Abstract
"We do not make use of things," writes Senancour, "but of their images." Accordingly I would like at once to invite you to consider the nude as an image, and not as prey. That can at first appear difficult, but this difficulty ought not detain us any further than does the nude itself when it fascinates us. This difficulty ought to give us pause, in the same measure as the nude, which when it proffers itself to us, agreeing that we make some use of it, nevertheless prompts us to take dilatory measures in its regard, so that we postpone gratification in order better to be receptive of sheer fascination. Here I could quote Lautreamont when, at the end of one of his odes, he speaks of letting his inspiration gain its breath for a moment and then compares the poet to the lover who pauses in the midst of his act to contemplate his desire. Thus contemplation replaces action. The nude, at that very moment, is above all an image. In proposing that you consider it as an image I am presenting you at the same time with the thesis I wish to establish here. That is, that the fascinating power of the nude, the erotic fascination, whatever its physiological roots might be, is nevertheless to be interpreted and grasped as an imaginary phenomenon, an ideal phenomenon. There is, in the fascination of the nude, something other than an instinct which is self-triggered and seeks only its own end.