Flatulence in Literature

Sometimes, I want to give my column some of the knowlege I gained during my years as an English major. Thus I present a small testament to the literature I've studied.

It is impossible to overrate the importance of flatulence in literature. Well, no, it is possible. In fact, after taking three years of English, it's pretty easy, but that's beside the point.

The earliest reference to flatulence was found in Sumerian tablets. One early tablet reads, "All praise to the great Lugalzagezi, for when he breaks his wind, it is as steam escaping from boiled wine."

The Hebrew culture seized on the idea of flatulence. The book of Job has the famous line, "And a foul wind didst break from the lord. It had the force of a mighty gale, for it had corrupted in His intestines for millenia without end. Where it touched the land, all was blighted.

"And the lord sayeth unto Job, 'Should any inquire of you, say unto them that thou didst that.'"

Of course, the original Hebrew would have been closer to, "It had the force of a mighty gale, for it *fermented* in His intestines," but all translations before the King James read "corrupted."

The "corrupted" mistake led to the Irish Order of St. Ddunk, who believed rapid digestion to be a path to good. Accounts from the order tell of one member who could make as many as five trips to a chamber pot after eating nothing but a communion wafer.

Then flatulence mysteriously disappeared from Western tradition, only to appear in the Orient. A little known Zen Buddhist text reads, "And the Buddha pointed at his student. The Buddha spoke slowly, with infinite wisdom in his breath.

"'Quick, pull my finger'

"The student did as he was told, and a long, sputtering burst of flatulence issued from betwixt the Buddha's magnificent cheeks. The student smelled this, and he was enlightened."

Flatulence then disappeared until modern times. The romanticist movement in the 19th century seized on flatulence as an expression of man's inner self. It was the romanticists who first wrote "bean poetry."

One excerpt from an Emily Dickenson "riddle poem" makes reference to the bean in the lines, "Heart of foulest Zephyr/Seed of all my flatulence."

Later, Lord Byron used beans more directly in his poem "Beans":

"Beans have the power to make one quite smelly/They make you smell worse than Percy Bysshe Shelly."

Shelly responded in a later poem, also entitled "Beans":

"Beans, beans make your sphincter a siren/They make you smell almost as bad as Lord Byron."

Lewis Carroll, though not connected directly to the romanticists, also used beans in the early text, "Alice's Adventures in Roswell":

"Alice saw a bowl of beans with a sign saying 'Eat Me,' and so she ate them.

"Much to Alice's surprise, she broke wind quite spectacularly, and she soon found herself up in a tree, dangling in the highest branches.

"'Dear me,' cried Alice, 'If my nanny were here, she would have hurled her crumpets, I'm sure.'"

I'd go on, but my editor is on the phone, frantically dialing numbers.