Sulamith. A Romance of Antiquity by Aleksandr Kuprin
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
WTF! This is Fifty Shades under the cover of a Russian classic! And the story wasn't any better in 1908 than it was in 2011.
You want to have evidence? Here you go: Horny Solomon seeing his newest crush the first time, of course there's this fateful wind coming up... "And when thou didst turn around in answer to my call, and the wind arose, I did see beneath thy raiment thy two nipples and methought: Here be two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies. This thy stature was like to a palm tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes."
And then, doesn't this back and forth and oh so much thoughts seem familiar somehow?
"What dost thou with me!" says Sulamith faintly, closing her eyes. But Solomon passionately whispers near her very mouth: "Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb; honey and milk are under thy tongue.... O, come away with me, speedily. Here, behind the wall, it is dark and cool. None shall see us. The green is soft here underneath the cedars." "Nay, nay, leave me. I desire it not, I can not." "Sulamith ... thou dost desire it, thou dost desire it.... Come to me, my sister, my beloved!"
And just with that, thou dost desire it, and some promises à la Christian Gray: "But have no fear, and put thy trust in me. I shall cause thee no grief. I shall give thee such joy compared with which all things upon earth are without significance", the young girl is like 'yeah, maybe I do desire this stranger who's three times as old as I am' and tadaa, they're in an obsessive love with each other and what man could resist this offer?! "Thou wouldst instruct me; I would cause thee to drink of the juice of my pomegranates."
Still another unbelievably romantic exclamation somehow didn't make it into the Fifty Shades but wouldn't everybody like to see Christian saying "Seven hundred wives have I known and three hundred concubines, and virgins without number,—thou art but one, my fair!" and Anastasia answering "I desire to be but thy slave, Solomon. Behold, I have put my ear to the post of the door. I beseech thee,—in accordance with the law of Moses, nail down my ear in witness of my voluntary bondage before thee."?? (Yes, really happened like this in the book, I'm not simply putting quotations together in a funny way...even though I wished it would be like this!). I guess nailing somebody's ear to a door post doesn't go in 21st century romance, which would be the only explanation for me to why E L James missed out on that.
There's even a Mrs. Robinson! But the "older" (she's 30...but when you think of Sulamith being 13, well...) lover goes a little further in this case, but of course I don't want to spoil all the "fun". So if you're brave enough and if you thought that the Fifty Shades were quite okay but would have been PERFECT if there just were some old religious rites and some famous examples of the judgement of Solomon included, then go and find out where this all leads to!
Well, to sum it up? Apparently E L James wasn't the first to come up with the idea of rich 'well experienced' man hitting on submissive naive young girl and putting it into a cheesy story with some sex involved...and having the characters say things like "farewell" and "thou shalt" doesn't really make the plot any better, even though I have to admit that it at least doesn't let Kuprin look as illiterate as E L James seems to be.
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