Category Archives: History

March 11, 2011

In Praise of Limestone

By Joe

NCP25058843801“In Praise of Limestone” is a poem written by W. H. Auden in Italy in May 1948. Central to his canon and one of Auden’s finest poems, it has been the subject of diverse scholarly interpretations. Auden’s limestone landscape has been interpreted as an allegory of Mediterranean civilization and of the human body. The poem, sui generis, is not easily classified. As a topographical poem, it describes a landscape and infuses it with meaning. It has been called the “first … postmodern pastoral”. In a letter, Auden wrote of limestone and the poem’s theme that “that rock creates the only human landscape.”

In December 1948, a few months after he had celebrated the maternal aspects of the flesh in “In Praise of Limestone,” Auden celebrated the male flesh in a less sacramental style. “Deciding that there ought to be one in the Auden corpus” — his choice of the noun is deliberate — “I am writing a purely pornographic poem, The Platonic Blow,” he told Kallman. He borrowed the nameless syncopated metre (“It was a Spring day, a day for a lay, when the air / Smelled like a locker-room”) invented by Charles Williams for the poems of his highly sacramental Taliessin through Logres, but the word “Platonic” in Auden’s title was an ironic spoof. The sexual act described by the poem in microscopic physiological detail is “Platonic” only in the popular sense that it is perfect of its kind — Auden asked friends to contribute their relevant ideas of perfection — and not in the sense that the bodies that perform the act are in any way transcended.

 

In Praise Of Limestone

Tuke,_Henry_Scott_(1858–1929)_-_1920_-_Youth_on_beachIf it form the one landscape that we, the inconstant ones,
Are consistently homesick for, this is chiefly
Because it dissolves in water. Mark these rounded slopes
With their surface fragrance of thyme and, beneath,
A secret system of caves and conduits; hear the springs
That spurt out everywhere with a chuckle,
Each filling a private pool for its fish and carving
Its own little ravine whose cliffs entertain
The butterfly and the lizard; examine this region
Of short distances and definite places:
What could be more like Mother or a fitter background
For her son, the flirtatious male who lounges
Against a rock in the sunlight, never doubting
That for all his faults he is loved; whose works are but
Extensions of his power to charm? From weathered outcrop
To hill-top temple, from appearing waters to
Conspicuous fountains, from a wild to a formal vineyard,
Are ingenious but short steps that a child’s wish
To receive more attention than his brothers, whether
By pleasing or teasing, can easily take.

Watch, then, the band of rivals as they climb up and down
Their steep stone gennels in twos and threes, at times
Arm in arm, but never, thank God, in step; or engaged
On the shady side of a square at midday in
Voluble discourse, knowing each other too well to think
There are any important secrets, unable
To conceive a god whose temper-tantrums are moral
And not to be pacified by a clever line
Tuke,_Henry_Scott_(1858–1929)_-_1921_-_Boys_bathing_on_rocksOr a good lay: for accustomed to a stone that responds,
They have never had to veil their faces in awe
Of a crater whose blazing fury could not be fixed;
Adjusted to the local needs of valleys
Where everything can be touched or reached by walking,
Their eyes have never looked into infinite space
Through the lattice-work of a nomad’s comb; born lucky,
Their legs have never encountered the fungi
And insects of the jungle, the monstrous forms and lives
With which we have nothing, we like to hope, in common.
So, when one of them goes to the bad, the way his mind works
Remains incomprehensible: to become a pimp
Or deal in fake jewellery or ruin a fine tenor voice
For effects that bring down the house, could happen to all
But the best and the worst of us…
That is why, I suppose,
The best and worst never stayed here long but sought
Immoderate soils where the beauty was not so external,
The light less public and the meaning of life
Something more than a mad camp. ‘Come!’ cried the granite wastes,
“How evasive is your humour, how accidental
Your kindest kiss, how permanent is death.” (Saints-to-be
Slipped away sighing.) “Come!” purred the clays and gravels,
“On our plains there is room for armies to drill; rivers
Wait to be tamed and slaves to construct you a tomb
In the grand manner: soft as the earth is mankind and both
Need to be altered.” (Intendant Caesars rose and
Left, slamming the door.) But the really reckless were fetched
By an older colder voice, the oceanic whisper:
“I am the solitude that asks and promises nothing;
That is how I shall set you free. There is no love;
Tuke_Henry_Scott_1858–1929_-_1914_ca_-_Two_boys_and_a_dogThere are only the various envies, all of them sad.”

They were right, my dear, all those voices were right
And still are; this land is not the sweet home that it looks,
Nor its peace the historical calm of a site
Where something was settled once and for all: A back ward
And dilapidated province, connected
To the big busy world by a tunnel, with a certain
Seedy appeal, is that all it is now? Not quite:
It has a worldy duty which in spite of itself
It does not neglect, but calls into question
All the Great Powers assume; it disturbs our rights. The poet,
Admired for his earnest habit of calling
The sun the sun, his mind Puzzle, is made uneasy
By these marble statues which so obviously doubt
His antimythological myth; and these gamins,
Pursuing the scientist down the tiled colonnade
With such lively offers, rebuke his concern for Nature’s
Remotest aspects: I, too, am reproached, for what
And how much you know. Not to lose time, not to get caught,
Not to be left behind, not, please! to resemble
The beasts who repeat themselves, or a thing like water
Or stone whose conduct can be predicted, these
Are our common prayer, whose greatest comfort is music
Which can be made anywhere, is invisible,
And does not smell. In so far as we have to look forward
SunBather_TukeTo death as a fact, no doubt we are right: But if
Sins can be forgiven, if bodies rise from the dead,
These modifications of matter into
Innocent athletes and gesticulating fountains,
Made solely for pleasure, make a further point:
The blessed will not care what angle they are regarded from,
Having nothing to hide. Dear, I know nothing of
Either, but when I try to imagine a faultless love
Or the life to come, what I hear is the murmur
Of underground streams, what I see is a limestone landscape.

W.H. Auden

The paintings are by Henry Scott Tuke.

5 Comments | posted in Art, History, Poetry

March 7, 2011

W.H. Auden

By Joe

This week I am going to focus on W. H. Auden.  You probably know by now how much I love poetry, and Auden is a beautiful poet.  The poem that I will feature tomorrow on this blog is the main reason that I decided to devote a week to Auden and his poetry.

W. H. Auden, (1907-1973)

Described by Edward Mendelson as “the most inclusive poet of the twentieth century, its most technically skilled, and its most truthful,” Auden is the first major poet to incorporate modern psychological insights and paradigms as a natural element of his work and thought. The foremost religious poet of his age, the most variously learned, and the one most preoccupied with existentialism, Auden is also an important love poet.

Although particularly concerned with the relationship of Eros and Agape and characteristically practicing a “poetry of reticence,” Auden celebrates erotic love as a significant element in his geography of the heart.

Born into an upper middle-class professional family in York in 1907 and educated at Christ Church College, Oxford, from which he received his B.A. in 1928, Wystan Hugh Auden was the third son of a physician and a nurse, from whom he imbibed scientific, religious, and musical interests and a love of the Norse sagas. Following his graduation, he spent a year in Berlin, where he enjoyed the city’s homosexual demimonde and absorbed German culture. He returned to teach in public schools in Scotland and England from 1930 to 1935.

In 1938, he married Erika Mann, daughter of the German novelist Thomas Mann, in order to enable her to obtain a British visa and escape Nazi Germany; the marriage was not consummated. In January 1939, disillusioned with the left-wing politics they had embraced, Auden and his friend and frequent collaborator, Christopher Isherwood, emigrated to the United States.

Settling in New York City, Auden soon fell in love with a precocious eighteen-year-old from Brooklyn, Chester Kallman, with whom he maintained a relationship for the rest of his life, sharing apartments in New York and, later, summer residences in first Ischia and then Austria. Auden died in Vienna on September 29, 1973.

Auden dominated the British literary scene of the 1930s, quickly emerging as the leading voice of his generation. With the publication of The Orators (1932) and the enlarged edition of Poems (1933), Auden became, by his mid-twenties, firmly established as an important literary presence, the leader of the “Auden Gang” that included Isherwood, Stephen Spender, C. Day Lewis, and Louis MacNeice.

Auden’s early poetry breathed an air of revolutionary freshness. In language at once exotic and earthy, alternately banal and elegant, colloquial yet faintly archaic, Auden’s verse diagnosed psychic disturbances with an extraordinary resonance. Although most of his early poems have their origins in his personal anxieties, especially those related to his homosexuality and his search for psychic healing, they seemed to voice the fears and uncertainties of his entire generation.

Auden may have initially regarded his gayness as a psychic wound, but he came to see it as a liberating force. In the prose poem “Letter to a Wound” (1932), he writes,

Thanks to you, I have come to see a profound significance in relations I never dreamt of considering before, an old lady’s affection for a small dog, the Waterhouses and their retriever, the curious bond between Offal and Snig, the partners in the hardware shop on the front. Even the close-ups in the films no longer disgust nor amuse me. On the contrary, they sometimes make me cry; knowing you has made me understand.

Auden’s acceptance of his gayness thus leads him to new insight into the universal impulse to love and enlarges his understanding of all kinds of relationships. At the same time, however, Auden is acutely aware of the limitations of eroticism.

His earliest love poems complain of his lack of sexual success, but his poems from the later 1930s such as “May with its light behaving” lament an emotional isolation that accompanies physical intimacy. In the poem beginning “Easily, my dear, you move,” erotic love and feverish political activity are both depicted as expressions of vanity and the desire for power. Auden finally reaches the conclusion that Eros and Agape are interdependent.

Auden’s recognition of the interdependence of Eros and Agape is at the heart of perhaps the greatest love poem of the century, the grave and tender “Lullaby” ([“Lay your sleeping head”] 1937), which moves so nimbly and with such grace among abstractions evoked so subtly that it may well be regarded as the premiere example of the poet’s intellectual lyricism. The luminous moment of fulfillment that the poem celebrates is placed in a context of mutability and decay that poignantly underlines the fragility of a love endangered from within by guilt, promiscuity, and betrayal, and from without by the “pedantic boring cry” of homophobic “fashionable madmen.”

Auden’s marriage to Kallman was not to prove entirely happy (primarily due to Kallman’s promiscuity), but it provided the poet with loving companionship and helped seal the permanence of his self-exile. Auden’s first flush of passion for Kallman immediately inspired several poems of fulfilled erotic love, including “The Prophets,” “Like a Vocation,” “The Riddle,” “Law Like Love,” and “Heavy Date,” in which he tells his lover, “I have / Found myself in you.”

Kallman introduced Auden to opera, an interest that would shape the curve of his career. The partners collaborated on several original libretti, including one for Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress (1951), and on translating others.

Auden movingly celebrates his relationship with Kallman in “The Common Life” (1965), which tellingly declares that “every home should be a fortress.” Also among Auden’s late poems is “Glad,” a light but deeply felt account of his relationship with a male hustler, “for a decade now / My bed-visitor, / An unexpected blessing / In a lucky life.”

In “Since,” a poem probably inspired by his relationship with Kallman, Auden suddenly remembers an August noon thirty years ago and “You as then you were.” He juxtaposes the memory of his youthful love-making with an account of the failures of Eros and Agape in the world since then and finds sustenance in the memory: “round your image / there is no fog, and the Earth / can still astonish.”

In a remarkable conclusion that bravely faces the issue of aging with unsentimental wit, he concludes, “I at least can learn / to live with obesity / and a little fame.” A stunning achievement, “Since” validates the vision of Eros as a life-sustaining experience that can compensate at least in part even for the inevitable failures of Agape.

Auden’s homosexuality is also expressed throughout his canon in the camp wit that discerns defensive fun in serious fear, as in the limerick “The Aesthetic Point of View” (1960). Moreover, the humorous self-revelations of the “Shorts” (1960), the “Marginalia” (1969), or “Profile” (1969), as well as the bawdy verse–such as “A Day for a Lay”–circulated among friends, helped establish for Auden a persona that has been particularly influential on younger gay poets, such as James Merrill, Richard Howard, and Howard Moss. In Merrill’s series of adventures with the Ouija board, for example, Auden is a ghostly presence, the embodiment of a homosexual artistic sensibility.

An essay by Claude J. Summers

Summers, Claude J., “Auden, W. H., ” glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture, 2002.  URL: http://www.glbtq.com/literature/auden_wh.html.


Bibliography

Callan, Edward. Auden: A Carnival of Intellect. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983.

Carpenter, Humphrey. W.H. Auden: A Biography. London: Allen & Unwin, 1981.

Farnin, Dorothy J. Auden in Love. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984.

Mendelson, Edward. Early Auden. New York: Viking, 1981.

Spender, Stephen, ed. W.H. Auden: A Tribute. New York: Macmillan, 1975.

Summers, Claude J. “American Auden.” Columbia History of American Poetry. Jay Parini, ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.

_____. “‘And the Earth Can Still Astonish’: W.H. Auden and the Landscape of Eros.” The Windless Orchard 32 (1978): 27-36.

Wright, George T. W.H. Auden. Rev. ed. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1981.

4 Comments | posted in Gay Icon, History, Poetry

February 28, 2011

Onanism by Mark Twain

By Joe
Did Mark Twain, nom de plume for Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), really say that 95% of men masturbate and the other 5% lie about it (or statistics to that effect)? In any event, at about 44 years of age, here’s what he said as speaker at a dinner held in 1879 at a Paris supper club. Fellow diners were, to say the least, surprised by what they heard. Enjoy!
Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism
by Mark Twain

[One evening in Paris in 1879, The Stomach Club, a society of American writers and artists, gathered to drink well, to eat a good dinner and hear an address by Mark Twain. He was among friends and, according to the custom of the club, he delivered a humorous talk on a subject hardly ever mentioned in public in that day and age. After the meeting, he preserved the manuscript among his papers. It was finally printed in a pamphlet limited to 50 copies 64 years later.]

My gifted predecessor has warned you against the “social evil–adultery.” In his able paper he exhausted that subject; he left absolutely nothing more to be said on it. But I will continue his good work in the cause of morality by cautioning you against that species of recreation called self-abuse to which I perceive you are much addicted. All great writers on health and morals, both ancient and modern, have struggled with this stately subject; this shows its dignity and importance. Some of these writers have taken one side, some the other.
Homer, in the second book of the Iliad says with fine enthusiasm, “Give me masturbation or give me death.” Caesar, in his Commentaries, says, “To the lonely it is company; to the forsaken it is a friend; to the aged and to the impotent it is a benefactor. They that are penniless are yet rich, in that they still have this majestic diversion.” In another place this experienced observer has said, “There are times when I prefer it to sodomy.”
Robinson Crusoe says, “I cannot describe what I owe to this gentle art.” Queen Elizabeth said, “It is the bulwark of virginity.” Cetewayo, the Zulu hero, remarked, “A jerk in the hand is worth two in the bush.” The immortal Franklin has said, “Masturbation is the best policy.”
Michelangelo and all of the other old masters–“old masters,” I will remark, is an abbreviation, a contraction–have used similar language. Michelangelo said to Pope Julius II, “Self-negation is noble, self-culture beneficent, self-possession is manly, but to the truly great and inspiring soul they are poor and tame compared with self-abuse.” Mr. Brown, here, in one of his latest and most graceful poems, refers to it in an eloquent line which is destined to live to the end of time–“None knows it but to love it; none name it but to praise.”
Such are the utterances of the most illustrious of the masters of this renowned science, and apologists for it. The name of those who decry it and oppose it is legion; they have made strong arguments and uttered bitter speeches against it–but there is not room to repeat them here in much detail. Brigham Young, an expert of incontestable authority, said, “As compared with the other thing, it is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” Solomon said, “There is nothing to recommend it but its cheapness.” Galen said, “It is shameful to degrade to such bestial uses that grand limb, that formidable member, which we votaries of Science dub the Major Maxillary*–when they dub it at all–which is seldom, It would be better to amputate the os frontis** than to put it to such use.”
The great statistician Smith, in his report to Parliament, says, “In my opinion, more children have been wasted in this way than any other.” It cannot be denied that the high antiquity of this art entitles it to our respect; but at the same time, I think its harmfulness demands our condemnation. Mr. Darwin was grieved to feel obliged to give up his theory that the monkey was the connecting link between man and the lower animals. I think he was too hasty. The monkey is the only animal, except man, that practices this science; hence, he is our brother; there is a bond of sympathy and relationship between us. Give this ingenuous animal an audience of the proper kind and he will straightway put aside his other affairs and take a whet; and you will see by his contortions and his ecstatic expression that he takes an intelligent and human interest in his performance.
The signs of excessive indulgence in this destructive pastime are easily detectable. They are these: a disposition to eat, to drink, to smoke, to meet together convivially, to laugh, to joke and tell indelicate stories–and mainly, a yearning to paint pictures. The results of the habit are: loss of memory, loss of virility, loss of cheerfulness and loss of progeny.
Of all the various kinds of sexual intercourse, this has the least to recommend it. As an amusement, it is too fleeting; as an occupation, it is too wearing; as a public exhibition, there is no money in it. It is unsuited to the drawing room, and in the most cultured society it has long been banished from the social board. It has at last, in our day of progress and improvement, been degraded to brotherhood with flatulence. Among the best bred, these two arts are now indulged in only private–though by consent of the whole company, when only males are present, it is still permissible, in good society, to remove the embargo on the fundamental sigh.
My illustrious predecessor has taught you that all forms of the “social evil” are bad. I would teach you that some of these forms are more to be avoided than others. So, in concluding, I say, “If you must gamble your lives sexually, don’t play a lone hand too much.” When you feel a revolutionary uprising in your system, get your Vendome Column down some other way–don’t jerk it down.***

Note: Formal title of his Presentation was “Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism.” Not that it would matter to Twain (who was well ahead of his time on masturbation), most biblical scholars today see Onan’s alleged “sin” as a reference to his disobedience of God’s alleged order to procreate. Instead, Onan engaged in coitus interruptus—withdrawing his penis before ejaculating. Masturbation had nothing to do with it.
* in the area of the sinuses (as best I can tell)
** frontal bone—forehead
***Twain’s satiric reference is to a penis-like column (pictured above), originally put in place by Napoleon, which rises majestically in Paris like an obelisk or erect phallus in the Place Vendôme. Napoleon himself stands on the head of this vertical shaft in full glory.
 
From: http://artofmalemasturbation.tumblr.com/MarkTwain.


For a more explicit view of masturbation, please visit my other blog.

5 Comments | posted in Art, History, Nudity

February 14, 2011

Happy Valentine’s Day

By Joe

tumblr_ley3ymUlcs1qg66b4o1_400The history of Valentine’s Day — and its patron saint — is shrouded in mystery. But we do know that February has long been a month of romance. St. Valentine’s Day, as we know it today, contains vestiges of both Christian and ancient Roman tradition. So, who was Saint Valentine and how did he become associated with this ancient rite? Today, the Catholic Church recognizes at least three different saints named Valentine or Valentinus, all of whom were martyred.
One legend contends that Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men — his crop of potential soldiers. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Valentine’s actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death.


Other stories suggest that Valentine may have been killed for attempting to help Christians escape harsh Roman prisons where they were often beaten and tortured.
tumblr_lfzzqqIsTs1qbtfb6o1_500
According to one legend, Valentine actually sent the first “valentine” greeting himself. While in prison, it is believed that Valentine fell in love with a young girl — who may have been his jailor’s daughter — who visited him during his confinement. Before his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a letter, which he signed “From your Valentine,” an expression that is still in use today. Although the truth behind the Valentine legends is murky, the stories certainly emphasize his appeal as a sympathetic, heroic, and, most importantly, romantic figure. It’s no surprise that by the Middle Ages, Valentine was one of the most popular saints in England and France.


tumblr_lg5fplqKAd1qc75dro1_500While some believe that Valentine’s Day is celebrated in the middle of February to commemorate the anniversary of Valentine’s death or burial — which probably occurred around 270 A.D — others claim that the Christian church may have decided to celebrate Valentine’s feast day in the middle of February in an effort to “christianize” celebrations of the pagan Lupercalia festival. In ancient Rome, February was the official beginning of spring and was considered a time for purification. Houses were ritually cleansed by sweeping them out and then sprinkling salt and a type of wheat called spelt throughout their interiors. Lupercalia, which began at the ides of February, February 15, was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus.


To begin the festival, members of the Luperci, an order of Roman priests, would gather at the sacred cave where the infants Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were believed to have been cared for by a she-wolf or lupa. The priests would then sacrifice a goat, for fertility, and a dog, for purification.


1452The boys then sliced the goat’s hide into strips, dipped them in the sacrificial blood and took to the streets, gently slapping both women and fields of crops with the goathide strips. Far from being fearful, Roman women welcomed being touched with the hides because it was believed the strips would make them more fertile in the coming year. Later in the day, according to legend, all the young women in the city would place their names in a big urn. The city’s bachelors would then each choose a name out of the urn and become paired for the year with his chosen woman. These matches often ended in marriage. Pope Gelasius declared February 14 St. Valentine’s Day around 498 A.D. The Roman “lottery” system for romantic pairing was deemed un-Christian and outlawed. Later, during the Middle Ages, it was commonly believed in France and England that February 14 was the beginning of birds’ mating season, which added to the idea that the middle of February — Valentine’s Day — should be a day for romance. The oldest known valentine still in existence today was a poem written by Charles, Duke of Orleans to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London following his capture at the Battle of Agincourt. The greeting, which was written in 1415, is part of the manuscript collection of the British Library in London, England. Several years later, it is believed that King Henry V hired a writer named John Lydgate to compose a valentine note to Catherine of Valois.


ErosIn Great Britain, Valentine’s Day began to be popularly celebrated around the seventeenth century. By the middle of the eighteenth century, it was common for friends and lovers in all social classes to exchange small tokens of affection or handwritten notes. By the end of the century, printed cards began to replace written letters due to improvements in printing technology. Ready-made cards were an easy way for people to express their emotions in a time when direct expression of one’s feelings was discouraged. Cheaper postage rates also contributed to an increase in the popularity of sending Valentine’s Day greetings. Americans probably began exchanging hand-made valentines in the early 1700s. In the 1840s, Esther A. Howland began to sell the first mass-produced valentines in America.


According to the Greeting Card Association, an estimated one billion valentine cards are sent each year, making Valentine’s Day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year. (An estimated 2.6 billion cards are sent for Christmas.)


5bd2b7e1962d1c50eb7d67e66f9e_grandeApproximately 85 percent of all valentines are purchased by women. In addition to the United States, Valentine’s Day is celebrated in Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, France, and Australia.
Valentine greetings were popular as far back as the Middle Ages (written Valentine’s didn’t begin to appear until after 1400), and the oldest known Valentine card is on display at the British Museum. The first commercial Valentine’s Day greeting cards produced in the U.S. were created in the 1840s by Esther A. Howland. Howland, known as the Mother of the Valentine, made elaborate creations with real lace, ribbons and colorful pictures known as “scrap.”
From: http://www.history.com/topics/valentines-day.

ErosMeteyard

XOXO,
JoeBlow

7 Comments | posted in Art, History, Nudity

February 14, 2011

A Little Help for Valentine’s Day

By Joe

Spell for a Man to Obtain a Male Lover
Egypt, perhaps 6th century
OverOurHead.netOne of the great problems in studying the history of sexuality in the past, as with other areas of human personal life, is that the vast majority of sources come from sources left by social elites. In many areas and periods only the elites could write, and even where a wider section of the population could write (as, probably, in classical Greece), the texts that have been preserved, usually by monastic copying and in monastic libraries for Greek texts, were works produced by the elites.

In Christian Egypt (or “Coptic Egypt”) there seems to have been fairly widespread literacy – in both Greek and Coptic languages – and much popular material has survived on papyrus. The particular climate of Egypt has alone made this possible. We are in a position then to explore aspects of Christian society in Egypt which remain obscure elsewhere. One set of sources which has been made available to English readers are the various collection of ritual “spells”. These texts, dating from the first to the eleventh century, show a religious life quite different from that of the elite theologians who were writing at the same time.

One of the spells translated in this volume is for a man to obtain a male lover: evidence of a homosexual sub-culture, neither philosophic nor literary which we may believe existed at other times and places in the ancient world, but which has left little evidence.

xjul1Spell 84: For a Man to Obtain a Male Lover
This text contains a same-sex love spell commissioned by one Papalo to “bind” another man, Phello (this name literally means “the old man” or “the monk”), by means of a variety of powerful utterances (especially ROUS). Besides extending the scope of erotic binding spells in late antiquity, this spell also employs formulae common to several Coptic texts of ritual power. The folds in the text and the description of the text’s depositing (lines 6-7) imply that this spell was intended to be placed near the beloved man.
TEXT
+CELTATALBABAL [.]KARASHNEIFE[.]NNAS’KNEKIE, by the power of Yao Sabaoth, ROUS ROUS ROUS ROUS ROUS ROUS ROUS ROUS
(ring signs)

+++I adjure you by your powers and your amulets and
places where you dwell and your names, that just as I take you
a put you at the door and the pathway of Phello, son of Maure,
(so alos) you must take his heart and his mind; you must dominate
his entire body.

gayegypt_1942_34252557When he (tries to) stand, you must not allow him to stand
When he (tries to) sit, you must not allow him to sit
When he lies down to sleep, you must not allow him to sleep.

He must seek me from town to town, from city to city,
from field to filed, from region to region,
until he comes to me and subjects himself under my feet-
me, Papapolo son of Noe-
while his hand is full of all goodness,
until I satisfy with him the desire of my heart
and the demand of my soul,
with pleasant desire and love unending,
right now, right now, at once! Do my work

Notes:
The reference to “his hand full of all goodness” may be connected with the Hebrew use of “hand” for “penis”. (Give a new meaning to the Spanish phrase mano-a-mano [hand to hand], doesn’t it?).

Ancient spells are not one of my specialties, but I found this very intriguing for two reasons. First, this is a Christian spell, and second, because I wonder if it works. If anyone tries this spell, and it works, then let me know, LOL.


And now for a little humor:

IIntruder² #9 – Ancient Egyptian Cock

http://www.IIntruder.TK
One of them has been cursed by the Ancient Egyptian God Set, and the other finds it quite amusing…

Leave a comment | posted in Funny, History, Nudity, Video

February 10, 2011

Gian Gastone de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany

By Joe
Last of the Medici – Brian Sewell

The House of Medici or de’ Medici was a political dynasty, banking family and later royal house that first began to gather prominence under Cosimo de’ Medici in the Republic of Florence during the late 14th century. 6a00d8341cc27e53ef01053617c20d970b-350wiThe family originated in the Mugello region of the Tuscan countryside, gradually rising until they were able to found the Medici Bank. The bank was the largest in Europe during the 15th century, seeing the Medici gain political power in Florence— though officially they remained simply citizens, rather than monarchs. The Medici produced four Popes of the Catholic Church and in 1531 the family became hereditary Dukes of Florence. In 1569, the duchy was elevated to a grand duchy after territorial expansion. They ruled the Grand Duchy of Tuscany from its inception until 1737, with the death of Gian Gastone de’ Medici. The grand duchy witnessed degrees of economic growth under the earlier grand dukes, but by the time of Cosimo III de’ Medici, Tuscany was fiscally bankrupt.

Their wealth and influence initially derived from the textile trade guided by the guild of the Arte della Lana. Like other signore families they dominated their city’s government. They were able to bring Florence under their family’s power, allowing for an environment where art and humanism could flourish. They fostered and inspired the birth of the Italian Renaissance along with other families of Italy, such as the Visconti and Sforza of Milan, the Este of Ferrara, and the Gonzaga of Mantua.

439px-Retrato_oficial_de_Gian_Gastone_Medici,_por_Ferdinand_RichterGian Gastone de’ Medici (Giovanni Battista Gastone; 24 May 1671 – 9 July 1737) was the seventh and last Medicean Grand Duke of Tuscany. He was the second son of Cosimo III de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Marguerite Louise d’Orléans, Princess of France. His sister, Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici, the Electress Palatine, married him to Anna Maria Franziska of Saxe-Lauenburg, a wealthy widow, in 1697. Unfortunately, Gian Gastone despised his new wife, and she, him. The union produced no offspring. As Grand Prince Ferdinando, Gian Gastone’s elder brother, predeceased Cosimo III, Gian Gastone succeeded his father as Grand Duke in 1723.

His reign was marked by the reversal of his predecessor’s ultra-reactionary policy; he abolished taxes for poorer people, repealed the anti-Semitic penal laws and discontinued public executions. The Medici were wanting in male heirs; his father, Cosimo III, wanted the Electress Palatine to succeed Gian Gastone. However, Spain, Great Britain, Austria and the Dutch Republic disregarded Cosimo’s plan and appointed Don Carlos of Spain—whose mother,Elisabeth Farnese, was a great-granddaughter of Margherita de’ Medici—Gian Gastone’s heir.  Don Carlos later transferred his claim to Francis III of Lorraine pursuant to a preliminary peace that was finalized in 1738. Francis duly succeeded at Gian Gastone’s demise, on 9 July 1737, ending almost 300 years of Medici rule over Florence. For the latter part of his reign, Gian Gastone chose to remain confined in his bed, tended by his entourage, the Ruspanti. (Italian for free-range, as in chicken or poultry, even back then they had the concept for twinks, young good looking men, or fresh chicken).

2 Comments | posted in Art, History, Video

February 4, 2011

The Year of the Rabbit

By Joe

yearrabbit

The Chinese New Year, or Spring Festival as it’s been called since the 20th century, remains the most important social and economic holiday in China. It was celebrated yesterday, February 3, 2011.  Originally tied to the lunar-solar Chinese calendar, the holiday was a time to honor household and heavenly deities as well as ancestors. It was also a time to bring family together for feasting. With the popular adoption in China of the Western calendar in 1912, the Chinese joined in celebrating January 1 as New Year’s Day. China, however, continues to celebrate the traditional Chinese New Year, although in a shorter version with a new name–the Spring Festival. Significantly, younger generations of Chinese now observe the holiday in a very different manner from their ancestors. For some young people, the holiday has evolved from an opportunity to renew family ties to a chance for relaxation from work.

From Huffington Post:

Queering the Lunar New Year: We Are (All) Family

by Ben de Guzman (Co-Director for Programs, National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance)

“When we come out, it’s not just to parents and siblings…. sometimes it’s to an entire clan. “

Lunar New Year: a time for renewal, a time to promote prosperity and good luck, a time to be with family. Families from places like China, Korea and Vietnam bring a variety of traditions to bear in marking the New Year on February 3rd. Cities with large Asian American populations will welcome the Year of the Rabbit with festive parades and celebrations. We expect that President Obama will make an official statement celebrating Lunar New Year on behalf of the entire American family.

Asian Americans/ South Asians/ Southeast Asians/ Pacific Islanders (AAPI) who are lesbian/ gay/ bisexual/ transgender (LGBT) often think about Lunar New Year in a unique way. On one hand, the family and cultural obligations that come with this time of year remind us that we often create and define family in very different ways than other members of LGBT communities — our non-AAPI counterparts. The mutual interdependence we create among our families transcends small nuclear units, and requires us to think about our lives as openly LGBT people against a large backdrop. When we come out, it’s not just to parents and siblings, but sometimes it’s to an entire clan.

The ways in which we are out and assert our visibility in our families and communities must be unique as well. The mantra of “We’re here! We’re Queer! Get Used to it!” may suit us at the Gay Pride Parade and can even be part of our demand for the full inclusion of our AAPI communities within the LGBTQ rubric. But as we engage our own racial and ethnic communities, often including our own biological families — our parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, even great grandparents — we have had to find different mantras and strategies that better fit into these distinct cultural contexts.

Lunar New Year parades and cultural festivals have become a flash point for activists and organizations to claim our space within our AAPI communities. Last year, a Vietnamese LGBT contingent marched with its allies in Westminster, California’s Tet Parade to observe Lunar New Year despite the vocal opposition of religious conservatives and elected officials. In Manhattan’s famous Chinatown, the “Lunar New Year for All” coalition convened what’s considered to be the first ever-queer contingent for the historic Lunar New Year Parade there.

Our Asian American/ Pacific Islander LGBT communities work hard to figure out the best ways to come out and create visibility in all our communities. The message of “Lunar New Year for All” is not only a stirring call for unity and an end to tolerance; it unapologetically claims our rightful space in our families and our communities:

Homophobia and discrimination continue to divide Asian American families and communities. Lunar New Year is a time when families come together to strengthen ties to our communities. This year, we are joining the Lunar New Year Parade to challenge homophobia and to honor all the different kinds of families in our community.

This week then, Asian American /Pacific Islander LGBT people will observe Lunar New Year in our families and our communities in ways large and small. In cities like New York, San Francisco, and Westminster, CA, queer contingents will march with pride to recognize Lunar New Year. In Los Angeles, the LGBTQ contingent is expected to be the largest contingent of any in the entire parade. At the same time, we will make progress with our families on a face-to-face level. We may do so by giving a traditional red envelope to a loved one as part of a committed same-sex relationship, or by creating good karma for the New Year by being more open in our families. Visibility may take different forms, but it “looks” the same regardless.

As we think about our life and times at this moment of challenge and adversity, the Lunar New Year hopefully signals a fork in the road for us to take and change our circumstances for the better. We take this moment to call for our families, our communities and our lawmakers to embrace each other and us despite our differences, and sometimes, because of them.

 

A special Happy Chinese New Year to Fan of Casey.  May your New Year and the New Year of all my Asian readers be one of health, prosperity, fortune, vigor, ardency, and potency (in other words, do it like rabbits, LOL).

2 Comments | posted in History

January 18, 2011

Winter Stores by Charlotte Brontë

By Joe
  • Charlotte_Bronte_coloured_drawingBorn: 21 April 1816
  • Birthplace: Thornton, Yorkshire, England
  • Died: 31 March 1855 (complications from pregnancy)

Charlotte is the author of Jane Eyre and a member of the remarkable Brontë family. The sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne first published their poetry under pseudonyms: Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell was released in 1846, selling only a few copies. Charlotte’s novel Jane Eyre was published in 1847, shortly after Emily’s Wuthering Heights; the sisters had almost simultaneously written what later became known as two of the great novels of English literature. Jane Eyre was an immediate success and Charlotte went on to publish Shirley (1848) and Villette (1853). She outlived her sisters but still was only 38 when she died in pregnancy.

 

Winter Stores by Charlotte Brontë

(published under her nom de plume, Currer Bell, 1846)

Caio-Cesar01We take from life one little share,
And say that this shall be
A space, redeemed from toil and care,
From tears and sadness free.

And, haply, Death unstrings his bow,
And Sorrow stands apart,
And, for a little while, we know
The sunshine of the heart.

Existence seems a summer eve,
Warm, soft, and full of peace,
Our free, unfettered feelings give
The soul its full release.

A moment, then, it takes the power
To call up thoughts that throw
Around that charmed and hallowed hour,
This life’s divinest glow.

But Time, though viewlessly it flies,
And slowly, will not stay;
Alike, through clear and clouded skies,
It cleaves its silent way.

Alike the bitter cup of grief,
Alike the draught of bliss,
Its progress leaves but moment brief
For baffled lips to kiss

tumblr_leqh30UsrN1qb3i8oo1_500The sparkling draught is dried away,
The hour of rest is gone,
And urgent voices, round us, say,
“’Ho, lingerer, hasten on!”

And has the soul, then, only gained,
From this brief time of ease,
A moment’s rest, when overstrained,
One hurried glimpse of peace?

No; while the sun shone kindly o’er us,
And flowers bloomed round our feet,—
While many a bud of joy before us
Unclosed its petals sweet,—

An unseen work within was plying;
Like honey-seeking bee,
From flower to flower, unwearied, flying,
Laboured one faculty,—

Dec20 (20)Thoughtful for Winter’s future sorrow,
Its gloom and scarcity;
Prescient to-day, of want to-morrow,
Toiled quiet Memory.

’Tis she that from each transient pleasure
Extracts a lasting good;
’Tis she that finds, in summer, treasure
To serve for winter’s food.

And when Youth’s summer day is vanished,
And Age brings Winter’s stress,
Her stores, with hoarded sweets replenished,
Life’s evening hours will bless.

2 Comments | posted in History, Nudity, Poetry

January 10, 2011

My Philosophy of History

By Joe

image

There is an ancient Chinese proverb that says, “History is a maiden, and you can dress her however you wish.”  If you’ve read my blog much, you know that I love writing history posts.  I also like to dress up the maiden of history in a beautiful gown that will turn every eye in the room.  Too often historians and history teachers dress up the maiden of history in dowdy and frumpy clothing and it bores us all to tears.  The trick is to let the gossip flow and grab their attention when you walk in the room.

BOTD-073010-003For me, history is the gossip that survived.  The winners right history and only the most interesting get remembered.  There are many things in history that cannot be proved or disproved.  That is where gossip comes in.  The juiciest of the gossip is often what survives, whether true or not. A few examples, the history of the lives of the Roman emperors written by Suetonius is full of  historical gossip, especially of the sex lives of the emperors.  The wildest of the stories that Suetonius wrote are probably not true or at least greatly exaggerated, though the salaciousness is what keeps getting repeated. 

Another example is the death of Empress Catherine the Great of Russia.  The imagestory goes that Catherine had an insatiable appetite for huge cocks, including those of horses.   When she wanted a horse hung man, she went straight for a real stallion.  She had a contraption built that allowed the horse to be lowered over her so that she could, well…you get the picture.  The story of her death is that the harness broke and the horse crushed her.  imageMost Russian historians will tell you that there is no truth to this myth (In reality, Catherine died of a stroke.), but it has obviously survived for some reason.  At the heart of all myths lies some reality, no matter how small.  Most likely the story was first told as a way to discredit Catherine, much like Suetonius told the the stories of the emperors of Rome.  So, Catherine the Great and her horse most likely did not engage in sexual congress.  True, Catherine the Great liked to ride, and she loved cavalrymen (the younger the better). So there was no equine sex, although it must be said that the Empress did enjoy dressing like a man and riding a horse astride her thighs.

History can truly be enjoyable, so I hope that you will continue to enjoy my posts on history.  I hope that the maiden catches your eye and becomes memorable, because no one likes a frumpy maiden.

Study the past if you would define the future.—Confucius

8 Comments | posted in History, Theory

January 6, 2011

Yankee Doodle

By Joe

imageYankee Doodle went to town
A-riding on a pony
Stuck a feather in his hat
And called it macaroni.

 

Yankee Doodle, keep it up
Yankee Doodle dandy
Mind the music and the step
And with the girls be handy.

 

 

Have you ever really listened to or considered the words to “Yankee Doodle?”  imageFor many years, I never understood the why he called himself “macaroni.”  What is a macaroni?  He obviously wasn’t talking about the pasta.  I had always known that “Yankee Doodle” first started out as a song that was making fun of the the colonists as country bumpkins (an awkward and unsophisticated person), because that was how the English regarded most colonials at that time.  The term macaroni actually has more connotations than the song lets on.  Macaroni is a fancy and overdressed (“dandy”) style of Italian clothing widely imitated in England at the time.  Young Englishmen who went on the Grand Tour of Europe to finish their studies (I will do a further post on the Grand Tour soon), spent much of their time in Italy.  They began to adopt Continental, and especially Italian, manners, fashions, and attitudes.

 

Those young men who returned form Italy with Italian fashion and ways were often made fun of for being effeminate.  imageBeing called a macaroni was not the same as the later terms of fops or dandy, which did not always, though mostly, had negative connotations.  Fop became a pejorative term for a foolish man over-concerned with his appearance and clothes in 17th century England.   A dandy (also known as a beau or gallant) is a man who places particular importance upon physical appearance, refined language, and leisurely hobbies, pursued with the appearance of nonchalance in a cult of Self. Historically, especially in late 18th- and early 19th-century Britain, a dandy, who was self-made, often strove to imitate an aristocratic lifestyle despite coming from a middle-class background.  In present day, we often called these types of men metrosexuals.  A heterosexual man who takes on gay fashion and care in their appearance.

 

A macaroni in mid-18th century England, was a fashionable fellow who dressed and even spoke in an outlandishly affected and epicene manner. The term pejoratively referred to a man who “exceeded the ordinary bounds of fashion” in terms of clothes, fastidious eating and gambling. Like a practitioner of macaronic verse, which mixed together English and Latin to comic effect, he mixed Continental affectations with his English nature, laying himself open to satire:

 

There is indeed a kind of animal, neither male nor female, a thing of the neuter gender, lately [1770] started up among us. It is called a macaroni. It talks without meaning, it smiles without pleasantry, it eats without appetite, it rides without exercise, it wenches without passion.

 

Young men who had been to Italy on the Grand Tour imageadopted the Italian word maccherone – a boorish fool in Italian – and said that anything that was fashionable or à la mode was ‘very maccaroni’. Horace Walpole wrote to a friend in 1764 of “the Macaroni Club, which is composed of all the traveled young men who wear long curls and spying-glasses.” The “club” was not a formal one: the expression was particularly used to characterize fops who dressed in high fashion with tall, powdered wigs with a chapeau bras on top that could only be removed on the point of a sword. The macaronis were precursor to the dandies, who far from their present connotation of effeminacy came as a more masculine reaction to the excesses of the macaroni.

 

In 1773, James Boswell was on tour in Scotland with the stout and serious-minded essayist and lexicographer Dr. Samuel Johnson, the least dandified of Londoners. Johnson was awkward in the saddle, and Boswell ribbed him: “You are a delicate Londoner; you are a maccaroni; you can’t ride.”

 

antiquity10More often the not, the term macaroni, fop, or dandy was considered synonymous with homosexual (though homosexual is not a term that comes into existence until the late 1800s and early 1900s).  Needless to say, it was certainly not compliment to say that he “Stuck a feather in his hat; And called it macaroni.”  So the next time you hear the song “Yankee Doodle”  I hope that you will have a different understanding of the song.

10 Comments | posted in Art, History