Sex in the Cities. Volume 3. Paris. Hans-Jürgen Döpp

takes refuge once again in a quasi-Wagnerian tone, full of German soul, dominated by profound emotional devotion.

      Although middle-class German scientists of sexual matters, on whose works about sexual morals our ideas principally depend, refer to a “deconsecration of love”, this is more than a cultural misunderstanding. “The mind and thoughts, take second place to the insistence of lust,” complains Ivan Bloch, “the life of the soul loses out, and all our thinking and feeling focus on one point: the satisfaction of physical desires.” For Bloch, the 18^th century French – specifically Parisian – love-life is “… nothing but a universal exposure of the body to the fulfilment of physical lust”. Here, no sacred flame blazes up. Even so, it is this emancipation of the flesh from the context of moral restrictions which turns our fascinated gaze time and again towards Paris and the Parisienne. Where would a moralist be without the opposite pole of corruption – something he deeply desires?

      Right up until today this image is still valid in any discussion of France as the “land of love”. Thus, in its 8 April 2002 issue, Der Spiegel entitled an article: “Lust in the land of love – Are the French really so lust-bound as contemporary scandalous authors of the Grande Nation currently proclaim? An in-depth analysis reveals the sexual habits of the French.” First and foremost, it asserts, desire has gained in importance over romantic attachment. Increasingly, women go to bed with men without love coming into it. But as late as 1992, 66 % still thought this feeling was essential. Since then, however, this percentage has shrunk markedly. Despite the fact we see a trend emerging – in all Western European and American culture, not just in France – we can still, as far as France is concerned, talk about a resurgence of the 18^th century libertine love-culture.

      “Never before have the French talked so much about sex – especially not in the first person,” the weekly L’Express remarked of this analysis. Never before? You only have to go back 200 years or so to draw the same conclusion! The only point worth making is the effect democratisation has had – what was formerly confined to the aristocracy has at long last pervaded all levels of society!

      And still the German exception casts its shadow: in Germany, love still plays a more important role. “Germans,” claims Spiegel, “seem less orgasm-fixated than their neighbours. Tenderness is more important to them. Almost 90 %, a victory for German Romanticism, declare that love is an essential precondition for sex.” The “sacred flame” is still burning bright here. Meanwhile, though, for foreigners, the Parisienne will continue to remain the epitome of a desirable, attractive, and appealing woman. Is the Parisienne a chimera? She may be an illusion, but one that really exists.

      Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Moulin-Rouge, 1891.

      Coloured lithograph, 170 × 124 cm.

      Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

      Illustration for the Le Sphinx brothel.

      Engraving, c. 1730.

      History: Middle Ages, Renaissance

      Paris: Europe’s First Metropolis

      “Paris cannot be grasped in one glance: it is not one composition, rather a welter of conflicting compositions. When one says ‘I am in Paris’, one is saying ‘I am nowhere’. It is just an expression. Everyone here lives in a multitude of Parises.” This is how the Russian symbolist, Andrei Belyi, describes the French capital in his memoirs in 1934.

      But Belyi would have gotten the same impression 400 years before, for, as early as the 16^th century, chroniclers described the city of Paris as “the wonder of wonders”. Many chroniclers, whose works spread throughout Europe thanks to the invention of printing, wrote about the wonders of Paris.

      From the Middle Ages onwards, Paris has been the centre of European culture and intellectuality. What made Paris stand out from all other cities was the fact that it was the first metropolis in the West. Here, there developed urban ways of life which broke down the existing social structure. This new anonymity of social situations helped create a sense of liberation, which in turn brought about various forms of liberty. Ivan Bloch sees a parallel development between the creation of cities and the growth of monetary economies. Corresponding to the late development of capitalism in Christian Europe, there was a complete lack of large cities compared to the Orient and the Islamic West. As far back as the Middle Ages, Cairo, Baghdad, and Constantinople all had populations of around a million people! These Oriental megalopolises were centres of a worldly high life in which, writes Bloch, “… the seemingly inexhaustible sources of wealth gushed out their golden floods; in which a limitless form of luxury arose, an insanely sensual life, a teeming mass of people, such as we can imagine only in ancient Rome or in the ways that modern metropolises like London and Paris have developed.”

      As early as the Middle Ages, Paris was one of the largest cities in Europe. And many things that were described as “typically Parisian” were simply “typically metropolitan”. Whilst active daily life began to develop in Italy, Belgium, France, and England as far back as 90 °CE, Germany in this period still had no major cities. We can assume that the splendour of Paris shone especially brightly on those neighbouring European countries which were less economically developed. As a “late-developing” nation, Germany was amongst these countries.

      The fundamental difference between the East and West was also of great significance for the development of prostitution. Until the Renaissance, there was no real prostitution trade in Europe and a sensual life, such as existed in the Orient, was just as unknown. Such a life could have been said to exist only in some Italian cities like Venice, Florence, and Rome, as well as in Vienna and, as we have seen, in Paris. Even in those days, Paris was regarded the world over as the new Babel, the site of the most sophisticated sensual pleasures. To foreigners, the city revealed itself as an overwhelming conglomeration of sensory stimulation, as an acoustic, visual, and olfactory experience. “It strikes me that I have been plunged into a giant whirlpool, with the raging waters swirling me back and forth like a grain of sand,” noted the Russian Karamsin – representing the many tourists to Paris during the ancien régime who felt the same.

      Nowhere, writes Karlheinz Stierle in his study The Myth of Paris, is Europe more European than in Paris! However, “if Paris is the European capital city par excellence, it is also the capital city of foreigners. The metropolis knows no foreigners because everyone in it is a foreigner and this is the common factor, uniting even the most native Parisians with the most exotic foreigners.”

      A contemporary, Montesquieu reaches this judgement: “Paris may well be the most sensual city in the world, which is aware of the most sophisticated of pleasures; but it may also be the city where life is hardest” (Lettres persans). The restless, universal pursuit of happiness and enjoyment, in which everyone takes part, makes Paris “… a city which is the mother of novelty”. The extraordinary mobility of the mind, which must constantly refocus while in turmoil, is also the reason for moral instability and insoluble ethical dilemmas. Its moral contradictions push the individual to debate with his conscience.

      The metropolis is the scene of experiments in humanity. Yet, as Rousseau’s Émile casts back, the city, which has just been the place where everything is possible, appears in a totally negative light: “Well, then, Paris, adieu, famous city of noises, smoke and dirt, where women have forgotten all about honour and men all about virtue.”

      Amusement with a hood, Paris, c. 1340.

      Embroidered purse, gold and silver thread on linen,

      16 × 14 cm. Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg.

      Bartholomeus Anglicus, Book of the Prophecy of Things, Paris, c. 1400.

      Herzog-August-Bibliothek, 1.3.5.1 Aug. 2 fol. 146r°, Wolfenbüttel.

      In Nougaret’s three-volume book, Parisian