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Nude Today with Dr. William A. Lipsmacker
Saturday, February 9, 2008
This week: The all-embracing kouroi at University College, London
Saturday, February 9, 2008
This week: The all-embracing kouroi at University College, London
I was once told that I resembled a young Greek God, but then my
supervisor got transferred.
Fortunately, they still gave me the First he’d promised me, and without
the oral examination, too.
Strange what thoughts a University quad can summon in the mind. For
instance, I cannot attend a May Ball without remembering an encounter
with a young girl from Trinity dressed as Anne of Green Gables (she
went as Clark Gable). We were young and in very bad taste and we
didn’t give a damn. Ah, l'ombre de jeunes filles en fleurs… or up against
a flowerbox, at any rate.
But my mind has turned to pederasts and lithe young bodies in the
quadrangle thanks to a lunch with my old chum, Professor Robert
Eagerly (Emeritus) over at UCL, where they do a very acceptable roast
in the Housman room.
For when one stumbles back into the sunlight, dabbing gravy from the
tie and regretting the third glass of port, there they are: the kouroi.
They are our prime. Staring out across the colonnade, welcoming new
generations of students to an interlude of cultured abandon, two
beautiful nude boys. When I had my Trinity girl, I looked that way – in
my memory, at least.
How appropriate, here at UCL, to have these symbolic nudes to outlast
the generations. The kouroi stand proudly, as the rest of us only
manage intermittently, defining a civilisation devoted from its beginning
to physical beauty, to delight in the human life, both the senses and
the mind, and to wise old men buggering the prettiest boy they could
find.
UCL is the right place for this pair of pretty boys, who no doubt get up
to all sorts in the gymnasium, for UCL opened in 1869 as the first
university to admit everyone: whatever their class, race, religion or sex.
That too is the democratic, polymorphously perverse message of the
Greeks. And it can be felt today in the strokeable bronze buttocks in
UCL’s front quad: not heroes, impossible to emulate, they are on a
human scale, just like all of us, and can be squeezed for luck by anyone
on their way into the halls of learning.
As I stood there after lunch, fondly recalling my own glory days and
contemplating my paunch, the quad was full of young people from all
corners of the world. They are here to learn, I thought wistfully, to
learn as we all must the wisdom of beauty.
My duty was plain. I staggered over to three lost-looking Polish girls,
who were delighted to hear that my door was always open for a little
private tuition.
Someone has to keep up the grand old traditions, after all.
supervisor got transferred.
Fortunately, they still gave me the First he’d promised me, and without
the oral examination, too.
Strange what thoughts a University quad can summon in the mind. For
instance, I cannot attend a May Ball without remembering an encounter
with a young girl from Trinity dressed as Anne of Green Gables (she
went as Clark Gable). We were young and in very bad taste and we
didn’t give a damn. Ah, l'ombre de jeunes filles en fleurs… or up against
a flowerbox, at any rate.
But my mind has turned to pederasts and lithe young bodies in the
quadrangle thanks to a lunch with my old chum, Professor Robert
Eagerly (Emeritus) over at UCL, where they do a very acceptable roast
in the Housman room.
For when one stumbles back into the sunlight, dabbing gravy from the
tie and regretting the third glass of port, there they are: the kouroi.
They are our prime. Staring out across the colonnade, welcoming new
generations of students to an interlude of cultured abandon, two
beautiful nude boys. When I had my Trinity girl, I looked that way – in
my memory, at least.
How appropriate, here at UCL, to have these symbolic nudes to outlast
the generations. The kouroi stand proudly, as the rest of us only
manage intermittently, defining a civilisation devoted from its beginning
to physical beauty, to delight in the human life, both the senses and
the mind, and to wise old men buggering the prettiest boy they could
find.
UCL is the right place for this pair of pretty boys, who no doubt get up
to all sorts in the gymnasium, for UCL opened in 1869 as the first
university to admit everyone: whatever their class, race, religion or sex.
That too is the democratic, polymorphously perverse message of the
Greeks. And it can be felt today in the strokeable bronze buttocks in
UCL’s front quad: not heroes, impossible to emulate, they are on a
human scale, just like all of us, and can be squeezed for luck by anyone
on their way into the halls of learning.
As I stood there after lunch, fondly recalling my own glory days and
contemplating my paunch, the quad was full of young people from all
corners of the world. They are here to learn, I thought wistfully, to
learn as we all must the wisdom of beauty.
My duty was plain. I staggered over to three lost-looking Polish girls,
who were delighted to hear that my door was always open for a little
private tuition.
Someone has to keep up the grand old traditions, after all.
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© lizardmagazine.com, 2008
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