John Adams wrote:
> On Jan 11, 2007, at 9:54 PM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
>> Besides, a libertine is the true lover of an ascetic, and in the heart
>> of a libertine is a devotion to chastity, or so suggests French
>> literature, e.g. Laclos's Les Liaisons dangereuses
>
>
> It's been some time since I read Laclos, but my memories on it are (I
> think) pretty sharp, and this seems like an odd reading of this book.
> Would you care to expand on it?
Not so odd -- Valmont falls in love with the virginal Mme What'sHerName who gives best because she gives once and gives what she esteems most, thus making his "triumph" the greatest. Libertinage is not an exercise in sensuality but in power and self-control.
One might think of libertinage as the obsessive compulsive desire to destroy what one yearns to have most (exclusive love). Deflowering the virgin proves again and again that the seducer has the power and control and that "true love" is merely a sham. One has to ask then why, if this is so, one must work so hard to make it so. The chaste is the libertine's necessary other -- his raison d'etre perhaps.
Or, as Balzac's contrapositive expressed it "young whores make old nuns."
Joanna