A reply to those dishonest journalists who twist phrases to make the Idea
seem ridiculous;
to those women who only think what I have dared to say;
to those for whom Lust is still nothing but a sin;
to all those who in Lust can only see Vice, just as in Pride they see only vanity.
Lust, when viewed without moral preconceptions and as an essential part of life’s dynamism, is a force.
Lust is not, any more than pride, a mortal sin for the race that is strong. Lust, like pride, is a virtue that urges one on, a powerful source of energy.
Lust is the expression of a being projected beyond itself. It is the painful joy of wounded flesh, the joyous pain of a flowering. And whatever secrets unite these beings, it is a union of flesh. It is the sensory and sensual synthesis that leads to the greatest liberation of spirit. It is the communion of a particle of humanity with all the sensuality of the earth.
Lust is the quest of the flesh for the unknown, just as Celebration is the spirit’s quest for the unknown. Lust is the act of creating, it is Creation.
Flesh creates in the way that the spirit creates. In the eyes of the Universe their creation is equal. One is not superior to the other and creation of the spirit depends on that of the flesh.
We possess body and spirit. To curb one and develop the other shows weakness and is wrong. A strong man must realize his full carnal and spiritual potentiality. The satisfaction of their lust is the conquerors’ due. After a battle in which men have died, it is normal for the victors, proven in war, to turn to rape in the conquered land, so that life may be re-created.
When they have fought their battles, soldiers seek sensual pleasures, in which their constantly battling energies can be unwound and renewed. The modern hero, the hero in any field, experiences the same desire and the same pleasure. The artist, that great universal medium, has the same need. And the exaltation of the initiates of those religions still sufficiently new to contain a tempting element of the unknown, is no more than sensuality diverted spiritually towards a sacred female image.
Art and war are the great manifestations of sensuality; lust is their flower.
A people exclusively spiritual or a people exclusively carnal would be condemned
to the same decadence— Lust excites energy and releases strength. Pitilessly it drove primitive
man to victory, for the pride of bearing back a woman the spoils of the defeated.
Today it drives the great men of business who run the banks, the press and international
trade to increase their wealth by creating centers, harnessing energies and
exalting the crowds, to worship and glorify with it the object of their lust.
These men, tired but strong, find time for lust, the principal motive force
of their action and of the reactions caused by their actions affecting multitudes
and worlds.
Even among the new peoples where sensuality has not yet been released or acknowledged,
and who are neither primitive brutes nor the sophisticated representatives of
the old civilizations, woman is equally the great galvanizing principle to which
all is offered. The secret cult that man has for her is only the unconscious
drive of a lust as yet barely woken. Amongst these peoples as amongst the peoples
of the north, but for different reasons, lust is almost exclusively concerned
with procreation. But lust, under whatever aspects it shows itself, whether
they are considered normal or abnormal, is always the supreme spur.
The animal life, the life of energy, the life of the spirit, sometimes demand
a respite. And effort for effort’s sake calls inevitably for effort for
pleasure’s sake. These efforts are not mutually harmful but complementary,
and realize fully the total being.
For heroes, for those who create with the spirit, for dominators of all fields,
lust is the magnificent exaltation of their strength. For every being it is
a motive to surpass oneself with the simple aim of self-selection, of being
noticed, chosen, picked out.
Christian morality alone, following on from pagan morality, was fatally drawn
to consider lust as a weakness. Out of the healthy joy which is the flowering
of the flesh in all its power it has made something shameful and to be hidden,
a vice to be denied. It has covered it with hypocrisy, and this has made a sin
of it.
We must stop despising Desire, this attraction at once delicate and
brutal between two bodies, of whatever sex, two bodies that want each other,
striving for unity. We must stop despising Desire, disguising it in the pitiful
clothes of old and sterile sentimentality.
It is not lust that disunites, dissolves and annihilates. It is rather the
mesmerizing complications of sentimentality, artificial jealousies, words that
inebriate and deceive, the rhetoric of parting and eternal fidelities, literary
nostalgia— We must get rid of all the ill-omened debris of romanticism, counting
daisy petals, moonlight duets, heavy endearments, false hypocritical modesty.
When beings are drawn together by a physical attraction, let them— Physical modesty, which varies according to time and place, has only the ephemeral
value of a social virtue.
We must face up to lust in full conciousness. We must make of it what
a sophisticated and intelligent being makes of himself and of his life; we
must make lust into a work of art. To allege unwariness or bewilderment
in order to explain an act of love is hypocrisy, weakness and stupidity.
We should desire a body consciously, like any other thing.
Love at first sight, passion or failure to think, must not prompt us to be
constantly giving ourselves, nor to take beings, as we are usually inclined
to do so due to our inability to see into the future. We must choose intelligently.
Directed by our intuition and will, we should compare the feelings and desires
of the two partners and avoid uniting and satisfying any that are unable to
complement and exalt each other.
Equally conciously and with the same guiding will, the joys of this coupling
should lead to the climax, should develop its full potential, and should permit
to flower all the seeds sown by the merging of two bodies. Lust should be made
into a work of art, formed like every work of art, both instinctively and consciously.
We must strip lust of all the sentimental veils that disfigure it. These
veils were thrown over it out of mere cowardice, because smug sentimentality
is so satisfying. Sentimentality is comfortable and therefore demeaning.
In one who is young and healthy, when lust clashes with sentimentality, lust
is victorious. Sentiment is a creature of fashion, lust is eternal. Lust triumphs,
because it is the joyous exaltation that drives one beyond oneself, the delight
in posession and domination, the perpetual victory from which the perpetual
battle is born anew, the headiest and surest intoxication of conquest. And as
this certain conquest is temporary, it must be constantly won anew.
Lust is a force, in that it refines the spirit by bringing to white heat the
excitement of the flesh. The spirit burns bright and clear from a healthy, strong
flesh, purified in the embrace. Only the weak and sick sink into the mire and
are diminished. And lust is a force in that it kills the weak and exalts the
strong, aiding natural selection.
Lust is a force, finally, in that it never leads to the insipidity of the definite
and the secure, doled out by soothing sentimentality. Lust is the eternal battle,
never finally won. After the fleeting triumph, even during the ephemeral triumph
itself, reawakening dissatisfaction spurs a human being, driven by an orgiastic
will, to expand and surpass himself.
Lust is for the body what an ideal is for the spirit— Lust is a force.
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