39. Paul-Emile Becat, 1848.
40. Paul Avril, circa 1910.
This admiration of the posterior was definitely ambivalent, as expressed in accompanying fantasies of corporal punishment. That which is desired is also a “damnable” object, and not only in puritanical cultures. One’s own fascination has to be suppressed by punishing the desired object. Thus in the idea of flagellation (for which England was particularly notorious) there is a defensive reaction against one’s own desires. In Our Mutual Friend, Dickens has this to say of the cherubic Mr. Wilfer: “So boyish was he in his curves and proportions, that his old schoolmaster meeting him in Cheapside, might have been unable to withstand the temptation of caning him on the spot”.[43] A pedagogue in antiquity would undoubtedly have solved the problem in an entirely different way. A poem by Heine also satirises the motif of corporal punishment. In Citronia, from the “Last Poems”, he describes a schoolmistress sitting in her armchair: “And a birch-rod in her hand, with which she beats the little brat. The little one, who committed a trivial fault, is weeping. She lifts up the skirts and the little globes with their charming, lovely curves, sometimes like roses sometimes like lilies – ah, the old lady beats them black and blue. To be ill treated and insulted – this is the fate of beauty on earth.” In normal editions of Heine, the middle section of the verse is omitted. Another stroke of the rod, this time from the pen of the censor against the delightful lines. It is not far from pleasure in exposure of the posterior to anal intercourse; a beautiful object that is desired must also be possessed.
In a study of The Posterior in Antiquity, Adrian Stähli indicates that, in vase paintings of the sixth and fifth centuries B. C. depicting the act of intercourse, the posture of anal intercourse is predominant or, if vaginal penetration is depicted, then it is in a position where the woman shows her bottom to the man, suggesting anal penetration to him or to anyone seeing the illustration. It is time to take a rear view of our idealised, posterior-less image of the Greeks. As Kenneth Clark emphasised: “This deeply rooted awareness, the recognition of the significance of physical beauty, protected the Greeks from the two evils of sensuality and aestheticism.” No – sensuality was increased by beauty! The classical object of libidinousness was – the posterior!
41. Paul Avril, circa 1910.
As Stähli has indicated, this was in no way gender-neutral; in antiquity, anal penetration was perceived at least potentially as a homosexual act. “The female posterior and that of a boy whom a homosexual lover finds attractive are, in principle, interchangeable.” In comparison with the much more highly valued charms of a boy’s bottom, a woman’s was always second best. “Homosexual epigrams from the Hellenistic period and the Roman Empire praise boys’ bottoms every bit as enthusiastically as the eulogies to women’s backsides”. As in the case of praise of women’s rears, the shape, form and colour of boys’ backsides are praised and described in detail. Far more often than the penis, the backside is seen as the decisive element of the desired boy’s sexual attractiveness. The desire to penetrate male rears is diverted to females. This is also the part of the body where sexuality is an expression of male dominance.
Contempt for the posterior no doubt owes its origin mainly to Christianity, which must have seen in it a heathen place of worship. At least since the thirteenth century, “unnatural indecency”, which included anal intercourse, was declared to be one of the worst of sexual sins, and the Church never ceased to condemn it most severely. Any danger that threatened the continuation of the species had to be abolished – thus, three sins against Nature were denounced more fiercely than ever; sodomy, masturbation and abstinence.
42. Courbouleix, circa 1935.
The Renaissance, however, did not only bring about a revival of the writings of the authors of antiquity. The new Humanism also led to an unusual valuation of sexuality. The confrontation with profane examples of classical literature led inevitably to recognition of the value of the erotic for Greek and Roman culture, a recognition that also encompassed the visual arts. For the “intellectuals” of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the greatest happiness consisted of a symbiosis of intellectual, sexual and culinary pleasures. Aretino[44] wrote glowing praises of callipygian charms. In his “Dialogues” he writes: “then he held the cheeks of her bottom apart with gentle hands – it looked as if he were turning the white pages of a missal – and looked at her backside, absolutely enchanted. It was neither a spiky bag of bones, nor a wobbly lump of fat, but exactly the right size and shape, a bit tremulous and curvy, shining like living ivory. The dimples that one is so glad to see on the chin and cheeks of lovely women adorn her posterior as well. The cheeks were tender as a mouse born and bred in a mill, completely covered with flour. And all her limbs were so smooth that the hand he put on her flank slid down to her calf, like a foot turning on the ice.” At least in Rome in the sixteenth century, anal intercourse was re-instated in its rights. This is the interpretation of several extracts from Aretino’s Sonetti Lussuriosi, for instance the depiction of a woman grasping the erect penis of a man who is pretending to protest, in order to put it into her anus:
(She)
Where do you want to put it? Tell me please,
In front or behind? Because it might annoy you
If during our play
It slipped into my arse.
(He)
O no, Madonna, a ride in the cunt
Doesn’t have that much sex appeal.
What I do, I do with the aim
Of not offending against custom.
But if you really want it anally,
Then it is decided —
Stick the arrow in the hole that we’ve always avoided.
You’ll see, it will do you good
Like medicine to an invalid.
And when I feel your hand on my prick
I’m so happy – when we fuck,
I’ll