Читать книгу Erotic Fantasy - Hans-Jürgen Döpp - Страница 6

The aim of Taoist art and culture was to reach that state of harmony which would lead Man, perennially confronted by a chaotic universe, towards a new serenity. In this spiritual context, love represented for the Chinese a force which they believed to unite sky and earth in balance and to maintain the reproductive cycle of nature. Eroticism thus became an art of living and formed an integral part of religion (to the extent that such western notions can be applied to philosophical thought of this kind).

Taoist religion assumes that pleasure and love are pure. “In order to gain some understanding of Chinese eroticism,” writes Etiemble, a great connaisseur of Chinese art, “we need to distance ourselves from the notion of sin and the duality between the corrupt body and the holy spirit,” an ideology which lies at the very base of Christianity. Erotic Chinese art reflects the extent to which we are “morally corrupt” and “full of prejudices.”

The Yin-Yang pairing introduces us directly into the world of Chinese eroticism: “The path of Yin and Yang” signifies nothing less than the sexual act itself. One of the best-known sayings of ancient Chinese philosophy, “Yi yin yi yang cheh we tao” (“On the one side yin, on the other yang, this is the essence of Tao”) indicates the fact that sex between a man and a woman expresses the same harmony as the changes between day and night, or summer and winter. Sex symbolises the order of the world, the moral order, while our culture stigmatises it as evil.

In this sense, master Tung-huan wrote in his Art of Love: “Man is the most sublime creature under the skies. Nothing which he enjoys can be compared to the act of sexual union. Formulated according to the harmony between the sky and the earth, it rules Yin and dominates Yang. Those who understand the sense of these words can preserve their essence and prolong their life. Those who do not grasp their true significance are heading towards their doom.”

The split in the Universe between Yin and Yang is all the more important because these two inseparable principles mutually influence each other. We know of a great many Chinese manuals whose purpose was to provide an education in the art of love-making for young couples; this education would cover desire, morality, and religion. In these texts, the sexual act is always referred to metaphorically with terms such as “the war of flowers,” “lighting the great candle” or “games of cloud and rain.” The texts are also full of images referring to various sexual positions:

10. Wedding book illustrating love positions, 19th century. Japan.

11. Wedding book illustrating love positions, 19th century. Japan.

In Chinese aesthetics, nothing is ever named directly and obviously. Instead, things are referred to obliquely; any transgression of this tradition is considered vulgar. Even the European notion of “eroticism” is much too direct. They would prefer to substitute the term “the idea of spring.” In the verses of a popular Chinese song, physical love is praised without pretence but also without vulgarity:

In the erotic images of paintings on silk or porcelain, wood engravings or illustrations, sexuality is never shown in its crude state or in a pornographic manner, but always in a context of beauty and harmony. Symbolic meaningful details enrich these illustrations, evoking the tenderness which occupies a favoured place in Chinese iconography. Nevertheless, these details are difficult for Europeans to decipher: the cold and impassive faces of the lovers are a long way from our idea of a blaze of passion.

Thus it is that one of the most fertile and ancient cultures in the world invites us, through its religious practices, to make love. Taoist manuals advocate the technique of holding back from ejaculation, a truly prodigious invention which allows the man to satisfy the woman. By doing this, a subtle alchemy is achieved: the man receives Yin from the woman, who obtains from him the pure essence of Yang. For this reason, coitus reservatus is considered in Taoism and in Tantrism to be the most subtle form of sexual union, because it allows the crossing of the divide between masculine and feminine energy. The creation of a new life is not the principal aim of the sexual act. Rather the act has more to do with identification with cosmic forces than with the forces of life.

The “theory of juices” holds that sperm passes through the spinal column directly to the brain. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, European medicine laboured under the same misapprehension. How frightening it must have been to be a young boy masturbating and believing that doing so would lead to a degeneration of the spinal chord and a drying-out of the brain!

Whilst ejaculation provides a mere instant of pleasure which is very swiftly lost and finishes in the relaxation of the entire body, a buzzing in the ears, tiredness of the eyes and a dry throat, coitus reservatus or coitus interruptus provokes a growth in vitality and an improvement in all the senses. Among the best-known manuals are those of Sou Nu King and Sou Nu Fang, which among other things recount how the legendary Yellow Emperor, Huang-ti (2697–2599 B. C., according to traditional historical reckoning) used experienced women to teach him about the art of love-making. In The Treaties of the Bedroom there is a conversation between the Emperor and one of his mistresses, a simple young girl:

‘The Yellow Emperor asks the simple young girl: My spirit is listless and lacking in substance; I live constantly in fear and my heart is full of sadness. What can I do to cure myself? The young girl replies quite simply: “All human weaknesses come from an unhappy union of bodies during the sexual act. As water wins in the fight against fire, so woman gains in the fight against man. Those who are skilled in pleasure are like good cooks who know which five spices to add to a soup.” Those who understand the art of Yin and Yang can unite the five modes of pleasure; those who do not know this die before reaching the age of maturity and without having had the slightest pleasure from sex. Should one not forestall this danger?’

12. Wedding book illustrating love positions, 19th century. Japan.

13. Wedding book illustrating love positions, 19th century. Japan.

14. Wedding book illustrating love positions, 19th century. Japan.

15. Wedding book illustrating love positions, 19th century. Japan.

And in another lesson in the same work: Huang-ti asked: “What does one gain from practising sex according to the path of Yin and Yang?”

“For man, sex makes his energies surge – for woman, it serves as protection against sickness. Those who do not know the right path think that the sexual act can be harmful to health. In truth, the sexual act has only one purpose: physical pleasure and joy, but also peace in the heart and strength of the will. The person feels neither sated nor hungry, he is neither hot nor cold; the body is satisfied and the spirit likewise. Energy ebbs and flows majestically, and no desire troubles this harmony. This is the result of a well-accomplished union. If one follows this rule, women will achieve full pleasure and men will always remain healthy.” Thus answered Sunu.

All of these manuals advocate making love as often as possible and even at an advanced age: “Whatever his age, man would not be happy living without a woman. If he is without a woman, his concentration suffers because of it. If his concentration suffers, the forces of his mind grow weaker; if the forces of his mind weaken, the span of his life grows shorter…”

The bibliography of works of the Han era, which directly pre-dated the birth of Christ, includes eight books that are entirely devoted to the art of love-making. During that era the following maxim was adopted: “The art of having sexual relations with a woman consists of remaining master of oneself and preventing ejaculation in order to allow the sperm to return to the brain.” From that moment on, every educated Chinese man felt obliged to be familiar with the technique of reinforcing masculine power named “drinking at the jade fountain”: the man had to remain inside the woman while she had her orgasm and only leave her when it was over, without releasing any sperm in the process. The treatises teach that it was even possible to make love several times in one night with different women if one followed this technique. Taoist wisdom emphasises the positive aspects of this for the man’s health:

‘Those who are capable of making love several times a day without spilling their sperm will be cured of all illnesses and will reach a ripe old age. If sexual relations are not limited to one woman, the success of this method will only be enhanced. The best option is to make love with ten women or more during the course of one night.’

16. Wedding book illustrating love positions, 19th century. Japan.

Sex, medicine and religion are thus closely linked in Taoism because of the large number of energy channels that flow through the body. There is a link between the exterior world in which man lives and the individual interior of every human being. Sexuality is thus called upon to play a central role in everyone’s life.

This explains why men thought of satisfying several women sexually as a duty. And the aim was to do it without exhausting all their energy. So, men were supposed to learn different erotic techniques for giving several women multiple orgasms without, however, experiencing their own. Taoist education, from the simplest effort right up to the most elevated spiritual heights, was founded on the control of sexual energies. Tantrism, influenced by Buddhism, was in its teachings and intentions largely similar to Taoism.

The greatest development in erotic art was principally concentrated in the rich commercial cities in the south of China, during the early part of the period that is considered the beginning of the modern era in Asia. From the tenth century onwards, cities as famous as Suzhou, Hanzhou or Quanzhou were among the most flourishing in the entire world. Businessmen frequented luxurious brothels, wine houses and other places of pleasure such as tea houses or the baths. They formed a sub-culture which today is largely documented by writings and novels from that period. The culture of courtesans was a part of this.

The golden age of Chinese erotic art dates from the end of the Ming period (1368–1644), which was characterised by relatively great liberty and the flourishing of all kinds of arts and science. The prudery of Confucianism was the cause of the destruction of a great number of erotic paintings which illustrated the ancient Taoist manuals. Confucianism denied eroticism, and advocated the separation of the sexes as well as the subordination of personal passions to the laws of family and the state.

17. Images of Spring, coloured shunga, 18th century. Silk on card.

Later on, Christianity played a negative role in favouring these iconoclastic practices. What had survived all of these eras was finally destroyed during the Maoist cultural revolution. These philosophical detours can no doubt go some way to explain the delicacy of Chinese eroticism. Like a mantra, these pieces of information are repeated again and again in books about China. And yet Asian eroticism still remains very enigmatic to western understanding.

As Europeans, we cannot help but wonder how sexual ecstasy can be combined with a technique that is so precisely worked out and that is controlled by such a myriad of instructions and recommendations. Does it not lead to a loss of spontaneity in one’s feelings and passions? Is this whole culture of delicacy, of the small and the pure, perhaps obeying a process of distancing things from reality and idealisation? Is what is really happening actually a change in the opposite direction? Does this oh-so-subtle control of natural impulses perhaps indicate repressed anguish hidden by the official and ideological explanation of love?

For a man to avoid having an orgasm is clearly in this day and age a very reasonable method of birth control, but when this practice is advocated because of the loss of vital energies, one suspects quite another motivation. Is there not here a fear of orgasm, in the form of a fear of the oneiric dilution of one’s self?

Orgasm, indeed, means “little death”, because during an orgasm the barriers of the individual are broken down for a moment. To flee death… would that not mean, in this male-centred sexuality, fleeing union with woman? Does the fear of death really mean a fear of women’s power? Chastity can only be dangerous, but seeing the loss of sperm as the loss of the very substance of life is no less so.

If a young man neglects his sexual life, he will be haunted by phantoms which will rear up in his dreams in the form of seductive young women. If he gives in to them, they will suck out his vital energy. It is exactly on this point that Chinese and European traditions meet. In this dream, it is the unconscious which is reclaiming its rights. Thus, regular sexual relations are recommended.

In this sense, Chinese sexuality seems to be held hostage between two distinct fears: on the one side, there is the fear of losing one’s vital energy because of sexual abstention, and on the other is the fear of losing one’s vital energy by ejaculating.

Sharing, as we all, do the human condition, that is, having all been born of a mother and a father who, in one way or another, have been able to come to terms with the Oedipus complex, sexuality can only consist, even in China, of a mixture of pleasure and pain. It is exactly these elements that one must seek behind these endless affirmations of eternal harmony.

What, for example, is the significance of that fact that, in hundreds and hundreds of depictions of the sexual act claiming to offer a complete guide to all conceivable sexual positions, I have only found two or three images of cunnilingus? Was this position forbidden? In 1,000 erotic images, only three represent this theme. Isn’t that strange?

18. Wedding book illustrating love positions, 19th century. Japan.

Likewise, another theme can give us an insight into repressed fears: In all the images that we have seen, women wear their shoes, even if they are naked. Unshod feet are never shown. For the Chinese, these feet, enclosed in their embroidered shoes, represented the most sublime erotic quality, and small feet exerted a very specific charm over men which we find difficult to understand today. During the Ming period, the custom of foot-binding developed rapidly. Concubines, courtesans, and also simple, mainly peasant women, had their feet broken in childhood and then had them bound for the rest of their lives. Any refusal of this custom was considered shameful. When in 1644 an attempt was made to abolish the custom, the women of Manchuria practically revolted. Indeed, this sign of nobility was held particularly dear among the poorest elements of the population. The bound foot represented at the same time the most powerful taboo: if a woman allowed her foot to be touched without resisting too strongly, one could hope for anything from her.

This custom was finally abolished by Mao Tse-Tung in 1949. Some authors have posited the theory that this ‘walk of the golden lotuses’ tightened the vaginal muscles, but there is no medical proof to sustain the idea.

Etiemble suggests that the bound feet of Chinese women “has nothing to do with what was, and still is, the essence of Chinese eroticism: the theory of Yin and Yang, the coitus reservatus, the respect for the partner’s orgasm and the naturalness of feelings.” But perhaps we are seeking to separate things that are in fact connected. If one thinks about it – a clubfoot acquired through appalling pain, flattened ankles which sink into stockings filled with painful ulcers: this has nothing to do with Chinese eroticism. Is it not a symbolic castration of woman? A castration which found redress only in the woman’s toe, the phallic significance of which was swiftly identified?

And what about the treatment of the female body during the nineteenth century? Does trussing women up in wired corsets not have some connection with European eroticism? The female body, sadistically laced up and suffocated by handcuffs and belts: is that not a fundamental indication of man’s primal fear of woman?

It is clear that there persists a kind of ideology which glamourises Chinese sexuality but which is, however, nothing more than a misplaced sense of conscience. As Bougainville wrote in 1771, in his Voyage Around the World, as well as in other exotic accounts of the eighteenth century, people often remark that Chinese sexuality criticises our “fallen and decadent state” while hiding their own sexual conservatism and their outmoded morality.

Perhaps I, too, am nothing more than a desperately decadent European who will never be able to find the path to the noble art that is love.

19. Wedding book illustrating love positions, 19th century. Japan.

20. Images of Spring, coloured shunga, 18th century. Silk on card.

21. Images of Spring, coloured shunga, 18th century. Silk on card.