Heathen, Hedonistic, and Horny: Notes on Maggie Nelson's Bluets (2009) - Part 1: Propositions 1-120

 Jonathan Cape (2017)

 

 

I. 

 

As long-time readers of Torpedo the Ark will know, whilst, as a nihilist, my default position is always paint it black, I do also have a philosophical fascination with a colour much loved by painters and poets and which Christian Dior identified as the only one which can possibly compete with black: blue. 

 

This includes, for example, the lyrical blue celebrated by Rilke and Trakl; the deep blue invented by Yves Klein; the blue of the Greater Day that D. H. Lawrence writes of; and my fascination with this colour extends to blue angels, blue boys, blue lenses, and blue lagoons.  

 

Thus, no surprise then that I should eventually get around to reading Maggie Nelson's wonderful little book Bluets ...

 

 

II. 

 

First published by Wave Books in 2009, Bluets consists of 240 numbered propositions arranged not so much randomly, but with what we might term considered whimsicality to create the illusion of logical precision and continuity à la Wittgenstein. Each proposition is either a sentence or a short paragraph; none exceeds two hundred words in length.

 

The book documents not only the author's bowerbird-like obsession with the colour blue, referencing many famous figures along the way associated with the colour, but also provides an insight into Nelson's understanding of love and mental health and examines what role - if any - beauty plays in times of heartache or depression.

 

In 2016, she won a MacArthur Fellowship - known to many as the genius grant - and, on the basis of this one book alone I think that Nelson is indeed one of those very rare individuals who probably deserves the title of genius; an original and insightful writer who produces work that is both lyrical and philosophical.  

 

The title doesn't refer us simply to those small and delicate blue flowers belonging to the genus Houstonia, but also to a triptyque by the American abstract artist Joan Mitchell, Les Bluets (1973), which Nelson describes as perhaps her "favourite painting of all time" [a]

 

Here, I would like to provide a commentary on the book, picking up on some of the things that particularly resonate with me or pique my curiosity to know more. Hopefully, in the course of doing so I can demonstrate why the author and critic Hilton Als was spot on to praise Bluets as a "new kind of classicism" that, whilst queer in content, remains elegant in form [b].     

 

 

III.

5

 

Are we to understand that when, like Mallarmé, one replaces le ceil with l'Azur - "in an effort to rinse references to the sky of religious connotations" - one ceases to be a crypto-theologian and becomes a poet-philosopher? 

 

Is it true to say: whereof one can perceive blueness, thereof one cannot imagine God ...     

 

 

18

 

"A warm afternoon in early spring, New York City. We went to the Chelsea Hotel to fuck."

 

For a moment I thought I was reading Young Kim's A Year on Earth with Mr Hell (2020). 

 

But then I read the three sentences following: 

 

"Afterward, from the window of our room, I watched a blue tarp on a roof across the way flap in the wind. You slept, so it was my seceret. It was a smear of the quotidian, a bright blue flake amidst all the dank providence."  

And realised I wasn't.  

 

20 

 

"Fucking leaves everything as it is." 

 

This is a very un-Lawrentian sentence; perhaps the most un-Lawrentian sentence you could imagine. 

 

For Lawrence insists that, on the contrary, fucking is transformational of the individual - changing the very constitution of the blood - and that a politics of desire, founded upon the act of coition, has revolutionary potential. 

 

Like Nietzsche, Lawrence believes that the lover is richer and stronger than those who do not fuck; that lovers grow wings and possess new capabilities. And there arises, he says, a post-coital "craving for polarized communion with others" [c] - not just for cigarettes. 

 

 

26 / 31

 

Nelson says that she's heard that "a diminishment of color vision often accompanies depression" and I couldn't help wondering if that's true; if feeling blue ironically makes the world seem greyer ...?

 

Well, apparently, it is: depression lowers the production of dopamine and this can impair neurotransmitters in the retina, making the world appear less vibrant and colourful. 

 

But then Nelson reminds us of the case of Mr Sidney Bradford, who had his vision restored in his fifties (having lost his sight as a baby) and saw the world at last in full-colour:  he died of unhappiness due to disappointment soon afterwards [d].      

 

35

 

"Does the world look bluer from blue eyes?", asks Nelson, before concluding that's probably not the case. 

 

But, like her, I like to imagine it does.

 

 

56

 

When reminded of Saint Lucy - patron saint of the blind, who was tortured and put to death by the Romans in 304 CE - I can't help thinking of Simone, the teenage erotomaniac at the heart of Bataille's notorious short novel L'histoire de l'œil (1928). 

 

For whilst Lucy didn't - as far as I know - insert the eye of a murdered priest into her vagina, she is often depicted in "Gothic and Renaissance paintings holding a golden dish with her blue eyes staring weirdly out from it".   

 

Depending on what sources one refers to, Lucy's eyes were either gouged out by her captors, or she removed them herself in order to avoid male attention and prove her religious devotion. For as Nelson writes, there are numerous stories of women "blinding themselves in order to maintain their chastity" and to demonstrate their fidelity to God (i.e., the fact that they 'only have eyes' for Christ).   

 

 

62

 

Nelson's definition of puritanism: the exchanging of corporeal reality for ideal representation. Not something that appeals to her: 

 

"I have no interest in catching a glimpse of or offering you an unblemished ass or airbrushed cunt. I am interested in having three orifices stuffed full of thick, veiny cock in the most unforgiving of poses ..."  

 

Fair enough: but this is still an image conjured up with words, is it not? And as Merleau-Ponty pointed out: Words do not look like the things they designate [e].  

 

 

71 / 72 

 

Hard to find dignity in loneliness; easier to find it in solitude. A pair of propostions of such high truth value that we may for all intents and purposes declare them true.  

 

 

101

 

When Nelson's friends were asked "how much time they would grant between 'a blinding, bad time' and a life that has simply become a depressive waste", the consensus was "around seven years". 

 

I suspect - based on my own experience between April 2016 and February 2023 - that that's probably about right; that the seven year mark is the limit. Perhaps that's why when a person goes missing there is a presumption of death after seven years. 

 

(As for how long it takes to fully recover having reached one's limit, that's a question to which neither Nelson nor her friends provide an answer and I suspect it might take longer to retreat from the edge of the abyss than it does to get there.)

Notes

 

[a] Maggie Nelson, Bluets (Jonathan Cape, 2017), Prop. 145, p. 57. Note that I will henceforth only give proposition numbers (in bold) in the post.      

 

[b] Hilton Als, 'Immediate Family', The New Yorker (11 April, 2016): click here. 

 

[c] D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 135. 

      Later, in proposition 201, Nelson does acknowledge the truth of change, newness, and becoming-other: "I believe n the possibility - the inevitability, even - of a fresh self stepping into ever-fresh waters [...]" (p. 80).

[d] This is a real case, although Nelson is taking artistic license with her conclusion. For whilst Bradford did admit to finding the world visually disappointing following corneal grafts - and did die two years afterwards - he also had chronic health issues and no specific cause of death was entered on his death certificate. 

[e] Nelson quotes this line herself in proposition 70. It can be found in the essay 'Cézanne's Doubt', in Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Basic Writings, ed. Thomas Baldwyn (Routledge, 2003). 

 

This post continues in part two (selected propositions from 121-240): click here. 

Melody Blue

Photo of Jane Birkin by Tony Frank used for the sleeve of 

Serge Gainsbourg's Histoire de Melody Nelson (1971)

 

 

As long-time readers of Torpedo the Ark will know, whilst, as a nihilist, my default position is always paint it black, I do have a philosophical fascination with a colour much loved by painters and poets and which French fashion designer Christian Dior once described as the only one which can possibly compete with black: Blue [1]. 

 

This includes the lyrical blue celebrated by Rilke and Trakl; the deep blue invented by Yves Klein; and the blue of the Greater Day that Lawrence writes of. 

 

So, no surprise then, that I should also adore the light blue used as a background colour by the photographer Tony Frank when shooting his iconic image of Jane Birkin for the cover of Serge Gainsbourg's seven-track concept album, Histoire de Melody Nelson (1971) [2].

 

Birkin, who would have been twenty-four at the time - and pregnant with Gainsbourg's child - was playing the part of the red-haired, rosy-cheeked 15-year-old with a penchant for blue jeans, a pair of which Birkin can be seen wearing in the photo, whilst clutching a toy monkey to her bare chest. 

 

It's a good look - albeit a slightly pervy one, with its Lolita-esque overtones. Birkin not only gets away with pretending to be an adolescent, but she has an androgynous thing going on in the photo that adds to her appeal. 

 

By staring directly at the camera - one assumes at Frank's suggestion - Birkin reveals Melody's innocence and vulnerability. But she also challenges the viewer to accept her gaze and question their own position vis-à-vis the question of a middle-aged man desiring (or actually entering into) a sexual relationship with an underage girl [3].            

 

Anyway, whatever one's thoughts on this, the fact is Frank's image of Birkin on the cover of Histoire de Melody Nelson has become as celebrated as the album itself and - according to the photographer at least - some people have even started to describe the background colour as Melody Blue [4].  

 

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I have written several posts on the colour blue. See, for example, 'Blue is the Colour ... Notes on Rilke's Blue Delirium' (1 April 2017) and 'Blue is the Colour ... Yves Klein is the Name' (2 April 2017).

 

[2] Serge Gainsbourg's Histoire de Melody Nelson was released on 24 March, 1971 (Philips Records). It tells the tale of an illicit romance which develops between the middle-aged narrator and a sexually innocent 15-year-old called Melody Nelson. The album is considered by many critics and fans to be Gainsbourg's most influential and accomplished work (despite only being 28 minutes in length). To play the second track from the album - 'Ballade de Melody Nelson' - click here. 

 

[3] Technically, Melody was not underage as the (heterosexual) age of consent in France at this time was fifteen, as established by an ordinance enacted by the French government in 1945. Interestingly, however, an article within this ordinance forbade anal sex and similar relations against nature with any person under the age of twenty-one (an attempt, one assumes, to discriminate against homosexual lovers).   

 

[4] Readers interested in this post will be pleased to know that Tony Frank has assembled photos, contact sheets, behind-the-scenes imagery, and slides from the shoot with Birkin, into a 96-page book entitled Bleu Melody (RVB Books, 2018). In the book, Frank also recounts his memories from the time.

 

Drinking the Silence: Notes on the Case of Georg Trakl

Georg Trakl: Self-Portrait (1913)

I.

You should probably read more Trakl, says Simon. And, yes, I probably should ...

For even if his work isn't quite my cup of tea, there are elements within his lyrical expressionism to which I'm sympathetic; such as his fascination with the blueness of twilight and his love of silence. No one can deny that there are many arresting - and disturbing - images in his work, as he fully exploits the often uncanny ambiguity of German. 


II. Wer war Georg Trakl? 

Georg Trakl was a typical Romantic figure; a depressed drug fiend, who engaged in an incestuous relationship with his younger sister, Greta, and received generous financial support from wealthy patrons, including the philosopher Wittgenstein, who, like Heidegger, was a huge fan (see section III below).

A pharmacist by profession, Trakl liked to hang around with the avant-garde artists involved with the well-known literary journal Der Brenner, edited by Ludwig von Ficker. The latter was also an avid supporter of the young poet and not only regularly printed his work, but attempted to find a publisher for his first collection.

Unfortunately, Trakl overdosed on cocaine in the autumn of 1914 and became an early member of what is now known as the 27 Club. There's a very strong possibility of suicide. In a letter written in 1913 he confessed:

"I long for the day when my soul shall cease [...] to live in this wretched body polluted with melancholy, when it shall quit this laughable form made of muck and rottenness, which is all too faithful a reflection of a godless, cursed century."


III. Philosophical Readings of Trakl

As mentioned above, both Wittgenstein and Heidegger were keen readers of Trakl. But, perhaps not surprisingly, they responded very differently to his poetry ...

The former, for example, wrote that whilst he didn't understand the verses, their tone - one of true genius - made him very happy. The latter, on the other hand, claimed that Trakl's work made perfect sense, once it had been situated and unified as a single rhythmic wave within his own thinking.

Derrida would later question this rather outrageous attempt by Heidegger to co-opt Trakl's work - what we might describe as an act of philosophical Anschluss - though, to be fair, it's something we've all done is it not; to read an author in light of one's own ideas and obsessions (indeed, it might be argued that every reading is an act of violation, as the reader seeks out their textual pleasure).


Thanks to the poet and literary scholar Simon Solomon for suggesting this post.