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But from whom came the temptation? Who was to be cursed on its account? It was easy to say that it came from the Devil. He was its source, but the curse had to do with its object. The object, the instrumentum of the Tempter, was woman. She was also, and by that token, indeed, the instrument of holiness, since holiness did not exist without raging lust for sin. But the thanks she got had a bitter taste. Rather the remarkable and profoundly significant thing was that though the human being, both male and female, was endowed with sex, and although the localization of the daemonic in the loins fitted the man better than the woman, yet the whole curse of fleshliness, of slavery to sex, was laid upon the woman. There was even a saying: “A beautiful woman is like a gold ring in the nose of the sow.” How much of that sort of thing, in past ages, has not been said and felt most profoundly about woman! It had to do with the concupiscence of the flesh in general; but was equated with that of the female, so that the fleshliness of the man was put down to her account as well. Hence the words: “I found the woman bitterer than death, and even a good woman is subject to the covetousness of the flesh.”
One might have asked: and the good man too? And the holy man quite especially so? Yes, but that was the influence of the woman, who represented the collective concupiscence of the world. Sex was her domain, and how should she not, who was called femina, which came half from fidus and half from minus -- that is, of lesser faith -- why should she not be on evil and familiar footing with the obscene spirits who populated this field, and quite particularly suspect of intercourse with them, of witchcraft? [Several very odd stories of incubi, idols, witchcraft, and the like follow that I think I can skip.]
p109 ...this point of view too includes the recognition of a certain natural wonder-working of the spiritual, its power to affect and modify the organic and corporeal in a decisive way -- and this so to speak magic side of the thing it was, of course, that Schleppfuss purposely emphasized in his comments on the Klopfgeissel case [“She” ends up burned at the stake].
p110 He did it in a quasi-humanistic sense, in order to magnify the lofty idea which those supposedly sinister centuries had had of the choice constitution of the human body. They had considered it nobler than all other earthly combinations of matter, and in its power of variation through the spiritual had seen the expression of its aristocracy, its high rank in the hierarchy of bodies. It got cold or hot through fear or anger, thin with affliction; blossomed in joy; a mere feeling of disgust could produce a physiological reaction like that of bad food, the mere sight of a dish of strawberries could make the skin of an allergic person break out; yes, sickness and death could follow merely mental operations [sounds like Percy Shelley]. But it was only a step -- though a necessary one -- from this insight into the power of the mind to alter its own and accompanying physical matter, to the conviction, supported by ample human experience, that mind, whether willful or not, was able, that is by magic, to alter another person’s physical substance. In other words, the reality of magic, of daemonic influence and bewitchment, was corroborated; and phenomena such as the evil eye, a complex of experience concentrated in the saga of the death-dealing eye of the basilisk, were rescued from the realm of so-called superstition. It would have been culpable inhumanity to deny that an impure soul could produce by a mere look, whether deliberate or not, physically harmful effects in others, for instance in little children, whose tender substance was especially susceptible to the poison of such an eye.
Thus Schleppfuss in his exclusive course -- exclusive because it was both intellectual and questionable. Questionable: a capital word, I have always ascribed a high philological value to it. It challenges one both to go in to and to avoid; anyhow to a very cautions going-in; and it stands in the double light of the remarkable and the disreputable, either in a thing -- or in a man.
I think we see revealed here the rules that will govern the action in the novel that follows. This is Mann’s way of saying, “In a galaxy far far away...”.
In our bow to Schleppfuss when we met him in the street or in the corridors of the university we expressed all the respect with which the high intellectual plane of his lectures inspired us hour by hour; but he on his side took off his hat with a still deeper flourish than ours and said: “Your humble servant.”
I'm now in the section of Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of the Senses where she talks about taste and, in particular, the Roman lust for taste (and pleasure in general) is described at length. And then we come to the early Christians,
p145 Small wonder Christianity arose as a slave-class movement, emphasizing self-denial, restraint, the poor inheriting the earth, a rich and free life after death, and the ultimate punishment of the luxury-loving rich in the eternal tortures of hell. As Philippa Pullar [interesting bio] observes in Consuming Passions, it was from this “class-consciousness and a pride in poverty and simplicity the hatred of the body was born. . . . All agreeable sensations were damned, all harmonies of taste and smell, sound, sight and feel, the candidate for heaven must resist them all. Pleasure was synonymous with guilt, it was synonymous with hell. . . . ‘Let your companions be women pale and thin with fasting,’ instructed Jerome.” Or, as [Edward] Gibbon put it, “every sensation that is offensive to man was thought acceptable to God.” ...
[But, interestingly, she goes on as follows] p146 While saucy Roman poets like Catullus wrote rigorously sexy poems about affairs with either sex, Ovid wrote charming ones about his robust love of women, how they tormented his soul, and about the roller coaster of flirtation he observed at dinner parties. “Offered a sexless heaven,” he wrote, “ I’d say no thank you, women are such sweet hell...”
This is a very traditional looking Italian cafe in North Beach. Located on Columbus Avenue, it caters to the tourist trade but still seems to be a favorite of the police officers from the station around the corner. It’s one of the larger places I frequent, with many tables inside and a row of smaller tables outside lining the sidewalk. There is even a parklet in front with more tables if you want to have the experience of drinking your coffee or tea virtually in traffic. (Parklets are small decks built in the street taking up one or more parking spaces. I think the one here takes up about three parking spaces. They have become common in the past few years, Quetzal has one as does the 24th Street location of Martha & Brothers.)
The walls here are lined with the traditional European posters for Vermouth Bianco and the like, and the cafe tables have heavy and ornate iron bases. The floor and table tops are stone.
I can’t speak to their coffee, as usual, but their iced tea is distinctively good. They also have a range of unusual cookies like the Orange-chocolate I’m having today. But the main reason to come here is to enjoy the view of this busy stretch of Columbus in the heart of North Beach. Mostly I come when the weather is warm and sit out on the sidewalk to take advantage of any breeze. Years ago they served my favorite caprese salad -- it included greens as well as the usual tomato and mozzarella. Apparently too many people complained that it wasn’t a “proper” caprese salad, so they changed it. So now, on hot afternoons, I have my salad on the sidewalk of a cafe just down the block where they have a similar salad that features fried, breaded eggplant and what look like jalapenos, though I think they may be a different green pepper. The food is actually better at Caffe Puccini but it is so tiny it's often hard to find a table.
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