In the museum of history of Naples there is a little room which, if not the most visited, is certainly the one that gets the most attention in catalogues and posters. It is called, in a not so subtle piece of marketing, “the secret cabinet” and it contains what most people would call ancient roman pornography. From the many fresco’s recovered from Pompeii, quite some depict rather explicit scenes of people enjoying themselves. Also this secret cabinet contains a small collection of talismans in phalic forms and little male figurines with prominent and ultimately disproportionate erections. It is indeed a pleasure to visit this cabinet, if only to contemplate the contained reactions of your fellow visitors. Appreciative sights, giggles and a hanging shared sense of invaded privacy. After all, the ones of us that enjoy pornography today, are meant to do so in the loneliness of their houses, and certainly not in a public and respectable museum of history.
Looking at these pieces, and remembering similar ones in other musea, I got to think in how cramped we seem to act nowadays regarding our own sexuality. How did we loose our way? Is it really christianity’s gift to us, the confiscation of our own sexuality? Well, if that is the case, other cultures have escaped christendom’s suffocating embrace. I am not an expert, and haven’t travel there yet, but I am told that making erotic drawings, is still appreciated as an art form in Japan. I can’t really know if that is really the case, but it seems to me that the more to the east, the more liberals peoples are regarding their bodies, and their enjoyment.
Outside the secret cabinet of the Naples museum, in a room close by, there is a mosaic depicting a satyr and a ménade. In itself there is nothing sexually explicit in their postures, even when they are naked and together, so I believe that this lack of explicitly exposed genitals prevents it to be placed in the secret cabinet. And yet, all in all considered, this mosaic is one of the most erotic pieces of art I have seen in quite a while. We can only see the profile and the back of the ménade, and the face of the satyr who is embracing her. She has given herself to him, and he receives her, looking her, seeing her really, at the time that one of his hands rests on her arm and the other gently brings her closer. I wish I could describe his expression, or the tenderness of their body language, the embrace of a woman and embodied nature.
And so, and then again not so, the japanese erotica. Their imaginary, instead of using land beings like a satyr, frequently depicts sea beings and humans together. Like those exquisitely carved sculptures of octopuses embracing a fisher’s wife, or the correspondent drawings. I suppose the island culture of Japan is closer to the sea than the roman ever was. But I also wonder how comes that nature ends up being portraited as male, and human women are the ones fascinated by it, like the ménades, or simply seduced or perhaps even taken by force, like the women embraced in the all reaching arms of octopus. How comes that we, men, are never the ones seduced and embraced and happily carried away?
I am not aware of the equivalent japanese figure, but we all know that sirens are another depiction of nature, sexualized and seductive. But differently than the pleasure given octopuses or the tender satyrs, sirenes are cruel and traitorous, promising what they will never yield, and ultimately leading humans to their destruction.
And there you have it, well grounded in our cultural roots, untrustable, scary and ultimately and perhaps accordingly, powerful women.