Category: Essay

Poetic Eros

Odilon Redon - The birth of Venus
Odilon Redon – The birth of Venus (1912) – from WikiArt

In the post “Components of Love” I presented the three types of love and friendship according to the ancient Greeks:

  • Eros is sexual love, generally driven by beauty; it is discriminating and it can be versatile, blooming or withering fast.
  • Storge is natural love, as it exists between members of a family, or the love of parents for children; contrarily to Eros, it is unconditional and long-lasting, and it grows slowly.
  • Philia is friendship, generally within a group, mediated by activities shared in common; it includes also philanthropy and humanitarian work.

The ancient Greeks also used the word Agape for affection and tenderness, similar to Storge. Then in Christianity, this word evolved to mean a purely spiritual, selfless and undemanding love embracing all humanity; in fact, such an ideal love is extremely rare in real human beings. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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Le Vin, par Charles Baudelaire

Saturno Buttò - Mixed technique on paper
Saturno Buttò – Mixed technique on paper cm. 58×39 – from saturnobutto.com

Baudelaire publia en 1851 le court essai Du vin et du haschisch, comparés comme moyens de multiplication de l’individualité, qui étudie les effets des deux drogues sur la personnalité, le comportement et l’inspiration. Plusieurs éditions l’incluent dans Les Paradis artificiels, bien qu’il n’en fasse pas partie. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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Un rêve d’André Breton

Toyen - Portrait d'André Breton
Toyen – Portrait d’André Breton (1950)

André Breton ne fit jamais grand cas des enfants et de leurs capacités. Quand il cherchait un poète ou un artiste, c’était un homme, éventuellement une femme, jamais un enfant. Ainsi quand parurent les premiers poèmes de Minou Drouet, âgée de 8 ans, il proclama d’emblée, sans prendre la peine d’enquêter sur les faits, qu’il était impossible qu’une enfant de cet âge pût écrire par elle-même ces poèmes. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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Mark Twain on the sexual superiority of women and girls

Mark Twain and Dorothy Quick
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) and Dorothy Quick aboard the Minnetonka (July 1907) – from historicaltimes.tumblr.com

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (b. November 30, 1835; d. April 21, 1910), the American writer and humorist better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was a free mind who evolved towards radicalism as he aged, opposing slavery and American imperialism, promoting civil rights and hailing labour unions. Although he was raised as a Presbyterian, he became distrustful of dogma and established religion. He did not publish in his lifetime his most controversial works about religion, and some of them were withheld from publication after his death, because his family disapproved them, notably: the novel The Mysterious Stranger published in 1916, the short story Little Bessie first published in 1972, and the collection of essays Letters From The Earth, written around 1909 and published only in 1962. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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De Quincey et la petite fille misérable, d’après Baudelaire

Zhenya Gay - illustration for Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas De Quincey
Zhenya Gay – illustration pour Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas De Quincey (1950) – The Heritage Press, New York

Après le recueil de poèmes Les Fleurs du mal, l’œuvre la plus célèbre de Charles Baudelaire est l’essai Les Paradis artificiels, publié en 1860, consacré à l’usage récréatif des drogues, plus précisément du haschisch et de l’opium. Il connut un large succès, il reste un exposé classique des effets de la drogue, comme l’exaltation, puis la dépendance et la souffrance. D’ailleurs l’expression “paradis artificiels” est couramment utilisée pour désigner l’utilisation de drogues (en particulier hallucinogènes) pour stimuler l’imagination ou enivrer les sens. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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Minou Drouet, le génie écrasé de l’enfance

Roger Hauert - Minou Drouet
Roger Hauert – Minou Drouet – dans Poèmes (1956)

Enfant intelligente et extrêmement sensible, esprit libre et immensément créatif, Minou Drouet irritait de nombreux adultes. Plusieurs crièrent à l’imposture, affirmant qu’elle ne pouvait en aucun cas être l’auteur des poèmes et lettres publiés sous son nom. Certains la considéraient comme un monstre ou un animal de cirque. D’autres essayaient d’en faire une petite fille normale ou un poète comme les autres. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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The wretched little girl in De Quincey’s Confessions

Frank Holl - Faces in the Fire
Frank Holl – Faces in the Fire (1867) – The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Oxford

The English writer Thomas Penson De Quincey (b. August 15, 1785; d. December 8, 1859) knew fame with his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, published anonymously in two parts in the September and October 1821 issues of the London Magazine, then released in book form in 1822. In 1845, De Quincey published Suspiria de Profundis, advertised as being a sequel to the Confessions. Then in 1856 he revised his Confessions, which became much longer. Since then, the two are usually published together, their complete titles being Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, Being an Extract from the Life of a Scholar, and Suspiria de Profundis: Being a Sequel to the “Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.” CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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Confused notions and incoherent terminology about love and sexuality

Suppose that you manage a website devoted to dogs, discussing everything about their life, health and happiness, giving advice on how to groom them, advertising dog events and contests, all with beautiful photographs of nice dogs on each page. Then someone comes and says that you hyper-sexualize dogs, that your site is a zoophile’s paradise. You will rightfully reply that the perversion lies only in that person’s mind, as your interest in dogs is friendly but not sexual, and you just want to share it with others. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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Components of Love

Color wheel Eros Storge Philia

Today I will discuss the various types of feelings and emotions involved in what one calls love, I label them “components.” I am to some extent inspired by the famous book The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis, but while he described them as distinct forms of love, I will rather consider that they can mix together in various proportions through any particular love relation. This idea of mixing different forms of love was developed by John Allan Lee in Lovestyles; however he views them as “styles,” which can be not only emotions, arousals and feelings, but also attitudes towards feelings such as commitment, playfulness or manipulation, as well as degrees of compliance with social norms such as marriage and family. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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