The Art of Seduction (62 page)

gardens. On land they moved through villages with vibrant marketplaces;
easily produced when the
the peasants were happily at work, building and repairing. Everywhere they
distinction between
spent the night, some spectacle filled their eyes—dances, parades, mytho-
imagination and reality is
effaced, as when something

logical tableaux vivants, artificial volcanoes illuminating Moorish gardens.
that we have hitherto
Finally, at the end of the trip, in the palace at Sebastopol, Catherine and
regarded as imaginary
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appears before us in reality,
Joseph discussed the war with Turkey. Joseph reiterated his concerns. Sud
or when a symbol takes
denly Potemkin interrupted: "I have 100,000 troops waiting for me to say
over the full functions of
'Go!' " At that moment the windows of the palace were flung open, and to
the thing it symbolizes,

and so on. It is this factor
the sounds of booming cannons they saw lines of troops as far as the eye
which contributes not a

could see, and a fleet of ships filling the harbor. Awed by the sight, images
little to the uncanny effect

of Eastern European cities retaken from the Turks dancing in his mind,
attaching to magical

practices. The infantile
Joseph II finally signed the treaty. Catherine was ecstatic, and her love for
element in this, which also
Potemkin reached new heights. He had made her dreams come true.
dominates the minds of

Catherine never suspected that almost everything she had seen was pure
neurotics, is the

overaccentuation of
fakery, perhaps the most elaborate illusion ever conjured up by one man.
psychical reality in

comparison with material

reality
—
a feature closely

Interpretation.
In the four years that he had been governor of the Crimea,
allied to the belief in the

omnipotence of thoughts.
Potemkin had accomplished little, for this backwater would take decades to

— S I G M U N D FREUD,

improve. But in the few months before Catherine's visit he had done the

" T H E U N C A N N Y , " I N

following: every building that faced the road or the shore was given a fresh
PSYCHOLOGICAL WRITINGS

coat of paint; artificial trees were set up to hide unseemly spots in the view;
AND LETTERS

broken roofs were repaired with flimsy boards painted to look like tile; everyone the party would see was instructed to wear their best clothes and look happy; everyone old and infirm was to stay indoors. Floating in their palaces down the Dnieper, the imperial entourage saw brand-new villages, but most of the buildings were only facades. The herds of cattle were shipped from great distances, and were moved at night to fresh fields along the route. The dancing peasants were trained for the entertainments; after each one they were loaded into carts and hurriedly transported to a new downriver location, as were the marching soldiers who seemed to be everywhere. The gardens of the new palaces were filled with transplanted trees that died a few days later. The palaces themselves were quickly and badly built, but were so magnificently furnished that no one noticed. One fortress along the way had been built of sand, and was destroyed a little later by a thunderstorm.

The cost of this vast illusion had been enormous, and the war with

Turkey would fail, but Potemkin had accomplished his goal. To the observant, of course, there were signs along the way that all was not as it seemed, but when the empress herself insisted that everything was real and glorious, the courtiers could only agree. This was the essence of the seduction: Catherine had wanted so desperately to be seen as a loving and progressive ruler, one who would defeat the Turks and liberate Europe, that when she saw signs of change in the Crimea, her mind filled in the picture.

When our emotions are engaged, we often have trouble seeing things as they are. Feelings of love cloud our vision, making us color events to coincide with our desires. To make people believe in the illusions you create, you need to feed the emotions over which they have least control. Often the best way to do this is to ascertain their unsatisfied desires, their wishes crying out for fulfillment. Perhaps they want to see themselves as noble or romantic, but life has thwarted them. Perhaps they want an adventure. If
Confuse Desire and Reality
—
The Perfect Illusion
•
303

something seems to validate this wish, they become emotional and irrational, almost to the point of hallucination. Remember to envelop them in your illusion
slowly.
Potemkin did not start with grand spectacles, but with simple sights along the way, such as grazing cattle. Then he brought them on land, heightening the drama, until the calculated climax when the windows were flung open to reveal a mighty war machine—actually a few thousand men and boats lined up in such a way as to suggest many more. Like Potemkin, involve the target in some kind of journey, physical or otherwise. The feeling of a shared adventure is rife with fantasy associations. Make people feel that they are getting to see and live out something that relates to their deepest yearnings and they will see happy, prosperous villages where there are only facades.
Here the real journey through Potemkin's fairyland began. It

was like a dream
—
the waking dream of some magician who

had discovered the secret of materializing his visions. . . .

[
Catherine
]
and her companions had left the world of reality
behind. . . . Their talk was of Iphigenia and the ancient

gods, and Catherine felt that she was both Alexander and

Cleopatra.

— G I N A KAUS

Keys to Seduction

The real world can be unforgiving: events occur over which we have little control, other people ignore our feelings in their quests to get what they need, time runs out before we accomplish what we had wanted. If we ever stopped to look at the present and future in a completely objective way, we would despair. Fortunately we develop the habit of dreaming early on. In this other, mental world that we inhabit, the future is full of rosy possibilities. Perhaps tomorrow we will sell that brilliant idea, or meet the person who will change our lives. Our culture stimulates these fantasies with constant images and stories of marvelous occurrences and happy romances.

The problem is, these images and fantasies exist only in our minds, or on-screen. They really aren't enough—we crave the real thing, not this endless daydreaming and titillation. Your task as a seducer is to bring some flesh and blood into someone's fantasy life by embodying a fantasy figure, or creating a scenario resembling that person's dreams. No one can resist the pull of a secret desire that has come to life before their eyes. You must first choose targets who have some repression or dream unrealized—always the most likely victims of a seduction. Slowly and gradually, you will build up the illusion that they are getting to see and feel and live those dreams of theirs. Once they have this sensation they will lose contact with reality, and begin to see your fantasy as more real than anything else. And once they
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lose touch with reality, they are (to quote Stendhal on Lord Byron's female victims) like roasted larks that fall into your mouth.

Most people have a misconception about illusion. As any magician

knows, it need not be built out of anything grand or theatrical; the grand and theatrical can in fact be destructive, calling too much attention to you and your schemes. Instead create the appearance of normality. Once your targets feel secure—nothing is out of the ordinary—you have room to deceive them. Pei Pu did not spin the lie about his gender immediately; he took his time, made Bouriscout come to him. Once Bouriscout had fallen for it, Pei Pu continued to wear men's clothes. In animating a fantasy, the great mistake is imagining it must be larger than life. That would border on camp, which is entertaining but rarely seductive. Instead, what you aim for is what Freud called the "uncanny," something strange and familiar at the same time, like a deja vu, or a childhood memory—anything slightly irrational and dreamlike. The uncanny, the mix of the real and the unreal, has immense power over our imaginations. The fantasies you bring to life for your targets should not be bizarre or exceptional; they should be rooted in reality, with a hint of the strange, the theatrical, the occult (in talk of destiny, for example). You vaguely remind people of something in their childhood, or a character in a film or book. Even before Bouriscout heard Pei Pu's story, he had the uncanny feeling of something remarkable and fantastical in this normal-looking man. The secret to creating an uncanny effect is to keep it subtle and suggestive.

Emma Hart came from a prosaic background, her father a country

blacksmith in eighteenth-century England. Emma was beautiful, but had no other talents to her credit. Yet she rose to become one of the greatest seductresses in history, seducing first Sir William Hamilton, the English ambassador to the court of Naples, and then (as Lady Hamilton, Sir William's wife) Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson. What was strangest when you met her was an uncanny sense that she was a figure from the past, a woman out of Greek myth or ancient history. Sir William was a collector of Greek and Roman antiquities; to seduce him, Emma cleverly made herself resemble a Greek statue, and mythical figures in paintings of the time. It was not just the way she wore her hair, or dressed, but her poses, the way she carried herself. It was as if one of the paintings he collected had come to life. Soon Sir William began to host parties in his home in Naples at which Emma would wear costumes and pose, re-creating images from mythology and history. Dozens of men fell in love with her, for she embodied an image from their childhood, an image of beauty and perfection. The key to this fantasy creation was some shared cultural association—mythology, historical seductresses like Cleopatra. Every culture has a pool of such figures from the distant and not-so-distant past. You hint at a similarity, in spirit and in appearance—but you are flesh and blood. What could be more thrilling than the sense of being in the presence of some fantasy figure going back to your earliest memories?

One night Pauline Bonaparte, the sister of Napoleon, held a gala affair
Confuse Desire and Reality
—
The Perfect Illusion • 305

in her house. Afterward, a handsome German officer approached her in the garden and asked for her help in passing along a request to the emperor. Pauline said she would do her best, and then, with a rather mysterious look in her eye, asked him to come back to the same spot the next night. The officer returned, and was greeted by a young woman who led him to some rooms near the garden and then to a magnificent salon, complete with an extravagant bath. Moments later, another young woman entered through a side door, dressed in the sheerest garments. It was Pauline. Bells were rung, ropes were pulled, and maids appeared, preparing the bath, giving the officer a dressing gown, then disappearing. The officer later described the evening as something out of a fairy tale, and he had the feeling that Pauline was deliberately acting the part of some mythical seductress. Pauline was beautiful and powerful enough to get almost any man she wanted, and she wasn't interested simply in luring a man into bed; she wanted to envelop him in romantic adventure, seduce his mind. Part of the adventure was the feeling that she was playing a role, and was inviting her target along into this shared fantasy.

Role playing is immensely pleasurable. Its appeal goes back to childhood, where we first learn the thrill of trying on different parts, imitating adults or figures out of fiction. As we get older and society fixes a role on us, a part of us yearns for the playful approach we once had, the masks we were able to wear. We still want to play that game, to act a different role in life. Indulge your targets in this wish by first making it clear that you are playing a role, then inviting them to join you in a shared fantasy. The more you set things up like a play or a piece of fiction, the better. Notice how Pauline began the seduction with a mysterious request that the officer reappear the next night; then a second woman led him into a magical series of rooms. Pauline herself delayed her entrance, and when she appeared, she did not mention his business with Napoleon, or anything remotely banal. She had an ethereal air about her; he was being invited to enter a fairy tale. The evening was real, but had an uncanny resemblance to an erotic dream.

Casanova took role playing still further. He traveled with an enormous wardrobe and a trunk full of props, many of them gifts for his targets—

fans, jewels, other accouterments. And some of the things he said and did were borrowed from novels he had read and stories he had heard. He enveloped women in a romantic atmosphere that was heightened yet quite real to their senses. Like Casanova, you must see the world as a kind of theater. Inject a certain lightness into the roles you are playing; try to create a sense of drama and illusion; confuse people with the slight unreality of words and gestures inspired by fiction; in daily life, be the consummate actor. Our culture reveres actors because of their freedom to play roles. It is something that all of us envy.

For years, the Cardinal de Rohan had been afraid that he had somehow offended his queen, Marie Antoinette. She would not so much as look at him. Then, in 1784, the Comtesse de Lamotte-Valois suggested to him that
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the queen was prepared not only to change this situation but actually to befriend him. The queen, said Lamotte-Valois, would indicate this in her next formal reception—she would nod to him in a particular way.

During the reception, Rohan indeed noticed a slight change in the