Category Archives: literature

Acis and Galatea

13 Monday May 2013

Posted by in art, literature, nymphs, poetry

≈ Leave a comment

image

I wrote a post a few months ago on the great French landscape painter, Claude Lorraine. This is a nice work of his: Landscape with Acis and Galatea.

The story is found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Galatea, a Nereid, fell in love with a young man, Acis. The Cyclops Polyphemous, however, was already in love with Galatea and in a fit of jealousy he killed Acis with a giant boulder. Galatea in her sorrow then transformed the blood of Acis into the river Acis. The whole scene takes place on Sicily.

Like all Claude paintings, this piece is infused with a certain lazy, dream like atmosphere. Although not tropical, it conveys the often other-wordliness of a tropical landscape. It is a land of pleasure, fantasy and mythology. Anyone who has sat beneath the warm canopy of a palm tree sipping a pina colada, surrounded by beautiful, bikini clad nymphs frolicking in the turquoise surf of a white sand beach, knows what I am talking about.

Even Dostoevsky felt the beauty of this painting. Apparently it inspired his description of the Golden Age in his “Raw Youth” and “The Devils”.

The world of the sea nymphs, the Nereids, although quite dangerous, is indeed quite wonderful.

Camille Paglia’s Sexual Personae: A Book Worth Reading

03 Friday May 2013

Posted by in art, culture, erotica, literature, religion, spirituality

≈ 2 Comments

Art and eroticism have always, are, and will always be intimately linked.

Art and eroticism always have, are, and will always be intimately connected.

I have always enjoyed Camille Paglia’s writings. An independent thinking woman, as well as an open lesbian and atheist, she has journeyed fearlessly into some of the more difficult areas of modern intellectual thought, especially in the realm of sex and art. In many ways my own ideas owe a great debt to her. Recently I started a reading one of her best works: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Neferiti to Emily Dickinson. It is a book about art, culture, sex, eroticism from ancient Egypt to the late Nineteenth Century. Although now a bit dated (published in 1990 and any book about modern culture published before the rise of the internet is now dated), from what I glean so far it is a well written and deeply informed work. This is perhaps her most important work. Over the years I have also read different articles and essays of hers. She is always intriguing.

In the preface Paglia introduces the main themes of the book. I will reprint a few here, because they are similar to what I am doing with this blog.

“I argue that Judeo-Christianity never did defeat paganism, which still flourishes in art, eroticism, astrology, and pop culture”.

I agree completely. At times there has been an open hostility, even violence, between paganism and Christianity; at other times and places there has been a more harmonious coexistence. I would say today we are living in an age of open hostility. The rise of religious fundamentalism is a reflection of that. A time of more harmonious balance would have been the Italian Renaissance, which was in essence a rediscovery and incorporation of the ancient pagan cultural and intellectual past of Greece and Rome. The word Renaissance means literally, “rebirth”. But even there, the reactionary forces of religious purity eventually ended that brief endeavor. Since its beginnings in the ancient Roman world, there has always been a deep tension between the pagan past, especially in cultural and intellectual matters, and Christian thought and practice. The destruction of the great statues of Buddha in Afghanistan last decade by the Taliban is another example of the religious intolerance of anything that came before and competes with that religion. Yet despite their best efforts, both Christians and Muslims have failed in eliminating our pagan past.

Camille Paglia, an always interesting critic of past and present cultures.

Camille Paglia, an always interesting critic of past and present cultures.

“What is art? How and why does an artist create? The amorality, aggression, sadism, voyeurism, and pornography in great art have been ignored or glossed over by most academic critics.”

Again, this is an interesting question, and one I deal with in this blog. I ask over and over again, “What is art”? In my response to religious fanatics, or just uptight prudes in general, I enjoy posting nudes, artistically done in my opinion, in order to demonstrate what I consider to be quality erotic art. In the ancient Classical world a nude statue or painting was nothing controversial. And yet here we are, two thousand years later, and we are more uptight over sexual expression than our distant ancestors. How did this happen? For the most part, as I can tell, it was the rise and power of Christianity. Not only in the past, with men like St. Augustine, but even today with such men as Tony Perkins, we see the impetus against sex and eroticism, especially their artistic expressions, driven most fiercely by conservative, evangelical Christians and orthodox Catholics. I feel such a thing has been harmful and detrimental to full human development, and has lead to endless scandals and hypocrisies that have in the end done more to damage the message of Christ than anything else save religious warfare. And yet, despite their best efforts for two millennia, the religious puritans have failed to eliminate the desire of humans to enjoy and express themselves sexually.

“What is sex? What is nature? I see sex and nature as brutal pagan forces. My stress on the truth in sexual stereotypes and on the biologic basis of sex differences is sure to cause controversy. I reaffirm and celebrate woman’s ancient mystery and glamour. I see the mother as an overwhelming force who condemns men to a lifelong sexual anxiety, from which they escape through rationalization and physical achievement.”

More interesting thoughts from Paglia. I also see sex and nature as brutal pagan forces. These forces are still with us. I once heard Paglia talk about how the modern strip club is just really a modern manifestation of the ancient temple prostitution and worship of Aphrodite. Despite its best efforts, and despite the plethora of angst ridden fundamentalists today, traditional religions like Christianity or Islam have not been able to suppress the male desire for sexual exploration. And now, as we learn more and more about the human mind, and as society in the West evolves, and especially with the rise of the internet, we see that woman’s sexual desires are also not as easily controlled and classified as once thought.

Of course many people always knew this; but female sexual passion and behavior has remained one of the taboo topics of discourse throughout history. Usually, it has only been those of us lucky enough to enjoy sex with many different women who have learned through first hand experiences just how sexual woman actually are, and how many of them do not conform to societal approved notions of their own sexuality. And yet so many highly sexual women willingly, or unwillingly, conform themselves to these very notions and structures which are in opposition to their own deepest desires. I cannot even begin to relate how many women like this I have known in my lifetime. I have found so many women who live in a sexual prison of their own, or society’s making. Helping them break out of such a prison has always been one of my great delights. Nor is there anything altruistic about this on my part; it simply stems from my unbridled enjoyment of sexual variety with various women, and my love giving sexual pleasure to a girl. But there can be spiritual component to all this too. Like Paglia, I also strive to “reaffirm and celebrate woman’s ancient mystery and glamour”. My delight in artistic nudes, and eroticism in general, is part of that.

Woman's ancient mystery and glamor has always been a part of artistic expression, despite religious fundamentalists best effort to suppress it.

Woman’s ancient mystery and glamor has always been a part of artistic expression, despite religious fundamentalists best effort to suppress it.

I don’t quite agree with the mother statement from Paglia. What I do agree with is her assertion, and one that is quite common in the manosphere, that men are for the most part the drivers of civilization. Men create and build. Most of the great artists and scientists are men. This is not to say there have not been important or great woman who have contributed to these fields as well, there has, and with increased opportunities there will certainly be many more in the future, but men desire, strive for and glory in physical and intellectual achievements in a way most women do not. But what drives men to do this is not fear of their mothers, or sexual anxiety about such fears, but rather, the simple abundance of testosterone they possess, in massive amounts compared to a female. And despite Paglia’s usually keen insights to human behavior, this is something she, like all woman, cannot really understand, just as no man can fully understand what drives a woman to want to children, and how that informs her selection of sexual partners, even if she is choosing not to have children. But as Paglia would argue, we are in the end dependent upon nature in these matters. The almost total lack of understanding that men and women have about each other in these fundamental areas is a reflection of the truth of her statement that indeed “sex and nature are brutal pagan forces” and her “stress on the truth in sexual stereotypes and on the biologic basis of sex differences”. I would argue for a spiritual element too, without denying the basic biology of sexuality and eroticism and how they affect our choices and behaviors.

Finally, she says, “My method is form of sensationalism. I try to flesh out intellect with emotion and induce a wide range of emotion from the reader”.

When I read that, I said to myself, yeah, that is what I also try to do. I try to be deliberately sensational, especially in my photos, because I want to hammer home the point I am trying to make about the goodness of eroticism and erotic art, and the best way to do that is by visual display. When it comes to other things, such as sexual scandals in the Catholic Church, and how they are a reflection of terribly flawed doctrines on human sexuality, I also try the sensationalist approach through erotic photos or art in order to try to elicit an emotional response from the reader while at the same time making an intellectual point. From the responses of the some of my more outrages pieces, especially on that subject, this seems to be have worked. Seeing holy housewives go berserk because I point out, for instance, the massive homosexual subculture in the Catholic Church, and then post a photo of two hot lesbians getting it on, is always amusing (even though most of the clergy scandal deal with male homosexuality, I have no interest in male gay porn…hence the hot lesbos, haha). I do this to show them exactly what human sexuality is, the reality of two people having sex. The neurotic reactions people have to displays of sexuality in art, photography or literature is always an endlessly fascinating thing for me. But then I ask myself, well, why are such pure people reading my blog, this den of iniquity, anyways?

This nude photo, with its play of light and shadow, with its celebration of female beauty, is art.

This nude photo, with its play of light and shadow and contrast of blues in the foreground and background, with its restrained celebration of female beauty, is art.

Plus I just enjoy sarcasm and I like nude photos of women. Like all good pieces of art, they give me pleasure.

Paglia is an interesting, if not brilliant critic of modern culture and I always look forward to what she has to say.

Why Is So Much “Literature” So Dull?

31 Friday Aug 2012

Posted by in literature

≈ 15 Comments

Cheesy novels are often the best…

I wonder why so much of “literature” is so boring. Once I read Moby Dick. This is considered to be one the greatest novels ever written. Yet halfway through the novel I had to put it down due to the strain of perpetual boredom. About six months later I took it up again and finally finished, although I was left wondering why so many academics and critics experience squirting ejaculations while reading this work. Melville takes so many digressions from his story to give us a National Geographic like, detailed account of whaling that I nearly impaled myself on whatever instrument resembling a harpoon I came across, which fortunately was none. Still, I found little pleasure in reading this book, except for a few passages here and there.

I once read Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs and found it utterly enthralling, entertaining and delightful. It was a complete contrast to the dull and ponderous Melville. So this made me wonder why so many of the “great works of literature” are so completely dull and difficult to read, while those of the more popular sort are so much more delightful to read.

I really do not know, and admit this is a completely subjective view. There are plenty of others who enjoy reading these things. However, when it comes to reading fiction, there is one small fact that needs to be addressed, and it is this:

Most statistics show that about 80% of all readers of novels are women. This is true for today, and was most likely similar in the past, although there are no statistics to back this up. We often hear of the criticism in the Nineteenth century about women being corrupted by their Victorian novels. So it is true that women have always made up a large if not great majority of the reading public.

But also in the past, as I have written before, there was a large industry of pulp magazines that appealed directly to male readers. Vigorous and flourishing throughout the first half of the twentieth century, this industry no longer exists. It always fascinates me today that there was once this real and tangible phenomenon, the pulp magazine geared towards men, and that a substantial readership of men existed at one time for fiction, and which has now for the most part faded away. It reveals how men once read for entertainment. Today, with televised sports, video games, and porn, and other avenues for entertainment, this no longer seems to be the case. Sure, there will always be some sort of  male readership for fiction, but I would place bets on its small and dwindling numbers. As a matter of fact, if you browse the fiction section of any bookstore, of those that are left, you will see the vast majority of the novels are geared towards women. And I think different desires motivate men and women when it comes to reading fiction.

Men want action. Men want adventure. Men want to be transplanted to strange, heroic, dangerous places where a character can test his limits. Men enjoy reading about unsavory, filthy and amoral characters. Men like violence. Men like sex. Men like beautiful women. These used to be the staple of the old pulp magazines. The girly themes that dominant most modern literature will naturally be devoid of theses qualities.

But I ask myself, why is it that so many of the so called great works of literature in past are often so dull and boring and tedious to read? I think one of the reasons is the academic class that has arisen in the past fifty years or so which dictates to the rest of us what is good and what is not good literature. As Mickey Spillane says, in response to the critics hating his best selling, hard hitting detective novels, “If people like you, your good.” I myself find Spillane a thousand times more enjoyable to read than Melville. The academic class of critics, buttressed by the prestige and aura of Universities, adorned with different degrees, titles and awards, see themselves as the gatekeepers to what is true and honorable in literature. They define for us what is literature. They tell us what we should be reading. They are in the fact that ones who turned reading fiction and stories as a simple source of enjoyment into the more ponderous and obtuse thing called “literature”.

Such images were common in the old Pulp magazines…

How many young people in high school or colleges have been forever turned away from reading fiction because they had to endure the endless drudgery of reading works that are utterly boring and tedious. There are fewer things more painful than having to read something you find dull and boring. And then, to be told that they are wrong because they find these things boring, and question their value, simply because the priestly class of critics have forever determined that certain works are valuable, while others are not. I simply cannot tell you how many novels I have read that I found utterly dull and boring, but which are considered great and important works of art, while at the same time I have read many novels that, while despised by the critics, I found to be absorbing, entertaining, and very well written, artistic in their own way.

I am not trying to make any sort of definitive statement on these matters, as I said above, each one has his own taste. There are many great and recognized works of literature that are pleasure to read, that are entertaining and engrossing, and plenty of entertaining works of popular fiction that are devoid of artistic merits. But once again my own tastes makes me realize that in reading, as in religion, in the end I need to go with my own instincts, and pursue the things that I enjoy, and not let others define for me what is good, proper and respectable. For me, too much of good, proper and respectable “literature”, the type you might read in a classroom, or promoted by high minded critics, is utterly devoid of excitement and entertainment.

I Love Books Almost As Much as I Love Women…

07 Wednesday Mar 2012

Posted by in culture, literature, women

≈ Leave a comment

Quite true...

Almost as much as I love women, I love books.  The digital age is somewhat depressing: the closing of bookstores, the infatuation with everything electronic, the incredibly swift speed at which everything is now transmitted. Of course I enjoy all the benefits of the digital age too. The very fact that I am writing on this blog is proof of that. Still, I hope the book does not disappear.

A book is sort of like a woman. Each has a unique cover, but when opened and explored each one is different and yields different sorts of pleasures. You must put some effort into conquering each one, but the rewards in the end are usually worth the effort. And just as when you have throughly fucked a woman, and enjoyed the intimacies of sexual pleasure with her, so too when you have finished a good book you feel a sense of delight as well as sadness that it is now over. A good book should be read slowly and carefully, each page should be savored, the mind should be lost in a sort of strange intellectual pleasure. In the same way sex should be enjoyed with a woman: savor it, make it last, let your body get lost in the wonders of physical love, the way the mind can get lost in the wonders of intellectual stimulation. The tactile nature of a book can never been replaced by our electronic age, especially the sensuality of old books: the smell, texture, the treasures hidden within. A woman is also a wonderful, tactile delight like nothing else. And the thrill of wandering around a bookstores browsing whatever is at your fingertips is slowly being lost as more and more stores capitulate to the demands of the online world. It is like wandering around a city filled with lovely women. I hope some bookstores remain, and I am sure some will, but they will become rarer and harder to find. Perhaps the only thing more thrilling than being surrounded by beautiful women is to be surrounded by wonderful and accessible books.

A woman is sort of like a book...I feel drawn to it, and want to open and explore what's inside. And I never regret it afterward.

In this digital age, I will always love books first and foremost, no matter how many Kindles or Nooks or online devices are created. Paper and binding and wonderful book covers cannot be reproduced through digital technology. And there is something basic, earthy, about paper, and binding, in the same way there is something so basic about the pleasures of a beautiful woman.

The Pefect Pulp Fiction Evening

09 Thursday Feb 2012

Posted by in art, culture, literature

≈ 3 Comments

A lovely pulp scenario...

As I wrote in a post some time ago,
https://theracerx.wordpress.com/2010/12/16/pulp-fiction-a-lost-male-literary-genre, the old pulp magazines and novels were cheap but popular sources of fiction and entertainment before the age of film and television. The heyday of pulp literature was from about 1900-1950. With the advent of television, the pulp magazines entered a steady decline until their eventual extinction. The above photo beautifully captures the pictural and literary essence of the old pulp publications.

It is hard to imagine that there was a time when people could actually make a living by simply writing stories for these magazines. Some of the top writers of the twentieth century contributed to many of these publications, some of whom, like Edgar Rice Burroughs, become quite famous for their creations (Tarzan, John Carter of Mars). Burroughs is only one of many well known and good, even great, writers who contributed to these unique and entertaining forms of literature. And the cover art was truly magnificent. Some great artists worked on these magazines.

The above photo reflects the masculine orientation of the pulp literary world. In our age of the Oprah book of the month club, with its endless pink publication about sisters fighting with each other or other such girly themes, this seems like quite an anachronism. And yet it is still quite appealing. The colors are masculine: a shadowy blend of reddish orange and dark blues, it has the atmosphere of a good bar or pool hall. Every good pulp production has beautiful women and tough men, and this photo reflects that. Also, like some good hard boiled crime drama, the setting is urban, with a nighttime view of skyscrapers visible from the window. To me this would be a nice scenario: after working on some imaginative fiction in the midst of a filthy but dynamic and decadent metropolis like New York, the evening would be capped by a nice erotic rendevous with my hot secretary. Sex and pulps went hand in hand. In many ways the pulps, in their vigorous display of male sexual desire and fantasies, were the precursors to later porn publications. As I mentioned in my early post, the great phenomenon of the Pulp fiction is a lost male literary world.

Another favorite male pastime found in pulps: guns, gambling and women.

One things the pulps did without apology was appeal to the imagination. In today’s world of video games and online this or that, the imagination is being sorely neglected. Fantasy is a wonderful part of the human experience. The use of the imagination is a powerful sexual stimulus. One of the things I dislike about so much modern porn is that so little is left to the imagination. Our imaginations, like anything else, can atrophy if not used on a regular basis. Part of the thrill of erotic experience is the simple wonder and enticement of the what if, the desire to explore more fully what are mind and desires are leading us towards. Older publications such as the pulps were able to capture these things in a way that most modern publications no longer can.

So here is toast to the wonderful, male world of the old pulp publications! May they live in our memories forever.

More on Ovid from the Catholic Perspective

10 Tuesday Jan 2012

Posted by in art, erotica, literature, love, poetry, women

≈ 6 Comments

In one poem, Amores 1.5, Ovid describes seeing his lover standing in their bedroom, wearing a translucent robe in the late afternoon sun. He goes on to make love to her. How delightful.

Here is an interesting entry on Ovid, from the Catholic Encyclopedia, of all places.

Ovid’s treatment of love is the most significant single literary formulation of erotic experience in the Latin tradition. When Augustine (Conf. 3.1) says, “I was not set in love, but in love with loving” (nondum amabam sed amare amabam), he uses the world “love” (amare) with just that shade of meaning given it by Ovid. In the tradition before Ovid, love was usually treated as an aberration, madness or sickness (furor, vesania, morbus, etc.) affecting the individual lover. Ovid extended and deepened this conception to emphasize his view that love is essentially a mutual experience between two persons who are equally involved.

His Pyramus and Thisbe, Ceyx and Halcyone, Philemon and Baucis and many others become typical examples for the Latin tradition after him. One always thinks these lovers in pairs, whereas the typical lover of Greek epigram, the new comedy, or earlier Latin elegy is usually thought of by himself.

It is interesting that an officially Church approved organ such as the Catholic Encyclopedia would be so approving of an erotic poet of Ovid’s stature. It is true, as the article claims, that Ovid was the first poet to look at love not so much as some sort of dangerous madness, although he did so in his purely erotic poems, but rather as a mutual pleasure to be shared by two people. This is especially true of many of his depictions of love in the Metamorphoses, something Ovid wrote later in his life. He most likely had a higher appreciation of the nuances of love when he was 40 and writing the Metamorphoses, than when he was 20 and writing his more racy love poems, The Amores. The Catholic Encyclopedia entry emphasizes quite well how Ovid influenced the meaning of the world amare or “love” in Latin, a meaning that was later carried on after that. For instance, a great period of later love poetry, the 12th and 13th centuries, the age of the troubadours as well as the golden age of Medieval  (and therefore Catholic) Christianity, is often referred to as the Aetas Ovidiana, “The Age of Ovid”, due to his literary influence at the time. This period in turn influenced all later love literature straight to our own time. It is an interesting and seemingly contradictory mixture of Christian and Ovidian notions of love and sex that has endured, at least in the literary and popular culture world. Our own notions of eroticism are in part due to Ovid’s influence.

Ovid writes about the importance of giving sexual pleasure to a woman, something I am quite fond doing of myself.

Another interesting fact is that Ovid is the first writer we know of who advocates the importance of mutual pleasure sharing in love making, that it is important for the male lover to help his female partner achieve orgasms.  He does so for instance in the Ars Amatoria, the Art of Love, (2. 683-88). Much of this work is written as humor and satire, but I think Ovid knew the pleasures and importance of providing sexual pleasure to a woman. A man who can do that well will be getting more women than he can imagine.

As far as Ovid’s influence on Shakespeare, here is a contemporary assessment of that, from Francis Meres, Palladis Tamia (1598): “The sweet and witty soul of Ovid lives in the mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare, witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugared sonnets among his private friends”.

Quite true. So the more I study Ovid, the more I find fascinating about his life, poetry and subsequent literary and cultural influence.

I Love The Poetry of Ovid

08 Sunday Jan 2012

Posted by in art, beauty, culture, erotica, literature, love, poetry, women

≈ 4 Comments

Ovid, the great Latin poet.

For some time now I have been reading and studying the Latin poet Ovid (43BC-18AD) and the more I read and study Ovid, the more I become enchanted and enthralled by his poetry. Without getting into too much detail about my personal life, I studied Classics, Greek and Latin, in both undergraduate and graduate school. For some reason I overlooked the importance and pleasure of reading Ovid in all that time. I think in the past I was a bit more serious than I am now, and so I was attracted to the more serious minded poetry of that other great Roman poet, Vergil, whom I still enjoy immensely. But now I have discovered the joys of Ovid as well.

Why do I enjoy Ovid so much, and what relevance does this have for this blog? Ovid was perhaps the greatest and most influential erotic poet of all time. Living in a time of great sophistication, civilization, and decadence, ancient Rome, his playful poems of love and sex are quite modern for the ancient world. No one before him wrote about love and sex with the sort of skill, wit, humor and psychological insight as he did, and no after him has had the profound influence on subsequent poetry as Ovid. He is one of the most important figures entire history of Western literature. Shakespeare as we know him is impossible without Ovid.

Ovid wrote three major works dealing with the themes of love. The first was the Amores, a series of elegiac love poems dealing with the overall pleasures and difficulties of a young man in love with a hard to get girl. The poems cover such diverse subjects as beauty, sexual positions, jealously, seduction, impotence, abortion, and the enjoyment of sexual variety. Ovid mentions how he enjoys every woman he meets, and cannot be content with just one. All the women on the street are beautiful to his eyes. He wants them all. I understand that completely. Latin poetry is not as graphic as modern poetry as far as describing sex, rather it speaks to us in nuances and suggestions, sort of in the same way that older movies expresses eroticism without actually showing the act of sex. And yet, like old movies, the verse is very effective in conveying the eroticism of life. But in all this Ovid is witty and humorous; his is a playful enjoyment of the world of love and sex. He never takes it too seriously, although he clearly enjoys the sensual company of women. It is all a game to Ovid. In this he is quite modern. “Game” is, as readers of this blog know, quite a modern phenomenon, especially in the blogosphere.

Ovid loved women and female beauty.

The next piece he wrote dealing with love was called the Heroides. This was a series of letters in verse written by jilted women to their ex-lovers. The subjects are famous women from Greek mythology, such as Medea writing to Jason. What is unique about this work is how Ovid desires to show the female side of the world of love, and his understanding of feminine psychology was deep. No other writer from the ancient world showed such a degree of interest in female eroticism, except perhaps the great Greek tragedian Euripides. Again, Ovid often mixes humor and levity and the final product is a depiction of once serious mythological figures that is both down to earth and sympathetic as well as biting.

Ovid enjoyed poetic depictions of the female psyche...

His most notorious work on eroticism was his Ars Amatoria, or Art of Love. This was a didactic poem in three books. The first two book offers advice for men on how to pick up women; the third book is advice to women on how to keep men. All in all it is a humorous and satiric instruction on the best ways and places to seduce women. He gives detailed and clinical advice on how to seduce, and yet it is always humorous and engaging. It is quite similar really to what you might read on the old Roissy blog. It was the best exposition of  “Game” ever written, two thousand years before we even had such blogs as Roissy. For instance, Ovid draws many examples from everyday Roman life (remember Roissy often wrote about life in DC). As a creature of urban Rome, a good place to meet girls, he says, are in theaters, or at the games, since women go the games not only to see, but to be seen. He mentions how you can score points with a girl at the games by confronting the guy sitting behind her if he happens to be pressing his knee into her back. I remember this actually happened to me once, when I was once in a movie theater with a girlfriend. A guy sitting behind us was shoving his knees into her chair and so I turned around and told him to stop. He did. She told me later that night, as I was furiously fucking her, how much that confrontation turned her on. She had many orgasms that night.

Whether it is seducing women in ancient Roman gathering places, as Ovid did, or in a modern office, the strategies and outcomes are still the same

Ovid wrote much more, the most important being the Metamorphoses, a long poem in the style of epic on mythological transformations. It is one of the most important poems ever written, and has had a profound influence on all later art and poetry. Many great artists and writers have been influenced in one way or another by this work. Again, much of the theme is that of erotic desire and destruction, often told in a humorous or sarcastic way, although there are passages and stories of true erotic pathos and tenderness too.

So these are some of his works which are relevant for this blog. Again, Ovid is quite modern. He was so modern, in fact, that the emperor Augustus actually banished Ovid from Rome in 8 A.D., and he spent the rest of his life in exile at a lonely outpost on the banks of the Danube in modern Romania, until his death in 18 A.D. For a sophisticated urbanite like Ovid, this was a crushing blow. For the next decade he pleaded in poetry to return to his beloved Rome, but was denied. Augustus did not like his poetry, as it was too racy and irreverent for his tastes. For instance, Augustus wanted to restore old Roman morality, and so he stiffened the laws against adultery, the same adulterous conduct which Ovid was openly celebrating and promoting in his erotic poetry. Even his books were banned from the libraries at the time. The erotically playful Ars Amatoria was particularly disliked by Augustus.

This is what happens when the wrong books, such as Ovid's Art of Love, are left in libraries and bookstores.

And yet Augustus’s ban on Ovid proved ineffective in the long run. In fact, Ovid predicted his own literary immortality. In the last nine lines of the Metamorphoses (15.871ff), finished in 8 A.D., he says:

Iamque opus exegi, quod nec Iovis ira nec ignis
nec poterit ferrum nec edax abolere vetustas.
Cum volet, illa dies, quae nil nisi corporis huius
ius habet, incerti spatium mihi finiat aevi:
parte tamen meliore mei super alta perennis
astra ferar, nomenque erit indelebile nostrum,
quaque patet domitis Romana potentia terris,
ore legar populi, perque omnia saecula fama,
siquid habent veri vatum praesagia, vivam.

Which is translated as:

And now I have finished my work, which neither the wrath of Jove, nor fire, nor sword, nor gnawing old age will be able to destroy. When it wants, let that day, which has no power over anything except the body, end the span of my life: and still in my better part I shall be carried immortal beyond the lofty stars and I shall have an undying name. Wherever Roman power extends over the conquered world, I shall be spoken of on the lips of people, and if the prophecies of bards have any truth, through all the ages I shall live in fame.

The last word in the poem is vivam: “I shall live”. How correct Ovid was. The Bible is not the only place where literary prophecies come true.

As Ovid understood, the artistic depiction of feminine beauty is always delightful.

And so today Ovid lives, and lives well, and is beloved among all lovers of eroticism as well as good literature. He clearly loved and was fascinated by women. He was entranced by feminine beauty. He loved writing about these things. He had in his own time, and has had for over two thousand years, a vast and receptive audience. Once again, as with the secret Vatican porn room I wrote about recently, the survival and profound influence of his poetry throughout the ages is another example of the “futility of censorship”.

Great Erotic Poets: Ovid

29 Tuesday Nov 2011

Posted by in art, beauty, culture, erotica, literature, women

≈ 3 Comments

Ovid and his lover Corinna, from a engraving by the Italian artist Agostino Carracci (1557-1602). Although a not very sensuous work, it is remarkably graphic for its time. Erotic art has existed for a long time.

Recently I have been reading the Roman poet Ovid (43 BC-17 AD). He has become a great favorite of mine. Vergil (70-19 BC) used to be my favorite Latin poet, but Ovid writes about things that are, right now, more intriguing to me. Vergil is the more serious of the two, often considered the greater. His main work, the Aeneid, deals with the mythical foundation of Rome by the Trojan exile Aeneas, following the Trojan War. As an intended rival to Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, the Aeneid is a celebration of Rome’s greatness, especially under the first Roman Emperor, and Vergil’s overall patron, Augustus. So beloved was Vergil thereafter that the great Italian poet Dante (1265-1321) uses him as an example of pagan pietas to guide him through the Inferno in his Divine Comedy. Vergil is perhaps the most spiritual, and even proto-Christian, of all Roman poets. For that reason he is also highly appealing to me.

Ovid, however, writes about more titillating subjects. He wrote many things, the most important of which are his Amores (“Loves”) a series of elegiac love poems, his Ars Amatoria (“The Art of Love”), which is a poem on how to pick up women; and his Metamorphoses, which is long poem on mythological transformations. The Metamorphoses is the classic work of Greek and Roman mythology. Its influence on subsequent Western art, literature and overall culture has been immense.  Urbane, witty, sophisticated, Ovid appears through his poetry as a man who loved life, enjoyed pleasures, pursued erotic adventures, and wrote about it all quite brilliantly.

Statue of Ovid in his birthplace, Sulmona in Italy. The Italians enjoy honoring their great Roman past.

To illustrate the difference between Vergil and Ovid: while the Emperor Augustus loved Vergil, the shy, reclusive, almost rustic bard of Roman greatness, he disliked Ovid, the poet of wit, scandal, eroticism and sensuousness so much so that he even sent him into exile for the rest of his life in a far off corner of the Roman Empire, Tomis, a small town on the Black Sea in what would be today modern Romania. It was basically like being exiled to Alaska. Although an overall mystery as to why he was sent into exile, ancient evidence from Ovid’s own writing refers (in Latin) to a “carmen et error” as the reasons, which mean, “a song and error”. The song most likely was the Ars Amatoria, which did not appeal to Augustus’s prudish nature, as well as his desire to reestablish old time Roman values, and the error may have referred to an affair Ovid may have had with Augustus’s granddaughter, the notorious nymphomaniac, Julia. But we will never know for sure.

I bring in Ovid here because I want to write more about how eroticism is often expressed through literature, especially poetry. I have been focusing a lot on the visual arts, and trying to define what is and what is not porn therein, but the written word also has a long and celebrated history of eroticism. Erotica is often considered not simply visual, but written as well.  Although we could find examples of this throughout all of literary history, such as with Shakespeare or Donne, or D.H. Lawrence, or with Joyce’s Ulysses being banned in Boston for its perceived sexual improprieties, certainly the most common and popular example of this today would be the Romance Novel, often referred to as “Chick Porn”. Indeed, some of the more recent Romance novels published over the last decade or so display an even more graphic depiction of sex than their predecessors, although the Romance Novel has always pushed the boundaries of female sexual desire. Modern prudes will often put the Romance Novel on their “to be avoided or eliminated” list of sinful items. The explosion of erotic writing on blogs is also another good sign of this fundamental human desire for some type of erotic expression and entertainment.

Like Ovid, I enjoy beautiful women.

Poets like Ovid show how erotic writing has been around for milennia. His exile shows that it always comes with controversy. Yet, despite the best attempts of the sexually repressed and prudish types to eliminate eroticism from art and literature, human nature has not changed since Ovid’s day, despite our vastly differently cultures of today. Most or many people simply enjoy reading, writing or viewing erotica. It is a form of entertainment. What makes Ovid so delightful is that he understood this, and his own love poetry is really a facade of irreverence and pure entertainment. For instance, his supposed mistress that he writes about in his Amores, Corinna, was most likely a fiction, something made up so Ovid could have fun with the genre. In his real life he did enjoy women, marrying three time, and finding true happiness in his final marriage. As someone once described him to me, “He was fascinated with women”. Yet he channeled this fascination, this love of women, into some of the finest literary art the world has seen. Ovid is a classic, firmly placed within the pantheon of historically great poets, in part because he wrote so well on such randy topics. Even today he is still a bit controversial in some settings.

I can understand and admire all Ovid was doing. In many ways my own blog is nothing more than a testimony to my own fascination with women, especially their hidden sexual natures which are so alluring, enchanting, and intoxicating. For there are few things I enjoy more in life than sharing eroticism with a woman, especially if I can give her the greatest pleasure she has ever experienced. I also enjoy immensely the artistic expression of eroticism, in art or music or literature, especially when done with charm and beauty. I enjoy writing erotica myself, or writing about it, or posting erotic images, much to the consternation of some former readers of mine, especially the more religious ones (some of whom, despite their misgivings, still secretly visit my blogging den of iniquity–and they are most welcome to come here, always!). I think Ovid, who was a master of expressing eroticism in ways that were charming and beautiful, would have understood these things.

If it is true that Ovid had an affair with the Emperor's granddaughter that led to his exile, then like me, Ovid loved highly sexual women who loved sex.

So I have much more to write on Ovid, and I intend to provide some examples of his poetry, as well as the importance of eroticism in art and literature as well. It is really an inexhaustible topic…and any good suggestion out there on good erotic writers and poets would be most appreciate

Erotic Poetry: John Donne

31 Monday Oct 2011

Posted by in art, beauty, eroticism, literature, poetry

≈ 4 Comments

John Donne, English poet whose subjects were often erotic ones.

John Donne (1572-1631) is one of the great English poets. Commonly referred to as belonging to the Metaphysical school of poetry, a term that only was applied much later by writers and critics such as Samuel Johnson, much of Donne’s poetry is a rich mixture of sensuality and spirituality. Poe once defined poetry as the “rhythmical creating of beauty” and I think we can see that quality in this poem. After seeing the following poem referenced on Alte’s blog: http://traditionalchristianity.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/exploring-deep-desires/, I thought I might post it here. I don’t have much to say on this poem, except that is reveals how eroticism has always been a part of life, expressed by writers and artists of different cultures and temperaments, and, when done well, a fine object of any artistic endeavor. Donne describes well the beauties of undressing his mistress. Enjoy.

Elegy XIX: To His Mistress Going to Bed

by John Donne

Come, madam, come, all rest my powers defy,
Until I labor, I in labor lie.
The foe oft-times having the foe in sight,
Is tired with standing though he never fight.
Off with that girdle, like heaven’s zone glistering,
But a far fairer world encompassing.
Unpin that spangled breastplate which you wear,
That th’ eyes of busy fools may be stopped there.
Unlace yourself, for that harmonious chime
Tells me from you that now it is bed time.
Off with that happy busk, which I envy,
That still can be, and still can stand so nigh.
Your gown, going off, such beauteous state reveals,
as when from flowry meads th’ hill’s shadow steals.
Off with that wiry coronet and show
The hairy diadem which on you doth grow:
Now off with those shoes, and then safely tread
In this love’s hallowed temple, this soft bed.
In such white robes, heaven’s angels used to be
Received by men; thou, Angel, bring’st with thee
A heaven like Mahomet’s Paradise; and though
Ill spirits walk in white, we easily know
By this these angels from an evil sprite:
Those set our hairs on end, but these our flesh upright.

License my roving hands, and let them go
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O my America! my new-found-land,
My kingdom, safeliest when with one man manned,
My mine of precious stones, my empery,
How blest am I in this discovering thee!
To enter in these bonds is to be free;
Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.

Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,
As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be
To taste whole joys. Gems which you women use
Are like Atlanta’s balls, cast in men’s views,
That when a fool’s eye lighteth on a gem,
His earthly soul may covet theirs, not them.
Like pictures, or like books’ gay coverings made
For lay-men, are all women thus arrayed;
Themselves are mystic books, which only we
(Whom their imputed grace will dignify)
Must see revealed. Then, since that I may know,
As liberally as to a midwife, show
Thyself: cast all, yea, this white linen hence,
There is no penance due to innocence.

To teach thee, I am naked first; why than,
what needst thou have more covering than a man?

As Donne understood, undressing a woman can be divine...

Hemingway, a Great Writer Who Suffered From Depression.

04 Saturday Jun 2011

Posted by in culture, literature, spirituality

≈ 4 Comments

Hemingway, pretty much every young man who wants to write looks to him for inspiration.

Many of those writing in the manosphere can appreciate the influence of Hemingway on their lives. If any guy aspired to write when younger, he most likely looked to Hemingway as some sort of model. I remember my own discovery of “Papa” as an ignorant teenager, when I read one of his stories for the first time. The moment is seared in my memory, as I read words that were written in way that I had never read before, that had a cadence and quality that was completely different from anything I had ever come across. His stories about adventure, manliness, the worlds of tough men and difficult women, are particularly appealing to the young man. His prose became the essence of a tough, straight forward, and immaculate style of writing. He forever changed the style of English prose.

His life seemed to mirror his stories. The photos of Hemingway hunting in Africa, fishing out the great American west or in the Caribbean, working as a war correspondent, etc., presented an image of a man whose life mirrored his writings. To this day it seems to be the glamorous incarnation of the modern man of action who is also a man of letters. No one has been able to emulate him since his death, whether in writing or action.

He died in 1961, at age 61. He committed suicide, blowing his head off with a shotgun. He had had many psychological ailments later in his life, but clearly depression had been one of them, and most likely something he had suffered through for most of his life. His father also had committed suicide, and there is a clear genetic link in families with mental illnesses.

Perhaps if things had been different back then in the medical world of mental health, nearly fifty years ago now, he may not have taken his own life. Whatever cause of his suicide, whether through depression or a mixture of different psychological ailments, his death deprived the world of potentially more great writing. This is the great tragedy of depression and its ultimate manifestation, suicide. Not only does it rob the world of a life, it robs the world of whatever that person may have contributed to that world, which in Hemingway’s case was more writing. The man seemingly had it all; yet mental health problems destroyed his life in the end. Even if the terrible last stage of suicide is never met, depression if left unchecked can sap a person of their strength, and create a life that is anything but fulfilling. Often it can lead to much chaos.

Suicide deprived the world of more of his writings.

However, despite the difficulties of this condition, there is hope. For me, hope manifests itself first through God and especially through prayer. In this I find great relief from my own psychic pains. And then God puts others in the world to help us through these things, whether through family, friends or professionals. There are resources, if we chose to seek them out, and we are not without hope. As one priest once told me, even in our greatest moments of darkness, remember, God is still there with us. And for those who don’t believe in God, there are others out there who can help us with this too. It also helps, I suppose, to know the many men and women who have dealt with this and other mental health conditions, both in our time and in the past. It is actually an impressive list of famous and accomplished people.

I also find writing about these things to be cathartic; I am not sure why, but it is something I need to explore more fully.