Jahsonic's microblog

This is my third post in what I shall call the unruly member series. The first was this[1] and the second this[2]. With the unruly member I mean man’s most honest organ.

To round up my research: first I found Plato saying that “the gods have given us one disobedient and unruly member” (4th century BC), then there was Schopenhauer who equated his will to live with the sex drive, saying “the genitals are the real focus of the will” (19th century). But in between there was Leonardo da Vinci (Renaissance) who wrote the little text “Della Verga” (on the penis) in his notebooks:

“[The phallus] confers with the human intelligence and sometimes has intelligence of itself, and although the will of the man desires to stimulate it it remains obstinate and takes his own course, and moving sometimes of itself without license or thought by the man, whether he be sleeping or waking, it does what it desires; and often the man is asleep and it is awake, and many times the man is awake and it is asleep; many times the man wishes it to practice and it does not wish it; many times it wishes and the man forbids it.

It seems therefore that this creature often has a life and intelligence separate from the man, and it would appear that the man is in the wrong in being ashamed to give it a name or exhibit it. seeking rather constantly to cover and conceal what he ought to adorn and display with ceremony as a ministrant.”[3]

How to illustrate? Aha. French artist Jean-Jacques Lequeu comes to rescue with his phenomenal Le Dieu Priape (shown above). Enjoy. And PS, my advice, listen to your members. Genitals don’t lie.

Just to be clear, my choice of Lequeu is not arbitrary. If one were to write a Pervert’s Guide to History, one would have to admit that the standard for everything that comes after the 18th century is the unholy trinity of Sade, Fuseli and Lequeu.