History of the O

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Histoire d'O-couverture.jpg

History of O (French original title: Histoire d'O , English Story of O ) is an erotic novel by Anne Desclos (better known as Dominique Aury ), published in 1954 , who published it under the pseudonym Pauline Réage . Because of its detailed depiction of female submission , the work has long been considered a scandal book. It had a great influence on the development of erotic literature and is one of the most famous sadomasochistic novels in the world.

content

The submissive O, a successful Parisian fashion photographer, lets her lover René take her to the secluded Roissy Castle. It is an exclusive private estate where women submit to the will of men. There O can be trained to be a perfect sub out of love for René . As part of her upbringing, she is tied up , whipped and taught to be sexually available to everyone at all times. After completing her training, she agrees to René's wish to temporarily stay with his father's friend Sir Stephen and to submit to his wishes unconditionally. Sir Stephen proves to be even more dominant than René; O falls in love with him. To prove this love, she undergoes a further, even stricter training in a property called Samois, which is exclusively inhabited and managed by women. There she receives brand marks on her buttocks and rings and discs on her labia as a sign that she is Sir Stephen's property.

The book contains a reference to a deleted final chapter: In it O returns to Roissy and is left there by Sir Stephen; in an alternate version, O, when she sees Sir Stephen leaving her, wishes her death, and Sir Stephen gives his consent. In fact, the author wrote the said appendix years later, but with a different ending (see below: Adaptations ).

Classification and background

The novel poses the question of the relationship between love and submission or the voluntary "giving up of one's own will". All processes are described from the perspective of the heroine without narrator comments, whose inner workings are described in a subtle way without her behavior being judged morally or explained on the basis of conventional standards. Famous is a rape and torture scene in which, when she sees her lover's worn-out slippers, she thinks of getting him new ones at the earliest opportunity.

In terms of language and style, the work is in the tradition of classical French literature; Despite the subject matter, the book manages completely without obscene words. The essential contrast to common schemes is that O consciously and voluntarily assumes their role. Because nothing happens without her first giving her consent, and it is precisely from this formal situation of submission that she draws new self-confidence.

reception

Susan Sontag named the story of O in her essay The Pornographic Imagination as an example of the legitimacy of sophisticated pornography as an independent literary genre. As part of her campaign against pornography in general and sadomasochistic literature in particular, Andrea Dworkin defended the thesis that the figure of O was created by a male author only to propagate the submission of women. Frederick Wyatt advocates the thesis that the obvious resilience of the O, as well as its inviolability against all rigors, facilitate the enjoyment of sadomasochistic literature and sees here a proximity to the function of catharsis in classical Greek tragedy.

Origin and Distribution

The biographical reason for the creation of the novel was Dominique Aury's love for the writer and literary connoisseur Jean Paulhan, who was twenty years his senior . After realizing the appreciation of her married partner for the works of the Marquis de Sade , unknown to her at the time , Aury decided to write her own book and send him every single chapter after it was completed. Following on from his remark that women could not write corresponding erotic literature, she wrote the work within three months in order to bind him to her, which she succeeded.

The novel was published in June 1954 in an edition of 2,000 copies with a foreword by Paulhan in the publishing house of Jean-Jacques Pauvert , in addition 600 numbered copies were printed and provided with a lithograph by Hans Bellmer . The book had previously been rejected by two other publishers (Les Deux Rives and Gallimard ) for fear of a public scandal . Pauvert had already published de Sade's collected works and had been charged several times for this reason.

In January 1955, the book won the Prix ​​des Deux Magots, a French literary prize . However, this did not stop the French authorities from filing a lawsuit against the publisher of the work for publishing obscene material. The lawsuit was dismissed by the competent courts, but the book landed on the index in France for several years. The publisher refused to give the authorities the real name of the author. Aury herself only publicly revealed her authorship (which has been rumored since the 1970s at the latest) in an interview with the American magazine The New Yorker . In 2004, director Pola Rapaport described the story of the mystery in her documentary "The Writer of O" through a series of interviews and film clips.

The first German edition was published in 1967 by Melzer Verlag , actually specializing in Judaica . The publisher consciously took the risk of publishing the novel in order to avoid the threat of bankruptcy. Since 2000 the work has been freely available in an edition from Charon Verlag with accompanying text and is sold in large editions.

As an independent edition, the novel remains classified in Germany as harmful to young people (“indexed”). A series of literature published since July 2006 under the name Bild-Erotik-Bibliothek by “Bild” and the Random House publishing group made the novel accessible to a wide audience in an abridged edition. The work was later classified as harmful to minors in the library edition. Even before the indexing, which had already been pronounced for other editions in 1967 and 1982, came into force again, the publishing house withdrew the book before the decision of the Federal Testing Office for Media Harmful to Young People .

A Swiss collector named Nordmann acquired the manuscript of the novel in 1994 for around US $ 100,000 (around € 65,000). After his death, much of the collection, including the manuscript of History of O, was auctioned at Christie's in Paris on April 27, 2006. The manuscript went to a stranger for € 85,000.

Quotes

"'The story of the O' paved the way for pornography in Germany, not the Olympia Press ."

- Jörg Schröder

“The contradictions of the beaten woman, on the one hand pain, on the other hand pleasure, are always resolved in favor of her own instinctuality, which is satisfied by sadomasochistic practices. The image of women outlined here does not correspond in any way to the sexual perception of women, rather it arises from the male fantasy world, even if the author is supposed to be a woman. "

- Federal Testing Office for Media Harmful to Young People 1983

Edits

continuation

The chapter Return to Roissy , published in 1969, is a continuation of the story of the O ; in more recent editions it is usually added as an appendix to the novel. In it, O is brought back into the castle. At the end the police appear who are looking for Sir Stephen for murder. O is then explained by the leader that she is now free; however, she could stay if she wanted. The author noted that the pages were "deliberately a descent, and they must never be included in the story of the O ".

Adaptation as a comic

In 1975 the Italian artist Guido Crepax adapted the story for a two-part comic . Peter Gorsen , at that time lecturer in art and visual communication at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen, wrote after the comic was published: “In my opinion, the 'story of O' falls under the art reservation of the Basic Law. It is aimed at an 'adult', educated, if not artistically interested group of readers. […] At Crepax, the graphics achieve a technical virtuosity . ”Because of the sadomasochistic content and explicit representations, the comic was put on the index by the Federal Testing Office for Media Harmful to Young People (BPS) . The comic version published in France and Italy, an elaborately screen-printed, signed and numbered edition with forewords by Roland Barthes and Alain Robbe-Grillet is considered the most expensive first print of a comic.

Film adaptations

The French director Henri-Georges Clouzot planned a cinematic implementation of the material for years. The film adaptation The Story of O 1975 by Just Jaeckin with Corinne Cléry and Udo Kier is considered a classic of its genre, even if it initially fell short of the book's success. Some storylines and the ending of the literary original have been changed very much. In Great Britain, the film was banned by the British Board of Film Censors until February 2000. The 1975 film's producer, Éric Rochat, produced a five-part Spanish miniseries in 1992 with Claudia Cepeda in the title role.

The American film director Gerard Damiano , best known for his two classic porn films Deep Throat (1972) and The Devil in Miss Jones (1973) , shot The Story of Joanna in 1975 , a variation on the story of the O theme. The film is heavily influenced by the story of O In order to avoid possible licensing demands, Damiano changed the title and created a mixture of a single chapter of the classic and Jean-Paul Sartre's Closed Society . As a tribute to the story of O and its author, the Danish director Lars von Trier produced a short film in 1979 with the name Menthe - la bienheureuse . In 2002 Phil Leirness directed a modern English-language adaptation of the material; he also co-wrote the script.

Filmography

Trivia

Simplified model of the ring of O based on the literary model with the triskele
  • The so-called ring of O is often worn in BDSM circles . This has also served the bondage scene as a distinguishing mark for some time and has found its way into the mainstream.
  • It is believed that in Dominique Aury's social circle, the French author Janine Aeply, wife of the painter Jean Fautrier and one of Aury's friends, was the model for the novel.
  • The novel is the source of a large number of different terms that are widely used in the BDSM subculture , including Samois , the name of the book character Anne-Marie's estate where O is pierced and branded.
  • One coincidence is Tom Sharpe's Der Renner, which is about a controversial erotic novel and the anonymous author, a highly respected literary critic.
  • Lars von Trier's film Manderlay was partly inspired by the story of the O
  • The 2002 album released O by Damien Rice probably refers to the history of O. In the title Amie is The Story of O mentioned.

literature

  • Regine Deforges: Confessions of O, Conversations with Pauline Reage . Viking Press, ISBN 0-670-23720-5 .
  • Fechter, Alexander: Construction of the female figure in the sadomasochistic film using the example of the “Story of O” / Alexander Fechter, 2007. - 112 sheets Vienna., Univ., Dipl.-Arb., 2008.
  • Régine Deforges , Pauline Réage: The "O" told me. Background to a bestseller. Charon, 2000, ISBN 3-931406-25-3 (Interview, "The Story of O" and "Return to Roissy" in one volume)
  • Christine Deja: Women's lust and submission. History of the O and Nine Weeks and Three Days. Kore Edition, 1991, ISBN 3-926023-31-7
  • Jessica Benjamin: The Shackles of Love. Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Power. Stroemfeld, 2004, ISBN 3-86109-168-2
  • Jörg Schröder tells Ernst Herhaus: Siegfried . March Verlag 1972, ISBN 3-88880-013-7

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. Observer, June 25, 2004, I wrote the story of O
  2. ↑ Frederick Wyatt: The triumph of masochism, or the alpha in the story of O, in Helm Stierlin, Wolfgang Kaempfer, Renate Böschenstein: Freiburg literaturpsychological discussions, Vol. 7, Masochism in literature. Koenigshausen & Neumann, 1988, ISBN 3-88479-330-6
  3. ↑ cf. BBC, November 13, 2001 The True Story of 'The Story of O' by Pauline Reage
  4. ^ Angie David: Dominique Aury. Editions Scheer 2006. p. 14
  5. ↑ Interview with Jacqueline Demornex for ELLE , conversation with Régine Deforges. See also: Based on truth? ( Memento of the original from January 21, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.storyofo.info
  6. ↑ Jörg Schröder, at that time publishing director at Joseph Melzer and a little later also publishing director of "Olympia Press Deutschland", looking back
  7. ^ Indexing decision of the Federal Testing Office for Media Harmful to Young People (BPS) of June 11, 1983. Judging committee: Elke Monssen-Engberding (Chairwoman of the BPS), Thea Graumann (writer), Elke Krumpholz (teacher).
  8. ↑ Régine Deforges, Pauline Réage: The "O" told me . Ullstein, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-548-22556-X , p. 279 above
  9. ↑ http://www.ofdb.de/film/43005,Geschichte-der-O
  10. ↑ IMDb
  11. ↑ IMDb