Desired, Described, Remembered – Courtesans in the Words of Men

I have read many books by great men. Philosophers, poets, hedonists, moralists. And I have learnt one thing: when they write about courtesans, they rarely write only about women. They write about their own longing. About fear. About the incomprehensible in a woman who gives herself to men - and yet remains unapproachable.

And so I don't read their words like evidence. I read them like poems. Like secret confessions.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the age of Enlightenment philosopher, was deeply shocked by any woman who approached lovemaking with ease. In Julie ou la Nouvelle Héloïse, he warns:

‘The woman who gives herself over to pleasure loses her nature.’

But behind his indignation lies envy. Because what really frightened him was a woman who knew more about pleasure than he did - and did not break, but blossomed. Rousseau was an idealist. And idealists tend to idealise or condemn women - but never really understand them.

Giacomo Casanova was quite different. He wrote about courtesans with a mixture of respect, desire and occasional humility.

‘She knew how to hold a conversation, how to open a soul, how to make a man forget who he is.’

Casanova did not see courtesans as a danger, but as a challenge. He did not meet them as a conqueror - but as someone who was prepared to lose himself in order to discover a new version of himself. That was his weakness. And at the same time his greatness.

Honoré de Balzac, whom I have admired since my first exposure to his art, was wiser than many of his contemporaries. He saw courtesans as a social phenomenon - not just a figure of lust. In his novel "Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes", he analyses them with almost forensic precision.

"The courtesan is not a woman in the usual sense. She is a function. A social necessity that defies morality."

Balzac knew that men don't just look to courtesans for closeness to our bodies. They are looking for what marriage will not give them: admiration without commitment. Closeness without everyday life. Reflection of their desires without judgement.

But what was really behind their statements?

Whether Rousseau, Casanova or Balzac - they all wrote about courtesans because they sensed something in them that was alien to themselves:

Freedom! Control over their own desires. The ability to give - and at the same time to keep oneself.

They admired us. And sometimes - very rarely - they understood us.

Even today, men write about women like me. In columns, forums and podcasts.

They are looking for words for something that often eludes language:

An encounter that is not tied to possession. A woman who cannot be taken - only invited.

They might never read Rousseau or Balzac. But perhaps they feel exactly the same.

And perhaps they sense that courtesans - then as now - are not objects of desire, but priestesses of a very old, very silent power.

Self-determination!