Reading Bawdy Language

Although Valentine’s Day is over, the singles have survived and millions of bouquets are on their way to wilting, but the theme of seduction in literature transcends the greeting card holiday. Authors wrote about romance long before the “Be Mine” lingo of conversation hearts, and surely will continue as long as people love. Here are some of the most memorable and sexy pieces of poetry and prose.

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“Wild Berry Blue” by Rivka Galchen

The narrator of Rivka Galchen’s short story “Wild Berry Blue” is not your average seductress: she is in elementary school. Her story tells vividly and truthfully of a first love ““ its all-consuming-ness, its pain, its failures. The object of her affection is Roy, a cashier at McDonald’s, and her seduction techniques are not so different from those we’re used to. She steals glances at him, she tries and fails to make conversation and she plans her week around finding the perfect gift for Roy at a medieval fair: “I had so little of Roy and yet he had all of me and the feeling ran deep, deep to the most ancient parts of me.” The older narrator looking back on this love notices the continuities in her love life that began with this first love of Roy, and it’s something to learn from. “All my life love has felt like a croquet mallet to the head,” she says. Whether her approach to love at the age of eight is something she wishes she could go back to ““ the earnestness, the fervor, the hope ““ or something she’s glad she’s past, it’s difficult to say.

“Text” by Carol Ann Duffy (from her collection of poems “Rapture”)

Today, all that remains of the seducing power of poetry is the overused “Roses are red, violets are blue …” poem that pops up every Valentine’s Day. The rest of the year, poetry does not show up as a courtship technique ““ it has been replaced with modern modes of communication. In her poem “Text,” Carol Ann Duffy shows the limitations and awkwardness of media such as text messages for conveying love. “Look for your small xx,/feeling absurd./The codes we send/arrive with a broken chord.” The textual mediation, Duffy points out, makes it difficult to express emotion, and leaves too much room for misinterpretation. While they make it difficult to communicate “our significant words,” text messages, e-mails and phones have become a vital part of our love language, so its probably best just to learn the lingo.

“Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov

In his most famous (and most controversial) novel, Nabokov tackles pedophilia from the inside. His middle-aged protagonist Humbert Humbert seduces 12-year-old Dolores Haze, after marrying her mother to get closer to the girl. The scary thing about “Lolita” is that as much as Humbert seduces little Dolores, Nabokov seduces the reader ““ to the point where you find yourself rooting for Humbert, virtually condoning this unthinkable relationship. From the first lines: “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta,” and you’re hooked. Throughout the novel we find that handsome Humbert doesn’t have to do all the work ““ and perhaps that’s the trick. After trying to use sleeping pills on Lolita to molest her without her knowledge, Lolita comes to seduce him herself. While this novel is no positive example of courtship, its raw emotion and sexual frankness are certainly a study in seduction.

“Sonnet 130″ by William Shakespeare

Especially around Valentine’s Day, you’ve heard all the cliches about love, and they’re probably a lot less persuasive than the first time you heard them. In this sonnet of Shakespeare’s, the poet inverts such cliches, admitting in the first line that “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun.” At first, it may seem that he is denying the woman’s beauty, with lines like “Coral is far more red than her lips’ red” or “And in some perfumes is there more delight/Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.” Yet his realistic approach rings true when he finishes with, “And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare/As any she belied with false compare.” Already in the 16th century, Shakespeare was alert to the hollowness of clichéd descriptions of love and beauty, and this less grand but more honest declaration of love seems certain to hold more promise.

“Histoire de ma vie” by Giacomo Casanova
An Italian adventurer and author of the 18th century, Casanova’s name is now synonymous with the art of seduction, and he recorded his exploits of women in this memoir. For Casanova, love and sex was casual and fun. While members of the nobility most often married for social connections, they relied on flirtations, bedroom games and short-term liaisons for romance. “Feeling that I was born for the sex opposite of mine, I have always loved it and done all that I could to make myself loved by it,” he said. Yet he was not without morals ““ alcohol and violence were not tools of his seduction. He focused on attentiveness, favored and loved to save a woman from a brutish or jealous lover ““ and then take her for himself.

“To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell

Andrew Marvell’s poem “To His Coy Mistress” is the most famous in a genre of “carpe diem” poetry ““ it attempts to seduce women into bed simply on the basis that life is short and there’s no time like the present. The poem begins “Had we but world enough, and time/This coyness, lady, were no crime,” and continues “Now let us sport us while we may.” It’s a pretty convincing argument, a more subtle version of what Ricky Gervais’ character says in “The Invention of Lying”: “the world’s going to end unless we have sex right now.” Appeals to a woman’s sense of mortality might have better results than a worn-out profession of love. The passing away of youth and time is something that no one can deny.