I oftentimes think it insulting when men are portrayed as weaklings who cannot control their own lust for a woman. That awful movie, 40 Days and 40 Nights, comes immediately to mind. But today I was reading a passage in a novel describing such a weak man and it really struck me.

“Vision,” Rodin says, “be mine; for just one instant crown with pleasure a life spent in the hard service of a jealous divinity, assuage with one lubricious embrace the eternity of flame to which your sight now plunges me. I beseech you, brush my face with your lips, you Antinea, you Mary Magdalene, you whom I have desired in the presence of saints dazed in ecstasy, whom I have coveted during my hypocritical worship of virginity. O Lady, fair art thou as the sun, white as the moon; lo I deny both God and the saints, and the Roman pontiff himself–no, more, I deny Loyola and the criminal vow that binds me to my Society. A kiss, one kiss, then let me die!”

It made me wish I could feel that way. I’ve never felt anything like that, but then, maybe only someone who has lived life celibate really can. “In a single moment he went mad and died in mortal sin.”

It’s a pretty good book: Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco. Reading it per Andy’s recommendation.