Davenport-Hines, Richard;
Vice: An Anthology
Hamish Hamilton / Penguin, 1993, 559 pages
ISBN 0241132371, 9780241132371
topics: | anthology | poetry | quotations | sex
A fascinating collection - every page has something that holds you. You romp through the darker underbelly of western literature, from classical times (Sappho, Lucretius, Plutarch), to the mid-20th c. (Thomas Gunn, Sylvia Plath, Italo Calvino). Poetry, prose extracts, organized into themes that never quite work, but are great reads anyhow. Great fodder to make you seek out the originals. Like most books of quotations and extracts, a great bathroom read. The French appear prominently - Baudelaire, Anatole France, Marguerite Duras, Proust, Flaubert; a good section of English nobility (Vita Sackville-West, Byron, Earl of Rochester), and also Americans (Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis). Although Anais Nin figures, Henry Miller is surprisingly absent. The only problem I had was that the extracts are stripped bare of all provenance - there is an utter disregard for the context of each texts. Only the index of authors at the end provides the dates for each author. Although about half the texts are from other European languages, translators are prominent by their complete absence.
Wear dark glasses in the rain. Regard what was unhurt as though through a bruise. Guilt. A sick, green tint. New gloves, money tucked in the palms, the handshake crackles. Hands can do many things. Phone. Open the wine. Wash themselves. Now you are naked under your clothes all day, slim with deceit. Only the once brings you alone to your knees, miming, more, more, older and sadder, creative. Suck a lie with a hole in it on the way home from a lethal, thrilling night up against a wall, faster. Language unpeels a lost cry. You're a bastard. Do it do it do it. Sweet darkness in the afternoon; a voice in your ear telling you how you are wanted, which way, now. A telltale clock wiping the hours from its face, your face on a white sheet, gasping, radiant, yes. Pay for it in cash, fiction, cab-fares back to the life which crumbles like a wedding-cake. Paranoia for lunch; too much to drink, as a hand on your thigh tilts the restaurant. You know all about love, don't you. Turn on your beautiful eyes for a stranger who's dynamite in bed, again and again; a slow replay in the kitchen where the slicing of innocent onions scalds you to tears. Then, selfish autobiographical sleep in a marital bed, the tarnished spoon of your body stirring betrayal, your heart over-ripe at the core. You're an expert, darling; your flowers dumb and explicit on nobody's birthday. So write the script - illness and debt, a ring thrown away in a garden no moon can heal, your own words commuting to bile in your mouth, terror - and all for the same thing twice. And all for the same thing twice. You did it. What. Didn't you. Fuck. Fuck. No. That was the wrong verb. This is only an abstract noun. [since may 09, Carol Ann Duffy is the UK Poet Laureate]
Why should a foolish marriage vow, Which long ago was made, Oblige us to each other now When passion is decay'd? We loved, and we loved, as long as we could, Till our love was loved out in us both: But our marriage is dead, when the pleasure is fled: 'Twas pleasure first made it an oath. If I have pleasures for a friend, And farther love in store, What wrong has he whose joys did end, And who could give no more? 'Tis a madness that he should be jealous of me, Or that I should bar him of another: For all we can gain is to give our selves pain, When neither can hinder the other.
(from The Edwardians, 1930) [In the country estate at Chevron, the widowed duchess Lucy is dressing for her extravagant weekly dinner party. Vita's ancestral home at Knole estate was the setting for her lover Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando (1928)); this inspired her to write of her own childhood experiences in The Edwardians. ] "Give me a wrap, Button. You can start doing my hair. Sebastian, give me the plan of the dinner-table. On the table there. No, silly boy. Button give it to his Grace. Now, Sebastian, read it out to me while I have my hair done. Oh, George Roehampton takes me in, does he? Must he? Such a bore that man is. And Sir Adam on the other side. Don't pull my hair like that, Button; really, I never knew such a clumsy woman, now you have given me a headache for the rest of the evening. Do be more careful. Well, I am not going to enjoy myself very much, I can see: Sir Adam and George Roehampton. However, it's inevitable. Or not, let me see for myself. That Miss Wace is such a fool that she may quite well have made a muddle of the whole thing. Come and hold the plan for me to see, Sebastian. Button! you pulled my hair again. How many times must I tell you to be careful? Once more, and I give you notice, I declare I will. Tilt it up, Sebastian; I can't see." Sebastian stood beside his mother holding the red leather pad, with slits into which cards bearing the names of the guests were inserted. As he stood holding it, he watched his mother's reflection in the mirror. With her fair hair and lively little crumpled face, she looked extraordinarily young for her age... If he had been asked to describe his mother, he must have said, "She is a famous hostess, with a talent for mimicry and a genius for making parties a success. She is charming and vivacious. In private life she is often irritable and sometimes unkind. She likes bridge and racing. She never opens a book, and she cannot bear to be alone. I have not the faintest idea of what she is really like." He would not have added, because he did not know, that she was ruthless and predatory. "Why are you staring like that, Sebastian? You make me quite shy." Her hair was about her shoulders now, and Button was busy with the curling-tongs. She heated them first on the spirit lamp, and then held them carefully to her own cheek to feel if they were hot enough. "Bless the boy, one would think he had never watched me dress before. Now about that dinner-table, yes, it's all wrong; I thought it would be. She has clean forgotten the ambassador. Button, you must call Miss Wace — no, Sebastian, you fetch her. No, ring the bell; I don't want you to go away. Why on earth can't people do their own jobs properly? What do I pay Wacey a hundred and fifty a year for, I should like to know? Oh dear, and look at the time; I shall be late for dinner. I declare the trouble of entertaining is enough to spoil all one's pleasure. It's a little hard, I do think, that one should never have any undiluted pleasure in life. Who's that at the door? Button, go and see. And Miss Wace must come at once." "Lady Viola would like to know if she may come and say good night to your Grace." "Oh, bother the child — well, yes, I suppose she must if she wants to. Now, Button, haven't you nearly finished? Don't drag my hair back like that, woman. Give me the tail comb. Don't you see, it wants more fullness at the side. Really, Button, I thought you were supposed to be an expert hairdresser. You may think yourself lucky, Sebastian, that you were born a boy. This eternal hair, these eternal clothes! they wear a woman out before her time. Oh, there you are, Miss Wace. This plan is all wrong — perfectly hopeless. I don't go in with Lord Roehampton at all. What about the ambassador? You must alter it. Do it in here, as quick as you can. Sebastian will help you. And Viola. Come in, Viola; don't look so scared, child; I can't bear people who look scared. Now I must leave you all while I wash. No, I don't want you now, Button; you get on my nerves. I'll call you when I want you. Get my dress ready. Children, help Miss Wace — yes, you too, Viola; it's high time you took a little trouble to help your poor mother — and do, all three of you, try to show a little intelligence." The duchess retired into her dressing-room, from where she kept up a flow of comments. "Viola, you must really take a little more trouble about your appearance. You looked a perfect fright at luncheon today; I was ashamed of you. And you really must talk more, instead of sitting there like a stuffed doll. You had that nice Mr. Anquetil, who is perfectly easy to get on with. You might be ten, instead of seventeen. I have a good mind to start you coming down to dinner, except that you would cast a blight over everything. Girls are such a bore — poor things, they can't help it, but really they are a problem. They ruin conversation; one has to be so careful. Women ought to be married, or at any rate widowed. I don't mean you, of course, Wacey. I'm ready for you, Button." [corsets: made of coutil = herringbone-patterned cloth used for corsets; tied together with a busk, rigid steel or bone pair, with hook and eye fastenings, in the front, and laces at the back. Tulle is a kind of lace (after town in France). Taffeta is a Persian word, for a fabric often made from silk. Most of it comes today from South India. ] Button vanished into the dressing-room, and for a while there was silence, broken only by irritable exclamations from within. These inner mysteries of his mother's toilet were unknown to Sebastian, but Viola knew well enough what was going on: her mother was seated, poking at her hair meanwhile with fretful but experienced fingers, while Button knelt before her, carefully drawing the silk stockings on to her feet and smoothing them nicely up the leg. Then her mother would rise, and, standing in her chemise, would allow the maid to fit the long stays of pink coutil, heavily boned, round her hips and slender figure, fastening the busk down the front, after many adjustments; then the suspenders would be clipped to the stockings; then the lacing would follow, beginning at the waist and travelling gradually up and down, until the necessary proportions had been achieved. The silk laces and their tags would fly out, under the maid's deft fingers, with the flick of a skilled worker mending a net. Then the pads of pink satin would be brought, and fastened into place on the hips and under the arms, still further to accentuate the smallness of the waist. Then the drawers; and then the petticoat would be spread into a ring on the floor, and Lucy would step into it on her high-heeled shoes, allowing Button to draw it up and tie the tapes. Then Button would throw the dressing-gown round her shoulders again — Viola had followed the process well, for here the door opened, and the duchess emerged. "Well, have you done that table? Read it out. Louder. I can't hear. Yes, that's better. I'm sorry, Sebastian, you'll have to take in old Octavia Hull again. Nonsense, she's very amusing when she's not too fuddled with drugs. She'll be all right tonight because she'll be afraid of losing too much money to Sir Adam after dinner. Now, Wacey, off you go and rearrange the cards on the table. And you too, Viola. There are too many people in this room. Oh, all right, you can stop till I'm dressed if you like. -- Button, I'm ready for my dress. Now be careful. Don't catch the hooks in my hair. Sebastian, you must turn round while I take off my dressing-gown. Now, Button." Button, gathering up the lovely mass of taffeta and tulle, held the bodice open while the duchess flung off her wrap and dived gingerly into the billows of her dress. Viola watched enraptured the sudden gleam of her mother's white arms and shoulders. Button breathed a sigh of relief as she began doing up the innumerable hooks at the back. But Lucy could not stand still for a moment, and strayed all over the room with Button in pursuit, hooking. "Haven't you finished yet, Button? Nonsense, it isn't tight. You'll say next that I'm getting fat." Lucy was proud of her waist, which indeed was tiny, and had changed since her girlish days only from eighteen to twenty inches. "Only when your Grace stops," said Button apologetically, for Lucy at the moment was bending forward and peering into her mirror as she puffed the roll of her hair into a rounder shape. "There, then," said the duchess, straightening herself, but reaching down stiffly for the largest of her rubies, which she tried first against her shoulder, but finally pinned into a knot at her waist. Then she encircled her throat with the high dog-collar of rubies and diamonds, tied with a large bow of white tulle at the back. "You must choose a wife who will do credit to the jewels, Sebastian," she said as she slipped an ear-ring into its place, "because, of course, the day will come when your poor old mother has to give up everything to her daughter-in-law, and we shan't like that — eh, Button?" -— for she was in a better humour now, again completely adorned and clothed —- "but we'll put up with it for the joy of seeing a bride brought to Chevron —- eh, Button? eh, Wacey? oh, no, of course Wacey has gone to do the table -— and you and I, Button, will retire to the Dower House and live humbly for the rest of our lives, and perhaps his Grace will ask us to the garden-party —- eh, Sebastian, you rogue? -— will you, if your wife allows it?" Lucy was herself again, adjusting her frock, clasping her bracelets, dusting her throat with powder — for she was one of those who used powder, to the disapproval of her elders —and everybody except Sebastian was radiant with responsive smiles. She flicked her handkerchief across Sebastian's lips. "Sulky boy! but Sylvia Roehampton says you are even more attractive when you sulk than when you are amiable, so I suppose I must believe her. Now Viola, my darling, I must run. Kiss me good-night. Go straight to bed. Do I look nice?" "Oh, mother, you look too lovely!" "That's all right." Lucy liked as much admiration as she could get. ... Come along, Sebastian. I shall want you to wait up for me, Button, of course. You go in front, Sebastian, and open the doors. Dear, dear, how late you children have made me. Sebastian, you must apologise to old Octavia at dinner, and tell her it was all your fault. My fan, Button! good heavens, woman, what are you there for? One has to think of everything for oneself."
may i feel said he (i'll squeal said she just once said he) it's fun said she (may i touch said he how much said she a lot said he) why not said she (let's go said he not too far said she what's too far said he where you are said she) may i stay said he which way said she like this said he if you kiss said she may i move said he is it love said she) if you're willing said he (but you're killing said she but it's life said he but your wife said she now said he) ow said she (tiptop said he don't stop said she oh no said he) go slow said she (cccome?said he ummm said she) you're divine!said he (you are Mine said she)
... all that love and joy and peace that flooded over me when I thought about Vere, and how it all came from what was a deep meanness in our lives, for that is what adultery is, a meanness and a stealing, a taking away from someone what should be theirs, a great selfishness, and surrounded and guarded by lies lest it should be found out. And out of this meanness and this selfishness and this lying flow love and joy and peace, beyond anything that can be imagined. And this makes a discord in the mind, the happiness and the guild and the remorse pulling in opposite ways so that the mind and sould are torn in two, and if it goes on for years and years the discord becomes permanent, so that it will never stop...
All fixed: early arrival at the flat Lent by a friend, whose note says Lucky sod; Drinks on the tray, the cover-story pat And quite uncheckable, her husband off Somewhere with all the kids till six o'clock (Which ought to be quite long enough); And all worth while: face really beautiful, Good legs and hips, and as for breasts - my God. What about guilt, compunction and such stuff? I've had my fill of all that cock; It'll wear off, as usual. Yes, all fixed. Then why this slight trembling, Dry mouth, quick pulse-rate, sweaty hands, As though she were the first? No, not impatience, Nor fear of failure, thank you, Jack. Beauty, they tell me, is a dangerous thing, Whose touch will burn, but I'm asbestos, see? All worth while -- it's a dead coincidence That sitting here, a bag of glands Tuned up to concert pitch, I seem to sense A different style of caller at my back, As cold as ice, but just as set on me.
I was sixteen years old. I still looked like a child. It was when we'd come back from Saigon, after the Chinese lover. It was on a night train, the train from Bordeaux, in about 1930. I was with my family – my two brothers and my mother. We were in a third-class compartment with either seats in it, and I think there were two or three other people besides us. There was also a young man sitting opposite me and looking at me. He must have been about thirty. It must have been in the summer. I was still wearing the sort of light-coloured dress I used to wear in the colonies, with sandals and no stockings. The man asked me about my family, and I told him about what it was like living in the colonies: the rains, the heat, the veranda, how difference it was from France, the walking in the forest, and the baccalauréat exam I was going to take that year. That sort of thing – the usual kind of conversation you have in a train when you pour out your own and your family’s life history. And then all of a sudden we noticed everyone else was asleep. My mother and brothers had dropped off soon after we left Bordeaux. I spoke quietly so as not to wake them. If they’d heard me telling someone else all our business their yells and threats would soon have put a stop to it. And our whispered conversation had sent the other three or four passengers to sleep too. So the man and I were the only two still awake. And that was how it started, suddenly, at exactly the same moment, with a single look. In those days people didn’t speak about such things, especially in circumstances like that. All at once we couldn’t go on talking. We couldn’t go on looking at one another either; we felt weak, shattered. I was the one who said we ought to get some sleep so as not to be too tired when we got to Paris in the morning. He was sitting near the door so he switched out the light. There was an empty seat between us. I curled up on it and closed my eyes. I heard him open the door. He went out and came back with a blanket and spread it over me. I opened my eyes to smile and say thank you. He said: ‘They turn off the heating at night and it gets cold towards morning.’ I went to sleep. I was wakened by his warm soft hand on my legs; very slowly it straightened them out and tried to move up towards my body. I opened my eyes just a fraction. I could see he was looking at the other people in the carriage, watching them; he was afraid. I very slowly moved my body towards him and put my feet against him. I gave them to him. He took them. With my eyes shut, I followed all his movements. They were slow even at first, then more and more slow and controlled until the final paroxysm of pleasure, as upsetting as if he’d cried out. For a long while there was nothing except the noise of the train. It was going faster and the noise was deafening. Then it became bearable again. He put his hand on me. Distraught, still warm, afraid. I held it in mine for a moment, then let it go, let it do as it liked. The noise of the train came back again. The hand went away, stayed away for some time. I don’t remember how long – I must have drowsed off. Then it came back. It stoked me all over first, then my breasts, stomach and hips, in a kind of overall gentleness disturbed every so often by new stirrings of desire. Sometimes it would stop. It halted over my sex, trembling, about to take the bait, burning hot again. Then it moved on. Finally it resigned itself, quieted down, became kind in order to bid the child goodbye. All around the hand was the noise of the train. All around the train, the darkness. The silence of the corridors within the noise of the train. The stops, waking people up. He got off into the darkness. When I opened my eyes in Paris his seat was empty.
I do not have a fiddle so I get myself a stick, And then I beat upon a can, Or pound upon a brick; And if the meter needs a change I give the cat a kick. Oomph dah doodle dah Oomph dah doodle dah Oomph dah doodle dah do. Whenever I find it coming on, I need a morning drink, I get a stool and sit and stare In the slop-pail by the sink; I lean my head near the brimming edge And do not mind the stink. Oh the slop-pail is the place to think On the perils of too early drink, Too early drink, too early drink, Can bring a good man down. ...
Sleepmonger, deathmonger, with capsules in my palms each night, eight at a time from sweet pharmaceutical bottles I make arrangements for a pint-sized journey. I'm the queen of this condition. I'm an expert on making the trip and now they say I'm an addict. Now they ask why. Why! Don't they know that I promised to die! I'm keping in practice. I'm merely staying in shape. The pills are a mother, but better, every color and as good as sour balls. I'm on a diet from death. Yes, I admit it has gotten to be a bit of a habit- blows eight at a time, socked in the eye, hauled away by the pink, the orange, the green and the white goodnights. I'm becoming something of a chemical mixture. that's it! My supply of tablets has got to last for years and years. I like them more than I like me. It's a kind of marriage. It's a kind of war where I plant bombs inside of myself. Yes I try to kill myself in small amounts, an innocuous occupatin. Actually I'm hung up on it. But remember I don't make too much noise. And frankly no one has to lug me out and I don't stand there in my winding sheet. I'm a little buttercup in my yellow nightie eating my eight loaves in a row and in a certain order as in the laying on of hands or the black sacrament. It's a ceremony but like any other sport it's full of rules. It's like a musical tennis match where my mouth keeps catching the ball. Then I lie on; my altar elevated by the eight chemical kisses. What a lay me down this is with two pink, two orange, two green, two white goodnights. Fee-fi-fo-fum- Now I'm borrowed. Now I'm numb. [After repeated attempts, american poet Anne Sexton (pulitzer 1967) committed suicide in 1974]
Many of those who are being initiated complain at first of the tedium; they wait with futile impatience, and if the drug does not act swiftly enough, they give sardonic satisfaction to Initiates by boasting that they are impervious to the effects of Hashish. The first signs of an approacing storm appear and multiply. In the early moments of getting stoned you are seized by an outrageous hilarity, irresistible and ludicrous. These motiveless fits of hilarity, of which you feel ashamed, recur and destroy the placidity of your stupor. The most simple words and most trivial ideas assume bizarre and fantastic shapes; you feel astonished not to have realised their simplicity before. ... Soon your ideas become so vague, your mental conceptions so strained, that only your accomplices can understand you... At the same time, wisdom and sagacity, the measured thoughts of the unintoxicated, divert you with their inanity. It is all inverted.
(from A history of the Fan)
The fan has its own language, more eloquent than that of flowers - The
Spanish novia (lady love) communicates her thoughts by code to her novio
(sweetheart):
1. You have won my love. — Place the shut fan near the heart.
2. When may I be allowed to see you? — The shut fan resting upon the right
eye.
3. At what hour? The number of sticks of the fan indicate the hour.
4. I long always to be near thee. Touchthe unfolded fan in the act of
waving.
5. Do not be so imprudent. Threaten with the shut fan.
6. Why do you misunderstand me? Gaze pensively at the unfolded fan.
7. You may kiss me. Press the half-opened fan to the lips.
8. Forgive me, I pray you. Clasp the hands under the open fan.
9. Do not betray our secret. Cover the left ear with the open fan.
10. _I promise to marry you. Shut the full-opened fan very slowly.
And so on, through the whole gamut of the language of love.
After midnight, the lesbians and fairies Sweep through the streets of the old tenderloin, Like spirochetes in a softening brain. The hustlers have all been run out of town. I look back on the times spent Talking with you about the idiocies Of a collapsing world and the brutalities Of my race and yours, While the sick, the perverted, the malformed, Came and went, and you cooked them, And rolled them, and beat them, And sent them away with a little taste Of electric life from the ends of your fingers. Who could ever forget your amiable body, Or your unruffled good sense, Or your smiling sex? I suppose your touch kept many men As sane as they could be kept. Every hour there is less of that touch in the world.
Adultery 1: Byron against constancy, Carol Ann Duffy's magnificient poem; Alfresco Sex 42: Open air sex, pieces by Aphra Behn and Lorca; Edmund Wilson, - at 60, makes love on the sand. Camilo Jose Cela about lovers who cavort in an the empty plot where children play in the daytime. Cruelty 57 Bullfighters (James Salgado), and Gladiators (St Augustine) Dancing 74 No sober man dances, unless he is mad. - Cicero These panting damsels, dancing for their lives / Are only maidens, waltizing into wives. - Anonymous Dressing 87 Vita Sackville West, Baudelaire on Dandyism Drink 114 '''Lechery, sir, it provokes and unprovokes; it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance. [Porter, in Macbeth, about drinking.] Also, the rather decadent Gob music by Theodore Roethk '''(1908-1963), who lived a life of drink and excess. For Marguerite Duras living alone in a huge house at Neauphle, alcohol "lends resonance to loneliness, and ends up making you prefer it to everything. Drugs 140 Anne Sexton's The Addict, Charles Dickens describing an Opium Den, Baudelaire on Hashish Flirting 179 Glances are the heavy artillery of the flirt: everything can be conveyed in a look, yet that look can always be denied, for it cannot be quoted word for word. - Stendhal Food 189: Hunger is the cheapest sawce. Sir Thomas Overbury (for more on him see Santillana's Age of Adventure. Gambling 219 Gossip 255 There is no rampart that will hold out against malice. - Moliere Heavenly Vices 270 Hedonism 272 Lust 285 Eros shakes my senses like a wind on the mountain shaking the oaks. - Sappho Allen Ginsberg's explicit gay poem: Please Master Motoring 310 Sinclair Lewis sketches Babbit's triumphant journey to office: "his motor-car was poetry and tragedy, love and heroism" Orgies 329 Suetonius and Juvenal on Roman times; Hubert Selby on a swinging orgy in the iconoclastic "Last Exit to Brooklyn" (1964) Prostitution 337 Reading 357 Schadenfreude 369 I detest that dark, dismal mentality which skims over life's pleasures but fastens on misfortunes, and feeds off them; like flies which cannot grip on smooth, polished surfaces, and so cling to rough, jagged spots, or leeches that suck off only bad blood. - Michel de Montaigne Scuzzy People 374 Seduction 391 Most virtue is a demand for greater seduction. Natalie Barney Shopping 403 Short Views on Mean Vices 426 [envy; flattering; lying, vanity, etc.] Snobbery 431 The man who has not anything to boast of but his illustrious ancestors is like a potato -- the only good belonging to him is underground. - Thomas Overbury Solitary Vice 449 John Cleland, on how Fanny Hill pleasures herself Theatricals 460 Every day, everywhere, it's on the rise. The television malady. THe set is dirty. It's a household object now, an old pot, a kitchen sink, but old and dirty... You see their life-size heads, they stretch their necks, they look toward you, then you stand in front of them to block them, you turn it off. They give us the same presumptuous, profoundly conniving smile. They talk to us in the singular language that likewise presumes to be self-evident, with the same staggering force of conviction, the same postures, the same zoom, then hey go off in another vein to speak to you about France, about the quality of life, about the Olympic games... - Marguerite Duras, Green eyes, tr. Carol Barko 1990 Tobacco 485 Le Vice Anglais 508 [birching, sadism] Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, from Venus in Furs, how he signs himself away to become a slave to Wanda Vice and Virtue 518 The vices we scoff at in others, laugh at us within. Sir Thomas Browne Voyeurism 532