unreachable

quotes by octavio paz, from an erotic beyond: sade

“what distinguishes eroticism from sexuality is not its complexity but rather its distance. a person is reflected in sexuality, bathes in it, becomes one, and separates. but sexuality never watches the erotic game; it illuminates without seeing; it is a blind light. the couple is alone, in the midst of the nature it imitates. the erotic act is a ceremony that is performed behind the back of society and in front of a nature that never contemplates representation. eroticism is both a fusion with the animal world and a rupture, a separation from that world, an irremediable solitude. catacomb, hotel room, chateau, fort, cabin in the mountains or an embrace under the clouds, it is all the same: eroticism is a world closed to society as well as to nature. the erotic act erases the world: nothing more real surrounds us except our ghosts.”

“distance creates erotic imagination. eroticism is imaginary: it is a shot of imagination fired at the exterior world, and that shot is people themselves, arriving at their images, arriving at themselves. creation, invention: there is nothing more real than this body that i imagine; there is nothing less real than this body i touch that turns into a heap of salt or vanishes into a column of smoke. . . someone else’s body is an obstacle or a bridge; either way, one must cross it. desire, the erotic imagination, the erotic life, all cross through bodies and make them transparent. or they destroy them. beyond you, beyond me, through the body, in the body, beyond the body, we want to see something. that something is erotic fascination, that which takes me from myself and brings me to you: that which makes me go beyond you. we do not know precisely what it is, except that it is something more. more than history, more than sex, more than life, more than death.” 

“the first act of philosophy, the first step, is to reduce variety to uniformity: what distinguishes one being from another is his or her resistance to my desire. the first failure of philosophy: this resistance is not only physical but also psychological. moreover, it is not voluntary. no matter how complete our dominion over another is, there is always an impassable zone, an inaccessible particle. the others are unreachable, not because they are impenetrable, but because they are infinite. each person hides an infinity. no one can possess the totality of another for the same reason that no one can give of one’s self entirely. a total submission would be death, a negation both of possessing and giving. we ask for everything, and they give it to us: a death, nothing. while the other is alive, his or her body is itself a consciousness that reflects and negates me. erotic transparency is deceptive: we see ourselves in it, we never see the other. to conquer resistance is to eliminate transparency, to turn the other consciousness into an opaque body. it is not enough: i need it to live, i need it to enjoy and, above all, to suffer. an insurmountable contradiction: on the one hand, the erotic object cannot have its own existence or it will turn into an inaccessible consciousness; on the other, if i wipe out that consciousness, my own being will disappear."