Sex in the Cities. Volume 1. Amsterdam. Hans-Jürgen Döpp
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associate it with the dark world of the physical body. It is the origin, the Prime Mover, in the archaeology of human nature.
In Sade’s obscene-philosophical novels, which present the sensual in an intellectualised format, the split between body and intellect both comes to a peak and simultaneously goes over the top. Frenzied rationality attempts to transcend its limitations and to once again possess the body in every one of its aspects.
The body returns from its ostracism – in writing. “Try an intellectual crime,” is the advice Juliette gives to Clairwil, “write.”
Edouard de Beaumont,
The Temptation of Saint Anthony, c. 1855. Lithograph.
Chinese anatomical doll used in medical diagnoses, early 20th century. Ivory.
The larger the breasts are on these figures, the more recent they are.
Old anatomical dolls are almost flat-chested.
Bedrich Benes, Ex libris, c. 1925.
1861: Wilhelmine Schroeder-Devrient, Memoirs of a Singer
My eye returned immediately to the gap in the wall. Marguerite was focused intently on reading the book and its content must have been fascinating because her cheeks acquired a blush and her eyes shone, her bosom heaved with excitement.
Suddenly, she reached under her skirt with her right hand, placed one foot up on the bed and now seemed even more intent on reading and gaining more enjoyment from the text.
Of course, I was unable to see what her hand was doing underneath the skirt since it still covered her, but I had a good enough idea. Sometimes she seemed to play only with her hair using nothing but her fingertips. Then afterwards, she pressed her thighs together and moved her hips back and forth.
I omitted to tell you that Marguerite presented me with the book she had read that evening when I spied on her.
It was a very delightfully-written erotic work called Felicia ou Mes Fredaines, and contained many colourful copperplate engravings, which would have taught me all about the vagaries central to human life if I had not known about them already. Reading this book was very enjoyable.
But I allowed myself to read it only once a week, specifically on Saturdays when I took my hot bath.
While I was in the bath, my aunt was not allowed to disturb me. The bathroom was away from the rest of the house and had only one door, over which I draped a blanket, although that was quite unnecessary. There was no gap or crack anywhere through which anyone could spy on me! I felt very secure.
While I took my bath, I read this book and felt it have the same effect on me that I had observed with Marguerite. Who could ever have read such red-hot descriptions without being aroused?
Carl Kauba, A Treasure Seeker, c. 1900. Bronze, 19.5 cm. Private collection.
A young man digs into the ground where the treasure lies hidden.
When opened, the treasure is discovered to be a nude woman.
Carl Kauba, A Treasure Seeker, c. 1900. Bronze, 19.5 cm. Private collection.
Volupté (voluptuous woman), 19th century. Photograph.
That is why it is so extraordinarily dangerous for a young girl to read indecent or licentious books! Later, when by chance I had access to a large collection of such books and pictures, I was able to experience for myself the effect they can have on a reader. The Peculiarities of Mr H., the abotts’ Gallantries, Conspiracy in Berlin, Althing’s Small Collection of Stories, the extremely lewd Priapus novels which I read in German, The Gatekeeper of the Carthusians, Faublas, Félicia ou Mes Fredaines, Les Confessions Erotiques de l’Abbé Pineraide, and others which I read in French, are absolutely lethal to unmarried women.
They all describe the act itself using the most sensuous, exciting forms of expression – but they never speak of the consequences, never mention what a girl risks when she gives herself to a man without thinking and without restraint. None of these books describes the regret, the shame, the loss of her good name, or even the physical pain a girl might suffer afterwards. That is why marriage is such an excellent institution beyond adequate praise and honour. That is why every sensible person must do everything possible to uphold this institution, to preserve it with every respect and safeguard. Without it, sensuality would turn people into wild animals.
Do you know whom he had to thank for this terrible end? A corrupt person who called himself his friend and who gave him the most shameless book ever written – the book Justine – together with Juliette, or The Dangers of Virtue and the Delights of Vice by Marquis de Sade. It is said that the author went insane as a result of his excesses, and died in an insane asylum. Monsieur Duvalin, my husband’s friend – the one who gave him that damned book to read – insisted that Sade did not go mad but instead joined the Jesuits to find even more pleasure in a monastery near Paris in Noisy-le-Sec.
When I hurled accusations at Duvalin, calling him the murderer of my husband, he simply shrugged his shoulders and said that it had certainly not been his intention to destroy my husband, but to cure him of his tendency to indulge in excesses. That his method had failed was unfortunate but no fault of his.
“What would you rather, Madame?” he concluded. “I too was plagued by the demon of the flesh, but I was cured by this book – cured of all those unnatural urges which dragged your husband down even deeper. I don’t mean to say that I have become an ascetic, but I am not one of those obscene Epicureans who turn sexual pleasure into a cesspit. I was brought to my senses by revulsion at it: he was attracted by it. Who is to blame for that?”
My love for my husband was unbounded. The type of death I chose for myself was to be the same as his, and thus much more painful than sati [the practice of a widow immolating herself on her husband’s funeral pyre]. I wanted to study animal lust in theory in order then to experience it in practice.
My husband had given me a few books with an appropriate content, namely The Memoirs of Fanny Hill, Petites Fredaines, The Story of Dom Bougres, the Cabinet d’Amour et de Venus, Les Bijoux Indiscrets, Pucelle by Voltaire, and the Adventures of a Cauchoise.
Some of these he had read to me, with the idea that it would get us both in the mood for pleasure. He was not unsuccessful in this, for he found me ready and willing for all kinds of delightful activities we enjoyed with one another.
Only the book by Sade he kept back because he thought it too dangerous for me – and only after his death did I find it carefully hidden in a closet with a false bottom.
Arpad confessed to me that he had bought the book – the Peculiarities of Mr H. – in a Frankfurt bookstore specialising in old books. It gave him theoretical experience of the pleasures of love.
He added that he was very lucky I had come to Hungary because he had considered ejaculating into a whore several times, but had been deterred by his fear of infection.
One of his friends he knew to have caught a shameful disease in a house where the most unclean sacrifices are made to the goddess Venus, and then to have been unable to rid himself of the disease.
Rojan, illustration for Vers libres, (Free Verses), by Radiguet, 1936.
Felicien Rops, illustration for Le Doigt dedans, (The Finger Inside), by Theodore Hannon, c. 1850.
William