Stephen Fry Purchases Ezra Pound’s Pickled Testicles
Stephen Fry writes exclusively for The Spine and explains why he has spent so much money buying a unique literary relic in the form of Ezra Pounds pickled testicles:
My good people and readers of The Spine, it is I: the man I know as me. And if you don’t mind me saying this: you are looking really quite scrumptious. And at the same time not only a bit or a little but really quite a lot of delectableness. Oh, yay is the word and squishy might be the adjective I’d place beside it. You are little dumplings of delight and I would take very great pleasure in taking each one of you between my incredulous fingers and giving you a tender little squeeze. Alas that I can’t and that I can’t: alas.
If there’s such a word and (I believe there is) I would say ‘twere’; ’twere a shame that the very thought imposed itself on my mind and, skittish though I still am at the fanfare of human delights you present to me, I find myself unable to think of anything other than the quality of ‘you’ that you possess and make you uniquely and so undeniably you, the people I see before me with these tired and slightly incredulous eyes.
So, you are wondering, are you not, about my purchase? As the poet said: why Stephen did you see fit to purchase Mr. Pound’s testicles? Well why indeed not? The testicles were to be had and to be the one that had them, I had to be. I put my money on the table, took the testicles in my hand, and a fine pair they are too. Of the variety known as ‘two’ and in shape the most orbular as can be imagined and I can imagine plenty. Pound was a poet of such refinement that only a man such as your good friend, the good Stephen, can understand his poetry. His Cantos I have tattooed on my right kneecap and the poetry of Mr. Eliot on my left. When I kneel, I pay homage, if that’s not too light and silly a word, to those men of the pen and I ask you, nay implore you, to consider: what more fitting a reason is there to keep a man’s nuts in jam jar?
You are, I can see, good, kind, and totally smashing people, and I wish you prolonged spells of insufferable naughtiness and quite quixotic quiescency and cupidity. Oh, be still my beating heart. Should ever twains be cross again, let them be our twains, my most twainsome friends.
Squiggles and snuffkins,
Your friend, lover, and devourer of men’s souls when the day of judgement comes,
Stephen.
October 29th, 2007 at 10:31 am
As the Blessed Ezra Pound may have been a secret homosexualist as well as noted litterateur, perhaps Mr. Fry can be prevailed upon to expand upon the correlation between the breath-takingly immense size of these gonads, Pound’s putative proclivities and the coveted effect of both on Fry’s own ouevre. I take it the purchase is tax deductible as a professional expense?
October 29th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
Hector, I believe the size of the testicles are the only clear indicator of poetic worth. Wallace Stevens was blessed by handsomely sized orbs, as was Shelley. Too much modern poetry, riddled with free verse and lacking metre, is excused because of small sized equipment. You must remember the words of Mr. Pope, who commented on the subject in his ‘Epistle to Burlington’ with these lines:
Still follow Sense, of ev’ry Art the Soul,
Parts answ’ring parts slide into a whole,
And from ye Great Gonads the Word imparts
A sense of Decorum akin to Art.
October 29th, 2007 at 9:17 pm
i thought you were just being cruel till i followed the link and read some of Fry’s blog.
October 29th, 2007 at 9:32 pm
‘Cruel’, Elberry? You should know that I’m silly, playful, obscure, sometimes slightly deranged, but never cruel unless it’s Jordan, Gordon Brown, James Blunt or Jamie Oliver. Except for the odd Iranian madman whose name I’m not about to spell, I think I’m quite gentle with everybody else.
October 29th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
Actually, i’m not sure you aren’t Fry, or Lord Melchett as he’s known in my circles. Isn’t there a great moment in Blackadder 3 where he plays Wellington and casually backhands Hugh Laurie across the face? There’s something deeply satisfying in watching eloquent (perhaps over-eloquent) men suddenly explode into physical violence.
November 6th, 2007 at 9:15 pm
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