Cuture and Sexual Relations
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Posted by Gerda Wever-Rabehl Jun 12, 2006 |
Was the secret love between Radha and Krishna like a Pinot Noir, sex in a glass, or was it a storm in a teacup, a calm version of a thunderstorm about to break two lovers in its rage?
A wine lover and maker, I am currently making a pinot noir. My wine making friend looked up the description of Pinot Noir on Wikipedia, where Joel Fleischman of Vanity Fair is quoted to describe pinot noir as "the most romantic of wines, with so voluptuous a perfume, so sweet an edge, and so powerful a punch that, like falling in love, they make the blood run hot and the soul wax embarrassingly poetic." Wikipedia also quotes Master Sommelier Madeline Triffon as calling pinot "sex in a glass" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinot_Noir)
From the endless stream of steamy confessions of illicit love affairs, from memoirists such as Anais Nin to discussions on illicit love and dating in women's magazines, you might think the illicit affair is like that: Sex in a glass. Ample classic and modern plays, movies, poetry classic evidence the appeal of secrecy as thrilling and romantic. Yet the harsh personal, communal, ethical and legal disapproval and condemnation evidence the dark and stormy side of the illicit. While this tension between allure and denunciation exist in the East as well as in the West, the lines between the conjugal and the adulterous are drawn particularly sharp in the East where the gods who look after marriage and fertility are neatly separated from those who look after erotic love.
I am exploring this twofold feature of secrecy in a second article of a four-part series. Once again, the Gitagovinda serves as point of departure. I will explore the way in which the poet, Jayadeva, imparted the adulterous aspects of the love affair between Radha and Krishna.
For more about sexuality in a historical context, read Kerry Kublius'
Gerda Wever-Rabehl
The Write Room
www.thewriteroom.net
