It’s impossible to deny that human beings like sex, and spend an inordinate amount of time consumed with thoughts of it. Sex may have started off as an evolutionary necessity – we had to have sex to survive as a species – but we also like sex because it’s fun, keeps us healthy, connects us to our partners (unless it’s casual, which is fine too), and it feels good.
Sex also inspires art; there are cave paintings that depict sex, clearly indicating that our ancestors spent a lot of time thinking about it too. It’s hard to escape the erotic theme in art — from paintings and statues to erotic prose and poetry — we just can’t seem to stop talking about it.
Erotic poetry was the earliest form of erotic literature, and it has been around since Ancient Greece and Rome. Those works still survive to this day and are attributed to Greek poets Straton of Sardis, Sappho of Lesbos, and Automedon.
Notable Roman writers of erotic poetry include Latin poet Albius Tibullus and the Priapeia, an anonymous collection of ninety-five poems that are a tribute to the phallic god Priapus. These and other poems from the Renaissance period were not written for a wider audience, but were circulated amongst a small group of people privately.
William Shakespeare was no stranger to erotica, with works such as Venus and Adonis — though he never attained the infamy of ‘restoration rakes’ like John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, and Sir Charles Sedley. John Wilkes, the author of An Essay on Woman, has the dubious distinction of being the only poet who had his erotic poetry read aloud in the House of Lords in its entirety;
his work was declared both obscene and blasphemous, and he was declared an outlaw!
Closer to home, the Indian association with the book of love, the Kama Sutra, is well known, but there are so many other erotic allusions scattered throughout Indian literature predating it. For instance, some of the earliest love poetry is found in the Rigveda (1500 BC), where there are primal and passionate poems, as well as charms and spells for lovers.
Later, in Sanskrit literature, there are erotic poems that speak of love, sex, and passion that is inspired by the divine. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Urdu poets Insha, Rangin, and Jur’At write passionately about erotic couplings that are both same sex and opposite sex.
There is a certain beauty to erotica that is under appreciated, especially in India, where has become a taboo, although it wasn’t historically. It is important to note though, that erotic literature — novels, short stories, poetry, memoirs, manuals, and confessionals — is immensely powerful because it instigates contemplations on a subject we may not vocalise. It has the power to move us and connect us to our own sexuality, and it is important to embrace that.