D
DesEsseintes
Guest
I have long thought that some of the most deliciously sensual writing out there is not directly concerned with sex at all. I wonder if you might join me in leaving here your own examples of writing which touches the soul and the flesh whilst scarcely touching on sex at all.
To begin with:
“His wedding gift, clasped round my throat. A choker of rubies, two inches wide, like an extraordinarily precious slit throat.”
Angela Carter: from The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories.
"The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne,
Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were lovesick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar’d all description: she did lie
In her pavilion, cloth-of-gold of tissue,
O’erpicturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature: on each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-colour’d fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did."
Enobarbus, from Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra.
"the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes"
Part of Molly Bloom's soliloquy, from the end of Ulysses, by James Joyce.
All these have nothing to do with sex per se, though they may touch on it, but each sends that old familiar, animal shiver down my spine. There must be so many other examples. Your thoughts?
To begin with:
“His wedding gift, clasped round my throat. A choker of rubies, two inches wide, like an extraordinarily precious slit throat.”
Angela Carter: from The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories.
"The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne,
Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were lovesick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar’d all description: she did lie
In her pavilion, cloth-of-gold of tissue,
O’erpicturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature: on each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-colour’d fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did."
Enobarbus, from Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra.
"the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes"
Part of Molly Bloom's soliloquy, from the end of Ulysses, by James Joyce.
All these have nothing to do with sex per se, though they may touch on it, but each sends that old familiar, animal shiver down my spine. There must be so many other examples. Your thoughts?
