It's in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera. Now, not only did this book inspire the album title to one of my favourite albums ever, (Soviet Kitsch, by Regina Spektor) but it also opens by pondering upon the concept of eternal return, and Nietzsche.
Seriously, how fucking swell is that?
But yes, this passage really struck a chord with me. Ultimately it's about the concept of infinity more than sex itself, but regardless I find it magical that the two concepts can actually be intertwined in any sense. Although thinking that, Bright Star by Keats is almost exactly that, in a more pervy fashion; Keats wants to be eternally 'pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast', which is, y'know, cool and stuff. But it's no Kundera. It's a very laddish poem though, credit to him, but wanting to spend eternity with your head in a nice pair of tits isn't quite the highbrow literary prestige Keats earned after the Odes, nor indeed in Kundera's magical passage which I shall show now.
"Darkness attracted him as much as light. He knew that these days turning out the light before making love was considered laughable, and so he always left a small lamp burning over the bed. At the moment he penetrated Sabina, however, he closed his eyes. The pleasure suffusing his body called for darkness. That darkness was pure, perfect, thoughtless, visionless; that darkness was without end, without borders; that darkness was the infinite we each carry within us. (Yes, if you're looking for infinity, just close your eyes!) And at the moment he felt pleasure suffusing his body, Franz himself disintegrated and dissolved into the infinity of his darkness, himself becoming infinite. But the larger a man grows in his own inner darkness, the more his outer form diminishes. A man with closed eyes is a wreck of a man. Then, Sabina found the sight of Franz distasteful, and to avoid looking at him she too closed her eyes. But for her, darkness did not mean infinity; for her, it meant a disagreement with what she saw, the negation of what was seen, the refusal to see."
Magical, absolutely magical. The idea that infinity can be found really inspired me; I once wrote a poem about how to be free and infinite is just to close one's eyes. But it's truly beautiful. It's translated from Czech so Michael Heim probably deserves credit too for the magnificent flow of the sentence beginning 'that darkness was pure, perfect...'; it's poetry in prose. Pure poetry. The only time I've found such poetry in prose is in the beginning of Lolita, by Nabokov, which is simply unrivalled.
This blog post hasn't really been much about sex, so for that I apologise. I guess you could say that it's really just a helpful metaphor to let you know a little more about me:
Pseudo-intellectual, rants about literature and the sex is always underwhelming.
But if you've read this far - here, have a hypothetical cookie. Don't worry, not one I hypothetically baked, because even my hypothetical cookies would no doubt taste like hypothetical shit. Alright, lay off, ok? This is my blog post.
I guess seeing as this was supposedly about sex I should probably end it on a high, but writing this has made me feel pretty good so I'm not going to bother giving you any pleasure out of this and just end it abruptly, with myself satisfied.
Ladies and gentlemen, THAT is prose at its finest. And yes, if you're looking for infinity - just close your eyes!
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