Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers

In the West, a repressive influence dominated the arts as Christian society sought to distance itself from the earthy sexuality of the older animist religions. As a result, we have only a paltry store of erotic poetry and sensual prose from the fourth century onward (compared to India, China, and Japan where sexuality continued to be perceived as a natural force and not a cause for shame.) Yet by using symbols drawn from pre-Christian myth and folklore, Western artists and writers found an important outlet for erotic imagery. We see this particularly in the luminous art of the Italian Renaissance, where Christian devotional works sit side-by-side with mythic works of a distinctly sensual nature—such as Botticelli’s voluptuous nymphs and pagan goddesses; Michaelangelo’s “Leda” (Leda’s rape by Jupiter in the form of a swan); and Raphael’s secret frescoes for the bathroom of Cardinal Bibiena in the Vatican (based on erotic stories drawn from Greco-Roman myth).

In Western literature, eroticism is firmly entwined with myth and fantasy in works by some of the greatest writers of the English language. We find it in the beguiling faery enchantresses of Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur; in the men and women be-spelled by sexual glamour in the Lays of Marie de France; in the sexual violence and intrigue of Spenser’s Faerie Queene; in the amorous antics of the fairy court in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as well as the darkly magical sensuality of The Tempest; in the sexualized denizens of fairyland in Pope’s The Rape of the Lock; in the dangers of fairy seduction found in the ballads of Sir Walter Scott as well as the poems of Byron, Keats, Blake, Tennyson, and Yeats.

In Victorian England, folk tales, fairy lore, and Arthurian symbolism enjoyed an explosive popularity at the same time that sexual expression was most repressed in polite society. Fairy paintings by Fuesili, Noel Paton, and J. A. Fitzgerald fairly drip with an eroticism which would have been banned from respectable galleries if the nudes painted so lusciously had not been given fairy wings. Aubrey Beardsley, on the other hand, never courted respectability; this young man’s distinctive illustrations for The Rape of the Lock and other fantasies were overtly and deliberately erotic, full of languid women, lewd fairies, and satyrs sporting enormous phalluses. Rossetti’s mythic Pre-Raphaelite ladies, with their pouting red lips just waiting to be kissed, were attacked in the Victorian press as lewd and immoral images (albeit these paintings merely look quaintly romantic to us today). Goblin Market, the famous fairy poem by Christina Rossetti (sister to the painter), was ostensibly a simple story about the dangers of eating goblin fruit—yet it reads as a heated metaphor for the sexual seduction of innocent young girls. The “fairy music” composed for the harp—a popular fad in Victorian times—also had distinctly erotic overtones; these composers enjoyed the celebrity accorded to pop stars today, and flushed young women would sigh and swoon during their performances. Richard Burton’s translation of the magical Arabian stories of The Thousand and One Nights also brought erotic tales to the Victorian public in the form of fairy stories. Burton’s frank (for the times) translation caused a publishing scandal; nonetheless (or because of this) the book went on to become a bestseller, and a fad for Orientalism joined the popularity of Victorian fairy lore—a distinct thread of magical eroticism running through them both.