In writing of D.H. Lawrence and theories of sexual redemption, Leithart delivers an interesting topic and well said. While Emeth (from whom I received notice of the article) focused on C.S. Lewis's point that you cannot approach with neutrality the more intimate processes and pieces of the body (concluding that in every description of said functions, one must either be childish, quaint, crass, or academically detatched), I will focus on something else in the article. Though I'm not quite certain that Lewis is correct (in fact, I think he's rather mistaken, but that's neither here nor there).
No, I think I will take the opportunity to quibble with the article's conclusion:
The result of Lawrence's evangelism [in the favour of the eff-word] has, of course, been less than redemptive. Instead of consecrating "f—–" and surrounding it with the whole aura of connotations associated with passionate, tender sexual love, it has demeaned all discourse about sex. It still brings with it the "whole atmosphere of the slum"; it can enter "polite society," but the result will be to transform the latter into a slum. [note the the eff-word was edited from Leithart's original in order not to offend the more sensitive of our readers.]
And here then is my point of disagreement, that bringing formerly obscene words into "polite society" can be done, but that the result will be to transform the polite society into a slum. I don’t think that the entrance of such words into "polite" society necessarily demeans that society. Instead, I think it renders such culture as "less polite."
I think there is a gulf of difference between polite society and the society of the slum; and within the expanse of that gulf are any number of bedposts upon which one might hang his hat. The introduction to polite society of a word that seeks to realize and recognize "the bodiliness, the messiness, of actual intercourse" wouldn’t be enough to damn the society, but it wouldn't help the society to remain "polite" either.
The thing is, what’s so great about polite? Time and place for it, sure. But really, all we mean when we speak of polite society is a society that clothes itself in lies, half-truths, and fabrications. It paints itself into an unrealistic corner, a facade that ends up fooling, well, most of its participants.
As believers, we value both truth and modesty. We take on our lives in a manner that exalts in truth and glories in honesty. But still, we do not rejoice in parading our inadequacies, in boasting in the effects of the fall. We are caught in between these mandates.
On the one hand, we should desire greater truth in advertising, less abstraction in our descriptions of the body and life. We should hope to be a frank people. Yet on the other, we sojourn in an old and diseased creation, one in which both body and life are the subject of taboo. It is for the sake of a crass and vulgar kingdom that we demure, that we speak so softly and with so little colour; for they would never understand. In their skewed reason, they would see us flaunt their taboos and believe us to be the unrighteous. It is for them and for our witness to them of the reality that subsumes us that we hedge a little and say, "I make love to my wife."
[NOTE: this posts masthead features Ken and Barbie doing what kids everywhere make them do.]
Labels: literature, philology, theory
11 fruitless beatings
