Rupert Birkin and the Ichthyosaur

French illustrator Édouard Riou 

gives us his take on the ichthyosaur in 1863 [1]

 

I. 

 

Rupert Birkin famously declares that he would like to see a pristine world empty of people: "I abhor humanity, I wish it was swept away." [2] 

 

And that's fair enough; many of us share his vision of a posthuman future and find it an attractive and liberating thought to imagine a world in which new species arise and the unseen hosts move about freely. 

 

And many of us are convinced that man is not exceptional or the measure of all things. Indeed, some of us are even tempted to promote a programme of voluntary human extinction - click here - or to adopt an object-oriented philosophy that challenges all forms of anthropocentrism - click here.      

 

However, I think Birkin is wrong to describe the poor old ichthyosaur as "one of the mistakes of creation" [3]. I mean, say what you like about mankind, but why take a pop at these large marine reptiles which thrived during the Mesozoic era and survived well into the Late Cretaceous period ...?

 

Modern humans have only been around for 200,000 years or so - and even if you can trace our ancestors belonging to the Homo genus back a couple of million years, that's nothing compared to the 160 million years that the ichthyosaurs clocked up.

 

And so I find it puzzling - as well as irritating - that Birkin insists on making a comparison between humanity and the ichthyosaurs: "The ichtyosauri were not proud: they crawled and floundered as we do." [4]  

 

But then, at heart, Birkin is more of a flora-dendrophile than a zoophile, believing that bluebells (more than butterflies) are the greatest example of pure creation and that there's nothing sexier than a young fir tree [5].      

 

 

II.

 

I suppose the question that might be asked is why does Birkin pick on the ichthyosaurs rather than the four-legged, land-dwelling dinosaurs? I don't really know the answer to this, but I suspect it might be due to the fact that throughout the mid-late nineteenth and early-twentieth century ichthyosaurs were very much in vogue ...

 

Although bones, teeth and fossilised remains of these beasts had been found prior to the early 19th-century, nobody really knew what they were looking at. Usually, remains were wrongly classified as belonging to fish, dolphins, or crocodiles, although in 1708, the Swiss naturalist Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, identified two ichthyosaur vertebrae as being human in origin. 

 

However, as more complete skeletons were unearthed, the suspicion grew that these were from a distinct species of animal, although many still argued they were merely the remains of giant lizards, or some transitional form, and uncertainty around classification continued. It wasn't until 1835 that the order Ichthyosauria was named by French zoologist Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville.    

 

The discovery of an extinct group of large marine reptiles generated huge publicity and captured both the scientific and popular imagination. People were fascinated by the strange anatomy of the creatures and astonished at the fact that they had lived so many millions of years before man. 

 

Some hoped that living specimens might yet be found; others, like the Scottish geologist Charles Lyell argued that since God's Earth was eternal, it was therefore inevitable that the ichthyosaurs would eventually return [6]. Meanwhile, crackpot fossil collector Thomas Hawkins believed that ichthyosaurs were the monstrous creations of the Devil and in 1840 he published a book denouncing the great sea-dragons. 

 

Fourteen year later, in 1854, when Crystal Palace was rebuilt in South London, the surrounding park was filled with life-sized, painted concrete statues of extinct creatures, including three ichthyosaurs, much loved by the public.

 

Finally, as the nineteenth century moved towards and into the twentieth, thousands of new finds - particularly in Germany - greatly improved the scientific understanding of these animals. In some cases, the quality of the finds was remarkable; not only were complete skeletons unearthed, but even preserved soft tissue.     

 

This, then, is the cultural background in which (and out of which) Birkin's thinking was formed. So not surprising, then, that he should refer to the ichthyosaurs - but still disappointing that he should dismiss them as evolutionary failures (or mistakes in creation, as he puts it) [7].     

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Although it was known that ichthyosaurs lived in the open seas, they were often shown basking on the shore, or splashing about in the shallows; a convention followed by many nineteenth-century artists, which led to the belief that they had an amphibious lifestyle. Note how Birkin mistakenly says the ichthyosaurs 'crawled and floundered', whereas actually they happily swam about like modern marine mammals.

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, ed. David Farmer, Lindeth Vasey amd John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 127.  

[3] Ibid., p. 128.

[4] Ibid. 

      Later in the novel, when reflecting upon the death of his friend Gerald, Birkin muses: "God can do without man. God could do without the ichthyosauri and the mastodon. These monsters failed creatively to develop, so God, the creative mystery, dispensed with them." [p. 478]

 

[5] For a discussion of Birkin's flora-dendrophilia, please click here.   

[6] The possibility of this was ridiculed in an 1830 caricature by Henry De la Beche. See the related post entitled 'On Posthumous Revenge and the Resilient Cretaceous' (6 Mar 2023), where this amusing illustration by can be found: click here.  

[7] Having said that, it is true that after 160 million years or so, the ichthyosaurs did become extinct. However, this was probably due to external events (i.e., environmental upheaval and sudden climatic changes), rather than a long decline, loss of pride, or lack of resilience on their part. 

 

If We Could Talk to the Animals

Sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus)

  

They say the sea is cold, but the sea contains 

the hottest blood of all ... [1]

 

 

As far as I recall, even Doctor Doolittle - who, famously, abandoned his human patients in favour of treating animals, with whom he could communicate in their various languages - never spoke to a sperm whale. But, apparently, an interdisciplinary group of scientists may now be close to so doing, with help from AI technology ...

 

The Cetacean Translation Initiative aims to decode the astonishing variety of clicks and whistles made by sperm whales. If successful, the project would be the first time (outside of fiction) that humans will be able to understand - and presumably employ - the language of another species (if, that is, animal utterances can legitimately be described as a language) [2].   

 

Of course, learning to decipher and communicate in whale-speech isn't going to be easy, even with the most advanced systems of artificial intelligence. But it's an intriguing project and one wonders what Moby Dick might have to tell us ... 

 

Alas, I fear it won't be anything very pleasing to human ears; for I suspect that these huge, intelligent mammals will, like elephants, have long memories and will thus recall the industrial scale slaughter of their kind by man during the last 300 years [3]. 

 

Maybe, to paraphrase Nietzsche, they'll accuse us not only of being the most absurd and unfortunate of all animals, but also the cruellest [4]. 

 

But maybe, if we're lucky, they'll also teach us something about love ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'Whales weep not!', The Poems, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 607-08. 

      This poem can be found online at poets.org: click here. Some readers might recall that the opening two lines were quoted by Capt. Kirk in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (dir. Leonard Nimoy, 1986), which features a pair of humpback whales. 

 

[2] Scientists and linguists are still uncertain whether or not animals can be said to truly possess language. For vocalisations can only be called a language if it can be shown that they possess fixed meanings and structures (i.e., without semantics and grammar, you just have a lot of clicks, grunts, squeaks, and squawks).   

 

[3] Although sperm whales are now a protected species and remaining populations are large enough that their conservation status is rated as vulnerable rather than endangered, the recovery from centuries of commercial whaling will be a slow process and it's doubtful the number of whales inhabiting the world's oceans will ever be what it once was. 

 

[4] See Nietzsche, The Gay Science, III. 224. 

 

 

Musical bonus: 'Talk to the Animals', written by Leslie Bricusse for the film Doctor Dolittle (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1967). Performed by Rex Harrison (as Doolittle), it won the Academy Award for Best Original Song and has been recorded by numerous artists, including Andy Williams, Tony Bennett, and Sammy Davis Jr. 

      Click here to listen to Bobby Darin's take on the song, from the album Bobby Darin Sings Doctor Doolittle, (Atlantic Records, 1967). 

Crawling on All Fours in Shaggy Inhumanity ...

William Blake: Nebuchadnezzar (c. 1795-1805)

tate.org.uk

 

 

I. The Case of King Nebuchadnezzar

 

Most people are probably vaguely familiar with the figure of King Nebuchadnezzar who, if the Bible is to be believed, was deprived of his mind by God and forced to live like an animal as punishment for excessive pride or hubris. The fact that he destroyed Solomon's Temple and held God's chosen people captive probably didn't go down well either [1]. 

 

William Blake famously produced a large colour print depicting this Babylonian monarch reduced to the status of a mad beast. As can be seen, he looked pretty rough during this seven year period; almost like some sort of werewolf. Alexander Gilchrist writes that the picture shows Nebuchadnezzar: 

 

"crawling like a hunted beast into a den among the rocks; his tangled golden beard sweeping the ground, his nails like vultures' talons, and his wild eyes full of sullen terror. The powerful frame is losing semblance of humanity, and is bestial in its rough growth of hair, reptile in the toad-like markings and spottings of the skin, which takes on unnatural hues of green, blue, and russet." [2]

 

Happily for Nebuchadnezzar, at the end of the septennium he is restored to sanity and full human status - indeed, he even gets his kingdom back, having learned his lesson, so all's well that ends well in his case ...     

 

 

II. The Case of Robinson Crusoe

 

Despite what naturists may choose to believe, I'm not convinced there's anything positive to be gained from the experience of nudity; I certainly don't think that running about with your kit off in the woods or on the beach, makes you essentially healthier, happier, or more vital. 

 

Having stripped off his clothes in a heavy shower of rain, Robinson Crusoe later muses on this question of nakedness and the importance of garments: 

 

"It was true that neither the temperature nor any consideration of modesty required him to go about dressed in a civilized manner. Sheer habit had caused him to do so, but now in his despair he began to appreciate the value of that armour of wool and linen with which human society had hitherto protected him. Nakedness is a luxury in which a man may indulge himself without danger only when he is warmly surrounded by his fellow man. For Robinson [...] it was a trial of desperate temerity. Stripped of its threadbare garments - worn, tattered, and sullied, but the fruit of civilized millennia, and impreganted with human associations - his vulnerable body was at the mercy of every hostile element. The wind, the thorned shrubs, the rocks, and the pitiless light assailed and tormented their defenceless prey." [3] 

 

Clothes serve many important functions. But offering a degree of physical protection in a hard, sharp and dangerous world is by no means the least of these. However, as time passes on the island, Crusoe succumbs to the devastating effects of isolation and eventually finds himself as naked - and as bestial - as Nebuchadnezzar in Blake's famous print: 

 

"Robinson could not have said how long it was since he had left his last shred of clothing on some thornbush. In any case, the thought of sunburn no longer troubled him, since his back, flanks, and thighs were now protected by a thick coating of dried mud. His hair and beard had grown so long that his face was almost invisible beneathy their tangled mass. His hands had become mere forepaws used for walking, since it made him giddy to stand upright. His state of physical weakness [...] but above all the breaking of some little spring in his soul, had led him to move only on his hands and knees. He knew now that man [...] can only stay upright while the crowd packed densely around him continues to prop him up. Exiled from the mass of his fellows, who had sustained him as part of humanity without his realizing it, he felt he no longer had the strength to stand on his own feet. He lived on unmentionable foods, gnawing them with his face to the ground. He relieved himself where he lay, and rarely failed to roll in the damp warmth of his own excrement. He moved less and less, and his brief excursions always ended in his return to the mire. Here, in its warm coverlet of slime, his body lost all weight, while the toxic emanations from the stagnant water drugged his mind. Only his eyes, nose, and mouth were active, alert for edible weed and toad spawn drifting on the surface." [4] 

 

III. Lou Carrington's Contrasting Vision of the Pure Animal Man

 

Crusoe's experience of becoming-animal doesn't sound so great a life - and certainly puts being in a Covid lockdown into perspective. It obliges one also to reconsider D. H. Lawrence's fetishisation of the animal man, articulated, for example, in St. Mawr by Lou Carrington who informs her (somewhat sceptical) mother that she is tired of nice, clean men with minds and wants instead men full of their own animal mystery, burning with life:

 

"'A pure animal man would be as lovely as a deer or a leopard, burning like a flame fed straight from underneath. And he'd be part of the unseen, like a mouse is, even. And he'd never cease to wonder, he'd breathe silence and unseen wonder, as the partridges do, running in the stubble. He'd be all the animals in turn, instead of one, fixed, automatic thing, which he is now, grinding on the nerves.'" [5]   

 

It's a lovely vision - in stark opposition to the image of Crusoe -  but one worries that just as the latter is the product of a fear of animality and the loss of humanity defined in moral-rational terms and related to the covering of one's nakedness, so Lawrence's fantasy is the product of his own romanticism and a longing for a natural paradise of some kind, in which man can dispense with clothing and his animal nature will no longer be corrupted and domesticated by civilisation.    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Readers interested in the story of Nebuchadnezzar will find it in the Old Testament Book of Daniel, a collection of legendary tales and apocalyptic visions dating from the 2nd century BC. The consensus among scholars is that the work should obviously be read as historical fiction, rather than historical fact.   

 

[2] Alexander Gilchrist, The Life of William Blake, (Dover Publications, 1998), p. 408-09. 

 

[3] Michel Tournier, Friday, trans. Norman Denny, (John Hopkins University Press, 1997), p. 33.  

 

[4] Ibid., p. 40.

 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, 'St. Mawr', in St. Mawr and Other Stories, ed. Brian Finney, (Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 62.       

On Bolshevism and Immortality: the Case of Arseny Tarkovsky

What I know about the twentieth century Russian poet and translator Arseny Tarkovsky can pretty much be written on the back of a postage stamp - such as this commemorative one issued in 2007 to mark the centenary of his birth:

The fact that he featured on a stamp issued by the new regime whilst also having been posthumously awarded the Soviet Union's State Prize in 1989, shows how admired Tarkovsky was across the political spectrum.  

Where he positioned himself on this spectrum is interesting to speculate. Revolutionary-minded, one wonders for example what Tarkovsky made of the way things developed, politically and in the arts, under Stalin.

He obviously didn't feel all that uncomfortable as he volunteered to work as a correspondent for an official Soviet Army publication during the war years and never seriously considered the life of an exile or dissident - not even after his own writing fell foul of the new guidelines established by Andrei Zhdanov.

(It wasn't until 1962, when he was aged 55, that Tarkovsky was finally able to publish a volume of original verse.)

However, one would like to believe that Tarkovsky secretly recognised communism for what it is; a form of political idealism doomed, like fascism, to end in tears, tyranny and state terror.

One perhaps finds a clue to his thinking on this question in a poem whose title is usually translated into English as Earthly; a work in which the fantasy of being an immortal and transcending limitations is decisively rejected.

In other words, it's the moment when Tarkovsky realises like Tommy Dukes that one has to be human, and have a heart and a penis if one is going to escape being either a god or a Bolshevist ... for they are the same thing: they're both too good to be true. 

Below is a brilliant and startling new translation by Simon Solomon; his alternative title emphasizing the irreverence of the verse:


Soiled Song (after Arseny Tarkovsky)

Were our lives innately fated
to play in gods’ eternal laps
we’d all have guzzled ambrosia
from some Olympian nurse’s baps

and I’d be a river deity or worse,
guarding tombs or blowing corn.
Instead I’m mortal and have no time
for eternity’s celestial porn.

Happy the man whose blistered lips
are not sewn into a ready smile.
So take your polytheologies
and leave me to earth’s salt and bile.


Notes 

Simon Solomon (aka Dr Simon Thomas) is a poet, translator, critic and tutor. He is a professional member of the Irish Writers Centre, Dublin and currently serves as managing editor with the academic journal Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society. He blogs at: simonsolomon.ink 

The Tommy Dukes line can be found in D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1983). 

  

Dog Bites: On the Question of Man and Animal (and the Becoming-Animal of Man)

Photo by Eija-Liisa Ahtila from the eight part series 

of images entitled Dog Bites (1992-97)

Like Lou Carrington, I’ve always believed there must be something else to marvel at in humanity besides a clever mind and a nice, clean face and that we might term this something else animality.

And like Lou, I’ve always hoped that were we to conduct what Nietzsche terms a reverse experiment and resurrect the wild beast within us, then we might produce a type of man who would be “as lovely as a deer or a leopard, burning like a flame fed straight from underneath”.

But now I’m not so sure about the desirability of this: for clearly there are dangers involved in the process of man’s becoming-animal and no one really wants to see werewolves prowling the streets.

Nor, for that matter, do I think it an attractive prospect to live like a dog, as Diogenes liked to live and as was central to the ancient philosophical practice of Cynicism. I don’t want to shit in the street or copulate in full view of others; don’t want to drink rainwater, growl at strangers, or eat raw meat. Like incest, these provocative acts might be perfectly natural and constitute secret pleasures, but they should only be indulged in with extreme caution.

In other words, unlike the ancient Cynics - and unlike some of the more militant of the animal rights activists and environmentalists campaigning in our own time - I don’t wish to tie the principle of the true life exclusively to the domain of Nature and thus reject all social convention and civilized restraint.

Our humanity may well be something that needs to be reformulated and eventually overcome, but it remains nevertheless a magnificent accomplishment; one that was achieved only after a huge amount of suffering over an immense period of time.

Thus, to adopt a model of behaviour based upon that of our own animality (or, rather, what we imagine the latter to be) simply so we might lick our own balls in public and thereby scandalise those who pride themselves on all that distinguishes them as human beings, seems to me profoundly mistaken.


Notes

Lou Carrington is a character in D. H. Lawrence’s short novel St. Mawr. See St. Mawr and Other Stories, ed. Brian Finney, (Cambridge University Press, 2003). The line quoted is on p. 61.

For an interesting interpretation of the bios kunikos and why the Cynics prided themselves on living such see Michel Foucault, The Courage of Truth, ed. Frédéric Gros, trans. Graham Burchell, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 242-43.

On The Horror of Living in the Moment

I used to celebrate the idea of living in the moment. That is to say, of enjoying the very nowness of time with neither memory of the past, nor anticipation of days to come.

But now, having witnessed how Alzheimer's traps and isolates a person precisely in a perpetual present, I know that this is actually a petrifying prospect. One might become innocent, in a Nietzschean sense of the term (i.e. as a concept closely tied to forgetfulness), but one becomes less than human rather than overhuman and increasingly without world, as Heidegger would say.

In other words, to live in the moment is to inexorably turn to stone ...         

Nietzsche's Animal Philosophy

The Company of Wolves, (dir. Neil Jordan, 1984)

One of Nietzsche's most daring strategies is to call into question the traditional privileging of the human over other animals and thus to place man back amongst their number. For Nietzsche, man is certainly not the high-point of evolution; rather, he is the most depraved of all beasts. Which is to say, man is the animal that has strayed furthest from its sound instincts.

It is only when the ideal of man as a divine creation made in the image of God is shown to be not only conceited but damaging, that individual men and women will be able to achieve a level of enhancement via a becoming-animal. There is thus what one critic terms a reverse anthropocentrism in Nietzsche's texts via which he naturalizes the human species and grounds not just his own thinking but all human culture in zoology.

Now, admittedly, there are times when Nietzsche risks simply allegorizing animals on the basis of a single characteristic or trait that he determines as either noble or base. However, what remains radical in his animal philosophy is the clear implication that socio-ethical behaviour - often held up as something uniquely human - can ultimately be located (if in a rather cruder form) amongst animals. He writes:

"The beginnings of justice, as of prudence, moderation, bravery - in short, all we designate as the Socratic virtues - are animal: a consequence of that drive which teaches us to seek food and elude enemies. Now if we consider that even the highest human being has only become more elevated and subtle in the nature of their food and in their conception of what is inimical to them, it is not improper to describe the entire phenomenon of morality as animal." [Daybreak, I. 26]

Later, in the Genealogy, Nietzsche will examine how man’s evolution from the semi-animal, happily adapted to the wilderness, was a difficult and painful process involving either the suspension of natural instincts or their internalization. Proto-humans were reduced to their consciousness; "that most impoverished and error-prone organ" [II. 16] and forced to think and feel shame for the first time. And other creatures looked upon man with fear and pity as "the insane animal, the laughing animal, the weeping animal, the miserable animal" [The Gay Science, III. 224].

Of course, what has happened has happened: our fall into consciousness and moral subjectivity, as well as our ever-greater reliance upon technology, is doubtless a fate that we will have to see through to the end. In other words, we will have to perfect our decadence and idealism before we can move towards a transhuman and noble future; i.e. the kind of future in which people pride themselves on their animal skills and attributes and understand that the sharing of traits with other species belongs to a primordial ethics.

But note: it’s not that this interaction and exchange hasn’t continued in the modern era of the farm animal and household pet - it has, and this has significantly contributed to modern man’s taming. What we need to do, then, is dynamically interact with animals other than those reared purely for slaughter and profit, or oedipalized cats and dogs.

In other words, as Angela Carter knew all too well: we should seek out the company of wolves and consent to becoming the tiger's bride; not just herd sheep and marry the boy-next-door!