V
There is no better proof that common objects, when possible, were formerly assigned sexual associations, than the obscene riddles of the Exeter Book. This work is largely attributed to the second great English poet Cynewulf in the eighth century. Certain riddles are propounded which reek with lewd suggestions, and the answer is supposed to be some object innocent in itself; it is apparent, however, from the questions and descriptions given that the interest in this object is because it is sexually symbolical. Thus the answers meant for the 26th, 45th, 46th, 55th, 63rd and 64th riddles of the Exeter Book are leek, key, dough, churn, poker and beaker, respectively. The reader will note thus how these objects had a sexual symbolic meaning for our ancestors.
Professor Frederic Tupper in his scholarly work The Riddles of the Exeter Book says: "By far the most numerous of all riddles of lapsing or varying solutions are those distinctly popular and unrefined problems whose sole excuse for being (or lack of excuse) lies in double meaning and coarse suggestion, and the reason for this uncertainty of answer is at once apparent. The formally stated solution is so overshadowed by the obscene subject implicitly presented in each limited motive of the riddle, that little attention is paid to the aptness of this. It is after all only a pretence, not the chief concern of the jest." He quotes from another scholar, Wossidlo, a number of other objects than those suggested in the Exeter Book, which in other riddle books were invested with sexual symbolism. These are spinning wheel, kettle and pike, yarn and weaver, frying-pan and hare, soot-pole, butcher, bosom, fish on the hook, trunk-key, beer-keg, stocking, mower in grass, butter-cask and bread-scoop.
Freud is apparently correct when he stated that familiar objects of our day like umbrellas and machinery are given a sexual significance by our dreams unconsciously.
That man early expressed his interest in love in symbolical terms is conceded by most anthropologists and philologists. They have traced the origins of many of our customs and institutions, our words and figures of rhetoric, to the veiled eroticism of former times. In our speech are many terms which now have a distinct sexual significance, though they originally had a symbolic one. The word for seed in Hebrew is zera, the Latin word is semen (from sero, to sow). Both words are also used for spermatozoa. Man formerly sought analogies just as he does to-day; he often feared to violate a taboo, or aimed at a delicacy of expression. He saw the life producing principle at work everywhere, and he found symbols for it in the phenomena of nature, in the sun, moon, water, forest, garden, field, trees, roses; in animals like the serpent, the horse, the bull, the fish, the goat, the dove; in implements like the arrow, the sword, the plough. Common objects assumed for him suggestive meanings. He saw a means of coining new expressions for generative acts and objects; he found associations when he used the fire-drill drilling in the hollow of the wood, or when he threw wood upon the fire. In later time he coined new symbolical terms suggested by such acts of his as stuffing a cork in a bottle, or putting bread in the oven, or inserting a key in the lock.
Man speaks in symbolic language especially when it comes to sex matters. This symbolism appears hence in his dreams and his literature. The language of the unconscious is symbolic, and literature is often expressing the author's unconscious in symbolic terms without his being aware of this.
When poets celebrate the ceremonies about the May pole they may not know that this celebration is related to early phallic worship. When Æschylus wrote his play of Prometheus stealing the fire, or Milton used the Biblical material of Eve tempted by the serpent, they were probably ignorant of the sexual associations of fire and the serpent in ancient times. But their own works thus become symbolical. Shelley, for example, used the metaphor of the snake quite often, and one of the best known passages in his works is the description of the fight of the eagle and the serpent in The Revolt of Islam. He often referred to himself also, as the snake. Yet he may not have been aware there was an unconscious connection between his interest in free love and the symbol of the serpent.
The part played by symbolism in love poetry is seen especially in The Song of Songs. To us moderns and occidentals many of the comparisons and symbolical representations seem very strange, but they had their origin not in the poet's own conceits but in a historic use of the language. This most celebrated of all love poems fairly swarms with sensuous symbolic images. It proves that early man saw lascivious suggestions everywhere in the landscapes, in flowers, rocks, trees, country, city, animals. The speech of our ancestors was sexualised.
The beloved in the poem, which is a dialogue between her and her lover, is like a wall with towers (the breasts); she is a vineyard; she is in the clefts of the rock and the hidden hollow of the cliff. She has eyes like doves, her hair is like a flock of straying goats, her teeth like a flock of washed ewes, her lips like a scarlet thread, her temples like pomegranate, her neck like the tower of David builded with turrets and hung with shields, her breasts like twin fawns feeding among the lilies. She is a closed garden, a shut up spring, a sealed fountain. The roundings of her thighs are like the link of a chain, her navel is like a round empty goblet, her belly like a heap of wheat set among lilies, her eyes like the pools of Heshbon, her nose like the tower of Lebanon.
The lover is like an apple tree among the trees of the wood; he is a young hart. His head is as fine gold, his eyes are like doves, his cheeks are a bed of spices, as a bank of sweet herbs; his lips are lilies dropping myrrh, his hands are as rods of gold set with beryl, his body is polished ivory overlaid with sapphires, his legs are pillars of marble set in sockets of gold; his aspect like Lebanon, chosen like the cedar.
The embrace of the lovers is described symbolically by means of the tree symbol. It is known that the tree was formerly used to represent both sexes. "The bisexual symbolic character of the tree," says Jung in his Psychology of the Unconscious (P. 248), "is intimated by the fact that in Latin trees have a masculine termination and a feminine gender." The lover in the Song of Songs calls his beloved a tree and says he will climb up to the palm tree and take hold of the branches; his beloved's breasts will be as clusters of the vine and the smell of her countenance like apples.
Students of anthropology will recognise all the sex symbols in this poem and will find analogies in other literatures. This great love poem is regarded by many, curiously enough, as a religious allegory. The chapter headings in the King James version of the Bible represent Christ and the Church as symbols of the lovers. Higher criticism has recognised the fact that the poem is a love poem. This is also proved by the fact that from time immemorial it has been the practice of orthodox Hebrews to read it on the Sabbath eve, which is the time for love embrace among them.