Monday, November 15, 2010

Very Punny


I learned a new word in Paul Theroux’s book. It’s “priapic” which means resembling a phallus. He used it to describe Hsi-Men, the Chinese Casanova in the pornographic and restricted book “Jin Ping Mei”, which he read while riding the Shanghai Express. Theroux describes the book as a raunchy 2,000-page novel that tries resolving itself as a morality tale. When I read the passage of its end, which Theroux quoted in his book, I was reminded of the film “In the Realm of the Senses.” Both male protagonists in the book and the film screwed themselves to death and the female protagonists were depicted as insatiable sex fiends who cause the male protagonists' fall from passion.

But I think what’s more ridiculous is Hsi-Men’s name. It sounds the same way as “semen”. The author must not have intended the pun.  But I, as a reader (and someone whose imagination got ludicrously fired up) could not help but notice the pun. In fact, there is not just the pun in Hsi-Men’s name. It did not take me a second to realize that if one divides the word “semen” by its syllables, one comes up with “se” (sē) and “men” (mən) which I interpret as “sea men” (sailors—a lot of testosterone there) and “a sea that reproduces men” (provided it merges with a sea of eggs). Now, I “see men”.

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