Instant Ithyphallic
Under the Hill. By Aubrey Beardsley. Completed by John Glassco. (Olympia Press, Its. 6d.) IN the library at my college was a copy, yellow with age and sweat, of a privately printed edition of Aubrey Beardsley's 'Venus and Tannhiiuser,' otherwise entitled Under the Hill. This volume was my first introduction to pure pornography. It told how Tannhiiuser came to the Venusberg, where, in the intervals between making more or less straight love to Venus, he either witnessed or took part in every variation of sexual practice ever dreamed of by the pundits in Vienna.
Since the authorities were liberal, we were allowed to take the book out of the library when- ever we wanted; and every now and again we would have little parties at which we read each other chosen passages. But despite the huge popu- larity of these gatherings, we were sniffy and ungracious. Witty, we said, and even polymath; but lifeless, artificial, the masturbatory fantasies of a brilliant schoolboy. And besides, there was this shocking assumption of Beardsley's that the lower orders were simply an enormous brothel for his entertainment.
The whole thing, we said with mounting in- dignation, was an insult—to instinct, to intelli- gence, to compassion. 'Yes indeed,' said one honest fellow on a memorable occasion; 'but it's deliciously horny, and that's why we're all here.' There was the resentful silence which always follows the release of an unwelcome truth. 'Coarse,' insensitive,"vulgar,' we all began to mutter : 'we shan't ask him again.'
And now, after all these years, comes the Olympia Press paperback. The original text broke off, probably because Beardsley was fed up, at page 71 as reckoned in this edition; so John Glassco has provided sixty-odd more pages of fun and frolic to make up our money's worth. But by page 71 Beardsley has been through just about everything, so what is the point? Further- more, Mr Glassco, despite a gift for pastiche, lacks the sexual sleight of hand by which Beardsley achieved his effects. Instead of using crude and tedious physical descriptions, Beards- ley would conjure, in a mere three words, an innuendo so swift and subtle that it instan- taneously by-passes any posssible resistance. One second you're just reading and the next you're violently excited—just like that.
This is the essence of good pornography; it is what our tactless guest meant by 'horny': and if we hadn't been such horrible little prigs we should all have owned up to our pleasure on the spot—as I for one am happy to do now.
SIMON RAVEN
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