You'll Never Turn the Vinegar Into Jam: On the Figure of the Tiger in the Philosophy of D. H. Lawrence

Most of their time, tigers pad and slouch in burning peace.

Yet they also drink blood. [1]

 

 

I. 

 

Although I wouldn't name it as one of Lawrence's totemic animals, nevertheless the tiger often appears within his work and held an important place in his philosophical imagination as one of the great realities of reality; i.e., a living thing that has come into its own fullness of being: 

 

"The tiger blazed transcendent into immortal darkness." [2]

 

"The tiger is the supreme manifestation of the senses made absolute." [3]

 

For Lawrence, in other words, the tiger is physical perfection and counters the bodiless idealism of those who, like Shelley, sought pure spiritual consummation: 

 

"The tiger was a terrible problem to Shelley, who wanted life in terms of the lamb." [4]  

 

 

II. 

 

In the the first essay of the Genealogy, Niezsche argues that it's perfectly natural for lambs to hate and fear tigers, wolves, and eagles. But mistaken to believe that they are morally superior to those animals that prey on them; the latter are not evil and act out of instinctive necessity, not cruelty.    

 

To expect fierce and powerful carnivores to lie down with meek and mild herbivores is as absurd as thinking you can turn the vinegar into jam; "a tiger is a tiger not a lamb, mein herr" [5] and cannot behave otherwise (and nor can the lamb - a creature which acts from weakness, not goodness).   

 

What's more, Lawrence argues that just as the tiger requires the lamb for sustenance, the lamb needs the tiger; for only the juxtaposition of the tiger "keeps the lamb a quivering, vivid, beautiful fleet thing"  [6]. 

 

Take away or exterminate the tiger, and all you're left with is a flock of letzte Schafe; happy, but little more than woolly clods of meat. Fear and suffering are vital principles; they help concentrate the soul, in man as well as lamb. 

 

Thank God, says Lawrence, for the tigers who liberate us from the "abominable tyranny of these greedy, negative sheep" [7]. And not only does he affirm the spirit of the tiger, he dreams of becoming-tiger and of making the tiger's way his own:

 

"Like the tiger in the night, I devour all flesh, I drink all blood, until [...] in the sensual ecstasy, having drunk all blood and devoured all flesh, I am become again the eternal Fire ..." [8]   

 

 

III.

 

Lawrence being Lawrence, however, he soon starts to oscillate from one pole of delirium to another and concede that the tiger's way - the way of the flesh and becoming "transfigured into magnificent brindled flame" [9] - is not the only form of ecstasy. 

 

Man can also become-deer, become-lamb, or, indeed, become-Christian, and move beyond the tiger, finding consummation not in the devouring of those who are weaker, or even in the negative ecstasy of offering non-resistance and being eaten oneself, but in acknowledging otherness:

 

"The Word of the tiger is: my senses are supremely Me, and my senses are God in me. But Christ said: God is in the others, who are not-me. In all the multitude of others is God, and this is the great God, greater than the God which is Me. God is that which is not-me. 

      And this is the Christian truth, a truth complementary to the pagan affirmation: 'God is that which is Me.'

      God is that which is Not-Me. In realising the Not-Me I am consummated, I become infinite. In turning the other cheek I submit to God who is greater than I am, other than I am, who is in that which is not me. This is the supreme consummation. To achieve this consummation I love my neighbour as myself." [10]

 

But then, having said that, Lawrence warns of the danger of pushing this ideal too far; of becoming too selfless whilst, somewhat paradoxically, identifying oneself with all that is other, like Walt Whitman, who aches with amorous love and insists with false exuberance on grasping everyone and everthing to his bosom, believing as he does in One Identity as the great desideratum [11]. 

 

For this path ends in nihilism and the triumph of the Machine and it's a "horrible thing to see tigers caught up and entangled in machinery [...] a chaos beyond chaos, an unthinkable hell" [12].   

  

IV. 

 

Ultimately, Lawrence's sharp-clawed feline philosophy can probably be best construed as tragic in the Nietzschean sense; one which understands according to the desire of death as well as according to the desire of life and is true for all things that emerge from the matrix of chaos, including "the tiger and the fragile dappled doe" [13].  

 

The former is a blossom of pure significance, born of the sun. But the tiger, like the leopard, needs to quench herself with the blood (or soft fire) of Bambi, so that she too might know tenderness when nursing her young and dreaming her dreams in stillness:

 

"For even the mother-tiger is quenched with insuperable tenderness when the milk is in her udder; she lies still, and her dreams are frail like fawns." [14]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] A misremembered couple of lines from 'Glory', by D. H. Lawrence; The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University press, 2013), p. 430.   

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Crown', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 270. 

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Lemon Gardens', Twilight in Italy, in Twilight in Italy and Other Essays, ed. Paul Eggert, (Cambridge Univrrsity Press, 1994), p. 117. 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, 'Fenimore Cooper's Anglo-American Novels', in Studies in Classic American Literature (First Version: 1918-19), ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen , (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 214.

 

[5] I'm quoting here from the brilliant Kander and Ebb song 'Mein Herr', from the musical Cabaret (1966). 

      To expect a tiger or leopard or lion to lie down with its prey is, says Lawrence, as vain as hoping "for the earth to cast no shadow, or for burning fire to give no heat". See 'The Reality of Peace', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays ... p. 49. 

[6] D. H. Lawrence, 'Fenimore Cooper's Anglo-American Novels', in Studies in Classic American Literature ... p. 214. 

 

[7] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Reality of Peace', Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays ... p. 42.

 

[8] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Lemon Gardens', Twilight in Italy, in Twilight in Italy and Other Essays ... p. 117.

 

[9] Ibid.

 

[10] Ibid., pp. 119-120. 

 

[11] I have discussed Walt Whitman and his fatal idealism elsewhere on Torpedo the Ark: click here.

 

[12] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Lemon Gardens', Twilight in Italy, in Twilight in Italy and Other Essays ... p. 121.

 

[13] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Reality of Peace', Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays ... p. 38. 

 

[14] Ibid., p. 48. 

 

 

For a related post which anticipates this one and in which I evoke the spirit of the Champawat Tiger, click here.  

 

 

Evoking the Spirit of the Champawat Tiger

Head of the Champawat Tiger

 

Tyger Tyger, burning bright, / In the forests of the night; 

What immortal hand or eye, / Could frame thy fearful symmetry? [1]

You might think that due to the enormous size of Russia, China, and India there would still be plenty of room for the tiger in this world. But you'd be wrong. Over the last century, tigers have lost more than 93% of their historic range and have been eradicated from Western and Central Asia, the islands of Java and Bali, and large areas of Southeast Asia and China. 

 

What remains of their range is cramped and fragmented and, thanks to habitat destruction and human encroachment - not to mention poaching - the global wild tiger population is now estimated to number a pitiful 5,500 individuals, with most populations living in small isolated pockets [2].

 

So, good news then, that in the Buddhist Kingdom of Bhutan native tiger populations are currently thriving due to a concerted effort to safeguard their habitat and create so-called wildlife corridors allowing them to roam about with a degree of freedom. From subtropical jungles to subalpine forests, tigers in Bhutan seem to have been given a fighting chance. 

 

However, despite this, their long-term survival is by no means guaranteed and one must keep things in statistical context. Thus, whilst celebrating a 27% increase in Bhutan's tiger population since 2015, it's important to recall that the starting figure was only 103 adult animals, meaning there are now still only 131 tigers in Bhutan. 

 

And - surprise, surprise - local farmers worried about their precious fucking livestock are not happy even with this tiny number. 

 

And whilst our friends in China continue to believe that various tiger parts have magico-medicinal properties, the illegal killing of tigers will continue. Snared, shot, and butchered by poachers for their bones, skins, and other body parts, tigers remain big business. 

 

Just as depressing is the fact that there are now more captive-bred tigers than wild creatures; living in zoos for our entertainment and on factory farms where they are reared for slaughter and human consumption as if they were cattle rather than majestic beasts of prey. 

 

If I could, I would summon the spirit of the Champawat Tiger to come and strike fresh terror into the heart of Man and gobble up his children [3]. Shelley, for whom the tiger was a terrible problem, wouldn't like it, but, as D. H. Lawrence pointed out, we can't live life exclusively in terms of the lamb [4].

 

 

 'A tiger knows no consummation unless 

they kill a violated and struggling prey.'

 

Notes

[1] William Blake, 'The Tyger', Songs of Experience (1794): click here. 

      According to D. H. Lawrence, the spirit of the tiger, burning bright in the forests of the Blakean night, is "the supreme manifestation of the senses made absolute". See 'The Lemon Gardens', in Twilight in Italy and Other Essays, ed. Paul Eggert, (Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 117.

 

[2] A century ago, that number was probably closer to 100,000. Thus, not suprisingly, the tiger is officially listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List.

 

[3] The Champawat Tiger was a beautiful Bengal tigress responsible for an estimated 436 human deaths in Nepal and the Kumaon district of India, during the late 19th century and early 20th century. Famed for her bloodlust, she is credited in the Guinness Book of World Records with preying upon more people than any other single animal. 

      Sadly, she was shot and killed in 1907 by the great white hunter Jim Corbett. However, before damning him to eternal torments in some hell ruled by felines, let us remember that Corbett eventually put down his rifle and picked up a camera, becoming an outspoken naturalist who advocated for the protection of India's wildlife, particularly its endangered big cats. In 1968, one of the five remaining subspecies of tigers was named after him: Panthera tigris corbetti. 

 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, 'Fenimore Cooper's Anglo-American Novels', in Studies in Classic American Literature (First Version 1918-19), ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 214.  

      Lawrence goes on to say: "We must admit that only the juxtaposition of the tiger keeps the lamb a quivering, vivid, beautiful fleet thing. Take away the tiger and we get the sheep of our pasture, just clods of meat."  

 

 

 For a follow up post to this one in which I expand upon Lawrence's tiger philosophy, click here.