Cemetery Lovers: Sex and Death

You were waiting for this, weren’t you? I mean, how could I write a blog about cemetery travels without discussing sex? Well, I have, on occasion, but not as directly as I am now. Whatever could sex and cemeteries have in common? Turns out sex and death are very closely related in our psyches. We seem to be simultaneously death phobic and sexually driven - death and desire seem to conjugate in some fashion in our minds, a philosophy of opposites. But do they conjugate in our cemeteries? That is, does live sex (I mean, between people) occur in our memory gardens? On our hallowed grounds? Sure it does. I’ve seen it, I’ve heard about it, I’ve done it. (There, I finally said it. Happy?)

While teenagers may use our cemeteries as trysting places because it’s the only way they can get privacy, adults do it for many other reasons. Its exciting, its forbidden (sort of, I guess, though I’ve never actually seen any signs posted …), and it is the closest many of us can get to experiencing human nature’s two basic instincts at the same time: Eros and Thanatos. Sure there’s autoerotic asphyxia (strangulation during sex), but that’s going off the deep end. Most people don’t need to go to such extremes to get off. Sigmund Freud theorized that Thanatos, the instinct of death, or aggression, drives us as strongly as Eros, our instinct for life. Eros drives us toward attraction and reproduction while Thanatos drives us to our destruction.

Found in a cemetery

If you accept this, it explains why so much of our entertainment (movies, books, and television) keeps us riveted with a teetering balance of sex and death. We enjoy this, for the most part. Sometimes, real life mimics fiction. Take for instance the couple who shows up at the cemetery’s “night photography” event without cameras. As the group heads off into the cemetery with the instructor, the couple disappears. (Do I need to draw you a picture?)

Doing it in a cemetery must be titillating to a rather small portion of the population. I can’t imagine that hordes of people would WANT to do this, although sometimes, business demands it. Take for instance the prostitute who recently approached several cemetery grounds keepers (separately, but on the same day) while in the course of their duties. This was her line: “Are you single? Because I don’t want any wives involved in this. My apartment has ghosts. Can you come with me to check it out for me?” After her third attempt failed, she left. She was making house calls, so to speak.

Old Camden Cemetery

So while some of my research depends on secondary sources, my primary research corroborates the data. Also, I trust my sources. I’ve written about being solicited by prostitutes in Camden, New Jersey cemeteries, and this is a weird experience, I must say (read more about that at this link). Being solicited, that is. (Happy to say my actual sexual encounters in graveyards did not involve prostitutes! And I was between marriages, for the record.) I realize that prostitution in graveyards is strictly business - the parties are not looking for thrills, its just cheaper than getting a room. (Do you know that some no-tell motels offer rooms by the hour!? If it does not appear to the clerk at check-in that you and your companion will be spending the night, the clerk might actually offer you an hourly rate!)

So, maybe cemeteries should have “No soliciting” signs on their gates? Or “No Engaging” signs …. I know of another cemetery where guys have driven onto the grounds with prostitutes in their cars, found a secluded spot and ….. you may think I’m going for the full Pinocchio on this topic but its true - I’ve seen this. I’ve unfortunately and accidentally, driven by this. Several times. A friend of mine who volunteers at a cemetery saw a taxi parked on the grounds recently, so she approached it, and then noticed that it was bouncing up and down! Two people were on the back seat while the DRIVER sat patiently behind the steering wheel! (No doubt the meter was ticking away.)

The author, photographed by Frank Rausch

But getting away from the business at hand, let us return to the Eros versus Thanatos thrill of sex in a cemetery. Personally, I was too scared of being caught to be, shall we say, effective? A partner and I were actually arrested once in a similar situation, having to pay a fine only for trespassing – they dropped the indecent exposure charge as there were no witnesses other than the cop who caught (and was no doubt watching) us. So while I’m a bit more careful these days, others obviously find the inherent danger of sex in cemeteries to be very stimulating. Not only because of the chance of getting caught, I suppose, but also because of the very real possibility of being eaten by zombies.

Then of course, there is nude cemetery photography. It happens. On occasion, I’ve seen exhibits of such work, though you’d be hard-pressed to find any examples of it were you to actually search (try searching the Internet right now, unless you're at work, that is!). It’s a rather taboo subject, for all the reasons you can possibly imagine.We seem as obsessed with death as we are with sex, but less openly. We fear death, though it fascinates us. These inner drives, as Freud says, both coincide and conflict. I know a guy who works at a cemetery and he occasionally sees a clandestine shoot here and there. He politely asks the photographer and model to pack up and leave, as it may upset other visitors who may be at the cemetery for other reasons. In one instance, he chased a vehicle from spot to spot over the course of a day as a woman dressed only in a cape would throw it over herself, jump into the passenger side of the vehicle and the driver would speed off.

If I was attending a burial ceremony or visiting the grave of a loved one I would not want a photo shoot of any kind happening nearby. Maybe those cemeteries who have signs saying “No Photography” are really trying to stop nude photography. I know of one cemetery in northern New Jersey that has a “No Photography” policy simply because the unauthorized rock band photo shoots and the motion picture crews do damage to the grounds and the monuments.

So obviously, nude cemetery photography is titillating to some, but then what do you do with the photos afterwards? Like I said, you very seldom see any in public. I’ve never done this myself, but then who would want to see photos of me naked in a cemetery?

Psyche, wakened by Cupid, her lover's kiss

So the life force in us is as strong as the death force, and while the drives may not be equal in everyone, they are certainly present, and often intermingle. This was never so prevalent as it was in the Victorian era, when artists had seemingly free reign to sculpt nude or partially nude statues for use as cemetery monuments. I've written about this in the past (see The Art of Sensual Statues in Cemeteries), and while the sculptures aren't exactly arousing, sexually, they are indeed suggestive. Perhaps their intent was to get our minds off dismal death, and to think rather about life and its beauty, and the joys of reproduction.

Love and Death

This would be quite a short blog if I were to just say, “Hey, one of my photographs was used on a magazine cover, and here it is.” But you know me better than that! First let’s talk about the magazine, or more accurately, the [British] Journal of the Center for Freudian Analysis and Research. One of the editors of the JCFAR had seen my photograph, “Cupid and Psyche,” on my StoneAngels website (www.StoneAngels.net), and emailed me asking if the organization could use it as the cover image for their next issue of its professional journal. The issue would be published in February 2013 (the month in which I am writing this blog, the month of love, as it were), its overall theme being, “On Love.”

I of course said yes, as this would be an interesting topic of conversation between my wife and I, she being, in fact, a psychotherapist. Our worlds again collide – art and mental health (but they are closely related, right?).

Journal of the Center for Freudian Analysis and Research, 
Issue No.23 “On Love”  (Table of Contents):

Lucia Corti   Love Masks....

Julia Borossa   Narratives of Love

Anne Worthington   The Inequalities in Love

Werner Prall   Transference: Seduction and Transcendence

David Henderson   Where is Love?

Astrid Gessert   What Does The Woman Want? - Revisited

Alireza Taheri   Love and the Sexual Non-Rapport

Conditions of Philosophy

From the book, Stone Angels, by Ed Snyder

My own interest in the sculpture of Cupid and Psyche began with research I did in preparation for writing my Stone Angels book, which features my photograph of the statue. When I made the image back in the early 2000s, I was unaware of its mythological and historical significance – I only recognized it as a quite moving piece of sculpture, one of many examples of sensuality and death comingled in the cemetery.

 (Available from Blurb.com)

“Sex and death. Eros and Thanatos. [The psychiatrist Sigmund] Freud believed them to be our inner drives, forces that both coincide and conflict. As humans we seem to be simultaneously sexually driven and death phobic. Death and desire seem to conjugate in some fashion in our minds, a philosophy of opposites.”

“The sculpture in this photograph is a copy of Psyche Revived by Love’s Kiss, by the Venetian sculptor Antonio Canova [1757 - 1822]. The original resides in the Louvre. The one I photographed is in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, California. The cemetery is cleverly described by its owners as the “final resting place of Hollywood’s immortals,“ which includes, quite appropriately, Rudolph Valentino.”

- Stone Angels (Blurb.com)

The Journal of the Center for Freudian Analysis and Research
 

Victorian Valentine, "Love's Question" (Squidoo.com)

The interest taken in my photograph by the Center for Freudian Analysis and Research for use on its journal cover is easily understood at first blush  – the imagery is essentially that of a Victorian Valentine, and the journal issue is focused on love. However, I believe the sculpture likely has a much deeper meaning to the readers of the journal, the members of the Center for Freudian Analysis and Research. Cupid, or Eros, is waking his love, Psyche, with a kiss. [In Roman mythology, Cupid (Latin Cupido, for "desire") is the god of desire, affection, and erotic love. His Greek mythological counterpart is the god Eros.]

Canova's original sculpture

The sculpture epitomizes not only love, but death as well. Freud theorized that human nature emerged from two basic instincts: Eros and Thanatos, the libido and mortido - the life instinct and death instinct. “He saw in Eros the instinct for life, love and sexuality in its broadest sense, and in Thanatos, the instinct of death, aggression. Eros is the drive toward attraction and reproduction; Thanatos toward repulsion and death. One leads to the reproduction of the species, the other toward its own destruction” (ref. Michael Dunev Art Projects). 

So, then, if Cupid, or Eros, with his erotic embrace, is reviving the woman with a kiss, is she dead? Is Antonio Canova’s sculpture as much about death as it appears to be about love? The meaning behind the statue lies in Greek mythology, not far from Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. It is an allegory about love overcoming death. As a piece of sculpture in a cemetery,  It can easily symbolize life after death – immortality.

Sleeping Beauty

Cupid and Psyche’s story is the earliest recorded version of the “wakened by a lover’s kiss” fairytale. It was told by Lucius Apuleius in his 2nd century AD novel, The Golden Ass (in the novel, the protagonist is turned into a donkey).

 William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1889

Psyche is a (mortal) princess so beautiful that people treat her like a goddess. Potential suitors are reluctant to approach her, and she can therefore find no mate. The goddess Venus is jealous of this so she decides to trick Psyche into a self-imposed “Sleep of the Innermost Darkness,” or coma-like death. Through Venous’ trickery, her own son Cupid becomes Psyche’s secret lover. Psyche implores Venus to help her find her mystery lover, and Venus imposes a series of [seemingly] impossible tasks that Psyche must perform in order to “prove her worth.” One of these tasks was to deliver a jar in which was imprisoned the “treasure of divine beauty.” Psyche wanted some for herself, thinking it might lure her mystery lover to show himself. However, the jar was filled instead with a sleeping potion. In the end, Cupid rescues Psyche from her death-sleep, and she is, as depicted in the statue,“… revived by Love’s kiss.” Cupid implores Zeus to grant Psyche immortality, so that the two lovers can be together forever. Psyche received the gift of immortality so that she could be with Cupid. Together they had a daughter, Voluptas (Greek for "Pleasure"), and they all lived happily ever after. Eros + Psyche (Greek word for the human soul) = Voluptas , i.e.,  erotic desire melded with the human spirit produces pleasure – or something like that.

Conclusion

So we can see that, as with love itself, there is much more to the "Cupid and Psyche" statue than meets the eye. The concepts of life and death touch us all - taphophiles, psychiatrists, sculptors, Disney script writers, and certainly these young lovers locked in a sort of Cupid-and-Psyche embrace that I photographed on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, Italy. In this month of Valentine’s Day, we can see how love is, in fact, a many-splendored thing. Namaste.

References and Further Reading:

Center for Freudian Analysis and Research
Antonio Canova biography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupid

http://www.ynot1.com.au/magazines/EROS%20AND%20THANATOS%20tat.pdf

Hollywood Forever Cemetery website
Greek Myths: Eros and Psyche

Victorian Valentines