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Two of the most erotic passages in American Literature
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Two of the most erotic passages in American Literature Here let me offer up two of the most erotic passages (in my opinion) from classic American literature The first excerpt is from Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God" (1937), which is a story of a young black woman's coming of age and her experience of three marriages, two of them quite awful and the last quite fulfilling, set in the rural south. This is the young woman as she is beginning to experience her sexuality and contemplate marriage: "It was a spring afternoon in West Florida. Janie had spent most of the day under a blossoming pear tree in the back-yard. She had been spending every minute that she could steal from her chores under the tree for the last three days. That as to say, ever since the first tiny bloom had opened. It had called her to come and gaze on a mystery. From barren brown stems to glistening leaf-buds; from the leaf-buds to snowy virginity of bloom. It stirred her tremendously. How? Why? It was like a<b> flute </font></b>song forgotten in another existence and remembered again. What? How? Why? The singing she heard that had nothing to do with her ears. The rose of the world was breathing out smell. It followed her through all her waking moments and caressed her in her sleep. It connected itself with other vaguely felt matters that had struck her outside observation and buried themselves in her flesh. Now they emerged and quested about her consciousness. She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting beees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation. Then Janie felt a pain remorseless sweet that left her limp and languid." My other choice for an erotic passage from classic American literature is a scene from Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick" when Ishmael and others are squeezing the sperm of the whale in order to soften it up. Melville's story is so much a critique of Ahab as a monomaniacal captain--a tyrant who has no capacity to listen to others, but is caught up in his own obsessions. Ishmael, in contrast, becomes the epitome of what I call the pentecostal spirit: the spirit thatallows us to make sense of babel, the spirit that allows us to converse with strange, foreign tongues. Ishmael's listening--his openness to learning by listening to other voices--is his saving grace, the antidote to Ahab's tyranny. Ahab is one of the greatest orators in an age of oratory, but his oratory is dangerous: the words of a demagogue. It's all about persuasion, making others listen to his words, commanding them in speech. Ishamael, on the other hand, practices a different oratory: the talk of conversation,of give and take, not a demagogic, "manly" oratory, but something kinder and gentler, and certainly more democratic. Here is Ishmael's voice. From Chapter 94, "A Squeeze of the Hand": ......No wonder that in old times this sperm was such a favoritecosmetic. Such a clearer! such a sweetener! such a softener!such a delicious mollifier! After having my hands in it for only afew minutes, my fingers felt like eels, and began, as it were, toserpentine and spiralize.As I sat there at my ease, cross-legged on the deck; after thebitter exertion at the windlass; under a blue tranquil sky; the shipunder indolent sail, and gliding so serenely along; as I bathed my hands among those soft, gentle globules of infiltrated tissues,woven almost within the hour; as they richly broke to my fingers,and discharged all their opulence, like fully ripe grapes their wine; as I snuffed up that uncontaminated aroms,--literally and truly, like the smell of spring violets; I declare to you, that forthe time I lived as in a musky meadow; I forgot all about ourhorrible oath; in that inexpressible sperm, I washed my hands and myheart of it; I almost began to credit the old Paracles and superstition that sperm is of rare virtue in allaying the heat ofanger: while bathing in that bath, I felt divinely free from allill-will, or petulance, or malice, of any sort whatsoever. Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed thatsperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I foundmyself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers' hands in it, mistakingtheir hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding,affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget;that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking upinto their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,--Oh! my dearfellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities,or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze handsall round; nay, let us al squeeze ourselves into each other; let ussqueeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness. Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever! For now,since by many prolonged, repeated experiences, I have perceived thatin all cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, hisconceit of attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in theintellect or the fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, thetable, the saddle, the fire-side, the country; now that I haveperceived all this, I am ready to squeeze case eternally. In thoughts of the visions of the night, I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his handle in a jar of spermaceti." Melville here articulates in ways that could escape the censor the great male fantasy: getting squeezed and squeezed, until all acerbities are gone, getting an afternoon, a long night, a weekend, a week of sex to melt away all differences, all problems, between lovers, or at least melt them away for the man, for this would do it--or this would keep us closer to the fire, the table. I wish Melville in his eloquence would have described as well what would be a woman's vision of felicity in as erotic and compelling terms as he articulates what I see as a more male point of viewabout sex and felicity.  |
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