The Other Body

In la llama doble, Octavio paz explains the similarities between the erotic and the poetic. Both are agents of the imagination. Both are not a means to an end. Poetry is to language what eroticism is to sex. Sex has a function, reproduction, but erosticism is something that is freed from that purpose. Poetry is similarly freed from the utility of language which is communication. A poem cannot be rationalized or understood, only enjoyed. In his essay, Octavio Paz calls the poetry the ‘other voice.’ 

If poetry is the other voice, then what would eroticism be? Perhaps the ‘other body’ that is freed from domestication. He says that eroticism is more than an animal sexuality, it is a ritual and representation. It is sexuality transformed into metaphor. 

So I wonder what is this ‘other animal,’ this metaphor beyond a body, perhaps beyond a human body, and perhaps even more an animal body. 

But we reproduce not only to propagate the population count, we reproduce to evolve. It is the way species have evolved. Eroticism touches on the mystery of evolution. To touch upon what feels erotic is to reach for a desire to create something greater than the current biological species we are. Just like to reach for a more poetic feeling finds words and language that does not yet exist, only because it is reaching for a consciousness that does not yet exist. 

This is how poetry and eroticism are closely related. Both reaching for connection in different mediums. They are our ambition towards becoming more, the imagination to create what does not exist, what is not possible.

Did a fish dream of legs? Of walking on land? Does it even know what is at the edge of the ocean?

What does a person dream of? Our poetry and eroticism contain our deepest desires. We are no longer aroused by fish yet we are the products of their arousal. So when does arousal turn into Eros, when do words become a voice undiscovered, Where does instinct end, and art begin? Our eroticism is our fish-bodies dreaming of a world beyond the ocean. 

“Quis hic locus? Quae regio? Quae mundi plaga?” —Virgil, Aeneid Book I

What world is this? What kingdom? What shores of what worlds?