Robert Sheppard's Blog: Robert Sheppard's Literary Blog & World Literature Forum , page 208
July 28, 2013
LIBERTINES AND SEXUAL EXCESS IN WORLD LITERATURE–SAIKAKU’S “LIFE OF A SENSUOUS WOMAN,” “THE LOVE POEMS OF THE SIXTH DALAI LAMA,” “DON JUAN,” THE EARL OF ROCHESTER AND THE MARQUIS DE SADE—–FROM THE WORLD LITERATURE FORUM RECOMMENDED CLASSICS AND MASTERPIECE
Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings by Marquis de Sade
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
LIBERTINES AND SEXUAL EXCESS IN WORLD LITERATURE–SAIKAKU’S “LIFE OF A SENSUOUS WOMAN,” “THE LOVE POEMS OF THE SIXTH DALAI LAMA,” “DON JUAN,” THE EARL OF ROCHESTER AND THE MARQUIS DE SADE—–FROM THE WORLD LITERATURE FORUM RECOMMENDED CLASSICS AND MASTERPIECES SERIES VIA GOODREADS—-ROBERT SHEPPARD, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
The word “libertine’ entered the English language not as a sexual term but as a by-product of the wars of religion between Protestants and Catholics in Sixteenth Century Europe, being the name of a French Protestant sect that believed individuals should be guided in religious matters “by their own lights”—-meaning reason, direct divine inspiration, spiritual intuition, or personal free interpretation of holy scripture, rather than by the clergy or traditional dogma. Later the word became synonymous with freethinkers whose behaviour, foremost sexual, is unconstrained by social norms or ethical considerations, even to the point of “outraging public morality.” Nevertheless the history of the term underlines its concern not simply with sexual deviance or excess, but with the ideal of freedom and self-determination, even against the pressure of public hostility or condemnation. It also raises the deeper question of how absolute personal freedom may be once released from political tyranny, religious dogma or blind social prejudice, and when liberty may degenerate into a license heedless of the needs, benefits or rights of others.
Not only in Europe but across Asia to Japan from the Sixteenth to Eighteenth centuries did sexual and social libertinage flourish, a generalized cultural drive towards breaking out of the bondage of traditional authority of all kinds, driven by the global rise of urban culture and the merchant class. Nevertheless, especially in those early days freedom was more a luxury than a right, and characteristically any true measure of individual freedom was enjoyed almost exclusively by the aristocracy or merchant elite, rather than the majority of the population constituting the lower classes, and the libertine was most likely a freethinking wealthy aristocratic male in an Asian or European city.
THE “FLOATING WORLD” OF IHARA SAIKAKU AND “THE LIFE OF A SENSUOUS WOMAN”
Ihara Saikaku (1642-1693) the author of “The Life of a Sensuous Woman” was a Japanese poet and creator of the “floating world” genre of Japanese prose (ukiyo-zōshi). Later in life he began writing racy accounts of the financial, amorous and erotic affairs of the merchant class and the demimonde. These stories catered to the whims of the newly prominent merchant class alongside the declassé aristocracy, whose tastes in entertainment leaned toward the arts and pleasure districts of the rising commercial cities such as his native Osaka.
“The Life of a Sensuous Woman,” an atypicaly female narrative as a sequel to his prior “Life of a Sensuous Man,” is an aging woman’s extended confession to two young men in which she describes her various experiences, beginning from her early childhood as the daughter of a former aristocrat in the capital Kyoto, her life as an attendant in the Imperial Palace, then through a descending order of fates as a courtesan, geisha, teacher of courtly manners and calligraphy to young ladies, hairdresser, go-between for marital engagements, and finally as a common streetwalker, losing her beauty in aging into an unattractive old woman. It structurally echoes the genre of the Buddhist confessional narrative in which someone who becomes a priest or a nun recounts the sins of their past and their moment of crisis leading to spiritual awakening. Hdowever, in this case the old woman in her narrative is implicitly initiating her young visitors into the secrets of the “Way of Love,” describing a life of vitality and sexual desire of which she does not essentially repent. En passant, she satirically reveals the underside of the lives of ministers and lords, powerful samurai, wealthy priests, and upper-class merchants. Often compared to Cleland’s “Fanny Hill” the narrative also celebrates the female protagonist’s pluck and resourcefulness in adversity, reminiscent of Becky Thatcher in Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair.” Only at the end of her life’s narrative, in sight of the five-hundred statues of boddhisatvas arrayed in a Buddhist temple does she have a vision of the five hundred men with whom she has had sexual relations arrayed in their place, and is moved to commit the end of her life to spiritual enlightenment, not essentially renouncing, however, the fated vitality of her former life’s path which had led her there, observing with a cautionary smile of spiritual melancholy to her departing two young initiates:
“A beautiful woman, many ages have agreed, is an axe that cuts down a man’s life. No one, of course, escapes death. The invisible blossoms of the mind finally fall and scatter; the soul leaves; and the body is fed like kindling into a crematorium fire in the night. But for the blossoms to fall all too soon in a morning storm—ah, how foolish are the men who die young of overindulgence in the way of sensuous love. Yet there is no end of them.”
THE SHORT EROTIC LIFE OF TSANGYANG GYATSO, THE SIXTH DALAI LAMA
In the Sixteenth Century, the Mongol Khan proclaimed the head of the leading Buddhist sect the “Dalai Lama,” who enjoyed considerable secular power alongside the spiritual authority of his office. When one Dalai Lama died, a search was undertaken to find his newly reborn reincarnation, who would be raised in the Potala Palace by a Regent until coming of age to reign again as the Dalai Lama. After the the Fifth Dalai Lama died in 1682, Tsangyang Gyatso (1683-1706) was proclaimed the new Dalai Lama, but the unscrupulous Regent schemed to keep him effectively under house arrest in the Palace, retaining all power to himself. In this unfortunate condition, deprived of his destiny, the Sixth Dalai Lama dedicated himself to three passions: the study of Buddhist Scriptures, the erotic worship of beautiful women, and the penning of love poems to his beautiful lovers. As he was a “Living Buddha” it was considered by the girls and their families a great and divine honor to be sexually united with the Dalai Lama, and when a girl residing in the elite Shol district of Lhasa below the Palace became a lover her family painted their house yellow, exalted beyond the common white, celebrating the act of divine favour. Gyatso was so successful in “painting the town red,” although in this case yellow, that a scandal ultimately ensued in which the outside power of the Mongol Khan in the north united with the conservative priests to depose,exile and ultimately assassinate him, claiming that the son of the Mongol Khan was the true Sixth Dalai Lama in a coup d’etat. Nonetheless, the Sixth Dalai Lama left behind a rich body of erotic poetry dedicated to his lovers:
Residing at the Potala
I am Rigdzin Tsangyang Gyatso
But in the back alleys of Shol-town
I am rake and stud.
Lover met by chance on the road,
Girl with delicious-smelling body–
Like picking up a small white turquoise
Only to toss it away again.
If I could meditate as deeply
On the sacred texts as I do
On you, I would clearly be
Enlightened in this lifetime!
THE UNPURITAN LIFE AND VERSE OF JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER
The Earl of Rochester (1647-1680) was unquestionably one of the “bad boys” of English letters. Born during the dour administration of Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan Commonwealth, he came of age just in time for the Resotation of monarchy, sexual excess and extravagance, and his attitude in word and deed as to libertine sexuality was “cavalier” in the extreme. As his father had engineered Charles II’s escape from England he became a favorite in the Restoration court, yet cavalierly endangered his status with such acts boxing the ears of high lords in the King’s presence and delivering caustic diatribes against the king to his face in fits of anger, accusing the king of being more addicted to sexual excess than the good of the kingdom. Nonetheless, Charles II took a protective interest in Rochester, continuously bailing him out of scrapes and predicaments.
As related in Samuel Pepys’ famous Diary, Rochester, who was poor, contrived to forcibly abduct the heiress of one of England’s wealthiest families, who despite the King’s encouragement, refused to consent to her marriage to Rochester because of his poverty and profligacy. The daughter nonetheless chose to elope with him and they were married. He was a notorious rake, had innumerable mistresses, including the finest actresses of London, and shared some mistresses with the king.
After a brawl between his gang of friends and the police in which a man died, Rochester in disgrace was forced into hiding, disguising himself as a “quack doctor” treating women for “barrenness” or infertility and other gynocological complaints, under the name of “Dr. Bendo.” Rochester in this reputedly attained great success in inducing pregnancy in infertile wives, largely utilizing his own sperm, introduced willingly or surreptitiously. To overcome occasional hesitancy of the women’s mothers or husbands to allow a male doctor to conduct the gynocological examination or treatment, Rochester dressed in drag to impersonate a fictive “Mrs. Bendo,” the putative doctor’s wife, who would conduct the examination and administer the treatment in lieu of the considerate doctor himself.
Rochester died at the age of 33 from a combination of syphillis, gonnorhea and alcoholic liver failure, reportedly wearing a false nose in lieu of the one lost to the disease. After his death several Puritan religious societies circulated an account of his deathbed repentence of his libertinage, the authenticity of which remains uncertain. Nevertheless, many of his forceful poems remain anthologized classics, such as “The Imperfect Enjoyment:”
Naked she lay, clasped in my longing arms,
I filled with love, and she all over charms;
Both equally inspired with eager fire,
Melting through kindness, flaming in desire.
With arms, legs, lips close clinging to embrace,
She clips me to her breast, and sucks me to her face;
Her nimble tongue, Love’s lesser lightning, played
Within my mouth, and to my thoughts conveyed
Swift orders that I should prepare to throw
The all-dissolving thunderbolt below.
My fluttering soul, sprung with the pointed kiss,
Hangs hovering o’er her balmy brinks of bliss,
But whilst her busy hand would guide that part
Which should convey my soul up to her heart,
In liquid raptures I dissolve all o’er.
Melt into sperm, and spend at every pore.
A touch from any part of her had done ‘t:
Her hand, her foot, her very look’s a cunt.
Smiling, she chides in a kind murmuring noise,
And from her body wipes the clammy joys,
When, with a thousand kisses wandering o’er
My panting bosom, “Is there then no more?”
She cries. “All this to love and rapture’s due”
Must we not pay a debt to pleasure too?”
LORD BYRON’S IMMORTAL CLASSIC “DON JUAN”
George Gordon, Lord Byron was celebrated in life for aristocratic excesses, including huge debts, numerous love affairs, a scandalous incestuous liaison with his half-sister, and self-imposed exile and European wanderings, culminating with his sponsorship of a military campaign to win Greek freedom from Ottoman oppression in which he fought and died. He was one of the greatest literary celebrities of Europe, and along with Wordsworth, Keats, Leopardi and Shelley one of the founding patriarchs of the Romantic Movement in Europe. He was regarded by his contemporaries as “mad, bad and dangerous to know.” He became the exemplar of what came to be known as “The Byronic Hero” presented an idealised, but flawed character whose attributes include: great talent; great passion; a distaste for society and social institutions; a lack of respect for rank and privilege (although possessing both); being thwarted in love by social constraint or death; rebellion; exile; an unsavory secret past; arrogance; overconfidence or lack of foresight; and, ultimately, a self-destructive manner.
His classic epic of erotic love is “Don Juan” which ironically and satirically re-casts the famous serial lover whose name itself has become synonymous in the English language with libertinage, rather as a weak man who cannot resist the uncontrollable sexual agressions of women, than as a seducer himself. The epic follows the hero Don Juan from scandal-caused exile from his home in Spain through an unending series of amourous adventures including his rescue from shipwreck and seduction by the dark and beautiful island girl Haidée. The love of Haidée and Juan is however ill-fated as her father Lambro, a pirate master, discovers their affair, seizes and sells Juan as a slave to Constantinople, and Haidée dies of a broken heart with their unborn child within her womb. In Constantinople Don Juan is purchased by a black eunuch at the behest of the Sultana, who desires to make love to him. To smuggle him into the Sultan’s Palace the eunuch forces Juan to dress as a woman, threatening him with castration if he refuses. Brought to the Sultana, he however refuses to make servile love to her, remembering his love for Haidée. Discovered by the Sultan, the Sultan himself is attracted to Juan dressed as a woman, who regrets the “she” is not a Muslim. Don Juan escapes, however, then joins the Russian armies attacking the Ottomans where he becomes a hero. He adopts a ten-year old Muslim girl orphaned in the war, Leila. Taken to the Russian Imperial Court as a war hero, he is seduced by the Empress, Catherine the Great, who becomes his lover until she sends him to England on a mission. There he is seduced by numerous lecherous Englishwomen until he begins to fall in love with Aurora, who reminds him of his lost love Haidée. We do not know how the epic ends, as Byron died before completing it.
THE ULTIMATE LIBERTINE BAD BOY, THE MARQUIS DE SADE
The Marquis de Sade, belying his reputation, was too much of a masochist for his own good. Time and again he proved himself too eager to be caught and punished for his sexual outrages, and the French government, whether of the ancien regime or of Revolutionary France was all too happy to oblige him. The errant aristocrat spent most of his life in jail writing furiously, or when at liberty, conceiving escapades of excess that would send him promptly back to incarceration. He served as an officer in the Seven Years’ War, then married, then committed outrages in whorehouses or with abducted females and males, including flagellation, sodomy, and poisioning prostitutes that landed him in the Bastille. Liberated by the Revolution, he quickly offended again, at the cost of imprisonment and having all his property confiscated, leaving him penniless at the end of his life.
A philosopher of liberty in addition to a sexual libertine, in his classic “Philosophy in the Boudoir” he advocated the absolute freedom of the individual, even at the expense of the injury of others, claiming that such absolute liberty would strengthen and catalyze the growth of all individuals in creative equilibrium and produce much more good than ethical repression of even deviant expressions of freedom. “Nothing is a crime” he declared defiantly….”Laws are not made for the individual but for the generality, which is what puts them in perpetual conflict with self-interest, given that personal self-interest is always in conflict with society. Laws that are good for society are bad for the individuals that compose it, becuase for every time they actually protect or defend an individual, they obstruct or ensnare him for three-quarters of his life.” He denied the bonds between children and parents, husband and wife, and advocated the reign of an absolute liberty in their stead. He called on the people to deny and overthrow both the state and the church: “The only gods should be courage and liberty” he declared. He dauntlessly championed the first of the three ideals of the French Revolution—-liberty, taken absolutely, while ignoring the second two of the triumverate, equality and fraternity. Ironically, his philosophy is often more entertaining than his pornography. His pornographic classics such as “120 Days of Sodom” often become arid and mechanical exercizes in carnal repetition which soon lose interest after the initial prurience and shock value are dissipated.
SPIRITUS MUNDI, SEXUALITY AND SEXUAL LIBERTY
Sexuality and sexual liberty have a stong presence in my own work, the recently published contemporary epic Spiritus Mundi. I grew up as a writer very much in the tradition of D.H. Lawrence and James Joyce, both of whom embraced the central importance of sexuality in human consciousness and existence in their works and worldviews. We are all living intellectually in the wake of the Freudian and Darwinian revolutions, as well the “sexual revolution” in popular culture since the Sixties. Our sexuality is the life blood of our lives and of our consciousness, not to mention our unconsciousness, collective or individual. In my view of sexuality, common with D. H. Lawrence and C.G. Jung, sexuality is intimately connected with the spiritual dimension of human existence as well—sexuality can lead to dehumanization and animalization of our beings but alternatively sexuality can also lead just as naturally in the direction of the humanization of our natural and biological impulses, their civilizing, and even to their spiritualization, as Jung observed.
In regard to sexuality I take as a starting point that it is a natural part of our lives and should be positively embraced in all dimensions of our existence—that it is a necessary and wholesome part of our individual and collective mental health. That is not to deny that it has its chaotic, selfish, destructive and socially disruptive side as well, which society has difficulty managing, which it always must, but it is important that it should not be irrationally repressed in the individual or the society at large, as Freud and Jung have taught us.
The sexual lives of the characters in fiction are a vital dimension of their beings, and a vital dimension for judging the viability, mental health and value of the worldviews of their authors. Hollywood and Washington have long judged their projects asking the question “Will it play in Peoria?” and writers similarly have tested their worldviews by asking “Will it play between the sheets?” In Spiritus Mundi sexuality is linked to the spiritual lives of the characters, but also to the “life force” which drives human evolution and the collective unconscious of the human race, necessary to its survival. The progressive humanization, civilization and spiritualization of our most primal sexual animal impulses in the forms of love, family, community and communion is the story of the progress of our individual lives in microcosm and of our civilizational lives in macrocosm.
For a fuller discussion of the concept of World Literature you are invited to look into the extended discussion in the new book Spiritus Mundi, by Robert Sheppard, one of the principal themes of which is the emergence and evolution of World Literature:
For Discussions on World Literature and n Literary Criticism in Spiritus Mundi: http://worldliteratureandliterarycrit…
Robert Sheppard
Editor-in-Chief
World Literature Forum
Author, Spiritus Mundi Novel
Author’s Blog: http://robertalexandersheppard.wordpr…
Spiritus Mundi on Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17…
Spiritus Mundi on Amazon, Book I: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CIGJFGO
Spiritus Mundi, Book II: The Romance http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CGM8BZG
Copyright Robert Sheppard 2013 All Rights Reserved
LIBERTINES AND SEXUAL EXCESS IN WORLD LITERATURE–SAIKAKU’S “LIFE OF A SENSUOUS WOMAN,” “THE LOVE POEMS OF THE SIXTH DALAI LAMA,” “DON JUAN,” THE EARL OF ROCHESTER AND THE MARQUIS DE SADE—–FROM THE WORLD LITERATURE FORUM RECOMMENDED CLASSICS AND MASTERPIECE
Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings by Marquis de Sade
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
LIBERTINES AND SEXUAL EXCESS IN WORLD LITERATURE–SAIKAKU’S “LIFE OF A SENSUOUS WOMAN,” “THE LOVE POEMS OF THE SIXTH DALAI LAMA,” “DON JUAN,” THE EARL OF ROCHESTER AND THE MARQUIS DE SADE—–FROM THE WORLD LITERATURE FORUM RECOMMENDED CLASSICS AND MASTERPIECES SERIES VIA GOODREADS—-ROBERT SHEPPARD, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
The word “libertine’ entered the English language not as a sexual term but as a by-product of the wars of religion between Protestants and Catholics in Sixteenth Century Europe, being the name of a French Protestant sect that believed individuals should be guided in religious matters “by their own lights”—-meaning reason, direct divine inspiration, spiritual intuition, or personal free interpretation of holy scripture, rather than by the clergy or traditional dogma. Later the word became synonymous with freethinkers whose behaviour, foremost sexual, is unconstrained by social norms or ethical considerations, even to the point of “outraging public morality.” Nevertheless the history of the term underlines its concern not simply with sexual deviance or excess, but with the ideal of freedom and self-determination, even against the pressure of public hostility or condemnation. It also raises the deeper question of how absolute personal freedom may be once released from political tyranny, religious dogma or blind social prejudice, and when liberty may degenerate into a license heedless of the needs, benefits or rights of others.
Not only in Europe but across Asia to Japan from the Sixteenth to Eighteenth centuries did sexual and social libertinage flourish, a generalized cultural drive towards breaking out of the bondage of traditional authority of all kinds, driven by the global rise of urban culture and the merchant class. Nevertheless, especially in those early days freedom was more a luxury than a right, and characteristically any true measure of individual freedom was enjoyed almost exclusively by the aristocracy or merchant elite, rather than the majority of the population constituting the lower classes, and the libertine was most likely a freethinking wealthy aristocratic male in an Asian or European city.
THE “FLOATING WORLD” OF IHARA SAIKAKU AND “THE LIFE OF A SENSUOUS WOMAN”
Ihara Saikaku (1642-1693) the author of “The Life of a Sensuous Woman” was a Japanese poet and creator of the “floating world” genre of Japanese prose (ukiyo-zōshi). Later in life he began writing racy accounts of the financial, amorous and erotic affairs of the merchant class and the demimonde. These stories catered to the whims of the newly prominent merchant class alongside the declassé aristocracy, whose tastes in entertainment leaned toward the arts and pleasure districts of the rising commercial cities such as his native Osaka.
“The Life of a Sensuous Woman,” an atypicaly female narrative as a sequel to his prior “Life of a Sensuous Man,” is an aging woman’s extended confession to two young men in which she describes her various experiences, beginning from her early childhood as the daughter of a former aristocrat in the capital Kyoto, her life as an attendant in the Imperial Palace, then through a descending order of fates as a courtesan, geisha, teacher of courtly manners and calligraphy to young ladies, hairdresser, go-between for marital engagements, and finally as a common streetwalker, losing her beauty in aging into an unattractive old woman. It structurally echoes the genre of the Buddhist confessional narrative in which someone who becomes a priest or a nun recounts the sins of their past and their moment of crisis leading to spiritual awakening. Hdowever, in this case the old woman in her narrative is implicitly initiating her young visitors into the secrets of the “Way of Love,” describing a life of vitality and sexual desire of which she does not essentially repent. En passant, she satirically reveals the underside of the lives of ministers and lords, powerful samurai, wealthy priests, and upper-class merchants. Often compared to Cleland’s “Fanny Hill” the narrative also celebrates the female protagonist’s pluck and resourcefulness in adversity, reminiscent of Becky Thatcher in Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair.” Only at the end of her life’s narrative, in sight of the five-hundred statues of boddhisatvas arrayed in a Buddhist temple does she have a vision of the five hundred men with whom she has had sexual relations arrayed in their place, and is moved to commit the end of her life to spiritual enlightenment, not essentially renouncing, however, the fated vitality of her former life’s path which had led her there, observing with a cautionary smile of spiritual melancholy to her departing two young initiates:
“A beautiful woman, many ages have agreed, is an axe that cuts down a man’s life. No one, of course, escapes death. The invisible blossoms of the mind finally fall and scatter; the soul leaves; and the body is fed like kindling into a crematorium fire in the night. But for the blossoms to fall all too soon in a morning storm—ah, how foolish are the men who die young of overindulgence in the way of sensuous love. Yet there is no end of them.”
THE SHORT EROTIC LIFE OF TSANGYANG GYATSO, THE SIXTH DALAI LAMA
In the Sixteenth Century, the Mongol Khan proclaimed the head of the leading Buddhist sect the “Dalai Lama,” who enjoyed considerable secular power alongside the spiritual authority of his office. When one Dalai Lama died, a search was undertaken to find his newly reborn reincarnation, who would be raised in the Potala Palace by a Regent until coming of age to reign again as the Dalai Lama. After the the Fifth Dalai Lama died in 1682, Tsangyang Gyatso (1683-1706) was proclaimed the new Dalai Lama, but the unscrupulous Regent schemed to keep him effectively under house arrest in the Palace, retaining all power to himself. In this unfortunate condition, deprived of his destiny, the Sixth Dalai Lama dedicated himself to three passions: the study of Buddhist Scriptures, the erotic worship of beautiful women, and the penning of love poems to his beautiful lovers. As he was a “Living Buddha” it was considered by the girls and their families a great and divine honor to be sexually united with the Dalai Lama, and when a girl residing in the elite Shol district of Lhasa below the Palace became a lover her family painted their house yellow, exalted beyond the common white, celebrating the act of divine favour. Gyatso was so successful in “painting the town red,” although in this case yellow, that a scandal ultimately ensued in which the outside power of the Mongol Khan in the north united with the conservative priests to depose,exile and ultimately assassinate him, claiming that the son of the Mongol Khan was the true Sixth Dalai Lama in a coup d’etat. Nonetheless, the Sixth Dalai Lama left behind a rich body of erotic poetry dedicated to his lovers:
Residing at the Potala
I am Rigdzin Tsangyang Gyatso
But in the back alleys of Shol-town
I am rake and stud.
Lover met by chance on the road,
Girl with delicious-smelling body–
Like picking up a small white turquoise
Only to toss it away again.
If I could meditate as deeply
On the sacred texts as I do
On you, I would clearly be
Enlightened in this lifetime!
THE UNPURITAN LIFE AND VERSE OF JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER
The Earl of Rochester (1647-1680) was unquestionably one of the “bad boys” of English letters. Born during the dour administration of Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan Commonwealth, he came of age just in time for the Resotation of monarchy, sexual excess and extravagance, and his attitude in word and deed as to libertine sexuality was “cavalier” in the extreme. As his father had engineered Charles II’s escape from England he became a favorite in the Restoration court, yet cavalierly endangered his status with such acts boxing the ears of high lords in the King’s presence and delivering caustic diatribes against the king to his face in fits of anger, accusing the king of being more addicted to sexual excess than the good of the kingdom. Nonetheless, Charles II took a protective interest in Rochester, continuously bailing him out of scrapes and predicaments.
As related in Samuel Pepys’ famous Diary, Rochester, who was poor, contrived to forcibly abduct the heiress of one of England’s wealthiest families, who despite the King’s encouragement, refused to consent to her marriage to Rochester because of his poverty and profligacy. The daughter nonetheless chose to elope with him and they were married. He was a notorious rake, had innumerable mistresses, including the finest actresses of London, and shared some mistresses with the king.
After a brawl between his gang of friends and the police in which a man died, Rochester in disgrace was forced into hiding, disguising himself as a “quack doctor” treating women for “barrenness” or infertility and other gynocological complaints, under the name of “Dr. Bendo.” Rochester in this reputedly attained great success in inducing pregnancy in infertile wives, largely utilizing his own sperm, introduced willingly or surreptitiously. To overcome occasional hesitancy of the women’s mothers or husbands to allow a male doctor to conduct the gynocological examination or treatment, Rochester dressed in drag to impersonate a fictive “Mrs. Bendo,” the putative doctor’s wife, who would conduct the examination and administer the treatment in lieu of the considerate doctor himself.
Rochester died at the age of 33 from a combination of syphillis, gonnorhea and alcoholic liver failure, reportedly wearing a false nose in lieu of the one lost to the disease. After his death several Puritan religious societies circulated an account of his deathbed repentence of his libertinage, the authenticity of which remains uncertain. Nevertheless, many of his forceful poems remain anthologized classics, such as “The Imperfect Enjoyment:”
Naked she lay, clasped in my longing arms,
I filled with love, and she all over charms;
Both equally inspired with eager fire,
Melting through kindness, flaming in desire.
With arms, legs, lips close clinging to embrace,
She clips me to her breast, and sucks me to her face;
Her nimble tongue, Love’s lesser lightning, played
Within my mouth, and to my thoughts conveyed
Swift orders that I should prepare to throw
The all-dissolving thunderbolt below.
My fluttering soul, sprung with the pointed kiss,
Hangs hovering o’er her balmy brinks of bliss,
But whilst her busy hand would guide that part
Which should convey my soul up to her heart,
In liquid raptures I dissolve all o’er.
Melt into sperm, and spend at every pore.
A touch from any part of her had done ‘t:
Her hand, her foot, her very look’s a cunt.
Smiling, she chides in a kind murmuring noise,
And from her body wipes the clammy joys,
When, with a thousand kisses wandering o’er
My panting bosom, “Is there then no more?”
She cries. “All this to love and rapture’s due”
Must we not pay a debt to pleasure too?”
LORD BYRON’S IMMORTAL CLASSIC “DON JUAN”
George Gordon, Lord Byron was celebrated in life for aristocratic excesses, including huge debts, numerous love affairs, a scandalous incestuous liaison with his half-sister, and self-imposed exile and European wanderings, culminating with his sponsorship of a military campaign to win Greek freedom from Ottoman oppression in which he fought and died. He was one of the greatest literary celebrities of Europe, and along with Wordsworth, Keats, Leopardi and Shelley one of the founding patriarchs of the Romantic Movement in Europe. He was regarded by his contemporaries as “mad, bad and dangerous to know.” He became the exemplar of what came to be known as “The Byronic Hero” presented an idealised, but flawed character whose attributes include: great talent; great passion; a distaste for society and social institutions; a lack of respect for rank and privilege (although possessing both); being thwarted in love by social constraint or death; rebellion; exile; an unsavory secret past; arrogance; overconfidence or lack of foresight; and, ultimately, a self-destructive manner.
His classic epic of erotic love is “Don Juan” which ironically and satirically re-casts the famous serial lover whose name itself has become synonymous in the English language with libertinage, rather as a weak man who cannot resist the uncontrollable sexual agressions of women, than as a seducer himself. The epic follows the hero Don Juan from scandal-caused exile from his home in Spain through an unending series of amourous adventures including his rescue from shipwreck and seduction by the dark and beautiful island girl Haidée. The love of Haidée and Juan is however ill-fated as her father Lambro, a pirate master, discovers their affair, seizes and sells Juan as a slave to Constantinople, and Haidée dies of a broken heart with their unborn child within her womb. In Constantinople Don Juan is purchased by a black eunuch at the behest of the Sultana, who desires to make love to him. To smuggle him into the Sultan’s Palace the eunuch forces Juan to dress as a woman, threatening him with castration if he refuses. Brought to the Sultana, he however refuses to make servile love to her, remembering his love for Haidée. Discovered by the Sultan, the Sultan himself is attracted to Juan dressed as a woman, who regrets the “she” is not a Muslim. Don Juan escapes, however, then joins the Russian armies attacking the Ottomans where he becomes a hero. He adopts a ten-year old Muslim girl orphaned in the war, Leila. Taken to the Russian Imperial Court as a war hero, he is seduced by the Empress, Catherine the Great, who becomes his lover until she sends him to England on a mission. There he is seduced by numerous lecherous Englishwomen until he begins to fall in love with Aurora, who reminds him of his lost love Haidée. We do not know how the epic ends, as Byron died before completing it.
THE ULTIMATE LIBERTINE BAD BOY, THE MARQUIS DE SADE
The Marquis de Sade, belying his reputation, was too much of a masochist for his own good. Time and again he proved himself too eager to be caught and punished for his sexual outrages, and the French government, whether of the ancien regime or of Revolutionary France was all too happy to oblige him. The errant aristocrat spent most of his life in jail writing furiously, or when at liberty, conceiving escapades of excess that would send him promptly back to incarceration. He served as an officer in the Seven Years’ War, then married, then committed outrages in whorehouses or with abducted females and males, including flagellation, sodomy, and poisioning prostitutes that landed him in the Bastille. Liberated by the Revolution, he quickly offended again, at the cost of imprisonment and having all his property confiscated, leaving him penniless at the end of his life.
A philosopher of liberty in addition to a sexual libertine, in his classic “Philosophy in the Boudoir” he advocated the absolute freedom of the individual, even at the expense of the injury of others, claiming that such absolute liberty would strengthen and catalyze the growth of all individuals in creative equilibrium and produce much more good than ethical repression of even deviant expressions of freedom. “Nothing is a crime” he declared defiantly….”Laws are not made for the individual but for the generality, which is what puts them in perpetual conflict with self-interest, given that personal self-interest is always in conflict with society. Laws that are good for society are bad for the individuals that compose it, becuase for every time they actually protect or defend an individual, they obstruct or ensnare him for three-quarters of his life.” He denied the bonds between children and parents, husband and wife, and advocated the reign of an absolute liberty in their stead. He called on the people to deny and overthrow both the state and the church: “The only gods should be courage and liberty” he declared. He dauntlessly championed the first of the three ideals of the French Revolution—-liberty, taken absolutely, while ignoring the second two of the triumverate, equality and fraternity. Ironically, his philosophy is often more entertaining than his pornography. His pornographic classics such as “120 Days of Sodom” often become arid and mechanical exercizes in carnal repetition which soon lose interest after the initial prurience and shock value are dissipated.
SPIRITUS MUNDI, SEXUALITY AND SEXUAL LIBERTY
Sexuality and sexual liberty have a stong presence in my own work, the recently published contemporary epic Spiritus Mundi. I grew up as a writer very much in the tradition of D.H. Lawrence and James Joyce, both of whom embraced the central importance of sexuality in human consciousness and existence in their works and worldviews. We are all living intellectually in the wake of the Freudian and Darwinian revolutions, as well the “sexual revolution” in popular culture since the Sixties. Our sexuality is the life blood of our lives and of our consciousness, not to mention our unconsciousness, collective or individual. In my view of sexuality, common with D. H. Lawrence and C.G. Jung, sexuality is intimately connected with the spiritual dimension of human existence as well—sexuality can lead to dehumanization and animalization of our beings but alternatively sexuality can also lead just as naturally in the direction of the humanization of our natural and biological impulses, their civilizing, and even to their spiritualization, as Jung observed.
In regard to sexuality I take as a starting point that it is a natural part of our lives and should be positively embraced in all dimensions of our existence—that it is a necessary and wholesome part of our individual and collective mental health. That is not to deny that it has its chaotic, selfish, destructive and socially disruptive side as well, which society has difficulty managing, which it always must, but it is important that it should not be irrationally repressed in the individual or the society at large, as Freud and Jung have taught us.
The sexual lives of the characters in fiction are a vital dimension of their beings, and a vital dimension for judging the viability, mental health and value of the worldviews of their authors. Hollywood and Washington have long judged their projects asking the question “Will it play in Peoria?” and writers similarly have tested their worldviews by asking “Will it play between the sheets?” In Spiritus Mundi sexuality is linked to the spiritual lives of the characters, but also to the “life force” which drives human evolution and the collective unconscious of the human race, necessary to its survival. The progressive humanization, civilization and spiritualization of our most primal sexual animal impulses in the forms of love, family, community and communion is the story of the progress of our individual lives in microcosm and of our civilizational lives in macrocosm.
For a fuller discussion of the concept of World Literature you are invited to look into the extended discussion in the new book Spiritus Mundi, by Robert Sheppard, one of the principal themes of which is the emergence and evolution of World Literature:
For Discussions on World Literature and n Literary Criticism in Spiritus Mundi: http://worldliteratureandliterarycrit…
Robert Sheppard
Editor-in-Chief
World Literature Forum
Author, Spiritus Mundi Novel
Author’s Blog: http://robertalexandersheppard.wordpr…
Spiritus Mundi on Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17…
Spiritus Mundi on Amazon, Book I: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CIGJFGO
Spiritus Mundi, Book II: The Romance http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CGM8BZG
Copyright Robert Sheppard 2013 All Rights Reserved
LIBERTINES AND SEXUAL EXCESS IN WORLD LITERATURE–SAIKAKU’S “LIFE OF A SENSUOUS WOMAN,” “THE LOVE POEMS OF THE SIXTH DALAI LAMA,” “DON JUAN,” THE EARL OF ROCHESTER AND THE MARQUIS DE SADE—–FROM THE WORLD LITERATURE FORUM RECOMMENDED CLASSICS AND MASTERPIECE
Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings by Marquis de Sade
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
LIBERTINES AND SEXUAL EXCESS IN WORLD LITERATURE–SAIKAKU’S “LIFE OF A SENSUOUS WOMAN,” “THE LOVE POEMS OF THE SIXTH DALAI LAMA,” “DON JUAN,” THE EARL OF ROCHESTER AND THE MARQUIS DE SADE—–FROM THE WORLD LITERATURE FORUM RECOMMENDED CLASSICS AND MASTERPIECES SERIES VIA GOODREADS—-ROBERT SHEPPARD, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
The word “libertine’ entered the English language not as a sexual term but as a by-product of the wars of religion between Protestants and Catholics in Sixteenth Century Europe, being the name of a French Protestant sect that believed individuals should be guided in religious matters “by their own lights”—-meaning reason, direct divine inspiration, spiritual intuition, or personal free interpretation of holy scripture, rather than by the clergy or traditional dogma. Later the word became synonymous with freethinkers whose behaviour, foremost sexual, is unconstrained by social norms or ethical considerations, even to the point of “outraging public morality.” Nevertheless the history of the term underlines its concern not simply with sexual deviance or excess, but with the ideal of freedom and self-determination, even against the pressure of public hostility or condemnation. It also raises the deeper question of how absolute personal freedom may be once released from political tyranny, religious dogma or blind social prejudice, and when liberty may degenerate into a license heedless of the needs, benefits or rights of others.
Not only in Europe but across Asia to Japan from the Sixteenth to Eighteenth centuries did sexual and social libertinage flourish, a generalized cultural drive towards breaking out of the bondage of traditional authority of all kinds, driven by the global rise of urban culture and the merchant class. Nevertheless, especially in those early days freedom was more a luxury than a right, and characteristically any true measure of individual freedom was enjoyed almost exclusively by the aristocracy or merchant elite, rather than the majority of the population constituting the lower classes, and the libertine was most likely a freethinking wealthy aristocratic male in an Asian or European city.
THE “FLOATING WORLD” OF IHARA SAIKAKU AND “THE LIFE OF A SENSUOUS WOMAN”
Ihara Saikaku (1642-1693) the author of “The Life of a Sensuous Woman” was a Japanese poet and creator of the “floating world” genre of Japanese prose (ukiyo-zōshi). Later in life he began writing racy accounts of the financial, amorous and erotic affairs of the merchant class and the demimonde. These stories catered to the whims of the newly prominent merchant class alongside the declassé aristocracy, whose tastes in entertainment leaned toward the arts and pleasure districts of the rising commercial cities such as his native Osaka.
“The Life of a Sensuous Woman,” an atypicaly female narrative as a sequel to his prior “Life of a Sensuous Man,” is an aging woman’s extended confession to two young men in which she describes her various experiences, beginning from her early childhood as the daughter of a former aristocrat in the capital Kyoto, her life as an attendant in the Imperial Palace, then through a descending order of fates as a courtesan, geisha, teacher of courtly manners and calligraphy to young ladies, hairdresser, go-between for marital engagements, and finally as a common streetwalker, losing her beauty in aging into an unattractive old woman. It structurally echoes the genre of the Buddhist confessional narrative in which someone who becomes a priest or a nun recounts the sins of their past and their moment of crisis leading to spiritual awakening. Hdowever, in this case the old woman in her narrative is implicitly initiating her young visitors into the secrets of the “Way of Love,” describing a life of vitality and sexual desire of which she does not essentially repent. En passant, she satirically reveals the underside of the lives of ministers and lords, powerful samurai, wealthy priests, and upper-class merchants. Often compared to Cleland’s “Fanny Hill” the narrative also celebrates the female protagonist’s pluck and resourcefulness in adversity, reminiscent of Becky Thatcher in Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair.” Only at the end of her life’s narrative, in sight of the five-hundred statues of boddhisatvas arrayed in a Buddhist temple does she have a vision of the five hundred men with whom she has had sexual relations arrayed in their place, and is moved to commit the end of her life to spiritual enlightenment, not essentially renouncing, however, the fated vitality of her former life’s path which had led her there, observing with a cautionary smile of spiritual melancholy to her departing two young initiates:
“A beautiful woman, many ages have agreed, is an axe that cuts down a man’s life. No one, of course, escapes death. The invisible blossoms of the mind finally fall and scatter; the soul leaves; and the body is fed like kindling into a crematorium fire in the night. But for the blossoms to fall all too soon in a morning storm—ah, how foolish are the men who die young of overindulgence in the way of sensuous love. Yet there is no end of them.”
THE SHORT EROTIC LIFE OF TSANGYANG GYATSO, THE SIXTH DALAI LAMA
In the Sixteenth Century, the Mongol Khan proclaimed the head of the leading Buddhist sect the “Dalai Lama,” who enjoyed considerable secular power alongside the spiritual authority of his office. When one Dalai Lama died, a search was undertaken to find his newly reborn reincarnation, who would be raised in the Potala Palace by a Regent until coming of age to reign again as the Dalai Lama. After the the Fifth Dalai Lama died in 1682, Tsangyang Gyatso (1683-1706) was proclaimed the new Dalai Lama, but the unscrupulous Regent schemed to keep him effectively under house arrest in the Palace, retaining all power to himself. In this unfortunate condition, deprived of his destiny, the Sixth Dalai Lama dedicated himself to three passions: the study of Buddhist Scriptures, the erotic worship of beautiful women, and the penning of love poems to his beautiful lovers. As he was a “Living Buddha” it was considered by the girls and their families a great and divine honor to be sexually united with the Dalai Lama, and when a girl residing in the elite Shol district of Lhasa below the Palace became a lover her family painted their house yellow, exalted beyond the common white, celebrating the act of divine favour. Gyatso was so successful in “painting the town red,” although in this case yellow, that a scandal ultimately ensued in which the outside power of the Mongol Khan in the north united with the conservative priests to depose,exile and ultimately assassinate him, claiming that the son of the Mongol Khan was the true Sixth Dalai Lama in a coup d’etat. Nonetheless, the Sixth Dalai Lama left behind a rich body of erotic poetry dedicated to his lovers:
Residing at the Potala
I am Rigdzin Tsangyang Gyatso
But in the back alleys of Shol-town
I am rake and stud.
Lover met by chance on the road,
Girl with delicious-smelling body–
Like picking up a small white turquoise
Only to toss it away again.
If I could meditate as deeply
On the sacred texts as I do
On you, I would clearly be
Enlightened in this lifetime!
THE UNPURITAN LIFE AND VERSE OF JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER
The Earl of Rochester (1647-1680) was unquestionably one of the “bad boys” of English letters. Born during the dour administration of Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan Commonwealth, he came of age just in time for the Resotation of monarchy, sexual excess and extravagance, and his attitude in word and deed as to libertine sexuality was “cavalier” in the extreme. As his father had engineered Charles II’s escape from England he became a favorite in the Restoration court, yet cavalierly endangered his status with such acts boxing the ears of high lords in the King’s presence and delivering caustic diatribes against the king to his face in fits of anger, accusing the king of being more addicted to sexual excess than the good of the kingdom. Nonetheless, Charles II took a protective interest in Rochester, continuously bailing him out of scrapes and predicaments.
As related in Samuel Pepys’ famous Diary, Rochester, who was poor, contrived to forcibly abduct the heiress of one of England’s wealthiest families, who despite the King’s encouragement, refused to consent to her marriage to Rochester because of his poverty and profligacy. The daughter nonetheless chose to elope with him and they were married. He was a notorious rake, had innumerable mistresses, including the finest actresses of London, and shared some mistresses with the king.
After a brawl between his gang of friends and the police in which a man died, Rochester in disgrace was forced into hiding, disguising himself as a “quack doctor” treating women for “barrenness” or infertility and other gynocological complaints, under the name of “Dr. Bendo.” Rochester in this reputedly attained great success in inducing pregnancy in infertile wives, largely utilizing his own sperm, introduced willingly or surreptitiously. To overcome occasional hesitancy of the women’s mothers or husbands to allow a male doctor to conduct the gynocological examination or treatment, Rochester dressed in drag to impersonate a fictive “Mrs. Bendo,” the putative doctor’s wife, who would conduct the examination and administer the treatment in lieu of the considerate doctor himself.
Rochester died at the age of 33 from a combination of syphillis, gonnorhea and alcoholic liver failure, reportedly wearing a false nose in lieu of the one lost to the disease. After his death several Puritan religious societies circulated an account of his deathbed repentence of his libertinage, the authenticity of which remains uncertain. Nevertheless, many of his forceful poems remain anthologized classics, such as “The Imperfect Enjoyment:”
Naked she lay, clasped in my longing arms,
I filled with love, and she all over charms;
Both equally inspired with eager fire,
Melting through kindness, flaming in desire.
With arms, legs, lips close clinging to embrace,
She clips me to her breast, and sucks me to her face;
Her nimble tongue, Love’s lesser lightning, played
Within my mouth, and to my thoughts conveyed
Swift orders that I should prepare to throw
The all-dissolving thunderbolt below.
My fluttering soul, sprung with the pointed kiss,
Hangs hovering o’er her balmy brinks of bliss,
But whilst her busy hand would guide that part
Which should convey my soul up to her heart,
In liquid raptures I dissolve all o’er.
Melt into sperm, and spend at every pore.
A touch from any part of her had done ‘t:
Her hand, her foot, her very look’s a cunt.
Smiling, she chides in a kind murmuring noise,
And from her body wipes the clammy joys,
When, with a thousand kisses wandering o’er
My panting bosom, “Is there then no more?”
She cries. “All this to love and rapture’s due”
Must we not pay a debt to pleasure too?”
LORD BYRON’S IMMORTAL CLASSIC “DON JUAN”
George Gordon, Lord Byron was celebrated in life for aristocratic excesses, including huge debts, numerous love affairs, a scandalous incestuous liaison with his half-sister, and self-imposed exile and European wanderings, culminating with his sponsorship of a military campaign to win Greek freedom from Ottoman oppression in which he fought and died. He was one of the greatest literary celebrities of Europe, and along with Wordsworth, Keats, Leopardi and Shelley one of the founding patriarchs of the Romantic Movement in Europe. He was regarded by his contemporaries as “mad, bad and dangerous to know.” He became the exemplar of what came to be known as “The Byronic Hero” presented an idealised, but flawed character whose attributes include: great talent; great passion; a distaste for society and social institutions; a lack of respect for rank and privilege (although possessing both); being thwarted in love by social constraint or death; rebellion; exile; an unsavory secret past; arrogance; overconfidence or lack of foresight; and, ultimately, a self-destructive manner.
His classic epic of erotic love is “Don Juan” which ironically and satirically re-casts the famous serial lover whose name itself has become synonymous in the English language with libertinage, rather as a weak man who cannot resist the uncontrollable sexual agressions of women, than as a seducer himself. The epic follows the hero Don Juan from scandal-caused exile from his home in Spain through an unending series of amourous adventures including his rescue from shipwreck and seduction by the dark and beautiful island girl Haidée. The love of Haidée and Juan is however ill-fated as her father Lambro, a pirate master, discovers their affair, seizes and sells Juan as a slave to Constantinople, and Haidée dies of a broken heart with their unborn child within her womb. In Constantinople Don Juan is purchased by a black eunuch at the behest of the Sultana, who desires to make love to him. To smuggle him into the Sultan’s Palace the eunuch forces Juan to dress as a woman, threatening him with castration if he refuses. Brought to the Sultana, he however refuses to make servile love to her, remembering his love for Haidée. Discovered by the Sultan, the Sultan himself is attracted to Juan dressed as a woman, who regrets the “she” is not a Muslim. Don Juan escapes, however, then joins the Russian armies attacking the Ottomans where he becomes a hero. He adopts a ten-year old Muslim girl orphaned in the war, Leila. Taken to the Russian Imperial Court as a war hero, he is seduced by the Empress, Catherine the Great, who becomes his lover until she sends him to England on a mission. There he is seduced by numerous lecherous Englishwomen until he begins to fall in love with Aurora, who reminds him of his lost love Haidée. We do not know how the epic ends, as Byron died before completing it.
THE ULTIMATE LIBERTINE BAD BOY, THE MARQUIS DE SADE
The Marquis de Sade, belying his reputation, was too much of a masochist for his own good. Time and again he proved himself too eager to be caught and punished for his sexual outrages, and the French government, whether of the ancien regime or of Revolutionary France was all too happy to oblige him. The errant aristocrat spent most of his life in jail writing furiously, or when at liberty, conceiving escapades of excess that would send him promptly back to incarceration. He served as an officer in the Seven Years’ War, then married, then committed outrages in whorehouses or with abducted females and males, including flagellation, sodomy, and poisioning prostitutes that landed him in the Bastille. Liberated by the Revolution, he quickly offended again, at the cost of imprisonment and having all his property confiscated, leaving him penniless at the end of his life.
A philosopher of liberty in addition to a sexual libertine, in his classic “Philosophy in the Boudoir” he advocated the absolute freedom of the individual, even at the expense of the injury of others, claiming that such absolute liberty would strengthen and catalyze the growth of all individuals in creative equilibrium and produce much more good than ethical repression of even deviant expressions of freedom. “Nothing is a crime” he declared defiantly….”Laws are not made for the individual but for the generality, which is what puts them in perpetual conflict with self-interest, given that personal self-interest is always in conflict with society. Laws that are good for society are bad for the individuals that compose it, becuase for every time they actually protect or defend an individual, they obstruct or ensnare him for three-quarters of his life.” He denied the bonds between children and parents, husband and wife, and advocated the reign of an absolute liberty in their stead. He called on the people to deny and overthrow both the state and the church: “The only gods should be courage and liberty” he declared. He dauntlessly championed the first of the three ideals of the French Revolution—-liberty, taken absolutely, while ignoring the second two of the triumverate, equality and fraternity. Ironically, his philosophy is often more entertaining than his pornography. His pornographic classics such as “120 Days of Sodom” often become arid and mechanical exercizes in carnal repetition which soon lose interest after the initial prurience and shock value are dissipated.
SPIRITUS MUNDI, SEXUALITY AND SEXUAL LIBERTY
Sexuality and sexual liberty have a stong presence in my own work, the recently published contemporary epic Spiritus Mundi. I grew up as a writer very much in the tradition of D.H. Lawrence and James Joyce, both of whom embraced the central importance of sexuality in human consciousness and existence in their works and worldviews. We are all living intellectually in the wake of the Freudian and Darwinian revolutions, as well the “sexual revolution” in popular culture since the Sixties. Our sexuality is the life blood of our lives and of our consciousness, not to mention our unconsciousness, collective or individual. In my view of sexuality, common with D. H. Lawrence and C.G. Jung, sexuality is intimately connected with the spiritual dimension of human existence as well—sexuality can lead to dehumanization and animalization of our beings but alternatively sexuality can also lead just as naturally in the direction of the humanization of our natural and biological impulses, their civilizing, and even to their spiritualization, as Jung observed.
In regard to sexuality I take as a starting point that it is a natural part of our lives and should be positively embraced in all dimensions of our existence—that it is a necessary and wholesome part of our individual and collective mental health. That is not to deny that it has its chaotic, selfish, destructive and socially disruptive side as well, which society has difficulty managing, which it always must, but it is important that it should not be irrationally repressed in the individual or the society at large, as Freud and Jung have taught us.
The sexual lives of the characters in fiction are a vital dimension of their beings, and a vital dimension for judging the viability, mental health and value of the worldviews of their authors. Hollywood and Washington have long judged their projects asking the question “Will it play in Peoria?” and writers similarly have tested their worldviews by asking “Will it play between the sheets?” In Spiritus Mundi sexuality is linked to the spiritual lives of the characters, but also to the “life force” which drives human evolution and the collective unconscious of the human race, necessary to its survival. The progressive humanization, civilization and spiritualization of our most primal sexual animal impulses in the forms of love, family, community and communion is the story of the progress of our individual lives in microcosm and of our civilizational lives in macrocosm.
For a fuller discussion of the concept of World Literature you are invited to look into the extended discussion in the new book Spiritus Mundi, by Robert Sheppard, one of the principal themes of which is the emergence and evolution of World Literature:
For Discussions on World Literature and n Literary Criticism in Spiritus Mundi: http://worldliteratureandliterarycrit…
Robert Sheppard
Editor-in-Chief
World Literature Forum
Author, Spiritus Mundi Novel
Author’s Blog: http://robertalexandersheppard.wordpr…
Spiritus Mundi on Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17…
Spiritus Mundi on Amazon, Book I: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CIGJFGO
Spiritus Mundi, Book II: The Romance http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CGM8BZG
Copyright Robert Sheppard 2013 All Rights Reserved
LIBERTINES AND SEXUAL EXCESS IN WORLD LITERATURE–SAIKAKU’S “LIFE OF A SENSUOUS WOMAN,” “THE LOVE POEMS OF THE SIXTH DALAI LAMA,” “DON JUAN,” THE EARL OF ROCHESTER AND THE MARQUIS DE SADE—–FROM THE WORLD LITERATURE FORUM RECOMMENDED CLASSICS AND MASTERPIECE
Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings by Marquis de Sade
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
LIBERTINES AND SEXUAL EXCESS IN WORLD LITERATURE–SAIKAKU’S “LIFE OF A SENSUOUS WOMAN,” “THE LOVE POEMS OF THE SIXTH DALAI LAMA,” “DON JUAN,” THE EARL OF ROCHESTER AND THE MARQUIS DE SADE—–FROM THE WORLD LITERATURE FORUM RECOMMENDED CLASSICS AND MASTERPIECES SERIES VIA GOODREADS—-ROBERT SHEPPARD, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
The word “libertine’ entered the English language not as a sexual term but as a by-product of the wars of religion between Protestants and Catholics in Sixteenth Century Europe, being the name of a French Protestant sect that believed individuals should be guided in religious matters “by their own lights”—-meaning reason, direct divine inspiration, spiritual intuition, or personal free interpretation of holy scripture, rather than by the clergy or traditional dogma. Later the word became synonymous with freethinkers whose behaviour, foremost sexual, is unconstrained by social norms or ethical considerations, even to the point of “outraging public morality.” Nevertheless the history of the term underlines its concern not simply with sexual deviance or excess, but with the ideal of freedom and self-determination, even against the pressure of public hostility or condemnation. It also raises the deeper question of how absolute personal freedom may be once released from political tyranny, religious dogma or blind social prejudice, and when liberty may degenerate into a license heedless of the needs, benefits or rights of others.
Not only in Europe but across Asia to Japan from the Sixteenth to Eighteenth centuries did sexual and social libertinage flourish, a generalized cultural drive towards breaking out of the bondage of traditional authority of all kinds, driven by the global rise of urban culture and the merchant class. Nevertheless, especially in those early days freedom was more a luxury than a right, and characteristically any true measure of individual freedom was enjoyed almost exclusively by the aristocracy or merchant elite, rather than the majority of the population constituting the lower classes, and the libertine was most likely a freethinking wealthy aristocratic male in an Asian or European city.
THE “FLOATING WORLD” OF IHARA SAIKAKU AND “THE LIFE OF A SENSUOUS WOMAN”
Ihara Saikaku (1642-1693) the author of “The Life of a Sensuous Woman” was a Japanese poet and creator of the “floating world” genre of Japanese prose (ukiyo-zōshi). Later in life he began writing racy accounts of the financial, amorous and erotic affairs of the merchant class and the demimonde. These stories catered to the whims of the newly prominent merchant class alongside the declassé aristocracy, whose tastes in entertainment leaned toward the arts and pleasure districts of the rising commercial cities such as his native Osaka.
“The Life of a Sensuous Woman,” an atypicaly female narrative as a sequel to his prior “Life of a Sensuous Man,” is an aging woman’s extended confession to two young men in which she describes her various experiences, beginning from her early childhood as the daughter of a former aristocrat in the capital Kyoto, her life as an attendant in the Imperial Palace, then through a descending order of fates as a courtesan, geisha, teacher of courtly manners and calligraphy to young ladies, hairdresser, go-between for marital engagements, and finally as a common streetwalker, losing her beauty in aging into an unattractive old woman. It structurally echoes the genre of the Buddhist confessional narrative in which someone who becomes a priest or a nun recounts the sins of their past and their moment of crisis leading to spiritual awakening. Hdowever, in this case the old woman in her narrative is implicitly initiating her young visitors into the secrets of the “Way of Love,” describing a life of vitality and sexual desire of which she does not essentially repent. En passant, she satirically reveals the underside of the lives of ministers and lords, powerful samurai, wealthy priests, and upper-class merchants. Often compared to Cleland’s “Fanny Hill” the narrative also celebrates the female protagonist’s pluck and resourcefulness in adversity, reminiscent of Becky Thatcher in Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair.” Only at the end of her life’s narrative, in sight of the five-hundred statues of boddhisatvas arrayed in a Buddhist temple does she have a vision of the five hundred men with whom she has had sexual relations arrayed in their place, and is moved to commit the end of her life to spiritual enlightenment, not essentially renouncing, however, the fated vitality of her former life’s path which had led her there, observing with a cautionary smile of spiritual melancholy to her departing two young initiates:
“A beautiful woman, many ages have agreed, is an axe that cuts down a man’s life. No one, of course, escapes death. The invisible blossoms of the mind finally fall and scatter; the soul leaves; and the body is fed like kindling into a crematorium fire in the night. But for the blossoms to fall all too soon in a morning storm—ah, how foolish are the men who die young of overindulgence in the way of sensuous love. Yet there is no end of them.”
THE SHORT EROTIC LIFE OF TSANGYANG GYATSO, THE SIXTH DALAI LAMA
In the Sixteenth Century, the Mongol Khan proclaimed the head of the leading Buddhist sect the “Dalai Lama,” who enjoyed considerable secular power alongside the spiritual authority of his office. When one Dalai Lama died, a search was undertaken to find his newly reborn reincarnation, who would be raised in the Potala Palace by a Regent until coming of age to reign again as the Dalai Lama. After the the Fifth Dalai Lama died in 1682, Tsangyang Gyatso (1683-1706) was proclaimed the new Dalai Lama, but the unscrupulous Regent schemed to keep him effectively under house arrest in the Palace, retaining all power to himself. In this unfortunate condition, deprived of his destiny, the Sixth Dalai Lama dedicated himself to three passions: the study of Buddhist Scriptures, the erotic worship of beautiful women, and the penning of love poems to his beautiful lovers. As he was a “Living Buddha” it was considered by the girls and their families a great and divine honor to be sexually united with the Dalai Lama, and when a girl residing in the elite Shol district of Lhasa below the Palace became a lover her family painted their house yellow, exalted beyond the common white, celebrating the act of divine favour. Gyatso was so successful in “painting the town red,” although in this case yellow, that a scandal ultimately ensued in which the outside power of the Mongol Khan in the north united with the conservative priests to depose,exile and ultimately assassinate him, claiming that the son of the Mongol Khan was the true Sixth Dalai Lama in a coup d’etat. Nonetheless, the Sixth Dalai Lama left behind a rich body of erotic poetry dedicated to his lovers:
Residing at the Potala
I am Rigdzin Tsangyang Gyatso
But in the back alleys of Shol-town
I am rake and stud.
Lover met by chance on the road,
Girl with delicious-smelling body–
Like picking up a small white turquoise
Only to toss it away again.
If I could meditate as deeply
On the sacred texts as I do
On you, I would clearly be
Enlightened in this lifetime!
THE UNPURITAN LIFE AND VERSE OF JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER
The Earl of Rochester (1647-1680) was unquestionably one of the “bad boys” of English letters. Born during the dour administration of Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan Commonwealth, he came of age just in time for the Resotation of monarchy, sexual excess and extravagance, and his attitude in word and deed as to libertine sexuality was “cavalier” in the extreme. As his father had engineered Charles II’s escape from England he became a favorite in the Restoration court, yet cavalierly endangered his status with such acts boxing the ears of high lords in the King’s presence and delivering caustic diatribes against the king to his face in fits of anger, accusing the king of being more addicted to sexual excess than the good of the kingdom. Nonetheless, Charles II took a protective interest in Rochester, continuously bailing him out of scrapes and predicaments.
As related in Samuel Pepys’ famous Diary, Rochester, who was poor, contrived to forcibly abduct the heiress of one of England’s wealthiest families, who despite the King’s encouragement, refused to consent to her marriage to Rochester because of his poverty and profligacy. The daughter nonetheless chose to elope with him and they were married. He was a notorious rake, had innumerable mistresses, including the finest actresses of London, and shared some mistresses with the king.
After a brawl between his gang of friends and the police in which a man died, Rochester in disgrace was forced into hiding, disguising himself as a “quack doctor” treating women for “barrenness” or infertility and other gynocological complaints, under the name of “Dr. Bendo.” Rochester in this reputedly attained great success in inducing pregnancy in infertile wives, largely utilizing his own sperm, introduced willingly or surreptitiously. To overcome occasional hesitancy of the women’s mothers or husbands to allow a male doctor to conduct the gynocological examination or treatment, Rochester dressed in drag to impersonate a fictive “Mrs. Bendo,” the putative doctor’s wife, who would conduct the examination and administer the treatment in lieu of the considerate doctor himself.
Rochester died at the age of 33 from a combination of syphillis, gonnorhea and alcoholic liver failure, reportedly wearing a false nose in lieu of the one lost to the disease. After his death several Puritan religious societies circulated an account of his deathbed repentence of his libertinage, the authenticity of which remains uncertain. Nevertheless, many of his forceful poems remain anthologized classics, such as “The Imperfect Enjoyment:”
Naked she lay, clasped in my longing arms,
I filled with love, and she all over charms;
Both equally inspired with eager fire,
Melting through kindness, flaming in desire.
With arms, legs, lips close clinging to embrace,
She clips me to her breast, and sucks me to her face;
Her nimble tongue, Love’s lesser lightning, played
Within my mouth, and to my thoughts conveyed
Swift orders that I should prepare to throw
The all-dissolving thunderbolt below.
My fluttering soul, sprung with the pointed kiss,
Hangs hovering o’er her balmy brinks of bliss,
But whilst her busy hand would guide that part
Which should convey my soul up to her heart,
In liquid raptures I dissolve all o’er.
Melt into sperm, and spend at every pore.
A touch from any part of her had done ‘t:
Her hand, her foot, her very look’s a cunt.
Smiling, she chides in a kind murmuring noise,
And from her body wipes the clammy joys,
When, with a thousand kisses wandering o’er
My panting bosom, “Is there then no more?”
She cries. “All this to love and rapture’s due”
Must we not pay a debt to pleasure too?”
LORD BYRON’S IMMORTAL CLASSIC “DON JUAN”
George Gordon, Lord Byron was celebrated in life for aristocratic excesses, including huge debts, numerous love affairs, a scandalous incestuous liaison with his half-sister, and self-imposed exile and European wanderings, culminating with his sponsorship of a military campaign to win Greek freedom from Ottoman oppression in which he fought and died. He was one of the greatest literary celebrities of Europe, and along with Wordsworth, Keats, Leopardi and Shelley one of the founding patriarchs of the Romantic Movement in Europe. He was regarded by his contemporaries as “mad, bad and dangerous to know.” He became the exemplar of what came to be known as “The Byronic Hero” presented an idealised, but flawed character whose attributes include: great talent; great passion; a distaste for society and social institutions; a lack of respect for rank and privilege (although possessing both); being thwarted in love by social constraint or death; rebellion; exile; an unsavory secret past; arrogance; overconfidence or lack of foresight; and, ultimately, a self-destructive manner.
His classic epic of erotic love is “Don Juan” which ironically and satirically re-casts the famous serial lover whose name itself has become synonymous in the English language with libertinage, rather as a weak man who cannot resist the uncontrollable sexual agressions of women, than as a seducer himself. The epic follows the hero Don Juan from scandal-caused exile from his home in Spain through an unending series of amourous adventures including his rescue from shipwreck and seduction by the dark and beautiful island girl Haidée. The love of Haidée and Juan is however ill-fated as her father Lambro, a pirate master, discovers their affair, seizes and sells Juan as a slave to Constantinople, and Haidée dies of a broken heart with their unborn child within her womb. In Constantinople Don Juan is purchased by a black eunuch at the behest of the Sultana, who desires to make love to him. To smuggle him into the Sultan’s Palace the eunuch forces Juan to dress as a woman, threatening him with castration if he refuses. Brought to the Sultana, he however refuses to make servile love to her, remembering his love for Haidée. Discovered by the Sultan, the Sultan himself is attracted to Juan dressed as a woman, who regrets the “she” is not a Muslim. Don Juan escapes, however, then joins the Russian armies attacking the Ottomans where he becomes a hero. He adopts a ten-year old Muslim girl orphaned in the war, Leila. Taken to the Russian Imperial Court as a war hero, he is seduced by the Empress, Catherine the Great, who becomes his lover until she sends him to England on a mission. There he is seduced by numerous lecherous Englishwomen until he begins to fall in love with Aurora, who reminds him of his lost love Haidée. We do not know how the epic ends, as Byron died before completing it.
THE ULTIMATE LIBERTINE BAD BOY, THE MARQUIS DE SADE
The Marquis de Sade, belying his reputation, was too much of a masochist for his own good. Time and again he proved himself too eager to be caught and punished for his sexual outrages, and the French government, whether of the ancien regime or of Revolutionary France was all too happy to oblige him. The errant aristocrat spent most of his life in jail writing furiously, or when at liberty, conceiving escapades of excess that would send him promptly back to incarceration. He served as an officer in the Seven Years’ War, then married, then committed outrages in whorehouses or with abducted females and males, including flagellation, sodomy, and poisioning prostitutes that landed him in the Bastille. Liberated by the Revolution, he quickly offended again, at the cost of imprisonment and having all his property confiscated, leaving him penniless at the end of his life.
A philosopher of liberty in addition to a sexual libertine, in his classic “Philosophy in the Boudoir” he advocated the absolute freedom of the individual, even at the expense of the injury of others, claiming that such absolute liberty would strengthen and catalyze the growth of all individuals in creative equilibrium and produce much more good than ethical repression of even deviant expressions of freedom. “Nothing is a crime” he declared defiantly….”Laws are not made for the individual but for the generality, which is what puts them in perpetual conflict with self-interest, given that personal self-interest is always in conflict with society. Laws that are good for society are bad for the individuals that compose it, becuase for every time they actually protect or defend an individual, they obstruct or ensnare him for three-quarters of his life.” He denied the bonds between children and parents, husband and wife, and advocated the reign of an absolute liberty in their stead. He called on the people to deny and overthrow both the state and the church: “The only gods should be courage and liberty” he declared. He dauntlessly championed the first of the three ideals of the French Revolution—-liberty, taken absolutely, while ignoring the second two of the triumverate, equality and fraternity. Ironically, his philosophy is often more entertaining than his pornography. His pornographic classics such as “120 Days of Sodom” often become arid and mechanical exercizes in carnal repetition which soon lose interest after the initial prurience and shock value are dissipated.
SPIRITUS MUNDI, SEXUALITY AND SEXUAL LIBERTY
Sexuality and sexual liberty have a stong presence in my own work, the recently published contemporary epic Spiritus Mundi. I grew up as a writer very much in the tradition of D.H. Lawrence and James Joyce, both of whom embraced the central importance of sexuality in human consciousness and existence in their works and worldviews. We are all living intellectually in the wake of the Freudian and Darwinian revolutions, as well the “sexual revolution” in popular culture since the Sixties. Our sexuality is the life blood of our lives and of our consciousness, not to mention our unconsciousness, collective or individual. In my view of sexuality, common with D. H. Lawrence and C.G. Jung, sexuality is intimately connected with the spiritual dimension of human existence as well—sexuality can lead to dehumanization and animalization of our beings but alternatively sexuality can also lead just as naturally in the direction of the humanization of our natural and biological impulses, their civilizing, and even to their spiritualization, as Jung observed.
In regard to sexuality I take as a starting point that it is a natural part of our lives and should be positively embraced in all dimensions of our existence—that it is a necessary and wholesome part of our individual and collective mental health. That is not to deny that it has its chaotic, selfish, destructive and socially disruptive side as well, which society has difficulty managing, which it always must, but it is important that it should not be irrationally repressed in the individual or the society at large, as Freud and Jung have taught us.
The sexual lives of the characters in fiction are a vital dimension of their beings, and a vital dimension for judging the viability, mental health and value of the worldviews of their authors. Hollywood and Washington have long judged their projects asking the question “Will it play in Peoria?” and writers similarly have tested their worldviews by asking “Will it play between the sheets?” In Spiritus Mundi sexuality is linked to the spiritual lives of the characters, but also to the “life force” which drives human evolution and the collective unconscious of the human race, necessary to its survival. The progressive humanization, civilization and spiritualization of our most primal sexual animal impulses in the forms of love, family, community and communion is the story of the progress of our individual lives in microcosm and of our civilizational lives in macrocosm.
For a fuller discussion of the concept of World Literature you are invited to look into the extended discussion in the new book Spiritus Mundi, by Robert Sheppard, one of the principal themes of which is the emergence and evolution of World Literature:
For Discussions on World Literature and n Literary Criticism in Spiritus Mundi: http://worldliteratureandliterarycrit…
Robert Sheppard
Editor-in-Chief
World Literature Forum
Author, Spiritus Mundi Novel
Author’s Blog: http://robertalexandersheppard.wordpr…
Spiritus Mundi on Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17…
Spiritus Mundi on Amazon, Book I: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CIGJFGO
Spiritus Mundi, Book II: The Romance http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CGM8BZG
Copyright Robert Sheppard 2013 All Rights Reserved
LIBERTINES AND SEXUAL EXCESS IN WORLD LITERATURE–SAIKAKU’S “LIFE OF A SENSUOUS WOMAN,” “THE LOVE POEMS OF THE SIXTH DALAI LAMA,” “DON JUAN,” THE EARL OF ROCHESTER AND THE MARQUIS DE SADE—–FROM THE WORLD LITERATURE FORUM RECOMMENDED CLASSICS AND MASTERPIECE
Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings by Marquis de Sade
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
LIBERTINES AND SEXUAL EXCESS IN WORLD LITERATURE–SAIKAKU’S “LIFE OF A SENSUOUS WOMAN,” “THE LOVE POEMS OF THE SIXTH DALAI LAMA,” “DON JUAN,” THE EARL OF ROCHESTER AND THE MARQUIS DE SADE—–FROM THE WORLD LITERATURE FORUM RECOMMENDED CLASSICS AND MASTERPIECES SERIES VIA GOODREADS—-ROBERT SHEPPARD, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
The word “libertine’ entered the English language not as a sexual term but as a by-product of the wars of religion between Protestants and Catholics in Sixteenth Century Europe, being the name of a French Protestant sect that believed individuals should be guided in religious matters “by their own lights”—-meaning reason, direct divine inspiration, spiritual intuition, or personal free interpretation of holy scripture, rather than by the clergy or traditional dogma. Later the word became synonymous with freethinkers whose behaviour, foremost sexual, is unconstrained by social norms or ethical considerations, even to the point of “outraging public morality.” Nevertheless the history of the term underlines its concern not simply with sexual deviance or excess, but with the ideal of freedom and self-determination, even against the pressure of public hostility or condemnation. It also raises the deeper question of how absolute personal freedom may be once released from political tyranny, religious dogma or blind social prejudice, and when liberty may degenerate into a license heedless of the needs, benefits or rights of others.
Not only in Europe but across Asia to Japan from the Sixteenth to Eighteenth centuries did sexual and social libertinage flourish, a generalized cultural drive towards breaking out of the bondage of traditional authority of all kinds, driven by the global rise of urban culture and the merchant class. Nevertheless, especially in those early days freedom was more a luxury than a right, and characteristically any true measure of individual freedom was enjoyed almost exclusively by the aristocracy or merchant elite, rather than the majority of the population constituting the lower classes, and the libertine was most likely a freethinking wealthy aristocratic male in an Asian or European city.
THE “FLOATING WORLD” OF IHARA SAIKAKU AND “THE LIFE OF A SENSUOUS WOMAN”
Ihara Saikaku (1642-1693) the author of “The Life of a Sensuous Woman” was a Japanese poet and creator of the “floating world” genre of Japanese prose (ukiyo-zōshi). Later in life he began writing racy accounts of the financial, amorous and erotic affairs of the merchant class and the demimonde. These stories catered to the whims of the newly prominent merchant class alongside the declassé aristocracy, whose tastes in entertainment leaned toward the arts and pleasure districts of the rising commercial cities such as his native Osaka.
“The Life of a Sensuous Woman,” an atypicaly female narrative as a sequel to his prior “Life of a Sensuous Man,” is an aging woman’s extended confession to two young men in which she describes her various experiences, beginning from her early childhood as the daughter of a former aristocrat in the capital Kyoto, her life as an attendant in the Imperial Palace, then through a descending order of fates as a courtesan, geisha, teacher of courtly manners and calligraphy to young ladies, hairdresser, go-between for marital engagements, and finally as a common streetwalker, losing her beauty in aging into an unattractive old woman. It structurally echoes the genre of the Buddhist confessional narrative in which someone who becomes a priest or a nun recounts the sins of their past and their moment of crisis leading to spiritual awakening. Hdowever, in this case the old woman in her narrative is implicitly initiating her young visitors into the secrets of the “Way of Love,” describing a life of vitality and sexual desire of which she does not essentially repent. En passant, she satirically reveals the underside of the lives of ministers and lords, powerful samurai, wealthy priests, and upper-class merchants. Often compared to Cleland’s “Fanny Hill” the narrative also celebrates the female protagonist’s pluck and resourcefulness in adversity, reminiscent of Becky Thatcher in Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair.” Only at the end of her life’s narrative, in sight of the five-hundred statues of boddhisatvas arrayed in a Buddhist temple does she have a vision of the five hundred men with whom she has had sexual relations arrayed in their place, and is moved to commit the end of her life to spiritual enlightenment, not essentially renouncing, however, the fated vitality of her former life’s path which had led her there, observing with a cautionary smile of spiritual melancholy to her departing two young initiates:
“A beautiful woman, many ages have agreed, is an axe that cuts down a man’s life. No one, of course, escapes death. The invisible blossoms of the mind finally fall and scatter; the soul leaves; and the body is fed like kindling into a crematorium fire in the night. But for the blossoms to fall all too soon in a morning storm—ah, how foolish are the men who die young of overindulgence in the way of sensuous love. Yet there is no end of them.”
THE SHORT EROTIC LIFE OF TSANGYANG GYATSO, THE SIXTH DALAI LAMA
In the Sixteenth Century, the Mongol Khan proclaimed the head of the leading Buddhist sect the “Dalai Lama,” who enjoyed considerable secular power alongside the spiritual authority of his office. When one Dalai Lama died, a search was undertaken to find his newly reborn reincarnation, who would be raised in the Potala Palace by a Regent until coming of age to reign again as the Dalai Lama. After the the Fifth Dalai Lama died in 1682, Tsangyang Gyatso (1683-1706) was proclaimed the new Dalai Lama, but the unscrupulous Regent schemed to keep him effectively under house arrest in the Palace, retaining all power to himself. In this unfortunate condition, deprived of his destiny, the Sixth Dalai Lama dedicated himself to three passions: the study of Buddhist Scriptures, the erotic worship of beautiful women, and the penning of love poems to his beautiful lovers. As he was a “Living Buddha” it was considered by the girls and their families a great and divine honor to be sexually united with the Dalai Lama, and when a girl residing in the elite Shol district of Lhasa below the Palace became a lover her family painted their house yellow, exalted beyond the common white, celebrating the act of divine favour. Gyatso was so successful in “painting the town red,” although in this case yellow, that a scandal ultimately ensued in which the outside power of the Mongol Khan in the north united with the conservative priests to depose,exile and ultimately assassinate him, claiming that the son of the Mongol Khan was the true Sixth Dalai Lama in a coup d’etat. Nonetheless, the Sixth Dalai Lama left behind a rich body of erotic poetry dedicated to his lovers:
Residing at the Potala
I am Rigdzin Tsangyang Gyatso
But in the back alleys of Shol-town
I am rake and stud.
Lover met by chance on the road,
Girl with delicious-smelling body–
Like picking up a small white turquoise
Only to toss it away again.
If I could meditate as deeply
On the sacred texts as I do
On you, I would clearly be
Enlightened in this lifetime!
THE UNPURITAN LIFE AND VERSE OF JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER
The Earl of Rochester (1647-1680) was unquestionably one of the “bad boys” of English letters. Born during the dour administration of Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan Commonwealth, he came of age just in time for the Resotation of monarchy, sexual excess and extravagance, and his attitude in word and deed as to libertine sexuality was “cavalier” in the extreme. As his father had engineered Charles II’s escape from England he became a favorite in the Restoration court, yet cavalierly endangered his status with such acts boxing the ears of high lords in the King’s presence and delivering caustic diatribes against the king to his face in fits of anger, accusing the king of being more addicted to sexual excess than the good of the kingdom. Nonetheless, Charles II took a protective interest in Rochester, continuously bailing him out of scrapes and predicaments.
As related in Samuel Pepys’ famous Diary, Rochester, who was poor, contrived to forcibly abduct the heiress of one of England’s wealthiest families, who despite the King’s encouragement, refused to consent to her marriage to Rochester because of his poverty and profligacy. The daughter nonetheless chose to elope with him and they were married. He was a notorious rake, had innumerable mistresses, including the finest actresses of London, and shared some mistresses with the king.
After a brawl between his gang of friends and the police in which a man died, Rochester in disgrace was forced into hiding, disguising himself as a “quack doctor” treating women for “barrenness” or infertility and other gynocological complaints, under the name of “Dr. Bendo.” Rochester in this reputedly attained great success in inducing pregnancy in infertile wives, largely utilizing his own sperm, introduced willingly or surreptitiously. To overcome occasional hesitancy of the women’s mothers or husbands to allow a male doctor to conduct the gynocological examination or treatment, Rochester dressed in drag to impersonate a fictive “Mrs. Bendo,” the putative doctor’s wife, who would conduct the examination and administer the treatment in lieu of the considerate doctor himself.
Rochester died at the age of 33 from a combination of syphillis, gonnorhea and alcoholic liver failure, reportedly wearing a false nose in lieu of the one lost to the disease. After his death several Puritan religious societies circulated an account of his deathbed repentence of his libertinage, the authenticity of which remains uncertain. Nevertheless, many of his forceful poems remain anthologized classics, such as “The Imperfect Enjoyment:”
Naked she lay, clasped in my longing arms,
I filled with love, and she all over charms;
Both equally inspired with eager fire,
Melting through kindness, flaming in desire.
With arms, legs, lips close clinging to embrace,
She clips me to her breast, and sucks me to her face;
Her nimble tongue, Love’s lesser lightning, played
Within my mouth, and to my thoughts conveyed
Swift orders that I should prepare to throw
The all-dissolving thunderbolt below.
My fluttering soul, sprung with the pointed kiss,
Hangs hovering o’er her balmy brinks of bliss,
But whilst her busy hand would guide that part
Which should convey my soul up to her heart,
In liquid raptures I dissolve all o’er.
Melt into sperm, and spend at every pore.
A touch from any part of her had done ‘t:
Her hand, her foot, her very look’s a cunt.
Smiling, she chides in a kind murmuring noise,
And from her body wipes the clammy joys,
When, with a thousand kisses wandering o’er
My panting bosom, “Is there then no more?”
She cries. “All this to love and rapture’s due”
Must we not pay a debt to pleasure too?”
LORD BYRON’S IMMORTAL CLASSIC “DON JUAN”
George Gordon, Lord Byron was celebrated in life for aristocratic excesses, including huge debts, numerous love affairs, a scandalous incestuous liaison with his half-sister, and self-imposed exile and European wanderings, culminating with his sponsorship of a military campaign to win Greek freedom from Ottoman oppression in which he fought and died. He was one of the greatest literary celebrities of Europe, and along with Wordsworth, Keats, Leopardi and Shelley one of the founding patriarchs of the Romantic Movement in Europe. He was regarded by his contemporaries as “mad, bad and dangerous to know.” He became the exemplar of what came to be known as “The Byronic Hero” presented an idealised, but flawed character whose attributes include: great talent; great passion; a distaste for society and social institutions; a lack of respect for rank and privilege (although possessing both); being thwarted in love by social constraint or death; rebellion; exile; an unsavory secret past; arrogance; overconfidence or lack of foresight; and, ultimately, a self-destructive manner.
His classic epic of erotic love is “Don Juan” which ironically and satirically re-casts the famous serial lover whose name itself has become synonymous in the English language with libertinage, rather as a weak man who cannot resist the uncontrollable sexual agressions of women, than as a seducer himself. The epic follows the hero Don Juan from scandal-caused exile from his home in Spain through an unending series of amourous adventures including his rescue from shipwreck and seduction by the dark and beautiful island girl Haidée. The love of Haidée and Juan is however ill-fated as her father Lambro, a pirate master, discovers their affair, seizes and sells Juan as a slave to Constantinople, and Haidée dies of a broken heart with their unborn child within her womb. In Constantinople Don Juan is purchased by a black eunuch at the behest of the Sultana, who desires to make love to him. To smuggle him into the Sultan’s Palace the eunuch forces Juan to dress as a woman, threatening him with castration if he refuses. Brought to the Sultana, he however refuses to make servile love to her, remembering his love for Haidée. Discovered by the Sultan, the Sultan himself is attracted to Juan dressed as a woman, who regrets the “she” is not a Muslim. Don Juan escapes, however, then joins the Russian armies attacking the Ottomans where he becomes a hero. He adopts a ten-year old Muslim girl orphaned in the war, Leila. Taken to the Russian Imperial Court as a war hero, he is seduced by the Empress, Catherine the Great, who becomes his lover until she sends him to England on a mission. There he is seduced by numerous lecherous Englishwomen until he begins to fall in love with Aurora, who reminds him of his lost love Haidée. We do not know how the epic ends, as Byron died before completing it.
THE ULTIMATE LIBERTINE BAD BOY, THE MARQUIS DE SADE
The Marquis de Sade, belying his reputation, was too much of a masochist for his own good. Time and again he proved himself too eager to be caught and punished for his sexual outrages, and the French government, whether of the ancien regime or of Revolutionary France was all too happy to oblige him. The errant aristocrat spent most of his life in jail writing furiously, or when at liberty, conceiving escapades of excess that would send him promptly back to incarceration. He served as an officer in the Seven Years’ War, then married, then committed outrages in whorehouses or with abducted females and males, including flagellation, sodomy, and poisioning prostitutes that landed him in the Bastille. Liberated by the Revolution, he quickly offended again, at the cost of imprisonment and having all his property confiscated, leaving him penniless at the end of his life.
A philosopher of liberty in addition to a sexual libertine, in his classic “Philosophy in the Boudoir” he advocated the absolute freedom of the individual, even at the expense of the injury of others, claiming that such absolute liberty would strengthen and catalyze the growth of all individuals in creative equilibrium and produce much more good than ethical repression of even deviant expressions of freedom. “Nothing is a crime” he declared defiantly….”Laws are not made for the individual but for the generality, which is what puts them in perpetual conflict with self-interest, given that personal self-interest is always in conflict with society. Laws that are good for society are bad for the individuals that compose it, becuase for every time they actually protect or defend an individual, they obstruct or ensnare him for three-quarters of his life.” He denied the bonds between children and parents, husband and wife, and advocated the reign of an absolute liberty in their stead. He called on the people to deny and overthrow both the state and the church: “The only gods should be courage and liberty” he declared. He dauntlessly championed the first of the three ideals of the French Revolution—-liberty, taken absolutely, while ignoring the second two of the triumverate, equality and fraternity. Ironically, his philosophy is often more entertaining than his pornography. His pornographic classics such as “120 Days of Sodom” often become arid and mechanical exercizes in carnal repetition which soon lose interest after the initial prurience and shock value are dissipated.
SPIRITUS MUNDI, SEXUALITY AND SEXUAL LIBERTY
Sexuality and sexual liberty have a stong presence in my own work, the recently published contemporary epic Spiritus Mundi. I grew up as a writer very much in the tradition of D.H. Lawrence and James Joyce, both of whom embraced the central importance of sexuality in human consciousness and existence in their works and worldviews. We are all living intellectually in the wake of the Freudian and Darwinian revolutions, as well the “sexual revolution” in popular culture since the Sixties. Our sexuality is the life blood of our lives and of our consciousness, not to mention our unconsciousness, collective or individual. In my view of sexuality, common with D. H. Lawrence and C.G. Jung, sexuality is intimately connected with the spiritual dimension of human existence as well—sexuality can lead to dehumanization and animalization of our beings but alternatively sexuality can also lead just as naturally in the direction of the humanization of our natural and biological impulses, their civilizing, and even to their spiritualization, as Jung observed.
In regard to sexuality I take as a starting point that it is a natural part of our lives and should be positively embraced in all dimensions of our existence—that it is a necessary and wholesome part of our individual and collective mental health. That is not to deny that it has its chaotic, selfish, destructive and socially disruptive side as well, which society has difficulty managing, which it always must, but it is important that it should not be irrationally repressed in the individual or the society at large, as Freud and Jung have taught us.
The sexual lives of the characters in fiction are a vital dimension of their beings, and a vital dimension for judging the viability, mental health and value of the worldviews of their authors. Hollywood and Washington have long judged their projects asking the question “Will it play in Peoria?” and writers similarly have tested their worldviews by asking “Will it play between the sheets?” In Spiritus Mundi sexuality is linked to the spiritual lives of the characters, but also to the “life force” which drives human evolution and the collective unconscious of the human race, necessary to its survival. The progressive humanization, civilization and spiritualization of our most primal sexual animal impulses in the forms of love, family, community and communion is the story of the progress of our individual lives in microcosm and of our civilizational lives in macrocosm.
For a fuller discussion of the concept of World Literature you are invited to look into the extended discussion in the new book Spiritus Mundi, by Robert Sheppard, one of the principal themes of which is the emergence and evolution of World Literature:
For Discussions on World Literature and n Literary Criticism in Spiritus Mundi: http://worldliteratureandliterarycrit…
Robert Sheppard
Editor-in-Chief
World Literature Forum
Author, Spiritus Mundi Novel
Author’s Blog: http://robertalexandersheppard.wordpr…
Spiritus Mundi on Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17…
Spiritus Mundi on Amazon, Book I: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CIGJFGO
Spiritus Mundi, Book II: The Romance http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CGM8BZG
Copyright Robert Sheppard 2013 All Rights Reserved
LIBERTINES AND SEXUAL EXCESS IN WORLD LITERATURE–SAIKAKU’S “LIFE OF A SENSUOUS WOMAN,” “THE LOVE POEMS OF THE SIXTH DALAI LAMA,” “DON JUAN,” THE EARL OF ROCHESTER AND THE MARQUIS DE SADE—–FROM THE WORLD LITERATURE FORUM RECOMMENDED CLASSICS AND MASTERPIECE
Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings by Marquis de Sade
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
LIBERTINES AND SEXUAL EXCESS IN WORLD LITERATURE–SAIKAKU’S “LIFE OF A SENSUOUS WOMAN,” “THE LOVE POEMS OF THE SIXTH DALAI LAMA,” “DON JUAN,” THE EARL OF ROCHESTER AND THE MARQUIS DE SADE—–FROM THE WORLD LITERATURE FORUM RECOMMENDED CLASSICS AND MASTERPIECES SERIES VIA GOODREADS—-ROBERT SHEPPARD, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
The word “libertine’ entered the English language not as a sexual term but as a by-product of the wars of religion between Protestants and Catholics in Sixteenth Century Europe, being the name of a French Protestant sect that believed individuals should be guided in religious matters “by their own lights”—-meaning reason, direct divine inspiration, spiritual intuition, or personal free interpretation of holy scripture, rather than by the clergy or traditional dogma. Later the word became synonymous with freethinkers whose behaviour, foremost sexual, is unconstrained by social norms or ethical considerations, even to the point of “outraging public morality.” Nevertheless the history of the term underlines its concern not simply with sexual deviance or excess, but with the ideal of freedom and self-determination, even against the pressure of public hostility or condemnation. It also raises the deeper question of how absolute personal freedom may be once released from political tyranny, religious dogma or blind social prejudice, and when liberty may degenerate into a license heedless of the needs, benefits or rights of others.
Not only in Europe but across Asia to Japan from the Sixteenth to Eighteenth centuries did sexual and social libertinage flourish, a generalized cultural drive towards breaking out of the bondage of traditional authority of all kinds, driven by the global rise of urban culture and the merchant class. Nevertheless, especially in those early days freedom was more a luxury than a right, and characteristically any true measure of individual freedom was enjoyed almost exclusively by the aristocracy or merchant elite, rather than the majority of the population constituting the lower classes, and the libertine was most likely a freethinking wealthy aristocratic male in an Asian or European city.
THE “FLOATING WORLD” OF IHARA SAIKAKU AND “THE LIFE OF A SENSUOUS WOMAN”
Ihara Saikaku (1642-1693) the author of “The Life of a Sensuous Woman” was a Japanese poet and creator of the “floating world” genre of Japanese prose (ukiyo-zōshi). Later in life he began writing racy accounts of the financial, amorous and erotic affairs of the merchant class and the demimonde. These stories catered to the whims of the newly prominent merchant class alongside the declassé aristocracy, whose tastes in entertainment leaned toward the arts and pleasure districts of the rising commercial cities such as his native Osaka.
“The Life of a Sensuous Woman,” an atypicaly female narrative as a sequel to his prior “Life of a Sensuous Man,” is an aging woman’s extended confession to two young men in which she describes her various experiences, beginning from her early childhood as the daughter of a former aristocrat in the capital Kyoto, her life as an attendant in the Imperial Palace, then through a descending order of fates as a courtesan, geisha, teacher of courtly manners and calligraphy to young ladies, hairdresser, go-between for marital engagements, and finally as a common streetwalker, losing her beauty in aging into an unattractive old woman. It structurally echoes the genre of the Buddhist confessional narrative in which someone who becomes a priest or a nun recounts the sins of their past and their moment of crisis leading to spiritual awakening. Hdowever, in this case the old woman in her narrative is implicitly initiating her young visitors into the secrets of the “Way of Love,” describing a life of vitality and sexual desire of which she does not essentially repent. En passant, she satirically reveals the underside of the lives of ministers and lords, powerful samurai, wealthy priests, and upper-class merchants. Often compared to Cleland’s “Fanny Hill” the narrative also celebrates the female protagonist’s pluck and resourcefulness in adversity, reminiscent of Becky Thatcher in Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair.” Only at the end of her life’s narrative, in sight of the five-hundred statues of boddhisatvas arrayed in a Buddhist temple does she have a vision of the five hundred men with whom she has had sexual relations arrayed in their place, and is moved to commit the end of her life to spiritual enlightenment, not essentially renouncing, however, the fated vitality of her former life’s path which had led her there, observing with a cautionary smile of spiritual melancholy to her departing two young initiates:
“A beautiful woman, many ages have agreed, is an axe that cuts down a man’s life. No one, of course, escapes death. The invisible blossoms of the mind finally fall and scatter; the soul leaves; and the body is fed like kindling into a crematorium fire in the night. But for the blossoms to fall all too soon in a morning storm—ah, how foolish are the men who die young of overindulgence in the way of sensuous love. Yet there is no end of them.”
THE SHORT EROTIC LIFE OF TSANGYANG GYATSO, THE SIXTH DALAI LAMA
In the Sixteenth Century, the Mongol Khan proclaimed the head of the leading Buddhist sect the “Dalai Lama,” who enjoyed considerable secular power alongside the spiritual authority of his office. When one Dalai Lama died, a search was undertaken to find his newly reborn reincarnation, who would be raised in the Potala Palace by a Regent until coming of age to reign again as the Dalai Lama. After the the Fifth Dalai Lama died in 1682, Tsangyang Gyatso (1683-1706) was proclaimed the new Dalai Lama, but the unscrupulous Regent schemed to keep him effectively under house arrest in the Palace, retaining all power to himself. In this unfortunate condition, deprived of his destiny, the Sixth Dalai Lama dedicated himself to three passions: the study of Buddhist Scriptures, the erotic worship of beautiful women, and the penning of love poems to his beautiful lovers. As he was a “Living Buddha” it was considered by the girls and their families a great and divine honor to be sexually united with the Dalai Lama, and when a girl residing in the elite Shol district of Lhasa below the Palace became a lover her family painted their house yellow, exalted beyond the common white, celebrating the act of divine favour. Gyatso was so successful in “painting the town red,” although in this case yellow, that a scandal ultimately ensued in which the outside power of the Mongol Khan in the north united with the conservative priests to depose,exile and ultimately assassinate him, claiming that the son of the Mongol Khan was the true Sixth Dalai Lama in a coup d’etat. Nonetheless, the Sixth Dalai Lama left behind a rich body of erotic poetry dedicated to his lovers:
Residing at the Potala
I am Rigdzin Tsangyang Gyatso
But in the back alleys of Shol-town
I am rake and stud.
Lover met by chance on the road,
Girl with delicious-smelling body–
Like picking up a small white turquoise
Only to toss it away again.
If I could meditate as deeply
On the sacred texts as I do
On you, I would clearly be
Enlightened in this lifetime!
THE UNPURITAN LIFE AND VERSE OF JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER
The Earl of Rochester (1647-1680) was unquestionably one of the “bad boys” of English letters. Born during the dour administration of Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan Commonwealth, he came of age just in time for the Resotation of monarchy, sexual excess and extravagance, and his attitude in word and deed as to libertine sexuality was “cavalier” in the extreme. As his father had engineered Charles II’s escape from England he became a favorite in the Restoration court, yet cavalierly endangered his status with such acts boxing the ears of high lords in the King’s presence and delivering caustic diatribes against the king to his face in fits of anger, accusing the king of being more addicted to sexual excess than the good of the kingdom. Nonetheless, Charles II took a protective interest in Rochester, continuously bailing him out of scrapes and predicaments.
As related in Samuel Pepys’ famous Diary, Rochester, who was poor, contrived to forcibly abduct the heiress of one of England’s wealthiest families, who despite the King’s encouragement, refused to consent to her marriage to Rochester because of his poverty and profligacy. The daughter nonetheless chose to elope with him and they were married. He was a notorious rake, had innumerable mistresses, including the finest actresses of London, and shared some mistresses with the king.
After a brawl between his gang of friends and the police in which a man died, Rochester in disgrace was forced into hiding, disguising himself as a “quack doctor” treating women for “barrenness” or infertility and other gynocological complaints, under the name of “Dr. Bendo.” Rochester in this reputedly attained great success in inducing pregnancy in infertile wives, largely utilizing his own sperm, introduced willingly or surreptitiously. To overcome occasional hesitancy of the women’s mothers or husbands to allow a male doctor to conduct the gynocological examination or treatment, Rochester dressed in drag to impersonate a fictive “Mrs. Bendo,” the putative doctor’s wife, who would conduct the examination and administer the treatment in lieu of the considerate doctor himself.
Rochester died at the age of 33 from a combination of syphillis, gonnorhea and alcoholic liver failure, reportedly wearing a false nose in lieu of the one lost to the disease. After his death several Puritan religious societies circulated an account of his deathbed repentence of his libertinage, the authenticity of which remains uncertain. Nevertheless, many of his forceful poems remain anthologized classics, such as “The Imperfect Enjoyment:”
Naked she lay, clasped in my longing arms,
I filled with love, and she all over charms;
Both equally inspired with eager fire,
Melting through kindness, flaming in desire.
With arms, legs, lips close clinging to embrace,
She clips me to her breast, and sucks me to her face;
Her nimble tongue, Love’s lesser lightning, played
Within my mouth, and to my thoughts conveyed
Swift orders that I should prepare to throw
The all-dissolving thunderbolt below.
My fluttering soul, sprung with the pointed kiss,
Hangs hovering o’er her balmy brinks of bliss,
But whilst her busy hand would guide that part
Which should convey my soul up to her heart,
In liquid raptures I dissolve all o’er.
Melt into sperm, and spend at every pore.
A touch from any part of her had done ‘t:
Her hand, her foot, her very look’s a cunt.
Smiling, she chides in a kind murmuring noise,
And from her body wipes the clammy joys,
When, with a thousand kisses wandering o’er
My panting bosom, “Is there then no more?”
She cries. “All this to love and rapture’s due”
Must we not pay a debt to pleasure too?”
LORD BYRON’S IMMORTAL CLASSIC “DON JUAN”
George Gordon, Lord Byron was celebrated in life for aristocratic excesses, including huge debts, numerous love affairs, a scandalous incestuous liaison with his half-sister, and self-imposed exile and European wanderings, culminating with his sponsorship of a military campaign to win Greek freedom from Ottoman oppression in which he fought and died. He was one of the greatest literary celebrities of Europe, and along with Wordsworth, Keats, Leopardi and Shelley one of the founding patriarchs of the Romantic Movement in Europe. He was regarded by his contemporaries as “mad, bad and dangerous to know.” He became the exemplar of what came to be known as “The Byronic Hero” presented an idealised, but flawed character whose attributes include: great talent; great passion; a distaste for society and social institutions; a lack of respect for rank and privilege (although possessing both); being thwarted in love by social constraint or death; rebellion; exile; an unsavory secret past; arrogance; overconfidence or lack of foresight; and, ultimately, a self-destructive manner.
His classic epic of erotic love is “Don Juan” which ironically and satirically re-casts the famous serial lover whose name itself has become synonymous in the English language with libertinage, rather as a weak man who cannot resist the uncontrollable sexual agressions of women, than as a seducer himself. The epic follows the hero Don Juan from scandal-caused exile from his home in Spain through an unending series of amourous adventures including his rescue from shipwreck and seduction by the dark and beautiful island girl Haidée. The love of Haidée and Juan is however ill-fated as her father Lambro, a pirate master, discovers their affair, seizes and sells Juan as a slave to Constantinople, and Haidée dies of a broken heart with their unborn child within her womb. In Constantinople Don Juan is purchased by a black eunuch at the behest of the Sultana, who desires to make love to him. To smuggle him into the Sultan’s Palace the eunuch forces Juan to dress as a woman, threatening him with castration if he refuses. Brought to the Sultana, he however refuses to make servile love to her, remembering his love for Haidée. Discovered by the Sultan, the Sultan himself is attracted to Juan dressed as a woman, who regrets the “she” is not a Muslim. Don Juan escapes, however, then joins the Russian armies attacking the Ottomans where he becomes a hero. He adopts a ten-year old Muslim girl orphaned in the war, Leila. Taken to the Russian Imperial Court as a war hero, he is seduced by the Empress, Catherine the Great, who becomes his lover until she sends him to England on a mission. There he is seduced by numerous lecherous Englishwomen until he begins to fall in love with Aurora, who reminds him of his lost love Haidée. We do not know how the epic ends, as Byron died before completing it.
THE ULTIMATE LIBERTINE BAD BOY, THE MARQUIS DE SADE
The Marquis de Sade, belying his reputation, was too much of a masochist for his own good. Time and again he proved himself too eager to be caught and punished for his sexual outrages, and the French government, whether of the ancien regime or of Revolutionary France was all too happy to oblige him. The errant aristocrat spent most of his life in jail writing furiously, or when at liberty, conceiving escapades of excess that would send him promptly back to incarceration. He served as an officer in the Seven Years’ War, then married, then committed outrages in whorehouses or with abducted females and males, including flagellation, sodomy, and poisioning prostitutes that landed him in the Bastille. Liberated by the Revolution, he quickly offended again, at the cost of imprisonment and having all his property confiscated, leaving him penniless at the end of his life.
A philosopher of liberty in addition to a sexual libertine, in his classic “Philosophy in the Boudoir” he advocated the absolute freedom of the individual, even at the expense of the injury of others, claiming that such absolute liberty would strengthen and catalyze the growth of all individuals in creative equilibrium and produce much more good than ethical repression of even deviant expressions of freedom. “Nothing is a crime” he declared defiantly….”Laws are not made for the individual but for the generality, which is what puts them in perpetual conflict with self-interest, given that personal self-interest is always in conflict with society. Laws that are good for society are bad for the individuals that compose it, becuase for every time they actually protect or defend an individual, they obstruct or ensnare him for three-quarters of his life.” He denied the bonds between children and parents, husband and wife, and advocated the reign of an absolute liberty in their stead. He called on the people to deny and overthrow both the state and the church: “The only gods should be courage and liberty” he declared. He dauntlessly championed the first of the three ideals of the French Revolution—-liberty, taken absolutely, while ignoring the second two of the triumverate, equality and fraternity. Ironically, his philosophy is often more entertaining than his pornography. His pornographic classics such as “120 Days of Sodom” often become arid and mechanical exercizes in carnal repetition which soon lose interest after the initial prurience and shock value are dissipated.
SPIRITUS MUNDI, SEXUALITY AND SEXUAL LIBERTY
Sexuality and sexual liberty have a stong presence in my own work, the recently published contemporary epic Spiritus Mundi. I grew up as a writer very much in the tradition of D.H. Lawrence and James Joyce, both of whom embraced the central importance of sexuality in human consciousness and existence in their works and worldviews. We are all living intellectually in the wake of the Freudian and Darwinian revolutions, as well the “sexual revolution” in popular culture since the Sixties. Our sexuality is the life blood of our lives and of our consciousness, not to mention our unconsciousness, collective or individual. In my view of sexuality, common with D. H. Lawrence and C.G. Jung, sexuality is intimately connected with the spiritual dimension of human existence as well—sexuality can lead to dehumanization and animalization of our beings but alternatively sexuality can also lead just as naturally in the direction of the humanization of our natural and biological impulses, their civilizing, and even to their spiritualization, as Jung observed.
In regard to sexuality I take as a starting point that it is a natural part of our lives and should be positively embraced in all dimensions of our existence—that it is a necessary and wholesome part of our individual and collective mental health. That is not to deny that it has its chaotic, selfish, destructive and socially disruptive side as well, which society has difficulty managing, which it always must, but it is important that it should not be irrationally repressed in the individual or the society at large, as Freud and Jung have taught us.
The sexual lives of the characters in fiction are a vital dimension of their beings, and a vital dimension for judging the viability, mental health and value of the worldviews of their authors. Hollywood and Washington have long judged their projects asking the question “Will it play in Peoria?” and writers similarly have tested their worldviews by asking “Will it play between the sheets?” In Spiritus Mundi sexuality is linked to the spiritual lives of the characters, but also to the “life force” which drives human evolution and the collective unconscious of the human race, necessary to its survival. The progressive humanization, civilization and spiritualization of our most primal sexual animal impulses in the forms of love, family, community and communion is the story of the progress of our individual lives in microcosm and of our civilizational lives in macrocosm.
For a fuller discussion of the concept of World Literature you are invited to look into the extended discussion in the new book Spiritus Mundi, by Robert Sheppard, one of the principal themes of which is the emergence and evolution of World Literature:
For Discussions on World Literature and n Literary Criticism in Spiritus Mundi: http://worldliteratureandliterarycrit…
Robert Sheppard
Editor-in-Chief
World Literature Forum
Author, Spiritus Mundi Novel
Author’s Blog: http://robertalexandersheppard.wordpr…
Spiritus Mundi on Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17…
Spiritus Mundi on Amazon, Book I: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CIGJFGO
Spiritus Mundi, Book II: The Romance http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CGM8BZG
Copyright Robert Sheppard 2013 All Rights Reserved
July 26, 2013
THE CONSPIRACY THRILLER MYSTERY IN WORLD LITERATURE–UMBERTO ECO’S “FOUCAULT’S PENDULUM” & “THE NAME OF THE ROSE” AND THOMAS PYNCHON’S “GRAVITY’S RAINBOW” & “AGAINST THE DAY”—–FROM THE WORLD LITERATURE FORUM RECOMMENDED CLASSICS AND MASTERPIECES SERIES VIA
Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
THE CONSPIRACY THRILLER MYSTERY IN WORLD LITERATURE–UMBERTO ECO’S “FOUCAULT’S PENDULUM” & “THE NAME OF THE ROSE” AND THOMAS PYNCHON’S “GRAVITY’S RAINBOW” & “AGAINST THE DAY”—–FROM THE WORLD LITERATURE FORUM RECOMMENDED CLASSICS AND MASTERPIECES SERIES VIA GOODREADS—-ROBERT SHEPPARD, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Umbert Eco has been described as the thinking man’s Dan Brown, a master of modern conspiracy narrative featuring secret societies, cryptic serial murders, Biblical mysteries, Templars, Illuminati, threatening technologies and the moving shadow of inexplicable historical forces mysteriously at work, enhanced and dialated also by serious discussions of the nature of God and His invisible shaping hand in human history, Revelations, semiotics and signs, intellectual puzzles and riddles, the nature of art, texts & textuality, mind, soul, spirituality, good & evil, and an exploration of order, absurdity and meaninglessness in life and world history.
Eco’s books, such as “Foucault’s Pendulum” and “The Name of the Rose” are seen as founding and grounding the genre of the Conspiracy Thriller Mystery, popularized recently in print and film with Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” and “Angels and Demons” and epitomized by such masterpieces as Thomas Pynchon’s epics, “Gravity’s Rainbow,” “The Crying of Lot 49,” and “Against the Day,” featuring esoteric conspiracies varying from the hidden hand of The Illuminati, Templars, Freemasons, Opus Dei, the Phoebus Conspiracy, Arch-Capitalists, Synarchists, Tri-Lateralists and International Bankers, to the advent of the Anti-Christ and fulfillment of the End-Days of Revelation.
THE CONSPIRACY THRILLER MYSTERY IN WORLD LITERATURE
The Conspiracy Thriller (or Paranoia Thriller) is a subgenre of more general thriller fiction. The protagonists of conspiracy thrillers are often journalists or amateur investigators who find themselves (often inadvertently) pulling on a small thread which unravels a vast conspiracy that ultimately goes “all the way to the top.” The complexities of historical fact are often recast as a morality play in which bad people cause bad events, and good people either identify and defeat them in the typical Hollywood ending, or alternatively are inevitably crushed by the entrenched secretive power elite of a malign or absurdist history which the “little people” remain powerless to change. Conspiracies are often played out as “man-in-peril” (or “woman-in-peril”) stories, or yield Quest narratives similar to those found in whodunnits and detective stories.
A common theme in such works is that characters uncovering the conspiracy encounter difficulty ascertaining the truth amid deceptions and diabolical riddles: rumors, lies, propaganda, and counter-propaganda build upon one another until what is conspiracy and what is coincidence become entangled. Many conspiracy fiction works also include the theme of secret history.
Modern classics of the Conspiracy Thriller Mystery genre include John Buchan’s 1915 novel “The Thirty-Nine Steps,” which weaves elements of conspiracy and man-on-the-run archetypes. Graham Greene’s 1943 novel “Ministry of Fear,” rendered in film by Fritz Lang in 1944, combines all the ingredients of paranoia and conspiracy familiar to aficionados of the 1970s thrillers, with additional urgency and depth added by its wartime backdrop.
One of the first science fiction novels to deal with a full-blown conspiracy theory was Eric Frank Russell’s “Dreadful Sanctuary” (1948). This deals with a number of sabotaged space missions and the apparent discovery that Earth is being quarantined by aliens from other planets of the Solar System. However, as the novel progresses it emerges that this view is a paranoid delusion perpetuated by a small but powerful secret society. The “Men in Black” series also transforms the locus of the hidden conspiracy against the ordinary folk to a supranational government nexus with extraterrestrials.
Conspiracy fiction in the US took off in the 1960s and 1970s in the wake of a number of high-profile scandals and cryptic controversies, most notably the Vietnam War, assassinations of John & Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr., as well as the Nixon Watergate scandal. Several fictional works thus explored the clandestine machinations and conspiracies lurking beneath the seemingly orderly fabric of political life. American novelist Richard Condon wrote a number of conspiracy thrillers, including the seminal brainwashing classic “The Manchurian Candidate” (1959), and “Winter Kills,” which was made into a film. “Illuminatus!” (1969–1971), a trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, is regarded by many as the definitive work of 20th-century conspiracy fiction. Set in the late ’60s, it is a psychedelic tale which fuses mystery, science fiction, horror, and comedy.
Philip K. Dick wrote a large number of short stories where vast conspiracies were employed (usually by an oppressive government or other hostile powers) to keep the common people under control or enforce a given agenda. Other popular science fiction writers whose work features conspiracy theories include William Gibson, John Twelve Hawks, and Neal Stephenson.
John Macgregor’s 1986 novel “Propinquity” describes an attempt by a modern couple to revive the frozen body of a gnostic medieval Queen, buried deep under Westminster Abbey. Their attempt to expose the feminine aspect of Christianity’s origins results in fierce Church opposition and, eventually, an international manhunt.
“The Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown draws on conspiracy theories involving the Roman Catholic Church, Opus Dei and the Priory of Sion. Other contemporary authors who have used elements of conspiracy theory in their work include Margaret Atwood, William S. Burroughs, Don DeLillo, James Ellroy, Joseph Heller, Robert Ludlum, David Morrell and James Clancy Phelan.
UMBERTO ECO: FATHER OF THE CONSPIRACY THRILLER MYSTERY NOVEL
Umberto Eco’s “Foucault’s Pendulum” (1988) features a story in which the staff of a vanity publishing firm bored with the third-rate novels,invent their own conspiracy for fun. They call this satirical intellectual game “The Plan”. The three become increasingly obsessed with The Plan, and sometimes forget that it’s just a game. Worse still, other conspiracy theorists learn about The Plan, and take it seriously. One, Belbo finds himself the target of a real secret society that believes he possesses the key to the lost treasure of the Knights Templar. Belbo, Diotallevi and Casaubon quickly become submerged in occult manuscripts that draw all sorts of flimsy connections between historical events and the unfolding of the plan. They nickname the authors of the “secret manuscript” they claim to have discovered the “Diabolicals”, and engage Agliè, a professional secret society expert as a consultant. They develop an intricate web of mystical connections, making use of Belbo’s small personal computer, which he has nicknamed Abulafia, uncovering hidden references to the Kabbalah’s Sefirot. Agliè in reality is a leader of a real secret society which becomes convinced that the fictional Plan is part of their own mission and they ruthlesssly take it over, torturing and ultimately killing Belbo to reveal the hidden keys to their destiny, and causing Casuabon, the sole survivor to run from their clutches.
Eco’s prior classic, “The Name of the Rose” is set in a Medieval monestery in which a series of murders unfolds, implicating heretical secret communistic religious sects and the Inquisition which pursues them, along with a witchhunt for the Anti-Christ on the eve of the expected Apocalypse. A Franciscan monk, William of Baskerville, takes on the role of a Medieval “Sherlock Holmes” to unravel the mystery, following clues and riddles until the story ends in tragedy with the entire monestery destroyed by fire at the hands of a spiteful reactionary monk. No “master conspiracy” is exists however, and history proves neither guided by the divine blueprint of Doom of Revelations nor the work of secret plotters, but rather the absurdist accidents of a disordered world.
THOMAS PYNCHON: FATHER OF THE CONSPIRACY-DRIVEN EXISTENTIAL EPIC
“Gravity’s Rainbow,” often regarded a the greates American novel since WWII,also draws heavily on conspiracy theory in describing the motives and operations of the Phoebus and other industrial cartels as well as the cross-plotting of Allied and Nazi intelligence services in connection with the development of V1 and V2 ballistic missiles during World War II. Mysteries unfold from the arcane to the absurd, such as the hidden correlations of the Nazi V2 rocket impact points and the locations of the sexual couplings of the protagonist Slothrop, an American intelligence operative whose mind ultimately disintegrates as he hunts for the hidden secrets of Nazi missile technology across WWII Europe amid uncanny connections of sexual perversions, capitalist plots, and the absurdist destinies of the characters.
Pynchon’s earlier work, “The Crying of Lot 49″ (1966) also includes a secretive conflict between cartels dating back to the Middle Ages. His late work, “Against the Day” presents a sometimes whimsical interweaving of technology as a driving force of history, the nefarious plotting of a secretive capitalist elite prior to WWI to dominate and control it, and occult secret societies, such as an idealistic scientific brotherhood operating a Zepplin fleet which contends with Russian and German rivals, then mysteriously travels through a an air tunnel from the North Pole to the Center of the Earth exploring occult technologies such as Tesla’s “Telluric Currents” which may offer unlimited energy. The idealistic scientific brotherhood gradually discovers that its secret leadership, innocently idealized, is controlled by ruthless capitalists out to control the technology shaping history.
WHO IS THE “TRUE BELIEVER” READER OF CONSPIRACY FICTION?
The “True Believer” addict of conspiracy theories need not believe in God, but always believes in the Devil. Though anyone may enjoy the artistry and entertainment value of conspiracy novels, and there are real conspiracies, those of a more pronounced paranoid mindset are often convinced of dubious conspiracies’ truth, more often resulting from their underlying psychological needs than the hisorical truth of the subject matter. Such conspiracies ironically provide the clinically paranoid as well as the socially functional paranoid with the mental secuirty of a predictable, if malign, world. They justify his distrust of any relationships with perfidious others and offer a convenient excuse for selfish and self-centered withdrawal into the intellectually lazy bunker-mentality of “us against them” in which there is conveniently no need for moral obligations, tiresome human feelings and complexities regarding anyone outside onself and one’s own small circle within the seige-bunker, with the bonus of convenient “feel good” self-justification of regarding onself as an innocent, even heroic victim and martyr of malign forces, immune from the possibility of being a source of evil oneself, which is always projected conveniently outward onto some demonized “them.” In terms of economic class, it justifies the acquisitive middle-class in hoarding their own resources for the fight for survival of oneself and defensive withdrawal.
Arguably the paranoia behind a conspiracy theorist’s obsession with mind control, population control, occultism, surveillance abuse, Big Business, Big Government, and globalization arises from a combination of two factors typifying such a personality, who: 1) holds strong individualist values and 2) lacks power. The first attribute refers to people who care deeply about an individual’s right to make their own choices and direct their own lives without interference or obligations to a larger system (like the government or human community,) but combine this with a sense of powerlessness in their own life, and one gets what some psychologists call “agency panic,” intense anxiety about an apparent loss of autonomy to outside forces or regulators. When fervent individualists, especially the “New Poor” of the Global Economic Crisis still internalizing traditional values of self-reliance, or those otherwise threatened in their economic condition, job, social status or psychological security feel that they can no longer exercise their independence, they experience a crisis and assume that larger forces, alien and malevolent, are to blame for usurping this freedom, psychologically projecting a magnified enmity from their own state of felt helplessness.
CONSPIRACY THRILLER MYSTERY IN SPIRITUS MUNDI
My own contemporary and futurist epic, Spiritus Mundi, is a thriller driven by multiple conspiracy theories, and influenced by the traditional masterpieces of the Conspiracy Thriller Mystery genre such as those of Eco and Pynchon. It tells the story of social idealists engaged in an idealistic campaign to found a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, a globalized version of the EU European Parliament constituted as a new advisory organ for international democracy in the United Nations alongside the existing General Assembly and Security Council. Along the way the Campaign is infiltrated by an apparant Islamic terrorist conspiracy to set off a nuclear device in Jerusalem and counter-infiltrated by the CIA and MI6. As this conspiracy unfolds, it is revealed to be part of a greater geopolitical conspiracy of a concealed “New Axis” alliance of a rising China, Russia and Iran to execute a Pearl-Harbor-like sneak attack on the Middle-East oil reserves to sever the West’s oil jugular and seize dominance in Eurasia and the World. At the end of Book II of Spiritus Mundi, the onion skins of this conspiracy are further unpeeled to reveal a metaconspiracy led by a 23rd Century time-travelling War Criminal, Ceasarion Khannis, who, Terminator-like has returned to our present to ignite WWIII to change his own future world’s benign history in which the United Nations Parliamentary Assembly has brought about centuries of world peace and progress. He is pursued in time-travel, Terminator-like, by the 23rd Century Chief Prosecutor, Abor Linkin,who seeks to save his own history and bring Khannis back to his own time to face justice.
Like Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow” and “Against the Day” the collision of these concrete conspiracies and the forces opposing them call to light potential hidden forces shaping human history, such as a benign spiritual evolution of the human spirit, embodied in the “Spiritus Mundi” reminiscent of Tielhard de Chardin’s and C.G. Jung’s “creative evolution” struggling in Yin/Yang opposition against their own nemeses, Entropy, the Freudian Death-Instinct Thanatos, and the spirit of negation.
Ironically, the very campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly for greater democatic oversight of the United Nations and the system of global governance which lies at the center of the novel, an innovation enabling the UN to redress its “democratic deficit” and thereby better resist domination by the international financial elite or narrow geopolitical power intersts of the dominant nation-states, has often become the “demonized” irrational fixation of of certain paranoid tunnel-vision conspiracy theories of prominent right-wing critics. On the irrational right wing there exists a crusade against what such groups term “The New World Order,” a phrase assoicated with the elder President Bush. This is a supposed conspiracy by an internationalist elite, led by an unholy alliance such agents as the Tri-Lateral Commission, communists, the CIA, MI6 and other devious intelligence services, nefarious financial capitalists, the “godless liberal-internationalist establishment,” Rockefellers, Rothschilds, Kissingers and other Jews, multi-national corporations, world socialists, and last but not least, the Anti-Christ, to establish a “One World Government” which has its goal the destruction of America’s national sovereignty, Constitution and democracy, replacement of our sacred dollar with a worthless Globo-Euro currency, institution of universal, global and crushing taxation, replacement of God and all traditional religion with uniformist secular humanism or communist atheism, destruction of all individual freedom, privacy and the family to create a faceless uniform socialist universal proletriat to populate this Brave New World, all dominated by the false benign mask of a demonized United Nations, in reality a Trojan Horse for a universal internationalist totalitarianism, both socialist-communist in its intentions yet somehow still controlled by the hidden strings of a financial elite of Investment Banks, souless technocrats and cynical global power holders! In the more Biblical of these paranoid conspiracy theories, all of this serves to make the United Nations the throne of the Anti-Christ for the reign of pure internationalist evil on earth, from which we will presumably welcome the Aramageddon which will finally clease the Earth prior to Last Judgment and the initiation of the Reign of Christ over a perfect new creation, at least for God’s elect, who presumably include all good Christian Patriots!
One would think such a self-contradictory hodge-podge of irrational fears, bugbears and mutually incompatible psychological projections were laughable and pathetic enough to fall of its own weight and stupidity. Unfortunately, for the psychologically addicted, who like playgoers exercises a powerful “willing suspension of disbelief” where any theory satisfies both their psychological needs and economic interests, such a theory has considerable appeal. Indeed, internal consistency, logic and objective evidence for such conspiracies are entirely unnecessay to the “True Believer” who merely needs confirmation of his or her own biases and fears. Assorted demonized “agents of evil” may be readily interchanged on any convenient occasion, with the Protean identity of the “Axis of Evil,” switched as quickly as the changing of a flat tire, being switched from subversive athiest communism, to Islamic Fundamentalism, to the “Godless Internationalist Elite” of the New World Order with complete ease. Unfortunately for the world, such paranoid conspiracy theories are often enough to move Congress to financially hobble the United Nations, magnified to the proportions of the Anti-Christ or International Big Brother in some right-wing circles, when in reality it possesses less than the budget and manpower of the New York City Fire Department while charged with maintaing world peace, prosperity and the well-being of the 7 billion humans on the planet utilizing resources and powers of trivial proportions.
In conclusion, I invite all of you to look into the masterpieces of Conspiracy Thriller Mystery fiction, including the works of Pynchon and Eco, and to check out the mysteries of Spiritus Mundi.
For a fuller discussion of the concept of World Literature you are invited to look into the extended discussion in the new book Spiritus Mundi, by Robert Sheppard, one of the principal themes of which is the emergence and evolution of World Literature:
For Discussions on World Literature and n Literary Criticism in Spiritus Mundi: http://worldliteratureandliterarycrit…
Robert Sheppard
Editor-in-Chief
World Literature Forum
Author, Spiritus Mundi Novel
Author’s Blog: http://robertalexandersheppard.wordpr…
Spiritus Mundi on Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17…
Spiritus Mundi on Amazon, Book I: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CIGJFGO
Spiritus Mundi, Book II: The Romance http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CGM8BZG
Copyright Robert Sheppard 2013 All Rights Reserved
THE CONSPIRACY THRILLER MYSTERY IN WORLD LITERATURE–UMBERTO ECO’S “FOUCAULT’S PENDULUM” & “THE NAME OF THE ROSE” AND THOMAS PYNCHON’S “GRAVITY’S RAINBOW” & “AGAINST THE DAY”—–FROM THE WORLD LITERATURE FORUM RECOMMENDED CLASSICS AND MASTERPIECES SERIES VIA
Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
THE CONSPIRACY THRILLER MYSTERY IN WORLD LITERATURE–UMBERTO ECO’S “FOUCAULT’S PENDULUM” & “THE NAME OF THE ROSE” AND THOMAS PYNCHON’S “GRAVITY’S RAINBOW” & “AGAINST THE DAY”—–FROM THE WORLD LITERATURE FORUM RECOMMENDED CLASSICS AND MASTERPIECES SERIES VIA GOODREADS—-ROBERT SHEPPARD, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Umbert Eco has been described as the thinking man’s Dan Brown, a master of modern conspiracy narrative featuring secret societies, cryptic serial murders, Biblical mysteries, Templars, Illuminati, threatening technologies and the moving shadow of inexplicable historical forces mysteriously at work, enhanced and dialated also by serious discussions of the nature of God and His invisible shaping hand in human history, Revelations, semiotics and signs, intellectual puzzles and riddles, the nature of art, texts & textuality, mind, soul, spirituality, good & evil, and an exploration of order, absurdity and meaninglessness in life and world history.
Eco’s books, such as “Foucault’s Pendulum” and “The Name of the Rose” are seen as founding and grounding the genre of the Conspiracy Thriller Mystery, popularized recently in print and film with Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” and “Angels and Demons” and epitomized by such masterpieces as Thomas Pynchon’s epics, “Gravity’s Rainbow,” “The Crying of Lot 49,” and “Against the Day,” featuring esoteric conspiracies varying from the hidden hand of The Illuminati, Templars, Freemasons, Opus Dei, the Phoebus Conspiracy, Arch-Capitalists, Synarchists, Tri-Lateralists and International Bankers, to the advent of the Anti-Christ and fulfillment of the End-Days of Revelation.
THE CONSPIRACY THRILLER MYSTERY IN WORLD LITERATURE
The Conspiracy Thriller (or Paranoia Thriller) is a subgenre of more general thriller fiction. The protagonists of conspiracy thrillers are often journalists or amateur investigators who find themselves (often inadvertently) pulling on a small thread which unravels a vast conspiracy that ultimately goes “all the way to the top.” The complexities of historical fact are often recast as a morality play in which bad people cause bad events, and good people either identify and defeat them in the typical Hollywood ending, or alternatively are inevitably crushed by the entrenched secretive power elite of a malign or absurdist history which the “little people” remain powerless to change. Conspiracies are often played out as “man-in-peril” (or “woman-in-peril”) stories, or yield Quest narratives similar to those found in whodunnits and detective stories.
A common theme in such works is that characters uncovering the conspiracy encounter difficulty ascertaining the truth amid deceptions and diabolical riddles: rumors, lies, propaganda, and counter-propaganda build upon one another until what is conspiracy and what is coincidence become entangled. Many conspiracy fiction works also include the theme of secret history.
Modern classics of the Conspiracy Thriller Mystery genre include John Buchan’s 1915 novel “The Thirty-Nine Steps,” which weaves elements of conspiracy and man-on-the-run archetypes. Graham Greene’s 1943 novel “Ministry of Fear,” rendered in film by Fritz Lang in 1944, combines all the ingredients of paranoia and conspiracy familiar to aficionados of the 1970s thrillers, with additional urgency and depth added by its wartime backdrop.
One of the first science fiction novels to deal with a full-blown conspiracy theory was Eric Frank Russell’s “Dreadful Sanctuary” (1948). This deals with a number of sabotaged space missions and the apparent discovery that Earth is being quarantined by aliens from other planets of the Solar System. However, as the novel progresses it emerges that this view is a paranoid delusion perpetuated by a small but powerful secret society. The “Men in Black” series also transforms the locus of the hidden conspiracy against the ordinary folk to a supranational government nexus with extraterrestrials.
Conspiracy fiction in the US took off in the 1960s and 1970s in the wake of a number of high-profile scandals and cryptic controversies, most notably the Vietnam War, assassinations of John & Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr., as well as the Nixon Watergate scandal. Several fictional works thus explored the clandestine machinations and conspiracies lurking beneath the seemingly orderly fabric of political life. American novelist Richard Condon wrote a number of conspiracy thrillers, including the seminal brainwashing classic “The Manchurian Candidate” (1959), and “Winter Kills,” which was made into a film. “Illuminatus!” (1969–1971), a trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, is regarded by many as the definitive work of 20th-century conspiracy fiction. Set in the late ’60s, it is a psychedelic tale which fuses mystery, science fiction, horror, and comedy.
Philip K. Dick wrote a large number of short stories where vast conspiracies were employed (usually by an oppressive government or other hostile powers) to keep the common people under control or enforce a given agenda. Other popular science fiction writers whose work features conspiracy theories include William Gibson, John Twelve Hawks, and Neal Stephenson.
John Macgregor’s 1986 novel “Propinquity” describes an attempt by a modern couple to revive the frozen body of a gnostic medieval Queen, buried deep under Westminster Abbey. Their attempt to expose the feminine aspect of Christianity’s origins results in fierce Church opposition and, eventually, an international manhunt.
“The Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown draws on conspiracy theories involving the Roman Catholic Church, Opus Dei and the Priory of Sion. Other contemporary authors who have used elements of conspiracy theory in their work include Margaret Atwood, William S. Burroughs, Don DeLillo, James Ellroy, Joseph Heller, Robert Ludlum, David Morrell and James Clancy Phelan.
UMBERTO ECO: FATHER OF THE CONSPIRACY THRILLER MYSTERY NOVEL
Umberto Eco’s “Foucault’s Pendulum” (1988) features a story in which the staff of a vanity publishing firm bored with the third-rate novels,invent their own conspiracy for fun. They call this satirical intellectual game “The Plan”. The three become increasingly obsessed with The Plan, and sometimes forget that it’s just a game. Worse still, other conspiracy theorists learn about The Plan, and take it seriously. One, Belbo finds himself the target of a real secret society that believes he possesses the key to the lost treasure of the Knights Templar. Belbo, Diotallevi and Casaubon quickly become submerged in occult manuscripts that draw all sorts of flimsy connections between historical events and the unfolding of the plan. They nickname the authors of the “secret manuscript” they claim to have discovered the “Diabolicals”, and engage Agliè, a professional secret society expert as a consultant. They develop an intricate web of mystical connections, making use of Belbo’s small personal computer, which he has nicknamed Abulafia, uncovering hidden references to the Kabbalah’s Sefirot. Agliè in reality is a leader of a real secret society which becomes convinced that the fictional Plan is part of their own mission and they ruthlesssly take it over, torturing and ultimately killing Belbo to reveal the hidden keys to their destiny, and causing Casuabon, the sole survivor to run from their clutches.
Eco’s prior classic, “The Name of the Rose” is set in a Medieval monestery in which a series of murders unfolds, implicating heretical secret communistic religious sects and the Inquisition which pursues them, along with a witchhunt for the Anti-Christ on the eve of the expected Apocalypse. A Franciscan monk, William of Baskerville, takes on the role of a Medieval “Sherlock Holmes” to unravel the mystery, following clues and riddles until the story ends in tragedy with the entire monestery destroyed by fire at the hands of a spiteful reactionary monk. No “master conspiracy” is exists however, and history proves neither guided by the divine blueprint of Doom of Revelations nor the work of secret plotters, but rather the absurdist accidents of a disordered world.
THOMAS PYNCHON: FATHER OF THE CONSPIRACY-DRIVEN EXISTENTIAL EPIC
“Gravity’s Rainbow,” often regarded a the greates American novel since WWII,also draws heavily on conspiracy theory in describing the motives and operations of the Phoebus and other industrial cartels as well as the cross-plotting of Allied and Nazi intelligence services in connection with the development of V1 and V2 ballistic missiles during World War II. Mysteries unfold from the arcane to the absurd, such as the hidden correlations of the Nazi V2 rocket impact points and the locations of the sexual couplings of the protagonist Slothrop, an American intelligence operative whose mind ultimately disintegrates as he hunts for the hidden secrets of Nazi missile technology across WWII Europe amid uncanny connections of sexual perversions, capitalist plots, and the absurdist destinies of the characters.
Pynchon’s earlier work, “The Crying of Lot 49″ (1966) also includes a secretive conflict between cartels dating back to the Middle Ages. His late work, “Against the Day” presents a sometimes whimsical interweaving of technology as a driving force of history, the nefarious plotting of a secretive capitalist elite prior to WWI to dominate and control it, and occult secret societies, such as an idealistic scientific brotherhood operating a Zepplin fleet which contends with Russian and German rivals, then mysteriously travels through a an air tunnel from the North Pole to the Center of the Earth exploring occult technologies such as Tesla’s “Telluric Currents” which may offer unlimited energy. The idealistic scientific brotherhood gradually discovers that its secret leadership, innocently idealized, is controlled by ruthless capitalists out to control the technology shaping history.
WHO IS THE “TRUE BELIEVER” READER OF CONSPIRACY FICTION?
The “True Believer” addict of conspiracy theories need not believe in God, but always believes in the Devil. Though anyone may enjoy the artistry and entertainment value of conspiracy novels, and there are real conspiracies, those of a more pronounced paranoid mindset are often convinced of dubious conspiracies’ truth, more often resulting from their underlying psychological needs than the hisorical truth of the subject matter. Such conspiracies ironically provide the clinically paranoid as well as the socially functional paranoid with the mental secuirty of a predictable, if malign, world. They justify his distrust of any relationships with perfidious others and offer a convenient excuse for selfish and self-centered withdrawal into the intellectually lazy bunker-mentality of “us against them” in which there is conveniently no need for moral obligations, tiresome human feelings and complexities regarding anyone outside onself and one’s own small circle within the seige-bunker, with the bonus of convenient “feel good” self-justification of regarding onself as an innocent, even heroic victim and martyr of malign forces, immune from the possibility of being a source of evil oneself, which is always projected conveniently outward onto some demonized “them.” In terms of economic class, it justifies the acquisitive middle-class in hoarding their own resources for the fight for survival of oneself and defensive withdrawal.
Arguably the paranoia behind a conspiracy theorist’s obsession with mind control, population control, occultism, surveillance abuse, Big Business, Big Government, and globalization arises from a combination of two factors typifying such a personality, who: 1) holds strong individualist values and 2) lacks power. The first attribute refers to people who care deeply about an individual’s right to make their own choices and direct their own lives without interference or obligations to a larger system (like the government or human community,) but combine this with a sense of powerlessness in their own life, and one gets what some psychologists call “agency panic,” intense anxiety about an apparent loss of autonomy to outside forces or regulators. When fervent individualists, especially the “New Poor” of the Global Economic Crisis still internalizing traditional values of self-reliance, or those otherwise threatened in their economic condition, job, social status or psychological security feel that they can no longer exercise their independence, they experience a crisis and assume that larger forces, alien and malevolent, are to blame for usurping this freedom, psychologically projecting a magnified enmity from their own state of felt helplessness.
CONSPIRACY THRILLER MYSTERY IN SPIRITUS MUNDI
My own contemporary and futurist epic, Spiritus Mundi, is a thriller driven by multiple conspiracy theories, and influenced by the traditional masterpieces of the Conspiracy Thriller Mystery genre such as those of Eco and Pynchon. It tells the story of social idealists engaged in an idealistic campaign to found a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, a globalized version of the EU European Parliament constituted as a new advisory organ for international democracy in the United Nations alongside the existing General Assembly and Security Council. Along the way the Campaign is infiltrated by an apparant Islamic terrorist conspiracy to set off a nuclear device in Jerusalem and counter-infiltrated by the CIA and MI6. As this conspiracy unfolds, it is revealed to be part of a greater geopolitical conspiracy of a concealed “New Axis” alliance of a rising China, Russia and Iran to execute a Pearl-Harbor-like sneak attack on the Middle-East oil reserves to sever the West’s oil jugular and seize dominance in Eurasia and the World. At the end of Book II of Spiritus Mundi, the onion skins of this conspiracy are further unpeeled to reveal a metaconspiracy led by a 23rd Century time-travelling War Criminal, Ceasarion Khannis, who, Terminator-like has returned to our present to ignite WWIII to change his own future world’s benign history in which the United Nations Parliamentary Assembly has brought about centuries of world peace and progress. He is pursued in time-travel, Terminator-like, by the 23rd Century Chief Prosecutor, Abor Linkin,who seeks to save his own history and bring Khannis back to his own time to face justice.
Like Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow” and “Against the Day” the collision of these concrete conspiracies and the forces opposing them call to light potential hidden forces shaping human history, such as a benign spiritual evolution of the human spirit, embodied in the “Spiritus Mundi” reminiscent of Tielhard de Chardin’s and C.G. Jung’s “creative evolution” struggling in Yin/Yang opposition against their own nemeses, Entropy, the Freudian Death-Instinct Thanatos, and the spirit of negation.
Ironically, the very campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly for greater democatic oversight of the United Nations and the system of global governance which lies at the center of the novel, an innovation enabling the UN to redress its “democratic deficit” and thereby better resist domination by the international financial elite or narrow geopolitical power intersts of the dominant nation-states, has often become the “demonized” irrational fixation of of certain paranoid tunnel-vision conspiracy theories of prominent right-wing critics. On the irrational right wing there exists a crusade against what such groups term “The New World Order,” a phrase assoicated with the elder President Bush. This is a supposed conspiracy by an internationalist elite, led by an unholy alliance such agents as the Tri-Lateral Commission, communists, the CIA, MI6 and other devious intelligence services, nefarious financial capitalists, the “godless liberal-internationalist establishment,” Rockefellers, Rothschilds, Kissingers and other Jews, multi-national corporations, world socialists, and last but not least, the Anti-Christ, to establish a “One World Government” which has its goal the destruction of America’s national sovereignty, Constitution and democracy, replacement of our sacred dollar with a worthless Globo-Euro currency, institution of universal, global and crushing taxation, replacement of God and all traditional religion with uniformist secular humanism or communist atheism, destruction of all individual freedom, privacy and the family to create a faceless uniform socialist universal proletriat to populate this Brave New World, all dominated by the false benign mask of a demonized United Nations, in reality a Trojan Horse for a universal internationalist totalitarianism, both socialist-communist in its intentions yet somehow still controlled by the hidden strings of a financial elite of Investment Banks, souless technocrats and cynical global power holders! In the more Biblical of these paranoid conspiracy theories, all of this serves to make the United Nations the throne of the Anti-Christ for the reign of pure internationalist evil on earth, from which we will presumably welcome the Aramageddon which will finally clease the Earth prior to Last Judgment and the initiation of the Reign of Christ over a perfect new creation, at least for God’s elect, who presumably include all good Christian Patriots!
One would think such a self-contradictory hodge-podge of irrational fears, bugbears and mutually incompatible psychological projections were laughable and pathetic enough to fall of its own weight and stupidity. Unfortunately, for the psychologically addicted, who like playgoers exercises a powerful “willing suspension of disbelief” where any theory satisfies both their psychological needs and economic interests, such a theory has considerable appeal. Indeed, internal consistency, logic and objective evidence for such conspiracies are entirely unnecessay to the “True Believer” who merely needs confirmation of his or her own biases and fears. Assorted demonized “agents of evil” may be readily interchanged on any convenient occasion, with the Protean identity of the “Axis of Evil,” switched as quickly as the changing of a flat tire, being switched from subversive athiest communism, to Islamic Fundamentalism, to the “Godless Internationalist Elite” of the New World Order with complete ease. Unfortunately for the world, such paranoid conspiracy theories are often enough to move Congress to financially hobble the United Nations, magnified to the proportions of the Anti-Christ or International Big Brother in some right-wing circles, when in reality it possesses less than the budget and manpower of the New York City Fire Department while charged with maintaing world peace, prosperity and the well-being of the 7 billion humans on the planet utilizing resources and powers of trivial proportions.
In conclusion, I invite all of you to look into the masterpieces of Conspiracy Thriller Mystery fiction, including the works of Pynchon and Eco, and to check out the mysteries of Spiritus Mundi.
For a fuller discussion of the concept of World Literature you are invited to look into the extended discussion in the new book Spiritus Mundi, by Robert Sheppard, one of the principal themes of which is the emergence and evolution of World Literature:
For Discussions on World Literature and n Literary Criticism in Spiritus Mundi: http://worldliteratureandliterarycrit…
Robert Sheppard
Editor-in-Chief
World Literature Forum
Author, Spiritus Mundi Novel
Author’s Blog: http://robertalexandersheppard.wordpr…
Spiritus Mundi on Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17…
Spiritus Mundi on Amazon, Book I: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CIGJFGO
Spiritus Mundi, Book II: The Romance http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CGM8BZG
Copyright Robert Sheppard 2013 All Rights Reserved
THE CONSPIRACY THRILLER MYSTERY IN WORLD LITERATURE–UMBERTO ECO’S “FOUCAULT’S PENDULUM” & “THE NAME OF THE ROSE” AND THOMAS PYNCHON’S “GRAVITY’S RAINBOW” & “AGAINST THE DAY”—–FROM THE WORLD LITERATURE FORUM RECOMMENDED CLASSICS AND MASTERPIECES SERIES VIA
Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
THE CONSPIRACY THRILLER MYSTERY IN WORLD LITERATURE–UMBERTO ECO’S “FOUCAULT’S PENDULUM” & “THE NAME OF THE ROSE” AND THOMAS PYNCHON’S “GRAVITY’S RAINBOW” & “AGAINST THE DAY”—–FROM THE WORLD LITERATURE FORUM RECOMMENDED CLASSICS AND MASTERPIECES SERIES VIA GOODREADS—-ROBERT SHEPPARD, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Umbert Eco has been described as the thinking man’s Dan Brown, a master of modern conspiracy narrative featuring secret societies, cryptic serial murders, Biblical mysteries, Templars, Illuminati, threatening technologies and the moving shadow of inexplicable historical forces mysteriously at work, enhanced and dialated also by serious discussions of the nature of God and His invisible shaping hand in human history, Revelations, semiotics and signs, intellectual puzzles and riddles, the nature of art, texts & textuality, mind, soul, spirituality, good & evil, and an exploration of order, absurdity and meaninglessness in life and world history.
Eco’s books, such as “Foucault’s Pendulum” and “The Name of the Rose” are seen as founding and grounding the genre of the Conspiracy Thriller Mystery, popularized recently in print and film with Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” and “Angels and Demons” and epitomized by such masterpieces as Thomas Pynchon’s epics, “Gravity’s Rainbow,” “The Crying of Lot 49,” and “Against the Day,” featuring esoteric conspiracies varying from the hidden hand of The Illuminati, Templars, Freemasons, Opus Dei, the Phoebus Conspiracy, Arch-Capitalists, Synarchists, Tri-Lateralists and International Bankers, to the advent of the Anti-Christ and fulfillment of the End-Days of Revelation.
THE CONSPIRACY THRILLER MYSTERY IN WORLD LITERATURE
The Conspiracy Thriller (or Paranoia Thriller) is a subgenre of more general thriller fiction. The protagonists of conspiracy thrillers are often journalists or amateur investigators who find themselves (often inadvertently) pulling on a small thread which unravels a vast conspiracy that ultimately goes “all the way to the top.” The complexities of historical fact are often recast as a morality play in which bad people cause bad events, and good people either identify and defeat them in the typical Hollywood ending, or alternatively are inevitably crushed by the entrenched secretive power elite of a malign or absurdist history which the “little people” remain powerless to change. Conspiracies are often played out as “man-in-peril” (or “woman-in-peril”) stories, or yield Quest narratives similar to those found in whodunnits and detective stories.
A common theme in such works is that characters uncovering the conspiracy encounter difficulty ascertaining the truth amid deceptions and diabolical riddles: rumors, lies, propaganda, and counter-propaganda build upon one another until what is conspiracy and what is coincidence become entangled. Many conspiracy fiction works also include the theme of secret history.
Modern classics of the Conspiracy Thriller Mystery genre include John Buchan’s 1915 novel “The Thirty-Nine Steps,” which weaves elements of conspiracy and man-on-the-run archetypes. Graham Greene’s 1943 novel “Ministry of Fear,” rendered in film by Fritz Lang in 1944, combines all the ingredients of paranoia and conspiracy familiar to aficionados of the 1970s thrillers, with additional urgency and depth added by its wartime backdrop.
One of the first science fiction novels to deal with a full-blown conspiracy theory was Eric Frank Russell’s “Dreadful Sanctuary” (1948). This deals with a number of sabotaged space missions and the apparent discovery that Earth is being quarantined by aliens from other planets of the Solar System. However, as the novel progresses it emerges that this view is a paranoid delusion perpetuated by a small but powerful secret society. The “Men in Black” series also transforms the locus of the hidden conspiracy against the ordinary folk to a supranational government nexus with extraterrestrials.
Conspiracy fiction in the US took off in the 1960s and 1970s in the wake of a number of high-profile scandals and cryptic controversies, most notably the Vietnam War, assassinations of John & Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr., as well as the Nixon Watergate scandal. Several fictional works thus explored the clandestine machinations and conspiracies lurking beneath the seemingly orderly fabric of political life. American novelist Richard Condon wrote a number of conspiracy thrillers, including the seminal brainwashing classic “The Manchurian Candidate” (1959), and “Winter Kills,” which was made into a film. “Illuminatus!” (1969–1971), a trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, is regarded by many as the definitive work of 20th-century conspiracy fiction. Set in the late ’60s, it is a psychedelic tale which fuses mystery, science fiction, horror, and comedy.
Philip K. Dick wrote a large number of short stories where vast conspiracies were employed (usually by an oppressive government or other hostile powers) to keep the common people under control or enforce a given agenda. Other popular science fiction writers whose work features conspiracy theories include William Gibson, John Twelve Hawks, and Neal Stephenson.
John Macgregor’s 1986 novel “Propinquity” describes an attempt by a modern couple to revive the frozen body of a gnostic medieval Queen, buried deep under Westminster Abbey. Their attempt to expose the feminine aspect of Christianity’s origins results in fierce Church opposition and, eventually, an international manhunt.
“The Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown draws on conspiracy theories involving the Roman Catholic Church, Opus Dei and the Priory of Sion. Other contemporary authors who have used elements of conspiracy theory in their work include Margaret Atwood, William S. Burroughs, Don DeLillo, James Ellroy, Joseph Heller, Robert Ludlum, David Morrell and James Clancy Phelan.
UMBERTO ECO: FATHER OF THE CONSPIRACY THRILLER MYSTERY NOVEL
Umberto Eco’s “Foucault’s Pendulum” (1988) features a story in which the staff of a vanity publishing firm bored with the third-rate novels,invent their own conspiracy for fun. They call this satirical intellectual game “The Plan”. The three become increasingly obsessed with The Plan, and sometimes forget that it’s just a game. Worse still, other conspiracy theorists learn about The Plan, and take it seriously. One, Belbo finds himself the target of a real secret society that believes he possesses the key to the lost treasure of the Knights Templar. Belbo, Diotallevi and Casaubon quickly become submerged in occult manuscripts that draw all sorts of flimsy connections between historical events and the unfolding of the plan. They nickname the authors of the “secret manuscript” they claim to have discovered the “Diabolicals”, and engage Agliè, a professional secret society expert as a consultant. They develop an intricate web of mystical connections, making use of Belbo’s small personal computer, which he has nicknamed Abulafia, uncovering hidden references to the Kabbalah’s Sefirot. Agliè in reality is a leader of a real secret society which becomes convinced that the fictional Plan is part of their own mission and they ruthlesssly take it over, torturing and ultimately killing Belbo to reveal the hidden keys to their destiny, and causing Casuabon, the sole survivor to run from their clutches.
Eco’s prior classic, “The Name of the Rose” is set in a Medieval monestery in which a series of murders unfolds, implicating heretical secret communistic religious sects and the Inquisition which pursues them, along with a witchhunt for the Anti-Christ on the eve of the expected Apocalypse. A Franciscan monk, William of Baskerville, takes on the role of a Medieval “Sherlock Holmes” to unravel the mystery, following clues and riddles until the story ends in tragedy with the entire monestery destroyed by fire at the hands of a spiteful reactionary monk. No “master conspiracy” is exists however, and history proves neither guided by the divine blueprint of Doom of Revelations nor the work of secret plotters, but rather the absurdist accidents of a disordered world.
THOMAS PYNCHON: FATHER OF THE CONSPIRACY-DRIVEN EXISTENTIAL EPIC
“Gravity’s Rainbow,” often regarded a the greates American novel since WWII,also draws heavily on conspiracy theory in describing the motives and operations of the Phoebus and other industrial cartels as well as the cross-plotting of Allied and Nazi intelligence services in connection with the development of V1 and V2 ballistic missiles during World War II. Mysteries unfold from the arcane to the absurd, such as the hidden correlations of the Nazi V2 rocket impact points and the locations of the sexual couplings of the protagonist Slothrop, an American intelligence operative whose mind ultimately disintegrates as he hunts for the hidden secrets of Nazi missile technology across WWII Europe amid uncanny connections of sexual perversions, capitalist plots, and the absurdist destinies of the characters.
Pynchon’s earlier work, “The Crying of Lot 49″ (1966) also includes a secretive conflict between cartels dating back to the Middle Ages. His late work, “Against the Day” presents a sometimes whimsical interweaving of technology as a driving force of history, the nefarious plotting of a secretive capitalist elite prior to WWI to dominate and control it, and occult secret societies, such as an idealistic scientific brotherhood operating a Zepplin fleet which contends with Russian and German rivals, then mysteriously travels through a an air tunnel from the North Pole to the Center of the Earth exploring occult technologies such as Tesla’s “Telluric Currents” which may offer unlimited energy. The idealistic scientific brotherhood gradually discovers that its secret leadership, innocently idealized, is controlled by ruthless capitalists out to control the technology shaping history.
WHO IS THE “TRUE BELIEVER” READER OF CONSPIRACY FICTION?
The “True Believer” addict of conspiracy theories need not believe in God, but always believes in the Devil. Though anyone may enjoy the artistry and entertainment value of conspiracy novels, and there are real conspiracies, those of a more pronounced paranoid mindset are often convinced of dubious conspiracies’ truth, more often resulting from their underlying psychological needs than the hisorical truth of the subject matter. Such conspiracies ironically provide the clinically paranoid as well as the socially functional paranoid with the mental secuirty of a predictable, if malign, world. They justify his distrust of any relationships with perfidious others and offer a convenient excuse for selfish and self-centered withdrawal into the intellectually lazy bunker-mentality of “us against them” in which there is conveniently no need for moral obligations, tiresome human feelings and complexities regarding anyone outside onself and one’s own small circle within the seige-bunker, with the bonus of convenient “feel good” self-justification of regarding onself as an innocent, even heroic victim and martyr of malign forces, immune from the possibility of being a source of evil oneself, which is always projected conveniently outward onto some demonized “them.” In terms of economic class, it justifies the acquisitive middle-class in hoarding their own resources for the fight for survival of oneself and defensive withdrawal.
Arguably the paranoia behind a conspiracy theorist’s obsession with mind control, population control, occultism, surveillance abuse, Big Business, Big Government, and globalization arises from a combination of two factors typifying such a personality, who: 1) holds strong individualist values and 2) lacks power. The first attribute refers to people who care deeply about an individual’s right to make their own choices and direct their own lives without interference or obligations to a larger system (like the government or human community,) but combine this with a sense of powerlessness in their own life, and one gets what some psychologists call “agency panic,” intense anxiety about an apparent loss of autonomy to outside forces or regulators. When fervent individualists, especially the “New Poor” of the Global Economic Crisis still internalizing traditional values of self-reliance, or those otherwise threatened in their economic condition, job, social status or psychological security feel that they can no longer exercise their independence, they experience a crisis and assume that larger forces, alien and malevolent, are to blame for usurping this freedom, psychologically projecting a magnified enmity from their own state of felt helplessness.
CONSPIRACY THRILLER MYSTERY IN SPIRITUS MUNDI
My own contemporary and futurist epic, Spiritus Mundi, is a thriller driven by multiple conspiracy theories, and influenced by the traditional masterpieces of the Conspiracy Thriller Mystery genre such as those of Eco and Pynchon. It tells the story of social idealists engaged in an idealistic campaign to found a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, a globalized version of the EU European Parliament constituted as a new advisory organ for international democracy in the United Nations alongside the existing General Assembly and Security Council. Along the way the Campaign is infiltrated by an apparant Islamic terrorist conspiracy to set off a nuclear device in Jerusalem and counter-infiltrated by the CIA and MI6. As this conspiracy unfolds, it is revealed to be part of a greater geopolitical conspiracy of a concealed “New Axis” alliance of a rising China, Russia and Iran to execute a Pearl-Harbor-like sneak attack on the Middle-East oil reserves to sever the West’s oil jugular and seize dominance in Eurasia and the World. At the end of Book II of Spiritus Mundi, the onion skins of this conspiracy are further unpeeled to reveal a metaconspiracy led by a 23rd Century time-travelling War Criminal, Ceasarion Khannis, who, Terminator-like has returned to our present to ignite WWIII to change his own future world’s benign history in which the United Nations Parliamentary Assembly has brought about centuries of world peace and progress. He is pursued in time-travel, Terminator-like, by the 23rd Century Chief Prosecutor, Abor Linkin,who seeks to save his own history and bring Khannis back to his own time to face justice.
Like Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow” and “Against the Day” the collision of these concrete conspiracies and the forces opposing them call to light potential hidden forces shaping human history, such as a benign spiritual evolution of the human spirit, embodied in the “Spiritus Mundi” reminiscent of Tielhard de Chardin’s and C.G. Jung’s “creative evolution” struggling in Yin/Yang opposition against their own nemeses, Entropy, the Freudian Death-Instinct Thanatos, and the spirit of negation.
Ironically, the very campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly for greater democatic oversight of the United Nations and the system of global governance which lies at the center of the novel, an innovation enabling the UN to redress its “democratic deficit” and thereby better resist domination by the international financial elite or narrow geopolitical power intersts of the dominant nation-states, has often become the “demonized” irrational fixation of of certain paranoid tunnel-vision conspiracy theories of prominent right-wing critics. On the irrational right wing there exists a crusade against what such groups term “The New World Order,” a phrase assoicated with the elder President Bush. This is a supposed conspiracy by an internationalist elite, led by an unholy alliance such agents as the Tri-Lateral Commission, communists, the CIA, MI6 and other devious intelligence services, nefarious financial capitalists, the “godless liberal-internationalist establishment,” Rockefellers, Rothschilds, Kissingers and other Jews, multi-national corporations, world socialists, and last but not least, the Anti-Christ, to establish a “One World Government” which has its goal the destruction of America’s national sovereignty, Constitution and democracy, replacement of our sacred dollar with a worthless Globo-Euro currency, institution of universal, global and crushing taxation, replacement of God and all traditional religion with uniformist secular humanism or communist atheism, destruction of all individual freedom, privacy and the family to create a faceless uniform socialist universal proletriat to populate this Brave New World, all dominated by the false benign mask of a demonized United Nations, in reality a Trojan Horse for a universal internationalist totalitarianism, both socialist-communist in its intentions yet somehow still controlled by the hidden strings of a financial elite of Investment Banks, souless technocrats and cynical global power holders! In the more Biblical of these paranoid conspiracy theories, all of this serves to make the United Nations the throne of the Anti-Christ for the reign of pure internationalist evil on earth, from which we will presumably welcome the Aramageddon which will finally clease the Earth prior to Last Judgment and the initiation of the Reign of Christ over a perfect new creation, at least for God’s elect, who presumably include all good Christian Patriots!
One would think such a self-contradictory hodge-podge of irrational fears, bugbears and mutually incompatible psychological projections were laughable and pathetic enough to fall of its own weight and stupidity. Unfortunately, for the psychologically addicted, who like playgoers exercises a powerful “willing suspension of disbelief” where any theory satisfies both their psychological needs and economic interests, such a theory has considerable appeal. Indeed, internal consistency, logic and objective evidence for such conspiracies are entirely unnecessay to the “True Believer” who merely needs confirmation of his or her own biases and fears. Assorted demonized “agents of evil” may be readily interchanged on any convenient occasion, with the Protean identity of the “Axis of Evil,” switched as quickly as the changing of a flat tire, being switched from subversive athiest communism, to Islamic Fundamentalism, to the “Godless Internationalist Elite” of the New World Order with complete ease. Unfortunately for the world, such paranoid conspiracy theories are often enough to move Congress to financially hobble the United Nations, magnified to the proportions of the Anti-Christ or International Big Brother in some right-wing circles, when in reality it possesses less than the budget and manpower of the New York City Fire Department while charged with maintaing world peace, prosperity and the well-being of the 7 billion humans on the planet utilizing resources and powers of trivial proportions.
In conclusion, I invite all of you to look into the masterpieces of Conspiracy Thriller Mystery fiction, including the works of Pynchon and Eco, and to check out the mysteries of Spiritus Mundi.
For a fuller discussion of the concept of World Literature you are invited to look into the extended discussion in the new book Spiritus Mundi, by Robert Sheppard, one of the principal themes of which is the emergence and evolution of World Literature:
For Discussions on World Literature and n Literary Criticism in Spiritus Mundi: http://worldliteratureandliterarycrit…
Robert Sheppard
Editor-in-Chief
World Literature Forum
Author, Spiritus Mundi Novel
Author’s Blog: http://robertalexandersheppard.wordpr…
Spiritus Mundi on Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17…
Spiritus Mundi on Amazon, Book I: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CIGJFGO
Spiritus Mundi, Book II: The Romance http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CGM8BZG
Copyright Robert Sheppard 2013 All Rights Reserved
THE CONSPIRACY THRILLER MYSTERY IN WORLD LITERATURE–UMBERTO ECO’S “FOUCAULT’S PENDULUM” & “THE NAME OF THE ROSE” AND THOMAS PYNCHON’S “GRAVITY’S RAINBOW” & “AGAINST THE DAY”—–FROM THE WORLD LITERATURE FORUM RECOMMENDED CLASSICS AND MASTERPIECES SERIES VIA
Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
THE CONSPIRACY THRILLER MYSTERY IN WORLD LITERATURE–UMBERTO ECO’S “FOUCAULT’S PENDULUM” & “THE NAME OF THE ROSE” AND THOMAS PYNCHON’S “GRAVITY’S RAINBOW” & “AGAINST THE DAY”—–FROM THE WORLD LITERATURE FORUM RECOMMENDED CLASSICS AND MASTERPIECES SERIES VIA GOODREADS—-ROBERT SHEPPARD, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Umbert Eco has been described as the thinking man’s Dan Brown, a master of modern conspiracy narrative featuring secret societies, cryptic serial murders, Biblical mysteries, Templars, Illuminati, threatening technologies and the moving shadow of inexplicable historical forces mysteriously at work, enhanced and dialated also by serious discussions of the nature of God and His invisible shaping hand in human history, Revelations, semiotics and signs, intellectual puzzles and riddles, the nature of art, texts & textuality, mind, soul, spirituality, good & evil, and an exploration of order, absurdity and meaninglessness in life and world history.
Eco’s books, such as “Foucault’s Pendulum” and “The Name of the Rose” are seen as founding and grounding the genre of the Conspiracy Thriller Mystery, popularized recently in print and film with Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” and “Angels and Demons” and epitomized by such masterpieces as Thomas Pynchon’s epics, “Gravity’s Rainbow,” “The Crying of Lot 49,” and “Against the Day,” featuring esoteric conspiracies varying from the hidden hand of The Illuminati, Templars, Freemasons, Opus Dei, the Phoebus Conspiracy, Arch-Capitalists, Synarchists, Tri-Lateralists and International Bankers, to the advent of the Anti-Christ and fulfillment of the End-Days of Revelation.
THE CONSPIRACY THRILLER MYSTERY IN WORLD LITERATURE
The Conspiracy Thriller (or Paranoia Thriller) is a subgenre of more general thriller fiction. The protagonists of conspiracy thrillers are often journalists or amateur investigators who find themselves (often inadvertently) pulling on a small thread which unravels a vast conspiracy that ultimately goes “all the way to the top.” The complexities of historical fact are often recast as a morality play in which bad people cause bad events, and good people either identify and defeat them in the typical Hollywood ending, or alternatively are inevitably crushed by the entrenched secretive power elite of a malign or absurdist history which the “little people” remain powerless to change. Conspiracies are often played out as “man-in-peril” (or “woman-in-peril”) stories, or yield Quest narratives similar to those found in whodunnits and detective stories.
A common theme in such works is that characters uncovering the conspiracy encounter difficulty ascertaining the truth amid deceptions and diabolical riddles: rumors, lies, propaganda, and counter-propaganda build upon one another until what is conspiracy and what is coincidence become entangled. Many conspiracy fiction works also include the theme of secret history.
Modern classics of the Conspiracy Thriller Mystery genre include John Buchan’s 1915 novel “The Thirty-Nine Steps,” which weaves elements of conspiracy and man-on-the-run archetypes. Graham Greene’s 1943 novel “Ministry of Fear,” rendered in film by Fritz Lang in 1944, combines all the ingredients of paranoia and conspiracy familiar to aficionados of the 1970s thrillers, with additional urgency and depth added by its wartime backdrop.
One of the first science fiction novels to deal with a full-blown conspiracy theory was Eric Frank Russell’s “Dreadful Sanctuary” (1948). This deals with a number of sabotaged space missions and the apparent discovery that Earth is being quarantined by aliens from other planets of the Solar System. However, as the novel progresses it emerges that this view is a paranoid delusion perpetuated by a small but powerful secret society. The “Men in Black” series also transforms the locus of the hidden conspiracy against the ordinary folk to a supranational government nexus with extraterrestrials.
Conspiracy fiction in the US took off in the 1960s and 1970s in the wake of a number of high-profile scandals and cryptic controversies, most notably the Vietnam War, assassinations of John & Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr., as well as the Nixon Watergate scandal. Several fictional works thus explored the clandestine machinations and conspiracies lurking beneath the seemingly orderly fabric of political life. American novelist Richard Condon wrote a number of conspiracy thrillers, including the seminal brainwashing classic “The Manchurian Candidate” (1959), and “Winter Kills,” which was made into a film. “Illuminatus!” (1969–1971), a trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, is regarded by many as the definitive work of 20th-century conspiracy fiction. Set in the late ’60s, it is a psychedelic tale which fuses mystery, science fiction, horror, and comedy.
Philip K. Dick wrote a large number of short stories where vast conspiracies were employed (usually by an oppressive government or other hostile powers) to keep the common people under control or enforce a given agenda. Other popular science fiction writers whose work features conspiracy theories include William Gibson, John Twelve Hawks, and Neal Stephenson.
John Macgregor’s 1986 novel “Propinquity” describes an attempt by a modern couple to revive the frozen body of a gnostic medieval Queen, buried deep under Westminster Abbey. Their attempt to expose the feminine aspect of Christianity’s origins results in fierce Church opposition and, eventually, an international manhunt.
“The Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown draws on conspiracy theories involving the Roman Catholic Church, Opus Dei and the Priory of Sion. Other contemporary authors who have used elements of conspiracy theory in their work include Margaret Atwood, William S. Burroughs, Don DeLillo, James Ellroy, Joseph Heller, Robert Ludlum, David Morrell and James Clancy Phelan.
UMBERTO ECO: FATHER OF THE CONSPIRACY THRILLER MYSTERY NOVEL
Umberto Eco’s “Foucault’s Pendulum” (1988) features a story in which the staff of a vanity publishing firm bored with the third-rate novels,invent their own conspiracy for fun. They call this satirical intellectual game “The Plan”. The three become increasingly obsessed with The Plan, and sometimes forget that it’s just a game. Worse still, other conspiracy theorists learn about The Plan, and take it seriously. One, Belbo finds himself the target of a real secret society that believes he possesses the key to the lost treasure of the Knights Templar. Belbo, Diotallevi and Casaubon quickly become submerged in occult manuscripts that draw all sorts of flimsy connections between historical events and the unfolding of the plan. They nickname the authors of the “secret manuscript” they claim to have discovered the “Diabolicals”, and engage Agliè, a professional secret society expert as a consultant. They develop an intricate web of mystical connections, making use of Belbo’s small personal computer, which he has nicknamed Abulafia, uncovering hidden references to the Kabbalah’s Sefirot. Agliè in reality is a leader of a real secret society which becomes convinced that the fictional Plan is part of their own mission and they ruthlesssly take it over, torturing and ultimately killing Belbo to reveal the hidden keys to their destiny, and causing Casuabon, the sole survivor to run from their clutches.
Eco’s prior classic, “The Name of the Rose” is set in a Medieval monestery in which a series of murders unfolds, implicating heretical secret communistic religious sects and the Inquisition which pursues them, along with a witchhunt for the Anti-Christ on the eve of the expected Apocalypse. A Franciscan monk, William of Baskerville, takes on the role of a Medieval “Sherlock Holmes” to unravel the mystery, following clues and riddles until the story ends in tragedy with the entire monestery destroyed by fire at the hands of a spiteful reactionary monk. No “master conspiracy” is exists however, and history proves neither guided by the divine blueprint of Doom of Revelations nor the work of secret plotters, but rather the absurdist accidents of a disordered world.
THOMAS PYNCHON: FATHER OF THE CONSPIRACY-DRIVEN EXISTENTIAL EPIC
“Gravity’s Rainbow,” often regarded a the greates American novel since WWII,also draws heavily on conspiracy theory in describing the motives and operations of the Phoebus and other industrial cartels as well as the cross-plotting of Allied and Nazi intelligence services in connection with the development of V1 and V2 ballistic missiles during World War II. Mysteries unfold from the arcane to the absurd, such as the hidden correlations of the Nazi V2 rocket impact points and the locations of the sexual couplings of the protagonist Slothrop, an American intelligence operative whose mind ultimately disintegrates as he hunts for the hidden secrets of Nazi missile technology across WWII Europe amid uncanny connections of sexual perversions, capitalist plots, and the absurdist destinies of the characters.
Pynchon’s earlier work, “The Crying of Lot 49″ (1966) also includes a secretive conflict between cartels dating back to the Middle Ages. His late work, “Against the Day” presents a sometimes whimsical interweaving of technology as a driving force of history, the nefarious plotting of a secretive capitalist elite prior to WWI to dominate and control it, and occult secret societies, such as an idealistic scientific brotherhood operating a Zepplin fleet which contends with Russian and German rivals, then mysteriously travels through a an air tunnel from the North Pole to the Center of the Earth exploring occult technologies such as Tesla’s “Telluric Currents” which may offer unlimited energy. The idealistic scientific brotherhood gradually discovers that its secret leadership, innocently idealized, is controlled by ruthless capitalists out to control the technology shaping history.
WHO IS THE “TRUE BELIEVER” READER OF CONSPIRACY FICTION?
The “True Believer” addict of conspiracy theories need not believe in God, but always believes in the Devil. Though anyone may enjoy the artistry and entertainment value of conspiracy novels, and there are real conspiracies, those of a more pronounced paranoid mindset are often convinced of dubious conspiracies’ truth, more often resulting from their underlying psychological needs than the hisorical truth of the subject matter. Such conspiracies ironically provide the clinically paranoid as well as the socially functional paranoid with the mental secuirty of a predictable, if malign, world. They justify his distrust of any relationships with perfidious others and offer a convenient excuse for selfish and self-centered withdrawal into the intellectually lazy bunker-mentality of “us against them” in which there is conveniently no need for moral obligations, tiresome human feelings and complexities regarding anyone outside onself and one’s own small circle within the seige-bunker, with the bonus of convenient “feel good” self-justification of regarding onself as an innocent, even heroic victim and martyr of malign forces, immune from the possibility of being a source of evil oneself, which is always projected conveniently outward onto some demonized “them.” In terms of economic class, it justifies the acquisitive middle-class in hoarding their own resources for the fight for survival of oneself and defensive withdrawal.
Arguably the paranoia behind a conspiracy theorist’s obsession with mind control, population control, occultism, surveillance abuse, Big Business, Big Government, and globalization arises from a combination of two factors typifying such a personality, who: 1) holds strong individualist values and 2) lacks power. The first attribute refers to people who care deeply about an individual’s right to make their own choices and direct their own lives without interference or obligations to a larger system (like the government or human community,) but combine this with a sense of powerlessness in their own life, and one gets what some psychologists call “agency panic,” intense anxiety about an apparent loss of autonomy to outside forces or regulators. When fervent individualists, especially the “New Poor” of the Global Economic Crisis still internalizing traditional values of self-reliance, or those otherwise threatened in their economic condition, job, social status or psychological security feel that they can no longer exercise their independence, they experience a crisis and assume that larger forces, alien and malevolent, are to blame for usurping this freedom, psychologically projecting a magnified enmity from their own state of felt helplessness.
CONSPIRACY THRILLER MYSTERY IN SPIRITUS MUNDI
My own contemporary and futurist epic, Spiritus Mundi, is a thriller driven by multiple conspiracy theories, and influenced by the traditional masterpieces of the Conspiracy Thriller Mystery genre such as those of Eco and Pynchon. It tells the story of social idealists engaged in an idealistic campaign to found a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, a globalized version of the EU European Parliament constituted as a new advisory organ for international democracy in the United Nations alongside the existing General Assembly and Security Council. Along the way the Campaign is infiltrated by an apparant Islamic terrorist conspiracy to set off a nuclear device in Jerusalem and counter-infiltrated by the CIA and MI6. As this conspiracy unfolds, it is revealed to be part of a greater geopolitical conspiracy of a concealed “New Axis” alliance of a rising China, Russia and Iran to execute a Pearl-Harbor-like sneak attack on the Middle-East oil reserves to sever the West’s oil jugular and seize dominance in Eurasia and the World. At the end of Book II of Spiritus Mundi, the onion skins of this conspiracy are further unpeeled to reveal a metaconspiracy led by a 23rd Century time-travelling War Criminal, Ceasarion Khannis, who, Terminator-like has returned to our present to ignite WWIII to change his own future world’s benign history in which the United Nations Parliamentary Assembly has brought about centuries of world peace and progress. He is pursued in time-travel, Terminator-like, by the 23rd Century Chief Prosecutor, Abor Linkin,who seeks to save his own history and bring Khannis back to his own time to face justice.
Like Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow” and “Against the Day” the collision of these concrete conspiracies and the forces opposing them call to light potential hidden forces shaping human history, such as a benign spiritual evolution of the human spirit, embodied in the “Spiritus Mundi” reminiscent of Tielhard de Chardin’s and C.G. Jung’s “creative evolution” struggling in Yin/Yang opposition against their own nemeses, Entropy, the Freudian Death-Instinct Thanatos, and the spirit of negation.
Ironically, the very campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly for greater democatic oversight of the United Nations and the system of global governance which lies at the center of the novel, an innovation enabling the UN to redress its “democratic deficit” and thereby better resist domination by the international financial elite or narrow geopolitical power intersts of the dominant nation-states, has often become the “demonized” irrational fixation of of certain paranoid tunnel-vision conspiracy theories of prominent right-wing critics. On the irrational right wing there exists a crusade against what such groups term “The New World Order,” a phrase assoicated with the elder President Bush. This is a supposed conspiracy by an internationalist elite, led by an unholy alliance such agents as the Tri-Lateral Commission, communists, the CIA, MI6 and other devious intelligence services, nefarious financial capitalists, the “godless liberal-internationalist establishment,” Rockefellers, Rothschilds, Kissingers and other Jews, multi-national corporations, world socialists, and last but not least, the Anti-Christ, to establish a “One World Government” which has its goal the destruction of America’s national sovereignty, Constitution and democracy, replacement of our sacred dollar with a worthless Globo-Euro currency, institution of universal, global and crushing taxation, replacement of God and all traditional religion with uniformist secular humanism or communist atheism, destruction of all individual freedom, privacy and the family to create a faceless uniform socialist universal proletriat to populate this Brave New World, all dominated by the false benign mask of a demonized United Nations, in reality a Trojan Horse for a universal internationalist totalitarianism, both socialist-communist in its intentions yet somehow still controlled by the hidden strings of a financial elite of Investment Banks, souless technocrats and cynical global power holders! In the more Biblical of these paranoid conspiracy theories, all of this serves to make the United Nations the throne of the Anti-Christ for the reign of pure internationalist evil on earth, from which we will presumably welcome the Aramageddon which will finally clease the Earth prior to Last Judgment and the initiation of the Reign of Christ over a perfect new creation, at least for God’s elect, who presumably include all good Christian Patriots!
One would think such a self-contradictory hodge-podge of irrational fears, bugbears and mutually incompatible psychological projections were laughable and pathetic enough to fall of its own weight and stupidity. Unfortunately, for the psychologically addicted, who like playgoers exercises a powerful “willing suspension of disbelief” where any theory satisfies both their psychological needs and economic interests, such a theory has considerable appeal. Indeed, internal consistency, logic and objective evidence for such conspiracies are entirely unnecessay to the “True Believer” who merely needs confirmation of his or her own biases and fears. Assorted demonized “agents of evil” may be readily interchanged on any convenient occasion, with the Protean identity of the “Axis of Evil,” switched as quickly as the changing of a flat tire, being switched from subversive athiest communism, to Islamic Fundamentalism, to the “Godless Internationalist Elite” of the New World Order with complete ease. Unfortunately for the world, such paranoid conspiracy theories are often enough to move Congress to financially hobble the United Nations, magnified to the proportions of the Anti-Christ or International Big Brother in some right-wing circles, when in reality it possesses less than the budget and manpower of the New York City Fire Department while charged with maintaing world peace, prosperity and the well-being of the 7 billion humans on the planet utilizing resources and powers of trivial proportions.
In conclusion, I invite all of you to look into the masterpieces of Conspiracy Thriller Mystery fiction, including the works of Pynchon and Eco, and to check out the mysteries of Spiritus Mundi.
For a fuller discussion of the concept of World Literature you are invited to look into the extended discussion in the new book Spiritus Mundi, by Robert Sheppard, one of the principal themes of which is the emergence and evolution of World Literature:
For Discussions on World Literature and n Literary Criticism in Spiritus Mundi: http://worldliteratureandliterarycrit…
Robert Sheppard
Editor-in-Chief
World Literature Forum
Author, Spiritus Mundi Novel
Author’s Blog: http://robertalexandersheppard.wordpr…
Spiritus Mundi on Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17…
Spiritus Mundi on Amazon, Book I: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CIGJFGO
Spiritus Mundi, Book II: The Romance http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CGM8BZG
Copyright Robert Sheppard 2013 All Rights Reserved
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