The depiction of the concubine Phyllis riding the philosopher Aristotle was a popular subject for artists of the Gothic period and early Renaissance. Popular because the patrons of those artists considered the scene to be emblematic of the relationship of the sexes and of the mind and body. The scene known as Aristote chevauché is derived from the medieval tale Lai d’Aristote“ written by Henri d’Andeli, a thirteenth-century Norman poet.
According to the Lai, Aristotle, tutor to Alexander the Great, advised the young king to avoid the company of the concubine Phyllis, since the time spent in her arms was dissipating Alexander’s energy and dedication to his studies and civic duties. Alexander agreed, albeit reluctantly, and eventually told Phyllis the reason why he avoided her company. Phyllis devised a plan to unseat her learned rival.
When Aristotle was in his study in the early hours of the morning, he was distracted from his reading by the sound of singing in the garden. Looking out the open window, he saw Phyllis, barefoot and clad in a gossamer shift, dancing and singing in the garden. As any serious student will tell you, willpower is no match for sexual desire which has been denied for too long. Aristotle groaned, closed his books and called to Phyllis. He told her how much he wanted her and, she promised to satisfy him if he would indulge a whim of hers: he should be her steed and allow her to ride on his back around the enclosed garden. Aristotle agreed, dropped to all fours, and carried Phyllis on his back while she sang:
Master Silly carries me.Alexander, intrigued by the singing in the garden, looks over the wall and sees Reason ridden hard by Desire. When confronted by Alexander, Aristotle tells his student that there is a lesson to be learned here: if a wise and aged philosopher can be swayed so readily by Love then one as young and inexperienced as Alexander must be on his guard against such temptation. However, Aristotle’s influence has been weakened and Alexander once again enjoys the company of Phyllis.
Love leads on, and so he goes,
by Love’s authority.
Henri d’Andeli’s narrative has a tongue-in-cheek quality, poking fun at those who believe themselves impervious to physical desire. But over time the story behind the scene was changed. Phyllis was no longer Alexander’s concubine but the wife of Aristotle and, her act of riding her husband like a beast was interpreted as an example of woman’s malicious manipulation of man’s need for physical love. By attributing such power and malice to women, men became, by default, the submissive class. A resentfully submissive class.
We are in dire need of new imagery.
Where can one find an image of male vulnerability that is not insulting? The place to start is the most powerful sexual organ, the human mind, preferably the mind of one who has lived on both sides of the whip. One such as Elizavetta Mora, of Vespertine Erotica. Consider this excerpt from a piece entitled, Words: sometimes they’re pretty useless, in which she describes a man who can deliver a fifteen minute monologue detailing what he wants Elizavetta to do, yet cannot look her in the eye as he speaks. And for her, that reluctance holds the key to what that man really needs and wants:
“Tell me how much,” I said. “Tell me how much you want me to hurt your cock. Say it. Say all those words you just said… say them again to me.”His eyes began fluttering with tears. He struggled with trying to speak while looking in my eyes. His struggle went on for a long, holy moment.
Then just before it seemed he was going to finally speak, I reared back fast and slapped his face very hard.
When his head snapped back toward me, the look on his face went from stunned to hurt… betrayal… anger… in a matter of seconds. I backed up and stood barely a foot away from him to watch while he strained and arched in his bonds toward me, away from me, totally at the mercy of all the emotions and sensations firing at light speed through his being.
Eventually, as I suspected would happen, a great rage rose up in him; a rage that made me thankful he was bolted to the wall. And, as I suspected, it was the rage that finally did it (along with, perhaps, my uncompromising, uncommenting witnessing of it).
And as that lifetime of rage silently burned it’s white hot way from the center of his body outward, he never broke my gaze – and never said a word – until his knees gave way and his cock spurted in wild grunting whole-body thrusts into the electrified air between us.
You can read the entire post by clicking here.
That scene conjures up many images in my mind, none of which I would describe as humiliating or insulting. One has to have a profound respect for another human being to free him from so fortified a prison of the self.
If you visit her site and read her poetry and stories, you will find that Elizavetta understands what Helene Cixous meant when she referred to l’ecriture feminine, feminine writing, language that allows a woman to express what her body feels like to her. Such language is poetic, nonlinear, and free of the restrictions of realistic prose. It is this language, grounded in the body, that Elizavetta uses to give shape to the thoughts of the spellbound Thomas Rhymer:
To her understanding smile, he begged, “Am I dying?”“Ah, no, I am not that One, Thomas.” So gently she spoke, with a knowing of long abiding sorrows it seemed. “Not yet that One.”
With that, she took his hand and suddenly they were astride her horse. His arms went about her like they had always been there, and his face buried itself in her hair.
His wife’s voice gone. His children’s smiles, all gone. His afternoon rest along the safe bank of his own river, the river of his fathers, gone. Her hair, her apple-scented hair was the whole golden world, the only world before him now. Everything else, forgotten, forgiven, swept away.
She clicked her tongue and snapped the reins. They lurched forward and the river’s rushing tumble sang along with the harness bells. The sky around them clouded over with every blue and gray that could be painted.
You can read The Rhymer’s Queen here.
Please. You have a long weekend ahead. Go visit Elizavetta and allow yourself to be vulnerable.
Submitted by 2539 (not verified) on Fri, 2008-11-28 11:13.
Kochanie, it is so nice to see semi-regular posts from you again. I missed you!
I tend to think of submission as a special case of vulnerability. Only some of us get off on submission. *All* of us are vulnerable to some degree in our sexual lives. Sometimes I think that precisely those people who try hardest to mask or avoid open vulnerability are actually the most vulnerable under the surface ...
Anyway, I think you make a wonderfully insightful point when you say that women's voracious desires - as imagined during the Middle Ages and early modern era - cast men as a "resentfully submissive class." Putting women on a pedestal in the 19th century and redefining (respectable) women as singularly virtuous then appears as a way for men to shed that submissive status.
I'd be very interested in hearing more of your thoughts on ecriture feminine. I've been discussing it with some of my students lately and struggling with it, myself. I agree that Elizavetta's writing is a gorgeous example of the sort of embodied, poetic, elliptical expression that Cixous both describes and practices. I'm just not sure whether I buy the notion that this sort of writing is a uniquely feminine/female capacity. What do you think, Kochanie?
ReCaptcha: this act, burning
(and clicking the "submit" button appears in a whole 'nother light ...)
[Thank you for your kind words, Sungold. Hopefully, I will post on a semi-regular basis, although I don't know if I could turn out the thoroughly researched posts that you do on a regular basis, while simultaneously planting 200 tulip bulbs, grading student papers and keeping up with two young boys.
Submission may be "a special case of vulnerability," as you say. When reading an individual's description of his/her experience with submission, I find it difficult to distinguish what is authentic from what has become ritualized in the literature.
As for l'ecriture feminine, do I think it is writing that is a "uniquely feminine/female capacity"? If you describe feminine/female writing as distinct from the representational or expository forms, yes. I agree with Cixous that poetry is the genre that is best suited for l'ecriture feminine since it is not restricted by linear time or the fixed meaning of words. It has been said that to write great poetry, you must write it in the language in which you learned to say "mama," and I agree. Great poetry comes from the unconscious. It may be refined by learning, but it is not an academic exercise. Since both men and women have written great poetry, feminine/female writing is not determined by the sex of the poet or writer, but rather how the poet or writer views language and uses language. Are the meanings of words fluid or fixed? If fixed, by whom? By what authority? What meanings have been obscured over time? I don't know if this clarifies anything and clarification is not the right word to use in connection with l'ecriture feminine. But please let me know what you think. -- Kochanie]
Submitted by 2539 (not verified) on Fri, 2008-11-28 15:02.
Cool, cool post, Kochanie! Also I totally agree with Sungold that it's good to have you back and sharing your amazingly erudite insights. Sigh. (For the record I also agree with Sungold that too much of our posturing -- male and female -- is an effort to mask vulnerability. Too bad so much of the masking happens because we mistake everyone else's masks for the way they really are -- imagining ourselves, therefore, the only ones.)
figleaf
p.s. ReCaptcha must be taking the day off: "Take Upersu?"
[Hey, fl, if that sigh is because you missed me, I'm tickled pink. But if it's envy, don't forget that my "erudite" posts are produced at breakneck tortoise speed. ;-) I guess you can say that I've been doing "slow blogging" long before it was fashionable. Since I envy your ability to turn out so many thoughtful posts in quick succession, let's call a draw and just enjoy each other's writing. Thank you very much for the warm welcome -- Kochanie].
Submitted by 2539 (not verified) on Tue, 2008-12-02 16:39.
I don't know if that was Recaptcha, Sungold. I encountered that problem when others were posting comments or when my blog host was publishing a post. I fear your comment was kidnapped by the dreaded Publishing Vortex and is now in the Land of Unmatched Socks.
I'm no expert on submission either, unless torturing oneself with to-do-lists counts as submission. But as far as ritual is concerned, P. Burke raised a question on that point and my response to her comment may be of interest to you.
I have not read Cixous in the original French. I've read translations and a translation is not the same as the original: it is another's interpretation of the original, no matter how faithful to the original the translator tries to be. I agree with you that, from the translations I've read, Cixous refers to the woman who writes her body, and I have not encountered that phrase applied to men. Perhaps I am conflating this with the issue Virginal Woolf raised in her essay Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown, that realist prose does not allow the writer or the reader to understand human nature. Perhaps Cixous is taking this a step further to say that you cannot understand human nature if you consider the mind and body as separate, for they are not. If you cannot divorce mind from body, you cannot divorce your thoughts from what others suffer, in mind or body. Perhaps that is how we can be liberated from the artificial distance of what Cixous calls the Symbolic Order.
Thank for your thoughtful comment, Sungold, and for making me think about this again.
Submitted by 2539 (not verified) on Mon, 2008-12-01 19:53.
Kochanie, I tried to leave a comment yesterday but the darn Recaptcha ate it! And then I gave up in disgust. Anyway, thanks for the kind words. But in truth, I don’t keep up with those boys; it’s more like waterskiing, with them pulling me pell-mell and me just trying to avoid a hard landing.
I’m the farthest thing from an expert on submission but what you say about its ritualization makes sense to me. I’d love to hear more of your thoughts on that – if, say, you’re inspired to post on it sometime? What Elizavetta describes strikes me as both ritualized and authentic, but maybe only so because she deviated from the script?
As for ecriture feminine, I’m no smarter about it than I was a few days ago. I do think Cixous believes men are capable of it. She seems to dig James Joyce, for example. But she anchors the philosophical foundation for it firmly and (I think) entirely in the female body, specifically in our capacity for sexual self-pleasure. That makes me tend to think that she sees ecriture feminine as an essentially female capacity. But I just don’t know enough about it to be sure I’m reading this correctly.
I do think meanings are fluid even in expository academic writing – often more than we intend them to be. One of the big questions Cixous raises for me is how this fluidity can help us work toward women’s liberation, and really, toward *human* liberation.
Submitted by 2539 (not verified) on Tue, 2008-12-02 06:00.
See what interesting conversations I miss when I go away for Thanksgiving!
Sungold, I like what you say about submission being a special kind of vulnerability. Part of what's sexy to me about male submission is the way it combines vulnerability and strength. (I have a weird idea of strength where it's at least as much about cleverness as it is about bulging muscles, but there you go.) I've noticed lately that I like images of female submission where the woman looks strong and grounded. Much as Goreans creep me out, that's one thing they get right; their female slaves are tough, and they fight back.
Kochanie, I'm also curious to hear your thoughts on ritualization. It seems like from the inside, there's a big difference between feeling the power of a ritual and just going through the motions, but I am not sure how to tell from the outside which of those things somebody else is doing.
Submitted by 2539 (not verified) on Tue, 2008-12-02 17:06.
It seems like from the inside, there's a big difference between feeling the power of a ritual and just going through the motions, but I am not sure how to tell from the outside which of those things somebody else is doing.
I thought a lot about this, P. Burke.
If the ritual exists for the participants, it does not matter what it looks like to those on the "outside." In different types of spiritual practice, one may begin a ritual with doubt ("This isn't going to work" or "This isn't real") or self-deprecation ("Who am I kidding? I'm just making a fool of myself") , but then you say the words, move your body, and the ritual takes hold. Doubt is forgotten. For a span of time, your consciousness is changed.
If you don't think the analogy applies, please let me know. But as always, thank you for making me think.
Submitted by 2539 (not verified) on Wed, 2008-12-03 06:05.
Not at all, that analogy is partly what I had in mind when I typed it. Spiritual rituals, or at least the Catholic ones I've tried don't feel like much of anything to me. I know that other people, including most of my family, find them deeply moving. Yet I can find goofy (from most people's perspective) BDSM rituals very moving. I probably worry too much about whether I'm faking it or everybody else is faking it; different people are wired up to respond to different rituals, and that's OK.