Les Onze Mille Verges

Les Onze Mille Verges ou les Amours d'un hospodar is a pornographic novel by French author Guillaume Apollinaire, published in 1907 over his initials "G.A.". The title contains a play on the Catholic veneration of the "Eleven thousand Virgins" (French: les onze mille vierges), the martyred companions of Saint Ursula, replacing the word vierge (virgin) with verge (rod) due to a slip of the tongue by the protagonist and as an omen of his fate. The use of the word verge may also be considered as a pun for it is used as a vulgarism for the male member.

Les Onze Mille Verges draws on the work of earlier erotic writers, including the Marquis De Sade, Rétif de la Bretonne, André Robert de Nerciat and Pietro Aretino.

Les Onze Mille Verges tells the fictional story of the Romanian hospodar Prince Vibescu Mony, in which Apollinaire explores all aspects of sexuality: sadism alternates with masochism; ondinism / scatophilia with vampirism; pedophilia with gerontophilia; masturbation with group sex; lesbianism with homosexuality. The writing is alert, fresh and concrete, humour is always present, and the entire novel exudes an "infernal joy", which finds its apotheosis in the final scene.

Admirers of Les Onze Mille Verges included Louis Aragon, Robert Desnos and Pablo Picasso, who dubbed the novel Apollinaire's masterpiece.

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