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trace of sublimation. His world is peopled exclusively by penises and
vaginas; but since for him these are items of symbolism-since the sex
act itself
is
symbolic, and nothing is real but imagination-it follows
that man is totally unconstrained at last. The Dionysian Christ re–
quires nothing of us, not even assent to his existence. Again, if we
consider the political dimension of
Love's Body
we can see that
Brown has trumped his predecessors. Reich was a Marxist, Lawrence
had a streak of latent fascism and Jung welcomed Hitler in Wagner–
ian tones. Brown outdoes them all in one sentence: "The real prayer,"
he says, "is to see this world go up in flames." But then he reminds
us that literal interpretations are vulgar; by making his fantasy ex–
plicit, by allowing the repressed to return uncensored, he has made it
innocent of covert violence. A man who rejects hierarchy in human
faculties will
be
against dictatorship on all levels. Polymorphous
perversity seems indeed to be the acme of quietism; it requires no
partner, overburdens no organ and entails no direct social conse–
quence. One might add that it entails no discipleship to Norman O.
Brown. Insofar as he has succeeded in keeping his body mysticism
uncluttered by Jung's cultural trappings or the social criticism of
Reich and Lawrence, he has disencumbered himself of followers who
might have seen him as the champion of their grievances. In the de–
cade of self-destroying sculpture Brown has perfected a new form, the
self-abolishing movement.
With
Love's Body
Brown abandons his questionable role as his–
torian and gives himself over to the ingenious nihilism that was lodged
between the lines of
Life Against Death.
He eliminates our problems
by eliminating us. Therapeutic Idealism, which has been out of favor
with most intellectuals at least since the time of Mrs. Eddy, here
undergoes another birth in the guise of its opposite, total desublima–
tion. Set free from all neurotic striving, Eros politely agrees not to
be
a nuisance any more and retires to the domain of symbolism. Nothing
remains for us to do but pluck our insipid lutes within a Oneness
which is now devoid of content. The distant explosions we thought
we heard-they too must be interpreted according to the spirit. And
if the bombs should turn out to be real after all, and begin falling on
us, they will find us in a serene attitude: passive, pre-Oedipal,
androgynous.
The business of philosophy, of course, is not to make protest but
to explore the nature of reality and language, and to alter or refresh
