While scouring the Web for more information on the great "lion on the cheese grater" mystery, I turned up this interesting article on courtesans on Salon, and thought it worth sharing. I'm still looking for my Aspasia. (Or should that be Aphasia?) |
Thursday, November 05, 2009
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Ha ha, I see Anonymous beat me to it. I was going to say that!
Anyway, this post feels as though the writer immediately thought of some latter-day counterparts. Speaking for myself, I've met... one, maybe two candidates.
O tempora, o mores.*
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* Speaking of puns, as we were recently, I once constructed an elaborate scenario in which an indecisive student of the classics goes to a Japanese restaurant. The server asks him what he'd like to order, and he says, "Oh... tempura-- no, wait -- morays."
Ooof! [Sucker punch to solar plexus. Collapses and writhes around on floor for a while.]
I once penned a Keats and Chapman with the punchline "Odi profanum vulgus, et RKO."
I loved a comedy singing group called Instant Sunshine who were on BBC radio a lot in my youth.
I'm sure they had a song that included the lines -
One never courts a courtesan
Or meets a paramour -
but I can't quite remember how the rest of it went.
I think it was bewailing how the promiscuous modern age had taken all the glamour out of illicit sex. The chorus was something like:
We are permissive, and that's how the world behaves;
But poor old Casanova's turning over, over, over,
Casanova's turning over in his grave.
Egad. There must be a fraternity for classical-language punsters.
It was James Thurber, I think, who once offered something like this: "If you say 'Cogito, ergo sum' and then say 'Non sum qualis eram,' then you are putting Descartes before Horace."
Found Instant Sunshine on the Web right away. Linking their name to any of the words "paramour," "courtesan," or "Casanova" doesn't retrieve any song lyrics, alas -- at least, none by them.
As I recall (amazing how this stuff stays with you after 30 years!), one of the verses of this one went:
It's hard to be a ruthless roué these days,
When fallen women aren't considered loose.
Today, we all philander
And what was sauce for the gander
Is now sauce for the liberated goose.
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