Schorsch’s rehabilitation of perversion is valid, however, only on sociologic-analytical level: “Perversions as phenomena manifest the utopia of sexual freedom, the utopia of unrestricted desire, because they expose the great limitations and narrowness of what is socially accepted as sexuality.” This sounds nice, but, on the other hand, from the subjective, psychoanalytical standpoint, perversions can be also seen as great obstacles. In any case, they illustrate the dynamism and explosive force of sexuality.
Freud considered perversions to be symptoms of neurosis, whereby that which is suppressed in neurosis is expressed “directly in resolutions and acts of fantasy.”[25] As Volkmar Sigusch summarises this thesis: “Perversion is the affirmation of normality. It is not its reversal and distortion, but its emphasis and pinnacle.”[26]
Thus, the fetish of a pervert focuses on the sensual experiences of childhood, while for a “normosexual” a vague, more or less mild fetish of certain body parts and features of the so-called sexual object would not at all be conceivable without otherwise normal sexual desire. The apparent directness with which the sexuality of a fetishist relates to things or, rather, objects, “allows a perverse act to appear as seemingly primal and vital, akin instinctive carnal desire and animalistic lust.[27] Yet, Sigusch observes the closeness of a fetishist act to poetry: “The surprise: a perverse act is comparable to poetry writing.”[28]
8. David Greiner, Love Games II, 1917.
Which brings us back to the Anatomical Blazons
All the body parts focused on in the following essays can become the subject of poetry as much as of fetish: an ecstatic face, a beautiful backside, breasts, a leg or a foot. Through the psychoanalytically oriented cultural-historical approach it becomes obvious that the body, as we experience it, is not something naturally given, but rather, first of all, something historical. Other essays in this volume deal with the oral and the sense of taste. The oral desire, as well as sense of taste, are modes of sensual appropriation of the world; as this book is illustrated with pictures of erotic art, the sense of sight should be appealed to equally. The chapter “Delights of a Whip” and “Lesbos” refer not only to real gender-relationships – the phantasm that they are based on is even more significant. The central phantasm, essential to both the history of culture and of life, is the “phallus.” As a Basso Continuo, it is present in every sexual maturing, even when its power is renounced.
“There is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom”: An awareness of the bodily that can bridge the separation between body and spirit and allow the body to be understood as a cultural-historical product has yet to develop. Everything that is exclusively erotic, however, joins together in praising the whole body:
So we would like to praise the Body duly,
Pay homage to it as to Lord and Master,
So that the sprit, that only nourishes thoughts,
Without body, neither happiness nor sorrow does excite us:
The Body makes its energy praiseworthy,
The force that completes us, consumes us.[29]
The Erotic Orient
9. Wedding book illustrating love positions, 19th century. Japan.
Bound Happiness
Chinese Eroticism
The aim of Taoist art and culture was to reach that state of harmony which would lead Man, perennially confronted by a chaotic universe, towards a new serenity. In this spiritual context, love represented for the Chinese a force which they believed to unite sky and earth in balance and to maintain the reproductive cycle of nature. Eroticism thus became an art of living and formed an integral part of religion (to the extent that such western notions can be applied to philosophical thought of this kind).
Taoist religion assumes that pleasure and love are pure. “In order to gain some understanding of Chinese eroticism,” writes Etiemble, a great connaisseur of Chinese art, “we need to distance ourselves from the notion of sin and the duality between the corrupt body and the holy spirit,” an ideology which lies at the very base of Christianity. Erotic Chinese art reflects the extent to which we are “morally corrupt” and “full of prejudices.”
The Yin-Yang pairing introduces us directly into the world of Chinese eroticism: “The path of Yin and Yang” signifies nothing less than the sexual act itself. One of the best-known sayings of ancient Chinese philosophy, “Yi yin yi yang cheh we tao” (“On the one side yin, on the other yang, this is the essence of Tao”) indicates the fact that sex between a man and a woman expresses the same harmony as the changes between day and night, or summer and winter. Sex symbolises the order of the world, the moral order, while our culture stigmatises it as evil.
In this sense, master Tung-huan wrote in his Art of Love: “Man is the most sublime creature under the skies. Nothing which he enjoys can be compared to the act of sexual union. Formulated according to the harmony between the sky and the earth, it rules Yin and dominates Yang. Those who understand the sense of these words can preserve their essence and prolong their life. Those who do not grasp their true significance are heading towards their doom.”
The split in the Universe between Yin and Yang is all the more important because these two inseparable principles mutually influence each other. We know of a great many Chinese manuals whose purpose was to provide an education in the art of love-making for young couples; this education would cover desire, morality, and religion. In these texts, the sexual act is always referred to metaphorically with terms such as “the war of flowers,” “lighting the great candle” or “games of cloud and rain.” The texts are also full of images referring to various sexual positions:
unfurling silk
the curled-up dragon
the union of kingfishers
fluttering butterflies
bamboo stalks at the altar
the pair of dancing phoenixes
the galloping tournament horse
the leap of the white tiger
cat and mouse in the same hole
10. Wedding book illustrating love positions, 19th century. Japan.
11. Wedding book illustrating love positions, 19th century. Japan.
In Chinese aesthetics, nothing is ever named directly and obviously. Instead, things are referred to obliquely; any transgression of this tradition is considered vulgar. Even the European notion of “eroticism” is much too direct. They would prefer to substitute the term “the idea of spring.” In the verses of a popular Chinese song, physical love is praised without pretence but also without vulgarity:
“The window open in the light of an autumn moon,
The candle snuffed out, the silk tunic undone,
Her body swims in the scent of the tuberoses.”
In the erotic images of paintings on silk or porcelain, wood engravings or illustrations, sexuality is never shown in its crude state or in a pornographic manner, but always in a context of beauty and harmony. Symbolic meaningful details enrich these illustrations, evoking the tenderness which occupies a favoured place in Chinese iconography. Nevertheless, these details are difficult for Europeans to decipher: the cold and impassive faces of the lovers are a long way from our idea of a blaze of passion.
Thus it is that one of the most fertile and ancient cultures in the world invites us, through its religious