A History of Erotica  

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"Man reveals his true nature in his fears and desires. Show me what he is afraid of, show me what excites him, I will tell you who he is."--Sholem Stein

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This page The History of Erotica is a placeholder for a draft of an English translaton of De geschiedenis van de erotiek: van holbewoner tot Markies de Sade by Jan Willem Geerinck, published in 2011 in Dutch.

Contents

Table of contents

Introduction

Prehistory

Eros is the oldest of the gods, said Plato. He is the god of love, lust, blind passion and sexual reproduction. If Eros with his bow and arrow hits someone, the victim falls in love immediately. His parentage is significant: he is the son of Aphrodite, goddess of love, and Ares, god of war. He is thus born out of beauty and belligerence, out of love and hate. Out of two opposites that are united nowhere else than in the most intimate space of the human psyche: the sexual act, and its abstraction: eroticism.

The prehistoric caveman, who we imagine to be hardly in command of language, communicating with jolting sounds rather than words, experienced this act just as sacredly and profanely as 21st-century man. Just as elusive, ineffable, unnameable and indescribable as today's mortal. Yet he tries to give expression to what he feels, to convert the immediacy of his experience into a tangible and visible image. The male desire and the heaving and pumping of his pelvis, apparently at random, without anyone having ever taught him. The woman receiving his pelvic blows and undulating under his strength, still unaware that her pregnancies are the result of their frenzy. Their mutual obsession with the other, the sense of wonder that transcends the animalistic but never entirely succeeds in escaping it. This powerful cocktail of confusing emotions provides the first erotic images and the first erotic art, from its beginnings two-fold, with a male and female version.

The cave painting Shaft of the Dead Man in the French Lascaux depicts male eroticism, and the Austrian Venus of Willendorf figurine depicts the female variant. Both date back to thousands of years before Christ, long before the Greeks and Romans. The painting in Lascaux and the Willendorf statue are the icons of prehistoric erotica. The dead man symbolizes male aggressive sexuality, as dictated by the hormone testosterone, the hormone at the root of the two basic male instincts, so aptly described by American New Age philosopher Ken Wilber as "fuck it, or kill it." The two instincts which the cave dweller needed to reproduce their kind.

The dead man shows a recumbent male figure with an erect penis, drawn as a straight line, as a toddler would. Towering above him is a wounded bison whose intestines protrude from its body, next to the bison is a broken spear. Has the man conquered the bison before the fight became his fatal end? Is it the depiction of a dream vision? Impossible to answer that question, but the violent struggle of the man and his obvious sexual arousal are juxtaposed here in one image, and are both symbols of male eroticism. His excitement - which once put on fire, is sometimes extinguished after a few minutes - has far-reaching consequences for her. Her breasts become fuller, her mound swells, her belly gets bigger and her buttocks heavier, her nesting instinct requires protection. She is the pregnant woman, the Venus of Willendorf, the idealization of femininity, the incarnate womb, the embodied protector of the species. The mother goddess. The hunter of Lascaux and the mother of Willendorf are the archetypes of erotic art. They symbolize the irrationality of love, which despite of its apparent incompatibility of the aggressive male and protective female eroticism, results in its most brilliant moments in a miraculous and divine harmony between Venus and Eros, the protagonists in the history of erotica.

Greco-Roman


In contrast to our caveman, our Greco-Roman ancestor understands agriculture and literally reaps its fruits. The elite of this new civilization can read and write, paint and sculpt. One who masters the written word can compose a love letter, but just as well write erotic poetry, a novel or a book about sex education. And thus love becomes an art, practised by both gods and mortals.

Thanks to these skills, which produce cultural artefacts, our understanding of Greco-Roman love life is much more precise than that of prehistoric man. The Greeks are popularly known for the love of older men for young boys, called pederasty and for homosexuality, the love of men for men, in general. In fact, the term Greek love has became a byword for homosexuality, used well into the previous century. That kind of loving is also found in Roman society, but there the attitude towards homosexuals and pederasts is rather less positive, a Roman man had to be cautious not to be on the receiving end of this kind of love. From the Romans we especially remember their general debauchery, and the perversions of the decadent Roman emperors, handed down throughout history with famous examples the exploits of ruler Caligula and empress Messalina.

Supposedly, Greeks and Romans knew very little sexual shame. To prove this point the large number of utensils that are decorated in an erotic or sexual manner, like the grotesque penis-shaped oil lamps, are usually brought to the fore. Yet shame could not have been an unknown phenomenon in Greco-Roman times. It is noteworthy that the Greek and Roman terms for the genitalia, aidoion and pudendum, mean 'shame' in their literal translation. The corresponding goddesses Aidos and Pudicitia are deifications of modesty, chastity and shame. If the Greeks and Romans embellished their surroundings with -- to our eyes -- obscene objects, the truth is that these objects are not a sign of their general debauchery. The penis as ornamental element has a symbolic value. It stands for fertility and fertility is essential for our ancestor. Fertility for the crops he grows and fertility for his family, because that shall assure him of a carefree retirement. Sexually suggestive objects for everyday use are not about sex but about happiness. Just as a four-leaf clover in a locket around someone's neck or a horseshoe above the door. These do not betray one's interest in botany or equestrianism, they are simply signs trying to enforce luck. Thus for the Romans, the penis is simply is a sign of good fortune, a means to ward off the evil eye. Whoever is offended by this phallic object is sorely mistaken.


The East

The Middle Ages

Renaissance

France

The love that dare not speak its name

The Low Countries

Baroquerotica

The 18th century: Eros Enlightened

Verantwoording

Bibliografie

See also


This page A History of Erotica, is © Jan-Willem Geerinck and may only be cited as per the fair use doctrine.
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