Sex orgies as pagan fertility rites

The sexual orgies Twain refers to were pagan fertility rites connected to planting seeds in the rich earth and the hoped-for harvest, but the orgies have somewhat faded away on the mechanized and commercial family farms of today.

Back in ancient times there was an explicit recognition of the sacred role sex plays in preserving life in face of famine and death.  James Frazer’s The Golden Bough was the landmark study in this area. Published between 1890 and 1915, it describes life as an annual ritual of worship and sacrifice.  The book influenced Twain and subsequent writers interested in myth, such as James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, T.S. Eliot (who acknowledges it in The Waste Land, 1922) and Robert Graves (The White Goddess, 1948).  Frazer’s most interesting (and controversial) argument was that Christianity was founded on the same fertility cults as all the other religions.

How many models were required? The above painting, The Nymphaeum, is by William-Adolphe Bougereau, from 1878. In the 19th century, Bouguereau was considered one of the most popular and commercially successful painters of all time, whose reputation was rewritten by the Impressionists. Although his paintings are in general mythological and sentimental, the work below, Dante and Virgil in Hell, from 1850, is striking for its homoeroticism.