Oh, Baby Mia! What Have They Done to You?

A healthy, happy child has no higher nature, 

no purity, and no ideal being. - D. H. Lawrence

I like babies. And so I don't want to see them exploited or humiliated; used, for example, as fashion accessories, propaganda, or living props in a photo session that is nothing but an infantalising fantasy. For despite what many parents seem to believe, babies aren't cute, sentimental, or stupid.

They are, rather, little bundles of will to power, full of die Unschuld des Werdens; alien beings who, without even trying, live beyond good and evil in happy indifference to morality; an astonishing combination of the prehuman, inhuman, and overhuman. In brief, babies are natural born Nietzscheans.

And that's why despite being placed in a Santa sack alongside Eeyore, the old grey donkey, who has himself been Disneyfied and forced to uncharacteristically smile, I'm glad to see that Mia refuses to look at the camera and in this way displays her displeasure (and boredom) with the situation.     

For now at least, my great-niece retains something of the pristine integrity of a newborn; she hasn't yet been fully subjectified and made drearily Allzumenschliche, though I'm sure her mother and father are working hard at it. If only they would realise that she's an as yet impersonal creature, laid soft and vulnerable on the face of the earth, not merely a machine to be programmed.

They, the parents, have a responsibility "to see that this unformed thing shall come to its own final form and fulness, both physical and mental". But that doesn't mean turning her into a good little girl according to a recipe overloaded with sugar and spice.

Perhaps the best thing they can do is leave her alone - not in a neglectful manner - but so as to allow her to be, unprovoked and undisturbed in all her beautiful remoteness, before, of her own accord, she makes the fall into consciousness and individuality.               

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'Education of the People', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 118.  

Baby/Doll (With Reference to the Work of W. B. Yeats)

 

Admit it, we're so much nicer than 

   the real thing mewling and puking ...

If I were asked by some kind of investigative committee into poetic activity: Are you now or have you ever been a reader of W. B. Yeats? I would have to answer no. 

However, in the interests of full disclosure, I would also have to admit that I did once (unsuccessfully) attempt to read his esoteric study A Vision (1925) and that I am of course familiar with three of his most famous verses: 'The Second Coming' (1920), 'Leda and the Swan' (1924), and 'Sailing to Byzantium' (1928).

But I'm certainly not a Yeats scholar of any kind, nor even a fan of his writing; it's too traditional, too nostalgic, too mystical and too Romantic - in short, too Irish - for my tastes. When I don't find it boring in its lyricism, I find it politically pernicious in it's völkisch nationalism and myth-making.

Having said that, there is at least one other poem by Yeats that fascinates and horrifies in equal measure ...

'The Dolls' (1916) tells the tale of a doll-maker and his wife who has recently given birth following an unplanned pregnancy, for which she is shamefully apologetic in the face of hostility to the newborn child from her husband's handcrafted creations, one of whom "Looks at the cradle and bawls: / 'That is an insult to us.'"

But it is the oldest of all the dolls who kicks up the biggest fuss and screams with indignant rage: 

"'Although
There's not a man can report 
Evil of this place,
The man and woman bring
Hither to our disgrace,
A noisy and filthy thing.'" 

This is obviously upsetting to the couple, as one might imagine; and upsetting also to readers of the verse. Creepy, malevolent dolls are bad enough - but creepy, malevolent dolls that bad-mouth innocent living babies, are even worse. WTF is Yeats playing at here?

Well, let me reiterate: I'm no Yeats scholar - but I know a woman who is ...

According to Dr Maria Thanassa, here, as elsewhere in his verse, Yeats is affirming the superiority of art over nature and the fact that he subscribes to a material form of aesthetic idealism in which artificial objects, such as handcrafted dolls, are infinitely preferable in their porcelain perfection to biological entities, such as babies, who cry, vomit, and defecate all day long without restraint and are subject to disease, cot death, and all the other forms of sordid stupidity and defect that characterise mortal existence.      

For the doll-maker, his beautiful figures are the result of hard-work and exquisite design; the child, on the other hand, is the unfortunate consequence of a quick fuck and carelessness on the part of the woman. It takes talent, discipline and dedication to be an artist, whilst anyone can be a human breeder. Thus we should value things born of the mind over things born of the body.

Obviously, in as much as this analysis of Yeats's thinking is correct, I find it problematic to say the least - even as someone fascinated by objects and sympathetic to agalmatophilia, pygmalionism, and all forms of doll fetish.

Were I the doll maker's wife, I'd get my child and get out of there ...     

See: W. B. Yeats, 'The Dolls', in Responsibilities and Other Poems (Macmillan, 1916). Click here to read online at allpoetry.com 

Thanks to Maria Thanassa for her kind assistance with this post.