people are rubbish, and their life is not life, but some sort of
conjured up, spectral, unnecessary delirium of world culture. But
there are two singular realities--ancient as humanity itself: the
prostitute and the moujik. And about them we know nothing, save
some tinsel, gingerbread, debauched depictions in literature..."

Tinsel, gingerbread, debauched depictions... Let us consider some
of the ways in which this monstrous reality has been approached by
various writers. There is, first, the purely sentimental:
Prevost's Manon Les caut. Then there is the slobberingly
sentimental: Dumas' Dame aux Camelias. A third is the
necrophilically romantic: Louys' Aphrodite. The fertile Balzac has
given us no less than two: the purely romantic, in his fascinating
portraits of the Fair Imperia; and the romantically realistic, in
his Splendeurs et Miseres des Courtisanes. Reade's Peg Woffington
may be called the literary parallel of the costume drama; Defoe's
Moll Flanders is honestly realistic; Zola's Nana is rabidly so.

There is one singular fact that must be noted in connection with
the vast majority of such depictions. Punk or bona roba, lorette
or drab--put her before an artist in letters, and, lo and behold
ye! such is the strange allure emanating from the hussy, that the
resultant portrait is either that of a martyred Magdalene, or, at
the very least, has all the enigmatic piquancy of a Monna Lisa...
Not a slut, but what is a hetaera; and not a hetaera, but what is
well-nigh Kypris herself! I know of but one depiction in all
literature that possesses the splendour of implacable veracity as
well as undiminished artistry; where the portrait is that of a
prostitute, despite all her tirings and trappings; a depiction
truly deserving to be designated a portrait: the portrait supreme