MILLE TRE
In Italia seicentoquaranta,
in Almagna duecentotrentuna,
cento in Francia, in Turchia novantuna,
ma in Ispagna son già mille e tre!
From: Don Giovanni,
by Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte (1787).
In his 'Colloquium senile' Erasmus stages 'Polygamus, a man
who owes
not only his premature decay, but also his name to the fact that he
remarried eight times. The number eight may seem impressive, but it is a
trifle in comparison with the numbers don Juan could boast about. Also he
is called a polygamist, but it is not so evident that both heroes
share their label. Although don Juan enjoyed many women, we scarcely can
call him a harem keeper. Instead of gathering women, he
rejects them after every conquest. His harem exists only as the
enumeration of names in his catalogue, not as a collection of real women
in a real harem. One could say that he builds up his harem in time
instead of in space. He is out at making the list of his conquests as long
as possible, and every repetition cannot but reduce the number of
conquests. The sooner he abandons them, the more lovers he can
seduce. To reach a maximum, he has to reduce the duration of every
relation to a minimum. In the extreme case, he realises an endless chain
of 'one night stands'.
To name the difference between don Jan and Ismail, we could
introduce the terms 'successive' and 'simultaneous' polygamy.
'Gamos', though, means 'marriage' or by extension an enduring relation, and
it is the question whether the term 'gamos' can rightfully be applied to encounters
of one night. And there is still another objection. One night stands are
not so much a variant, as rather a negation of the harem: one has to
keep a harem, whereas don Juan only rejects.
The counterpart of the
rejecting conqueror is the monogamous husband: he conquereds to
hold forever. The harem keeper is somewhere between both: he conquers more
often than the monogamous lover, but, unlike don Juan, he defends
his possession after each conquest.
The more he conquers and the more he begins to replace, like Ibn Saud, the
more he begins to resemble don Juan. But only when he no longer keeps at
all has he become a real don Juan. The
harem is then dissolved in a chain of relations with one single partner,
comparable with King Sharyar's
chain of virgins. Absolute unfaithfulness is equally
'monogamous' as absolute faithfulness!
The catalogue is the negation not only of the harem,
but also of the monogamous
couple. What is negated is not so much the
number of the relations, as rather their duration: faithfulness. Don Juan is the champion of
unfaithfulness. And his behaviour has a good name: promiscuity. Promiscuity
is the opposite of faithfulness. Between absolute faithfulness and
absolute promiscuity, there is a whole array of less faithful and more
promiscuous intermediary stages. A monogamous couple can remain faithful
for a whole life, or the partners may be more promiscuous and engage in
new relations, like the man who consumes seven times the seven beautiful
years of seven beautiful women.
A harem keeper can remain faithful until his death, or he can be more
promiscuous and abandon his harem wives when their seven beautiful years
are over. Also communards can remain faithful until death or they can be
more promiscuous and change the composition of the commune now and then. All
these forms of 'relative promiscuity' must be distinguished from don
Juan's 'absolute promiscuity' - or promiscuity as such.
In the promiscuous pattern, every man is connected to an ever increasing
chain of women, and every woman with an ever increasing chain of men.
These catalogues can grow impressively. Already 'monogamous' men are
often surprised when they list the women with whom they have had more
or less far-reaching sexual contacts. But promiscuity cannot remain the
privilege of one sex. In the beginning, one single don Juan seduces many women
and every woman he seduces sees the number of her relations
increase with one. In this
pattern, exuberant male promiscuity goes hand in hand with a rather
modest unfaithfulness in women. Such pattern could be called
'uncompleted promiscuity'. The more don Juans begin to seduce, the longer
the catalogue of each women that
is seduced. But it is only when also
women begin to actively seduce men, that the lists become equally long in
both sexes. Only then can we speak of 'completed reciprocal
promiscuity'.
A certain degree of asymmetry may be caused when some males prefer
whores above wives.
With this kind of promiscuity, the smaller number of whores is
compensated by their more frequent copulations. With free promiscuity,
though, men as well only make love when they feel inclined too. In the
supposition that the sexual urge is equally frequent in both sexes, the
number of promiscuous women has to equal the number of promiscuous men.
The number of beautiful women is scarce, but that goes also for the
number of beautiful men. With free promiscuity, a less desirable men
cannot take a more desirable women, so that he will have to settle for
less desirable partners. As long as women were doomed to a quasi
permanent motherhood, there was a relative scarcity of beautiful women,
but to the extent that the role of motherhood is
growing less important, the
scarcity of beautiful women is decreasing too, to the point that every
symmetry between the sexes disappears. To be completed, promiscuity has
to be reciprocal.
Promiscuity has voluntariness and reciprocity in common with reciprocal
polygamy. That is why we combined both in this third diptych of our
book, wherein two reciprocal patterns of relations are contrasted with
two one-sided patterns in the former diptychs. Also as voluntary forms
of relations do they contrast with the former patterns, and especially
with their involuntary preliminary stages in whoredom, as we
studied them in 'The wealthy man' because of its involuntariness.
Completed promiscuity is not only voluntary and reciprocal, but also
absolute: it excludes every form of repetition. Any
return to a sexual partner introduces an element of faithfulness
and hence a form of monogamous or polygamous relation. When talking
about relative promiscuity, it must be specified, hence, whether there
is talk of serial monogamy, serial polygyny or serial polyandry, or of
serial reciprocal polygamy.
PROMISCUITY IN THE MIRROR
'Le désir se nourrit du changement' .
Pascal
The confusion of polygamy with promiscuity is responsible for a lack of
theory on this subject. This scarcity does not catch the eye because the
term is frequently
used
with regard to primeval times. thus,
Bachofen holds that in
primeval times sexual commerce was completely free. But we
already pointed
out that Bachofen thinks of free sexual commerce within a restricted
community, so that we are dealing here
with reciprocal polygamy, not with
promiscuity. Herein, Bachofen and all the other authors who are
prone to
make the
same mistake, are heirs of an old tradition that opposes the faithful
relations of man to supposedly promiscuous relations of animals: married
man against promiscuous animal. This time, the preferred
paradigm was not so
much the gorilla, but rather street dogs. A good is example is Vico, who
describes how the 'Giganti' roamed around after the flood in
search of shy women whom they left behind after impregnation, just like
their mothers, who
left behind their children after lactation, so that they
thrived well amidst their excrements...whence their gigantic stature. Wundt sees in the theory of
Vico a rest of Hobbes bellum omnium contra
omnes, not unjustifiably so. After the primeval father of Freud, the
primeval mother of McLennan and the commune of Bachofen, we can
proclaim Vico's relationless
Giganti as the fourth paradigm of a this time promiscuous nature of man.
But also Vico has no proper term for this fourth primeval condition.
While Bachofen calls reciprocal polygamy 'promiscuity', with Vico
promiscuity is considered to be a case of 'community of goods and women'.
It appears that there is from the beginning a confusion between reciprocal polygamy and
promiscuity, the two panels of our third diptych. It is founded in the
truth that all forms of polygamy are promiscuous in relation to lifelong
monogamy. The 'monogamous' Westerner equals the philandering in the
harem, or in the other half of the community, with philandering as such.
Promiscuity -
the relative
variant as well as the absolute - are
often explained through
the theory of man's insatiable desire for variety. That theory
is surely
as old as man himself. We find it in the Kama Sutra. In the West,
Pascal thinks that desire is fuelled by change. Fourier holds that
inconsistency belongs to human nature. Kierkegaard. Walter writes n 'My Secret Life': 'fresh cunt, fresh courage always'. Also Max Nordau
thinks that
love does not remain constant, but changes with every new phase in the
development of the individual and that it needs new incitements and
calls for new
relations. Even Westermarck recognises the need for variation as a
possible argument against
monogamy. Bloch asserts that the need for sexual variation is an
anthropological given that that cannot be reconciled with marriage. Forel founds 'polygamy'
and whore hopping in the attraction ofnovelty. Havelock Ellis
holds that the desire for variation disrupts monogamous marriage. Russell (1927).
De Beauvoir heightens the desire for novelty to a more philosophical
desire for transcendence. Kinsey proclaims that men shares a promiscuous
nature with many mammals, who lose interest in a prolonged relation.
More recently, the attraction of novelty is called 'the 'Coolidge effect'.
Also Van Ussel thinks that after six months the partners of a commune are
looking for fresh flesh. Borneman descries promiscuous matriarchal
cultures in primeval times and talks about faithfulness as of a lack of
sexual interest! Alberoni thinks that the deep-rooted discontent with
marriage is a result of our desire to transcend ourselves. Elsewhere it
is phrased somewhat less philosophically: 'when eroticism becomes
repetition, duty, discipline, it dies, is transformed in drudgery and
aversion. Lévy writes that don Juan is 'inexhaustibly curious' -
because reality is endlessly diverse, full of contrasts. The discovery of
another body, another voice, other gestures is a thrill. Or a little
more sophisticated: that desire is by definition the incapability to
reach a goal(p.160)).
Many authors think that such desire for variety is typically male, and
thus provide a legitimation for uncompleted promiscuity. That is the
case with Forel and Havelock Ellis. Sociobiologists hold that males tend
to be more promiscuous because a woman has mo invest more in a child
than a man, so that the reproductive success of the male increases with
his unfaithfulness.
On the basis of such theory of 'differential parental investment'
Symons asserts that
men are out on a variety of partners
for variety's
sake. Symons refers to the fact that male promiscuity is expressed
freely with homosexuals and female faithfulness with lesbians, because in
these cases there is no need of making a compromise between male and
female dispositions. Kinsey, on the other hand, found that males as well
as females are promiscuous, and
also that female promiscuity is checked by
males, and male promiscuity by other males.
The theory of variation as sexual stimulus is not only used to
legitimate the loss of sexual interest in one's partner, but also to
explain the reluctance for sexual commerce with kin. As
we grows up
with
our brother(s) or sister(s), we know
them all too well, and such familiarity would make them sexually
uninteresting. In 1981, Westermarck formulated his
theory of sexual familiarity as the origin of the incest taboo.
Countless echoes of this theory are to be heard in the work ofForel, Havelock Ellis, Lanval
and with Shepher.
The latter gave a new impetus to the theory by replacing the mechanism
of habituation with that of 'imprinting'
(Heinroth, Lorenz). We will come
back to this strange explanation in chapter XII on 'Incest'.
In a variant of this theory 'novelty' goes hidden behind the
'experience',
that is supposed to increase with the number of partners. In many
cultures, this variant is used as a legitimation for premarital
relations or the ditto dalliance with whores. This variant is defended
by Havelock Ellis, Russell and Borneman. The theory is also used to
incite to unfaithfulness after marriage.
Thus, Havelock Ellis holds that even a good sexual relation can be
enriched through introducing new partners. This leads
to the theory of
'open marriage' with the O'Neills or Borneman.
A last variant, finally, is
the idea that being in love is merely a
transient phase, so that we have to tumble from one relation to another
- at least if we are not prepared to fall out of love. We will come back
on that topic in the chapter on monogamy, but want to point out already
here that Schopenhauer, Liebowitz, J. and C. Gould, Margulis and H.E. Fisher
use this transience as an argument to legitimate 'serial monogamy'.
A second series of theories explains promiscuity through the allure of
the forbidden. Already the Talmud holds that forbidden fruit tastes
sweeter. Schelley proclaims that 'Love withers under constraint; its very
essence is liberty; it is compatible neither with obedience, jealousy,
nor fear.' Borneman thanks that homo sapiens experiences a taboo
as a stimulant.
A third series of theories founds promiscuity (or polygamy) in the
exuberant sexual urge of single individuals (which legitimises
uncompleted promiscuity). Forel ascribes don Juan's 'satyriasis' and
Messalina's 'nymphomania' van Messalina to 'sexual hyperaesthesia'.
Exuberant sexual desire is often
an effect of culture, and can then
be unlearned. There is no doubt that the variability
in matters sexual
is
very high in every respect (Kinsey
1949, Eysenck 1976).
A fourth series of explanations understands promiscuity as the inability
to engage in an enduring relation - with Freud because primeval love is
incestuous. Promiscuous unfaithfulness is only the counterpart of
faithfulness to incestuous partners. Don Juan is looking for his mother
and wants to conquer her time and again from
his father. To Fanti oedipal love is the only
enduring love. Kristeva (1983) refer to narcism that
can only partially be overcome. Philosophers like Ortega
y Gasset explain don Juan's promiscuity from the opposite of sensuality:
an abnormal insensitivity for sexual pleasure: Don Juan would revel in
the transfiguration of women: the moment when
the caterpillar emerges from the pupated larvae for the sake of man. In
more sociological approaches promiscuity is seen as a symptom of social
disintegration. Schelsky (1955)
is talking about a lack of depth, anonymity and unwillingness to engage
when talking about homosexual promiscuity.
1001 NIGHT
The theory on promiscuity turns out to be rather meagre, certainly with
regard to the historical dimension. Just like with the primeval woman,
art compensates largely for this dearth. Especially writers have created
legendary promiscuous heroes. In Antiquity we have the unforgettable Odysseus
and in 1630 Tirso de Molina created the immortal don
Juan, who, in the hands of Mozart and da Ponte was transformed into the
paradigm of 'libertinage', compared to whom Casanova's
autobiography, S. Richardsons 'Lovelace from 'Clarissa Harlowe', Duclos'
'Confessions du Comte XXX' (wherein there is
talk of an 'augmentation de la
liste')
and Laclos' 'Liaisons dangeureuses', yes even Byron's
autobiographical 'don Juan' only fade into insignificance. In more
recent times authors stage themselves: think of the diaries of Gauguin on Tahiti,
the books of H. Miller, N. Mailer, H. Robbins, (and more recently Cathérine Millet)*
In the plastic arts, on the other hand, promiscuity seems to be unknown
The very timelessness that predestines the image to the medium par
excellence for
glorifying
female beauty, makes it totally inappropriate to
stage promiscuity. In the film, on the other hand, above all Casanova is
a cherished theme.
The absence of promiscuous females, though, catches the eye.
There seems to be only the forced promiscuity of whores and courtesans.
With Wagner's Kundry, promiscuity as a curse. The reason is that female
promiscuity was not at all accepted until recently. An exception is
Bizet's Carmen, where love is 'enfant de bohème'. Since the advent of
the last wave of feminism things seem to change (think of Erica Young).
Just like one-sided polygamy, but contrary to utopian reciprocal
polygamy, also promiscuity is often depicted as the
deplorable counterpart
of monogamy. After his endless quest, Odysseus finally finds rest in the
womb of his faithful Penelope. As a reversed Odyssey far more
convincing, and therefore to be proclaimed as the paradigm of
promiscuity, is the story of 1001 night, where King Sharyar falls
hopelessly in love, his abundant harem notwithstanding. When he is
betrayed during his absence, he decides to have his
brides executed after spending the
night with them. Sheherazade escapes that fate by promising him
new stories
and bearing him
three sons during 1001 nights.
Eventually, King Sharyar decides to honour her
faithfulness by electing
her as his a lifelong and exclusive mistress.
METROPOLIS
Un éclair... puis la nuit! Fugitive beauté
Dont le regard m'a fait soudainement renaître,
Ne te verrai je plus que dans l'éternité?
Ailleurs, bien loin d'ici! trop tard! jamais peut être!
Car j'ignore ou tu fuis, tu ne sais ou je vais,
O toi que j'eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais!
From: A une passante.
Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal.
What about the practice of promiscuity?
First, there is premarital promiscuity. In many cultures sexual
abstinence
before marriage
is obligatory. In other cultures,
promiscuity in the premarital period is a rule. But we
are dealing here with
factual promiscuity: an exploration of the sexual market and of
sexuality as such.
Exploration leads to discovery and results in an enduring relation as
soon as the appropriate partner has been found. Here, promiscuity leads
to faithful (monogamous or polygamous) relations.
Totally different is continued and principial promiscuity:
the cult of the transient sexual relation. It matters to
distinguish between voluntary and involuntary promiscuity. Feudal lords,
capitalists and bosses had and have
often sexual contacts with their subjects,
but that had and has
everything to do with power. The same goes for whorehoppers
and sex-tourists (and their predecessors: explorers like R. Burton and
colonials)
and for the already mentioned 2.000 women of H.Hefner. That is worlds
apart from the voluntary promiscuity of figures like Casanova, who
seduced women from all layers of society, and with the promiscuity in
the urban bars and dancings or in holiday resorts.
From a historical point of view, forced promiscuity is gradually
replaced with free promiscuity. And that has everything to do with the
decreasing importance of marriage as a reproductive and economic unit
and the concomitant economical emancipation of women: economic
independence breaks the power of Mars insatiatus. From a positive point
of view, woman can now freely choose with whom she wants to have sex.
And it seems as if women are out at recouping their losses: many
statistics show earlier and more frequent
female sexual intercourse. In that
sense, completed promiscuity will ultimately replace forced marriage and
whoredom: the chains of (single)bars in the big cities are, next to
promiscuous commerce with images, the historical successors of the
brothels, which are in their turn the successors of the harems. Many
authors want to actively accelerate the dawn of the age of whoredom
through pleading for more promiscuity.
Voluntary promiscuity is a late phenomenon in human history, no initial
state. That is
already so for purely technical reasons. Only large
concentrations of population or the possibility to travel rapidly and
unpunished from one town to another, make it possible to be promiscuous
a life long without having to repeat oneself. In a tribe, one would
inevitably have
to begin a next round after some dozen one night stands, so that the
promiscuous pattern would gradually be transformed into reciprocal polygamy.
The tribe would grow into the 'primeval commune'. There can only be talk
of
real promiscuity when the tribal confines are transgressed through
adventurers and explorers, who are not only armed themselves, but are
backed by the navy of their homeland at that. Odysseus is the epitome of
this first generation of promiscuous lovers. Also in the first big
metropolises, promiscuity can develop, but it does so primarily in the
form of whoredom
(apart from exceptions like the empress Messalina). Only later does a
second generation appear with figures like Casanova, who move themselves
within the confines of a militarily and juridically subdued world from
court to court and from city to city, armed with their physical charm as their
only weapon. Only from the industrial era onwards are the conditions
given for the development of completed promiscuity as well in mass
tourism as in the urban jungles, growing to massive proportions. There
it is endemic - not hampered by syphilis or aids - with the swinging
couples of Bartell, with the partners of the 'open marriage' of the
O'Neills, during the countless parties (partouses) and also increasingly
in the steadily growing army of separated or
unmarried singles, that often build up a special separate circuit of
bars, nightclubs and discotheques,
just like the 'cruising' homosexuals. Not only the
increasing concentration and the limitless mobility in an overpopulated
world are responsible for the unstoppable advent of promiscuity, but
foremost what is in its turn the motor of this
epiphenomenon: the ever more unbridled expansion of Adam Smith's free
market, where the isolated individuals or their products are moving like loose
particles in
an empty space. We will concentrate on the economic aspect of
this development in the fourth diptych of this book.
Next tot the absolute promiscuity of one night stands, there is also the
more moderate -relative - promiscuity that ends up in serial monogamy or
polygamy. Absolute monogamy remains faithful after death. Many men whose
women used to die during childbirth switched without problems to another
partner (think of Rubens or Bach). Figures like Henry VIII no longer
awaited the death of their partners.More and more, it is purely
sexual relations that succeed one another other (Picasso, Max
Ernst, Chaplin). The pattern is generalised, as is shown by the
increasing number of divorces.
In expectance of the breakthrough of completed promiscuity, we witness
the withering away of its uncompleted and one-sided predecessor. We
already mentioned
how in literature primarily male promiscuity is thematised. And that is not only so in literature: also in real life, voluntary female promiscuity
has been rather scarce. Exceptions to the rule
are: Messalina, Karoline Michaelis Böhmer Froster Schlegel
Schelling, Sarah Bernhardt
with her more than thousand
lovers, Lou Andreas Salome, whose polyandric relation with Rée en
Nietzsche was succeeded by relations with George
Lebedour, Rainer Maria Rilke, Viktor Tausk en Sigmund Freud, Alma Mahler
with Gropius, Oskar Kokoschka and Hanz Werfel, Colette Peignot, with the
mistress of Souveraine, Jean Bernier and Bataille (Anaïs Nin). This
series only confirms that the really existing promiscuity was, until
shortly, above all a question of males: only they were sufficiently
independent and released from the burden of children. And also within
the male sex, they were the exception. That is why their catalogues are
so impressive and contrast so strongly not only with the blank page of
other males, but also with the innocence of their victims. The reason is
that the promiscuous male
revels in seducing,
and only sneezes at buying. And not every male has
the time for seduction. On the contrary; the males that cannot play off
their sexual charms have to spend their time with earning the money with
which they will be able to sustain a wife or
to pay a whore. Just because they want (or have) to spare themselves the
burden of conquest, they are creating the vast
reservoir of yearning innocence, that wants to be released from the
stranglehold of their second choice husband, albeit for one single
night. The scoundrel who wants to tap that reservoir has not so much to
be beautiful, as rather to make true the rumour that the power of his
impressive and ever present organ equals that of the rhinoceros. Figures
like Casanova did their best, although, with all their aphrodisiacs,
they certainly were bested by Rasputin. His legendary member, of which
he was bereaved when
murdered, is told to have been saved form decay by an
inconsolable admirer. Several years later, the relic must have looked
like a black, overripe banana with a length of one foot. Figures
with such allure are perhaps even more scarce than
beautiful women. Only in them does Mars Insatiatus feast his triumph,
not only over Venus frigida, who this time is only set in flames for
him, but also over the impotent rape of males who, as masters or as
slave, subordinate themselves in the beehive under the beautiful woman.
JACK OF ALL TRADES, MASTER OF NONE
Many are too little and one is too much.
A. Polgar
Promiscuity is founded in the
very allure of
novelty which is at the same time its Achilles' heel. No
doubt, we have to roam around for some time
before setlling on a
place. The allure of novelty is then
gradually replaced with the charm of the familiar.
The novel is not only the potentially better, but also what is not yet
developed. Only familiarity allows for better gratification, were it
only on the sexual plane, where it is all about in matters of
promiscuity. To become a father, the
philanderer has no time and fertile promiscuity is only a unintended and
annoying side-effect of his very
undertaking. That
is why he refuses to have exploration completed in settlement and why he
promotes himself to the eternal explorer who discovers ever new
places, but also loses them by always heading further. He discovers virgin
maiden land, but leaves the exploitation to
others. Seen from a broader perspective, absolute novelty is synonymous
with superficial, transient, futile. Or, to phrase it from the
perspective of continued relations: every new relation unravels the
thread of life into a tangle of ever more frayed ends. With every new
relation a part of one's history is doomed to oblivion,
and what remains is a mere concatenation of isolated episodes. What promised to be the beginning of a novel, turns out to be the mere
onset of a frame story.
Thus, the saying 'more is less'
is particularly applicable
to promiscuity.
Above all it
will have become clear
by
now
that
promiscuity is in essence postponed faithfulness. For, the problem with
promiscuity is the breaking of the promise that is inherent in every
encounter: what to do with that alien body in your bed
the morning after? How to
end
relation
once initiated? Whores are paid and images are easily
left aside, but real bodies that voluntarily
surrendered want
also
to stand up after intercourse. Don Juan could settle the
problem through sending his women back to their husbands
under howls of
derision, but when everybody
has become promiscuous, such
satisfaction is no longer possible.
As postponed or refused faithfulness, promiscuity is, just like the
admiration in the polygynous amphitheatre, a 'perversion', an attempt at
curbing the unfolding of
love. That is why it is readily restricted to purely
sexual contact: the spell of beauty has to
be broken through orgasmic release, which
should above all not lead
to
pregnancy. Therefore, don Juan is the antipode not so
much of Messalina, but rather of Venus frigida, and the wealthy man is
merely his caricature. While polyandry of seduction resigns from
intercourse in an attempt at freezing the progress of time in breathless
adoration, promiscuity tries to break the spell through hastening to
intercourse. Time and again, ever new steps are set in always other
directions, and the progress of time is stopped in a hectic dance of
mere first steps on one leg.
THE VIRGIN
A virgin is thousand times more our own than whatever other woman.
Mantegazza.
Not only the allure over novelty is invoked as an explanation of
promiscuity, but also exuberant sexual appetite.
At first glance, the unparallelled power of don Juans organ seems to
legitimise his promiscuity. But this is mere appearance.
No doubt, there is an
enormous variability of 'sexual
appetite', but to the male piramyd corresponds a female one,
and only the
man or the woman who 'marries below his/her status' will need more
partners to get satisfaction. That is why initial promiscuity may be required to find an appropriate partner: otherwise than female beauty,
the degree of sexual appetite cannot known 'at first sight'. thus, the
problem has nothing to do with the rhinoceros: the question is rather
why the chosen do not choose other chosen, bur rather revel
in the
opposite! Not only the theory of desire for novelty, but also the
theory of variability in sexual appetite
cannot
give account of
promiscuity.
Only the story of 1001 night reveals the truth behind the one night
stands: that promiscuity is not only the counterpart, but also the
negation of absolute faithfulness. King Sharyar prefers his lovers to be
virgin, and to prevent soiling after him, he has his mistresses
decapitated
the morning after. Figures like the legendary Yuan Ti from the Sui dynasty
equally specialised in virgins, but restricted themselves to penetrating
and omitted the
subsequent
decapitation. Equally modest
were the feudal lords who
claimed the 'ius
primae noctis', the right on the first night, the echo
of which
can be
still be heard in don Giovanni's seduction of Zerlina on the moment that
is about to marryMasetto. A similar right is also claimed by many
a pimp. Their clients, on the other hand, must put up with the
insupportable thought that they deliver their precious organ to a hole
that has already been visited by alien foreskin. Even in the brothel is
the longing for absolute faithfulness betrayed in the cult of the - real
of feigned - virgin whore.
From this all,
it is all too apparent: when we have to share our wives,
than we want at least to
be the cross on the paternoster of which others
may pray the remaining beads. It takes a don Joan to make a virtue of
this need. Instead of virginal, he wanted his wifes married: all the
greater was his triumph when it appeared that he knew to break the ice. In
the bars of our contemporary metropolises,
maidenhead and decapitation
are superfluous altogether: the anonymous partners loom up from the dark
of the urban jungle, to dissolve
in it again, not otherwise than
passengers on a night train or the tourists on a tropical island. An
echo of don Juan's triumph resounds in their expectation to do it
better than their predecessors and
in
their secret hope
therefore to survive
in memory. In the tireless desire to hear repeated again and again that
one is the one and only unsurpassed lover, shimmers through the
complaint that one has nevertheless never been chosen. With such
completed form of promiscuity,
the partner is granted unfaithfulness only
when
he
reciprocates that favour, often in a vain effort to save a
monogamous relation.
The story of 1001
night not only makes it clear that
a
disguised desire for absolute faithfulness
goes hidden behind promiscuity, but also
lays bare the motif of its denial (negation): Sharyar was betrayed by
his beloved. And to prevent this wound
to
ever be opened again,
he wanted virgins, whose first night was turned into the last by
decapitation
the morning after. He thereby ensured absolute faithfulness.
At a high price, though:
condeming
himself to absolute unfaithfulness!
Others take revenge for unfaithfulness not by decapitating their wives,
but through becoming unfaithful themselves.
That they thereby drive their women in the arms of others yields an
additional pleasure:
they turn to others the
very
weapon that wounded
themselves. The machine-gun salvo of promiscuity is a reaction on
that
one lethal shot that has been fired. In as much as all
the
bullets of
this
salvo drive new wounded to their machine-gun nest, all the don Juans
drag one another into
hell: no women comes unsoiled in a relation and no
man will be first! This unravels the deeper motif behind the third
explanation of promiscuity: the allure of the forbidden. It appears that
such allure
is no more than the compulsion to transgress the taboo that one had
all too eagerly imposed on others.
The total absence of possessive jealousy with which the promiscuous
delivers his women to others only hides the presence of a special
variant: instead of turning his rage against the cuckolder, the
cuckolded identifies with the cuckolder
and cuckolds others in his turn.
Just
as
behind absolute unfaithfulness of the promiscuous goes hidden
the desire for absolute faithfulness, just so an unbridled jealousy goes
hidden behind sovereign indifference. It will only rest when nobody
possesses anything and when all have to complain with the loggers in Brecht's 'Mahagonny': 'They
cannot drag us in hell, because we have
always been there'.
Thus, promiscuity is not only an endless lament on faithfulness that
remains forthcoming, but also a revenge for the expulsion from paradise:
a perfect synthesis of desire and its repression. Thus, of all things
the very counterpart of faithfulness turns out to be its strongest
witness.
THE FRATERNAL HORDE (2)
The commandment to be faithful has created many adulterers.
Rousseau.
The duel of don Giovanni with 'the Commander', the father of the
violated donna Anna,
has been regarded by many an author in the
wake of
Otto
Rank (1922)
as
a restaging of the parricide on the primeval father. That this time not a
fraternal horde commits the murder, but a single
individual, is explained
through the theory of the hero, the exceptional individual, who is the
successor of the fraternal horde after the primeval parricide.
Freud approved of this version. But that cannot prevent it from being an
umpteenth remarkable lapsus. Rank's
interpretation tries to give account of the difference between horde and
individual, but overlooks
three other 'details': don Giovanni is not
out at gathering all his conquests in a harem, but shakes them off
as
quickly as he took them on his lap. And the Commander is even less a
harem keeper, but rather the champion of monogamy. Only in name of the
cuckolded husbands does he drive don Giovanni into
hell. And that points
to a third difference:
there are two murders in Mozart's opera. In the beginning,
don Giovanni
kills the Commander and in the end the resurrected Commandeer drives
don Giovanni into
hell. Which of both is the primeval patricide? Judging
from the horde of cuckolded husbands that begins to grow around don Ottavia between both duels, we would rather think of don Giovanni as the
primeval father, were it not that this fraternal horde is not quite
convincing. Only when the Commander has driven Giovanni into
hell do they
appear on the scene and they feel fooled when it appears that next to
the honour of their wives, they are also bereaved of the feast of
revenge. Even therefore did they lack guts. The
fanfare of the
cuckolded husbands has only her number in common with the fraternal
horde, not the committing of the primeval murder, let alone the
motif for it.
That is what they have in common
with that other 'fraternal
horde' that - in 1916, one year before the murder on the Czar in 1917-
invited Rasputin for a nocturnal banquet to offer him poisoned wafers
and poised wine. This became Rasputin's Last Supper, and only when he
was riddled with bullets would a 'heroic individual' among the brothers
dare to castrate him.
And this castration lays bare a fourth and fundamental difference. The
murder on don Giovanni or on Rasputin are not murders committed by sons
that are out at appropriating the harem of their father, but murders
committed by wronged husbands that want to bereave a scoundrel from the
organ with which he bereaved them of their women. That Rasputin's organ
survived as an
overripe banana in a coffin rather then being consumed in
the stomach of the plotters as a pars pro toto of the primeval father's
body,
makes the
whole
difference. Phrased differently: the murder on the
Commander and on don Giovanni are certainly murders on impressive
figures, like fathers happen to be, but not murders on 'primeval fathers'.
To be a primeval father,
one has to monopolise all the women and to chase
his sons, and to be a primeval brother a chased son must contest this
monopoly and join with his brothers in a fraternal horde.
That is why the opera of Mozart
and da Ponte does not stage the drama of polygamy, the struggle between sons
and fathers, but the struggle between two patterns of relations, the
duel between faithfulness and unfaithfulness, between promiscuity and
monogamy.
There is a kernel of truth, though, in Rank's analysis: don Giovanni as
an individual is not the heroic successor of the fraternal horde, but
the solitary prefigure of what is gradually growing into an impressive
horde, that contains not only countless brothers, but
increasingly
also many sisters
and threatens to inaugurate the era of completed promiscuity. They
stand up not so much against a polygynous primeval father that dooms
them to resignation, but against the tyranny of absolute faithfulness. And since the one-sided polygamy of the
primeval father is, from the point of view of promiscuity,
only the
nearest enemy, the revolt against it cannot but be the prelude to the
final struggle against the farthest
enemy: the tyranny of absolute fidelity.
Like Saint John the Baptist for Jesus Christ, the Commander only
paved
the way for such tyrant.
Thus, the swarm of free-floating promiscuous is the successor of the
horde of the communards, that struggles against polygyny. That the
promiscuous only come to rest when no one possesses anything
anymore, reminds us
of the communistic community of women. In their endeavour to deny that
all belong to one, the communards
proclaimed
that all belong to all. To the
promiscuous, nobody may belong to nobody, and they hold that because
they deny something more fundamental: that one belongs to one. The
phrases 'all to all' and 'nobody to nobody' poignantly embody the
opposition between
the
two otherwise so symmetric panels of our third diptych.
And the formulation of this opposition reminds us of the
neo-liberal and anti socialistic slogan:
'everybody's property is nobody's property'. From Karl Marx to Adam Smith:
the political development that has been inaugurated in the past decades
under these augurs, is the counterpart of the evolution of the
socialistic community of women to the liberal/libertarian property of
nobody by nobody.
Not only sexually, also economically is the horde of the promiscuous the
successor of the horde of the communards. The desherited communards
propagated a double community of goods and woman in opposition to the
double sexual and economic monopoly of the harem keeper. To be
promiscuous, on the other hand, one must be economically independent and
buy all the satisfaction that otherwise is provided within the frame of
a marriage.
That is why female promiscuous only recently appeared on the stage:
they first had to wage a struggle for economic independence from the
very men that forced them to sexual and economical servility. Only to the
extent that they can break the monopoly of the male by joining the
growing army of workers, can economic dependency be replaced with full
independency. Such refusal to dissolve in marriage inaugurates the
regime of 'everyone for himself'. This regime creates the proper
conditions for the sexual regime of 'nobody of nobody', counterpart of
the more archaic regime of the communards, where 'everybody worked for
everybody'
and
'all belonged to all'.
We can ask ourselves whether the term 'fraternal horde' applies to
those who only work for themselves and belong to nobody. Adam Smith
showed how they are steered by an 'invisible
hand'
to the effect
that the common wealth of nations is created through
individual selfishness. In the same way they are connected through a
secret solidarity: by being simultaneously demand and supply on the
market of love, they release each other from every monopolistic or monopsonistic tyranny.
Remains the question why such horde of atoms experiences absolute
monogamous fidelity as tyranny? Does the wound struck by the
unfaithful virgin suffice as en explanation for promiscuity?
Perhaps we can learn more from economy as such, not just from economy as
the wealth of men considered up to now. Let us look whether the next
diptych of this book can give us an answer to our question.