 
                         20060228.01

     The statement: "The Victorians enjoyed sex as much as we
do, they just didn't talk about it as much."  requires
further comment.

     If this is to imply that "we", all of us, "enjoy" "sex"
to the same presumably significant degree, the statement is
surely misleading. Such "enjoyment", whatever it may be, is
surely different both in quality and in intensity, at
different times, under different circumstances, for different
individuals; and in some instances will surely be negative,
i.e. replaced by pain and suffering, longing, loneliness,
resignation and despair. I am reminded of Damon's aria from
Haendel's Acis and Galatea:

        Consider, fond shepherd,
        How fleeting's the pleasure,
        That flatters our hopes
        In pursuit of the fair!
        The joys that attend it,
        By moments we measure,
        But life is too little
        To measure our care.
        Consider. . . da capo

     The reluctance to "talk about" "sex" has many
implications.  The prohibition against talking about "sex" has
its correlative in the prohibition against talking about God.
Both prohibitions are protective of the individual's innermost
feelings, of his subjectivity, of his individuality in the
most profound sense. But at the same time the fact is
inescapable that "talking about" what I experience, what I
feel, what I do, what I understand, is integral to my
emotional and intellectual existence.  The prohibition of
talking about God is controverted by Scripture itself: "The
heavens declare the glory of God." - what declaration could
be more emphatic, - and in the poetry of the Song of
Solomon,"sex" receives its share of the glory.

     It is a matter of common knowledge that there is a wide
spectrum of expression about "sex", ranging from
Shakespeare's Sonnets and Rilke's Duino Elegies, to the
crudest and most distateful pornography. Such expression is
variously edifying or demoralizing, may in some instances be
constructive in establishing a spiritual environment of great
value, or may, in other instances, be erosive of such value
and destructive of such an environment. I doubt that
consistent objective criteria can be established to
distinguish between "good" and "bad" "talk" about "sex".  I
am certain that no such criteria can be legally enforced
without a subverting the most fundamental of civil rights.

     It is true that the Victorians didn't "talk about"
"sex".  More significant is that they suppressed and
prohibited "talk about" "sex". Verbal expression, "talk", is
essential to the metabolism of the spirit as breathing is
essential to the physical metabolism of the body. The
Victorian prohibition of verbal expression was emblematic of
a pervasive destructive repression of experience, sexual and
otherwise, and this repression constituted a cover under
which hypocrisy, prostitution, and infanticide flourished.
It is against this background that the work of Sigmund Freud
must be understood.

                      * * * * *
Copyright 2006, Ernst Jochen Meyer
