Akiko's Note:
66.12-14: "if we recall the customs
of certain Far Eastern people, virtually halfwits in many other respects:" What
does VN has in mind as the customs? I
might be expected to figure it out as
one from the Far East, but I must confess I have no idea (virtually
half-witted!). "The contrast between the
fictitious and the factual" is, for
example, the Chinese reversals associated with death in *The
Gift*?
TT passage:
Hugh's mediocre potency might not have survived
the ordeal had she concealed from him
more
completely than she thought she did the excitement derived from
the contrast between the fictitious and
the factual -- a
contrast which after all
has certain claims to artistic subtlety if
we recall the customs of certain Far
Eastern
people, virtually halfwits in many other
respects. But his chief support lay in the never deceived expectancy
of the dazed
ecstasy that gradually
idolized her dear features, notwithstanding
her efforts to maintain the flippant patter.
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EDNOTE. Akiko's Note calls attention to VN's (or Mr. R's) remark about "Far Eastern sexual customs" and ponders what customs these might be. A couple of passages from ADA (cited below) offer some clarification. VN apparently illustrates the "fictitious" and the "factual" distinction by reference to old Japanese prints such as the one I have attached. Although it is not particularly evident in this example, an examination of erotic shunga and ukiyo-e prints shows that the faces of the participants, especially females in frenzied couplings, very often display no emotion. This disjunction of strong emotion and stolid expression is presumably what VN has in mind in his account of Armande's sexual protocol. Although I know very little about such matters I would hazard that the Japanese dichotomy may be in some part a by-product of the limitations of woodblock printing as well as local traditions of sexual etiquette. Perhaps those better informed could enlighten us.
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ADA passages:
The collection of Uncle Dan’s Oriental Erotica prints turned out to be artistically second-rate and inept calisthenically. In the most hilarious, and expensive, picture, a Mongolian woman with an inane oval face surmounted by a hideous hair-do was shown communicating sexually with six rather plump, blank-faced gymnasts in what looked like a display window jammed with screens, potted plants, silks, paper fans and crockery. Three of the males, contorted in attitudes of intricate discomfort, were using simultaneously three of the harlot’s main orifices; two older clients were treated by her manually, and the sixth, a dwarf, had to be contented with her deformed foot. Six other voluptuaries were sodomizing her immediate partners, and one more had got stuck in her armpit. Uncle Dan, having patiently disentangled all those limbs and belly folds directly or indirectly connected with the absolutely calm lady (still retaining somehow parts of her robes), had penciled a note that gave the price of the picture and identified it as: ‘Geisha with 13 lovers.’ Van located, however, a fifteenth navel thrown in by the generous artist but impossible to account for anatomically.
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