L
LoafingOaf
Guest
Morrissey is the Observer:
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Does he have relationships ever? 'Not physical relationships, no. I mean there are some people on this planet who aren't obsessed with sex, and I'm one of them. I'm not interested. And I'm not cloaking something, I'm not going somewhere under cover of night and existing in some wild secretive way. I wasn't interested when I was 17, I wasn't interested when I was 27, I was less interested when I was 37 and I'm even less interested now. I really enjoy my own company enormously, so I don't feel a great gaping hole. I sit at home at night and I feel absolutely honoured not having to cater for anybody, or listen, or put up with anybody. I feel it's a great privilege to live alone.'
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I wonder if Morrissey has ever read Camille Paglia. He might like her!
His name and celibacy came up in a 1997 "Ask Camille" column on salon.com.
Have a looksie:
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Dear Camille:
Reading the essays of Jean Cocteau, I am struck by the similarity between his elaborate self-description as a celibate (and history's evidence to the contrary) and the self-promotion of the modern singer known as Morrissey. While I can't presume to know Morrissey's private life, I'm curious: Is there a long tradition of strenuously gay artists who go to great lengths to portray themselves as morose celibates? Can such a trend (if it exists) be the product of more than simple protection from societal prejudice? A flamboyantly celibate mini-genre?
A real-life, albeit unwilling, celibate
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Dear Unwilling Celibate,
There is indeed a gay tradition of abstinence or celibacy, beginning with Plato's "Symposium," where the gorgeous Alcibiades describes his inability to seduce Socrates while they slept together one long winter night. Even Shakespeare, in his love sonnets to the mysterious "fair youth," seems to suggest that physical contact did not occur, by the poet's own choice.
A good example of the ideological bias and unscholarly amateurism running through women's studies and gay studies is the way this issue of abstinence has been ignored or derided. All the great world religions, including sensuous Hinduism, honor celibacy as intrinsic to the ethical discipline of asceticism.
The best of the medieval monks did not hate women or sex but sought to suppress the body in order to intensify their spiritual experience of God. The monkish impulse is detectable in the saturnine, reclusive Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, who are crudely classified as "gay" today but who probably had very little sex in their stunningly productive lifetimes.
In "Sexual Personae," I discuss celibacy as a symbol of psychological autonomy in the great Greek virgin goddesses, Athena and Artemis, as well as in the French novelist Balzac, who dressed in a monk's robe and abstained from sex during his Herculean labors on "The Human Comedy." I suspect that Walt Whitman too, despite some random romping and groping, was basically celibate.
As someone whose dating life was for many years a complete disaster, I can testify that celibacy can enormously benefit artists and intellectuals, to whom it gives both energy and detachment. Balzac's fierce Cousin Bette gains from her virginity "a diabolical strength or the black magic of the Will." Perhaps Jean Cocteau, despite his gay adventures, reached this revelation.
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Does he have relationships ever? 'Not physical relationships, no. I mean there are some people on this planet who aren't obsessed with sex, and I'm one of them. I'm not interested. And I'm not cloaking something, I'm not going somewhere under cover of night and existing in some wild secretive way. I wasn't interested when I was 17, I wasn't interested when I was 27, I was less interested when I was 37 and I'm even less interested now. I really enjoy my own company enormously, so I don't feel a great gaping hole. I sit at home at night and I feel absolutely honoured not having to cater for anybody, or listen, or put up with anybody. I feel it's a great privilege to live alone.'
====
I wonder if Morrissey has ever read Camille Paglia. He might like her!
His name and celibacy came up in a 1997 "Ask Camille" column on salon.com.
Have a looksie:
====
Dear Camille:
Reading the essays of Jean Cocteau, I am struck by the similarity between his elaborate self-description as a celibate (and history's evidence to the contrary) and the self-promotion of the modern singer known as Morrissey. While I can't presume to know Morrissey's private life, I'm curious: Is there a long tradition of strenuously gay artists who go to great lengths to portray themselves as morose celibates? Can such a trend (if it exists) be the product of more than simple protection from societal prejudice? A flamboyantly celibate mini-genre?
A real-life, albeit unwilling, celibate
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Unwilling Celibate,
There is indeed a gay tradition of abstinence or celibacy, beginning with Plato's "Symposium," where the gorgeous Alcibiades describes his inability to seduce Socrates while they slept together one long winter night. Even Shakespeare, in his love sonnets to the mysterious "fair youth," seems to suggest that physical contact did not occur, by the poet's own choice.
A good example of the ideological bias and unscholarly amateurism running through women's studies and gay studies is the way this issue of abstinence has been ignored or derided. All the great world religions, including sensuous Hinduism, honor celibacy as intrinsic to the ethical discipline of asceticism.
The best of the medieval monks did not hate women or sex but sought to suppress the body in order to intensify their spiritual experience of God. The monkish impulse is detectable in the saturnine, reclusive Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, who are crudely classified as "gay" today but who probably had very little sex in their stunningly productive lifetimes.
In "Sexual Personae," I discuss celibacy as a symbol of psychological autonomy in the great Greek virgin goddesses, Athena and Artemis, as well as in the French novelist Balzac, who dressed in a monk's robe and abstained from sex during his Herculean labors on "The Human Comedy." I suspect that Walt Whitman too, despite some random romping and groping, was basically celibate.
As someone whose dating life was for many years a complete disaster, I can testify that celibacy can enormously benefit artists and intellectuals, to whom it gives both energy and detachment. Balzac's fierce Cousin Bette gains from her virginity "a diabolical strength or the black magic of the Will." Perhaps Jean Cocteau, despite his gay adventures, reached this revelation.
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