Undying Passion [antikvár]

FOREWORD Sex is no longer a dirty word in literary biography. As a pioneer of sexual emancipation Lytton Strachey put it: "Discretion is not the better part of biography." Other daring writers sharpened their arrows for the kill. When Hugh Walpole was delivering a panegyric on romantic love, H. G. Wells intemipted him: "Nonsense, Hugh. There's no such thing as romantic love. Every normally constituted young man wants to pop into bed with every normally constituted young woman. And vice versa. And that's all there is to it." Leo Tolstoy, who probably had more to say about sex and marriage than any other modem novelist, summed up the basic sex drive in seven short words: "The whole story is told in bed." Too simplistic, countered Bertrand Russell, and added two other elementary forces, money and power, but he kept the human sex drive as the predominant ignition. Undying Passion is an eclectic compendium of glimpses into the private sex experiences and theories of over a hundred eminent writers. The selections provide fresh insights into such aspects as erotic theories and observations, marital bliss, involvements and entanglements, repressions, brothel diversions, sexual awakenings, inner emotional conflicts, even erotomania. My aim is to satisfy our natural curiosity as well as scholarly concems about the one overriding human dimension, sexual desire. My purpose is only partly to amuse, and not all the pieces are intrinsically diverting. Some, like those on Heinrich Heine, Dorothy Parker, Elinor Wylie, and others, betray pathos and arouse compassion. An anecdote is not always droll. The research for Undying Passion led me to examine unpublished correspondence that fortunately had escaped shredding, diaries, personal joumals, confessional autobiographies, newspaper files, and off-the-record disclosures discreetly relegated to footnotes and appendices in books long out of print. For the longer pieces 1 have gone beyond the limitations of an anecdote to a variety of other sources to form composite portraits. A major difficulty is nailing down gossip and rumor. All the great