Adults only as France's National Library allows peep at sex 'hell'

0 Comments | AFP, December, 2007

PARIS (AFP) — An eye-popping array of rutting satyrs, tumescent aristocrats and lusty 18th-century shepherdesses went on display in Paris Tuesday, as France's National Library lifted the veil on its collection of long-censored erotica.

For the first time since it was catalogued in the 1830s, the library's special pornographic section -- officially entitled "Enfer" (Hell) -- has been revealed in all its priapic glory. Such is the graphic nature of the material that under-16 year-olds are barred.

Some 350 books, engravings, photographs and curiosities -- the oldest a 14th-century manuscript illustration of a nun picking the fruit of a phallus-tree -- bear witness to man's insatiable instinct for the lurid intimacies of the flesh.

Overall more than 2,000 works...