Erotic poetry

“ The decadence was to be seen in a perverse and finicking glorification of the fine arts and mere artistic virtuosity on the one hand, and a militant commercial movement on the [xv] other.... The eroticism which became so prevalent in the verse of many of the younger poets was minor because it was little more than a pose—not because it was erotic.... It was a passing mood which gave the poetry of the hour a hothouse fragrance; a perfume faint yet unmistakable and strange."
But most of the elegant and disillusioned young men overshot their mark. Mere health reasserted itself ”

“ When the erotic ceased to be quite as much a matter of course, in fiction or poetry, as hatred, jealousy, or revenge, and the reader learned to pass it over with a frown or pick it out with a relish, according to his natural disgust of or morbid craving for the impure, it became a blemish. ”

“ The erotic element, such as it is, consists in these writers almost entirely of erotic legends or myths, which would seem to have been recounted without special comment on the part of the poet and, in most cases, without elaborate analysis of the emotions of the characters introduced. The stories therefore that these writers tell, rather than the actual words in which they tell them, will require consideration in the present connection. ”

“ In his book on Psychopathia sexualis, Krafft-Ebing remarks how easily religion, poetry and eroticism are combined and mingled in the obscure feelings and presentiments of maturing youth. In the life of saints there is always the question of sexual temptations, in which the most elevated and ideal sentiments are mixed with the most repugnant erotic images. ”

“ The occasional experience, often only the dream of such a love, sensible to the finest shades of the soul, to the most delicate vibrations of the senses—of a love which is an all comprehensive tenderness, an all embracing intimacy—has already raised the erotic demands and the erotic existence of thousands of men and women to a sphere of more infinite longing, more fervid chastity than that of their contemporaries. ”

“ The achievement of this eagerly desired unity, which would be synonymous with the victory of personality over the limitations of body and soul, is the great problem of modern time in the domain of eroticism. The characteristic of this third stage of eroticism is the complete triumph of love over pleasure, the neutralisation of the sexual and the generative by the spiritual and the personal. The physical and spiritual unity of the lovers has become so much supreme erotic reality, that the line of demarcation between soul and senses is completely obliterated. ”

“ Unfortunately, many novels and dramas which meet with the approbation of society, thanks to their fashionable or even decent form of presentation, are often full of half-veiled eroticism, which is much more exciting to the sexual appetite than the brutal and realistic descriptions of Zola or Brieux, or even the erotic art of de Maupassant. ”

“ We have now examined several very various and yet very typical manifestations in all of which it is not difficult to see how, in some strange and eccentric form—on a basis of association through resemblance or contiguity or both combined—there arises a definite mimicry of the normal sexual act together with the normal emotions which accompany that act. It has become clear in what sense we are justified in recognizing erotic symbolism. ”

“ But from first to last it is a distinct phenomenon, having a more or less reasoned and intellectual basis, and it scarcely serves in any degree to feed the sexual impulse. Erotic symbolism is not intellectual but emotional in its origin; it starts into being, obscurely, with but a dim consciousness or for the most part none at all, either suddenly from the shock of some usually youthful experience, or more gradually through an instinctive brooding on those things which are most intimately associated with a sexually desirable person. ”

“ They introduced into her mind an erotic fantasy, so powerful, so compelling, that she was powerless to resist. They know that to the human mind an erotic trance, dreamlike and unreal, can be more compulsively irresistible than any waking moment of rapture and abandonment, enforced by fervent kisses and caressing hands. In dreams of desire, the human mind is completely set free. ”

“ This love soon becomes tinged with a very strong erotic feeling connected with the little one’s growing sensuality, which, as we have seen, is centered on her clitoris.
Now, it is necessary for humans to love and to have erotic feelings centered on others. But clearly, if this early love situation did not change at some point, the little girl would grow up to have women as her erotic centers of interest. Nature intends no such end result. She intends these erotic feelings to become ultimately very much man-centered. ”

“ He points out that not only is the nude in art not to be condemned without qualification, and that the nude is by no means necessarily the erotic, but he also adds that even erotic art, in its best and purest manifestations, only arouses emotions that are the legitimate object of man's aspirations. ”

“ Whatever the real benefits, and there is no occasion for questioning them, of the sexual order thus established, it becomes clear that in certain important respects it had an unnatural and repressive influence on the erotic aspect of woman’s sexual life. ”

“ In the tendency to idealize the unbeautiful features of a beloved person erotic symbolism shows itself in a simple and normal form. In a less simple and more morbid form it appears in persons in whom the normal paths of sexual gratification are for some reasons inhibited, and who are thus led to find the symbols of natural love in unnatural perversions. It is for this reason that so many erotic symbolisms take root in childhood and puberty, before the sexual instincts have reached full development. ”

“ I have briefly touched on this subject because my theory of the two roots of eroticism permits of a new, and in my opinion plausible, explanation of erotic perversions; one might even go as far as to say that the existence of perversions follows as a necessary consequence; that they must exist because it obviously cannot always be possible to maintain a harmonious balance of sensuality and love. ”

“ Psychology has in recent years investigated the unconscious day dreams which are now recognised as part of our imaginative life. No matter how religious or moral we may be, erotic fancies are always with us. This mental life has often been described in mediæval literature in the accounts of sensuous visions which tempted saints. ”

“ Erotic means more than “inspired by love” in the sense that the uninitiated use the term love, which in common language is of very wide application including even food and clothing and all other egoistic-social expressions. Erotic not only means inspired by love in the most whole, passionate sense but implies also that the persons activated by erotic motives have at least some knowledge of the art of love, a knowledge which includes something about the unconscious factor. ”

“ Only when women begin to tell the truth about themselves will literature universally illuminate the still unknown depths of woman's erotic temperament. To the present time it has been almost exclusively men poets who have made revelations about women. The nearer these poets have approached life, the more surely have they seen the highest expression of the eternal feminine as the great women poets also saw it: in erotic love and in mother love. And it was the completeness of her consecration which was in their eyes a woman's supreme chastity. ”

“ There are, indeed, as we shall see, elementary forms of erotic symbolism which are not uncommonly associated with feeble-mindedness, but even these are still peculiarly human, and in its less crude manifestations erotic symbolism easily lends itself to every degree of human refinement and intelligence. ”

“ In a somewhat less abnormal form, erotic symbolism probably shows itself in its simplest shape in the tendency to idealize unbeautiful peculiarities in a beloved person, so that such peculiarities are ever afterward almost or quite essential in order to arouse sexual attraction. ”

“ One of the most interesting and important characters by which the erotic dreams of women—and, indeed, their dreams generally—differ from those of men is in the tendency to evoke a repercussion on the waking life, a tendency more rarely noted in men's erotic dreams, and then only to a minor extent. ”

“ This cerebral initiation commonly occurs to the youth through the medium of literature. The influence of literature in sexual education thus extends, in an incalculable degree, beyond the narrow sphere of manuals on sexual hygiene, however admirable and desirable these may be. The greater part of literature is more or less distinctly penetrated by erotic and auto-erotic conceptions and impulses; nearly all imaginative literature proceeds from the root of sex to flower in visions of beauty and ecstasy. ”

“ The difficulty both of finding and of substitution increases in proportion to the differentiation and the intensity of feeling. The true erotic, once he has found his complementary being, is overwhelmed by the will to the perfect realisation of his passion. ”

“ But it is certainly true that, in proportion as we truly and wisely exercise the play-function of sex, we are at the same time training our personality on the erotic side and acquiring a mastery of the art of love. ”

“ Her new erotic experience has not only stimulated all her energies, but her new knowledge has quickened all her sympathies. She feels, at the same time, more mentally alert, and she finds that she is more alive than before to the influences of nature and of art. ”

“ And as soon as we begin to restrain the free play of sexual impulse toward sexual ends, at once auto-erotic phenomena inevitably spring up on every side. There is no end to them; it is impossible to say what finest elements in art, in morals, in civilization generally, may not really be rooted in an auto-erotic impulse. ”

“ In every book there is much of the author's unconscious which can be discovered by the critic and psychologist who apply a few and well tested and infallible principles.
This unconscious is largely identical with the mental love fantasies in our present and past life. Since the terms "unconscious" and "erotic" are almost synonymous, any serious study of literature which is concerned [2] with the unconscious must deal impartially with eroticism.
Every author reveals more than he intended. Works of the imagination open up to the reader hidden vistas in man's inner life just as dreams do. ”

“ The youth who was her partner learned, in the same way, to find an erotic symbolism in all the pressure reactions of attractive feminine feet, the swaying of a carriage beneath their weight, the crushing of the flowers on which they tread, the slow rising of the grass which they have pressed. Here we have a symbolism which is altogether different from that fetichism which adores a definite object; it is a dynamic symbolism finding its gratification in the spectacle of movements which ideally recall the fundamental rhythm and pressure reactions of the sexual process. ”

“ In many hysterical and psychically abnormal women, auto-erotic phenomena, and sexual phenomena generally, are highly pleasurable, though such persons may be quite innocent of any knowledge of the erotic character of the experience. ”

“ The energy of its movements becomes a substitute for the energy of the sexual organs themselves in coitus, and exerts the same kind of fascination. The young girl (page 35) "who seemed to have a passion for treading upon things which would scrunch or yield under her foot," already possessed the germs of an erotic symbolism which, under the influence of circumstances in which she herself took an active part, developed into an adequate method of sexual gratification. ”

“ For this reason the licentious in American literature is and must be cold, artificial, and repugnant. The erotic becomes mere bald immorality, without grace, gayety, color, or warmth to lend it dignity or render it tolerable. In the opulent, fervid period of the Renaissance, art was born of passion and inspired by it to greatness. The erotic was a legitimate element of all works of the imagination, because it was a part of the social life of the day, and because, being genuine, it could be made beautiful. ”

“ As criteria of beauty he lists such characteristics as well-shaped waist, rounded bosom, full and red underlip, small feet, etc., all of which have come to be considered standards of loveliness because the erotic emotion has been conditioned to respond to their stimulation. Literature is full of references to such marks of beauty in its characters (Jane Eyre is almost the only well-known book with a plain heroine) , and is therefore one of the potent factors in establishing a conditioned emotional reaction to these stimuli. ”

“ In a treatment of the relation between art and sexual life the facts must necessarily be classified under two different headings, namely, the influence of artistic activity upon sexual selection and the importance of erotic motives in works of art. ”

“ Thus the seeker of love, too, though in a restricted sense, may be regarded as a metaphysical erotic, for he loathes sexuality—his portion—and yearns for a higher form of love. He shares this attitude with the slave of love, who is also a sensualist and a would-be lover. The slave of love imitates the attitude of the worshipper, but he infallibly sinks into the sexual sphere. ”

“ Literature could not exist without dwelling on the love interest. The stories of Jacob and Rachel, of Ruth, and of David and Uriah's wife, are all beautiful examples of eroticism in the Bible.
Man is averse to admitting certain facts about his mental love life. People are often shocked by the immorality of the dreams which reveal their unconscious lives. A man, however, will often confess in intimate circles the existence of sensuous fancies within himself. People show indications in many ways of the parts played by the love and sex interests in their mental lives. ”