October 09, 2008
Great Moments in Literary Sex (Part I)
There is something about the creativity of authors that extends far beyond the writing desk and into their lives. Especially when it comes to sex:
* Jonathan Swift had two women "Stella" and "Vanessa" in love with him. He courted them, but withheld himself physically from them. Stella finally got him to marry her, but he refused to live with her or consummate the marriage. He even demanded that she invite other guests to be present when he visited her.
* Petrarch: Despite his love from afar for his pure Laura, he had two illegitimate children by his mistress, while Laura had 11 children, all by her husband. For 47 years, Petrarch wrote numerous sonnets to his Laura, which spurred this response from Bryon, in his "Don Juan": "Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch's wife,/He would have written sonnets all his life?"
* Goethe had looked up one day in his home and saw a vision. Bettina Brentano, who had discoverd love letters from him to her mother, had decided upon a novel method to seduce the great German poet. She dressed in some of her mother's finery, showed up at his home unannounced, posed in the doorway in a pose such as she had seen in pictures of her mother. He was stunned, but recovered enough to embrace her and helped to unbutton her dress.
* Honore de Balzac disappointed his numerous lovers because he believed that his semen was behind his success as an author. One night at dinner, he ruefully told his friends, "Today, I lost a book."
* Alexandre Dumas was very firm on the difference between himself and his son: "If you locked me in my bedroom with five women, pens, paper, ink and a play to be written, by the end of an hour I'd have written the play and had the five women."
One time, the married Dumas caught his wife in bed with her lover. The frightened man shivvered, but the practical Dumas pointed out that the night was cold, so why not share the bed? In the morning, Dumas sent the man away and used the occasion to divorce his wife.
Born: Edward Bok, editor, Den Helder, Netherlands, 1863; Ma io de Andrade, author, São Paulo, Brazil, 1893; Bruce Catton, historian, Petoskey, Mich., 1899; Léopold Senghor, poet, statesman, Joal, French West Africa, (now Senegal), 1906; Jill Ker Conway, novelist, college president, Hillston, New South Wales, Australia, 1934.
Died: Claire Booth Luce, playwright, politician, wit, Washington, D.C., 1987; Walter Kerr, theater critic, Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., 1996; Anna Freud, psychoanalysist, London, 1982; Joao Cabral de Melo Neto, poet, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1999; Amanda Cross (ps. Carolyn Heilbrun), mystery author, literary critic, professor, New York City, 2003.
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