The Erotic Literature Assignment.

This is the price I pay for trying to be a friggin smartass in English Class. I landed a 1000 word essay on Erotic Literature from Arulster for calling out Erotica as a genre of Literature in his class. Apprently, I shouldn't have mentioned that I got inspired from his website. Aajkal sachchai ka bol-bala khatam hi ho gaya hai!

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Literotica : A journey through time.

Abhilash Dwarakanath

I B.Sc MCZ

O6SJ2651

St. Joseph’s College of Arts and Science

They say that the most primal and innate instinct or action of man is Fornication (yeah, marriage is just a license to screw). After all, life is defined by a multitude of biologists as ‘Preservation and Propagation of DNA’. When humans moved on from eating raw flesh and savagely assaulting each other for petty things like sleeping space, and settled down in communities, the first thing they did; other than fornicate; was develop a means of communication. Writing began. When humans realized that they could use their cerebrum for things other than running, walking, jumping, eating, screwing and screaming, they sought to invest their intellect in constructive writing. They began writing to chronicle their civilisation’s progress, events, facts, discoveries and legends. Some of them specialised in writing, and when they became jobless, literature came into being. Imagination took flight into various realms; realms of heroic valour, realms of love, realms of creativity and Natural Philosophy. How could the most primal instinct of man be left behind?

Who said the Indian Civilisation looks upon sex as something that shouldn’t be blatantly exhibited, otherwise some unknown booming voice from the heavens will render you unable to reproduce? The most celebrated and ancient of erotic literature is from our land; the land of Tantric Sex. Although Vatsyayana wrote the Kama Sutra in the 4^th Century AD, its roots can be traced back to a certain bull-written, legend-infested manuscript called the Kama Shastra, allegedly compiled by Nandi the Bull, after hearing the not too subtle lovemaking between Lord Shiva and Parvati. It passed between quite a few centuries and hands before Dattaka composed a work on courtesans, on which Vatsyayana based his epic treatise.

On careful perusal of the Mahabharata, you will encounter various erotic references. Of course, you’ll have to be corrupt of mind and filthy of thought to come across them...yeah, I have indeed come across them, draw your own conclusions. There are vivid descriptions of Krishna courting Gopikas and his misdemeanour, the birth of Karna and the other Pandavas, the Arjuna – Subhadra saga, the conception of Babruvahana in the kingdom of Manipura, Arjuna’s night of passion with the Snake Princess and other such references. Not to mention, of course, Duryodhana’s lecherous advances towards Draupadi and numerous other such passages which would qualify as early, subtle erotica.

Not much of eroticism was seen in literature until the dawn of the Romantic Era. Although Shakespeare’s plays are simple to comprehend at one glance, they are swathed in multiple layers of complexly webbed emotions. Eroticism is one of them. Examine the behaviour of a voyeuristic and pandering Puck in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ where he is flummoxed by the fact of lack of passionate lovemaking among humans when they are able to do it; or the adolescent cravings of a not-yet-fourteen Juliet in Romeo and Juliet when she says, ‘If he be married, my grave is like to be my marriage bed’. This particular verse is very compelling upon the belief that Shakespeare was a damned pervert –

Give me my Romeo; and when he shall die
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of Heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night,
And pay no worship to the garish sun.

In Anthony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare embarks on a very vivid account of how Cleopatra exacts the virgin-like virility and enthusiasm of Anthony, by not being straightforward, but manipulative and seductive.

Other women cloy
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies; for vilest things
Become themselves in her, that the holy priests
Bless her when she is riggish.

Virtually every Shakespearean heroine from Rosalind and Viola to Helena is endowed with pro-active sexual desire and has as well the courage and dedication to pursue her own erotic ends. It is left to anti-heroines, like Ophelia, Gertrude, Lady Macbeth etc to act coy and submissive, tacitly denying their sexual autonomy along with their individual responsibility.

In the Victorian Era, the non-committal and snobbish English Genteel rebuffed blatant exhortation of sexuality and erotica. Though most writers restricted their hormones from spilling over into their books, some of them flouted norms and wrote with a disdain. Jane Eyre’s burning desire for Rochester’s flesh is very artistically weaved in Charlotte Bronte’s masterpiece, though, fearing societal reactions, she chose to publish the book under an ambiguously androgynous pseudonym, Currer Bell. When the stiff upper-lipped Victorian Era drew to a close and firmly implanted the ideals of Realism in Literature, writers like Oscar Wilde, D H Lawrence and James Joyce rose to the forefront of literature, with heavy sexual undertones in their novels. Indeed, such was Lawrence’s reputation after the publication of ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ that he came to be known more as a verbal pornographer wasting his brilliant literary skills, than as a novelist of gifted repute. James Joyce’s magnum opus Ulysses had to undergo an obscenity trial, before being acclaimed by the critique conglomerate.

By the 18^th century, Erotic Fiction as a separate genre had started to take shape. Though they occupy a mainstream literary slot, they often fall short of the quality of more serious literature. Though, towards the end of the 19^th century, a more 'cultured' form of erotica began to appear. This was associated with the Decadents, in particular, with Aubrey Beardsley and the Yellow Book. But it was also to be found in France, amongst such writers as Pierre Louis, author of the 'Chanson de Bilitis' (a celebration of lesbianism and sexual awakening).

In the 20^th Century, many pulp fiction authors tend to lace their novels with heavy doses of sex and eroticism, that it sometimes becomes tough to draw a line between Erotica, Romanticism and the like. Harold Robbins and Sidney Sheldon are noted for vivid sexual imagery in their work. Mario Puzo illustrates erotica and lovemaking as a very basic need of man, using the Italian principles and society as a backdrop, highlighting the egotistic connotation of eroticism among the Mafia. Mills and Boon novels masquerade as Romance Fiction, while all the time they vulgarly disrobe the female form and use her as an abject model for the quenching of sexual thirst. And then there are the numerous ha’ penny books that come under the huge umbrella of cheap press, which do not even merit a discussion, thank you very much. My suggestion is, go to any old bookstall which sells dime novels by the dozen and experience them yourselves.

Although I am not very familiar with Indian writing, there seems to be a very fine sense of balanced eroticism among the modern Indian writers in English. Khushwant Singh is notorious for his risqué humour and obsession with the female form. ‘In The Company of Women’ is a book that he wrote when he was in his late 80s. Viagra companies need to ascertain the secret of his ripeness. R K Narayan very poignantly used sex to illustrate the importance of it between married couples in the Indian Society.

Mikhail will continue about the development of Erotica in the 20^th Century.