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That Difficulty Increases Desire

'No reason but has its contrary' says the wisest of the Schools of Philosophy.

I have just been chewing over that other fine saying which one of the ancient philosophers cites as a reason for holding life in contempt: 'No good can bring us pleasure except one which we have prepared ourselves to lose' - Seneca. 'Sorrow for something lost is equal to the fear of losing it' - Ibid. He wanted to show by that that the fruitiion of life can never be truly pleasing if we go in fear of losing it.

But we could, on the contrary, say that we clasp that good in an embrace which is all the fonder and all the tighter in that we see it as less surely ours, and fear that it may be taken from us. For we know from our evidence that the presnse of cold helps fire burn brighter and that our wills are sharpened by flat opposition: "Danae would never had had a child by Juppiter had she never been shut up in a tower of bronze" - Ovid, Amores.

We also see that by nature there is nothing so contrary to our tastes than that satiety which comes from ease of access; and nothing which sharpens them more than the rareness and difficulty: "In all things pleasure is increased by the very danger which ought to make us flee from them" - Seneca. "Say 'No' to him, Galla: Love is soon satred unless joys meet torments" Martial, Epigrams.

To keep love in trim Lycurgus ordained that married couples in Sparta should only have intercourse with each other by stealth, and that it should be as much a disgrace for them to be discovered lying together as lying with others. The difficulty of arranging trysts, the danger of being surprised, the embarrassment on the morning after - that is what gives smack to the sauce.

How many pleasant and very stimulating verbal frolics arise from the chaste and modest vocabulary we use when talking of sexual intercourse. Pleasure itself seeks stimulation from pain. It tastes far more sweet when it hurts and takes your skin off. Flora, the courtesan, said that she had never lain with Pompey without making him bear the marks of her teeth:

"The object of their desire they tightly hug, hurting each other's body; they keep singing their teeth into each other's lips; some hidden goads prick them on to give pain to the very thing, whatever is it, from which spring the seeds of their ecstasy" - Lucretius

So it is with everything: it is difficulty which makes us prize things.

The people of the Marches of Ancona more readily go to Saint James of Compostela to make their vows: those of Galicia, to Our Lady of Loreto. At Lieege they sing the praises of the baths at Lucca: in Tuscany, of those of Spa-by-Liege. Your hardly ever see a Roman in the fencing school of Rome: it is full of frenchmen! Great Cato tired of his wife - just like the rest of us - when she was his: when she belonged to another man, he yearned for her. I had an old stallion which I put out to stud: there was no holding it back when it sceneted the mares. The ease of it all soon sated it where its own mares were converned; but with the other mares, as soon as one passes by its paddock it returns to its incessant neighings and its frenzied passions just as before.

Our appetite scorns and passes over what it holds in its hand to run after what it does not have: "He leaps over hwat lies fixed in his path, to chase after whatever runs away" - Horace.

To forbid us something is to make us want it: "Unless you start looking after that girl of yours better, I shall soon stop wanting her!" - Ovid

To hand it over to us completely is to breed contempt for it in us. To Want and Plenty befall identical misfortunes: "You have too much of it, and that pains you. What pains me is that I do not have enough" - Terence

We are equally troubled by desiring something and by possessing it. Coldness in mistresses is most painful, but in very truth compliance and availability are even more so; that is because the yearning which is born in us from the high opinion in which we hold the object of our love sharpens our love, and the choler similarly makes it hot: but satiety engenders a feeling of insipidness; our passion then is blunted, hesitant, weary and half asleep:

"If any mistress wants to go on reigning over her lover, then let her scorn him" - Ovid

"Scorn your mistress, young lovers, then she will come back today for what she denied you yesterday" - Propertius

Why did Poppae hit on the idea of hiding the beauties of her face behind a mask if not to make them more precious to her lovers?

Why do women now cover up those beauties - right down to their heels - which every woman wants to display and every man wants to see? Why do they clothe with so many obstacles, layer upon layer, those parts which are the principal seat of our desires - and of theirs? And what use are those defence-works with which our women have started to arm their thighs, if not to entrap our desires and to attract us by keeping us at a distance?

"She flees into the willow trees - but wants you to see her first!" - Virgil
"Sometimes she delays me by letting her dress get in the way" - Virgil

What is the purpose of that artful maidenly modesty, that posed coldness, that severe countenance, that professed ignorance of things which they know better than we do who are teaching them to them, if not to increase our desire to vanquish, overcome and bend to our passion all those conventional obstacles? For there is not only pleasure in making that sweet gentleness and that girlish modesty go mad with sensual desire but glory as well in reducing a proud and imperious gravity to the mercy of our ardour.

There is glory, they say, in triumphing over coldness, modesty, chastity and moderation, and those who counsel ladies against such qualities betray both the ladies and themselves. We need to believe that their minds are quivering with fear; that the sound of our words offends the purity of their ears; that they hate us for it and yield to our insolence with an enforced attitude.

Beauty, however powerful it may be, has no way iof making itself savoured without such preliminaries. See how in Italy - where there are more beautiful women on sale, and finer ones too - beauty still has to seek extraneous means and other artifices to make herself attractive: and yet, in truth, being public and buyable she remains weak and languishing: just as in virtue, even out of two similar actions, we hold the one to be more beautiful and more highly prized in which there are more difficulties and hazards to be faced.

---- Continued later