Sex as Religion (in Progress).

Here I leave the first pages. This is only the first draft. It needs filling in.

Sex as Religion

The Metaphysical Conception of Sex

in the Lyrics of Donne and Prince.

INTRODUCTION

Sex is something that pervades everything we are. We are the product of a sexual act and all our ancestors did have sex for us to be here. Not everyone understands this biological fact for human societies have erected norms to hide this fact, the fact that sex is the most important thing in our world. For many societies, the only way to cope with sex is to not talk about it, to not let this fact be talked about. And when our ancestors discovered agriculture some 20,000 years ago, in the Neolithic, cities appeared and with them classes and the religious caste. Religion may have appeared to explain our most distinguished atttribute among animals, which is our self-consciousness. Be that as it may, the religious caste stood side by side with power and kings to give cohesion and unity to a society that now was varied in great cities. Religions do not talk about sex. Religions talk about God and our salvation as humans in another world.

   But there are people who think that another world, if there is any, should be of concern when we arrive there. In this world, this people think, we should be thinking of being happy and having fun. And here it is where sex appears with force. For sex is one of the most pleasurables things a human can do during his (or her) short life. And when sex is joined with love, then sex is the most powerful experience one can have in life. There is simply no other experience that come near to having sex with a person you love. Art, then, has understood that everytime it deals with love and sex it is dealing with the key question.

   In Homer, in the Iliad, we read about warriors killing each other..., for a woman. And that is a right cause, because males fight with other males to have access to females, or to have access to resources and power that give access to females. A poor man without resources is not going to have sex with a female, if that female have other males around with resources. Females want males who are ambitious, powerful, resourful, intelligent, witty, and kind. But the first step is to have resources. And the more beautiful the female the more the male has to show, for she has many offers from other males. In the case of Homer, females have few choices but to give themselves to the victorious warrior. The Iliad is a story of sexual selection. And that is why the story has such power over us as readers.

   In Safo we have the theme of sex as love, tender and spiritual love. She misses her love, another young female who has given in marriage to a male. Safo suffers because her love is gone and is now under the power of a male with no love for her. Safo lived in Lesbos and hence comes the lesbian definition for a female in love with another female.

   In Catullus sex and love are the key questions, and that is why Catullusʼ poetry is still read today. It looks like modern. I remember still the impression that Catullus made on me when I read his Carmina VIII:

Poor Catullus, you must stop being silly,
and count as lost what you see is lost.
Once the sun shone bright for you,
when you would go whither your sweetheart led,
she who was loved by me as none will ever be loved.
Then there took place those many jolly scenes
which you desired nor did your sweetheart not desire.
Truly the sun shone bright for you.
Now she desires no more: do you too, weakling, not desire;
and do not chase her who flees, nor live in unhappiness,
but harden your heart, endure and stand fast.
Goodbye, sweetheart. Catullus now stands fast:
he will not look for you or court you against your will.
But you will be sorry when you are not courted at all.
Wretch, pity on you! What life lies in store for you!
Who will come to you now? Who will think you pretty?
Whom will you love now? Who will people say you are?
Whom will you kiss? Whose lips will you bite?
But you, Catullus, be resolute and stand fast.¹

This is the pain of love, of sex, for there is no love where sex is out of the question when we start a relationship. If a female is not granting the male her sex, she is indicating that the male is not worth it. The better way to reject a male without saying anything is to not let him have access to your female body. He will understand. Catullus has understood it, but cannot get over it. His calmness and reasonable attitude is just a façade. He is out of his mind for his Lesbia.

   This madness is also depicted by Virgil. In his Bucolica we read about this fact too. In particular, in Eclogue II we read about a male falling in love with a young boy, Corydon for Alexis. Alexis has gone with the master to the city and its luxiries and pleasures, while poor Corydon has been left in the country with the sheeps. To have sex you need power and resources. In Ovid we move to the city and heterosexual love. Ovidʼs Amores is one of the most revolutionary books in the history of poetry, for it deals with the key question directly. Sex is for Ovid the only true game in town. And he is very good at describing its pains and its pleasures. We could say every Renaissance poet imitated Ovid when talking about love and sex, from Ariosto to Spenser, from Shakespeare to Marlowe.² Göngora in el Polifemo (1613) describes the love of Galatea for Acis in this way (st. 23-24, my translation):

   The fugitive nymph, meanwhile, 
wheresteals a laurel its trunk the burning sun,
so many jasmines as many herb does hide
the snow of her limbs, gives to a spring.
Sweet it complains, and sweet does respond
a nightingale to another, most sweetly
to the sleep gives her eyes the harmony,
so not to scorch with three suns the day.

   Salamander of the sun, dressed stars,
beating the dog of the sky was, when,
dust the hair of his, moist scintillas,
if not burning pearls, sweating indeed,
came Acis and, of those two fair lights
sweet West seeing he the soft sleep,
his mouth gave, and his eyes all he could,
to the sonorous crystal, to the crystal mute.

Now Acis is described in stanzas 25-26:

   Was Acis a spear of the god Cupid,
of a faun, half-man, half-beast he,
in Simethis, beautiful nymph, was,
glory of the sea, honour of its shore.
The fair magnet, the asleep idol,
that steel follows, venerates idolater,
rich of all those the orchard offers, poor,
deliver the cows and foments the oak:

   the celestial humour freshly curdled
the almond kept, ʼtween green and dry,
in white wicker he did put beside her,
and a flake, in green reeds, of butter;
in brief cork, but well embroidered,
a blonde son of a hollow holm oak,
sweetest honeycomb, to whose wax
its nectar vinculated, the green spring.

The nymph awakes and sees the food besides her; surprised, she wonders who may have been her idolater. She goes to find and finds Acis lying faking to be asleep. She gets besides him and contemplates him. Now Love awakes in her bosom, as we read in stanza 37:

   Acis, even more than that which dispenses
the front sight of the vigilant dream,
altered the nymph be, or suspended,
Argos is ever watchful of her visage,
penetrating lynx of what she thinks,
encircle it bronze or diamond wall it,
that in his palladiums Love blind,
without breaking walls, introduces fire.

He wakes up and the nymph, surprised, backs up. In the end, she loves Acis and takes him to a bower of bliss, which reads like this (stanzas 40-42):

   On a carpet (that imitated in vain
the Tyrian its hues, while it was
of all those silks once spun, worm,
and artificer wove, the Spring)
reclined they, to the myrtle most lush
one and another wanton, if swift,
dove swooped down, whose moans,
trumpets of Love, do alter their ears.

   The hoarse coo to the youth solicits,
yet, with detours Galatea, soft,
to his boldness the terms limits,
and the applause to the birdsʼ harmony.

Between the billows and the fruit, imitates
Acis to the ever fast in grave griefs,
that, in so much glory, hell are not brief,
fugitive crystal, pomes of snow.

   Not to the doves conceded Cupid
to unite of their two beaks the rubies,
when to the carnation the daring youth
the two leaves sucks her, crimson.
All those produces Paphos, begets Gnidus,
black violas, white wallflowers,
rain over that one which Love wants to be
bed of Acis right now, and of Galatea.

The words of George Santayana should not be ignored here. He writes in The Sense of Beauty (1896):

We need to clarify our ideals, and enliven our vision of perfection … Accordingly our consciousness of the ideal becomes distinct in proportion as we advance in virtue and in proportion to the vigour and definiteness with which our faculties work. When the vital harmony is complete, when the act is pure, faith in perfection passes into vision. That man is unhappy indeed, who in all his life has had no glimpse of perfection, who in the ecstasy of love, or in the delight of contemplation, has never been able to say: It is attained. Such moments of inspiration are the source of the arts, which have no higher function than to renew them.

A work of art is indeed a monument to such a moment, the memorial to such a vision; and its charm varies with its power of recalling us from the distractions of common life to the joy of a more natural and perfect activity.

The question is this, then: all great art deals with love and sex, and the more it celebrates these key human activities, the more monumental is the work of art. It is not difficult to see why: for sex is the most important human activity for us humans. We just love it.

   And in Donne and in Prince, the subject of this book, we will see that this key theme is turned into a religion, a metaphysical experience, a divine activity. A wholesome action that makes us feel in touch with the divine. Let us see how they do it.

1 Translation by Kelly Salyer at http://rudy.negenborn.net/catullus/text2/e8.htm.

2 Marlowe and Spenser (and Thomas Nashe) were pseudonyms of John Donne. In some plays by Marlowe, one can see that Edward de Vere (aka Shakespeare) put his hand too. Cf. Ver, begin (2015) and Sex & Fun in The Faerie Queene (2019).