...life can be translucent

Menu

Book: The Culture of Sex in Ancient China by Paul Rakita Goldin

Lilly-La

visitor
Joined
Oct 9, 2006
Messages
220
Reaction score
7
Perhaps this wonderful and entertaining book was mentioned here already. Goldin teaches Chinese history and philosophy. Based on his lectures on Sex and Society in Ancient China he shows how central the subject of sex was to early chinese thought. This book is packed with interpretations of poems and stories from 500BC to 400 AD. It helped me reading a. understanding the I Ching (symbols) much better. The way early Chinese ppl thought and used language is so different to our culture that non-scholars like me simply can not understand. Goldin is a great lecturer.
5 stars for this book!! isbn 0 8248 2482 2
 

charly

visitor
Joined
May 9, 2007
Messages
2,315
Reaction score
243
... Based on his lectures on Sex and Society in Ancient China he shows how central the subject of sex was to early chinese thought... It helped me reading a. understanding the I Ching (symbols) much better...
Hi, Lilly:

Here a REVIEW of Ulrike Middendorf book about sexual euphemisms, and the like, in the Shi Jing, Book of Poetry, that can be also useful to better understand some hidden meanings in the Book of Changes:

MIDDENDORF, Ulrike,
Resexualizing the Desexualized: The Language of Desire and Erotic Love in the Classic of Odes.
Pisa and Roma: Accademia Editoriale, 2007. ISSN: 0392-4866. 281 S.

«Resexualizing the Desexualized» is a study of the language of desire and erotic love in the form of euphemism in the Classic of Odes. The author's goal is to survey the basic vocabulary of eroticism in the poems through an analysis of metaphor and metonymy.

It is an ambitious task because of the remoteness of the texts in both time and social horizon. The author admits that many of her conclusions are ultimately unverifiable, but nevertheless introduces a depth of erudition that is rare and astonishing. Ulrike Middendorf's background includes linguistics, psycho-linguistics, cognitive psychology, not to mention the fields of sinology, mythology, and Chinese and European literature and literary criticism.

Parts of the book will dazzle readers; other parts will leave them unable to judge, the conclusions being simply too speculative. But the author's effort is always well argued and fascinatingly presented. The first chapter presents a range of sources not usually found in one book, which can only betoken many years of study and preparation. Concerning the Classic of Poetry, the author describes the early process of moralization and historicization of the poems, but insists on the existence of other readings that gave rise to a double hermeneutics. She assembles evidence to support the notion of euphemism as the core hermeneutic method for unraveling the meaning of the poems.

She defines euphemism based on a wide range of sources as referring in general to the preservation of self-image and the manipulation of language in a way that implies more than can be explicitly stated. There is a subversion of 'optimal relevance' by way of 'consciously hiding difficult matter', the purpose of which is to avoid offending and to maintain respect for the audience (p. 35). There is also an aesthetic goal, which is particularly important in the case of sexual content, which as readers know have been studiously and at times preposterously controlled in traditionally accepted interpretations of the Classic of Odes, hence Middendorf's 'resexualization' of the poems.

Her tools of analysis consist of a set of metaphors and metonymies that name thematic domains and image schemas, all of which refer to recurring patterns of human experience in the poems. She uses capital letters to label the themes, e.g., LOVE IS A NATURAL FORCE (FLOOD, WIND, STORM, FIRE, p. 46), which act as rubrics under which she organizes her interpretations.

I found the second chapter to be the most useful. It is an expert study of the 'literal and figurative language of sexuality in early and early medieval Chinese literature' (p. 8). The author focuses on medical and sexological texts from Mawangdui, from which she compiles a glossary at the end of the book. Many of the terms in those texts are problematic (such as the interesting word zui, for example, as a possible reference to the penis as an organ that 'accumulates' and 'assembles', as in sucking in the woman’s essence during intercourse). She breaks the language down into categories such as genitals, intercourse, and emotional states.

For her core categories, she employs the set of conceptual metaphors and metonymies referred to above, such as THE PENIS IS A MALE ANIMAL, which contains sub-metaphors such as THE PENIS IS A BULL or a CROWING COCK. Thus we have mu, ‘the male', 'bull', tu, 'male rabbit', or mingxiong, 'crowing cock', or MALE AQUATIC ANIMAL, e.g., gui, 'turtle' (pp. 67'68). In contrast, THE FEMALE GENITALS ARE AN ANIMAL includes MAMMALS, ma, 'horse', and pin, 'the female animal', or THE FEMALE GENITALS ARE PLANTS, such as the internal depths of the vagina in the Mawangdui called gu shi, 'grain fruit', and mai chi, 'wheat teeth' (p. 79).

Once Middendorf establishes the basic semantic range and categories, she then proceeds to the Classic of Odes itself. Her goal is to provide a framework for the 'anatomy of desire and sexual love in the Odes', for which she uses ten subheadings: 1) beautyscapes and sexual exemplars, 2) gazes, fetishes, fantasies, and dreams, 3) waters, wombs, and desirous women, 4) fruit trees, creepers, and plant pickers, 5) mountains, tall trees, and phallic icons, 6) weapon bearers and carriage drivers, 7) rapers, hunters, and hungry men, 8) margins, spaces, and places, 9) atmospheric phenomena and weather, and 10) homoerotics (some of which derives from Friedrich Bischoff's controversial but also fascinating work The Songs of the Orchis Tower).

I will provide a sampling of interpretations to give an idea of the results of Middendorf's research, some of which are quite plausible, some as I said extremely speculative. For the famous first poem of the 'Airs', for example, the images of picking and plucking seem, as Middendorf says, to euphemize sexual activity, as in 'to the left, to the right, one plucks them' (p. 127). But linking the verb mao etymologically to a technical term in the Mawangdui text Yangsheng fang meaning to 'remove the (pubic) hair' is perhaps an interpretation that not many scholars will be willing to accept, the author herself only suggests such a meaning.

In general, I take such interpretations as the sign of a bold willingness that does no harm. Some of her examples allow for what we might call a safe translation followed by a daring one, as in 'Oho! Beautiful he is, / the clear forehead is lovely', for which her 'tentative' translation is 'Oho! Enrapturing beauty, / his essence rises to abundance'. Here, for example, she takes the line and rereads qing as jing, essence (though I am representing only a small portion of her interpretation of this poem; Mao 106, p. 136). These examples fall under the rubric of 'beautyscapes and sexual exemplars'.

Under 'waters, wombs, and desirous women', we have 'The bream has a red tail, / the royal chamber is like a blazing fire' (Mao 10), for which Middendorf plays off the sexual metaphors in the first two stanzas of the poem, 'water, branches, stems, shoots, and hunger', to derive an interpretation of the 'fish, fishtail, chamber, and fire' in the third stanza. Thus 'red (erect) tail' is 'the male member in arousal', whereas 'royal chamber' is the 'bedroom, or vaginal channel, like 'blazing fire' (p. 155).

Under 'fruit trees, creepers, and plant pickers', we have 'Ge tan' (Mao 2), 'The Kudzu Expands', which portrays successful intercourse: 'How the kudzu expands, / it spreads into the middle of the valley, / its leaves are luxuriant. / The yellow birds go flying, / they settle on the lush trees, / they sing in unison' (p. 168). Though sexual imagery is missing from the surface, the author thinks we can take the spread into the middle of the valley as the 'happiness of consummation', which is mirrored by the birds singing. The birds flying, moreover, is like 'merry lovemaking,' as based on the metonymic concept of 'MOTION FOR SEXUAL INTERCOURSE' that she has introduced previously.

Under the category of 'atmospheric phenomena and weather', we have the poem 'Feng yu', 'Wind and Rain' (Mao 90), which perhaps alludes to unsuccessful intercourse and even dysfunction. The traditional interpretation is that the poem expresses longing for a noble man who remains true even in an age of disorder. The resexualized version of the poem offers the notion that the ening lines, 'Wind and rain are cold, / the cock crows wildly,' or the words of the second stanza, 'Wind and rain are chill, / the cock crows [in a] frenzy' (where I have added the words in brackets) refer to 'stimulation and ejaculation' that are cold and chilled. The cold wind further refers to arousal without involvement, as in the situation of the man aroused but the woman sad or unreceptive. Cold rain perhaps even refers to 'cold semen', which signifies infertility and inability to impregnate the woman (pp. 185'186).

The above is a mere digest of examples found in the book; again, my representation fails to evoke the complexity of Middendorf's exegesis. A further test of the author’s approach might be to apply her methods to other works such as the Lyrics of Chu, Chu ci, or even the erotic poetry of someone like Li Shangyin. First, are there commonalities between the Odes and the Lyrics of Chu, and, second, what is the history of euphemism between the Odes and someone like Li Shangyin? The study of euphemism in general in China is a rich field (it is also tied to reticence, a highly cultivated type of behavior that still rules in the realm of sex and love in China).

Even the supposedly most explicit texts like the art of the bedchamber evoke an overarching atmosphere of sex as ritualized behavior, which is one of the most fascinating features of these ancient texts. Ritualization is a form of euphemism and sublimation. Sex as ritualized act constitutes sex as something controlled and choreographed, such that cultured sex always prevails over animal nature.

The texts are written from a male perspective, with the man being the main one who is in control. This also means that he is the one who easily loses control, as literature and history for centuries of Chinese history have portrayed. I would still like to understand more about the context of the bedchamber texts (who read them; how widespread were they) and why they did not end up side-by-side with texts like the Book of Rites, which they parallel in so many ways. Perhaps the simple answer is that using things like euphemism to ritualize or domesticate the so-called animal nature of sex cannot achieve the desired effect.

Sexual desire, no matter what culture or era, represents a zone of taboo, where taboo and prohibition (as in rules against illicit sex) are simply no more than attempts to control the uncontrollable.


Keith McMahon

Source: available as pdf in the WWW.


panel.jpg

Ulrike Middendorf is the second from the left.
Source: Heidelberg University page

Maybe you also know Middendorf, if not may you enjoy the review.

All the best,

Charly
 
Last edited:

Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom

Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).

Top