Richard Lovatt Somers: Notes Towards a Character Study (Part 2)

 

Garry Shead: Flaming Kangaroo (1992) 

From the D. H. Lawrence Series  

etchinghouse.com.au

 

 

I. 

 

So, as we have seen in part one of this study, R. L. Somers is a queer fish, who desires (at times at least) to actually become-fish and leave cloying humanity behind. At other times, however, as we shall discuss here, he pledges his allegiance to dark gods and prides himself on the daimonic aspects of his nature. 

 

It might be argued, therefore, that in as much as he has a politics, the latter rests upon a philosophy of inhuman otherness and an opening up of self to alien forces; not something that is shared with Ben Cooley, who acts in the name of Love and remains human, all too humanistic (even when, physically, he resembles a kangaroo). 

 

Anyway, let's pick up from where we left off in Lawrence's Australian novel: I remind readers that page numbers given below refer to the Cambridge Edition of Kangaroo (1994), ed. Bruce Steele.

 

 

II.

 

Somers is a man who wants to be convinced by Kangaroo, so that he might submit to him. But he isn't convinced, so he can't and won't submit. Not to Ben Cooley, not to anybody. Nor will he allow himself to be carried away: "He had a bitter mistrust of seventh heavens and all heavens in general." [132] Like Larry David, Somers has learnt to curb his enthusiasm and come to the end of transports. 

 

"'I don't quite believe that love is the one and only, exclusive force or mystery of living inspiration. [...] There is something else'" [134], Somers tells an exasperated Kangaroo. And this something else is that which enters us not from above via the spirit, but from behind and below, marking the end of all that we are (or, rather, all that we think we are). 

 

With his devilish blue-eyes sparkling, Somers says: "'What you call my demon is what I identify myself with. It's the best me, and I stick to it.'" [136-37] As a reader of Nietzsche, I know precisely what he means and I sympathise with this position [a]. Many of us have grown tired of being moral-ideal automatons and long to escape our humanity as founded upon the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.

 

Whether this means flirting with one's next door neighbour's wife, however, is another matter; not that Somers follows through with his illicit desire for Victoria, despite having "stroked her hot cheek very delicately with the tips of his fingers" [142] and justified the possibility of an adulterous affair in his own mind by giving reference to the gods. 

 

For in his heart of hearts, Somers remained stubbornly puritanical and "his innermost soul was dark and sullen, black with a sort of scorn" [143] even for extramarital shenanigans. Better to collect differently coloured sea-shells on the beach, or to take off one's clothes and run naked in the rain, or to go for a swim in the sea and delight in the fresh cold wetness. 

 

Indeed, better even to chase rainbows than to get mixed up with the world: "The rainbow was always a symbol to [Somers ...] of unbroken faith, between the universe and the innermost" [155]. The problem is, even when feeling relatively peaceful Somers found himself in a "seethe of steady fury" [163] - a kind of general rage aimed at no one and everyone: 

 

"He didn't hate anybody in particular, nor even any class or body of men. He loathed politicians, and the well-bred darling young men of the well-to-do middle classes made his bile stir. [...] But as a rule the particulars were not in evidence [...] and his bile just swirled diabolically for no particular reason at all." [163]

 

At times, Somers feels himself to be a sort of human bomb ready to explode and cause the maximum amount of havoc. Again, one is reminded of Nietzsche, who declared: "I am not a man - I am dynamite!" [b] Is this longing for chaos a resentful expression of anarcho-nihilism? Perhaps. But more likely, it's related to the abuse Somers suffered at the hands of the authorities during the War years whilst in Cornwall (a period he refers to as the Nightmare and which inflicted lasting psychological damage upon him) [c].

 

But, thankfully, Somers manages to refrain from exploding and resist the urge to involve himself in bloody revolution; for he realises that this simply leaves behind "'the same people  after it as before'" [161-62]. His pessimism and his inability to summon up sufficient enthusiasm for any form of militancy or direct action is, of course, his saving grace. When, inevitably, there's a row in town (Chapter XVI), it's not Somers who breaks heads with an iron bar. 

 

Ultimately, Somers simply doesn't care: "How profoundly, darkly he didn't care." [178] What does the modern world of men and politics matter compared to the ancient fern-world, "before conscious responsibility was born" [178] and men too were shadowy like trees, "with numb brains and slow limbs and a great indifference" [179]? 

Later, Somers confesses his indifference: "'I try to kid myself that I care about mankind and its destiny. [...] But at the bottom I'm as hard as a mango nut. [...] I don't really care about anything [...]" [203] For Kangaroo, this - combined with his obsession with the magic of the dark world - makes Somers a traitor to his own human intelligence; a remark that causes Richard to smile and recall Nietzsche once more [d].

 

Thus, no surprises then that Richard Somers leaves Australia shortly after his falling out with Kangaroo - and shortly after the latter dies from a gun shot wound that resulted from a political meeting turning violent (Chapter XVI). 

 

Although Somers visits Kangaroo in hospital, there's no reconciliation and although Cooley pleads with Somers to concede that love is the greatest thing of all, the latter cannot make this concession - even to comfort a dying man. In fact, he tells Cooley: "'I don't want to love anybody. Truly. It simply makes me frantic and murderous to have to feel loving any more.'" [326]      

 

Jack Callcott thinks Somer's was a bit hard on Cooley as the latter lay on his death bed. But Kangaroo surely shouldn't have been surprised, as Somers has already made it perfectly clear that he wants an understanding between them that is deeper than love and allows each to retain their integrity: "'Let's be hard, separate men.'" [209] [e]      

Again, I find this diamond-like Somers who loves nobody and likes nobody, rather amusing (my middle name, as Katxu once said, is Hate). But so too do I like the Somers who walks round the Zoo and feels tenderness for the animals (to whom he feeds extra-strong peppermints). But then, tenderness isn't the same as love; it's deeper, darker and, as Lawence will later conclude, more phallic in origin than the latter. 

 

The Australian bush and the wildlife - the (mostly) unique flora and fauna - are what, ultimately, cause Somers (despite all that we say above) to declare his love for the country: "'I don't love the people. But this place - it goes into my marrow, and makes me feel drunk.'" [347]

But still he leaves: waving his orange silk handkerchief in the air as he sets sail for America; arguably one of the most fascinating characters ever to have found himself upside down at the bottom of the world (to borrow David Allen's phrase) [f]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[a] See the section entitled 'The Convalescent' in Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in which he asserts that man needs what is most evil in him for what is best in him. I am following Walter Kaufmann's translation in The Portable Nietzsche (Penguin Books, 1976), p. 330.

      It's clear that Richard Somers has read Zarathustra - later in the novel he quotes from the book re the idea of great events (and the need to unlearn our belief in them when they consist only of a lot of noise and smoke). See Kangaroo, p. 161 and see the section entitled 'Of Great Events' in Thus Spoke Zarathustra.  

 

[b] See Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Penguin Books, 1988), p. 126. 

      One wonders if, in making this startling declaration, Nietzsche forgets what he wrote in The Gay Science: "I do not love people who have to explode like bombs in order to have any effect at all." Perhaps it betrays a certain self-contempt; or perhaps it demonstrates how Nietzsche's position (and temperament) becomes more violent (more desperate) over the years. See The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann, (Vintage Books, 1974), III. 218, p. 210.

      Finally, readers might like to note that an actual bomb is thrown at the violent climax of Chapter XVI, just as a bomb explodes at the end of Lawrence's previous novel, Aaron's Rod. See p. 282 of the Cambridge Edition (1988), ed. Mara Kalnins. 

 

[c] See Chapter XII, pp. 212-259. Somers, we are informed, has an "accumulation of black fury and fear" [260] submerged like a horrible pool of lava ready to erupt deep in his unconscious. And when he does remember his time in Cornwall and what he experienced, it leaves him "trembling with shock and bitterness" [260] and a feeling not only of intense humiliation, but desecration.  

 

[d] Somers recalls, with a smile, the title of Nietzsche's third book, Menschliches, Allzumenschliches (1878-80). When Cooley goes on to call him a perverse child, this makes Somers laugh and reply: "'Even perversity has its points'". See Kangaroo pp. 206 and 208. 

      Ultimately, what Somers wants is to get clear of humanity: "That was now all he wanted: to get clear. Not to save humanity or to help humanity or to have anything to do with humanity. [...] Now, all he wanted was [...] to be alone." [265] This, for Richard, is the true starting (and finishing) point: "a man alone with his own soul: and the dark God beyond him" [281].     

[e] Again, this is Somers at his most Nietzschean. See the section entitled 'Of Old and New Law Tables' (29), in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in which the diamond instructs the charcoal on the need for creators to become hard. 

 

[f] Upside Down at the Bottom of the World is the title of a drama, written by David Allen, about the Lawrence's in Australia. It was published by Heinemann Educational Australia, in 1981. 

 

 

Surprise musical bonus: click here. 

Richard Lovatt Somers: Notes Towards a Character Study (Part 1)

Detail from 'The Struggle' (1992) 

Garry Shead: D. H. Lawrence Series

etchinghouse.com.au

 

I. 

 

In his Introduction to the Cambridge Edition of Kangaroo, Bruce Steele argues that whilst the novel is "in many respects thinly disguised autobiography", uncritical emphasis on this pervasive element has led to the mistaken assumption that the character Richard Lovatt Somers is identical with Lawrence as narrator, even though "Lawrence as narrator [...] is often sharply distinct from his character Somers and frequently critical of him and his views" [a].  

And that's true - but doesn't go far enough. For I would not only challenge the ridiculous idea that Somers is identical with the narrator, but interrogate also the belief that the narrator can be identified with an Author who resides outside (and above) the text and in whose person is found the very origin of the work and its ultimate truth.       

      

In this post, therefore, I'm concerned only with Richard Somers and not interested in making any attempt to tie Kangaroo as a work of fiction to Lawrence's own memories, foreign travels, political views, or sexual fantasies. As Deleuze says, creative writing that is overly reliant upon autobiography is not only often bad writing, but dead writing; for literature dies from an excess of authorial input just as it does from an overdose of reality.

 

 

II.

 

Richard Somers is a queer fish: a small, foreign-looking, slightly comical figure, with a pale face, dark beard, and an absent air of self-possession that spoke not only of his (in)difference, but innate superiority and sensitivity (as indicated by his Italian suit and brown shoes).

 

His middle name, Lovatt, suggests either something wolfish about his nature, or something rotten; either way, he doesn't like to be cheated by taxi drivers - but then, who does? Nor does he find humorous house names very amusing - but then ...

 

To be fair, Somers could be charming - when he wanted - but mostly he liked to keep himself to himself and not to "speak one single word to any single body" [19] - except Harriett, his wife, "whom he snapped at hard enough" [19]. The thing he hates most of all is "promiscuous mixing in" [36] and informality. 

 

Unfortunately, Somers can't help feeling himself in touch with (and responsive to) others due to the fact he possessed "the power of intuitive communication" [37]. However, despite this, Somers "would never be pals with any man" [38].    

 

Somers was a writer of poems and essays, with an income of £400 a year (i.e., about twice the average wage in 1922). So, whilst not rich, he was able to globe-trot, admiring the local flora whilst despising the natives and forever asking himsef why he had ever bothered to leave England: Somers "wandered disconsolate through the streets of Sydney" [20], longing to be back in London.

 

Still, if the city disappoints, the Australian bush makes a tremendous impression upon him: "Richard L. had never quite got over that glimpse of terror in the Westralian bush" [15]. He was sure a menacing spirit of place had been watching him as he walked amongst the ghostly pale trees. Watching - and waiting to grab him. For as a poet, Somers felt himself "entitled to all kinds of emotions and sensations which an ordinary man would have repudiated" [14].

 

But of course, as the narrator of Kangaroo notes: "It is always a question, whether there is any sense in taking notice of a poet's fine feelings." [15] Or indeed, his prejudices - of which Somers has many; mostly rooted in his snobbishness, such as his dismissal of Australians "with their aggressive familiarity" [21] as barbarians, lacking in class and culture. For Somers, there has to be rule - otherwise there's just a form of irresponsible anarchy and bullying.    

 

"Poor Richard Lovatt wearied himself to death struggling with the problem of himself, and calling it Australia." [28] That's an interesting remark. But what is Somers's problem? I'm not sure - perhaps we'll find out by the end of this character study ... And maybe we'll find out too what lesson it is that Somers thinks the world has got to learn [31] - or why it is he seems so fascinated by the legs of young men in bathing suits on the beach [27]. 

 

But maybe not: maybe Somers will always remain something of an enigma: for it was "difficult to locate any definite Somers, any one individual [...] The man himself seemed lost in the bright aura of his rapid consciousness" [38]. Somers, we might say, is mercurial and light-footed. He's also a reckless chess player; "very careless of his defence" [39], which is odd for someone so guarded in other respects.

 

For a man who, by his own admission, never takes any part in politics, Somers does seem to hold a number of very definite political views; as might be expected of a writer of essays on social and political topics, such as the future of democracy or the fate of capitalism. And his views might best be described as national socialist in character (all that talk of blood and soil), or as a kind of demonic radicalism (all that talk of dark everlasting gods).    

 

Somers also fancies that it's his "own high destiny" [92] to be a leader of men one day and to make some kind of opening in the world. Though, push comes to shove, he can't commit to any cause, party, or movement. Nor even to Benjamin ('Kangaroo') Cooley. Something always stops him; "as if an invisible hand were upon him" [106]. 

 

Thus, whilst Somers might crave living fellowship with others, he does not want affection, love, nor comradeship. For living fellowship, it turns out, is a synonym for the mystery of lordship. That is to say, the thing which the dark races still know:

 

"The mystery of innate, natural, sacred priority [...] which democracy and equality try to deny and obliterate [...] the mystic recognition of difference and innate priority, the joy of obedience and the sacred responsibility of authority" [107] [b].

 

At other times, however, Somers rejects the human world entirely - and I think I like him best at such moments; when he is filled with cold fury and contempt for mankind and cares only for the dark cold sea, dreaming (in what is perhaps my favourite section of the novel) of becoming-fish: 

 

"To have oneself exultingly ice-cold, not one spark of this wretched warm flesh left, and to have all the terrific, ice energy of a fish. To surge with that cold exultance and passion of a sea thing! [...] No more cloying warmth. No more of this horrible stuffy heat of human beings. To be an isolated swift fish in the big seas, that are bigger than the earth; fierce with cold, cold life, in the watery twilight before sympathy was created to clog us.

      They were his feelings now. Mankind? Ha, he turned his face to the centre of the seas, away from any land. The noise of waters, and dumbness like a fish. The cold, lovely silence, before crying and calling were invented. His tongue felt heavy in his mouth, as if it had relapsed away from speech altogether.

      He did not care a straw what [...] anybody said or felt, even himself. He had no feelings, and speech had gone out of him. He wanted to be cold, cold, and alone like a single fish, with no feeling in his heart at all except a certain icy exultance and wild, fish-like rapacity. [...] Who sets a limit to what a man is. Man is also a fierce and fish-cold devil, in his hour, filled with cold fury of desire to get away from the cloy of human life altogether, not into death, but into that icily self-sufficient vigour of a fish." [125]  

 

As Zarathustra might say: Man needs what is most piscean in him for what is best in him ... [c]  

 

 

This series of notes for a character study of R. L. Somers is continued in part two of this post: click here.  

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Bruce Steele, Introduction to D. H. Lawrence's Kangaroo, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. xxiii. All future page references to this work will be given directly in the post.  

[b] This is, of course, a fantasy of the reactionary imagination and one which I have discussed recently on Torpedo the Ark in terms of natural aristocracy: click here. I also discuss the politics of this passage in chapter 5 of Outside the Gate, (Blind Cupid Press, 2010), see pp. 100-126, and will comment further on Somers's politico-theological speculations in part two of this post. 

[c] I'm paraphrasing a famous line written by Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra - see the section entitled 'The Convalescent'. 

Autogynephilia (The D. H. Lawrence Birthday Post 2016)

Garry Shead: The Dancing Lesson

There's been a significant amount of discussion around the question of D. H. Lawrence's sexuality.

Unfortunately, most of it has been conducted in boring, restrictive and ultimately untenable binary terms. And so, despite all the heat generated, there's not been much light shed on the subject. Frequent accusations of misogyny, homophobia, and phallocentrism haven't helped matters either.       

Not that these accusations are entirely unjustified. With reference to the latter charge, for example, it's true that Lawrence privileges, fetishizes, and wants to be penetrated by the phallus. But what's most interesting - to me at least - is that he expresses a genderqueer desire in his final novel to be penetrated as a woman, not as a man. 

In other words, Lawrence shows signs of anatomic autogynephilia and is clearly excited by the thought of having a female body so that he might experience vaginal as well as anal penetration. He doesn't want to be Mellors, he wants to be Connie and in Lady Chatterley's Lover he is able to intimately describe a woman's lusts, fears, and hopes not because he was in some ways a bit womanly or had a feminine eye for fashion and rugged gamekeepers, but because he's unafraid of exploring an eonistic fantasy of sexo-aesthetic inversion, regardless of the ridicule or opprobrium this would inevitably result in.

This makes him not only a courageous and transgressive writer, but also one who still has something to say to us today - after the orgy - in a transsexual age of gender fluidity and gender flux. Lawrence, it seems, the kinky crossdreamer, wasn't as committed to essentialism as many critics believe; he often uses terms such as 'male' and 'female' metaphorically and knows very well how these things are constructed, stylised, and performed.   


Notes

Autogynephilia is a term coined by the sexologist Ray Blanchard, to refer to "a man's paraphilic tendency to be sexually aroused by the thought or image of himself as a woman". See 'The concept of autogynephilia and the typology of male gender dysphoria', in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 177 (10): 616–623 (1989).

Eonism is a term coined by the sexologist Havelock Ellis, which he derived from the name of the 18thC French spy and diplomat, Chevalier d'Éon, who claimed to be a woman in a male body and spent the second half of his life dressed in female clothing. For Ellis, eonism is an extreme form of mimetic identification by the male with the admired object (woman) on what may be a neurotic basis. See Studies in the Psychology of Sex: Volume VII: Eonism and Other Supplementary Studies (1928).

D. H. Lawrence's Kangaroo and Some Transpolitical Musings

Garry Shead, Lawrence and Kangaroo, (1992)

Although I'm interested in politics and regard my work as politically informed, I am not one of those individuals who could ever belong to a political party or follow a party line.

I suppose, primarily, this has something to do with wishing to safeguard my reputation as a nomadic thinker; i.e. one who cares for those ideas that don't allow themselves to easily be codified or coordinated by an ideology, or made subject to authority. For this reason, I'm very sympathetic to Richard Somers, protagonist of Lawrence's novel Kangaroo (1923).

For Somers too is something of a Nietzschean free spirit, struggling to rid himself from all forms of dogma and doxa, desperately trying to reinvent each gesture and finally find a way in which to say something in his own name without asking permission (albeit a name which designates no ego whatsoever).

Thus, although he writes essays on social questions - and although he flirts with parties on both the far-left and far-right of the political spectrum, fantasizing about being a revolutionary man of action - Somers ultimately chooses to stand aside and stand alone, remaining loyal to his own demon (no matter how wilfully perverse this makes him look in the eyes of others) and exercising what Foucault describes as a decisive will not to be governed.

He very early on in the novel makes his transpositional position clear when he states that politics isn't his real concern and that he'd rather wander in a homeless fashion without a friend in the world than belong to any nation, church, or cause. Somers knows and comes to accept that he is fated to be one of those who must remain silent, lonely, and resolute - individuals content to engage in invisible activities outside the gate.

Heidegger talks about the need for such people engaged in reverent contemplativeness which might keep open the slim hope of a new revealing for man; a form of transcendence that has been purged not only of its conventional ties to morality and metaphysics, but also to the very possibility of direct action.

Ultimately, despite what militant political fanatics and religious terrorists believe, the greatest events are not our loudest or bloodiest but our stillest hours and "The world revolves not around the inventors of new noises, but around the inventors of new values; it revolves inaudibly."

Like Zarathustra, Richard Somers knows in his heart that change takes time and begins with a new feeling. Thus whilst the commentator Mac Daly is right to suggest that Kangaroo unfolds within a nihilistic universe, he is mistaken to argue that Somers's problem is that he cannot summon up sufficient faith in any cause that might give his life meaning. This, in fact, is Somers's strength and saving grace; it is what prevents him from deteriorating into something dreary and political like a communist or a fascist. It is his lack of faith and his inability to believe in anything or anyone that, paradoxically, is a sign of his spiritual superiority.

For Somers knows that whilst life can be made to march in step with the limited movements of the body politic and mouth empty slogans, it at the same time exceeds these and goes far beyond them: for life makes no absolute statement and sensitive, intelligent men and women don't need metanarratives and remain incredulous before them. If they do think their way into a political party or a faith, so too do they think their way through and out the other side, back into the open, like worms through a rotten apple. 

Kangaroo is a great novel precisely because it encourages us not to belong; to keep moving and abandon all attachments; to understand that it's merely Christian to love your enemies, whilst the really crucial but difficult thing is learning how to hate your friends and betray your masters.      


Notes:

D. H. Lawrence, Kangaroo, edited by Bruce Steele with an Introduction and Notes by Macdonald Daly, (Penguin Books, 1997).  

Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Penguin Books, 1969). The line quoted is from the section in part two entitled 'Of Great Events', pp. 153-54.  

See also Stephen Alexander, Outside the Gate, (Blind Cupid Press, 2010), II. 6, pp. 127-45, for a further discussion of this topic with reference to Kangaroo and Aaron's Rod.