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Overview
It begins with nineteen-year-old Emmanuelle’s flight from London to join her husband in Bangkok. On the airplane, she is seduced by the passenger seated next to her. By the time they land, she has indulged her irrepressible and insatiable sexual appetite, embarking on an odyssey of hedonistic sensual discovery that takes her from the arms of her husband to intimate encounters with the wives of his business associates, to further explorations wherein the philosophical and aesthetic facets of eroticism are expounded—and enacted—to the fullest degree.
Much like Anne Desclos’ The Story of O and Anaïs Nin’s Delta of Venus, Emmanuelle is as pertinent today as it was when it was first published in 1967, a thrilling reminder of “how this revolutionary epic had an impact on the sexual liberation of women” (Le Parisien Magazine).
“Emmanuelle is not just sex; it is an eroticism that is vintage, oneiric, utopian, and tender, an optimistic and radiant eroticism.” —Le Point
“Emmanuelle’s eroticism is not pathological, unlike the eroticism of revolt. It is a crucial part of the satisfaction of the individual, which feels threatened by nothing, which unfolds in harmony with the world: an eroticism of perfect accord.” —Le Magazine Littéraire
“Lyrical and graphic . . . But it’s not all salacious play-by-play. The sex scenes are interspersed with abstract musings about the nature of sex. . . . In short, it arouses.” —Teddy Wayne, NPR
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780802192714 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Grove/Atlantic, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 09/01/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| Sales rank: | 283,899 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The Flying Unicorn
Love has a thousand postures; the simplest and the least tiring is to lie halfway over on your right side.
— Ovid, The Art of Love
Emmanuelle boarded the plane in London that was to take her to Bangkok. At first the rich smell of leather, like that preserved in British cars after years of use, the otherworldly lighting, and the thickness and silence of the carpets were all she could grasp of the environment she was entering for the first time.
She did not understand what was being said to her by the smiling man who was guiding her, but she was not upset. Although her heart may have been beating faster, it was only from a sensation of strangeness, not from apprehension. The blue uniforms, the thoughtfulness and authority of the personnel assigned to welcome and initiate her — everything combined to create a feeling of security and euphoria. A new universe was going to be hers for the next twelve hours of her life, a universe with different laws, more constraining, but perhaps more delectable for that very reason. The vigilance of freedom was replaced by the leisure and placidity of subjection.
The steward led her to her seat. It was what would normally have been a window seat, but there was no window. She could see nothing beyond the draped walls. It made no difference to her. She did not care about anything but abandoning herself to the powers of that deep seat, drifting into drowsiness between its woolly arms, against its foam shoulder, on its long, mermaid lap.
An English stewardess stopped in the aisle. Her hands flew up to the rack above Emmanuelle's head to put away her light, leather traveling case. She spoke French and the impression of semi-torpor that Emmanuelle had been feeling for the past two days (she had arrived in London only the day before) was dispelled.
As the stewardess leaned over her, her blondeness made Emmanuelle's long hair seem still more nocturnal. They were both dressed nearly alike, but a brassiere showed through the English girl's blouse, while the slightest movement revealed that Emmanuelle's breasts were free under hers. She was glad that the stewardess was young and that her eyes were like her own — flecked with gold.
Emmanuelle tried to think of something to ask that would please her. Maybe she should show an interest in the plane. But before she could speak, two children — a boy and a girl — pushed aside the velvet curtain that separated Emmanuelle's row of seats from the row in front. They looked so much alike that one had to assume they were twins. Emmanuelle noted at a glance the graceless, conventional clothes that stamped them as English schoolchildren, their reddish blond hair, their expression of affected coldness, and the haughtiness with which they spat out brief words to the stewardess. Although they were apparently only twelve or thirteen, their confident manner created a distance between them and her that she had no thought of reducing. They sedately planted themselves in the two seats across the aisle from Emmanuelle. At the same time the last of the four passengers for whom the compartment was reserved came in and she turned her attention to him.
He was at least a head taller than she was. His hair and mustache were black. She liked his amber-colored suit. She judged him to be elegant and well-bred, two qualities that, after all, covered most of what one hoped to find in a fellow passenger. She tried to guess his age from the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes — forty, perhaps fifty? He would be more agreeable, she thought, than the two pretentious children.
The stewardess had left the compartment and, through the gap in the curtains, Emmanuelle could now see her blue hip pressed against an invisible passenger. She tried to turn her eyes away. Her black hair whipped her cheeks and flowed over her face. Then the English girl straightened up, turned toward the rear of the plane, appeared between the curtains, pushing their long legs apart with her hands, and stepped toward Emmanuelle. "Would you like me to introduce your traveling companions to you?" she asked; and, without waiting for an answer, she told her the man's name. Emmanuelle thought she heard "Eisenhower," which amused her and made her miss the names of the twins.
The man began talking to her in English. She had no idea what he was saying. Seeing her perplexity, the stewardess questioned the three others, then laughed, showing the tip of her tongue. "What a pity!" she said lightheartedly. "None of them knows a single word of French. This will be a good chance for you to brush up on your English!"
Before Emmanuelle could protest, the stewardess moved her fingers in a graceful, cryptic gesture to her passengers, turned on her heel, and walked away. Emmanuelle was again alone. She felt like sulking, holding herself aloof from everything.
A loudspeaker hidden behind the draperies came to life. After a male voice had spoken in English, Emmanuelle recognized the stewardess speaking in French ("For me," she thought), welcoming the passengers aboard the Flying Unicorn and giving flight instructions.
The awakening of the jet engines was indicated by a murmur and a slight quivering of the soundproof walls. Emmanuelle was not even aware that the plane was moving along the runway. And it was a long time before she realized that she was flying.
She did not realize it, in fact, until the red light went off and the man beside her stood up and offered, by gestures, to put away her jacket, which she had kept on her knees without knowing why. She let him take it. He smiled, opened a book, and stopped looking at her. A waiter appeared, carrying a tray of glasses. She chose a cocktail by its color, but it was not the one she expected; it was stronger.
What must have been an afternoon on the other side of the silk wall went by without Emmanuelle's having time to do anything but eat pastry, drink tea, and leaf through a magazine that the stewardess had given her (she refused to accept a second one because she did not want to be distracted from the novelty of flying).
Then a waiter placed a little table in front of her and served various foods that were hard to identify, in unusually shaped containers. Her dinner seemed to last for hours but the discovery of the culinary game pleased her so much that she was in no hurry for it to end.
She felt light and carefree. She noticed that she had even lost her dislike of the twins. The stewardess came and went, never failing to say something cheerful to her as she passed. When she was absent, Emmanuelle was no longer impatient.
She wondered if it was time to go to sleep. But actually she was free to sleep whenever she chose in that winged cradle so far from the surface of the earth, in a region of space where there were neither winds nor clouds, and where she was not sure there was even night and day.
Emmanuelle's knees were bare in the golden light shining down from overhead, and the man was staring at them. Under the invisible nylon, the movement of their dimples made agile shadows in the toasted-bread color of their skin. She knew the excitement they caused. They seemed more naked than ever under the spotlight which had been turned on them. She felt as if she were coming out of the water after a moonlight swim. Her temples throbbed faster and her lips filled with blood. She closed her eyes and saw herself not partially but totally naked, and she knew that once again she would be helpless against the temptation of that narcissistic contemplation.
She resisted, but only to increase the joy of gradually slipping into surrender. Its nearness was announced by a diffuse languor, a kind of warm consciousness of her whole body, a desire for abandon, for opening, for fullness; nothing very different from the physical satisfaction she would have felt from stretching out on the warm sand of a sun-drenched beach. Then, little by little, the surface of her lips became still more lustrous, her breasts swelled, and her legs tensed, attentive to the slightest contact. Her brain began experimenting with images. They were disconnected and formless at first, but were enough to moisten her mucous membranes and arch her back.
The steady, subdued, almost imperceptible vibrations of the metal fuselage attuned her body to the frequency. Starting from her knees, a wave rose along her thighs, resonating on the surface, moving higher and higher, making her quiver.
Phantasms assailed her — lips pressed against her skin, genitals of men and women (whose faces remained ambiguous), penises eagerly rubbing against her, pushing their way between her knees, forcing her legs apart, opening her sex, penetrating it with laborious efforts that enraptured her. One after another, they plunged into the unknown of her body, thrusting into her unendingly, sating her flesh, and endlessly emptying their semen into her.
Thinking Emmanuelle was asleep, the stewardess cautiously tilted back her seat, transforming it into a bed, and spread a cashmere blanket over her long, languid legs. The man stood up and pushed his seat back to the same level as hers. The children had already dozed off. The stewardess wished everyone a good night and turned off the ceiling lights. Only two purple night lights prevented objects and people from losing all shape.
Emmanuelle had abandoned herself to the stewardess's care without opening her eyes. Her reverie, however, had lost none of its intensity or urgency. Her right hand now began to move over her belly, very slowly, restraining itself, descending toward her pubis. The thin blanket undulated above it. Her fingertips, pushing down on the soft silk of her skirt, whose narrowness made it difficult for her to spread her legs, found the bud of flesh in erection that they sought and pressed it tenderly. Her middle finger began the gentle, careful motion that would bring on orgasm. Almost immediately, the man's hand came down on hers.
She stopped breathing and felt her muscles and nerves tighten, as though her belly had been struck by a jet of ice water. Her sensations and thoughts were suspended, like a film when the projector has stopped, leaving a single image on the screen. She was neither afraid nor offended. She waited for what was going to follow her collapsed dreams.
The man's hand did not move. Merely by its weight, it applied pressure to her clitoris, on which her own hand was resting.
Nothing else happened for some time. She then became aware that his other hand was lifting the blanket and drawing it aside. It took hold of her knee and felt its curves and hollows. It rose slowly along her thigh and soon passed over the top of her stocking.
When it touched her bare skin, she started for the first time and tried to break the spell. She sat up awkwardly and turned halfway on her side. As though they wanted to punish her for her futile revolt, the man's hands abandoned her abruptly. But before she had time to react, they were on her again, this time at her waist. They deftly unfastened and unzipped her skirt, pulled it down to her knees, then moved up again. One of them slipped under her panties and caressed her flat, muscular belly, just above the high mound of her pubis, stroking it as though it were the neck of a thoroughbred. Its fingers ran along the folds of her groin and across the top of her pubic hair, tracing a triangle whose area they seemed to be estimating. The lower angle was very wide, a rather rare feature that had been appreciated by Greek sculptors.
Then the hand forced her thighs to spread farther apart. It closed over her warm, swollen sex, caressing it as if to soothe it, without haste, following the furrow of its lips, dipping in lightly between them, passing over her erect clitoris and coming to rest on the thick curls of her pubis. As they moved to and fro between her legs, the fingers sank deeper between her moist membranes, slowing their advance, and seeming to hesitate as her tension increased. Biting her lips to stifle the sob that was rising from her throat, she panted with desire as the man brought her closer and closer to orgasm without letting her reach it.
Then his hand stopped moving and cupped the whole part of her body that it had inflamed. He leaned toward her, extended his other hand, took one of hers, and drew it inside his trousers. He helped her to grasp his rigid penis and guided her movements, regulating their length and cadence to suit his taste, slowing or accelerating them according to his degree of excitement, until he was convinced that he could rely on her intuition and good will and let her continue the manipulation in her own way.
She sat up to let her arm do its work properly, and he moved closer to her so that she could be sprayed by the sperm he felt welling up from the depths of his glands. He succeeded in restraining himself for a long time, while her bent fingers rose and fell, becoming less timid as they prolonged their caresses, no longer limiting themselves to elementary back-and-forth motions, but opening slightly, skillfully, to slide along the big, swollen vein of his arched penis (lightly scratching it with their filed nails), as far down as possible, as close to his testicles as the tightness of his trousers would permit, then rising again with lascivious twists. His member had grown so much that it seemed endless, but she finally reached its tip and covered it with the folds of loose skin in the hollow of her damp palm before beginning another downward journey, squeezing him tightly again, stretching his foreskin, alternately strangling his tumescent flesh and relaxing her grip on it, barely grazing it or tormenting it, massaging it in broad strokes or irritating it with quick, merciless little movements ...
When his satisfied penis finally disgorged its semen in long, white, odorous spurts, she received it with strange exaltation along her arms, on her bare belly, on her throat, face, and mouth, and in her hair. It seemed that it would never stop. She felt as if it were flowing down her throat, as if she were drinking it ... She was seized with an unknown intoxication, a shameless delight. When she let her arm fall, he took hold of her clitoris with his fingertips and brought her to orgasm.
A buzzing sound indicated that the loudspeaker was about to be used. The stewardess's voice, deliberately softened so the passengers would not be awakened too abruptly, announced that the plane would land at Bahrein in about twenty minutes. It would leave at midnight, local time. A light meal would be served at the airport.
The light in the compartment gradually came on again, imitating the slowness of a sunrise. Emmanuelle used the blanket, which had slipped down to her feet, to wipe away the sperm that had spattered her. She pulled her skirt up over her hips. When the stewardess came in, Emmanuelle was sitting up on her seat, without having raised its back, still trying to make herself presentable.
"Did you sleep well?" the stewardess asked.
Emmanuelle fastened the waist of her skirt. "My blouse is all wrinkled," she said.
She looked at the damp spots that spread out in both directions from below her collar. She rolled back the lapels of her blouse and the pink tip of a breast appeared. Her neckline remained open and four pairs of English eyes were glued to the profile of her bare breast.
"Don't you have anything to change into?" asked the stewardess.
"No," said Emmanuelle.
The two women looked each other in the eye and recognized their complicity; they were both equally excited. The man observed them. There was not a single wrinkle in his suit, his shirt was as neat as when he had boarded the plane, his tie was perfectly straight.
"Come with me," said the stewardess.
Emmanuelle stood up, stepped past the man, and followed the young English stewardess into the ladies' lounge. It was filled with mirrors, cushioned footstools, white leather upholstery, and shelves laden with lotions in crystal bottles.
"Wait."
The stewardess slipped away and returned moments later, carrying a little suitcase. She lifted its calfskin lid and removed a russet sweater of orion, wool, and silk, so light that it was crumpled into a ball that fit into her closed fist. When she shook it out it seemed to swell suddenly like a balloon. Emmanuelle clapped her hands with admiration. "You're lending it to me?" she asked.
"No, I'm giving it to you. I'm sure it will look good on you."
"But ..."
The stewardess put her finger over Emmanuelle's lips as they rounded to protest her embarrassment. Her tender eyes sparkled. Emmanuelle could not look away from them. She moved her face close to them. But the stewardess spun around and handed her a bottle of toilet water. "Rub yourself with this, it's delightful!" Emmanuelle refreshed her face, arms, and neck, started to wipe between her breasts with the pad she had saturated with the perfumed liquid, then changed her mind and quickly unbuttoned the rest of her blouse.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Emmanuelle"
by .
Copyright © 1967 Le Terrain Vague.
Excerpted by permission of Grove Atlantic, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
1 The Flying Unicorn,
2 Green Paradise,
3 Of Breasts, Goddesses, and Roses,
4 Cavatina, or the Love of Bee,
5 The Law,
6 The Sam-Lo,
![Three Stories and Ten Poems [With ATOC]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/2940014303071_p0_v1_s90x140.jpg "Three Stories and Ten Poems [With ATOC]")
