Erotica As Religion

Carmela Ciuraru remembers the impact of the French erotic novel The Story Of O, written in 1954 by Pauline Réage:

In her disciplined effort toward transcendence, O is not unlike a zealot giving herself to God. O’s devotion to the task at hand takes the form of what might be described as spiritual fervor. She loses herself entirely—and, after all, the loss of self is a goal of prayer. If O is willing to sustain her devotion all the way through to her own destruction, so be it. She wants to be “possessed, utterly possessed, to the point of death,” to the point that her body and mind are no longer her responsibility. “What does a Christian seek but to lose himself in God,” Aury, a devout atheist, once said. “To be killed by someone you love strikes me as the epitome of ecstasy.”