Let me counterpose these contiguous paragraphs to the "great passive vulva
of London" quote given us by Wei . The remark Wei cited and these words
below come from the Translator's Postscript to De Gourmont's The Natural
Philosophy of Love.

    "Insect, utility ;  bird, flight ;  mammal, muscular splendour ;  man,
experiment.
    The insect representing the female, and utility ; the need of heat being
present, the insect chooses to solve the problem by hibernation, i.e. a sort
of negation of action.  The bird wanting continuous freedom, feathers
itself.  Desire for decoration appears in all the branches, man
exteriorizing it most.  The bat's secret appears to be that he is not the
bird-mammal, but the mammal-insect : economy of tissue, hibernation. The
female principle being not only utility, but extreme economy, woman, falling
by this division into a male branch, is the least female of females, and at
this point one escapes from a journalistic sex-squabble into the opposition
of two principles, utility and a sort of venturesomeness.
    In its subservience to the money fetish our age returns to the darkness
of mediaevalism. Two osmies may make superfluous eggless nests, but do not
kill each other in contesting which shall deposit the supererogatory honey
therein. It is perhaps no more foolish to go at a hermit's bidding to
recover an old sepulchre than to make new sepulchres at the bidding of
finance.
    In his growing subservience to, and adoration of, and entanglement in
machines, in utility, man rounds the circle almost into insect life, the
absence of flesh ;  and may have need even of horned gods to save him, or at
least of a form of thought which permits them."


Tim Romano