Those who conceal their sexuality despise their innate abilities
without ever having risen above them. Though they reject human
mortality, they arc incapable of liberating themselves from the
lugubrious cycle of life - made possible and guaranteed by the genitals
- to achieve the immortality of the mythical gods. And though they have
created the illusion of their own immortality, thereby ridding their
behavior and even their psyche of any sexual character, they will never
eliminate the corporeal proof of their animality. The body will
continue to demonstrate mortality as the fate of all humans. It is for
this reason that any reference to human animality so gravely affects
those who dream of its antithesis. They take offense not only at any
mention of animality in life, but in science, literature, and the arts
as well, as this would disturb their reveries by undermining their
rationalist airs and social pretensions. By imposing acts both
excremental and sexual on their perception, their superhuman fantasies
are destroyed, laying bare the vanity of their efforts to free
themselves from the power of nature, which has, in assuming mortality,
equipped them with a sex and an irrepressible need to satisfy its
hunger.
There is nothing as intensely dispiriting for those who have sublimated
the substance of the body than their animality spontaneously making its
presence felt. Just consider how the signs of uncontrollable shits
deject the hero during a triumphal campaign, or how painfully the
nabobs bear their sexual appetites towards their despised inferiors.
Nothing but the body pulls these haughty folk back to animality,
disillusioning their superhuman self-confidence. The bodily processes
they are unable to shake free of have become their Achilles heel, whose
sensitivity has been superbly exposed by pornophiles.
The nature of pornophilia is at heart militant and sadistic. Through
their activities pornophiles attack any mode of non-animality used by
people to elevate themselves over pornophiles. In pointing to human
nature, they sweep away all pretensions of human inequality while at
the same time proceeding from a new criterion: the creation of new
castes distinguished not by social standing but by vital potency.
Pornophilia thus collapses the illusions the exalted harbor of their
divine nature while exposing their physical decrepitude, the
inferiority that they have brought upon themselves through their
contempt for the body. The body is the last argument of those who have
been unjustly neglected and ignored; it demonstrates beyond debate the
groundlessness of all social distinctions in comparison to the might of
nature. With the body pornophiles not only abolish social barriers,
through the vigor of the non-incapacitated body they also elevate
themselves above those who scorn them in return. From this perspective
pornophilia could, above all, serve as a potent weapon for the socially
weak, the materially and culturally oppressed, who might, in this
context at least, assert their strength and significance through the
potency of their undegenerate body. It is therefore understandable that
those who succumb to pornophilia are of a more revolutionary bent than
those mired in the prejudices of the moribund bourgeoisie.
Pornophiles use sadistic methods to attack the inflated psyches of the
ruling peacocks. Finding their dreams frustrated, those thus attacked
counter in like manner with a sadistically motivated prudishness, a
puritanical persecution of the "depraved". One can discover for oneself
the reason for the emergence of pornophilia: When in the company of
these flatulent snobs one will have the overwhelming urge to disrupt
their prevailing idiotic idyll by roaring "shit, piss, fuck" and so
forth.
The primal reason for employing obscenity cannot be disguised even in
the primitive expression of those barbarians who to this day draw the
familiar diamond-shaped pattern and phallus on the walls of a
metropolis. If the sadistic impulse of their displays is not directed
at the socially conceited, it is aimed at women, at their inferior,
memberless sexual organ, threatened with punishment by the penises
represented in colossal drawings and sculptures. Present-day
pornophilia - whose psychological value lies in the manifestation of
obscene works and expression, not in their anxious concealment - has,
however, become a weapon even against those of the same sex,
unjustifiably inflated though they might be. In other words, it tends
towards misanthropy rather than misogyny.
Inasmuch as the biological consequences of one´s sex ultimately
adversely affects pornophiles as well - as even they, too, prefer to
deny their mortality - the predilection towards pornophilia assumes a
particular characteristic that camouflages the general unpleasantness
of being reminded of one´s animality. In this specific context, a work
of obscenity may serve as a surrogate to sexual gratification, as a
direct sexual charge. If of an artistic nature, it retains its
militancy, albeit in an especial sense. The sadistic character of
pornophilic works, particularly those that are works of art, is of
course usually latent, hidden in the authors subconscious, without it
ever reaching the level of consciousness proper; a similar meaning is
apparent in the vehement aversion puritans show towards it. The true
motives for their actions are as unknown to pornophiles as they are to
puritans, and they are therefore erroneously interpreted. The sadism
evident in pornophilic works naturally should not in any way impact on
its aesthetic evaluation, and as a drive it isn´t any more peverse
than the impetus to reproduce the obligatory genres.
In pornophilic works of art the sex is liberated from its biological
function. Interpreted purely in terms of pleasure without its
reproductive consequences, sex does not attack the animality of the
conceited per se but the relative inferiority of their animality. The
artist does not provoke the puritan for his transience, his mortality,
which the artist suffers as well, but for his impotence, his sexual
inadequacy, which he has brought on himself by leaving his sexus to
degenerate through a foolish desire for superhumanness. By excluding
the biological aspects of sex and excrementation from its content,
pornophilic art does not conceal the sadistic nature of its
unpretentious obscenity; rather, it merely curtails the manner in which
its militancy is projected. In pornophilically motivated art,
therefore, the conceited are being combatted through sex´s pleasure
principle instead of through its biological purpose- in other words,
what this art primarily attacks is imperfect humanity, not the
imperfect divinity of the conceited. One could ridicule the desire for
immortality for its baneful consequences alone, i.e., sexual
degeneracy. Thus art mitigates the sadism of pornophilia only in its
exploitation of sex´s biological function, which is as unpleaant to
pornophiles as it is to pornophobes.
Yet pornophilic tendencies are found even in those who are targeted;
they are particularly fond of it as kitsch, the purpose of which is
sexual titillation. This mode of trash pornophilia completely
suppresses the sadistic impulses found in pornophilic art. As a result
pornophilia is rendered accessible precisely to that caste of people
against whom it is essentially directed. Pornophilia has a corrupting
influence solely on those puritans who persecute its militancy and
sadism; they have imputed to it the same meaning as their pornographic
literature and pictures carefully hidden away in closed drawers until
required for that occasional arousal (which as a rule their shabby
wives can no longer produce). The only thing this sort of trash
pornophilia does not need is a public, in fact, it resists one as any
number of people, and not only puritans, find it difficult to reach
orgasm in the presence of others.
Divesting ourselves of all prejudices, we should evaluate pornophilic
works strictly on their artistic value. If anyone should think that
obscene content in itself detracts from the value of a work of art,
then we might just as well reject Strindberg´s or Tolstoy´s art for its
misogyny. Pornophilia cannot be reproached for being pathological as it
is a disease of a similar order to any other manifestation of culture,
no different even than the sadistic puritanism of its opponents. If
pornophilia can be considered a work of art, it is as much a cultural
phenomenon as "humanitarian" art, and if it limits itself purely to
expressing the libido without any connection to other cultural or
economic values, then it is no more neurotic than the trite expressions
of compassion; its pathological manifestations in erotomania and
coprophilia are similar to the anthropophilia evident in the masochism
of martyrs. Our humanity, culture, and civilization are nothing more
than a useful way to utilize neurotic conflicts. So until our
pathologies give rise to works of value we simply cannot be taken to
task for having this nature. The sublimation of the neurotic libido is
creative, while the normal libido leads only to playfulness. Both
libidos, therefore, participate in the creative process that is
motivated by obscenity. The neurotic libido determines the work´s
content while the normal libido gives it its mode or form. If the
normal libido looks for a surrogate to instant gratification, it will
use obscenity to create kitsch, but if its demands are sublimated, then
the result is art.
The titillating, kitchified mode of pornophilic themes has no other
value and function than that of artificial dolls designed for onanism
(ipsatio). Such works are limited to the sexual act in and of itself
and are incapable of disengaging from the atmosphere of the recess
without ceasing to perform their function, which is founded on the
illusion of a real partner and coitus. On the other hand, the artist
whose work is not bound to reality sees no need to have naked girls
urinate into a chamber pot when he could offer them an alpine valley
instead. An ejaculation need not become a yellow stain on the bedding -
it can be transformed into a bolt of lightning and used to cleave a
Gothic cathedral. A lovers´ bed can be replaced by the cosmos and the
globe inserted under a woman´s buttocks. And from her pudenda the
artist then has a sun emerging, the most marvelous of miscarriages.
The artist not bound by the rational coordination of perceptions,
actual proportionality and syntax releases the sexual organ from its
biological function of procreation, which is perhaps too painfully
evoked by pornographic kitsch when its titillating function ceases
through the orgasm it has produced. Artistic pornophilia can never be
glossed by irony and cynicism as real or reproductive sexuality stuck
to the bed sheets.
While a different world might have long ago achieved a transvaluation
of art, the elaboration of sexuality has been impeded by the censorship
of puritans who are incensed by obscene content insofar as it portrays
healthy sex, whereas their sexuality is pitifully derelict under their
flies. They are aware, even if unconsciously, of their sexual
inferiority, and as their rumps are deformed by hemorrhoids as well,
they envy the formidable penises and clean backsides of others. What
galls them to a far greater extent than pornophilic kitsch are works of
art of obscene content, for here the artist has extended the reign of
his sexuality over the entire world. Pornophilic kitsch keeps to the
recess. The artist, on the other hand, has expanded throughout the
world. He pisses a sea, shits a Himalayas, gives birth to cities,
masturbates factory chimneys, etc. Nothing is sacred to him, and the
associations he makes are, above all, sexual.
His pansexuality carries a double meaning: the first attacks puritan
impotence and the second frees sex from its procreative function. Here
sex is comprehended in a purely aesthetic sense, voluptuously. The
artist´s pleasure, facilitated by the libido, is not dampened by common
veracity. The erotic scenes thus created do not stand or fall through
an oppressive banality, although the banality and insipidness of sexual
gratification cannot be eliminated by perverse infatuations. These,
too, are dull and banal. The libido needs a space to play in, a space
that diverts the senses from the dismal postcoital condition and deters
those rational speculations poisoning one´s pleasure. Our eroticism
must be rid of its depressing connection to plump wives and conjugal
beds under which a chamber pot is lurking.
Nevertheless, as poetry is the art of finding the exotic in the
mundane, there is no need to discard our inventory of the banal, only
banal situations. This can be achieved only through a subjective
evaluation of things and actions, liberating them from their customary
sequencing. Poetry negates reality´s biological and economic meaning;
annulling its rationalist context, it creates a new syntax that gives
the old content new meaning, a new narrative. In this way the vapid,
the graceless, becomes the exceptional, the emotive. Poetry is the art
of discovering mundane life´s emotive perspective. The art of living is
the art of where and when to have a cup of black coffee, or in the
sexual arts, where and when to have an orgasm. If puritans would like
to call this a disease, then we shall help them. It is simply a matter
of being partial to situations.
From the world of dreams and hallucinations the modern artist enters
the world of the most demented lunatics who are exhausted by the
wayward adventure into which their reason has led them. Having
renounced his reason, the artist is satisfied with the adventure that
has freed his libido by liberating his senses. The adventure of reason,
of rationality, is pathologically closed off by a psychosis that
negates the intellect and by an autism that exempts one from rationally
evaluating one´s intuitions and behavior. The freed libido may
autonomously reveal itself during this pathological state. Psychosis
puts an end to the ravages of neurosis through negation, by gradually
inhibiting menial and bodily functions. If psychosis is limited only to
the negation of reason and does not inhibit perception, movement, and
so on, then the natural channels for our emotional, aesthetic, and
irrational actions and perceptions will eventually surface.
The world the mad have entered through a numbness of mind the artist
has attained through a soundness of mind, and has thereby adopted a
natural, purely hedonistic stance towards the real possibilities of
what might be utilized for his art. If ancient art is analogous to
neurosis, then modern art is analogous to the creations of psychosis.
The artist of today has emerged from the world of dreams,
hallucinations, alcoholic deliriums, and violent, sweat-soaked,
symbolic phantasms to a valuation that is unaffected and purely
emotive, and a perception of the real that spontaneously creates
phantasms of the kind ancient art could scarcely imagine. Modern poetry
has magically fanned out over all landscapes like the dreamlike
atmosphere of an atelier. It has enabled the artist to disregard the
socio-economic values of life in favor of a thought and perception that
are solely focused on pleasure. The liberated senses and psyche are
thus able to see the entire world in its full emotive nature,
evanescent though this might be. Pornophilia as a work of art offers
the pleasures of life far removed from pedestrian concerns. Having
prudently rid our animality of its bleak vision, the artist emancipates
the acts of the body from their biological purpose, leading us to revel
in delight in a manner that is only allowed us by nature. Asceticism,
any sort of renunciation of our sexuality, is indefensible. As each
person comes into the world at the end of an umbilical cord only
inevitably to become dust, we should take pleasure from everything our
abilities allow us.
Postface to Emilie Comes to Me in a Dream (1933) by Jindrich Styrský,
published in Edition 69 (Prague: Twisted Spoon Press, 2004, pp.
109 - 119, transl. by Jed Slast.)
