A forgotten poem? ‘Maddalou’ by Pierre Louys

There are two versions of the poem Maddalou by Pierre Louys. The first is included amongst a collection of ‘Fourteen Images’ in the second volume of the poet’s Complete Works. It follows the lyrics of Bilitis, indicating that it dates to same period, around 1894.

“Her hair is black; her skin is brown. Around her chest she wears a white rag, which was once a camisole, and which reveals her half-naked.

A red rag serves as her skirt, a rag with more holes than a battle flag.  And that’s all.- she doesn’t have a shirt; her feet are bare as hands.

But what embroidered silk would be more beautiful than this colourful costume of human skin and rags? What jewel purer than the point of her breast?

She moves in the light, without shame and almost without clothing, while I follow the play of shadow and sunlight around her form.”

The second Maddalou, as I have noted before, is a longer poem, published separately after Louys’ death in 1925. I have been able to see a copy of the 1927 edition, held by the British Library, and- because it’s such a rare little book- I’ve reproduced a translation of the French prose poem here.

The physical book itself underlines some of what I’ve said several times previously about the qualities of limited edition fine art printings and how they can interact with the experience of reading the text. As was common practice at the time, the book was issued in a limited run of 400 copies, printed on three grades of paper. The BL copy is number 36 and is on the ‘cheapest’ paper, Velin d’Arches. This is a strong cotton paper, with a fine grain and ‘deckle’ (untrimmed) edges. It has weight and a pleasing grained texture. The book itself comes in a card case that opens to reveal the forty loose pages; these are quite small- called in-huit in French, they’re only about 19 cms tall. It was a delight to see and handle and Edouard Degaine’s illustrations were gorgeous- soft-focus and evocative.

“At the end of the long path which winds between the bushes, I discovered a hovel in the middle of a small garden. It was a poor shack that no one knew, far from hamlets, far from the roads. Never has a tourist, a hunter or a passer-by walked there. It had only one window and just one door. Through the window I saw an old woman seated and, before the door, a young girl was standing. But this young girl was very strange, with rags like a savage and a body so beautiful that I felt myself go pale.

Throughout the day I thought about her and, in the evening, I went back. She came towards me, little by little, curious, but also slightly on her guard, like a tame doe.

‘Who do you want here? My grandmother isn’t at home. Grandma’s left for the town, for the Saturday market. I’m alone- who are you looking for?

I’ll be on my own for another three days. If you want a basket, grandma has taken to them all to sell at the market. You’ll quickly catch up with her on the road running beside the sea.

Why don’t you reply? Why are you just looking at me without saying a word? I haven’t got anything… Only a bowl of milk… and some figs… and water from the spring.

How did they come to live here? She didn’t know anymore: she was little; it was ten or more years ago. Back then, there, one of the men who’d loved her mother had killed her.

Back there, on the other side of the mountains. That was the day when Maddalou was taken away by her grandmother, passing through so many villages. She doesn’t know anything more than that, neither can she read, nor count, nor say where she comes from.

The hovel didn’t belong to them. They are allowed to stay there as an act of charity. By whom? A lady whom they never see, whose name she’s forgotten- but who owns all the land round here.

She responds to me with her head lowered and, when she stops speaking, I no longer even hear the silent footsteps of her bare feet in the dust.

Maddalou, with such black hair, barely covers herself with a red rag which, pierced, torn, slashed, wraps over her chest, and hangs down to her slender heels. She puts this on like a shirt, passing her arms through the tears, then ties it in the middle of her body. It gapes on the side and opens on the thigh- and her feet are bare.

But what silk would dress her better than this motley costume of brown skin and rags? What could be more beautiful than this exposed hip? What jewel could be purer than the tip of her bare breast?

She moves in the light, without shame and almost without clothing, and each of her gestures reveals all her contours to the play of shadow and sun.

‘Oh yes! Yes, stay here with me. I’m alone, I’m miserable. No-one ever comes here, except the seabirds and the birds from the woods. Stay! I’m all alone and I’m bored. I hate to go to work in the fields with my little coat all in rags. The gleaners have all got shoes and they mock my bare feet.

Instead, I go to the deserted willow grove, to harvest the stems. I come back and I weave baskets; I milk the black goats; I sing to myself- and yet, I’m not happy. You’re the first man I’ve seen- the first since… since I’ve been grown up and since I’ve been crying at night without knowing why.

I love life in my rags. I wash them like lace; when I see spots there, I just cut them out and make more holes for the wind to blow through. The holes dress me with my skin; the material covers what it can. If someone were to lie in wait for me in the woods… but no one spies on me in the woods and doesn’t follow me along the path.

On more than one evening, do you want to know how I make my way back from the fountain? With my rags over my arms, completely naked so I can run faster!

Now I’ve told you all my secrets- I’m tired of telling them to myself. I never like the flower I put in my hair, because it was me that gave it to myself.’

The hovel is just a large room covered with a broken roof. Just as Maddalou’s rags tear and show her body, so the roof has holes in and lets you look up at the sky. It lets in the wind and the rain, butterflies and dead leaves, the bats and the birds and, in their turn, the sunshine and the moonlight.

There’s neither a table nor chairs. You sit yourself on empty baskets and you eat off your lap. The bucket, the spindle whorl and the pan hang on the mossy, decaying wall. The goats sleep in one corner, the old woman by the chimney, the mice in the wall, the blue parrot on the rack and the girl under the stairs.

Under an old broken staircase that serves as a perch for the hens and from which she hangs a cloth as a curtain, there Maddalou has her bed. On a mattress of seaweed and tow sleeps the loveliest girl in the world. It’s just a sack laid on the earth, made from lots of saffron bags sewn together with string and somewhat gnawed by rats. A roll of rags serves as her pillow. She only has one sheet: the thin red canvas that she wears as a dress during the day. At night, when she lies down, she’s uncovered down to her feet, her head resting on her hand.

But those who did not see her on this regal bed, half-opening her mouth and stretching out her arms, will die without having known what human splendour can be.”

Maddalou is a very different poem to almost everything else produced by Pierre Louys (and hence nearly every book I’ve described on this blog). It describes a tender, romantic love, which despite the evident impact that the young woman’s partial and unconscious nakedness has on the male narrator, is taken no further. It’s not even clear whether the narrator expresses his admiration for the titular heroine, or just worships her silently. Degaine’s full page illustrations do tend to focus on the naked Maddalou, but the headpieces at the beginning of each section of the prose poem are small landscape scenes, evoking the peaceful, deserted natural world in which the hovel is set.

There are some hints of adult sexuality- and of the potential dangers of the outside world- but Maddalou and her grandmother inhabit a kind of Edenic utopia cut off from the harsh outside world. Their contact with it seems to be limited to selling the baskets at market- something the grandmother undertakes in order (it seems) to protect the girl from the corruption and temptation of the rest of society. There are indications that the maturing young woman is beginning to sense a lack in her life (her loneliness and her tears), and wants more, but she doesn’t yet know what that is.

The encounter between narrator and female household echoes the mise en scene of Trois Filles de leur mere, but the story is otherwise located in a completely different universe. Whether we are even in contemporary France is unclear (although the amphora in Degaine’s frontispiece might suggest not). All in all, the closest parallel in the rest of Louys’ work to this poem is the Dialogue at Sunset, found in Sanguines, which is set in ancient Greece and in which a goatherd and a girl meet, talk and fall in love. That said, Maddalou’s name implies very strongly that the setting is French: as we know from Bilitis and Aphrodite amongst other books, Louys was perfectly capable of coming up with authentic Greek names from the sources he knew so well. Wherever the story takes place, though, Maddalou’s world is innocent, pure and placid and, as the final sentence reveals, it’s held up to us as a model to envy and to imitate.

A longer, fully annotated version of this essay can be downloaded from my Academia page.

The depiction of women in the illustrated works of Pierre Louys

by Paul Gervais

The illustrated novels of Pierre Louys are instructive in many ways. Primarily, of course, they reveal evolving artistic responses to the author’s prose and verse, thereby not just illustrating his personal vision but demonstrating- indirectly- what book purchasers were understood to want, and what publishers and their commissioned artists believed they could offer them, within the parameters of law and public decency. In other words, the nature of illustrations can be a record of changes in society- in attitudes to sexuality, gender and the status and rights of women.

Louys’ first books appeared in the last decade of the nineteenth century, notably Les Chansons de Bilitis in 1894 and Aphrodite in 1896. The earliest illustrated editions are distinctly reflective of their era, tacitly articulating contemporary attitudes towards the female gender and the position of women in society. Librairie Borel‘s 1899 edition of Aphrodite, illustrated by Antoine Calbet, is a case in point: his depictions of Chrysis reflect the Academic tradition of life studies, derived from the classical artistic tradition since the Renaissance, and the young Galilean courtesan is depicted very much in the style of Greek statues of Aphrodite and paintings of Venus by Botticelli, Tiziano Vecelli and others thereafter.

The title pages of the Calbet edition

Likewise, when Georges Rochegrosse provided plates for an edition of Ariadne in 1904, what he supplied was a very revealing reflection of the period’s conceptions of bacchantes- frenzied women. In the plate illustrated below, they are seen wreathed in ivy and flowers and leopard skin, about to tear apart the helpless Ariadne. Elsewhere in the same volume, Greek ladies were presented as sedate, respectable, elegant, graceful and beautiful- as in the illustration that accompanied the preamble to The House on the Nile by Paul Gervais, which is seen at the head of this post.

As I have described in other posts, numerous further illustrated editions of the various books written by Louys were to follow, both before and after his decease in 1925. A constant feature of these was women in greater or lesser states of undress, plates that faithfully responded to the text but also very consciously appealed to the primarily male collectors of fine art limited editions of books. Amongst these many examples, the most interesting are probably those designed by women. Those volumes worked on by Suzanne Ballivet, Mariette Lydis and Clara Tice are notable for the quality of their work and for the fact that the latter two were lesbian and brought their own sense of eroticism to their reactions to the texts. So, for example, in her plates for the 1934 edition of Les Chansons de Bilitis, Lydis’ vision of female lovers was far more intimate and subtly sensual than most of the works produced by male contemporaries- such as J A Bresval (see below). Other women who worked on the various titles by Louys included Renee Ringel (Aphrodite, 1944), Yna Majeska (Psyche, 1928), Guily Joffrin (Psyche, 1972) and editions of Bilitis illustrated by Jeanne Mammen, Genia Minache (1950), Carola Andries (1962) and Monique Rouver (1967). The frequency with which female illustrators were employed as the century passed is noticeable, although I hesitate to identify a distinctly feminine style.

Maritte Lydis, plate for Bilitis, 1934

Post-war, new editions of Louys introduced us to new conceptions of his female characters. J. A. Bresval illustrated an edition of Bilitis in 1957, his figures being very much inspired by contemporary film stars like Gina Lollobrigida and Brigitte Bardot. The women have a dark-haired fulsomeness typical of the period; the eroticism is rather cliched, such as the frontispiece to the book, which shows Bilitis with a lover: the latter kneels before her partner, embracing her waist and kissing her stomach; the standing woman cups her breasts in her hands and throws back her head in a highly stereotypical soft-porn rendering of female ecstasy.

However, by 1961 and Raymond Brenot’s watercolours for a new edition of Sanguines, we see a new aesthetic of the female body beginning to emerge: the bosoms may be just as fantastical, but there is a slenderness and, in some of the clothes, a sense of a more liberated and relaxed mood. Pierre-Laurent (Raymond) Brenot (1913-98) was a painter who was also very much in demand to design record sleeves, advertisements and fashion plates (for such couturiers as Dior, Balenciaga, Ricci and Lanvin). More tellingly, he is known as the ‘father of the French pin-up’- consider, for example, his advert for lingerie manufacturer Jessos- “Comme maman, je porte un Jessos” declares a young teen with pigtails, seated with her blouse unbuttoned to reveal her bra (“just like my mum’s”); I have discussed this style of marketing in another post. Brenot’s poster designs, for consumer goods, holiday destinations and films and theatres, regularly featured glamorous young women and, when this work declined during the later 1960s, he returned to painting, producing many young female nudes.

Brenot, Parrhasius in ‘The Wearer of Purple’ from Sanguines

What has to be observed, though, is that most of the nudity portrayed by Brenot was not justified by the actual stories in Sanguines. There are some naked slaves in The Wearer of Purple (see below), and Callisto in A New Sensation does share a bed with the narrator, but most of the rest of the stories are really quite respectable and sex-free (by the standards of Louys), being more concerned with psychology than sexuality. What we see, therefore, is evidence for the tendency to treat the works of Louys as a platform for erotic illustration. Frequently, this was a distinct element in the author’s stories, but it seems that he had acquired a reputation for sexiness which was then applied more liberally, presumably in the knowledge that the name would sell. The same criticism can, in truth, be made of Georges Rochegrosse’s depiction of the bacchae in the 1904 edition of Ariadne (see earlier): what he depicted might perhaps be implied in the text, but what Louys wrote doesn’t wholly warrant the nudity that we see:

“They wore fox skins tied over their left shoulders. Their hands waved tree branches and shook garlands of ivy. Their hair was so heavy with flowers that their necks bent backwards; the folds of their breasts streamed with sweat, the reflections on their thighs were setting suns, and their howls were speckled with drool.”

Ariadne, c.2

Brenot, Callisto in ‘A New Sensation’ from Sanguines

The men who feature in Brenot’s illustrations often seem hesitant, ill at ease or, even, embarrassed at being discovered with the women in their company- his take on the ‘satyrs’ with nymph in a scene from ‘The Wearer of Purple’ is a case in point. In Louys’ story, this is an incident involving a slave girl being assaulted by two other servants so as to create a titillating composition for the the artist Parrhasius to paint. As we can see in the reproduction below, the satyrs appear afraid of the young woman, having lost all their accustomed priapism, whilst she strikes me as indifferent to their presence and in fully control of the situation. Given Brenot’s later output, it’s almost certainly overstating things to say that these plates reflect shifts in social attitudes.

Brenot, two satyrs & a nymph in ‘The Wearer of Purple’ in Sanguines

Coming right up to date, the 1999 edition of Aphrodite demonstrates how visions of women may have developed and advanced (or not). The book was issued in three volumes, the first two being illustrated by two male comic book artists, Milo Manara and Georges Bess respectively. Both have distinctly erotic styles and the results strike me as being, in essence, highly accomplished and artistic reproductions of glamour photography and lesbian porn; for example, George Bess’ picture of the reclining woman, which faces the start of Book 2, chapter 1 of the story, seems to me to be drawn in a style very much influenced by Mucha or Georges du Feure: the streaming hair and the encroaching, twisting foliage all have the hallmarks of Art Nouveau (which is of course highly appropriate given the publication date of the original book). In the modern version, Chrysis is regularly depicted in intimate scenes alone, with her maid Djala or with the two girls Rhodis and Myrtocleia. With their tousled hair, pouting lips and pneumatic breasts, these women are very much the late twentieth century ideal. Most of the time, they are presented as being more interested in each other than in any of the male characters in the story, but my response is that there are really rather high-quality examples of fairly standard pornographic obsessions. When we look at them, it’s worth recalling Pierre Louys’ own description of his heroine, when he wrote to the painter Albert Besnard asking to paint her:

“Chrysis, as womanly as possible- tall, not skinny, a very ‘beautiful girl.’ Nothing vague or elusive in the forms. All parts of her body have their own expression, apart from their participation in the beauty of the whole. Hair golden brown, almost Venetian; very lively and eventful, not at all like a river. Of primary importance in the type of Chrysis, the mouth having all the appetites, thick and moist- but interesting […] Painted lips, nipples and nails. Depilated armpits. Twenty years old; but twenty years in Africa.”

Aphrodite, chapter 1, Milo Manara, 1999

Bess, plate for Aphrodite, 1999, Book 2, c.1, ‘The Garden of the Goddess’

A fascinating contrast to the the first two volumes of the 1999 edition is to be found in the third, illustrated by Claire Wendling (born 1967). She is a French author of comic books and her response to the text is interesting because it is so much darker and less obviously ‘sexy’ than that of her male collaborators. The plates are, literally, dark in tone and, although they tend to focus on solo female nudes, rather than lascivious eroticism is there is a mood of mental and physical suffering entirely appropriate to the final section of the book, in which Chrysis is arrested, sentenced to death, executed and buried. Her cover image evokes- for me- thoughts of Gustav Klimt in its decoration, but the twisted, crouched posture of the woman doesn’t look seductive- rather she’s supplicatory or, possibly, predatory.

At the start of this post I proposed that the book illustrations published with successive editions of the works of Pierre Louys can be a record of changes in society- in attitudes to sexuality, gender and the status and rights of women. I think that this is true, but that the evidence does not necessarily reveal huge steps forward in those areas. Far more women are involved now in commercial art, and the works of Louys provide vehicles for the expression of lesbian desire on their own terms: albeit in the service of illustrating books written by a man in which his sympathetic views of same-sex attraction compete with heterosexual masculine eroticism. Art styles have evolved, but the attitudes expressed by what’s depicted have not necessarily developed at the same pace.

Louys in translation

1928 Pierre Louys Society edition

I’ve previously discussed how the illustration of texts can, arguably, be a form of translation of those books; in my outlines of the successive editions of the numerous novels by Pierre Louys, I have also noted a number of translations of those books. Here, I will pull together a number of less well-known books by the author, paying especial attention to translated editions.

There have been plenty of translations of the work of Louys, testifying to the recognised importance of his novels and verse. English has been the main language, but Czech, German, Spanish and Latvian texts have also come to my attention. For example, American readers were offered a selection of his poetry in the 1930 volume, titled Satyrs and Women, a collection of his verse from between 1890 and 1901 translated (allegedly) by ‘Pierre Loving.’ One bookseller has described the verse as “sensual and intelligent” and “odes to the female form.” The book was published in New York with fifteen plates by ‘Madame Majeska;’ as can be seen, these represent their own visual odes to women’s bodies, as well as being part of a striking ‘framed’ page design.

I have often written about Louys’ first major book, Les Chansons de Bilitis (1894), and this very successful and very significant debut was inevitably quickly translated into English. The Songs of Bilitis appeared in 1904, published in London and New York by the Aldus Society and illustrated by James Fagan. His etched portrait of the author and three plates are rather dull and uninspired, so that English-speaking audiences had to wait two more decades to be able to enjoy more interesting versions. Firstly, in 1926, a version appeared with illustrations by Willy Pogany. I have reproduced some of these before– they are austere and simple, but erotic.

Pogany 1926

Pogany 1926

Then, in 1928, the USA’s Pierre Louys Society issued another new translation (part of their commemorative response to the author’s death in 1925). This 1928 edition was supplied by Franz Felix (1892-1967) with twenty four colour and black and white plates. Felix was Austrian-born but lived in the USA and worked as a painter, portraitist, illustrator and fresco painter. Some copies of this book have a gorgeous decorated cover as well (see head of page). I have provided copies of several of the illustration to the text, simply because they are so stunning.

Franz Felix, 1928

L’Arbre, by Felix

Maenads, by Felix

A further translation, by H. M. Bird, appeared in 1931 with plates supplied by ‘Denton.’ The page is design is, again, extremely attractive, and the plates have an art deco flair. I assume the artist involved was Francis William Denton (1896-1987) a Canadian artist who was known for his drawing and painting.

Lastly, in 1928, and then again in 1933, an edition published by William Godwin appeared, with colour illustrations by Jan de Bosschere, whom I featured before. Previously I reproduced the cover: here is one of the plates.

‘Dancing in the Moonlight’ by Bosschere.

Finally, I should not overlook the US edition of the Collected Works of Pierre Louys, edited by Mitchell Buck and published in 1926 by the Pierre Louys Society. This includes translations of Aphrodite, Bilitis, King Pausole, Woman and Puppet, Twilight of the Nymphs, Sanguines and Psyche and is illustrated with black and white woodcuts by Harry G. Spanner. I have reproduced a few of these in previous posts, for example on Twilight of the Nymphs.

Slavery & subjection in the work of Pierre Louys

Many of the works of the French author Pierre Louys are set in the ancient classical world of Greece and Hellenistic Egypt.  Slavery features in these novels and stories as a matter of course; the enslavement of captives and defeated peoples were part of the economy of Greece and Rome, without which their societies would not have functioned.  However, Louys makes a particular use of slavery, employing it to represent certain views of the world.

Clara Tice, illustration of Book 3 of Aphrodite

An important text for this discussion is the author’s short story The Wearer of Purple (L’Homme de pourpre) which is part of the collection of stories titled Sanguines, published in 1903.  It tells of the Athenian artist Parrhasius (a real person) and how he created a famed picture of Prometheus.  The tale begins in Chalcis, where the entire population of Olynthus is being sold off into slavery by Philip of Macedon after he has defeated and destroyed the city.  The narrator, the sculptor Bryaxis (another real historical figure), here meets with Parrhasius; and two men then tour the vast slave market.  Prices have collapsed because so many healthy and young people are for sale. Parrhasius buys a young noble woman of eighteen called Artemidora, admitting to Bryaxis that he has no intention of rescuing her- “she will serve me as model for certain small pictures dealing with sexual subjects, with which I relieve the tension of my mind in my hours of leisure.” Parrhasius then finds the ideal model for his Prometheus, a mature man called Nicostratus who is a skilled physician.  The purchaser doesn’t care for this slave’s medical ability, though, saying dismissively that “[if] I have a cold, I do not make use of any other plaster than a fair warm-breasted girl to recline on my bosom.”  He is only concerned with the captive’s physique. 

Bryaxis and Parrhasius then return home to Athens.  The narrator visits the artist one day, to find him ‘relaxing’ before starting work on his picture of Prometheus.  He is doing this by painting a picture of a nymph being molested by two satyrs- this involves Artemidora being assaulted by two male slaves.  Parrhasius then turns his attention to his major work.  Prometheus was punished by the Olympian gods for having given fire to humans; he was bound to a rock and his liver was devoured daily by an eagle.  To achieve a realistic result, Parrhasius tortures Nicostratus to death.  At first people are outraged, but the great artist is forgiven because the painting he has created is such a prodigy. The story is told, by Seneca, of how the real Parrhasius bought a slave from Olynthus and tortured him to death in order to achieve the most authentic looking picture- most scholars reject this as a fiction, though.

The Wearer of Purple summarises the position of slaves in the classical world recreated by Louys.  They are, of course, property, to be used for pleasure or destroyed however the owner chooses.  We see very similar individuals in his other stories of ancient Greece.  In Les Chansons de Bilitis (1894), on the island of Cyprus, we encounter a ‘merchant of women’ who sells young girls to brothels, although an incident in which a little rose seller is prepared to offer herself and her younger sister to some men, in order to secure the sale of some flowers, is barely to be distinguished from the plight of those sold expressly into prostitution.

Frank J Buttera, illustration for Aphrodite- A Great Pagan Love Story, 1936

We see the same conditions and treatment in Aphrodite (1896).  Highly indicative of slave status is the miserable fate of the girl Aphrodisia, who is property of a courtesan called Bacchis.  The girl and her six half-sisters were all the daughters of a single African slave, whom her owner had ‘bred’ with selected men so as to provide herself with a proper complement of staff.  Three boys were born but were killed; the girls were raised to serve in their owner’s home.  As Aphrodisia is the favourite amongst Bacchis’ seven slaves, the decision has been taken to free her, in celebration of which a party is held.  During this orgy Aphrodisia gives herself to three lovers at once for, “according to the law of slaves who were to become courtesans, she had to prove by incessant zeal that her new dignity was in nowise usurped.” Sadly, during the evening, Bacchis discovers that a precious mirror is missing.  Aphrodisia is wrongly accused of this by her sisters and is crucified on the spot, in the midst of the party.

Once again, we see that slaves are expendable; they may be enjoyed, but they may just as lightly be thrown away- and in the cruellest of manners.  Yet, at the very same time, the position of others is scarcely better than that of the plainly enslaved.  The party has entertainment from musicians and dancers, who perform erotic and gymnastic steps, losing their clothes in the process.  An acrobat walks on her hands, naked amidst sword blades.  As the drinking continues “the twelve naked dancers [prove] an easy prey” for the guests.  One of them, Theano, imitates Danae for the party, letting the guests throw coins at her.  “The saucy impiety of the posing child amused all the feasters,” until one man clumsily injures her and she starts to cry.  To cheer her up, the guests then decide to dip her head first into a krater full of wine, the source of much laughter all round.  This appears to be typical of such events: earlier in the same book, we meet the flute players Rhodis and Myrtocleia making their way home after another engagement.  They complain of the “debauched people” who had treated them like prostitutes; Myrtocleia had to defend Rhodis against an assault; the latter’s sister, Theano, was taken into another room and raped.

Frank J Buttera, 1936

To be sure, there are mutual high spirits here but -in reality- the entertainers are barely distinguishable from the slaves in terms of what it is assumed they will do and tolerate.  They are regarded as property and playthings more than individuals with rights and choices.  The fact that they are female- and young- is plainly a major contributing factor.  They have neither the status nor the power to resist.

The position of female slaves in the ancient world was depicted by Louys as being predictably bleak.  They are liable to sexual exploitation and abuse and of course, they have no means of resisting this: it is just part of their lot. Turning to the modern world, it does not seem to me that Pierre Louys necessarily saw circumstances being any better for certain women.  In his record of his own dealings with prostitutes, as well as in his fiction, the author depicted circumstances and treatment just as poor as anything he imagined in ancient times. He described (and, it seems, used) sex workers who were so poor and desperate that they would consent to clients doing whatever they liked to them in order to get paid.

Antoine Calbet, Aphrodite, 1910

Louys seemed to like to believe that sex workers relished their position: in his novella Trois Filles de leur mere it is claimed that “the brothel girl needs slavery… [she] threw herself into servitude, preferring to obey the whims of others- chains that she herself forges all the days of her life.”  This may only have been a way of reconciling himself to some of his more exploitative actions. Nonetheless, Louys’ contemptuous attitude towards sex workers seems to have extended more broadly to all poor, working class females.  As I described before in respect of his attitude towards trottins and arpetes (errand girls and apprentices), we see the same sense of sexist entitlement manifested by Louys towards poor working girls in Paris: they were treated as being readily available and amenable to providing sexual favours.

To conclude, for Pierre Louys slavery in Greece and Rome was seen as providing a convenient pool of young females who were available for male entertainment.  This fictional world might be regarded as, to some degree, a criticism of this aspect of classical culture, but the author’s own conduct and his personal attitudes, as unconsciously betrayed in his other writing, reveal that, at one level at least, he did not object to the existence of women whose social and economic circumstances obliged them to sell themselves to bourgeois and aristocratic men.  They were not enslaved, but they were still the slaves to money.

A full, annotated version of this essay can be downloaded from my Academia page.

Frank J Buttera, 1936