Delta of Venus

Stropps of Stroppyblog fame has a gripe. While it appears socialist women are happy to blog about issues of sex and sexuality, socialist men (with the noted exception of Jim Jay) aren’t. I’m not immune either. For instance I had no hesitation composing a silly post about the living dead, and yet I had to really think twice before contributing my few thoughts on Anais Nin’s Delta of Venus. Is there something about our socialist culture inhibiting me and other (straight) lefty men from addressing sex and sexuality politically? Or is it just me? Do I need to be conscious of my inner prude? I’ll try and explore this more fully in a future post, hopefully redressing the balance identified by Stropps at least where AVPS is concerned.

One consequence of not regularly talking about sex politically is the difficulty of how to muse about Delta of Venus. I’ve never written anything about erotic fiction or erotica except the odd two-penneth on UKLN debates around porn and prostitution. Neither am I particularly acquainted with the field of erotic literature; a book each by Henry Miller (Tropic of Cancer) and Melissa P (One Hundred Strokes of the Brush Before Bed) are about it. If the latter and the celebrity of Abby Lee’s blog and book are anything to go by, (young) women’s sexual autobiography is where the action’s at, if you pardon the clumsy pun.

Judging from my limited knowledge of the field, I’d stick my neck out and say a “return” to Delta of Venus is timely. Nin’s book has been rightly celebrated not just for the quality of her writing, but for being a pioneer who was among the first to place female desire at the centre of the work. Nin’s scenarios are incredibly evocative and compelling. The narrative is strongest where it is based among the literati of early 20th century Paris. As an intimate of the scene the encounters she plays out - prostitution, threesomes, gay and lesbian relationships, kinky sex – are stunningly realised and utterly believable. If the aim of Orwell’s writing was to be as clear as a pane of glass, Nin's words leap from the page and immerses you in the feast of flesh. It is for this reason some of her vignettes dealing with abuse, incest and rape (‘The Hungarian Adventurer’, ‘The Boarding School’) can be quite uncomfortable.

Nin was paid a dollar a page to write what became Delta of Venus by a mysterious collector of erotica. He demanded nothing but clinical descriptions of sex expunged of all emotion and “poetry”. It is ironic that despite the artistic blow for women’s sexual freedom the work represents, it was the culmination of what Nin herself characterised as her period of literary prostitution; a period where she was forced to sell her (literary) labour power to support herself and her lover, Henry Miller. While many of the erotic adventures were ground breaking because it was a woman distilling her own sexual experiences and fantasies through the medium of her characters, the necessary surrendering of her artistic autonomy and demands of the patron meant the ideological division between romantic love and sex is, for the most part, perpetuated throughout. At the very moment Delta was appropriated by feminists and wielded as a weapon against the patriarchal regulation of women’s bodies, it nevertheless affirmed one of its chief devices.

But ultimately contradictions between the conditions a work of art is produced in, the motivations of the author, the issues and questions suggested by the content, and how it is received is what makes art something worth talking about. Given the few funny looks I got reading Delta on the bus, the reception Nin’s opus provokes suggests the conversation about it is far from over.