ABSTRACT
A German evolutionary thinker, Wilhelm Bolsche, believed that the line of evolutionary development was one in which simple organisms used the mouth as a reproductive organism, sexual reproduction being originally 'a sort of higher eating'. Sigmund Freud was drawn to the idea of an auto-erotic stage of development in infantile sexuality: oral, anal, genital. As against Rome's corruption of all things bright and beautiful, Brisset takes a relaxed view of the whole question of homosexuality and, as always, mixes in the linguistic and the anatomical. The puns in that passage remind people that they are a key means of smuggling in and yet foregrounding sexual meaning. Euphemism: speak easy, fine talk. It is interesting to see Brisset for once rejoining the modern world and its concern for sexual property rights. Steiner offers the measured view, and Brisset, naturally, the inordinate one. Steiner: 'It is likely that human sexuality and speech developed in close-knit reciprocity.
