Wayne R. Dynes
French Erotic Writings
from the Ancien Régime to the Revolution
Originally published at symbolabs.blogspot.de.
Reproduced here by permission of the author.
Contents:
LIBERTINE
LITERATURE IN FRANCE AND ITS BACKGROUND
HISTOIRE
DE DOM BOUGRE
THÉRÈSE
PHILOSOPHE
SAME-SEX
WORKS: AN EARLY EXAMPLE
DENIS
DIDEROT
THE
MARQUIS DE SADE
SAME-SEX
PAMPHLETS OF THE TIME OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
NATURE
AS CRITERION
SOME
CONCLUSIONS
FOOTNOTES
Before the
censorship of books collapsed in the United States during the mid-1960s,
American travelers were accustomed to visit one of the English-language
bookshops in Paris to acquire erotic books we could not obtain in our own
country. I remember going in 1958 to Brentano’s in the City of Light to buy
Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, which I then proudly displayed as I sat with
my coffee in European cafes. Sometimes people asked if I was a medical student,
Paris was then the capital of underground literature in the English language,
and its prince was Maurice Girodias (1919-1990), who headed the Olympia Press.1
Remembered in literary histories for his publication of works not only by
Miller but by Beckett (Malone trilogy), Nabokov (Lolita), and Donleavy (The
Ginger Man), he also published gay classics such as William Talsman’s The Gaudy
Image (1958) and Burroughs’s The Naked Lunch (sic, 1959), translations of
Apollinaire’s Les Onze mille verges (of which more in a moment) and Raymond
Queneau’s Zazie dans le Métro (1959), and a reprint of Teleny (1958).
After encountering legal difficulties, Girodias left Paris in 1963, eventually
settling in New York City. There he published erotica under various imprints.
One of these, The Other Traveller, featured gay-themed books. Between 1967 and
1972 “Traveller’s Companions” included fiction by Richard Amory (his mystery,
Frost), Victor J. Banis (The Gay Haunt by “Victor Jay”), John Coriolan (Seven
Ways from Sunday), Angelo d’Arcangelo (Sookey), Joseph Hansen as James Colton
(The Outward Side and Todd, the last “Colton” novel), Larry Townsend (Run,
Little Leather Boy, The Sexual Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by “J. Watson,”
and The Scorpius Equation), and Dirk Vanden (All Is Well and a reprint of All
or Nothing).
Girodias published a hardback edition of Ronald Tavel’s Street of Stairs
(1968). Under his Ophelia Press imprint he published d’Arcangelo’s The
Homosexual Handbook (1968). It was notorious for outing J. Edgar Hoover and
Cardinal Spellman. The original green cover edition quickly disappeared. When
it was reprinted with a bold pink cover, Hoover’s name had disappeared. Olympia
covers were uniformly plain. In general their gay line received more respect
than that accorded most gay pulps. While Girodias set new standards for such
works in terms of editing and printing, he was very casual about paying his
authors. Fees were tiny – and they arrived late, it at all.2
In fact, Girodias had taken over the business of his father, the expatriate
Englishman Jack Kahane (1919-1939), whose imprint, founded in 1929, was called
the Obelisk Press.3 It was Kahane who first published Miller, together
with a number of other significant American and British authors. In 1933 he
published Charles Henri Ford and Parker Tyler’s The Young and Evil.
Kahane was in turn preceded by another Englishman, Charles Carrington
(1857-1922).4 Born in England as Paul Harry Ferdinando, in 1895 he
settled in Paris, where he published and sold erotica. Carrington also issued
works of classical literature, including the first complete English translation
of Aristophanes, together with books by noted authors such as Oscar Wilde and
Anatole France; these served to cloak his erotica in a veil of legitimacy.
Carrington, who displayed a particular interest in flagellation (ostensibly the
English vice), also published books in French.
All these entrepreneurs of erotic books took advantage of a quirk in French law
that exempted books printed in foreign languages from censorship.
Still, some “dirty books.” quite a few in fact, were published in the French
language.5 In Carrington’s time the spiritus animator of the erotic field
in Paris was the poet and art critic Guillaume Apolliinaire (1880-1918). While
not a publisher, Apollinaire was active in several ways, writing two pieces of
erotica himself: Les Onze mille verges (1907) and Les exploits d’un jeune Don
Juan (apparently 1911).
The title of the first novel contains a French pun substituting the word verges
(switches or pricks) for the usual vierges (virgins – as in the Eleven Thousand
Virgins of St. Ursula). The book relates the adventures of Mony Vibescu, a
young Romanian aristocrat who is highly sexed. It is mostly heterosexual, with
a good deal of S/M, scat, and necrophilia. However, there are several gay-male
episodes. In Bucharest, the adolescent Mony is regularly sodomized by a Serbian
diplomat. In due course he sets out for Paris, where he becomes an accomplished
rake. At one point, while he is practicing sixty-nine with his valet, a servant
enters with the news of his appointment as an officer in the Russian army. The
two men celebrate the occasion by sodomizing each other.
In 1953 Olympia Press published The Debauched Hospodar, a translation of Les
Onze mille verges by “Oscar Mole” (a pseudonym of the Scottish writer Alexander
Trocchi). In the 1960s this translation, together with the Olympia version of
the second Apollinaire effort, entitled variously as The Amorous Exploits /
Memoirs of a Young Rakehell, was pirated several times by U.S. pulp publishers.
Somewhat hastily contrived, the second work is a coming-of-age novel recounting
the sexual education of an adolescent named Roger who seduces and impregnates
several women.6
Conditions were less favorable in England, but nonetheless one erotic publisher
managed to survive there for a time. Leonard Smithers (1861-1907) undertook the
challenging task of issuing Sir Richard Burton’s translation of the Book of the
Thousand and One Nights in 1885.7 Later he published books by Aubrey
Beardsley, Ernest Dowson, Aleister Crowley, and the 1893 book known as Teleny
(often ascribed, though probably wrongly, to Oscar Wilde). Reputedly, his
bookshop in Bond Street displayed the slogan: “Smut is cheap today.” This claim
was misleading, as Smithers’ books tended to be expensive.
Generally the United States was inhospitable to such activity, at least until
the censorship was lifted in the mid-sixties when a number of opportunist pulp
publishers sprang up. A notable, though hardly respectable example was Marvin
Miller’s Collectors Publications, located in the City of Industry and Covina in
California, which began shamelessly pirating the Olympia Press books.
Collectors Publications even purloined the characteristic Olympia Press cover
design with its layout of nested rectangles enclosing the name of the author
and the title.
It seems clear then that this quintet – Girodias, Kahane, Carrington,
Apolliinaire, and Smithers--were the godfathers of our pulps. Who then were
their godfathers?
LIBERTINE
LITERATURE IN FRANCE AND ITS BACKGROUND
Answering that question takes us back to the Old Regime in France, where a
lively trade in underground literature had grown up to evade the strict
censorship of the Bourbon monarchy.8 For safety, these books were usually
printed abroad, generally in the Netherlands and Switzerland. Sometimes the
books seem to have been actually printed in France, but bore a false imprint,
such as “Freetown” or “Philadelphia.” If they were printed abroad, as most
were, they had to be smuggled into France. There they were hawked by itinerant
peddlers who supposedly kept them hidden under their coats. Hence this
production is sometimes called books distributed “sous le manteau.”
This literature generally goes under the name of libertine. The term stems from
the Latin libertinus, a freed slave. In the course of time the meaning morphed
into two acceptations. The first means someone who questions established views
in religion and philosophy. The second means someone who is licentious,
especially as concerns sensual pleasures. The common link is defiance of
conventional middle-class norms of thought and behavior.
During the Old Regime in France, some libertine works were nonfiction efforts
critiquing political or religious orthodoxy. The more serious works of this
kind were aptly termed philosophical. Yet there were also erotic books,
subversive in a different way. Many were only mildly sexual. Others, though,
were downright pornographic. Perhaps the best-known examples, slightly later,
are the novels of the Marquis de Sade. Since the trade was usually clandestine,
book sellers found it expedient to classify all the books under the honorific
rubric of “philosophy.”
This body of writing may be termed the sub-basement of the Enlightenment. Yes,
the conventional wisdom of politics and religion must be questioned. But it is
also true that sex sells.
The story actually takes us back to the sixteenth century. While the works of
François Rabelais offer a precedent in terms of sexual explicitness, the new
crop of works lacked the fantastic, carnivalesque emphasis of the earlier
French writer. In fact, the beginnings of the “dirty book” genre derive from
Rabelais’ Italian contemporary, Pietro Aretino (1492-1556). In 1524 Aretino
brought out his sixteen Sonetti lussuriosi, sex sonnets describing different
positions for copulation. These texts elicited illustrations by Giulio Romano,
which were turned into prints by Marcantonio Raimondi. The resulting marriage
of text and image ranks as the first illustrated porno book.
Also influential was a prose work by Aretino, the Ragionamenti (1534-36). Over
the course of sex days, a seasoned prostitute explains the secrets of the trade
to a novice.
Directly inspired by the Ragionamenti was L’Escole des Filles ou la Philosophie
des dames, first issued in 1655. While the work is anonymous, Michel Millot and
Jean L’Ange have been suggested as authors. In this story the experienced
Suzanne explains the facts of life to her naive 16-year old cousin Fanchon. The
English diarist Samuel Pepys notes that he bought a copy for solitary perusal.
Afterwards, he burned the book so that his wife would not discover it. During
the heyday of the American pulps. purchasers would also commonly destroy their
gay erotic books to keep them from falling into the hands of relatives and
associates. For that reason some titles have become scarce.
In 1660 this first French effort was succeeded by a more elaborate production
with a complicated history. Nicolas Chorier (1612-1682), who worked as a lawyer
and government official in Grenoble. Because of his position, Chorier took
great pains to protect his identity – as did many American pulp authors. For
one thing he composed his erotic work in Latin. The first edition of 1660 bears
the sonorous title of Aloisiæ Sigeæ, Toletanæ, Satyra sotadica de arcanis
amoris et Veneris, Aloisia hispanice scripsit, latinitate donavit Joannes
Meursius V. C. The reader is supposed to believe that the text was originally
written by one Aloysia or Luisa Sigea, a court lady and poet of Spanish origin
residing in Lisbon. The text was then translated into Latin by a certain
Joannes Meursius, a Dutch humanist. Both these writers are fictional.
Chorier’s work consists of seven dialogues between an Italian lady Tullia and
her younger cousin Ottavia. While the main concern is with the various
positions of heterosexual copulation, two of the dialogues deal with lesbian
relations. Ottavia also includes a list of famous male homosexuals, one of the
earliest such compilations that is known.
Subsequently, Chorier’s book was translated into French under the title of
L’Académie des dames (1680). There were also English and Italian renderings of
this very popular work.
While there were some publications in the interval, the production of such works
achieved an apogee in France in the period between 1740 and 1755. We turn now
to the two most important such works.
HISTOIRE DE
DOM BOUGRE
The book entitled Histoire de Dom B*** portier des Chartreux, écrite par
lui-même (1741) is ascribed to the lawyer Jean-Charles Gervaise de Latouche
(1715-1782). The novel is cast in the form of the memoirs of “Brother Bugger,”
looking back over his life from his position as a gatekeeper in a Carthusian
monastery. In addition to its sexual connotations, the French word “bougre”
(easily detectable under the disguise of the asterisks) retained the meaning of
heretic. Much of the story takes place in or near monasteries. The book is thus
a direct challenge to the Church.
Brother Bugger’s real name is Saturnin, and the account mainly concerns his
sexual education. At the age of thirteen or fourteen, Saturnin chances to espy
his foster mother indulging in sexual congress with a man who is not her
husband. Inspired to emulation, the adolescent almost succeeds with a young
woman named Suzon, whom he believes to be his sister. After the failure of that
attempt, Saturnin is actually initiated, the full nine yards, by her horny
godmother. While the older woman is not attractive, she proves an apt
instructress. After a number of other adventures, Saturnin goes to live in a
Celestine monastery where sexual license, both heterosexual and homosexual, is
rife. The sodomitically inclined Father Casimir arranges a threesome; the young
man fucks his niece, while Casimir is penetrating him from behind. At the
monastery Saturnin meets his real mother, a nun named Gabrielle, who has
offered her favors to so many monks that no one can discover who the real
father is.
Eventually, Saturnin reunites with Suzon – now revealed as not his sister after
all – and he successfully copulates with her. But she gives him syphilis. As a
remedy he is castrated. His tombstone reads: “Hic situs est Dom Bougre,
fututus, futuit” (Here lies Dom Bougre; he fucked and was fucked).
In addition to the explicit sex scenes, “Brother Bugger’s Story” is notably for
providing a matter-of-fact description of masturbation and a realistic approach
to the danger of venereal disease. Since the novel is intended for a
heterosexual audience, same-sex action is sparse, but in addition to the
threesome described above, there is a lesbian scene. In the convents nuns make
common use of dildoes.
The novel’s message is clear. The quest for human happiness is the only thing
worth seeking. Despite the undeniable risks, one must proceed on this basis,
otherwise one will feel regret afterwards. Even the brothers of the monastic
orders, those supposed guardians of the strictest morality, acknowledge this
imperative in their personal lives. Absent the hypocrisy so must we.
Brother Bugger’s book enjoyed great popularity in the eighteenth century, when
it was reprinted at least five times (the last apparently in 1770).
THÉRÈSE
PHILOSOPHE
Thérèse Philosophe is a 1748 novel ascribed to Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis
d’Argens, that contains explicit sexual descriptions.9 The narrative
starts with Thérèse, from solid bourgeois stock, who loses her sexual innocence
through voyeurism, when she is invited to witness a demonstration arranged by
her friend Mlle Eradice, who submits herself to the erotic ministrations of
Father Dirrag. After first flagellating his companion, Dirrag brings out a kind
of holy relic, the stiffened end of the “cord of St. Francis,” which is of
course his erect male member with which he penetrates her. The two experience a
sublime mixture of sensual and spiritual joys, The episode is based on reality,
for “Father Dirrag” and “Mlle. Eradice” are anagrams stemming from the names of
Father Jean-Baptiste Girard and Catherine Cadière, implicated in a highly
publicized trial in 1730.
Relegated to a convent, Thérèse languishes because of the lack of opportunities
for erotic expression, throwing her body into disorder. Rescue comes in the
guise of Mme. C and Abbe T. , who provide both instruction and sexual relief.
Thérèse’s sexual education continues with her connection with Mme.
Bois-Laurier, an experienced prostitute. This section of the novel is a
variation on the whore dialogues, a convention that derived, as we have seen,
from Aretino.
Finally, Thérèse meets a certain Count who wants her for his mistress. Because
of her fear of dying in childbirth, she refuses his advances. So the Count
makes the following promise: if she can spend two weeks in a room full of
erotic books and paintings without yielding to the temptation of masturbation,
he will refrain from demanding intercourse. Of course, Thérèse loses the wager
and becomes the Count’s permanent mistress.
For all of its explicit debauchery, the novel can claim some intellectual
merit. Between the more graphic sections of the novel, the characters discuss
philosophical issues, including materialism, hedonism and atheism. In keeping
with the materialism of leading thinkers of the time, the phenomena of our
world are simply matter in motion; religion is a fraud, though a useful fiction
for keeping the lower orders in line. Nonetheless, Thérèse believes in God, to
whom she attributes the human capacity for pleasure. Thérèse philosophe stands
out among its competitors because if offers a balanced mix of the two main
forms of libertinism; religious and philosophical skepticism and sexual
license.
The book not only draws attention to the sexual repression of women at the time
of the enlightenment, but also to the abuse of ecclesiastical authority for
sexual exploitation. This anticlerical element is generally lacking in the
Anglophone counterpart to these works, though it currently finds a nonfictional
counterpart in the current concern about sexual abuse on the part of members of
the Catholic clergy.
The author of Thérèse philosophe does not look favorably on male homosexuality.
In fairness, however, he includes a brief summary of the arguments that were
circulating among adepts of Greek love in his day (recounted by Mme.
Bois-Laurier). Our goal is pleasure, says the anonymous spokesperson. It is
this quest that guides us, just as with our [heterosexual] adversaries. In so
many words, the anonymous defender of gay rights says that this orientation is
not a matter of choice. He rejects the argument that same-sex behavior is unnatural;
this cannot be, for it is nature itself that has given us this propensity.
Finally, there is the argument that such acts do not lead to procreation. That
is not why anyone seeks the pleasure of sex, he tartly avows. These arguments
were to recur at the end of the century in the pamphlet known as Les petits
bougres au manège (1790).
Dom Bougre and Thérèse philosophe have several characteristics in common. Both
are told in the first person in a narrative in which the protagonist goes from
naïveté to a new awareness of self, so that the person can live an independent
life that disregards the constraints of conventional social norms. In her
account, Thérèse reflects from the standpoint of her status as a mature, but
not yet elderly woman, while Brother Bugger is written looking back from near
the end of his life. Nonetheless, both are examples of a type of fiction known
as the Bildungsoman or “formation novel.” This genre traces the psychological
and moral (sometimes immoral) growth of the protagonist from callow youth to
mature adulthood. In Brother Bugger’s case we go even beyond – to old age.
In all likelihood the Bildungsroman emerged from folk tales featuring a dunce
or youngest son who goes out in the world to seek his fortune. The familiar
story of Dick Whittington and his Cat, rising from humble beginning to become a
wealthy merchant and finally Lord Mayor of London, is a good example. In the
Bildungsroman the beginning of the journey is usually triggered by a setback or
an emotional conflict. The ensuing process of maturation is long, strenuous,
and sometimes perilous, with repeated clashes between the protagonist’s
personal needs and the norms enforced by a powerful social order that is
hostile to self-actualization. In some works, the protagonist is impelled to
tell his or her story in order to assist others embarking on a similar journey.
This is the case with Thérèse.
This pattern recurs in twentieth-century gay novels. Probably the best-known
example is Gore Vidal’s The City and the Pillar (1948), where the protagonist
Jim Willard travels from his provincial milieu to various cosmopolitan locales
to the culminating episode in New York City. Vidal’s novel is actually a
variation on the genre, as indeed many examples are. The author seems to be saying
that Willard’s education is incomplete, for in the end he seeks, disastrously,
to return to the teenage fixation he had begun with. The pulps provide many
straightforward examples. In Larry Townsend’s Run Little Leather Boy (1971), a
teenager obtains his first sexual experience from an older man who picks him up
as a teenager. After this the protagonist embarks on a complicated journey to
become a full-fledged adept of the leather subculture.
SAME-SEX
WORKS: AN EARLY EXAMPLE
As we have seen, same-sex behavior is generally secondary in these erotic
works, if it appears at all. Works focusing exclusively on same-sex relations
become common only after the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789.
There are a few exceptions to this generalization.
The earliest landmark is the Anecdotes pour servir à l’histoire secrète des
Ebugors (Medoso [Sodom], 1733), now a very rare book. Despite its playful tone,
this work ranks as an early plea for gay rights. The term Ebugor is an anagram
for “bougre.” The anonymous author begins with an account of the war between
the Ebugors (gays) and the Cythereans, who are encroaching on the territory of
the former. As the domain of Aphrodite, Cythera was a code word in France of
the Old Regime for heterosexuality. (Note the early version of the gay-straight
contrast, so often claimed to be unknown before the latter years of the
nineteenth century.)
War breaks out, with the Ebugors being led by their general Kulisher
(break-arse), who had earlier distinguished himself in alliance with the
Coginiens (Ignatiens, that is Jesuits). His soldiers are generally brave
(“tops” in contemporary terms), except for the Chadabers (Bardaches), who are
bottoms.
At length it is decided that the two groups will live together in peace. While
the Ebugors should recognize the paramount status of the Cythereans, they
nonetheless must assert their right to live according to their own laws and
customs.
DENIS
DIDEROT
Another work, a celebrated one, concerns lesbianism, It is La religieuse (The
Nun) by Denis Diderot (1713-1784).10 The Enlightenment writer began the
novel in 1760 and then set it aside, until resuming it in 1780. The full text
only appeared posthumously in 1796, during the freer publishing conditions of
the French Revolution.
In the form of letters, the nun Suzanne Simonin relates the story of her life.
Her parents forced her to enter a convent, ostensibly for financial reasons,
but actually because she is illegitimate. Through this fate, Diderot explicitly
attacks the biblical doctrine that the children must pay for the sins of the
parents. Diderot’s novel is based on a real story of a Longchamp nun named
Marguerite Delamarre.
At the community of the Poor Claires at Longchamp Suzanne is at first fortunate
to encounter an ethical mother superior who was a mystic with strong ethical
principles. Upon the death of this protector, she is replaced by a new, less
kindly mother superior. When Suzanne indicates her wish to leave the convent,
the abbess unleashes a torrent of cruel mental and physical punishments. Losing
the law suit that she starts in order to free herself, Suzanne is required to
remain a nun. In this state she passes successively through three convents. At
the convent of Saint-Eutrope she undergoes prolonged attempts at seduction on
the part of a Sapphic mother superior. Suzanne escapes with her virtue intact,
but only just.
These salacious descriptions seem clearly intended to appeal to the voyeuristic
interests of heterosexual male readers. Despite its literary merits, Diderot’s
novel qualifies as an early example of a genre that flourished in America in
the 1940s and 1950s, when it came to be called “lesbian trash.” Such works were
not in fact sympathetic accounts of lesbianism, as they might at first appear,
but cruel caricatures calculated to stimulate male readers.
Earlier, in 1748, Diderot had published anonymously a somewhat strained satire
on erotic themes entitled Les bijoux indiscrets, in which the word bijou
(jewel) is a euphemism for vagina. As he indicates in his Supplement au voyage
de Bougainville (1772), Diderot was not a friend of sexual expression for its
own sake. Using a Tahitian sage as his mouthpiece, he suggests that copulation
should only be permitted when conception is possible. For this reason, even older
heterosexual women should abstain after menopause. Sterile women must never
have sexual relations. To be sure, the customs of the South Seas may not be
transferable to France, but Diderot invests the idea with an aura of approval.
The whole matter is reviewed in general terms by Diderot in his philosophical
contribution entitled Le Rêve de d’Alembert of 1769. In the closing sections of
this work, an enlightened physician, Dr. Bordeu, undertakes to instruct a
somewhat conventional young woman, Mlle. de l’Espinasse. Dr. Bordeu is
evidently the author’s mouthpiece, but using this device allows Diderot to
establish some distance from views that would surely have displeased the
authorities of his time. (The text was not actually published until 1830.)
Here is the key passage: “Nothing that exists can be against nature or outside
nature, and I don’t even exclude chastity and voluntary continence which, if it
were possible to sin against nature, would be the greatest of crimes against
her as well as being the most serious offenses against the social laws of any
country in which acts were weighted in scales other than those of fanaticism
and prejudice.”11
Enjoined by the Church, chastity and continence are to be deplored, even though
they are not against nature, for that is a logical impossibility. Dr. Bordeu
feels similarly about male homosexual conduct (not of course approved of by the
Church). When Mlle. de l’Espinasse asks about “abominable tastes,” he offers an
environmental explanation. These stem “everywhere from a weakness of he
organism among young people and the mental corruption of the old: in Athens,
from the attraction of beauty; in Rome, from the scarcity of women; and in
Paris, from fear of the pox.”
THE MARQUIS
DE SADE
Except for Diderot, who is not mainly known as an erotic writer, the authors of
the above works have remained obscure. In some cases, the authorship is not
even certain. It is the works that are famous, to the extent that they are, and
not the writers.
That situation is emphatically not the case with the Marquis de Sade, whose
works have even given rise to the word “sadism.” As we shall see, however,
there is much more to Sade than an exaltation of cruelty as a sexual stimulant.12
Donatien Alphonse François de Sade (1740-1814) excelled in carrying the
principles of libertinism to their final term. He held that with the triumph of
atheism and republicanism the restraints imposed by the church and the monarchy
are completely abolished. We are free to engage in any conduct we choose; such
choices can include sexual license. blasphemy, violence, and criminality. In a
pithy statement of his religious and philosophical views, the “Dialogue entre
un prêtre et un moribond” (1782), the priest who arrives to take a deathbed
confession is shocked to find that the dying man regrets only his restraint in
satisfying his urges. Desire, the dying man argues, stems from nature and must
be satisfied; all codes of restraint, social and religious, are man-made and
can be dispensed with.
The personal activity of the Marquis de Sade was mainly heterosexual. However,
his literary program was pansexual, and homosexual activity ranks an important
feature in his program of revolutionary sexual freedom.
His views about same-sex behavior emerge most clearly in the scintillating
dialogue La Philosophie dans le boudoir (Philosophy in the Bedroom, 1795). The
two leading characters maintain that the only moral system that is compatible
with the recent political Revolution is libertinism. Should the people of France
fail to adopt this philosophy, France will be doomed to return to monarchy.
There are six characters. Eugénie is a fifteen year old girl. At the beginning
of the dialogue she is a virgin, brought up by her mother to be well-mannered,
modest and obedient. Madame de Saint-Ange, a 26-year-old libertine woman, is
the owner of the house and bedroom in which the dialogue is set. She has
invited Eugénie to participate in a kind of two-day immersion course on how to
be libertine. The name Saint-Ange is clearly ironic. The Chevalier de Mirval is
Madame de Saint-Ange’s 20-year-old brother. He aids his sister and Dolmancé in
the task of educating Eugénie. Dolmancé is a 36-year-old atheist and
homosexual, a friend of the Chevalier’s. He is Eugénie’s foremost instructor.
Appearing towards the end of the dialogue, Madame de Mistival is Eugénie’s
provincial, self-righteous mother. Finally, the young gardener Augustin
provides a token representation of the working class.
In the introduction, the Marquis de Sade exhorts his readers to indulge in the
various activities described in the dialogue. The work is dedicated to
“voluptuaries of all ages, of every sex.” “Lewd women,” he writes, “let the
voluptuous Saint-Ange be your model; after her example, be heedless of all that
contradicts pleasure’s divine laws, by which all her life she was enchained.”
He then urges “young maidens” to copy Eugénie; “be as quick as she to destroy,
to spurn all those ridiculous precepts inculcated in you by imbecile parents.”
Finally, he urges male readers to “study the cynical Dolmancé,” following his
example of selfishness and consideration for nothing but his own enjoyment.
In fact Dolmancé, the gay man, is the dominant character. He dismisses
morality, compassion, religion, and modesty as absurd encumbrances that stand
in the way of the proper goal of human existence: pleasure.
Eugénie is instructed on the pleasures of various sexual practices and she
proves to be a fast learner. Anal intercourse is favored, with the approval of
all concerned, especially Dolmancé, who prefers male sexual partners and
refuses to have anything other than anal intercourse with females. Madame de
Saint-Ange and her younger brother Le Chevalier also have sex with one another,
and boast of doing so on a regular basis. Dolmancé justifies their incest –
together with all manner of other sexual activity and taboo breaking, such as
buggery, cunnilingus, anilingus, adultery, and homosexuality. His voluble
arguments ultimately reduce to one precept: if it feels good, do it. There is
only one caveat: sex should be nonprocreative. “A beautiful girl must only be
concerned with fucking, never with conceiving.”
It turns out that the corruption of Eugénie is actually at the request of her
father, who has sent her to Madame de Saint-Ange so that his daughter may be
stripped of the conventional morality inculcated by her virtuous mother. In the
midst of their erotic explorations, the characters pause to listen to the
reading of a pamphlet calling for the abolition of Christianity as the ultimate
enemy of republican institutions.
In the concluding episode, Eugénie’s censorious mother, Madame de Mistival,
arrives to rescue her daughter from the “monsters” who are seeking to corrupt
her. Eugénie’s father has warned his daughter and friends in advance, urging
them to thwart and punish his shrewish wife. Madame de Mistival is horrified to
find that not only did her husband arrange for their daughter’s corruption, but
the plan has succeeded: Eugénie has discarded any moral standards she previously
possessed, together with any respect for her mother’s wishes. She refuses to
leave, and Madame de Mistival is soon stripped, beaten, whipped, and raped,
with her daughter taking an active part in this brutalization, even declaring
her wish to kill her mother. Dolmancé eventually summons a syphilitic servant
to rape the unfortunate woman, infecting her.
Lacking the relentless catalogues of transgressions that suffuse Sade’s longer
works, The Philosophy in the Bedroom is suffused with a light-hearted spirit of
play. This may seem paradoxical, but such is the general effect on readers.
Despite all that we have learned in recent decades about the dangers of
careless sexual indulgence, one is tempted to yield to Sade’s special version
of the truism that it is better to live than merely to exist.
At all events one must be careful not to confuse the writings with the man. As
far as we know, the Marquis de Sade never killed anyone. The elaborate
fantasies contained in his books were a product of the deprivation of
experience during three decades of confinement.
The fantasies are particularly prominent in Les 120 Jours de Sodome. While this
vast work is pansexual, it contains a number of homosexual episodes.
In his writings Sade shows himself a master of language. One of his
contributions is to deploy pejorative expressions in a way that detoxifies
them. For example, he turns the disparagement of masturbation as “pollution,” a
common usage at the time, into a word of praise. Like some other writers of the
time, he refers to homosexual behavior as “antiphysique,” against nature. Yet
he does not mean this as a term of disparagement. Nature is not uniformly
benign. Sometimes she is our implacable enemy; it is only fair to return the
favor. In a more general way, corruption and perversion are regarded as good.
This upending of words foreshadows the current effort to redeem such terms as
“queer.” There are also inventions, such as “socratiser,” Sade’s term for
finger-fucking of the anus.
Sade innovated in another way. He declined to be bound by the gentility
principle that had usually been observed by earlier writers in their
descriptions of sexual organs and acts. He freely used street terms, such as
con, cunt; vit, prick; foutre, fuck; and chier, to shit.
For a long time the original texts of the Marquis de Sade, unexpurgated,
remained largely inaccessible to the general public. Their recovery after World
War II is chiefly due to the dogged efforts of the French publisher
Jean-Jacques Pauvert. Efforts at comprehensive English translations began in
1954 with a 575-page Olympia Press edition in Paris with a rendering by
“Pierallessandro Casavini” (Austin Wainhouse) of The 120 Days of Sodom. During
the 1960s the major works of Sade crossed the Atlantic when this translation
and a number of others were issued in three stout volumes by the Grove Press in
New York. In their pulp paperback editions these books reached many American
readers.
SAME-SEX
PAMPHLETS OF THE TIME OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
The first topic to be considered is a cluster of five pamphlets concerning
lesbianism. All rely on a celebrated section of the gossip compilations
(chroniques scandaleuses) published by the prolific Mathieu-François Pidansat
de Mairobert (1707-1779). The item of specific interest is the “Confession de
Mademoiselle Sapho” in his L’Espion anglais, ou Correspondance secrète entre
milord All’Eye et milord All’Ear, vol. X, (London: John Adamson, 1784), pages
179-208.
The “Confession de Mademoiselle Sapho” recounts the education of a young woman
in lesbianism (then known as tribadism) at the hands of an older instructress.
The young woman is particularly suited for this role because of her large
clitoris – evidently a subject of fascination on the part of curious men at the
time. At the center of this text is what purports to be an address by the
actress Françoise Raucourt of 1778 to a secret society of French tribades known
as the Anandrynes. (The term means “women without men.”)
Pidansat’s account drew the attention of many at the time, including the young
Napoleon Bonaparte. The text became of broader interest with the outbreak of
the French Revolution, with its somewhat ambiguous promise of sexual liberty.
At that time, the five pamphlets appeared, reprinting and sometimes recasting the
material.
The pamphlets are as follows: Anandria ou Confessions de Mlle Sapho (“En
Grèce,” 1789); Histoire de la secte anandryne (Paris, 1791); La Liberté ou Mlle
Raucourt à toute la secte anandrine assemblée au foyer de la Comédie-Française
(“A Lèche-Con,” 1791); La Nouvelle Sapho ou Histoire de la secte anandryne par
la C. [citoyenne] R. [Raucourt] (Paris, 1793 or 1794); and La Jolie Tribade, ou
Confessions d’une jeune fille (Paris, 1797].
Four of these pieces are cannibalized versions of the material found in
Pidansat de Mairobert. However, the work entitled La Liberté ou Mlle Raucourt à
toute la secte anandrine assemblée au foyer de la Comédie-Française is
different. It seems to be an original composition. Not without ironic
overtones, it is nonetheless a plea for lesbian independence. This will be
assured. “Raucourt” thinks, in alliance with a the gay-male faction headed by
the Marquis de la Villette. In this way (though this claim is perhaps a bit of
a stretch) the text anticipates the modern alliance of lesbians and gay men.
The Anandryne sect seems to have been a real sapphic group, one headed by
Françoise Raucourt [stage name of Francoise-Marie-Antoinette-Joseph Saucerotte
(1756-1815)].13 According to contemporary reports, Raucourt was president
of the group, which had been founded in 1770 by Thérèse de Fleury. The votaries
met in the Rue des Boucheries-Saint-Honoré, where novices were stripped and
examined for the seven marks of beauty required for membership. Eventually, a
quarrel arose over the admissions policy: some insisted on women exclusively,
while others wanted to admit as voyeurs men who practiced women’s ways.
The last two pamphlets to be considered here concern male homosexuality.14
The first is Les enfans de Sodome à l’Assemblée Nationale (Paris, 1790). This
work, sometimes tongue in cheek, alludes to the homosexual circle of Charles,
Marquis de Villette (1736-1793), who played a role for men comparable to that
of Raucourt for women. It was even alleged that for a time Villette and Raucourt
were “an item.” His reputation as a rake involved with both sexes caused the
marquis to suffer six months imprisonment in 1764. Attaching himself to
Voltaire, Villette sought to make a literary career for himself, though with
scant success. Villette was thought to have headed a homosexual association
known as Les Gens de la Manchette or L’Ordre de la Manchette,
The keynote of Les enfans de Sodome is sounded by the motto on the title page:
“[l]es goûts sont dans la nature; [l]e meilleur est celui qu’on a” (preferences
are part of nature; the best one is one’s own). In eighteenth-century French,
the word goûts. tastes, was sometimes used to describe sexual inclinations –
what we would term orientations. Thus the preferences of the Marquis de Villette
and his friends lay within the order of nature, not outside it. The precept is
ascribed to the writer Jean-Pierre Claris, Chevalier de Florian (1755-1794).
Here is the gist of the pamphlet itself. Following the example of the Greeks
and Romans, all sorts of groups – from tailors and house servants to cuckolds
and prostitutes – have come forward to make their case before the newly formed
National Assembly. At first, the members of the Ordre de la Manchette [that is,
the gays and lesbians] have hung back, choosing simply to gather in nocturnal
conventicles at the Tuileries Gardens and other cruising spots.
On the present occasion, the adepts of the Order follow tradition by meeting
under the chestnut trees of the Tuileries. Several speakers hold forth, including
a prominent Tribade (lesbian), showing that an alliance between the men and
women was being implemented.
The main speech is by the leader, the Duc de Noailles, who salutes the work of
the philosophers of the Enlightenment.. Thanks to their intervention, times
have definitely changed, so that the Sodomites and Tribades can now come
forward to make their case. With these remarks meeting general approval, the
assembly elects officers, with the Duc de Noailles at the head. By-laws,
consisting of seven articles, are adopted.
The pamphlet concludes with a roster of leading adherents of the group, some
120 men and 41 women. It is hard to know what to make of this list. Were these
people genuinely prepared to come forward to press for gay rights, or was the
list simply a way of outing them? In favor of the first hypothesis is the fact
that in the following year, 1791, the National Assembly did in fact
decriminalize sodomy – for the first time in the Western world – by simply
declining to include it in the new Penal Code. While there is probably no
causal relationship between the pamphlets --this one and the next one – and the
decriminalization, the two phenomena clearly reflect the atmosphere of the
times.
While it too has its satirical aspects, the last pamphlet, Les petits bougres
en manège (The Little Buggers on Parade; Paris, 1790?), is a striking
profession of progay ideas. To this end, the speaker, evidently the celebrated
Marquis de Villette, sets forth a proto-libertarian philosophy. The principle of
individual liberty makes my body and all its parts my property, he indicates.
Since my cock and balls belong to me, I can put them in a stew or broth if I
chose, or insert them in an asshole or a cunt. The writer saves his greatest
enthusiasm for the joys of anal sex. “Fame is but a passing fancy, while
pleasure is the only reality; to acquire as much as I can is my sole aim. In
short, to sodomize in the morning, sodomize at noon, and to sodomize in the
evening – that is all that I am seeking.” A modest aspiration!
Villette also provides a novel explanation for the burning of Sodom. It seems
that a cook was roasting meats for a great feast, when his eye chanced upon a
gorgeous teenage boy, whom he immediately sodomized. Entranced by this
pleasure, the cook failed to notice that flames were spreading, soon to engulf
the entire city. There is even an illustration of this event. Thus Sodom was
destroyed not because of the mere prevalence of same-sex love, but through an
injudicious indulgence in this pleasure.
The pamphlet concludes with a poem warning of the dangers of the Pox. Women’s
cunts are the reservoirs of this venereal infection, and are to be avoided.
NATURE
AS CRITERION
Since the time of the ancient Greeks, conformity with nature had been upheld as
the ultimate touchstone of human conduct, including sexual matters.15 In
a late work, The Laws, Plato had suggested that same-sex acts are against
nature. This stricture was reinforced by the condemnation that the Apostle Paul
included in his Epistle to the Romans (1:26-27). The last passage was
responsible for the legislation, found in many jurisdictions of Christian
Europe, stigmatizing the “crime against nature,” that is, homosexual conduct.
During the French enlightenment, however, some writers questioned whether any
sort of behavior could actually stand outside nature. This argument could be
turned in favor of same-sex love, which was commonly stigmatized as
“antiphysical.” In Thérèse philosophe, the pro-Sodomite arguments reported by
Mlle. Bois-Laurier include the following point: “It is false that the
antiphysical is against nature.” Bois-:Laurier makes it clear that she hates
Sodomites because they are misogynist. Nonetheless, after this disquisition the
woman proceeds to have sex with In Thérèse, showing that she agrees in practice
with the precept, despite its origin.
As was noted above, Diderot revisited the issue in his Rêve de d’Alembert of
1769, where he indicated that “[n]othing that exists can be against nature or
outside nature.” Yet even though sodomy lies within the all-encompassing bounds
of nature, we may nonetheless seek to discourage it through social policy.
Diderot was not as much an advocate of sexual freedom as is commonly assumed.
This implication of this principle is that any given society make take its own
view of same-sex love. The criterion for the policy chosen lies in the realm of
culture, not nature. Accordingly, one may disagree with Diderot’s judgmentalism
(not to speak of that of the Catholic church), and cease to forbid it. So the
National Assembly decided in 1791.
SOME
CONCLUSIONS
Given the differences of time and culture that separate eighteenth-century
France from twentieth-century America, it would be idle to expect a perfect
congruence between the two bodies of writing, the French underground literature
and the American pulps. Still, some major similarities emerge. Both represent a
spirit of revolt against the forces of repression in their respective host
societies. Moreover, both observe, implicitly or explicitly, two guiding
principles regarding human action and destiny:
1) We must strive will all our might to be true to our own selves, rejecting
the social programming that society applies to keep us in fetters. To this
principle, there is a corollary.
2) The purpose of life is pleasure (hedonism), above all sexual pleasure. We
have but one life to live, and whether sex is given to us by nature or God, it
a faculty that we should – that we must – give free exercise.
Like the so-called Tijuana Bibles in the US, the French books were for the most
part produced and marketed clandestinely. They were often shipped in the
original sheets, and doubtless many purchasers did not take the trouble to have
them bound – it may not have been wise to do so. A good many were as small as
thirty-six pages. Because of these circumstances, the books survive in
relatively small numbers. After the relaxation of the censorship in 1789, the
French books began to appear more openly in the marketplace – just as ours did
during the 1960s.
There are some other, less fundamental similarities.
In terms of plot, both traditions provide a good many examples of the type
known as the Bildungsoman or “formation novel.” Following this expository
scheme, the hero or heroine passes from a state of relative innocence to a full
understanding of his or her nature and place in the world. These are sometimes
known as coming-of-age novels, an appropriate term – except where the
experiential record extends into later life, as with Brother Bugger.
The French books are much concerned with religion, and the way in which it
restricts adhesion to principles 1 and 2. While this feature is less notable in
the American novels, it does sometimes occur. For example, in Dirk Vanden’s All
trilogy (1969-71), the hero must seek to overcome the repressive elements of
his Mormon heritage. The earlier sexual bonding of the hero of Song of the Loon
(Richard Amory; 1966) was blighted by the religiously based bigotry of his
former partner. Also relevant is a novel by Dick Dale called (probably by the
publisher, Greenleaf Classics) The Fag End (1968), where one of the main
characters is a hypocritical and closeted minister, the Reverend Mr. Smith. He
abuses teenage boys mentally and wants to sexually. To its credit, the book makes
a real attempt to understand and explain how our hypocritical and puritan
culture has created such a monster
While the French books provided a considerable amount of sex, it was generally
less explicit than in the general run of the American books. A major exception
is the work of the Marquis de Sade. His One-Hundred Twenty Days of Sodom equals
or outdoes any of the later American works in the sheer profusion and variety
of sex acts.
The American pulps generally lacked the intellectual content that some of the
French works offered. The latter-day novels could scarcely be marketed as
“philosophical.” Oftentimes, though, the publishers sought to provide an air of
authority by placing an introduction by some purported psychiatrist or other
authority at the start. This matter, appearing at the very start of the book,
served – or so the publishers hoped – as a kind of protective talisman to
prevent the book from being suppressed.
FOOTNOTES
1 For Girodias’ own account (perhaps not always reliable), see his The
Frog Prince: An Autobiogaphy (New York: Crown, 1980). A full bibliography of
the publications of the press appears in Patrick John Kearney and Angus
Carroll, The Paris Olympia Press (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007).
2 An Olympia editor, Frances Green, wrote a letter Aug. 13, 2011, to
Lambda Literary in which she recalled: “Such bright dreams when we started that
gay series at Olympia Press, dragged down by the money problems. The
embarrassment of trying to wheedle the money contractually owed – “You can have
$200 for your authors this month.” Send it to one or split it among four –
cringe at the memory! And still we had to ask for graphic sex, because that’s
what Olympia did.” See http://www.lambdaliterary.org/features/08/10/dirk-vanden-pioneer-of-gay-literature/#more-5374
3 See Neal Pearson, Obelisk: A History of Jack Kahane and the Obelisk
Press (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007).
4 See the short biography in The Erotica Bibliophile:
http://www.eroticabibliophile.com/publishers_carrington_about.php.
5 Most of these appear in the alphabetical listing to be found in
Pascal Pia, Les livres de l’Enfer du XVIème siècle à nos jours (Paris: C.
Coulet and A. Faure, 1978).
6 There is a new translation of the first work by Alexis Lykiard, The
Eleven Thousand Rods (Washington, DC: Solar Books, 2007).
7 James G. Nelson, Publisher to the Decadents: Leonard Smithers in
the Careers of Beardsley, Wilde, Dowson (University Park: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 2000).
8 The major study is Robert Darnton, The Forbidden Best-Sellers of
Pre-Revolutionary France (New York: Norton, 1995). See also Lynn Hunt, ed., The
Invention of Pornography: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity (New York:
Zone Books, 1993); and Michel Feher, The Libertine Reader: Eroticism and
Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century France (New York: Zone Books, 1997), which
contains translations of nine specimens by Diderot, Choderlos de Laclos, the
Marquis de Sade, and others.
9 As far as I know, this important novel (like the previous one) has
not been fully translated into English. However, there is a useful abridged
version in Robert Darnton, op. cit,, pp. 249-99.
10 The Diderot bibliography is vast. For orientation regarding works
and themes, see Roland Mortier and Raymond Trousson, eds. Dictionnaire de
Diderot (Paris: Champion, 1999).
11 Translation by Leonard Tancock (New York: Penguin, 1974).
12 The fullest account of the life and works of Sade is Maurice
Lever, Donatien Alphonse François, marquis de Sade (Paris: Fayard, 1991). For a
stimulating essay, see Angela Carter, The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of
Pornography (New York: Pantheon, 1979).
13 A recent account of this much-discussed individual and her circle
appears in Jeffrey Merrick, “The Marquis de Villette and Mademoiselle Raucourt:
Representations of Male and Female Sexual Deviance in Late-Eighteenth Century
France,” in Jeffrey Merrick and Bryan T. Ragan, Jr., eds., Homosexuality in
Modern France (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 30-53.
14 Together with one of the Raucourt items, English renderings of
these two pamphlets (heavily abridged) appear in Mark Blasius and Shane Phelan,
eds., We Are Everywhere: A Historical Sourcebook of Gay and Lesbian Politics
(New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 39-47.
15 Still helpful as an introduction to this protean theme is Arthur
O. Lovejoy, “‘Nature’ as Aesthetic Norm,” in his Essays in the History of Ideas
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1948), pp. 69-77.