v is for virgin

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

+  " ... when adams was a boy in boston, the best chemist in the place had 
probably never heard of venus except by way of scandal, or of the virgin except 
as idolatry; neither had he heard of automobiles or radium; yet his mind was 
ready to feel the force of all, though the rays were unborn and the women were 
dead.

 here opened another totally new education, which promised to be far the most 
hazardous of all. the knife-edge along which he must crawl, like sir lancelot in 
the twelfth century, divided two kingdoms of force which had nothing in common 
but attraction. they were as different as a magnet is from gravitation, 
supposing one knew what a magnet was, or gravitation, or love. the force of the 
virgin was still felt at lourdes and seemed to be as potent as x-rays; but in 
america neither venus nor virgin ever had a value as force --- at most as 
sentiment. no american had ever been truly afraid of either.

 this problem in dynamics gravely perplexed an american historian. the woman had 
once been supreme; in france she still seemed potent, not merely as a sentiment, 
but as a force. why was she unknown in america? for evidently america was 
ashamed of her, and she was ashamed of herself, otherwise they would not have 
strewn fig-leaves so profusely all over her. when she was a true force, she was 
ignorant of fig-leaves, but the monthly-magazine-made american female had not a 
feature that would have been recognized by adam. the trait was notorious, and 
often humorous, but anyone brought up among puritans knew that sex was sin. in 
any previous age, sex was strength. neither art nor beauty was needed. every 
one, even among puritans, knew that neither diana of the ephesians nor any of 
the oriental goddesses was worshipped for her beauty. she was goddess because of 
her force; she was the animated dynamo; she was reproduction --- the greatest 
and most mysterious of all energies; all she needed was to be fecund. singularly 
enough, not one of adams's many schools of education had ever drawn his 
attention to the opening lines of lucretius, though they were perhaps the finest 
in all latin literature, where the poet invoked venus exactly as dante invoked 
the virgin:---


                   'quae quoniam rerum naturam  s o l a   gubernas.'

 the venus of epicurean philosophy survived in the virgin of the schools:---

                   'donna, sei tanto grande, e tanto vali,
                    che qual vuol grazia, e a te non ricorre,
                    sua disianza vuol volar senz' ali.'     


 all this was to american thought as though it had never existed. the true 
american knew something of the facts, but nothing of the feelings; he read the 
letter, but he never felt the law. before this historical chasm, a mind like 
that of adams felt itself helpless; he turned from the virgin to the dynamo as 
though he were a branly coherer. on one side, at the louvre and at chartres, as 
he knew by the record of work actually done and still before his eyes, was the 
highest energy ever known to man, the creator of four-fifths of his noblest art, 
exercising vastly more attraction over the human mind than all the steam-engines 
and dynamos ever dreamed of; and yet this energy was unknown to the american 
mind. an american virgin would never dare command; an american venus would never 
dare exist."

  --- henry adams: the education of henry adams, chapter xxv, pp. 383ff (modern 
                                      library paperback edition of 1999) ---


 kfl *