Good for a giggle
SIMON RAVEN
Aubrey Beardsley's Erotic Universe with an introduction and illustrations selected by Derek Stanford (Four Square 9s 6d)
The First Masochist a life of Count Leopold von Sacher-Masoch by James Cleugh (Anthony Blond 42s) Derek Stanford, in his introduction to Aubrey Beardsley's Erotic Universe, quotes with appro-
val this dictum from Arthur Symons: 'He [Beardsley] expresses evil with an intensity which lifted it into a .region almost of asceticism.' Mr Stanford then expands on the thought. Beardsley, he explains, was a sick man who expressed through his erotic draw-
ings a desire for life. However, this desire was
qualified by melancholy and twisted by certain obsessions, these latter being concentrated on the satanic and the hermaphroditic, or, less
notably, on the sadistic and the bestial. Pic- torial indulgence in these obsessions, Mr Stan-
ford suggests, had the final effect of purging the artist, 'till, drained of them, he made a holy death.'
This may well be so; today, however, Beardsley's visions of evil are no longer cathartic. If you examine the reproductions which make up most of this handy little volume, you will be neither shocked nor purged: you will be, by turns, amused, charmed
and mildly irritated; you will often be im- pressed by the sheer cleverness of the thing; you
will occasionally be brushed by the ghost of sexual excitement; but, above all, you will be moved . . . to giggle. This is a perfectly
legitimate reaction, as far as it goes, and one which • reflects no discredit on the artist: for, as Mr Stanford points out in a perceptive pas- sage of his introduction, Aubrey Beardsley. whatever his aesthetic intentions and whatever his obsessions or his sufferings, was always a great joker.
The jokes are either straight, as in the porno- graphic illustrations to The Lysistrata (two of which are reproduced here); or, more com- monly and more to Mr Stanford's taste. the are indirect, being just perceptibly suggested by a line, a fold, a twist of someone's eyes or fingers. Thus in one plate a pensive bm clasping his hands together is transformed.
a fleck of hair and the slight droop of one eyelid, into the very image of sexual delin- quency. Direct or indirect, there are joke, for every conceivable taste: lavatory jokes, mastur- bation jokes, impotence and whipping joke' premature orgasm and voyeur jokes, and even jokes about Mummy. The one thing there definitely is not, to the modern eye, is evil. Messalina herself becomes comic—no longer 3 brooding figure of lust but a cross old w.omarl who hasn't had her money's, worth from her gigolo. If the years have reduced Aubrey Beard,le% to a jolly titter, they have reduced Leopold von Sacher-Masoch to a flat absurdity. bow' Cleugh's The First Masochist is the first 'full biography' (blurb) of Sacher-Masoch in English, and one entirely sees why no one else has bothered. Poor Mr Cleugh does his level best to win our serious regard for his subiect: Sacher-Masoch, we are told, was a fond father. an- idealist, a lover of humanity, and a prodigi' crusty hard worker who produced ninety-odd novels and a 'masterpiece' in Venus in Furs. But it is all to no avail. Try as one may, one simply cannot keep a straight face when pre- sented with a man whose abiding pleasure was to be whipped while. he watched his own cuckolding.
To make matters worse, the monotony of this taste and the apparent paucity of other material (despite an impressive bibliography) compel Mr Cleugh to pad. Hence we are given huge quo- tations from the 'masterpiece,' which is revealed as even sillier and duller than I remembered it. Sacher-Masoch's name has provided a useful term of sexual reference: best to leave it at that.
Previous page
