Eroticism - lost in translation?

Histoire de l'erotisme, by Pierre-Marc de Biasi (Gallimard, 2007)

Translating that  French title  L’histoire de l’érotisme, word-for-word makes you realise what a challenge such a title presents. The English don’t really do “eroticism” – they have pornography, but there isn’t much call for the word “eroticism” in English.  Only in France could such a book be done tastefully, as part of the Gallimard Découvertes series, which means an integrated four-colour layout with two narratives on each page, one for the text, and the other for the pictures. Of course, the limited space in the book means that many of the pictures are too small and the text (by the impressive Pierre-Marc de Biasi) has a breathless feel to it, since the author does not have space to develop his arguments.

But was it any good? Yes, it had some genuine insights. The text ranged widely (although there was not as much about the East and about Japan as I would have wished), and the author cleverly comments on changes in contemporary attitudes by pointing out the date when a term was introduced. The word “flirter” appears in French with Emma Bovary, for example. The word “pornography” appears almost in the same year as the word “photography”. The word “sexy” appears in France in 1928. In the same year were published classic erotic works, which are in themselves enough to suggest the gulf in attitudes to the erotic between Britain and France:

-          Bataille, Histoire de l’œil

-          Aragon, Le con d’Irène

-          Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover

Some might say that Lawrence's novel is erotic; I wouldn't. More like an embarassing moral tract, for me, but that's another subject. 

As for the book’s major themes, I noted:

1.       The baleful role of the Church in determining erotic attitudes.  While in the Ancient World sex was polymorphous and celebrated, by the third century CE Clement of Alexandria was already identifying the Fall as a sin of passion, not due to curiosity or the desire for knowledge. By the time of Alexander, sex had become linked with original sin: “Procreation would be nobler if it could be achieved without sexual relations.” The Christian West created a single sexual sin, including within marriage, under the title of “concupiscence”. And the Church was very clear just how sinful sex was. According to Gerson, around 1400, incest was a lesser sin than masturbation.

2.       A common theme through book is the contrast between consensual eroticism, as represented by Casanova, and a feudal, dominant eroticism, as represented by Don Juan, de Sade, and in the 20th century by Georges Bataille. Don Juan seduces for the sake of it, without any compassion for his victims. In his 1957 book L’Erotisme, Bataille describes eroticism as “a painful, Sadean concept, criminal and nihilist” [une conception douloureuse et sadienne, criminelle et nihiliste].  For de Sade, libertinage was a tool for destruction ; there is no concept of shared pleasure with him. While the erotic could be about unrestrained pleasure, a dominant theme in 20th-century eroticism has been this aggressive, tyrannical, dominating attitude to sex.

3.       So what’s the author’s view? He is a life-affirmer. In his initial definition of eroticism he describes it as “sexual pleasure for its own end, without any biological injunction. But its object is spiritual.” It is an achievement of the author that while praising the erotic, as he is more or less obliged to do in a book of this title, he makes it clear the erotic can have a spiritual element, and need not be dominating. He describes the public recognition of homosexuality as the greatest achievement of eroticism in the last 30 years, and ends the book with a tantalising (because unexplored) yet fascinating defintion of modern eroticism: the art of loving and of living together that will make all of us artists [un art d’aimer et du vivre ensemble qui fera de nous tous des artistes.]