A Return of Aphrodite- on the Venusberg

In his short story, An Ascent of the Venusberg, written in 1903, the author Pierre Louys explored the possibility of encountering the goddess of love in the contemporary world.

The Venusberg, as I have previously described, is a mountain in Germany near Eisenach in Thuringia, now called the Hörselberg. The peak is the focus of folklore and myth, being immortalised in the story of Tannhäuser by Wagner, Aubrey Beardsley, William Morris, Swinburne and- even- Aleister Crowley. 

In Louys’ version of the story, a Frenchman is visiting Eisenach after attending performances of Wagner at Bayreuth. From his hotel room, he can see the Venusberg, which- due to his “sinful disposition”- looks to him “exactly like the swelling breast of a woman… It quivered; positively seemed to be alive at certain hours of the evening… [giving the impression] that Thuringia, like a goddess reclining… was letting the blood rise, in her passion, to the summit of her bare breast.”

He decides to climb the mountain one day. There is a small hostelry at the summit, where he has a meal; one of the two sisters running the place has an “obliging disposition” and makes it clear that sex is available too on top of the peak. The tourist settles instead for directions to the Venushöhle, the Grotto of Venus. It is only a short walk away, but she warns him of the madman to be found there.

The grotto of the goddess looks exactly as one might anticipate: “it was small, in the form of a vertical ellipse crowned with slender brown brambles.” The madman is also present, warning the visitor not to enter because “Venus dwells there herself in the flesh with her millions of nymphs about her.” This scarcely discourages the Frenchman, so the madman begins to rant. It seems he was once a godly and pure young man; even though he married, he renounced the temptations of the world and he and his wife lived together in a “state of grace” (or so they thought). He has learned, though, that this attempt at austere self-denial was utterly wrongheaded: it was “a lie, each day, to the law of life.” Now it is too late- he is old and still a virgin: “Woe to all virgins! For the love they have rejected all their short lives will justly torture them in the infinity of the wrath to come!”

The man sits on the mountain peak daily to commune with Aphrodite, because every evening “the Goddess sings a sweet song… she calls to me from afar, she draws me to her.” Eventually, he will perish by falling down into the Venushöhle and thence into the furnace in which the chaste are punished.

The pair wait and then “a breath of perfumes bore to our ears the languishing echo of a Voice…”- and the story ends abruptly. We can only assume that, as this is told as a reminiscence, this “sinful” young man met with no punishment from the goddess.

There are many aspects of this little account typical of Louys. He treats the ancient pagan deities as still alive and actively present in the modern world. Secondly, sex and sexuality are to the fore- though for very obvious reasons, given the subject matter. Thirdly, the author took pleasure (as he often did) in inverting and reversing the tenets of Christianity. The Venusberg is the gateway to hell, but punishment here is for the “niggards of the flesh” those who have lived “solitary lives in revolt against the great divine law.” Hell is a place full of “thousands of millions of naked women dancing,” placed there to torment those who denied themselves the pleasures of their bodies during their lives. In the philosophy of Venus (and Louys) carnal delight is good and virtuous and abstinence is unnatural. The writer had said the same six years previously in Aphrodite, when he described how “virginity displeases [the goddess].” Here he expanded on the idea, stating more clearly the principle that underlay so much of his work.

See my Louys bibliography and details of my various publications on the poet, as well as details of my book on the goddess herself.

In the Venusberg

Edward Burne-Jones, Laus Veneris, 1875

In 1866 Algernon Swinburne composed the poem, Laus Veneris.  The title means ‘The Praise of Venus’ and is based on the story of Richard Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser, which in turn derives from the myth of Venus and her palace under the Venusberg mountain. In the legend, the young knight Tannhäuser falls in love with Venus and lives with her in her faery realm until he becomes so overwhelmed by remorse at his fleshly sins that he makes a pilgrimage to Rome to seek absolution. This is denied to him as being impossible. The entire tone of the poem is one of hopeless regret: the love and sex with Venus was all consuming at the time, but upon later recall, the thought turns bitter.  Nonetheless, the knight struggles between the attraction of her physical joys and the redemption offered by the church.  The goddess proves to be more profoundly attractive than Jesus and his Mother to Tannhäuser.

The goddess of Swinburne’s Laus Veneris is “the world’s delight” and her bodily charms- her long hair, her “gracious body lithe as lips,” her ‘great chest,’ clear limbs and her marvellous mouth with luxurious lips- are irresistible but terrible temptations. Passion with Venus is an intensely sweet pleasure but ultimately, it appears, it is unsatisfying: “Brief bitter bliss, one hath for a great sin.” Death and desire are treated as being identical.

As so often in his poetry, Swinburne is skilled in evoking a delicious sense of sinfulness. This was extremely transgressive and thrilling in the mid-nineteenth century, and it can still prove evocative today. The erotically suggestive but ambiguous images come in a flood: the knight kissing and sucking on her neck like a vampire; the goddess feeling “my love laid upon her garment-wise/ Feeling my love in all her limbs and hair;” a “panting mouth of dry desire;” all the talk of physical labour through a “hot hard night” and of huge weariness that suggests violent copulation followed by drained exhaustion; the entwined couple “lover-like with lips and limbs that meet/ They lie, they pluck sweet fruit of life and eat; “Her little chambers drip with flower-like red” and “Her gateways smoke with fume of flowers and fires.” Together they experience “the pain that never finisheth,” deriving “Exceeding pleasure out of extreme pain.”

Venus’ love is addictive, “thou knowest how sweet a thing it is to me” he tells her- a phrase that is a constant refrain throughout the poem. It reminds me powerfully of the chorus of ‘Sweet Thing,’ by David Bowie, from Diamond Dogs:

“Boys, boys, it’s a sweet thing, sweet thing;
If you want it, boys, get it here, thing;
‘Cause hope, boys, is a cheap thing,
Cheap thing.”

Gabriel Max, Tannhäuser

The young knight sees Venus first under a (fairy) elder tree, “Naked, with hair shed over to the knee.” Immediately, he “knew the beauty of her, what she was/ The beauty of her body and her sin.” This faery queen is beautiful beyond compare and cannot be denied: “As when she came out of the naked sea/ Making the foam as fire whereon she trod..” As these lines make clear, this queen is, indeed, Venus/ Aphrodite, born of the spume of the sea off Cyprus.

As we see at the head of the page, Burne-Jones later borrowed the title of Swinburne’s poem for his depiction of the goddess; she is shown worn out by love-making, it would seem- slumped and self-absorbed. Reviewing the painting in 1875, The Spectator was tremendously prudish and Victorian about it: “when we arrive at the meaning, it is not one we would care to explain to child or wife.” (Did wives rank on the level of children? Where, anyway, did those children come from?)

Laurence Koe, Venus & Tannhäuser

The legend of the Venusberg is fascinating, independent of Wagner’s use of it.  It seems to be a combination of ancient Germanic mother goddesses, of medieval faery lore (that elder queen found living under a hill) and the classical myths of sex-goddess Aphrodite.   In the original version of the legend, the goddess was called Sibylla, a name that’s widely applied to the ‘queen of the faeries’ across Europe. The idea of a man falling for the faery queen and visiting Faery isn’t unique either: in Britain, the story of Thomas of Erceldoune is comparable. His experience is set in the Eildon Hills in the Scottish Borders; the Venusberg lies near the Rhine in western Germany. Whether in the place-name there is some crude and simple pun on mons veneris, I’m not sure, but art historian Lionel Lamborne certainly noted the fact that, in Burne-Jones’ painting, the queen’s crown rests on her lap, perhaps implying some sort of venereal sovereignty.

For painters, this sexy seductress Venus was too good a subject to ignore- and most paintings were far more explicit than Burne-Jones’ rather allusive scene.  In Gabriel Max’s Tannhäuser, the goddess is yearning and alluring,  her robe slipping down to tempt him to stay.  Laurence Koe’s Venus and Tannhäuser (1896) shows an even more wanton and seductive Venus, writhing nakedly on a bed of roses whilst the knight vainly seeks to focus on higher things.  The Belgian Egide Rombaux’s sculpture, Venusberg, of about 1901, takes the eroticism yet further with three naked maidens engaged in a writhing and ecstatic dance.

Rombaux, Venusberg

Sandor Liezen-Mayer, Venus & Tannhäuser

Lastly, as I have mentioned before, the cover of my recent book on Aphrodite uses John Collier’s 1901 picture of the Venusberg, showing a more imperious deity, topless on her throne with doves fluttering around her and handmaiden to one side, displaying to young Tannhäuser the pleasures that await him if he stays.

The Imperious Venus- the art of John Collier

A Priestess of Bacchus

The Honourable John Maler Collier (1850-1934) was a British painter and writer. He painted in a style inspired by the Pre-Raphaelites and the neo-classicists and became one of the most prominent portrait painters of his generation. Collier deserves a posting to himself on this blog as his image, Tannhäuser in the Venusberg (1901), forms the cover of my 2021 book, Aphrodite- Goddess of Modern Love. I chose the image for the fact that it represented one aspect of Aphrodite- that of her as an independent and self determining female. In the words of the Velvet Underground’s song, Venus in Furs, she is seen here as “the imperious.” She may not be about to whip and humiliate Tannhäuser, as Wanda would have done in the novel Venus im Pelz, but she nonetheless has the young knight as her subject and slave.

The recent Green Magic publication with its Collier cover.

Lilith, 1887

Collier was from a prosperous and successful family; his father was a judge. He studied painting at the Slade School under Edward Poynter for three years, before attending the Munich Academy from 1875, followed by a time studying in Paris. Through his father, he was introduced to the established painters Alma-Tadema and Millais, who provided guidance and encouragement. Collier first exhibited a figure study at the RA as early as 1874, something which soon established him as a portraitist. He also met his first wife at the Academy school. She sadly died after the birth of their first child; Collier then, much against prevailing convention and society approval, married her younger sister, a ceremony which had to take place in Norway as it was prohibited in English law. Interestingly, Collier’s greatest successes as a painter came from his “problem pictures” in which he tackled social problems and the dramas of ordinary life- The Prodigal Daughter (1903) and Sentence of Death (1908) speak for themselves.

An Incantation

During his career, Collier benefitted from his social background to receive commissions to paint a lot of the leading men of the British Empire, from which he made a “comfortable if uninspiring living.” These pictures are a succession of dull figures in black suits and khaki; his portraits of society ladies and children are rather more appealing (he painted some 1100 in his lifetime). Far more interesting and memorable, though, are his historical and mythical scenes, such as Lady Godiva, 1898, Circe, 1885, Lilith, 1887, and Clytemnestra, 1882. These can be melodramatic as well as colourful. His classical and oriental scenes are without doubt vibrant and sexy, his heroines often being fearfully self-contained and determined women. As art historian Christopher Wood rightly observed, Collier had a “distinct taste for the theatrical.”

The Pharaoh’s Handmaidens, 1883

Delphic Oracle, 1891

For such an establishment figure, Collier’s views on morality and the Christian religion were surprisingly outspoken for the time and his position was decidedly sceptical about a deity. He was a forthright rationalist, once described as ‘quietly ruthless’ in his manner. Perhaps this was why he seemed to imbue so many of his pagan scenes with such a vital spirit, as if prepared to concede that their deities might be real, that their practices might be as valid as those of the established church, that magic and prophecy might work, and that supernatural entities might exist throughout the natural world. If nothing else, the ancient ceremonies he imagined look lively and fun and he endowed his nature spirits with life and charm, whilst his females and goddesses have a quiet power and confidence.

Maenads, 1886

As some readers may be aware from my other WordPress blog, British Fairies, I also write about British folklore, so that part of my admiration for Collier comes from his frequent handling of native legends and stories alongside the classical myths. As his rendition of Halloween shows (see below), Collier appreciated the continuing emotional power of folk beliefs.

The Water Baby, 1890

The Land Baby, 1909

Many of Collier’s images seem to stand outside any specific chronological period or identifiable historical era. For instance, Stepping Stones, shown below, could well represent a young girl of the 1920s, but her dress is vaguely classical, making it possible that we can see her as yet another Greek naiad alongside the Water Nymph depicted beside her.

The Water Nymph, 1923

Stepping Stones, 1929

For me, there is far more vitality and interest in Collier’s depictions of myth and antiquity than in most of his pictures of the great and the good of the late British Empire. If nothing else, his imaginary worlds are places where women wield considerable temporal, religious and magical power- they are all, in a sense, a manifestation of Venus the imperious.

Suggested further reading includes Christopher Wood’s Olympian Dreamers and William Gaunt’s Victorian Olympus. For more information on Victorian art, see details of my book Cherry Ripe on my publications page.

All Halloween