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Overview
The beautiful heroine's initiation into the ecstasies of love are here set against the exotic background of Thailand, where she easily moves from the attentions of a handsome Siamese prince at an elegant soiree to the dark ante-chamber of a Buddhist temple to learn how the vow of celibacy can be cleverly circumvented by a venerable old monk.
A sensual delight, Emmanuelle II succeeds, like few novels before it, in pushing the philosophy of eroticism to the frontiers of myth. This is one of the few erotic novels of ideas since Sade. Its exploration of delightful fantasy transformed into exquisite fulfillment makes this one of the finest erotic novels every published. It is as pertinent today as it was four decades ago.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780802122360 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Grove/Atlantic, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 03/11/2014 |
| Edition description: | Reprint |
| Pages: | 325 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x (d) |
About the Author
Anselm Hollo (translator)wrote more than thirty books, including the essay collection Caws & Causeries and Notes on the Possibilities and Attractions of Existence: New and Selected Poems 1965-2000, which received the San Francisco Poetry Center's Book Award for 2001. His translation of Pentii Saarikoski's Trilogy received the 2004 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets. He was a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, two grants from The Fund for Poetry, and the Government of Finland's Distinguished Foreign Translator's Award.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
It Is the Love of Loving That Makes You the World's Betrothed
We who must, perhaps, die one day, shall declare man immortal on the very threshold of that instant.
— Saint-John Perse, Amers
"Anna Maria Serguine."
In sounding the i in the young woman's first name, Mario had held it, for the longest time, on a high, isolate note, thus giving the remainder of the syllables an air of abrupt and tender confidentiality.
She remained seated behind the steering wheel of her car. Mario took her hand and presented the long, ringless fingers to Emmanuelle, holding them on his own palm.
"Anna Maria," says the echo within Emmanuelle, as she tries to recapture the caressing thrill of the sound that had followed upon the Florentine roll of the r. Fragments of plainchant come to her mind, and with them, the scents of incense and melting wax. Panis angelicus. Young girls' knees under the decent cover of skirts. Delicious daydreams. O res mirabilis! And throats, prolonging the i-sounds, tongues, moistening them with their saliva, lips, opening, offering up their teeth. ... O salutaris hostia. ... With the light shining through a stained-glass window, from the other end of the world, Emmanuelle gilds this unfamiliar face, reproaching herself for her inability to transcend a schoolgirl's vocabulary in her response to its beauty:
"She's marvelous!" Emmanuelle whispers to herself. "And of a purity so sure of herself, so jubilant, so happy." It is almost breaking her heart. Such grace can only be a dream!
"It's up to you to make it real," says Mario, and she asks herself whether she hasn't, after all, been thinking out loud.
Anna Maria laughed, a peal of amusement so unembarrassed that Emmanuelle regained her composure. She decided to take the visitor's hand into her own.
"But not right now," Anna Maria said with a smile. "I mustn't be late for this ladies' tea party I'm going to."
Then she turned toward Mario, looking him over as if he had grown since she had last seen him. Her car was a very low-slung affair.
"I'm sure you'll find some good soul to take you back?"
"Via, cara, via!"
The wheels spun in the gravel, skidded off. No windshield, no mudguards, no top! Emmanuelle thought, anxiously looking up at the dark sky. Instantly unhappy, she watched the dream fading into the distance.
"And I had thought I knew the most beautiful creatures on this earth! Where did you ever find that archangel?"
"Oh, she's related to my family," Mario said. "Sometimes I have her drive me around."
Then, sounding curious:
"You find her interesting?"
Emmanuelle looked inscrutable.
"She'll be back tomorrow," he said.
After a moment's silence, he went on:
"I have to tell you this: you would have to get her more than just a little excited. But I'm sure that you'll be able to make her listen to reason."
"Me?" protested Emmanuelle. "But how do you think I could do such a thing? I'm just a beginner."
A twinge of spite entered her feelings. Was it perhaps that he, as far as he was concerned, regarded their affair as finished, after one single lesson?
They had walked across Emmanuelle's garden and terrace, and were now standing in the living room, in front of the large mobile sculpture constructed out of black metal. Mario breathed on its leaves and made them turn.
Emmanuelle said:
"But I'm sure you must have taken care of her education, yourself. What would I be able to add to that?"
"It isn't Anna Maria we're talking about. It's you."
He stopped to wait for a reply from her, but she only rearranged her features in an expression meant to look skeptical. So he went on, explaining:
"You see, the act that makes you new, is the one that you have to accomplish. There is no form that is yours to such a degree as the one that turns you into another being. But perhaps you are satisfied with what you are?"
Emmanuelle shook her great black mane.
"No, I'm not," she said, resolutely.
"Well, then. Do it." Mario sounded weary.
Nevertheless, he went on:
"As a woman, your love for yourself quite certainly is a fitting preoccupation. But you are a goddess, as well: therefore the well-being of others has to be an equal concern of yours."
She smiled, remembering the boardwalk, the temple, the night. He looked at her, with a questioning mien:
"And have you started enlightening your husband?"
She shook her head, looking half defiant, half ashamed.
"But wasn't he surprised by how long you were gone?"
"He was."
"What did you tell him?"
"I told him that you had taken me to an opium den."
"And he didn't give you a lecture?"
"He made love to me."
She read the question in her father confessor's eyes.
"Yes," she said, "I was thinking about it, all the time."
"And you liked it that way?"
Emmanuelle's face was eloquent: in her mind, she was reliving the tremendous new thrill she had experienced when her husband's semen had spurted forth to mingle with the sam-lo's.
"You'd like to do it again, right now," Mario observed.
"But I told you, I believe in your law."
And it was true. At this moment, she found herself unable even to remember what could have raised any doubts in her mind. In order to convince Mario, she repeated the maxim that he had caused her to formulate, the day before:
"All time spent in other pursuits but that of making love, embraced by an ever-increasing number of arms, is time lost."
Then she wanted to know:
"And what does Anna Maria believe she ought to spend her time on?"
"On the preparation for other times; on self-mortification in this world, in order to achieve endless ecstasy in the other."
Emmanuelle's voice sounded impartial:
"Well, that means that there are other values in her life, besides those of eroticism. She, too, has her gods and her laws."
Mario looked at her quizzically:
'What I'm waiting to see," he said, "is whether the dream of heaven is going to lead a daughter of man to damnation, or if the love of the real is going to win a soul, here on earth."
Emmanuelle puts her hand on his arm.
"But I'm such a miserable hostess. I haven't even offered you a drink, not even a cigarette."
She wants to guide him over to the bar, but he holds her back.
"I hope, to say the very least, that you're not wearing anything under those shorts?" he asks, looking roguish.
"Look again."
The shorts are so minimal that they're hardly visible beneath the coral-red sweater. Emmanuelle's black, curly pubic hair is peeking out both sides of the crotch.
Mario looks, but has still further comment to make:
"I don't like this kind of clothing. A skirt may be raised: it is a gate permitting entry. Those shorts are like a wall. I'll get bored with your legs, as long as I see them emerging from that little bag."
"I'll take them off," Emmanuelle says, good-humoredly. "But first you have to tell me what you would like to drink?"
He has another bee in his bonnet:
"Why stay in here? I like the trees in your garden."
"But it's going to rain!"
"It isn't raining yet."
He takes Emmanuelle where he wants to go: out to the wide ledge of flat rocks bordering the terrace. A lightning-bolt turns the spaces between the motionless, flamboyant flowers a vivid hue of green.
"Oh, Mario, look at that beautiful boy walking by in the street!"
"Yes, he's handsome all right."
"Why don't you call him over here and make love to him?"
"There is a time for everything under heaven, saith the Preacher: a time to run after the boys, and a time to let them run."
"I'm positive he never said anything like it. Listen, Mario, I'm thirsty!"
He crosses his arms, in a display of patience. She knows what he is waiting for. She shrugs, looking obstinate, and examines her naked thighs: naked up to the groin, where the edge of her shorts draws a red line across the skin. To expose oneself beyond that line is incompatible with dignity.
"Well, then?"
"Please, Mario, not out here! They can see us from the house across the street. Look!"
She points at a pair of curtains moving in one of the windows.
"You know these Siamese. There's always someone skulking around."
"But that's perfect!" Mario exclaims. "Didn't you tell me that you like people admiring your body?"
Emmanuelle's shamefaced look makes him smile. Then he gets going, once again.
"Remember: nothing that's discreet can be erotic. The erotic heroine is not unlike the chosen of God: she is the one who brings about strife and scandal. A masterpiece always scandalizes the world. What nakedness is it that hides itself in order to be naked? Your lechery makes little sense, if you draw the curtains of your bedroom on it: it won't liberate your neighbor from his ignorance, his shame, his fear. The important thing is not that you get naked, but that you are seen naked; not that you cry out with pleasure, but that you can be heard; not that you count your lovers, but that he can count them; not that your own eyes have been opened to the truth of loving love, but that that other one, who is still groping about amongst his own chimeras, and in his own night, may discover, by seeing you, that there is no other light, and see your gestures testify to the fact that there is no other beauty."
His voice assumes a more urgent tone:
"Every relapse into false shame will demoralize a multitude. Each time you start worrying about causing a scandal, think of those who secretly yearn for you to show them the way. Do not betray them. Don't make light of the hope they put in you, whether they know it or not! If out of timidity or doubt you should ever — yes, even just once — prevent the accomplishment of an erotic act, no future audacity or merit would ever make up for such backsliding."
He pauses to draw breath, and then, with an almost imperceptible note of disdain in his voice:
"Or is it propriety you're thinking about? Is it that you only want to do as others do — or that you want all others to act like you? Is it Emmanuelle you want to be ... or just anybody?"
"But surely I can respect the beliefs of my neighbors," she defends herself. "That doesn't mean that I share them, does it? And if they do not like my kinds of pleasure, why should I enjoy shocking them, or creating a scandal? It's no skin off my back to let them conduct their lives according to their own lights. Is it possible to live at all, without a little discretion, tolerance, politeness? What is wrong with letting those people persuade themselves that I really do think and act like them — society is made out of such conventions, compromises."
"If one behaves like the people across the street, one is the people across the street. Instead of changing the world, one merely becomes the reflection of what one would like to destroy."
Emmanuelle looks impressed. Mario hastens to add:
"Well, that's not by me, that's Jean Genet."
He continues in a gentler vein:
"As another playwright puts it: in the matter of love, too much isn't even enough. If you already have done well, it is necessary to do even better. You must constantly surpass yourself, as well as all others. You can not afford to have anyone match your achievement, much less allow him to transcend it. It is not enough to be exemplary, you have to be exemplary before anyone else."
Emmanuelle stares into the distance. She has nothing to say. She sits down on the low wall, folding her arms round her crossed legs and resting her chin on the double pommel of her knees. After a while, she asks, sounding tense, almost hostile:
"And why is it that I have to do all that? Why me?"
"Why you? Because you're capable of doing it. As others are able to solve equations, to write symphonies, your genius lies in physical love and beauty. Or let's put it this way: you become what you can do. Surely you don't want to live out your life without making some mark on the world?"
"But I'm only nineteen years old! I'm not about to end my life...."
"Do you have to wait any longer to even begin to live? Are you just a little kid? It's true, I'm telling you to be heroic. But the world needs that. Your species demands it from you."
"My species?"
"Yes, indeed: that ancient amino acid, that ancient amoeba, that ancient tarsier, that unbelievable that has to be believed — always destined to turn into something else. Animal? Vertebrate? Mammal? Primate? Hominid? Homo? Homo sapiens? Outdated labels, all of them! The forerunner of those to come: man of space-time, man of boundless thought-power, man of multiple bodies and a single spirit, man, the creator and modifier of men, always threatened by his own creatures, and bleeding, stigmatized, by his errors and his mysteries. Don't you want to help him?"
"So if I take my shorts off, that's helping him?"
"What use is it to perpetuate illusion, swindles, phobias? To perpetuate modesty?"
"Listen, do you really believe that it's important, for past and future mankind, whether one bares one's pubis or keeps it covered?"
"The future depends on your powers of imagination, on your courage. Not on your fidelity to old customs. What once was the wisdom of the caves may have become our idiocy. Let's take modesty: is that an innate virtue, a positive or negative value for all time? As a matter of fact, it is nothing of the sort. Originally, a sound notion, a smart idea, fitting and salutary: but today, a mere pretense, a sophism, senseless, a false jewel of absurdity, a refuge of iniquity, a vessel of perversion...."
"You know very well that I'm no prude. And I find your litanies quite ravishing. But is it necessary to take all that so seriously?"
"Man came down into the underbrush, still holding on to the saving lianas hanging from the branches. He was scared of the claws and teeth of the competition, and spent more time in climbing, jumping, hopping about on the ground among the thorns and flints than in caressing his females in the saline humidity of his caves. And the first one who got the idea to protect those organs on which the creation and number of his progeny depended, true, he rendered the species a service. If he hadn't managed to turn this simple precaution into an ethical law, a ritual, a matter of elegance, a charm, who knows if he would have been able to impose his supremacy on the rest of creation? What was to become bigotry initially was a kind of biological clairvoyance: it was an initiative in the direction of evolution, a good thing, in the most moral sense."
Mario sits down, facing Emmanuelle:
"Then, later, the invention of clothing saved the species from perishing in the great freeze."
With an irritated gesture, he pinches the material of his shirt, now lightly stained with perspiration:
"But now, look! The reindeer have retreated, the great glaciers have melted away. Nevertheless we go on disguising ourselves, just because it would be bad to go naked!"
A dramatic sigh. Then:
"Our resting places are covered with velvet, our gardens are lovely lawns. Our domestic animals have no armor, no fangs. But we are still afraid something might hurt our genitals. Its function accomplished, its true meaning forgotten, the pair of panties has become sacred. And you're asking me why it is necessary to rid oneself of it, as urgently as if it were Deianira's tunic? Clinging to a myth that has outlived its purpose is bound to stultify mankind. The energy wasted in the service of a mere superstition saps our creative powers."
Mario's face brightens, as he shifts gears:
"In fact, the task the ancient Greeks felt to be the most urgent one, once they'd gotten it into their heads to civilize us, was: to take their clothes off! In the beginning, still harking back to the Stone Age, they went on concealing their phalloi — but once the age of reason and high culture began, their statuary became nude. If those great warriors and philosophers hadn't realized, in time, how ridiculous their jockstraps were, we might still be barbarians, to this day."
There is a sly gleam in the Italian's eyes.
"And don't you believe that the Dorian ephebes chose to compete in their pentathlons with nothing on only because it granted them maximal freedom of movement! Surely their prime intention was to show off their beauty to their admirers, who then went on to immortalize them. In the gymnasium, the statue of Eros stood next to that of Pallas Athena, and it was at his feet that man achieved his first insights into philosophy."
For a moment, Mario seems lost in reverie about an epoch which Emmanuelle knows he would have liked to live in. Then he goes on, emphasizing his words with sweeping gestures:
"What I've just said about the history of modesty goes just as well for the other sexual taboos. Your peers would heap such immense opprobrium on you if you were to admit, openly, that you just love to feel a male member entering your mouth and taking its pleasure there, right to the very end! That you delight in the caresses your own fingers provide you, every day! And that you take pleasure in sharing your bed with other bodies besides your husband's! Once upon a time, all those taboos made sense. When it was man's task to populate the planet, wasting sperm didn't make much sense, and it seemed an excellent idea to proclaim masturbation a sin. Now that the proliferation of human beings has become a menace, men should be forbidden the practice of coming inside the female vagina: it ought to be regarded a virtue to spill one's semen only in those places where there is no risk of fertilizing an ovum. Once that is recognized, the husband's archaic fear that his wife might bear another man's child loses its raison d'être — even more so since we can now rely on our arts of contraception, in addition to those of our lips and tongues and fingers. It's surely ridiculous, in this century, and offensive to the intelligence, to regard the search for sensual pleasure outside of the reproductory mechanism as in any sense blameworthy — and it's time, too, for us men to recognize our wives' taste for new penises as both inoffensive and legitimate."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Emmanuelle II"
by .
Copyright © 1968 Le Terrain Vague, Paris.
Excerpted by permission of Grove Atlantic, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
1 It Is the Love of Loving That Makes You the World's Betrothed,
2 The Invitation,
3 The Battle of Eve,
4 The Night of Maligâth,
5 The Hetairion,
6 To Ariane's Happiness,
7 The Age of Reason,
8 Deus Escreve Direito Por Linhas Tortas,
9 The Birds Unmasked,
10 The Noblest Talent,
11 The Glass House,
12 Her Bare Legs on Your Fiery Beaches,