Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> Williams, Andrew P. "Review of Sexual Freedom In Restoration
> Literature." Early Modern Literary Studies 3.2 (September, 1997):
> 5.1-6
>
> [clip] Namely, the libertine's aggressive pursuit of total
> freedom, especially in regards to the instinctual attainment of
> bodily pleasures, can never be obtained, due in part to the
> restlessness of the human condition which makes impossible the
> perfect compatibility of human desire and the fruition of that desire
> (32).
I read this after I'd responded to Yoshie's earlier post, but "The Imperfect Enjoyment" (even more, I think, than "A Ramble in St. James's Park") exemplifies Williams's point here. Whoever collected Rochester's _Poems on Several Occassions_ (1680) included a good deal of bawdy verse not by Rochester, including one by Behn on the same subject, male failure to perform. (The finest of all Rochester's poems I believe is "The Maim'd Debauchee.")
Carrol
P.S. A speculation: The same Platonic notion of an abstract Desire (detached from human actuality) that Lacan assumes seems to inform Rochester's work as well. Doug never has explained why he wishes to eliminate all concrete human desires in order to worship this Platonic form of Desire.