fpb

A sudden realization

Jan 22, 2008 17:03

I suddenly realized the reason for the fad for the Sorry Trinity - Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hutchens. By all sane critical standards, their criticism of what they call "religion" is astonishingly incompetent; much worse than the notorious pamphlet by Bertrand Russell that gave Christian apologists so much matter for mirth and so ( Read more... )

essay, religion, culture, atheism, pornography, dawkins, society, sexual revolution

Leave a comment

dustthouart January 23 2008, 09:20:17 UTC
No piece of writing on an erotic subject exists that can in any way be compared with the greatest literature.
Song of Songs?

Reply

fpb January 23 2008, 10:57:25 UTC
I mean about sex, not love. The SoS is about love preluding to marriage, and the delights it implies are those of the marriage bed. There is a whole literary genre on this subject, rather out of fashion today (I wonder why?), called epithalamium. "Erotic literature" either decouples sex from marriage or even from relationships - achieveing orgasms, in some Anais Nin short stories, is a goal in itself - or else abuses marriage or any kind of relationship by using them as an excuse for elaborate descriptions of coition. This sort of trick, however, is usually pulled by hack writers with no claim to produce "erotic literature" in the "culture" meaning of the term: as a rule, the more genuinely meritorious a piece of pornography is, the more it is desolate in its setting and conclusions. An unprejudiced reading of Anais Nin should be enough to get any sensible human being to swear chastity out of mere self-defence.

Reply

theswordmaiden January 26 2008, 00:14:19 UTC
Hmm. That must explain why I swore chastity out of self-defense! But seriously, it was this reply here that finally explained to me what exactly you meant by "erotic literature." And I've been thinking. I seem to remember that Anais Nin wrote her erotica for some anonymous buyer, and that as she was sending him stories, he kept on writing her to do "less poetry, more sex" or something of that nature. She hated the idea of making sex into some mechanical thing, apart from emotions, and she felt that her characters were just caricatures.

At least, that's what she said later. Also I believe she also wrote these stories along with some other writers, and they disliked it as much as she did. They did get a kick out of trying to write about the most ridiculous sexual situations possible.

Reply

fpb January 26 2008, 07:54:29 UTC
Yes, but it was she - now I do not claim to be some sort of NIn expert (all the facts that follow come from one TV documentary and one newspaper article), but she was the one who set out on the path of writing about sex for its own sake. The buyer's objection was not, IIRC, to passionate descriptions of love, but to flowery and lyrical passages in the description of coitus itself. She went on writing on the same subject long after she had ceased to depend on a single customer. She also cast her own public image in that light, as the great sexual revolutionary, and did so until her death, that is until well into her sixties. And even after her death, she left more sexual writings to be discovered, including some sort of account of an incestuous affair with her own father. The woman, God help us, believed in what she was doing.

Reply

theswordmaiden February 6 2008, 03:31:24 UTC
Hmm. I'm pretty sure that the buyer's objection was to both descriptions of love and to poetic descriptions of sex. And everything else except the coitus, I think. I know that Nin wanted to write erotica anyway, and I sure know that she wasn't quite right in the head, but it didn't seem like she wanted to write about sex devoid of emotions or anything else.

As how much she believed in what she was doing, I don't know. She wanted to write erotica, but not always the way she was told to do. She wanted to have numerous sexual encounters, but I'm unclear as to how much her "analyst" influenced her regarding that, including the incest.

You had the TV documentary and newspaper article, and I pretty much had this: http://www.geocities.com/arsenio_grilo/a_nin_1.html :)

So feel free to make up your own mind. And maybe explain it to me. ;)

Reply


Leave a comment

Up