CM: You went away, and I couldn't think of anything to say. I thought people might be interested in a little poetry, and that wasn't too bad. But it appears they don't much like Evelyn Waugh. In fact, as I've told you before, they like me best when I'm babbling on about the men I've dated.
Clio: Well, that's not entirely true, you know. Your statistics show that people keep coming by to read your posts. They just don't comment much on the poetry.
CM: Yes, but it seems I've grown addicted to the lively exchange of views in my comments boxes.
Clio: You can't expect me to help you much there. I'm the Muse of history, dear. If you want lively conversation, perhaps my half-brother Hermes would be a better patron for your site. But he's not so willing to waste his time inspiring mortals as us Muses are. Speaking of which, have you disinterred that copy of your dissertation yet?
CM: No. I'm still searching through the boxes of my books in the crawl-space. It's taking forever because I had to put up my bookcases and put the books away. There's about 25 boxes of them. I've opened and gone through 15. What do you want to bet that the stupid thing is going to be in the last box I open?
Clio: Ah, but then the work will be done! Perhaps the gods arranged things that way to make sure that you finally got this disagreeable chore out of the way. Mortals are so short-sighted about divine providence.
CM: Disagreeable is right. It's hot and dark, and I get dusty and sweaty, and I keep hitting my head on the steel support beam if I absent-mindedly stand up a little too straight.
Clio: Well, luvvie, it sounds as if you need a little amusement. Why not post that ridiculous passage from that book you like so much, what is it called again?
CM: Oh, you mean the bit about King Alcinous in Girl in a Swing? I can't believe you're encouraging me to put that up.
Clio: I don't see why. It's decidedly pagan, and in a way rather historical, and filled with arcane references. Besides, it's funny, and we both like to amuse people.
CM: Well, when you put it that way --
===============================================
And so here it is, dear readers, without further ado. Oh yes, though, one more thing: although I love the book, this bit really belongs on the list of all-time worst sex passages in the history of literature, although some would argue that the sex scenes in Sophie's Choice are their equal. This one isn't explicit, though whether that makes it better or worse you'll have to decide for yourselves.
Our being travelled very far, for, as I could see clearly, the blades of grass above my eyes and close beside her head were in reality forests hundreds of feet below us. The green beetle clambering astray through them had leagues to go, and wisely flew off across the distant, rolling plains. I perceived also that the red clouds and one emergent star beneath me, alternately hidden and revealed by her plunging shoulders, had been well-known to Theodora, Phryne and Semiramis. I myself, dizzy at that great depth, became lost for a time, striving half-frenzied in a marshy wood close beside that same sea where the bull swam with Europa on his back: but then by good luck I came upon a white, winged mare grazing by the shore, mounted her and spurred away until we came to a city at the end of the world, where there was no time and men's minds and bodies were dissolved in an enchanted pool from which they were re-born to bless others by their grief, though unable to give any account of what they had undergone. After that drowning I was carried home asleep, across many miles of ocean, in one of the Phaecaian ships of King Alcinous.
Literature is perhaps not the best medium in which to convey the experience of human eroticism. This passage's pomp and portentousness illustrates one of the great problems for storytellers of attempting to write about sexual encounters. They are either purely objective and, as a result, grossly clinical, which certainly doesn't do justice to human experience of sexual love; or else they're narrated subjectively and become, in the telling, absurdly inflated.
Tell me, my dears, is the passage good or bad? Perhaps it isn't really a "sex scene" at all, but an attempt to capture something of the attitude of the hero of the story, who was cracking up at the time, towards its heroine.
33 comments:
For what it's worth, I agree with your Muse - I always read the poetry, and the quotations from literature. I can't think of much to say in reaction to them. But they are part of the reason I read the blog.
Thanks. I'm pleased to hear that people might actually enjoy them.
clio
Bad.
- The "green beetle clambering" part and a few other description of the setting came across as if the narrator was on a science fieldtrip.
I understand how one's consciousness can latch on to some thought or detail during sex, but this usually takes form of a half-conscious fixation, not a survey of the landscape.
- The rhythm of the prose is not the kind of rolling, breathless rush that Milton pulls of when his Almighty hurls Lucifer into hell. It does pick up in the second half of the paragraph, but again, distracted descriptions of stuff.
- I see the ascent-plateau-descent effort made structuring this description. But it lacks an original take.
- Not in the least sexy. Even if an author is going to use a sex act as a vehicle for philosophical meditqaion, it needs to be arousing. Here, I felt like I was watching one of those TV painters going on about the pretty little clouds.
- I struggled to keep from glossing over the paragraph. Perhaps that's my failing, but I've read prose of which I enjoyed each word.
Well, it works better in the context of the story than it does wrenched from its roots like this. The narrator's wife inspires a kind of awe in him - an awe that in effect blinds him to the truth about her until it's too late. The passage is an expression of that awe, at a moment in the story when he is getting closer to learning the truth.
Literature is perhaps not the best medium in which to convey the experience of human eroticism.
It's not really a story or narrative but a raw feeling, so it's more suited to visual or musical media. Maybe weirdo forms of poetry -- the good kind.
As much as females prefer verbal over visual media, when they want to get aroused, they look at pictures or turn on music. Only hormone-depleted women rely primarily on romance novels. Hence all the Klimt and Chagall prints on the coed's dormroom walls, or the throbbing body of a collegienne staring at her Abercrombie model posters.
Not true, Agnostic. It may be that only the "hormone-depleted" read Harlequin-type romance novels, but there's a big range of other writing (Danielle Steele, Judith Krantz, Jacquelynn Susann in the old days) written for women with fairly to very explicit sex scenes. And it's read by a younger female audience. Women like Klimt or Chagall more because their painting is beautiful than because it's some kind of arousal mechanism for them. Please believe me: I've seen statistics (but don't have them handy), and I also know from observing my female friends.
I do enjoy your literature posts, though I can't say much about them; the arcs of our reading circles don't intersect much. I tend to go for the more Dionysian aspect of the arts. I should read Waugh, though; any misanthrope who smokes a pipe is a kindred spirit in my book. His quote on how nasty he'd be if he *wasn't* religious is quite apropos.
I actually disagree a bit with you on eroticism in literary form. It's tough to pull off, no doubt, but I think it's possible. What one has to do is simply to write to allow the reader to go in between the lines. It's much more difficult in prose than in poetry. One of the most erotic poems I ever read had only one mention of a bodice and of the woman's lips. The rest of it was a subtly charged description of the room and the shadows cast by the trees outside. It didn't even resort to using the metaphoric shorthands for sex. The brief mentions of the girl were enough to position the rest of the poem to be interpreted in that light.
Also.... (bites tongue very hard). Forbearance is a lost art, but for the sake of civilized discourse, I would submit to a full glossectomy.
And herein lies the trouble with debating females -- balancing "saying what you really think" and "saying what you know will spur the flirt-arguing onward."
It's probably why arts and humanities people are so wrong -- too much of it is flirting, as Michael Blowhard says about French intellectual culture (which, he says, Americans were suckered into taking seriously). Where there are few females to distract a man's logical mind into flirting, a more accurate picture of the subject emerges.
No, I know that young girls read about boys and sex (but mostly prefer reading about how awful Girl World is). But level of hormones must be a good predictor of a female's visual-to-verbal ratio in erotic preferences.
Klimt and Chagall made good art, but of all the good art, why do college girls choose the subset that flushes their loins with blood?
Please believe me: I've seen statistics (but don't have them handy), and I also know from observing my female friends.
As much as females prefer verbal over visual media, when they want to get aroused, they look at pictures or turn on music
Perhaps the two of you are arguing about different things? If you're talking about things that might make a women feel more sensual in diffuse sort of way, things like music, art, certain perfumes, wearing fabric that feel sensual against the skin work, sure.
But if a woman is um...looking to get the job done and her own fantasy life is not enough (or wants something to spark the fantasy-weaving), she is more likely to seek out (usually soft-core) sexy film scenes or explicit written material & use the visuals it inspires to achieve gratification. Men are more likely to use still pictures of anonymous models for this purpose - women can too, obviously, but the stereotype that women prefer some narrative or context is true.
Where there are few females to distract a man's logical mind into flirting, a more accurate picture of the subject emerges.
Also helpful is when one of the debaters is not rigid & pinched in his mindset and convinced that he is always right, a certainty that is often unfortunately unearned. It is also helpful if this debater tries to keep condescension, rudeness, and generally disagreeable personality traits controlled so everyone involved can just focus on the issue at hand.
Well, what is better than a male who tells females what they like??
I haven't been able to take part in this discussion because google has been giving me trouble.
Agnostic, believe me, I have better reason than you to know what women find arousing. There's a huge market of non-Harlequin authors who specialize in a kind of soft-core "literary" (the term is a bit doubtful here) porn or erotica. Popular in my generation were Danielle Steele and Judith Krantz; there's also Sidney Sheldon's "women's books", like The Other Side of Midnight.
Please don't be so rude in proclaiming yourself to be right and others wrong.
I have made no argument about "what women want" -- I made an argument about what causes some females to prefer X and others to prefer Y. (So much for the reading comprehension skills that arts & humanities people say they're superior at.) It could be the same female at different stages of life, young vs. old, or in different phases of her menstrual cycle.
Variation in hormone levels predicts variation in all kinds of sex-related things. That's obvious in the abstract, but I know a lot of the lit to have concrete examples. That's why I'm "rigid" -- I know what I'm talking about.
Women who are naturally cycling pay more attention to the genitals when watching porn, while those on birth control -- i.e., who have depleted hormone levels -- fixate more on the background, jewelry, etc. I don't need a study to tell me that teenage girls plaster their bedroom walls with visuals of hunky, usually bare-torsoed guys, while women over 30 don't, and that this surely tracks the different average level of sex hormones between young and old.
That's why I say that when females have higher levels of sex hormones, they're going to be more interested in visual and less in verbal forms of erotica, compared to those with lower levels. It's just part of becoming more guy-like (sexually aggressive, sexually promiscuous, focusing on the genitals rather than atmospheric objects in porn, etc.).
Ultimately, this is what decides a debate: facts directly bearing on the argument, or a clear and robust pattern of which the argument is an obvious special case. Arguments are not decided by personal feeling or social grace.
(BTW, I try not to be rude at the outset of a debate, but when people so twist my words and with such haughtiness -- like Sister Wolf's remark -- they deserve a little wake-up call.)
I don't need a study to tell me that teenage girls plaster their bedroom walls with visuals of hunky, usually bare-torsoed guys, while women over 30 don't, and that this surely tracks the different average level of sex hormones between young and old.
I'm not sure that's the best example - it's considered tacky, low-class, and rather ridiculous for males or females over 30 to plaster their walls with pictures of heartthrobs, especially if they're middle class and up. The desire to avoid that impression can explain that.
Anyway, I'm not sure I buy that older women lose their taste for visual media in a major way - I work in film/tv and one definite trend is the increasing sexual explicitness of tv aimed at women and how well it goes over with the audience; as well as the popularity of celeb, soap opera, etc. magazines among the older crowd, which always feature heavy-lidded, "I'm too sexy for my shirt" photo shoots with good-looking actors, like Tiger Beat for Moms. Also, women in this age group make up a big share of the audience for racy (mainstream, not porno) movies. For example, the direct-to-video erotic thriller industry is basically supported by and aimed at female consumers.
The antidote for ire isn't trying to find a calm within yourself. No, the antidote for ire is to find humor in the absurd.
Laughing at the joke that will never be gotten is the only thing I can do.
That's why I'm "rigid"--I know what I'm talking about.
And that's why I'm rigid too. You know what you're talking about. Ummm yeah. When you talk all knowledgeable like, I just wanna be your butt-slave.
Hurt me!
P.S. Self-evaluation is less reliable than an appropriate concern given to the opinions of others. If lots of people say you come across a certain way, maybe, maybe try listening. Just a bit. Occasionally. Try it!
"I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you are mistaken"...when you say all these wonderful things about yourself. 'Cause you are mistaken.
And take note that it's only you saying them. Doesn't that ever bother you?
(BTW, I try not to be rude at the outset of a debate, but when people so twist my words and with such haughtiness -- like Sister Wolf's remark -- they deserve a little wake-up call.)
Actually you were (and frequently are) rude at the outset of the debate or in response to an innocuous question or comment you deem too stupid to receive a polite response. I assume this tone is your default. Just don't be surprised that people find it irritating.
The best literary sex scenes are by Ariosto. His huge poem is available in a wonderfully well done translation by, somewhat ironically, well known Christian intellectual Barbara Reynolds. Spenser and Tasso are also pretty good.
Carew's A Rapture is good as well, but a bit too much focussed on the male's pleasure I should think. Among 20th century poets Jaroslav Seifert is probably the best for this sort of thing.
I seem to recall some good stuff from John Donne, but can't remember anything in particular.
Now excuse me while I return to the regularly scheduled task of managing my harem. ;)
"Well, what is better than a male who tells females what they like??"
These were my exact words, not anything about "what women want." I have no idea where that came from. Freud, wasn't it?
In any case, Agnostic, your insult toward Clio is so hostile and arrogant, one wonders if you even know how out of order it is.
I assume this tone is your default.
I visit and comment at many of the same sites he does (here, 2BH, Roissy). And going by his comments over the past year or so, it looks as though he's beat into his head that "low agreeableness" is a defining aspect of his personality and he's running with it. And still running.
Actually you were (and frequently are) rude at the outset of the debate or in response to an innocuous question
I once asked him an innocuous question at his blog to which he responded in a manner that would have gotten him decked, were we face to face.
Anyway, the transformation of his persona over the past year from a self-deprecating, smallish, skinny introvert in his mid-20s (about two years ago the Blowhards linked to the photos he posted of himself) to a scooter-operator on a road rage rampage feels like he's wearing an ill-fitting manufactured personality. He needs to lose it. It will be a source of embarassment to him sooner then he realizes.
I know I'm piling on here. If Clio's Mortal frowns, I won't be offended if she deletes this comment. But I wouldn't be saying this if he wasn't otherwise an interesting and insightful writer with some real potential.
And he needs to tone down his tales of teen groping. It's creepy.
I've always heard that the rule when it comes to eroticism is women = verbal and men = visual. Maybe things are starting to change, but somehow I don't think that's the case.
pa - I agree, Agnostic is getting way too annoying. He seems rather maturity-deprived.
Agnostic has a way of needling me about being an arts major. I don't think he means any harm by it, though it sounds perhaps ruder than he intends. I've done some needling of him myself. Don't attack each other any more, people, please.
I think being female is a disadvantage in reading this passage. This is the olde-time version of reciting baseball statistics, sheesh.
Well, Clio, the thing is, it's not just aimed at you. He's directing it explicitly at entire classes of people. It basically insults the intelligence and intellectual merit of a whole class of people here.
Not only that, it's never done as part of a heated exchange, but simply his way of postulating points from the get go. Insult the opposition while casting about his stock and trade gigantic strawmen and ad hoc "theories of everything".
He doesn't mean any harm by it perhaps, but neither does a three year old having a temper tantrum in a restaurant. It doesn't make it any less tiresome or annoying for the rest of grown-ups around, even though relatives my find his screechings have some sort of twee charm to them.
If you wish for others to not make comments at his expense, then it would be best to hold him to the standards you want the rest of us to keep.
Then maybe the rest of us will begin to regard him as an adult instead of as a indulged half-cocked brat at a dinner party we wish would just take his rhetorical water pistols and hobby horses home.
Well, Spike, you make a good point there. I suppose I haven't been trying to enforce my own rules firmly enough recently. Part of the reason on this occasion is that for some reason I've had difficulty posting comments to my own blog! I attempted to post a couple in which I tried to rein Agnostic in, but they simply vanished into the e-ether, and I was too frustrated to try again.
Agnostic, behave yourself!
Clio
btw, Thursday, I don't know Ariosto's work at all, except of course in references by other writers, but you've piqued my curiosity about it!
Donne's poetry is wonderfully sexy. Perhaps I'll post some soon...
Clio
Agnostic deserves to be banned. He's extremely uncivil.
Warren
Well, banning seems excessive. His comments can be interesting and he's certainly the go-to guy for stats.
It's just...well, I'm reminded of a story he told here about how he complimented a female friend by telling her she had a feminine personality and she took this as an insult implying weakness and began acting bitchier, which then prompted Agnostic to avoid her and hope she got the message that her bitchery was not attractive to people. Maybe he can take his own advice?
Coming late to this comment thread, I enjoy the literary quotations as well.
Well, I've never yet banned anyone, but every now and then I've deleted a comment (it's very rare, people, I promise), and a couple of times I've simply closed down a comment thread when it got too hostile, or else when it seemed to be getting completely stale, with arguments going round and round and no one paying any attention to each other.
I'll post something again soon; have just felt a bit stale for the last few days.
Clio
The muse is right. I like the poetry etc. but don't usually have anything intelligent to say about it.
That passage, however, is just plain BAD. What the heck is he doing? It reads like a Monty Python sketch, "Highly Literate Twit Having Sex" or something.
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