I discovered this text Vivant Denon with Milan Kundera (who cites it in "Slow" if I remember correctly). This is a book about love licentiousness, desire, taste that women and men of each other, sex. It's in a wonderful French, sumptuous, sparkling (read the first five lines "I loved madly and I was twenty, I was naive") There are only two writers who have achieved such. splendor are Choderlos de Laclos with "Dangerous Liaisons" and in another register, Cardinal de Retz in his memoirs (I think particularly in this exchange between the Duc de Bouillon and the future Cardinal tax where the first second cowardice, saying: "You have good composure for a young man"). A shimmering text, biting, virtuoso.
