The Naughty Bits (20 page)

—translated by Bernard Frechtman

from
The Faerie Queene

EDMUND SPENSER

At first glance this selection might not appear terribly promising. It is taken from the longest poem in the history of English literature —Edmund Spenser’s sixteenth-century
The Faerie Queene
— which, while once considered among the greatest verse ever written, is now read in its entirety only by the real triathletes of literary studies. Granted,
The Faerie Queene
spans over eleven hundred pages, is written in a faux medieval English, and takes as its theme the allegorical presentation of the moral virtues— hardly Hollywood material. Yet to the attentive (and persevering) reader
The Faerie Queene
proves to be the lushest of semiotic mangroves, extending its endless roots through the swampland of poetic language to generate a complete, self-sustaining ecosystem.

In
The Faerie Queene,
one can find almost anything, including the erotic. The following passage, when read with a discerning eye, is extraordinarily sexy. It is part of Spenser’s allegorical portrayal of Malbecco, the jealous husband, and Hellenore, his inconstant wife. Malbecco is so jealous that, contrary to medieval courtesy, he never admits errant knights to his castle, no matter what the weather. But the scene takes place during a maelstrom, and the three knights caught in it, Britomart, Paridell, and Satyrane, threaten to burn Malbecco’s castle down unless he lets them in. He finally does, and they are taken to meet him at the dinner table. Hellenore soon joins them, and what transpires is a marvel of subtle symbolism in one of the most important and nuanced sign systems in the universe: flirting. So sit back and see how the pros do it.

She came in presence with true comely grace,
And kindly them saluted as became
Herself a gentle courteous dame.

They sat to meat, and Satyrane to Hellenore
Was her before, and Paridell beside.
. . . On her fair face Paridell fed his fill
And sent close messages of love at will.

And ever and anon, when noone was aware,
With speaking looks that secret message bore
He gazed at her, and told his hidden care
With all the art that he had learned of yore.
Nor was she ignorant of that seductive lore,
But in his eye his meaning wisely read,
And with the like answered him evermore:
She sent at him one fiery dart, whose head
Empoisoned was with secret lust and jealous dread.

He from that deadly throw made no defence,
But to the wound his weak heart opened wide.
The wicked engine through false influence
Passed through his eyes and secretly did glide
Into his heart, which it did sorely chide.
But nothing new to him was that same pain,
Nor pain at all; for he so oft had tried
The power thereof, and loved so oft in vain,
That thing of course he counted, love to entertain.

Thenceforth to her he sought to intimate
His inward grief, by means to him well known:
Now Bacchus’ fruit out of the silver plate
He on the table dashed, and overthrowed
The cup of fruited liquor overflowed
And by the dancing bubbles did divine
And therein write to let his love be showed;
Which well she read out of the learned line:
A sacrament profane in mystery of wine.

And when so of his hand the pledge had passed
The guilty cup she fained to mistake,
And in her lap did spill her brimming glass
Showing desire her inward flames to slake.
By such close signs they a secret way did make
Unto their wills, and watched for due escape . . .

from
Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure

JOHN CLELAND

Fanny, as many of you know, is not what you want to name your daughter. In American slang, it means butt, in English, pussy (making the American fanny pack a rather laughable entity —“Ooh, honey, I really need a good fanny pack!”). That it can mean the backside on one bank of the Atlantic and the front side on the other is one of those vagaries of language that gives me no end of pleasure (like cleave meaning either “to cling or to separate,” or egregious meaning “esteemed” until 1700 or so, and “horrible” thereafter). According to the
Oxford English Dictionary,
the first use of “fanny” as something other than a name was in 1879, as a reference to the female genitals. I think it was probably far earlier. The most famous book of English erotica, John Cleland’s
Fanny Hill: Memoirs
of a Woman of Pleasure,
was published in 1748, and my suspicion is that the book’s name (after its fictional protagonist) was a sly joke on the mons veneris (though it is possible, of course, that the slang emerged as a result of the book, even if the OED has no evidence of this happening).

Whether its title is a play on the grassy knoll or not, the oft-banned
Fanny Hill
is a rollicking read. A quarter millennium has passed since its penning, and its language now seems both quaint and charming, but Cleland’s masterpiece still makes one wonder: is erotica getting any better? The sizable chunk excerpted here will allow you to decide for yourselves.

I was then lying at length upon that very couch . . . in an undress which was with all the art of negligence flowing loose . . . On the other hand, he stood at a little distance, that gave me a full view of a fine featur’d, shapely, healthy country lad, breathing the sweets of fresh blooming youth . . .

I bid him come towards me and give me his letter, at the same time throwing down, carelessly, a book I had in my hands. He colour’d, and came within reach of delivering me the letter, which he held out, aukwardly enough, for me to take, with his eyes riveted on my bosom . . .

I, smiling in his face, took the letter, and immediately catching gently hold of his shirt sleeve, drew him towards me . . . for surely his extreme bashfulness, and utter inexperience, call’d for, at least, all the advances to encourage him . . . carrying his hand to my breasts, I prest it tenderly to them . . . at this, the boy’s eyes began to lighten with all the fires of inflam’d nature, and his cheeks flush’d with a deep scarlet . . . his looks, his emotion, sufficiently satisfy’d me that my train had taken, and that I had no disappointment to fear.

My lips, which I threw in his way, so as that he could not escape kissing them, fix’d, fired, and embolden’d him: and now, glancing my eyes towards that part of his dress which cover’d the essential object of enjoyment, I plainly discover’d the swell and commotion there; and as I was now too far advanc’d to stop in so fair a way . . . I stole my hand upon his thighs, down one of which I could both see and feel a stiff hard body, confin’d by his breeches, that my fingers could discover no end to. Curious then, and eager to unfold so alarming a mystery, playing . . . with his buttons, . . . those of his waistband and fore-flap flew open at a touch, when out It started . . . I saw, with wonder and surprise, what? not the play-thing of a boy, not the weapon of a man, but a maypole of so enormous a standard, that had proportions been observ’d, it must have belong’d to a young giant . . . It stood an object of terror and delight.

But what was yet more surprising, the owner of this natural curiosity . . . was hitherto an absolute stranger, in practice at least, to the use of all that manhood he was so nobly stock’d with; and it now fell to my lot to stand this first trial of it, if I could resolve to run the risks of its disproportion to that tender part of me, which such an oversiz’d machine was very fit to lay in ruins.

. . . the young fellow, overheated with the present objects, and too high mettled to be longer curb’d in by that modesty and awe which had hitherto restrain’d him, ventur’d . . . under my petticoats . . . and seizes, gently, the centerspot of his ardours. Oh then! the fiery touch of his fingers determines me, and my fears melting away before the growing intolerable heat, my thighs disclose of themselves, and yield all liberty to his hand: and now, a favourable movement giving my petticoats a toss, the avenue lay too fair, too open to be miss’d. He is now upon me; I had placed myself with a jet under him, as commodious and open as possible to his attempts, which were untoward enough, for his machine, meeting with no inlet, bore and batter’d stiffly against me in random pushes . . . till, burning with impatience from its irritating touches, I guided gently, with my hand, this furious engine to where my young novice was now to be taught his first lesson of pleasure. Thus he nick’d, at length, the warm and insufficient orifice; but he was made to find no breach practicable, and mine, tho’ so often enter’d, was still far from wide enough to take him easily in.

By my direction . . . a favourable motion from me met his timely thrust, by which the lips of it, strenuously dilated, gave away to his thus assisted impetuosity, so that we might both feel that he had gain’d a lodgment. Pursuing then his point, he soon, by violent, and, to me, most painful piercing thrusts, wedges himself at length so far in, as to be now tolerably secure of his entrance: here he stuck, and I now felt such a mixture of pleasure and pain, as there is no giving a definition of . . . The sense of pain however prevailing . . . made me cry out gently: “Oh! my dear you hurt me!” This was enough to check the tender respectful boy even in his mid-career . . .

But I was, myself, far from being pleas’d with his having too much regarded my tender exclaims . . . I first gave the youth a re-encouraging kiss . . . and soon replac’d myself in a posture to receive, at all risks, the renew’d invasion, which he did not delay an instant . . . Pain’d, however, as I was, with efforts of gaining a complete admission, which he was so regardful as to manage by gentle degrees, I took care not to complain . . . the soft strait passage gradually loosens, yields, and stretch’d to its utmost bearing, by the stiff, thick, indriven engine, . . . let him in about half way, when all the most nervous activity he now exerted, to further his penetration, gain’d him not an inch of his purpose: for, whilst he hesitated there, the crisis of pleasure overtook him, and the close compressure of the warm surrounding fold drew from him the extatic gush, even before mine was ready to meet it . . .

I expected then, but without wishing it, that he would draw, but was pleasantly disappointed: for he was not to be let off so . . . As soon, then, as he had made a short pause, waking, as it were, out of the trance of pleasure, he still kept his post . . . till his stiffness . . . who had not once unsheath’d, he proceeded afresh to cleave and open to himself an entire entry into me . . . made easy to him by the balsamic injection with which he had just plentifully moisten’d the whole internals of the passage . . . And now, with conspiring nature, and my industry, strong to aid him, he pierces, penetrates, and at length, winning his way inch by inch, gets entirely in, and finally a mighty thrust sheathes it up to the guard . . . Thus I lay gasping, panting under him, till his broken breathings, faltering accents, eyes twinkling with humid fires, lunges more furious, and an increased stiffness, gave me to hail the approaches of the second period: it came . . . and the sweet youth, overpower’d with the extasy, died away in my arms, melting in a flood that shot in genial warmth into the innermost recesses of my body; every conduit of which, dedicated to that pleasure, was on flow to mix with it.

from The Exeter Book

ANONYMOUS

They say that Typho, terrible and proud . . . Conceived . . . the deadly Sphinx, a curse on the men of Thebes.

—Hesiod

To the Egyptians we owe the wingless sphinx, the sphinx of the desert, the tomb, the sphinx of death; to the Greeks we owe the winged female sphinx, the carnivorous sphinx, the sphinx of the famous riddle. Both are primal, basic symbolic entities, appearing again and again in world literature. Both are mysterious but the Greek even more so. Her riddle (What walks on four legs, on three, and on two?) was the bane of the Thebans —for she devoured all who answered incorrectly—till Oedipus was able to name the answer: man. Four legs in infancy, two in maturity, and three in old age. In a certain sense, then, the riddle of the sphinx is the riddle of all riddles; it doesn’t take a sage to realize that all our mysteries point back to ourselves, and we are, ultimately, the end of all our questioning.

Another riddle, then: what is it that humans want, seek, think, and talk about but pretend does not exist? Sex, of course. But if you put the question differently, the answer is not so clear: why is there repression? Many theories abound—none more persuasive than Freud’s—yet no answer can quite account for the barbarous tyranny of the superego. What keeps us from sexual freedom? What prevents us from understanding the links between our outer bodies and inner selves? Why, though the forms have varied significantly from culture to culture, century to century, are virtually all human societies founded in and upon some regulation and repression of sexuality, some form of censorship and censoring of desire, some form of denial? The question is so huge it is difficult even to speculate.

And yet. Necessity is the mother of invention, they say; so is privation (the principle behind Raymond Queneau’s Oulipo group). In any repressive regime expressions of freedom will find ways of making themselves known. Thus the various outcroppings of sexual literature during the glory days of Christianity (
Le
roman de la rose,
Margery Kempe, penitentials, etc.). The key to all these forms, of course, is a superficial layer of orthodoxy, subtended by a racy second meaning. This exoteric-esoteric dynamic (outside-inside layers) is the structure of much of the history of writing on sexuality. Amid prohibition and repression, the poetic capacity to veil meaning finds no greater application than in the writing of sex.