Nothing is as amusing to read as a diatribe against kissing in a stupidly scientific journal (for one of science’s properties is to increase human stupidity). Every paradox is unleashed. There are persons who will calmly inform you that kissing is an unhygienic practice. I am quite willing to believe it; but it does not bother me, nor, I suppose, almost anyone else. In truth, everything is unhygienic; everything is unclean, even life itself; but some things are agreeably unclean and others disagreeably unclean. To live according to the precepts of this imbecile science, one must avoid the first as much as the second. Truly, one would do better to cleave to the old common notion of cleanliness, which shades into the notion of decency, while, in all other things, indulging bravely in one’s instincts. That is what makes man civilized; and that is what he will always do as he mocks scientific pedagogues, who, in mentality, are very like of one of Molière’s medical men. Lovers kiss on the lips and a professor of hygiene pops up: ‘Poor things! What are you doing? Don’t you know that saliva contains some microbe or other, not to mention these others that are even more dangerous? Look but don’t touch, especially not with the lips. Science will protect you.’ I do not believe the day will come when lovers, frightened and obedient, will turn from this pleasure. ‘But men are so stupid and so frightened!’ Not to that extent, no. Lovers will always answer: ‘Our love is stronger than fear. Our desire is stronger than life.’ And thus, sensibility, which created civilization, will protect it from the tyranny of dogmatic scientism.
Wednesday 7 June 2023
Remy de Gourmont, ‘Horses and Women’ (1921)
Apparently, the other day, a horse-dealer took his client for a ride and sold him a horse with a gutta-percha hoof. The horse-dealer is famous for his trickery. There is no horse-sickness he does not know how to disguise, no coat he cannot imitate, no gait he cannot force on a beast. Like woman, the horse is generally a counterfeit animal. We force him into the hypocrisy that woman forces herself into in order to trick man, her perpetual desire and perpetual enemy. So, somewhere or other, there is sure to be a saying of this sort: ‘Trust in neither horse nor woman.’ The horse no longer interests us much, having fallen out of fashion; but woman is always in fashion. The dexterity of horse-dealers notwithstanding, a horse is sold naked: there is a limit to his trickery; but to the trickery of woman, who sells herself clothed, there is no limit. An almost entirely artificial woman can inflame the covetousness of the connoisseur, not least because a woman made up by dressmakers and hairdressers, dentists and corset-makers almost always offers a fairer prospect than a natural woman. Artificiality goes deeper than the skin: wigs are not only for the head! How many lovers have caressed magnificent blonde tresses not long dead on the head of a hospitalized phthisic? How many lovers have been troubled by the finely-wrought rhythm of a breast they have seen before, but mute, then, in the rubber-merchant’s window? Her modesty, her ferocious modesty, compounds an artificial woman’s charm. Undressing, she defends herself despairingly. She is not one to let her gutta-percha slip like the poor, innocent horse!