. 1 6 9.
CHAPTER VII
SCATOLOGY: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND
PHILOSOPHICAL USES
In his study Samuel Beckett's Dramatic Language,
James Eliopulos includes a couple of pages he calls "in-
delicacies of language." "Indelicacies of language" in
deed I That Victorian phrase would probably have sent
Beckett into a paroxysm of hysterical laughter. To an
author who thought of art as the excrement of the soul, ob
scenities are part of the poetry of the state of man in
this century. The artist like every other man is Just a
piece of dung whirling through meaningless space on what
Estragen, Clov, and Krapp call this "muckball" and "muck-
heap." Art, instead of being immortal, is just excrement
like everything else. Perhaps Eliopulos was having fun
with the phrase; he certainly is frank enough in citing
some examples of "indelicacies," and he also cites some
scholarly comment upon them.
Indelicacies of Language
While contradictions, dystax, and pratfalls may be
regarded as direct frontal assaults on language, in
delicacies should be considered as an oblique attack.
Beckett's strategy has been to arrange stylistic in
delicacies to function as "anti-embellishment" fea
tures in an effort to produce and vivify a comic
shock effect.
101
102
Indelicacies of language appear in a variety of
forms: fecal puns, scatalogical [sic] speech, irrever-
encles toward the classico-Christian tradition, ob
scenities of language, and obscenities of situation.
Much of the language in Godot reverts to nonsense
or evinces inopportunely a scatological meaning.
Grossvogel testifies to the quantity of indelicate
language, "Puns, frequently fecal, dot the dialogue;
names betray the namesakes . . . two metaphysicians
whose contribution to mankind has been primarily
rhetorical, are named Far to v and Belcher.I ! The abun
dance of indelicacies has resulted from the fact that
Beckett's humor is grotesque and vaudevillian. As
Hassan has suggested, "Because Beckett's humor is re
ductive and sadistic, it tends to focus upon scatolog
ical rather than erotic functions." "The works of
Beckett abound in indelicacies", Tindall agrees and
establishes a possible debt to Joyce in this connec
tion .
A variety of examples will help to illustrate the
diverse ways in which Beckett employs indelicacies.
Hamm blasphemously distorts the Scripture, "Get out
of here and love one another, . . . Lick your neighbor
as yourself . . . Peace to our arses ..." Hamm re
quires that God be prayed to in silence and then be
rates Him ("The bastard") for not existing. Beckett
mocks the theme of creation as he destroys the flea in
Clov's trousers lest a new evolutionary line develop
an entire new race of humans.
Fecal and urinary puns are common in Godot and
Endgame. Vladimir cannot laugh and urinates torren-
tially. Hamm discloses, "My anger subsides, I'd like
to pee." Ten pages later, Clov asks,
CLOV: What about that pee?
HAMM: I'm having it.
In Godot, one of Lucky's dances is called the Hard
Stool. Kenner identifies Lucky's stuttering on the
word Acacacademy { asr a fecal pun (caca, Fr. colloquial,
excrement).2
The important point about these scatological examples and
Beckett's scatology everywhere is that the scatological is
tied to his philosophy of life or rather to his lack of any
such philosophy. Beckett's plays are grinning cadavers.
103
He is the artist of despair and the "dying light," the poet
of nihilism who like Estragon has only dead bones to gnaw
on, and the author of "the sin is having been born." He is
not "sadistic," as Hassan puts it; he merely tells the truth
as he sees it. His scatology is factual. It accurately
describes his view of the condition of man in a God-is-dead
universe. As Richard Coe so aptly states of Beckett's phi
losophy, "Suffering is the one incontrovertible fact of
life.Man is a zero in a meaningless void--a piece of
shit in a great manure heap. Some scholars make claims for
positive values in his works, but if he is positive, it is
only in the true existential position--if one accepts the
nothingness of this "muckheap," one can start' from there,
In all his works Beckett has fun with his fecal
puns, metaphors, and satire. His excremental vision is
tragi-comic. As Nell says in Endgame, "Nothing is funnier
than unhappiness." Sometimes his vision is too morbid to
be truly Rabelaisian, as in Malone Dies where the dying
hero states Beckett's pessimism. "What matters . . . is to
eat and excrete. Dish and pot, dish and pot, these are the
poles" (p. 7)• Beckett comes close to the Rabelaisian
gusto in Molloy when he scatologically mocks mathematical
science. Jacobsen and Mueller state:
But an even more explicit and devastating reference
to the vanity of scientific enterprise--in this case,
mathematics--is found also in Molloy. The protagonist
104
is referring to the bundles of newspaper wrapped
around him under his greatcoat as protection against
the winter cold:
The Times Literary Supplement was admirably-
adapted to this purpose, of a neverfailing
toughness and impermeability. Even farts made
no impression on it. I can't help it, gas es
capes from my fundament on the least pretext,
it's hard not to mention it now and then, how
ever great my distaste. One day I counted them.
Three hundred and fifteen farts in nineteen
hours, or an average of over sixteen farts an
hour. After all it's not excessive. Pour farts
every fifteen minutes. It's nothing. Not even
one fart every four minutes. It's unbelievable.
Damn it, I hardly fart at all, I should never
have mentioned it. Extraordinary how mathemat
ics help you to know yourself. (p. 3)
Beckett's best scatological play is his tragi-
comic Krapp's Last Tape. Beckett's symbol of modern man—
Krapp— is just that, constipated crap. A lonely, isolated,
forlorn, dessicated 6 9-year-old man, Krapp is reduced to
getting his kicks out of listening to tapes of his life re
corded thirty years earlier. "A wearish old man," Krapp
wears "rusty black narrow trousers too short for him . . .
rusty black sleeveless waistcoat . . . grimly white shirt
. . . dirty white boots." He has "disordered grey hair,"
and is unshaven. He is also very near-sighted, hard of
hearing, and has a cracked voice. His diet consists of
bananas and booze. He is seen wallowing in filth in his
dark den like an animal in its own filthy cage. His words
are grimly ironic.
105
With all this darkness round me I feel less alone.
(Pause.) In a way. (Pause.) I love to get up and
move about in it, then back here to . . . (hesitates)
. . . me. (Pause.) Krapp. (pp. 14-15)
Krapp plays with his spools (stools?) of tape, especially
one about his life when he was thirty-nine and had a brief
sexual affair. But his life has been one long undramatic
constipation, and the laxative has been "unattainable."
Life is "the sour cud and the iron stool," and the earth is
"this old muckball." A supposed writer, the best Krapp has
been able to produce is a book that sold "seventeen copies
. . . of which eleven at trade price to free circulating
libraries beyond the seas."
While younger, Krapp said "farewell to love," and
the best he can do now is Fanny, "a bony old ghost of a
whore." He never made much out of life, and it is as if he
were born weary of the sun. The play ends the same way.
Past midnight. Never knew such silence. The earth
might be uninhabited. (Pause.) Here I end this
reel. Box— (pause)— three, spool--(pause)--five.
(Pause.) Perhaps my best years are gone. When
there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn't
want them back. Not with the fire In me now. No,
I wouldn't want them back. (Krapp motionless star
ing before him. The tape runs on in silence.)
(p. 28)
Beckett's time setting for the play is "a late evening in
the future." What he is saying in the play is that modern
man's existence has little meaning--on or off tape. He is
saying v tomorrow Krapp, and tomorrow Krapp, and tomorrow
106
Krapp; life has a little sound hut no fury. It signifies
something--Krapp, Krapp, Krapp.
Norman 0. Brown in Life Against Death states, "The
death instinct is reconciled with the life instinct only in
a life which is not repressed, which leaves no 'unlived
„5
lines' in the human body. v At one point in the play,
Krapp says, "Did I sing as a boy? No. (Pause.) Did I
ever sing? No." Krapp was too constipated to sing, too
constipated to give love to anyone or anything, too con
stipated to live. His greatest moment came when he "rev
elled in the word spool. (With relish.) Spooool! Happi
est moment of the past half million." Beckett's scatology
is powerful. He uses it to underscore his belief that
modern man lacks any real moral, spiritual, and creative
vitality. Beckett is morbid, but at least he is able to
laugh at his morbidity. He may not speak for all men, but
he certainly speaks for many. When one broods about the
eternal verities in this grotesque century of world wars
and concentration camps, hopefully one would conclude that
the verities are still percent positive. Beckett, of
course, could not see any verities, period, but his scato
logical laughter helps us all to endure when we feel life
is "Krapp."
As George Wellwarth asks, "But what is one to do
with an author who can write lines like these: 'I'm like a
107
ripe stool In the world's straining anus, and at any moment
we're about to let each other go'?"^ Wellwarth's remark
poses the key question In the reaction of audiences and
critics to John Osborne's Luther, for scatology plays an
Important role In the play. Luther's constant constipation
is a psychological key to his character, and scatology Is
employed in other ways as well. For example, after his
breaking with Rose, Luther uses scatological language to
picture his anger at the Pope.
I have been served with a piece of paper. Let me
tell you about it. It has come to me from a latrine
called Rome, the capital of the devil's own sweet em
pire. It is called the papal bull and it claims to
excommunicate me, Dr. Martin Luther. These lies they
rise up from paper like fumes from the bog of Europe;
because papal decretals are the devil's excretals,
I'll hold it up for you to see properly. You see the
signature? Signed beneath the seal of the Fisherman's
Ring by one certain midden cock called Leo, an over
indulged Jakes' attendant to Satan himself, a glit
tering worm in excrement, known to you as his holi
ness the Pope. You may know him as the head of the
Church. Which he may still be: like a fish is the
head of a cat's dinner; eyes without sight clutched
to a stick of sucked bones. God has told me: there
can be no dealings between this cat's dinner and me.
And, as for this bull, it's going to roast, it's go
ing to roast and so are the balls of the Medici.7
(Act II, scene vi)
Traditionally, of course, the Devil had always been asso
ciated with black filth and evil sulfuric smells. One
could even compete with the Devil's anality. Near the end
of the play, Luther states this belief to his sleeping,
nightmare-troubled son. "What was the matter? Was it the
108
devil bothering you? . . . Well, don't worry. . . . So long
as you can show him your little backside.” Luther believed
in fighting shit with shit, and he actually believed he
once routed the Devil in a contest using the Devil's own.
weapon, "De crepitu Diaboli," the fart.
Throughout Osborne's play, Luther is pictured as
constipated. In the opening speech of scene ii, Act I, he
complains, "There's a bare fist clenched to my bowels and
they can't move, and I have to sit sweating in my little
monk's house to open.them." At later times he states, "My
bowels won't move. . . . But that's nothing out of the way.
. . . I wish my bowels would open. I'm blocked up like an
old crypt."
From the psychiatric viewpoint, constipation is seer
as an unwillingness to give. The constipated individual
sees the world as hostile and threatening, and he cannot
love it. Often he sees his parents as hostile and is able
to love neither them nor anyone in authority. The con
stipated individual is under tension all the time. He
wants to give and he is afraid to do so. He wants to sub
mit to authority and wants to be free and assert himself.
Freud held that faeces were the child's first gift and that
the child bestows them on those he senses affection for,
not upon strangers. The constipated individual can often
109
be one who hates himself and the world. He alternately sub
mits to and rebels against authority.
To any educated audience, Osborne's study of Luther
would seem to be expressing much of the psychiatric view.
Luther becomes a monk despite the opposition of his father,
who sees through him in many ways. The father's insights
are particularly telling in some exchanges.
You try, you can't ever get away from your body
because that's what you live in, and it's all
you've got to die in, and you can't get away
from the body of your father and your motherI
We're bodies, Martin, and so are you, and we're
bound together for always. But you're like every
man who was ever born into this world, Martin.
You'd like to pretend that you-made yourself,
that it was you who made you--and not the body
of a woman and another man.
Why do you blame me for everything?
MARTIN: I don't blame you. I'm just not grateful,
that's all.
You really are disappointed, aren't you? Go on.
HANS: And why? I see a young man, learned and full
of life, my son, abusing his youth with fear and
humiliation. You think you're facing up to it
in here, but you're not; you're running away,
you're running away and you can't help it.
MARTIN: You disappointed me too, and not just a few
times. . . . Funnily enough, my mother disap
pointed me the most, and I loved her less, much
less. . . . She beat me once for stealing a nut,
your wife. I remember it so well, she beat me
until the blood came. . . .
HANS: You know what, Martin, I think you've always
been scared— ever since you could get up off
your knees and walk. You've been scared for the
good reason that that's what you most like to be.
110
Yes, I'll tell you. I'll tell you what! Like
that day, that day when you were coming home from
Erfurt, and the thunderstorm broke, and you were
so piss-scared, you layOon the ground and cried
out to St. Anne because you saw a bit of light
ning and thought you'd seen a vision. (Act I,
scene iii)
On parting from Luther, his father, who hated his becoming
f ' i»
a monk, ironically x said,. Goodbye, son. Here— have a glass
of holy wine," which the father had earlier called "monk's
piss."
Luther turned to the holy wine and he is set to
cleaning the latrines in order to learn proper submission
and humility. But later he decides the whole world is a
latrine and he will clean it all. From the beginning, im
plies Osborne, this is the actual way he saw life. Another
monk, Brother Weinand, says to him, "The whole convent
knows you're always making up sins you've never committed.
. . . Some of the brothers laugh quite openly at you, you
and your over-stimulated conscience."
In his play Osborne shows Luther can turn his wrath
upon indulgences, Church doctrine, and the Pope, figura
tively shitting upon them. The act is fitting for Luther,
since he received revelation and an ecstatic bowel move
ment upon the privy.
". . . The. just shall live by faith." And seated
there, my head down, on that privy just as when I
was a little boy, I couldn't reach down to my breath
for the sickness in my bowels, as I seemed to sense
beneath me a large rat, a heavy, wet, plague rat,
ail-
slashing at ray privates with its death's teeth. (He
kneads his knuckles into his abdomen, as if he were
suppressing pain. His face runs with sweat.) I
thought of the righteousness of God, and wished his
gospel had never been put to paper for men to read;
who demanded my love and made it impossible to return
it. And I sat in my heap of pain until the words
emerged and opened out. "The just shall live by
faith." My pain vanished, my bowels flushed and I
could get up. I could see the life I'd lost. No man
is just because he does just works. The works are
just if the man is just. If a man doesn't believe in
Christ, not only are his sins mortal, but his good
works. This I know; reason is the devil's whore, born
of one stinking goat called Aristotle, which believes
that good works make a good man. But the truth is
that the just shall live by faith alone. I need no
more than my sweet redeemer and meditator, Jesus
Christ, and I shall praise Him as long as I have voice
to sing; and if anyone doesn't care to sing with me,
then he can howl on his own. If we are going to be
deserted, let's follow the deserted Christ. (Act II,
scene iii)
Luther turns to God partly out of an inability to
love man, and Osborne shows this poignantly in his drama
tization of Luther's role in The Peasant's Revolt. Scream
ing for the validity of the individual religious conscience,
nevertheless, Luther backs the brutal suppression of the
Peasant struggle for justice and freedom. Osborne has the
Knight In the play charge him directly with the responsi
bility for the bloody reprisal.
(MARTIN moves to go, but THE KNIGHT stops him.)
Martin. Just a minute. (He turns and places his
hand carefully, ritually, on the body in the cart.
He smears the blood from it over MARTIN.) There
we are. That's better. (MARTIN makes to move
again, but again THE KNIGHT stops him.) You're
all ready now. You even look like a butcher--
MARTIN: God is the butcher—
112
KNIGHT: Don't you?
MARTIN: Why don't you address your abuse to Him?
KNIGHT: Never mind--you're wearing His apron.
(MARTIN moves to the stairs of the pulpit.) It
suits you. (Pause.) Doesn't it? (Pause.)
That day in Worms (pause) you were like a pig
under glass weren't you? Do you remember it? I
could smell every inch of you even where I was
standing. All you've ever managed to do is con
vert everything into stench and dying and peril.,
but you could have done it, Martin, and you were
the only one who could have ever done it. You
could even have brought freedom and order in at
one and the same time.
MARTIN: There's no such thing as an orderly revolu
tion. Anyway, Christians are called to suffer,
not fight.
KNIGHT: Aren't you, you're breaking out again, you
canting pig, I smell you from here!
You're killing the spirit, you're killing it with
the letter. You've been swilling about in the
wrong place, Martin, in your own stink and ordure.
Go on I You've got your hand on it, that's all the
holy spirit there is, and it's all you'll ever get
so feel iti (Act III, scene ii)
Of course, scholars now know that Osborne was in
deed dramatizing a psychiatric study of Luther, Erik H.
Erikson's Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and
History. Erikson sees Luther as an anal neurotic who had
ambivalent feelings toward his father and authority figures
in general. His scatological obscenities are a part of his
inner tensions and rage.
We must conclude, that Luther's use of repudiative
and anal patterns was an attempt to find a safety-
valve when unrelenting inner pressure threatened to
make devotion unbearable and sublimity hateful— that
113
Is, when he was again about to repudiate God In su
preme rebellion, and himself in malignant- melancholy.
The regressive aspects of this pressure, and the re
sulting obsessive and paranoid focus on single figures
such as the Pope and the Devil, leave little doubt
that a transference had taken place from a parent fig
ure to universal personages, and that a central theme
in this transference was anal defiance.
During childhood when man's ego is most of all a
body-ego, composed of all pleasures and tensions ex
perienced in major body regions, the alimentary proc
ess assumes in phantasy the character of a model of
the self, nourished and poisoned, assimilating and
eliminating not only substances, but also good and bad
influences. Prayer and swearing can later take over
these two aspects of an intrinsic ambivalence toward
the personified forces behind reality: prayer can ex
press the trustful modality of incorporation--expressed
in the Latin coram Deo, in the presence of God, a
phrase which Luther loved. Coram is a combination of
cum, with, and or, mouth. Swearing can express the
hateful mode of elimination, of total riddance.
This magical ambivalence is much aggravated in some
cultures and classes by particular emphasis on bowel
and bladder training. Such training obviously reveals
magical superstitions about these primitive functions;
the horror of the evacuated substances is eventually
replaced by anxiety over the possible consequences for
an individual's later character and performance should
he not achieve early and complete mastery of his
sphincters.8
Erickson documents his thesis with scatological quotes from
Luther, and so does Osborne. Luther was famous for his
scatological vehemence, and his sermons and Table Talk are
loaded with it. The scatology was so vehement, in fact,
that Brustein states, "Actually, Osborne's anal obsessions
, . Q
are quite subdued when compared with Luther's.
Like Beckett, Osborne during his writing career has
tried to free dramatic language from euphemistic, polite
nineteenth-century conventions. In Act II, scene ii of
114
Look Back in Anger, when Jimmy Porter castigates Helena for
her polite language, he Is speaking for Osborne and all
modern playwrights who want to use the language of emo
tional truth and not the language of polished drawing rooms.
Luther Is obviously no exception to his dramatic conception
of realistic dialogue, and some of the scatological refer
ences are there because realistically that is the way the
characters did or ought to have talked. Thus, Luther's
father refers to the monk's wine as "that damned monk's
piss," and he calls him "piss-scared." Characters can also
joke scatologically.
BRO. WEINAND: The moment you've confessed and turned
to the altar, you're beckoning for a priest again.
Why, every time you break wind they say you rush
to a confessor.
MARTIN: I ought to. Ever since I came into the
cloister, I've become a craftsman allegory maker
myself. Only last week I was lecturing on Gala
tians Three, verse three, and I allegorized go
ing to the lavatory.
Take care of your eyes, my son, and do something
about those damned bowels I
MARTIN: I will. Who knows? If I break wind in Wit
tenberg, they might smell it in Rome.
(Exit. Church bells.) (Act I, scene ii)
Throughout his plays, Osborne has no hesitation in
using obscenities] he considers such language to be the
most truthful in expressing man's rage "at being trapped
115
into a pattern from which., however desperately he wishes to
10
escape, he cannot." For example, a typical obscene out
burst by an enraged Osborne character would be that of Jed
in West of Suez. "That's what you'll all go down in. One
blissful, God-like shit. You think we're mother-fucking,
stinking, yelling, shouting shits. Well that's what we all
are, babies" (Act II).
Osborne uses scatology in various ways: for psycho
logical insight to explain motivation in Luther himself,
for universal insight into how man and religion view the
world, and for the portrayal of realistic verbal and emo
tional freedom. They are, all interrelated. As Luther says,
"I'm like a ripe stool in the world's straining anus, and
at any moment we're about to let each other go."
116
NOTES
" * ■ Eliopulos, p. 96.
2 Eliopulos, pp. 97-98.
8 Coe, p. 5 8.
ii ,
Samuel Beckett, Krapp1s Last Tape (New York: The
Grove Press, 1957)• Subsequent references to this play
will be by page numbers.
^ Brown, p. 3 0 8.
6
Wellwarth, p. 2 6 3.
^ John Osborne, Luther (London: Faber and Faber,
1961).
8 Erikson, p. 2 3 4.
^ Brustein, p. 1 9 8.
10 Carter, p. 172.
CHAPTER VIII
SCATOLOGICAL SATIRE
Scatology in literature has had a traditional sa
tirical function* and it has been one of the traditional
reductive devices of the satirist. After all* satire aims
to kill* and human wastes are death symbols. As has been
cited* some of the most famous and highly regarded authors
in the world have used scatology to satirize many aspects
of life: Aristophanes* Juvenal* Rabelais* Dante* Swift* etc.
Some modern dramatists have taken up the scatological at
tack anew and with ferocity.
As one would expect in a God-is-dead century* re
ligion has received a goodly share of the scatological sa
tiric attacks. In his Divine Comedy* Dante employed sca
tology to repeatedly attack and satirize sinners. Luther
did the same thing in his sermons. From the Christian
viewpoint* the Devil had consistently been associated with
the scatological. However* modern dramatists have iron
ically reversed the Christian tradition* and used scatology
to satirize the really big sinners* God and his official
representative here on earth* the Church. These satiric
scatological attacks have been as serious as Dante's* and
more bitter and less playful than those of Rabelais.
117
118
One of the most grotesque users of scatology is
Michel de Ghelderode. While Osborne's implication that the
Protestant movement was based on Luther's inability to shit
is a Rabelaisian joke* Ghelderode's use of scatology to
attack the Church is much more savage and blasphemous.
George Wellwarth says of Ghelderode:
Ghelderode has created an enclosed world that re
flects. and comments upon the larger world outside.
Ghelderode's world is medieval Flanders, and his view
of the world can best be described as savagely gro
tesque. His plays are sadistic caricatures shot
through with a ribald scatological humor which re
minds one of the pictures of his countrymen Hierony-
'mU’ B-y Bosch and Pieter Breughel and of the anonymous
woodcuts of the danse macabre.1
The Devil reigns supreme in Ghelderode's world, and his
characters, especially the religious ones, are perverse
caricatures of sinful and animalistic traits. Throughout
his plays he continually refers to them in scatological
terms. For example, in Red Magic his central character,
Hieronymus, who worships gold a la Volpone, refers to The
2
Monk in scatological terms.
He has made a stink! . . . He has farted his benedic
tion. . . . No, your bottom is no censer.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • a
Pig! . . . He makes the place stink. (Act II)
Hieronymus himself makes filthy lucre his god and he
"sniffs and licks" his gold like a dog does urine and
faeces. Ghelderode has people launch a savage scatological
attack on Hieronymus.
119
( . . . enters, bent double, out of breath, and
without hat or cloak.)
HIERONYMUS (in a hoarse voice): Help! . . . There
are wasps tormenting me. Sticky insects are run
ning over me. All the terrors of the fields made
up an escort for me. There were vipers, wolves,
brown owls. Drive all these evil beasts awayI
. . . I am afraid] . . . I am unclean] . . . I
have seen the green flesh of monsters with stink
ing breath and decaying nails, in vermin among
the mushrooms and the nettles. I was the prey
of slobbering gargoyles. I was beaten to a jelly.
What did I do to these ribald creatures and their
females? What witches* lair did I wander into?
Help] . . . Drive off the furies and the shrews]
. . . I paid, and the old sweats in the taverns
threw the stools in my path and swore horribly in
German and Spanish] And the butchers wanted to
pull down my breeches and cut my organ off] I
did nothing, said nothing! And the beggars were
none the less frenzied . . . with blows from their
crutches. . . . On me, noble Hieronymus! . . . And
their bawling! . . . Oh] Oh! . . . They kicked me
into the filth of the gutter. And mangy dogs sud
denly appeared in blind alleys. They bit me. And
attic windows opened. And bald and toothless crea
tures emptied their chamber pots on my skull.
(Act III)
Ghelderode's most sardonic scatological attack upon
the church occurs In his powerful play Chronicles of Hell.
This play is a diabolical Rabelaisian parody on Christ,
Saints' lives, and the Catholic church. This play centers
around the death of the Bishop of Lapideopolis, a self-
made, miracle-working, non-ordained man who became bishop
by acclamation. His religious staff and colleagues are
absolutely delighted by his death, and at times joke about
each other and the Church scatologically.
120
CARNIBOS: I once dreamed I was on all fours eating
refuse in a charnel house,, Yum., yum, yum . . . .
(p. 240)
I used to go and eat In the privy. (p. 243)
REAL-TREMBLOR: May the storm be without effect on
Monsignor’s bowels. (p. 247)
DOM PIKKEDONCKER: Is Monsignor talking to us about
his health? In my opinion, nothing is as good as
a clyster ....
SIMON LAQUEDEEM: For the time being, swallow your
bowel-washings, you deaf old man] My bowels are
my business. For the present it’s the diocese
that needs purging of what is obstructing it.
(p. 248)
SODOMATI: The Holy See might become concerned about
your bowels. . . . It is acknowledged that this
great belly is ill and contains enough stinking
breaths to infect all the nearby countries more
thoroughly than heresy. . . .
SIMON LAQUEDEEM (bursting out laughing): Really? Has
it been smelled as far as Rome? What a smell, bam
bino] . . . (He rubs his belly.) And If I gave
off floral perfumes, wouldn't the cry be, "a mir
acle"? (p. 254)
Later in. the play the Bishop, Jan In Eremo, comes
temporarily back to life (because he failed to swallow the
Host), and he and his former auxiliary Bishop, Simon
Laquedeem, engage in. a demonic fight, replete with an ax.
Eventually the Bishop dies a second time, and his former
colleagues engage in a great scatological farting danse
macabre.
121
SIMON LAQUEDEEM: Deliverance'
KRAKENBUS: Deliverance! The corpse Is outside . . . .
CARNIBOS: The smell remains. Ugh! (He holds his
nose.)
SIMON LAQUEDEEM: The odor of Death!
SODOMATI: Do you think so?
(CARNIBOS disappears at the hack.)
SIMON LAQUEDEEM: True, It doesn’t smell nice! . . .
The odor of Death, I say! The dead stink.
REAL-TREMBLOR: The living too.
SIMON LAQUEDEEM: True, true . . . they stink! . . .
(He gives a fat laugh.)
(CARNIBOS comes back swinging a smoking censer.)
SIMON LAQUEDEEM: Fine! Incense! . . . Some Incense!
. . . A lot of Incense!
CARNIBOS (swinging the censer majestically): I'm
censing!
SIMON LAQUEDEEM: Open the balcony! What d'you say,
PIkkedoncker?
DOM PIKKEDONCKER: Dung!
(Laughter cascades. The priests sniff each other
like dogs.)
SIMON LAQUEDEEM: Dung? Who?
DOM PIKKEDONCKER: Not me! Him! . . . And you, Mon-
signor! . . . Dung!
(Panic laughter breaks out, and this hilarity is
.accompanied by digs in the ribs and monkeylike
gesticulations. Seized by frantic joy, the
priests jump about comically in the clouds of
incense, repeating all the time, , r Dung! . . .
Dung! Ir)
122
SIMON LAQUEDEEM (thundering): The pigs! . . . They've
filled their cassocks with dung I
(He crouches— gown tucked up--his rabbinical face
expressing demonaic bliss--while the curtain comes
slowly down on these chronicles of Hell.) (pp.
273-74)
After seeing Jarry's King Ubu, Yeats uttered the now famous
line* "After us, the Savage God." How prophetically true.
Another playwright who can use scatology with power,,
verve, and wit is Fernando Arrabal. Everywhere he looks,
Arrabal sees a world without meaning, a ridiculous void
where man plays out his life in childlike charades. Arra
bal attacks religion and concepts of God with wit and fe
rocity; in doing so, he many times uses scatology. Some-
4
times he merely does so wittily, as in The Tricycle.
MITA: But he won't sleep in heaven. That’d be a fine
thing! You must realize that he'll be taking some
one else's place.
CLIMANDO: Tell me, Mita--where shall we pee in heaven?
MITA: People don't pee in heaven.
CLIMANDO: Oh I am sorry.
MITA: You'll get used to it. (Act II)
A more serious use of. scatology occurs in The Laby
rinth, where Arrabal uses a latrine as an important meta
phor for the human predicament. The play satirizes reli-
gion and the meaningless world God and Christ have created.
The plot deals with two men, Etienne and Bruno, who are
manacled to the latrine; they try to escape from it, but to
123
no avail. Life is a labyrinth, a puzzling, absurd game,
and the rules have been set up by a willful God. Justin, a
character who is a caricature of God, is all but just,- and
Micaela, his daughter, is a caricature of Christ, who tries
to help man, but she does not know whether to love him or
hate him. Etienne sets himself free from his manacles, but
he is caught and tried in a caricature of a just trial.
The judge who sentences him is a sadistic lackey who sen
tences everyone in the name of morality. In this kind of
world, says Arrabal, the best one can do is to plead like
Bruno for a drink from the commode.
Arrabal’s most scatological play is The Architect
and the Emperor of Assyria. Esslin refers to it as a black
mass which fails as a work of art, but it is Arrabal.1 s y
most powerful play. An all-encompassing parody of God and
the history of man, the play shows the absurd universe par
excellence. The two main characters, the Architect and the
Emperor, dissolve in and out of many roles: primitive, king,
sensualist, Christ, master, slave, horse, rider, fiancee,
dictator, mother, son, soldier, judge, accused, etc., al
most ad infinitum. And all of these characters are in
volved in love-hate relationships which can change instan
taneously because in a meaningless world, all men are
children. Arrabal set up this absurd universe deliberately.
My theater is not surrealistic but is not merely re
alistic; it is realistic including nightmares. Night-
mares are very important in my life. Why not put them
in my books? In my theater., situations often change;
characters and ideas are interchangeable; beauty is
concealed in the monster, sainthood in the criminal,
the executioner in the victim. . . . I am obsessed by
the idea of confusion, and by confusion I mean every
thing that is contradictory, inexplicable, unexpected,
everything that makes a coups de theatre. . . . I am
creating realistic theater which represents this con
fusion. 5
With tremendously vital verbal scatology, Arrabal pokes fun
at this universe.
EMPEROR: I'll give you my dreams for a present, if
you want.
ARCHITECT: You always dream the same thing, always
the garden of happiness, always Bosch, and I'm
tired of women with roses planted in their pos
teriors. (Act I, scene ii)
EMPEROR: My apologies to the ladies, but I must re
port that my brother had a special talent which
he performed in front of the whole school: he
drank his classmates' urine. (Act II, scene i)
EMPEROR: . . . Oh my, now that I'm blind I've never
seen God more clearly. 0 Lord! I see you with
the eyes of faith now that my eyes are blind. 0
Lord! How happy I am! I feel, like Saint The
resa of Avila, that you have inserted a fiery
sword into my behind.
ARCHITECT (in dog language): Into my entrails.
EMPEROR: That's it, into my entrails, and it fills
me with sublime joy and pain. (Act II, scene i)
In the history of dramatic scatology, no-one has
been as vital and blasphemous as Arrabal in this play. He
shakes his fist at God.
125
ARCHITECT: . . . If you want to, we can blaspheme
together right now.
EMPEROR (worried): Together? You and me? Blaspheme?
ARCHITECT: Certainly, that'd be great'.
EMPEROR: What do you say we blaspheme to music?,
ARCHITECT: Excellent idea!
EMPEROR: What music would piss God off the most?
ARCHITECT: You should know better than I.
EMPEROR: If we blaspheme to military music it should
be as much fun for him as a kick in the ass.
(Sadly.) Do you know exactly what I do when I
leave? I defecate in the most distinguished man
ner and with great euphoria. Then, with the prod
uct, using it as paint, I write: "God is a son of
a bitch" . . . Do you think that someday he'll
turn me into a pillar of salt?
ARCHITECT: Is he turning you into a pillar of salt
now?
EMPEROR (with great eloquence): Poor moron. You
haven't read the Bible. It's unbelievable I I Ah,
youth! You didn't know it: God can change you
into a pillar of salt as easily as he can cast
fire upon you or inundate the earth in an instant.
Be very careful!
ARCHITECT: All right, are we going to blaspheme to
gether, yes or no?
EMPEROR: What, aren't you afraid?
ARCHITECT: But you yourself . . .
EMPEROR: Don't remind me of my petty youthful errors.
You know nothing about the weaknesses of the flesh,
how could you know? Listen to me. (He takes the
stance of a tenor and sings to an opera aria.)
Shit on God.
Shit on His divine image.
Shit on His omnipresence..
126
(To the ARCHITECT.) At least add tralala-tralala.
(Act II, scene l)
Many modern playwrights use scatology, but even in our day
few would go so far as to cry, ’ ’Shit on God." Not even
Rabelais could top that.
Genet is famous for his scatology, or rather one
should say among many people he is infamous for it. A
thief, a convict, and a homosexual, an outcast from bour
geois society, Genet developed an undying contempt for so
ciety that he has been expressing ever since. Some schol
ars believe that includes his dramatic audience. Martin
Esslin states this view clearly.
The temptation to have people come to the theatre
and then to insult them is very great. Genet, as
Sartre points out, and as is quite obvious from every
thing he has written, has exactly the same attitude.
It has even been argued that the whole of Genet's the
atre is a revenge that Genet, an outcast from society,
has devised against the bourgeoisie--he gets them into
the theatre, makes them pay, and then showers scato
logical abuse on'them. Indeed, if you look up the
ending of The Balcony, where a world of total falsity
and vile sexual fantasy has been shown, you find the
last speech urges the audience to go back to their
own homes where everything is much more false than
anything they have seen in this theatre. These are
quite clear cases of aggression against the audience.6
Genet obviously considers scatology an appropriate language
to show some of his contempt, especially since it is so of
fensive to conventional, bourgeois society. Also, as
Sartre stated, Genet regarded himself as a bit of his
"mother's excrement." If that is so, perhaps.the scato
127
logical contempt he has for himself Is part of the same
scatological contempt he has for other aspects of life.
However., one must remember that while Genet's attacks on
society may be a reflection of his personal problems, what
he attacks "mirrors the concerns of his readers.'
Of all Genet's plays, the most powerful one, sea-
8
tologically speaking, is The Screens. A tremendous attack
on the futility of war, the stupidity of man, and the ab
surdity of life, Screens caused riots in the theater when
Jean Louis Barrault dared to bring it to the Paris stage in
1 9 6 6. Genet's debunking of the Franco-Algerian war and his
violent attack upon the traditional French concept of
honor--he called the Legion of Honor "a comma on the white
wash of latrines"--horrified various segments of French
society. One critic, Jean-Jacques Gautier, wrote:
The author's manner of expression leaves me abso
lutely impervious to his intentions.
Every fiber of my being rebels, rears up in revolt.
Genet's ideas, the working of his mind, the instincts
which impel him onward, the constant choice of his
imagery, his manifest predilection for everything that
is ugliest, filthiest, and crudest, this barrow-load
of muck that he pushes around with a little thrill of
pleasure, the smug self-satisfaction with which he
piles insulting incongruities one on top of the other,
the delight he feels in concocting his witches'-brew
of indecencies, in wallowing in the language of the
urinals, in hugging obscenities, and in spitting in
the face of the audience for the pleasure of seeing
it spin into a dizzying ecstasy of adoration--all this
stinks to high heaven, and reflects a longing, an in
tention, an ambition, a firm resolve to smirch every
thing, to debase everything, to cover everything in
degradation.
128
And to some extent he has succeeded, since his
play is popular, since a whole theaterful of people
receives his slap full in the face without taking the
least offense, or for an instant demanding that its
dignity he respected.
In a word, this crowd accepts a playwright and a
company of actors addressing it in the most disgusting
language, and performing under its very eyes the vilest
of actions.9
Gautier is like Sir Harold, a blatant colonialist in The
Screens, who states, "To tamper with language is sacre-
ligious. 1 1
The violence of Genet's anality may be sacreligious
and obscene, but it can hardly compare with the obscenity
of killing in war. Genet accents his contempt for blind
militarism-in a devastating scatological scene in which a
dying lieutenant is given some obscene last rites by his
men.
THE LIEUTENANT: Water . . .
(The soldiers turn THE LIEUTENANT over and lean
him against the screen.)
ROGER: Put him down gently, with his back against
the rock. And do your job silently. The enemy’s
in the neighborhood but, thanks to us, in the
hostile darkness and countryside there'll be a
Christian death chamber with the smell of candles,
wreaths, a last will and testament, a death cham
ber set up there like a cloud in a painting. . . .
Get set, boys. (To THE LIEUTENANT): Sir, you
won't go down among the dead without harmony and a
little local air. (To NESTOR): You who know
music, stand over there. But soft-pedal it. The
dying man's a delicate chap and the place isn't
safe. (NESTOR faces the audience. To THE LIEU
TENANT): Sir, open your ears and nostrils. . . .
Fire I
129
(ROGER himself goes and places his ass above THE
LIEUTENANT'S face. NESTOR slaps his own face
with his finger and makes a farting sound.)
ROGER: That's Gascony.
(He makes way for JOJO, who assumes the stance of
a pissing dog, with a leg raised above THE LIEU
TENANT, and leaves his fart, but the sound Is
made by NESTOR with his hand under his arm.)
JOJO: That's a refrain from Lorraine.
(He makes way for ROLAND, who squats, then squeezes,
but the sound is again made by NESTOR, this time
with his hand against his mouth.)
ROLAND: Greetings from Normandy.
(NESTOR leaves his place and goes to fart on THE
LIEUTENANT. He forces himself, but nothing comes.
He takes the scarf he was wearing around his neck
and rips it from top to bottom.)
NESTOR: Brittany delegation.
ROGER (gravely): Thanks, boys, he's had his official
funeral and the enemy hasn't spotted us.
ROLAND: About the rocks lingers the odor . . .
ROGER: Lift him gently. (The soldiers take THE
LIEUTENANT and carry him behind the screen.)
And send the stuff tumbling from ravine to ra
vine. (Scene xv)
The Screens has been Genet's most successful play,
and after twenty performances it was suggested to him that
the above scene be done away with. Genet replied to his
director Roger Blin, "And the farts? I refuse to give them
10
up. Have you given up farting?" As for the military men
who came to the theater trying to close the play down,
Genet stated,
130
The few demonstrators of the Occident group--"In
the deserted Occident what became of my boredom
. . ."— give in to the lazy side of their nature when
they see on-stage a dead French officer sniffing the
meticulous farts of his soldiers, whereas they ought
to be seeing actors playing at being or at seeming.
. . . Actors' acting is to military reality what
smoke bombs are to the reality of napalm.11
Genet's observation is powerful and apt. The violence of
his dramatic anality is nothing compared to the violence of
napalm. However, Genet's championing of the profane side
of man--the "Other," the unconscious, the repressed, the
scatological--can reach the audience in the Theatre of
Cruelty communion sense. Lewis T. Cetta has put forth this
view:
In other words, a kind of Aristotelian purgation
of cruelty should occur. Consequently, the audience
must, as in a serious game or ritual, identify
strongly with the spectacle. In order for this iden
tification to occur, the theatre should choose themes
consistent with the agitation and neurosis of the
twentieth century,* these themes should be cosmic in
scope. They should, at all costs, reflect man's un
fulfilled longings, his repressed desires, his fear
some, terror-inspiring, unknown innermost Self-~which,
paradoxically, is not Self at all, but that Other,
Other only because civilized man has denied conscious
expression to it.12
Perhaps Genet's dramatic scatology makes his audience feel
the contempt for war and glory they should allow them
selves to feel.
In all his plays, Genet's heroes and heroines are
thieves and prostitutes, and it is no different in The
Screens. However, while his sympathies are on the side of
131
the underdog Algerians, his hero Said is often an unatrac-
tive slob who is finally killed by the Arabs for turning
traitor.
Said and the rest of the proletarian masses have
been so suppressed by the bourgeois ruling class that sca
tological language is the natural language to express their
frustrations, disgust, and hostility. Their contempt is
continually expressed through such scatological expressions.
WARDA: When the sun's gone down, I can't do a thing
without my finery . . .not. even spread my legs
to piss, but rigged up in gold I'm the Queen of
Showers. (Scene ii)
LEILA (speaking to a pair of trousers): . . . in my
presence you play dead. And yet you're alive,
warm, ready for anything, for walking, pissing,
spitting, coughing, smoking, farting like a man,
and mounting a horse, and being mounted by me.
. . . You're better built than Said. . . . Your
behind is rounder than his. But you don't piss
as far. (Scene iii)
HABIBA: . . . Shall we go?
CHIGHA: Wait'll I take a piss. (Scene vi)
THE MOTHER: A corpse doesn't impress. (To CHIGHA):
Rich as you are, you still relieve yourself be
hind a fence. (Scene vi)
THE CADI (to the Arab who is approaching): Your
turn . . .
THE POLICEMAN: Proudly--for there was pride in his
posture— proudly he pissed against a young laurel
at the edge of the soccer field. . .
132
THE CADI: . . . relieving yourself against the shapely
right leg of a beautiful young laurelI Three or
four leaves of which are likely to be yellowed!
(To the SECOND POLICEMAN): Take him out and piss
on his feet. (Scene vii)
LEILA: 'You there's taboo. . . . 'You there' pee-pee.
. . . Pooh-pooh on you. (Scene ix)
NEDJMA: Manure and Insults are necessary. (Scene xiv)
Words like "crap,, " "shit, 1 1 "bullshit* " "stink* "
"asses*" "bowels*" "fart*" "filth*" "dung*" and "latrine"
abound in the play. Ironically* Genet uses defecation to
represent both life and death. In Scene xvi of the play*
dead characters of the play draw a parallel between shit
ting and dying* and Genet points out the ridiculous facades
we assume.
THE SERGEANT (smiling): But just imagine* I died
shitting . . . squatting in the foliage* well
above the hole. . . .
WARDA (smiling): And how is that any different from
other deceases? I too dropped my load when I
came.
THE SERGEANT!.', (he will smile and laugh throughout the
speech and everybody will smile and laugh with
him): . . . in the foliage. I first looked to
see if there were any snakes around* you never
know* there weren't any. (Laughter.) In the
officers' foliage? No. A plain hole. And . . .
(He looks uneasy.) . . . is he still after me?
(He looks about* and the women do likewise.) He
walked in front, actually he was always behind
me* spying on me. I can really say that I was
dogged by the Lieutenant. First* I peered into
the darkness; he wasn't there. Then lowering my
pants with both hands* I squatted above the hole.
133
And it was the very moment I was squeezing (Laugh
ter.),, and when my eyes got glassy* the moment
when* I don't know if you know it. . . Let me
show you. (Laughter; he squats* supported behind
by KADIDJA's knee and at either side* as by arm
rests* by the forearms of the two other women.)
. . . When you squeeze* you get glassy-eyed* some
thing clouds over . . . and . . . what is it that
clouds over and blots out? The world? . . . The
sky? . . .No. Your rank of sergeant* and that
of captainI And all that goes with it: the uni
form* the stripes* the decorations and the offi
cer's school diploma when you've got one! . . .
And what's left? Emptiness. I'm telling you.
(Laughter.) I've seen officers shitting— higher
officers* general offleers I--their eyes: emptied.
Not empty; emptied* i-e-d* emptied. The stars on
their kepis* no longer stars when the eyes are
emptied. (Laughter.) Luckily* when you've
stopped squeezing* when you've finished shitting*
the uniform comes right back on again* the
stripes* the decorations* in short* you're once
again the man you were. So* with my turd half
out--but still with a dopey look on my puss--I
was about to stop squeezing (Laughter.)* I was
about to be the sergeant again* my vanished cap
ital* about to understand again the beauty of
marital gestures— because I was uncomfortable*
not having your kindly support at the time--I
was about to look at the world with eyes that
know how to read service records* and . . . and?
. . . and? . . . and? . . . Hey* hey? Wha . . .
what's going? . . . going? . . . going? . . .
going? . . . what's going? . . . going on? . . .
Along with Aristophanes* Rabelais* and Swift* Genet is one
of the greatest scatologists in the world.
In some ways* one of the most brilliant of all the
scatological dramatists is Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz.
Take Rabelais and add a strong dose of bitterness* and you
have Witkiewicz. At times playfully and at times sardon
ically* he turns his scatological vision on anything and
134
everything. Why? Because* as the First Apprentice in his
play The Shoemakers^ states* "Man, just try to find some
thing in this world that isn't being pushed to absurd
lengths since all of existence* both sacred and profane* is
one great absurd!ty--a struggle among monsters* that's all"
(Act I* p. 2 3 9). The Shoemakers is his most scatological
play* and in the absurdist world it portrays all the major
political factions* and systems receive their just share of
scatological abuse. As Jan Kott states* in The Shoemakers
"we recognize the expiration of a rotten capitalist system*
the conflict of fascism with a peasant brand of socialism*
„14
and the rise of a totalitarian state. All these systems
and more are bombarded with Witkiewicz's excremental vision*
and he does it with power* intensity* verve* and gusto.
Nothing is sacred to him; he is both philosophical and
earthy. A sampling of his scatological perspective shows
the following:
He mocks the Gettysburg Address and the favorite
cliche of democracy.
JAWBLOATSKI: I pshit on all of it.
FIRST APPRENTICE: Did you say pshit?
JAWBLOATSKI: Pshit enough to drown out one stink
with something else that stinks worse. Men
who've sold out find the noun useful* too--those
who believe in democracy* for example: of the
pshit* by the pshit* and for the pshit* and so
on. (Act III, p. 282)
135
SCURVY: Liberalism is batshit--it!s the biggest lie
there is. (Act II, p. 247)
SCURVY: He always has to butt in with something in
poor taste: the rabble will never learn tact and
a sense of moderation. (Shouts.) Off to the
pissoir with him. (They drag the FIRST APPREN
TICE out to the pissoir.) (Act II, p. 254)
And how do the workers feel about the different
rulers of society and how they are treated in a Socialist-
Fascist society?
FIRST APPRENTICE: I took a course with that intel
lectual slut Zahorska at our Free Workers College.
Oh, it's free all right, so free it's come loose.
They get a solid education for themselves but
they see to it that we only get a good case of
mental diarrhea. . . . Got a radio, got a fountain
pen, got the movies, got a typewriter, got a belly
and ears that don't stink or drip, got enough of
everything— so what else do you want. But deep
down you're just a common piece o'f dirt, a fine
little specimen of repulsive guano. (Act I, p.
229)
SECOND APPRENTICE: Oh, boots, boots— how beautiful
you are I Worlds with their boots on! We'll put
boots on the entire world— we'll work it over,
we'll crap it up— it all comes out the same.
(Act II, p. 262)
Biological materialism Witkiewicz calls "batshit, 1 1
and he playfully puns about the ideas of Sajetan, the so
cialist worker in the play.
FIRST APPRENTICE: That's enough! (To SAJETAN)
Boss, despite your past services, you're an old
dodo— you don't understand a thing about the
younger generation. We're not manure like you —
we're the seeds of the future. I'm not saying
it well, I'm not Inspired— but why not let it
all come pouring out any old way? Here's what
136
I'd want to say: all you're doing is holding us
back with all your old-fashioned useless., idiotic
analytic philosophy, whose methods were created
by those lackeys of the bourgeoisie, Kant and
Leibniz. Throw 'em both out on a wun-swept ding-
hill--hey! hey! (Act III, p. 270)
There are three main characters in The Shoemakers:
Sajetan the socialist, Scurvy the corrupt representative of
the bourgeoisie, and the Duchess, who is a composite of
aristocratic decadence. They all speak scatologically and
lambaste life, themselves, and each other excrementally.
SAJETAN: We're manure, like former kings and intel
lectuals in relation to the totem clan--manure.
SECOND APPRENTICE: At least you didn't say "hey" —
I'd have killed you if you had. Manure or not,
they sure lived well. Their broads didn't stink
like ours do, son of a sucking prunt, the stupid,
lousy, crock-picking skonkies! Oh, Jesus.
SAJETAN: Everything's grown so ugly in the world,
there's no use talking about anything at all.
Mankind is suffocating, squashed under the body
of the rotting, malignant tumor of capital, on
which fascist governments swell and burst, like
putrefying blisters, discharging foul-smelling
gases from the faceless mass of humanity gone
rotten from stewing in its own juice. (Act I,
p. 228)
DUCHESS (strewing flowers on him): I care--I really
do! But stop versifying, when you do it's in
such poor taste it's the living end. I posi
tively feel embarrassed for you. Now take me,
I can afford to because you know, to put it in
simple everyday language, a duchess is a duch-
ess--take it or leave it. (Shouts) Hey! Hey!
Long live vulgarity! I'll come down to your
level and let myself go after all my sufferings,
mine and my forebears' and their bare rears, too.
Even poor old Scurvy doesn't look so puny today.
137
SAJETAN: HeyI Take it easy! Let the strange moment
of our stink-filled life continue, let it be sanc
tified and pass, let it kill us poor lice with
murderous, tragic lust. I'd like to live a short
time only, like an ephemerid, and live to the full,
but here this shit sausage stretches out endlessly,
as far as the gray monotonous horizon of the hope
less, fruitless day— eternal as juniper--where
death awaits us, moldy and lice-covered. Drip
pings into a gravedigger's bucket— that's all it
is, isn't it— nothing more. (Act I, p. 24o)
SAJETAN: The way you're swearing your tongue must
have already turned into a pork sausage— simmer
down. I want someone to clear up this business
point by point once and for all, but that guy
there just goes on swearing without any wit what
soever, no light French touch. You'd better read
Boy's Little Words if you want to improve your vo
cabulary, you gazoony, you bahooley, you dejuiced
soak-socker, you gutreamed pukeslurper, you lousy
bum . . .
DUCHESS (coldly, hurt): Are you listening, or aren't
you? If you're going to continue to swear at one
another, I'm leaving this Instant for five o'clock
tea, a time-honored custom among the aristocracy.
As for your swearing directed at me, it only makes
me laugh, you snotswallowers, you twimpicks, you
unwiped fatasses running around on spindly legs
SAJETAN (grimly): We're listening! We'll shut up now.
DUCHESS: Now then, the ones "against" you— I'll put
this in simple down-to-earth language so even
you'll finally be able to understand (with a Rus
sian accent) "in what the matter is"--they're di
verse— that's the most important thing. We, that
is, the aristocracy, are multicolored butterflies
hovering above the excrement of this world— you've
noticed how a butterfly sometimes alights on a
little pile of shit. In the good old days we were
like iron worms in the bowels of life's infinity,
obeying transcendental laws or something: I'm no
expert on the subject; I'm just a simple countess,
let it go at that-- (Act I, p. 242)
138
SCURVY (evasively, but in a towering state of despair):
You have no idea what a tragedy . . .
SAJETAN: Now he'll pester me with his imaginary little
tragedies I Mine--is a real tragedyI I see the
ultimate truth for all mankind because I'm really
seeing it, my personal life is flowing away like
the blackest nightmare out of a sewer, while you
bathe in girls and mayonnaise. (Act II, p. 2 5 2)
Throughout The Shoemakers, Witkiewicz showers the
audience with his scatological language and imagery.
I spit on your tragedy, I crap on it. . . . And ach
ing doubts swell from boredom dreadful as the Cloaca
Maxima and Mount Excrement. . . . That's a lot of in
tellectual crap. . . . It's damn cold in all the toi
lets around here— a frost must be setting in. . . .
Where are you crawling off to, you misplaced piece of
dog crap. . . .We're not going to let you disinte
grate in front of everyone into dog pshit— the word
comes from the Greek. . . . He's wallowing in his own
filthy talk like a puppy in excrement. . . . The
world is full of infinite beauty. Every blade of
grass, the tiniest little bank of shit which gives
life to the planets. . . . Holy mother of shit, . . .
The son of a shint [sic]. . . . I'm sucking up real
ity from a dirty slop pail. . . . I'm drinking hog-
wash through a straw like iced coffee. . . . My guts
are scalded as if I'd been given an enema of concen
trated acid. . . . For billions of years cells have
been fusing and dividing so that such a despicable
piece of stockyard refuse, like me, could say "l, r
about himself! . . . Only stinking broads and still
stinkier gutter matrons. . . . Not even one Jotty-
assed jot.
Witkiewicz has scatological fun with everything,
even the audience:
FIRST APPRENTICE (shouts): To the center of the stage.
Everybody, to the center of the stage I Let's get
on with our work! The audience doesn't like such
interludes, crap on them and their lousy taste.
(Act III, p. 275)
139
No dramatist uses scatology more poetically than Witkiewicz.
Although he is a highly philosophical playwright, Witkie
wicz is able to tie his conceptions to the earth with his
excremental imagery. Enraged by his vision of Fascist-type
systems taking over the world, and enraged by the pitiful
condition of man in an absurdist universe, Witkiewicz found
an appropriate language to express his rage--the scatolog
ical. At times, no other language will do. As the Duchess
states in The Shoemaker,
Sajetan, I want to be in bad taste--I want to I There's
been enough good taste. I'll blast everything to the
final stench and filth. Let it all -stink, let this
world stink itself out of existence and let it stink
itself down to the last drop, then maybe at last it'll
smell sweet; because you really can't live in this
world the way it is. The poor people don't smell how
the democratic lie stinks, but a pair of digs can
smell the stink of the outhouse, hey! And that's the
truth: he'd give anything to be a real count for just
a moment. But he can't, he's out of luck, poor guy,
hey. (Act I, pp. 2 3 3-3 4)
Witkiewicz's excremental vision is bitter and acerbic, but
also powerful, Rabelaisian, and satirically comic.
Even the great Pablo Picasso got into the satirical
scatological act. During the German occupation of Paris in
January of 1941, he wrote a six-act farce, Desire Caught by
lg
the Tail. v The translator of the play, Bernard Freehtman,
warns the reader that the play has no real meaning. "It
l6
says nothing of human destiny or the human condition."
While the play has absurd characters such as Onion, Tart,
l4o
Round End, and Pat Anguish, it is hard to believe a supreme
genius did not have a real conception of what he was doing.
What the play seems to be saying is that under the condi
tions of war, everything is reduced to the basics: food,
drink, keeping warm, sex, and the natural functions. The
basic, animal, id desires reign supreme and man tries to
survive. The absurd characters of the play represent this
desire to survive. In Act V, the following scene takes
place between Big Foot, a poet-artist, and the Tart.
TART (enters running): Hello I Good evening! I'm
bringing you the orgy. I'm stark naked and I'm
dying of thirst. Hurry up and make me a cup of
tea and some honey roasts. I'm as hungry as a
wolf and I'm so warm! Let me make myself comfort
able. Give me a fur filled with hair full of
moths so that I can cover myself. And first kiss
me on the mouth and here and here here here and
there and everywhere. It must be that I love you
to have come In this sloppy way, as a neighbor
and stark naked to say hello to you and to make
you believe that you love me and want to have me
against you, cute little lover that I am for you
and absolute mistress of my thoughts for you, who
seem to be such a tender adorer of my charms.
Don't be so upset, give me another nice kiss.
And a thousand more. Go, go make me some tea.
And meanwhile I'm going to cut off the corn on
my little toe that's annoying me. (BIG FOOT
takes her In his arms and they fall to the floor.)
TART (getting up after the embrace): You've got
quite a way of receiving and taking. I’m cov
ered with snow and I'm shivering. Bring me a
brick. (She squats in front of the prompter's
box and, with her face to the audience pisses
and syphilisses for a good ten minutes.) Ouf!
that's better! (She farts, re-farts, tidies up
her hair, sits down on the floor and starts
skillfully demolishing her toes.) (Act V)
l4l
If nothing else, at least the Tart can function. It also
shows what the Nazis have reduced the world to— pure ani
malism.
For purposes of dramatic satire, scatology has been
powerfully and brilliantly used by a few modern playwrights
to express their passionate contempt for certain aspects of
life. This brutal scatological drama has definitely of
fended audiences and critics, and this has led to the sup
pression and censorship of some plays in some places— for
example, Arrabal1s most scatological plays are banned in
Spain. However, despite these difficulties, most modern
playwrights refuse to cater to the supposed acceptable
tastes and desires of audiences. The dramatists demand
total artistic freedom--the audiences must play the game on
their terms. Are these satirists different from the great
satirists of the past? Hardly, for most of the great sat
irists have insisted upon the same artistic freedoms. And
what if critics and audiences object, walk out, stay away?
The satirical dramatists would answer as Said does when he
is about to die, "To all of you, I say shit."
142
NOTES
■ * " Wellwarth, p. 111.
2
Michel de Ghelderode, Seven Plays, II (New York:
Hill and Wang, i9 6 0), 3-45.
^ Ghelderode, Seven Plays, I, 235-73- Subsequent
references to this play will be by page numbers.
4
Fernando Arrabal, Guernica and Other Plays, trans.
Barbara Wright (New York: Grove Press, 19&7) j PP• '67-108.
5
Ruby Cohn, Currents in Contemporary Drama, ed.
Michael Anderson (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1969)*
p. 30.
6
Esslin, Reflections, p. 166.
^ Thody, p. 219.
8
Jean Genet, The Screens, trans. Bernard Frechtman
(New York: Grove Press, 1962), pp. 1-201.
Q
^ Coe, The Theatre of Jean Genet, p. 152.
Jean Genet, Letters to Roger Blin (New York: The
Grove Press, 1 9 6 6), p. 59-
Genet, Blin, p. 6 7.
^ Cetta, p. 9.
IS
-^Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, The Shoemakers, trans.
Daniel C. Gerould and C. S. Durer, in The Madman and the
Nun and Other Plays, ed. Daniel C. Gerould and C.. S. Durer
(Seattle': Univ. of Washington Press, 1 9 6 6), pp. 215-88.
Kott, "Introduction,” p. 2 1 5.
15
^ Pablo Picasso, Desire Caught by the Tail, trans.
Bernard Frechtman (New York: The Citadel Press, 1 9 6 2), pp.
7-6 0.
16
Frechtman, "Introduction," p. 6.
CHAPTER IX
CONCLUSION
In Saul Bellow's Mr. Sammler's Planet, his spokes
man hero Is Invited to speak at Columbia University. As
Sammler talks about George Orwell's views and related mat
ters, he Is shouted down by rebellious students who call
him an "effete old shit," and what he states is called "a
lot of shit."'*' Later Sammler thinks about the experience.
And he was not so much personally offended by the
event as struck by the will to offend. What a passion
to be real. But real was also brutal. And the accept
ance of excrement as a standard? How extraordinaryI
Youth? Together with the idea of sexual potency? All
this confused sex-excrement-militancy, explosiveness,
abusiveness, tooth-showing, Barbary ape howling. Or
like the spider monkeys in the trees, as Sammler once
had read, defecating into their hands, and shreiking,
pelting the explorers below.' (p. 47)
Still later he reflects, "Who had raised the diaper flag?
Who had made shit a sacrament?" (p. 48). Sammler's and
Bellow's points are well taken. Have life and literature
become "this confused sex-excrement-militancy, explosive
ness,. abusiveness, tooth-showing, Barbary ape howling," and
is excrement now accepted as a sacramental standard? Yes,
the scatological is now a standard and its use has run
amuck in modern life and literature. Used at its worst,
143
144
It unquestionably represents Barbary apes howling, and used
at Its best, It represents a brilliant use of a traditional
and potent literary weapon.
The prolific use and abundance of scatology in mod
ern drama is probably due to several reasons. Certainly it
reflects an attack upon conventional society and morality.
Leonard Pronko in his Avant-Garde: The Experimental Theater
in France states, "The avant-garde theater . . . is a sav-
2
age attack on the eternal bourgeois spirit." As a corol
lary to this view, one of my mentors at the University of
Southern California, Dr. Aerol Arnold, remarked that much
of the scatological appeared in modern drama because "writ
ers are out to prove they are not bourgeois." The drama
tists themselves no doubt would justify their attacks by
stating that Artaud's advocacy of a "Theatre of Cruelty" is
now the only way to reach a real "communion" with contem
porary audiences. The poetic theater of the Greeks and
Shakespeare, the bon gout theater of Corneille and Racine,
and the realistic theater of Ibsen and Shaw are "dead"
theater to modern playwrights. Modern drama now has to
come alive by reaching man's unconscious myths, desires,
dreams, instincts, and hallucinations. The dramatist has
to strip away the veneer of bourgeois civilization, and the
scatological is an effective means of doing so.
This rejection of authority and everything bour-
145
geois has resulted In a new worship of each man's psyche*
particularly the unconscious. It signifies a new worship
of the individual* the personal* and the body. It symbol
izes the predominance of the "id" in life--the predominance
of the unconscious forces over the rule of reason. It
stands for the total liberation and freedom of the indi
vidual. It thus represents the romantic agony once more*
only this time in full bloom* and recognizing no excesses
of any sort. Thus* what was formerly pornographic* obscene*
and perverse is now quite acceptable* and in fact desirable
as the true reality of life. So* what was "private goes
public*” and therefore* on stage anything goes.^ In terms
of the scatological* this is exactly what has happened* and
it climaxed in Arrabal’s "Shit on God.” After that state
ment on stage* there are few if any personal and collective
taboos left to smash in the theater.
One of the feelings and thoughts one gets from
studying scatology in modern drama is that some authors are
dramatizing their own private woes and venting their own
private spleens. For example* Ghelderode has stated in his
Ostend Interviews*
I am a man who writes in a room--all alone and who
does not trouble about the fate of his works. . . .
I am hardly ever seen in theatres. . . . I have al
ways written plays as it suited me* in accordance
with my own perspective* and not in accordance with
an eventual audience . . . * not for the immediate
public.4
146
However., Ghelderode later contradicts himself and states,
nOne doesn't write plays for oneself."^ But how can he be
doing otherwise? He is his own therapist, spilling out his
guts in his literature, and his plays are part of his ther
apy. In that sense, he is typical of a lot of other modern
dramatists. They lack the impersonal artistic approach set
by the great Greek dramatists. Sir Maurice Bowra has writ
ten,
In their interest in human beings the Greeks saw them
simply and directly, and presented them in the epic
or on the stage with a keen eye to their main charac
teristics. Their sense of personality was different
from ours, in that they were less interested in the
subtleties and oddities of character than in its domi
nating traits. . . . There is nothing ,in Greek lit
erature to compare with the complexity of Hamlet or
Richard II, still less with the searching psychology
of Tolstoy or Proust. . . . Their first interest in
man was as a being made and given to action, and they
examined with care the motives of action and the kind
of man who will act in this or that way. Their con
cern was not with "humours" but with thought's and emo
tions, and their combination in promoting certain re
sults. . . . They shrank from analysing themselves on
any exacting scale. It is significant that they
hardly ever wrote confessions or autobiographies.6
Greek dramatists dealt with great universal myths
and important relationships in the family and state. Most
great dramatists have followed the Greek tradition, but
many modern ones seem anxious to report every beat of their
hearts and every bowel movement. Therefore, one of the key
points in evaluating modern drama is whether the author's
portrayal of his individual neurosis is a portrayal of the
147
universal neurosis of man--as Norman Brown states was the
case with Swift’s anal vituperations. Such is also the
case with the "best of modern dramatic scatologists: Beckett,
Genet, Ghelderode, Witkiewicz, and Arrabal. But, as for
much of the rest of modern scatological drama, one wonders
if the audience becomes a pack of Peeping Toms looking in
on a lot of private outhouses.
Of course, the psychiatric case-history approach to
play analysis is speculative, and one should always keep in
mind that there has been a well-established scatological
tradition in literature. In any age where society has per
mitted the scatological, authors have sometimes used it as
a satiric weapon. In an age' where dramatists consider
everything a reductio ad absurdum, one would expect the
scatological to flourish as it does in their plays. One
does not necessarily have to seek for deeper historical,
social, and psychological reasons for its bountiful dra
matic presence.
Another reason for the profuse outpouring of dra
matic scatology is that despite the strong anti-naturalis
tic, absurdist tendencies of modern drama, there is a
passion for naturalistic language in these works, and thus
a passion for the scatological. Many modern dramatists
find the conventional poetic language of the past and the
conventional educated, polite prose of society suspect. The
148
only absolutely true realities for these dramatists are the
facts of nature--the sun, the stars, the earth, the body,
etc. Therefore, the anal aspects of the body are part of
the true realities of life, the verifiable realities. The
trouble is that these dramatists have that reality mixed up
with art, which does not necessarily have anything to do
with strict adherence to realism. They have made dramatic
realism--the language of the masses— a virtue in itself,
and they have therefore overly used the scatological.
There are literally hundreds of modern plays which contain
scatological references. They have literally done the sca
tological to death. One sits in the audience expecting
scatological remarks, and one is seldom disappointed. The
use of the scatological then becomes gratuitous, and such
scatological realism lacks dramatic power and creative con
ception. At best, it only titillates the audience and calls
attention to itself and away from what should be the build
ing tension of the plays. In the pure naturalistic sense,
the use of scatology in modern drama has exhausted itself.
So much so, in fact, that one is inclined to utter, "Ah
scatology, where is thy stink?" Perhaps the time is now
ripe for dramatists to forget its use; perhaps on stage men
should talk better than they do in real life. For many
theater goers, of course, the stink is still there, and the
scatological obscenities drive them out of the theater in
droves.
What remains to toe done with the scatological in
modern drama? Probably nothing. Perhaps it could be used
with more Rabelaisian joy--as Brecht does with his fake
urinating elephant in Man is Man, and his toilet scene in
Baal where his devilish rebel-poet escapes from a crass
nightclub by flying "out the can" and taking the amusing
excremental path to freedom (Scene viii). But that Rabe
laisian use would require dramatists who accepted and en
joyed life more than the dramatic writers of this century.
Also, perhaps, and most likely what will happen, there will
be written a play called The Coprophiliac in which the hero
a la the Marquis de Sade will have a gourmet dish of excre
ment served to him with truffles. The notoriety given <
such a play would assure the playwright's critical success
and a half-empty house after a run of one week.
However, such cynicism about any future use of sca
tology in the drama does not mitigate the occasional bril
liant scatological accomplishments of the best modern
scatological dramatists. For these select dramatists have
used their excremental visions as a part of their view of a
grotesque universe. Much of modern drama has been called
the "grotesque-absurd or absurd-grotesque."^ Karl Guthke
in his Modern Tragicomedy believes that the tragi-comic
grotesque is a dominant condition of the modern world. In
a God-is-dead universe, tragedy is hardly possible and the
150
tragi-comic grotesque goes with the disorientation of our
day., the absurd, ludicrous horror of it. Jan Kott also
feels the modern world is a grotesque one, and it differs
from a tragic one, although they are related.
Grotesque means tragedy re-written in different terms.
. . . Grotesque exists in a tragic world. . . . Both
the tragic and the grotesque vision of the world are
composed as it were of the same elements. In a tragic
and grotesque world, situations are imposed, compul
sory and inescapable. Freedom of choice and decision
are [sic 3 part of this compulsory situation, in which
both the tragic hero and the grotesque actor must al
ways lose their struggle against the absolute. The
downfall of the tragic hero is a confirmation and
recognition of the absolute; whereas the downfall of
the grotesque actor means mockery of the. absolute and
its desecration. The absolute is transformed into a
blind mechanism, a kind of automaton. . . . In the
final instance tragedy is an appraisal of human fate,
a measure of the absolute. The grotesque, is a criti
cism of the absolute in the name of frail human ex
perience . 8
The scatological is part of that ’ 'criticism of the absolu.te
in the name of frail human experience." Following the pio
neering lead of Jarry in the use of the scatological absurd-
grotesque, great numbers of playwrights and directors have
used scatological grotesque elements' in their productions.
Artaud's "Theatre of Cruelty" demands it, and as John
Killinger says, "The Theatre of the Absurd is such a the-
Q
atre, where the sky does fall on our heads. Only it
isn't raining "violets" in such theater, it's raining sca
tology.
Many cynical and bitter modern playwrights have
151
seen man as operating in Beckett's ’ ’ muck-heap" universe.
Shakespeare could be bitter and cynical too, as in Hamlet
a,nd Lear, but he could still view man as half-angel and
lalf-beast. The modern playwrights believe him to be all
beast. For in an irrational, absurd world, man is only
another pissing and shitting animal. Therefore, in the
fcwentieth-century world of global wars, concentration camps,
fV-bombs, Charles Mansons, etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseam,
the playwrights believe the scatological is appropriate to
express their rage at man's pathetic condition. The play
wrights are entitled to their philosophy and their rage.
However, they are not entitled to their scatology unless
they use it artistically and effectively in terms of the
cohesive and unified dramatic impact of their plays.
Technically, scatology has been used for various
purposes: to shock, to smash puritanical taboos, to express
hate and disgust, to explain psychological motivation, to
satirize people, Church, and State, to preach acceptance of
the body, to project moral indignation, to shake the fist
at God, and to have pure Rabelaisian fun. Above all, the
modern playwrights have used scatology, verbal and visual,
for one great thematic purpose--as a metaphor for the human
condition. As the potent, pioneering iconoclast of modern
drama, Alfred Jarry, put it, life is "merdre.I f
152
NOTES
Saul Bellow, Mr. Sammler' s Planet (New York: The
.Viking Press, 1 9 6 9) P** ^ -
2
Pronko, p. 206.
-1 Buchan, p. 5*
L l
Ghelderode, p. 3*
Ghelderode, p. 19.
f
Bowra, p. 1 3 8.
^ Karl S. Guthke, Modern Tragicomedy (New York:
Random House, 1 9 6 6), p. 73*
Q
Jan Kott, Shakespeare Our Contemporary (New York:
Doubleday Anchor, 1 9 6 6j, p. 152.
Q
Kllllnger, p. 9.
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