Only the united beat of sex and heart can create ecstasy.

In the week Henry Miller arrives on my doorstep, I trip across Delta of Venus, the 1995 film.

Trite. Over-acted. I was not much impressed until the end - the cumulative effect of the film was powerful enough to research its origins. I knew it was a core work of erotica, but didn't recall much past that.

Anais Nin - of course. And she crosses my path the same week as Tropic of Cancer.

What made me pay attention: Elena maintains and magnifies her personal power throughout the film. This amazes me. She meets him - in her power. She matches it. With every man and woman, she brings her full self. I don't often see that in films. Most often the man is dominant. Not always, but often. Sometimes the woman is dominant, in the role of Bitch or Whore. Here she was neither. She was Elena - and approached the men and the situations head on... once she had made up her mind to do so.

This makes me want to read Anais Nin side-by-side with Henry Miller. Henry & June as been a favourite since I first saw it years ago - perhaps it deserves another viewing. Maybe. Maybe later. More, I'm interested in Delta of Venus. Do her characters bring their Self so directly into sex, work, and friendships - as portrayed in this overly-done film? I'll need to look at when each work was written, but it'll be interesting to compare their styles. And see which resonates, stimulates, and interests me the most - if either.


From Anais Nin to The Collector:

"Dear Collector: We hate you. Sex loses all its power and magic when it becomes explicit, mechanical, overdone, when it becomes a mechanistic obsession. It becomes a bore. You have taught us more than anyone I know how wrong it is not to mix it with emotion, hunger, desire, lust, whims, caprices, personalties, deeper relationships that change its color, flavor, rhythms, intensities.

"You do not know what you are missing by your microscopic examination of sexual activity to the exclusion of aspects which are the fuel that ignites it. Intellectual, imaginative, romantic, emotional. This is what gives sex its surprising textures, its subtle transformations, its aphrodisiac elements. You are shrinking your world of sensations. You are withering it, starving it, draining its blood.

"If you nourished your sexual life with all the excitements and adventures which love injects into sensuality, you would be the most potent man in the world. The source of sexual power is curiosity, passion. You are watching its little flame die of asphyxiation. Sex does not thrive on monotony. Without feeling, inventions, moods, no surprises in bed. Sex must be mixed with tears, laughter, words, promises, scenes, jealousy, envy, all the spices of fear, foreign travel, new faces, novels, stories, dreams, fantasies, music, dancing, opium, wine.

"How much do you lose by this periscope at the tip of your sex, when you could enjoy a harem of distinct and never repeated wonders? No two hairs alike, but you will not let us waste words on a description of hair; no two odors, but if we expand on this you cry Cut the poetry. No two skins with the same texture, and never the same light, temperature, shadows, never the same gesture; for a lover, when he is aroused by true love, can run the gamut of centuries of love lore. What a range, what changes of age, what variations of maturity and innocence, perversity and art . . .

"We have sat around for hours and wondered how you look. If you have closed your senses upon silk, light, color, odor, character, temperament, you must be by now completely shriveled up. There are so many minor senses, all running like tributaries into the mainstream of sex, nourishing it. Only the united beat of sex and heart together can create ecstasy."