The Color of Summer: or The New Garden of Earthly Delights (48 page)

M
y dear friends. Before I begin this lecture I wish to inform you that if I have decided to take my leave for a few hours from the realm of Proserpine where I have the good fortune not only to taste pleasures both Luciferian and Christian but also to enjoy the company of my mother and my wife, María Luisa Bautista—a
woman whose life, like mine, was snuffed out by Fifo—Oh yes, I know that this denunciation might cost me my life, but since I have none, I don’t give a fig whether I lose it or not—the reason for my decision is not that I dare not disobey the order of a fifth-rate dictator and his velvety intrigues or defy his Coryphaei with their membranous wings and sinister designs. No, I have come here, first, because I did not wish to miss the opportunity to witness this night on which so many heretofore unimagined things were to take place; second, because I wished to know in person Madame Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda and Messieurs Juan Clemente Zenea and André Bréton, all reborn from the dead—as have been others—for this celebration; and third, because my lecture for you tonight is worthy of the raising of a dead man. I am that dead man, eager to see the friends who have not yet descended into the shadowy Moira . . . and now, vade retro to all those official devils, sprites, and demons who, filling the hall, writhe now in their seats or hide behind the faux-Japanese vases—I shall begin my reading.

For many years, an enigma as mysterious as the oracle at Delphi and the visage of the Sphynx, and as tempting as a Roman bath, has been for me an obsession during my most lucid moments. That enigma, which I have been able to unravel only in the calm of Hecate’s mansion, can be summed up in the following phrase
:
HAD THAT YOUNG FLORENTINE GIOVANOTTO WHO POSED FOR MICHELANGELO
’
S DAVID JUST EJACULATED
,
OR HAD HE NOT
?
This
question has obsessed scholars, specialists, and simple dilettantes of the dolce stile nuovo for hundreds of years.

To answer it, let us turn first to the Egyptians, whose prehistoric imagery was invariably phallic, and therefore germinative. In Egypt, the god of creation is portrayed in profile and wearing a purse; were he not, his potent phallus would dominate the entire fresco, and therefore it would no longer be so fresh a fresco, strictly speaking, but would become a hot-blooded relief. And then let us journey to the age of the harmonious Greeks, who venerated the triumphant phallus so inordinately, and yet so fittingly, that the erect male member was a god, the god Priapus, who rules our destinies to this day. Finally, employing as a springboard those ever-throbbing phalluses, let us leap into the heart of Christianity, to examine the era with none of the small-town piety that is customary in this case—that is, we shall put aside the sanctimoniousness of the Council of Trent and the histories of that Isabel the Catholic who was led by a lack of the fruit of Adam (we all know that Ferdinand was impotent) to commit atrocities against all those who worshiped the penetrant stalk whose nectar sweetens all things. Cock, ladies and gentlemen, to say it with Xenophontian clarity, or, if you prefer, the clarity of midday, as González de la Solana might put it.—Our theme shall be cock.

Because, dear friends, I would ask you to consider: What is Christianity and its greatest symbol, Christ our Lord, but the secret and therefore sacred worship of that corpus, ne’er infused by the grace of God, which is the phallus Nike? We are moved by Christ because he has a phallus, and His body, human by reason of that phallus, hangs naked on the Cross, covered with an improvised wrapping which points to, rather than covers, the divine prepuce. The fragrance of that towel (a gift no doubt from the Magdalene), the fragrance of Christian balls and but-twipe, has Proustian reverberation. Here, the fragrance of that towel has the same power as that other madeleine (for it is Magdalenes of all types that we are discussing) exercised upon the young Proust when it brought back his entire erotic past, so that in the shadow of its savor and odor he might erect his magnum opus, A la recherche du temps perdu. The same power, yet different—for that brief Christian girdle, that towel which is the annunciation of that which is, so to speak, beneath the belt, yields up to us not some mere novel, but all of Western culture. The slender, naked body encircled by a severe band of cloth—that image which has obsessed so many, which has reigned on beaches, at swimming holes, at thermal baths, in films, and upon crucifixes is, without a doubt, the summa of the Christian tradition. Every young man with a towel laid across his groin, hiding yet promising the Adamic fruit, is a replica of Christ. The imago phallico, which has dominated virtually all pre- and post-Hellenic civilizations, is also the index, indicator, and pointer of our own. A young man thirty-three years old preaches love to the ecstatic apostles with a passion that makes his loincloth tremble. That is why—doubt it not, my friends—St. John, at the Last Supper, knowing that his Lord was about to leave him, could bear it no longer, and in the presence of the rest of the disciples fell to his knees before his Master’s legs and under the tablecloth ingurgitated the serpent divine. Meanwhile, the Master was delivering a holy, venerable sermon—a double explosion of life to a single rhythm. That is why we, the devout, bow down to every young man (in allusion to Christ Himself) who modestly but irresistibly hides under a small knotted towel his pink, or bronze, or sable balls. . . . Hosanna! Hosanna! The divine dart, the shaft of life, shall always be there, before out emotion-stirred eyes. Now we know that the Gordian knot of our lives (that compulsive tragedy) can be cut if we but stretch out our arms and unwrap that towel under which lies the sweet, divine—yet human—Lestrigon. No matter who it is that wears the towel, he is part of the harmony of the spheres. In the delectation of that Lestrigon, in the arrow wounds it gives us, lie our redemption and our peace. To be penetrated by that dart—it burns us, and in burning heals us. That penetration may be a metaphoric hypostasis, yet it must be deep. The delight of believing oneself, feeling oneself, my friends, nailed by that arrow, penetrated, transverberated—that delight is the secret correlative of the holy act. Arrow, spear, pallium, candle, musket—all are priapic symbols which, as factotums, make the skin and backside tingle and bring on spasms of Christian faith and devotion. And so the spear that pricks the side of Our Lord, qua penetrant spear, imago of the great and yearned-for dart of flesh, brings on, under the towel He wore, a slight final temblor. At the exultation inspired by the imago, there springs forth the toconema. And with thanksgiving we receive the final arrow wounds that bring on the final shudder.

Let us enter the Scuola Grande di San Rocco (a place which the orders of that wretch Fifo have prevented me from ever entering) and observe, with the blossoming-forth of a night-slug and the voracity of a Tibetan daisy, the portrait of St. Sebastian painted by Tintoretto. As with every true St. Sebastian, the young body of the saint (like some pre-Attic discus-thrower) is naked, his formidable groin covered by a peremptory loincloth. But look how that cloth rises as the arrows penetrate the flesh. Two concurrent events make the Tuscan-fleshed and therefore irresistible saint (or the model for him), as he is pierced by the arrows, become aroused. First wonder, to a Rimbaudian thrumming of the dice upon the drumhead: the penetrant arrows (from the Latin penis erectum) produce in the man who receives them a sweet, voluptuous stinging sensation like that felt by the white mouse upon being bitten by a bear cub on the islands of Terranova. Second drumroll: we must not forget that the lad who poses for the arrow-pierced saint was a beautiful naked giovanotto standing under the voracious gaze of his Master. The fact of knowing oneself chosen and painted by Tintoretto—summa Gloria, my dear friends! Do not these things, then, justify in that naked youth the proud homage of the glorious erection of his phallus? I am certain that on more than one occasion Tintoretto had to interrupt his work at the easel, as all the Greek and Roman masters did, to deliver a veritable tongue-lashing on account of the undiplomatic interruptions of that capitoline promontory. Although the giovanotto no doubt was often pacified by the painter, we can see in the finished work the remnants of a Tower of Pisa swaddled in rags and protruding from the groin of the arrow-riddled youth. The realism of Life (that supreme delectation of unreality) emerges, as always, even at the very moment of our Death. St. Augustine erred, then, in complaining of the tragedy (the temptation) experienced by the Florentine masters when their models, upon being looked upon by the masters, were pricked by the angel of antsiness—for none of those dominics of wisdom tossed their inkstands, or their brushes, or a tubful of paint at the model (who might be a fisherman on the Arno), but, on the contrary, they went on, delighting in their pictorial occupations, despite (or inspired by) the sprouting of the holy bulrushes. Thus it was that Andrea del Sarto painted his San Giovanni Battista naked from the waist up, but camouflaged from navel to knees with all sorts of cooking pots, mantles, rocks, crosses, and even a gigantic ferret which, while it sat upon a rock and covered the lad’s groin, nursed at the member of life. That opportunity, not scorned by the ferret, magnetized Andrea del Sarto’s
San Giovanni with that imperative, imperious modesty typical of a naked adolescent who while someone is sucking him looks at us with his big naughty innocent eyes as though supplicating us, and also commanding us, to participate in the feast.

That unique canvas, which has brought on spasms in not a few prominent marquises and even in Pope Pius XII, can fortunately still be admired in the gallery of the Palazzo Pitti, in Florence
. . . .
And what say you of that adolescent Bacchus by Caravaggio? This Bacchus—that is, this delicious Florentine rogue—had a prick so high-strung that even being one of the favorites of the Vergamasco family, his pyramid never found repose, not even with the good offices of Caravaggio. Finally, bags under his eyes, eyelids drooping, swaddled in layers of rags that hardly left a single victorious nipple exposed, the adolescent played a Bacchus with his legs pinned behind a table and with an enormous bowl of fruit before him, so that the marvelous fata morgana which opens all the communicating vessels would not arise, or at least would not be seen. Those models’ erections, in a time when (like today) things could not be painted as they truly are, caused no Augustinian tragedies, but they did cause neuroses both aesthetic and emotional among the Florentine masters who, like all true artists, were lovers of the truth.

The problem, however, seemed to have been solved under the bloody Florentine dynasty of the Medici, who, devotees of the most straightforward realism, ordered that all statues and paintings be painted or sculpted totally nude, and with all the burgeoning splendor of their models. Thus the Piazza della Signoria of Florence contains a huge Neptune carved with great erotic genius, in which the glory of Orphism extends from the magnificent creases in the buttocks to the filigreed pubic hairs from which there emerges the Delphic mace that held sway over the entire rapt city. And let us not forget that thanks to those erect, pulsating, and naked maces that made the very wind of the Apennines moan, Florence had its Dante, Giotto, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Botticelli, among other singular masters whose genius, and anus, were flooded by inspiration and inseminated with creativity.

When the skirmishes between the Guelphs and Ghibellines were ended, the potent families who held all power in their hands (the Pitti, the Frescobaldi, the Strozzi, the Albizi, and of course the Medici-Riccardi), claiming their independence from Rome, raised upon every bridge along the Arno statues of vigorous, virile, naked gods (who defied and struck fear in the old popes), their vital parts proudly lifted to the skies. The enemy, faced with those manifestations of magnetic power, would immediately surrender and fall to its knees. And so, where before had stood Urbino’s Venus, who covered her sex with a modest hand, or Sandro Botticelli’s other Venus, who tugged at her peplum so as to hide her cunt—though unable to hide an expression of sadness in her eyes—were erected a series of Moseses with rampant phalluses, Achilleses with imposing bulges, Apollos that stood upon a piazza and ruled the city with their formidable mandrels—warriors with defiant
bulges, naked fishermen, their eyes closed, hunched over a rock and as they held aloft a golden fish revealing between their thighs the succulent treasure of their own delicious catch.

Amor and Psyche, sculpted by Canova, brought luster to Villa Carlotta—Amor with wings and quiver, but an erect arrow between his legs, aimed at Psyche. A naked Leda, legs upraised, openly copulating with the swan in the gardens of Florence and later in the Museo Nazionale. A naked Adam at the instant of his expulsion from the garden, and therefore still sporting an enormous erection, standing petrified upon the Florentine portico.

And thus the city was filled with handsome youths in marble, stony youths whose models still wandered through the piazzi—easy, delicious prey for all the city’s painters. Famous in the history of sculpture is the Boy with a Sliver (whose first model must now be twenty-five centuries old), a servant lad who sits nude upon a rock and crosses one leg over the other in order to pull a sliver out of his foot while he shows those who are fortunate enough to have eyes to see that greater splinter that rests, though alert, upon two magical stones
. . . .
Worthy of all contemplation, praise, and enjoyment are the balls of the centaur by Botticelli, who came into fashion and after copulating with his own centaur, the Condotta family’s draft horse, began to paint, as he had always wished, scenes of damsels and blooming adolescents with long ringleted hair who while they saluted their ladies peeked at each other out of the corners of their longing eyes. We should look for this same feature in the Madonna del Magnificat, painted in about 1510. But the matter, of course, did not end with languid looks. The portico of the Palazzo dei Lasquenete was teeming with phallic Hermeses and crouching thieves desperately gazing upon those rods, not knowing whether to grab them and make a run for it or swallow them down in one gulp. The fountains became filled with Neptunes with imposing dongs, surrounded in turn by dribbling and most graciously endowed demigods. The piazzi, palazzi, porticos, triumphal arches, woods, bridges, and even churches became filled with stunning Patrocluses, hyperaroused Achilleses, athletes tensed into penetrating poses, forever-naked gods with their all-consoling staffs on high.