Hell at the Library, Eros in Secret

In an artistic exhibition of a different kind showcased by France’s National Library, rutting satyrs, degenerate aristocrats and lusty clergy went on display as part of its extensive collection of prohibited erotica.With cataloguing starting in the 1830s, the library’s special pornographic section, officially entitled “Enfer” (Hell), has dropped its strides and bared all in priapic glory as it has a long, hard (in fact, very long and hard…) look in the mirror of contemporary moral values.

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With a collection of over 2000 works, including over 350 books, paraphenalia, lithographs and photographs, the age of the collection dates back to the 14th-century through a manuscript of a nun picking the fruit of a phallus-tree, to more famous authors such as Marquis de Sade, Jean Genet and Guillaume Apollinaire.

Notable works include “Therese Philosophe” (Therese the Philosopher) which was tucked discreetly in many a nobleman’s bookshelf. As a forerunner of the “Confessions” genre, it told of a girl’s sexual awakening through the perusal of pornography.

The Revolution also gave birth to a new movement of ‘obscene pamphleteers’ who delighted in libels against members of the deposed royalty. King Louis XVI’s legendary insatiable queen is shown in flagrante on the frontispiece of “Marie-Antoinette’s Uterine Frenzies.”

By comparison, 20th-century erotica becomes semi-respectable, as society writers develop a taste of the forbidden, however their banned works are still consigned to the library “Hell” by the moral censors.

The paradoxical dichotomy is that while such works were all once held to offend against national morals, they were all secretly prized.

18th-century encyclopaedist Denis Diderot is quoted in the opening of the exhibition: “The tougher the ban on a book, the higher its price and the more eager the curiosity. So the more copies are sold, and the more the book is read.”