/lit/ - Literature

GOAT alert

>In this passage, cut from the original version of “Look Homeward, Angel,” Eugene thinks he has contracted a venereal disease from a prostitute, and Ben, his brother, takes him to a doctor. What follows is a rumination on the seduction of helpless men.

>The old gods and goddesses were no better. Aegis-bearing Zeus seduced a great number of young virgins, appearing to them disguised as a bull, a swan, a shower of gold and in whatever other shapes seemed most convenient to him. Venus, the so-called goddess of love, was a living symbol of unbridled lust, and had a whole legion of lovers, divine and mortal. The wife of Potiphar, prime minister of Egypt, lay her snares for a young man of strong character and unimpeachable morals. When he repulsed her, she plotted against his life. Think of the titled mistresses of King Charles the Second of England, the powdered courtesans of the dissolute kings of France, Lesbia, the faithless mistress of the poet Catullus, a faithless wife to boot, the unspeakable Sappho and Queen Catherine the Great of Russia, whom Byron justly calls the world's most celebrated whore. Think of Queen Helen, most beautiful of mortal women, that adulterous whore for whom Troy was put to the sack and burned, and for whom countless numbers of the Argive men suffered woes innumerable, and were given to the birds to scavenge . . . in order that the will of god might be accomplished. . . . Clytemnaestra, her hands dabbled with the blood of Agamemnon, Becky Sharpe, with her lover dead upon the field at Waterloo, Lucrezia Borgia - the proud black names, each with its wrought skein of evil, marched through his brain their awful pageantry of treason, Lesbic loves, the smiling kiss of poison, the red smear of lust and murder, weaving all life, all nature, all men, bright shoals of flapping minnows, helplessly and irresistibly into their net.

>“And right here - in this town, now, this very minute, it is happening. All around us!” he burst out in resentful fury.