I Don't Know as I Get What D. H. Lawrence is Driving at When He Writes of Bursten Bowels ...

Picasso: Gored Horse (1917) 

Graphite pencil on canvas with ochre primer 

(80.2 x 103.3 cm)

Museu Picasso de Barcelona

 

 

I. 

 

As readers of D. H. Lawrence are very well aware, he loves to write about the mysterious nether region of the human body known as the loins - i.e., that zone of libidinal intensity that lies somewhere between the ribs and the pelvis (or above the legs, but below the waist).

 

In fact, the only thing that excites his imagination more are the bowels ... 

 

 

II. 

 

Unfortunately, a bit like Frank O'Hara, I'm not quite sure I always understand what Lawrence is getting at when he uses this term [1]. On the one hand, it seems to be more than simply an anatomical reference to the gastrointestinal tract; indeed, for Lawrence, the bowels seem to be the seat of human compassion from which the deepest desires also spring. 

 

But, on the other hand, Lawrence likes to base his philosophical understanding of the body in biology where possible. So when he talks about the bowels, he is also referring us to the digestive system and those sausage-like organs known as the intestines or entrails. 

 

And, rather like Kenneth Williams, who described his daily bowel movements obsessively in his diaries, Lawrence seems to be plagued by a fear of things not working properly in this region, as we can see in the novel Kangaroo (1923), for example, when the marsupial-like fascist Ben Cooley is shot several times in his "'bloomin' Kangaroo guts'" [2], as one of his followers says.

 

Richard Somers - the book's Lawrentian avatar - visits Cooley in the hospital and can barely disguise his horror and disgust at the thought of ruptured bowels:

 

"Somers found Kangaroo in bed, very yellow, and thin [...] with haunted, frightened eyes. The room had many flowers, and was perfumed with eau de cologne, but through the perfume came an unpleasant, discernible stench. [...]

      Somers could not detach his mind from the slight, yet pervading sickening smell.

      "'My sewers leak,' said Kangaroo bitterly, as if divining the other's thought." [3]

 

Bruce Steele's explanatory note on this is spot-on:

 

"Jack's angry reaction to his leader's having been shot in the stomach and not killed outright probably reflects the First World War soldier's fear of abdominal wounds. In a pre-biotic age, peritonitis was a common and deadly complication of such wounds. While a ruptured bowel could be stitched, contamination of the abdominal cavity was frequently fatal; it would account for  the 'unpleasant, discernible stench' and Kangaroo's diagnosis 'My sewers leak'. If the sniper had deliberately aimed at his stomach rather than his head - which would probably have killed him instantly - it would have been in the knowledge that the victim would almost certainly die a slow and painful death." [4]

 

Of course, whilst being shot in the stomach can lead to a slow and painful death for a man, being disemboweled by the horns of an angry bull can be an equally horrific (and, arguably, even more obscene) way for an elderly horse to die.

 

And so to Mexico City ...   

 

 

III.

 

There are several disturbing scenes in Lawrence's novel The Plumed Serpent (1926), including the opening one set at the plaza de toros [5] - and I'm not referring to the fact that someone in the crowd thought it funny to throw an orange at the bald spot on Owen's sunburnt head.

 

Rather, I'm referring to the following incident involving a blindfolded horse ...

 

"The picador pulled his feeble horse round slowly, to face the bull, and slowly he leaned forward and shoved his lance-point into the bull's shoulder. The bull, as if the horse were a great wasp that had stung him deep, suddenly lowered his head in a jerk of surprise and lifted his horns straight up into the horse's abdomen. And without more ado, over went horse and rider, like a tottering monument upset.

      The rider scrambled from under the horse and went running away with his lance. The old horse, in complete dazed amusement, struggled to rise, as if overcome with dumb incomprehension. And the bull, with a red place on his shoulder welling a trickle of dark blood, stood looking round in equally hopeless amazement.

      But the wound was hurting. He saw the queer sight of the horse half reared from the ground, trying to get to its feet. And he smelled blood and bowels.

      So, rather vaguely, as if not quite knowing what he ought to do, the bull once more lowered his head and pushed his sharp, florishing horns in the horse's belly, working them up and down inside there with a vague sort of satisfaction." [6] 

      

As the novel's protagonist Kate Leslie rightly recognises, this shocking spectacle reveals nothing so much as human cowardice and indecency. She turns her face away in disgust. And when she looks again, "it was to see the horse feebly and dazedly walking out of the ring, with a great ball of its own entrails hanging out of its abdomen and swinging reddish against its own legs as it automatically moved". [7] 

 

But the sordid show isn't over: another horse is brought into the bullring so that it may be publicly disemboweled for the amusement of the crowd:

 

"Kate knew what was coming. Before she could look away, the bull had charged on the limping horse from behind [...] the horse was up-ended absurdly, one of the bull's horns between his hind legs and deep in his inside. Down went the horse, collapsing in front, but his rear was still heaved up, with the bull's horn working vigorously up and down inside him, while he lay on his neck all twisted. And a huge heap of bowels coming out. And a nauseous stench." [8] 

 

 

IV. 

 

I've never been (and wouldn't go) to a bullfight, and so would find it difficult (and disturbing) to visually imagine this scene were it not for the fact that Picasso - a lifelong bullfighting enthusiast - produced the image at the top of this post, after attending a bullfight in Barcelona during his stay in the city in 1917.

 

As the anonymous author of a piece describing this work on the Picasso Museum's website rightly notes:    

 

"In contrast to what he had mostly done on previous occasions, here the artist leaves aside the colourful and festive representation of the spectacle of bullfighting to focus his attention [...] on the solitary agony of the disemboweled horse, which collapses until it falls on its knees in a fetal position or prayer posture that has been compared to that of a fossilised crustacean or bird. Picasso manages to transcribe the animal's stabbing pain by means of its outstretched neck and raised head, looking upwards with a fixed gaze, as if asking for mercy to put an end to its cruel agony, once and for all." [9]

 

The author concludes: 

 

"The drama and cruelty of the scene reaches its zenith with the horn that sprouts from the ground and stands threateningly, waiting for the horse to finish collapsing to then finish it off." [10] 

 

I suppose, to end on a slightly more positive note, it might be mentioned that bullfighting was banned in Catalonia several years ago and the the last bullfight in the region took place in September 2011. [11]

 

However, there are still eight countries in the world where this ancient festival of gore still takes place - Spain, France, Portugal, Mexico, Columbia, Venezuela, Peru, and Ecuador - and every year around 180,000 bulls (and 200 horses) are slaughtered in the ring.

 

 

V. 

 

In sum, I might not get what D. H. Lawrence is driving at when he writes of bursten bowels, but I do know: 

 

(i) I wouldn't want to be shot in the stomach ...

 

(ii) I don't like cruelty to animals ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See Frank O'Hara, 'I don't know as I get what D. H. Lawrence is driving at', Selected Poems, ed. Mark Ford, (Alfred A. Knopf, 2009), p. 167. The poem can be read online at allpoetry.com: click here. 

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, Kangaroo, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge Unversity Press, 1994), p. 317.

 

[3] Ibid., pp. 322-323.    

[4] Bruce Steele's explanatory note to 317:12 of D. H. Lawrence's Kangaroo ... p. 406.

[5] In Lawrence's day, the main bullring in Mexico City was the Toreo de la Condesa. This ancient bullring was replaced in 1946 by the monumental Plaza de toros México, an arena that seats over 41,000 people.

[6] D. H. Lawrence, The Plumed Serpent, ed. L. D. Clark, pp. 15-16.

[7] Ibid., p. 16. 

[8] Ibid. 

[9-10] See the text that accompanies Picasso's Gored Horse (1917) on the Museu Picasso de Barcelona website: click here. 

[11] The ban was officially annulled for being unconstitutional by Spain's highest court in October 2016. However, despite the overturning of the ban, no further bullfight has taken place in Catalonia. 

 

 

FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)

 

FOMO - the fear of missing out - is a form of social anxiety stemming from the belief that other people might be having fun whilst you are stuck at home checking your social media feeds, or writing your blog [1].

 

Of course, no one likes to feel that opportunities to interact with others, enjoy new experiences, or witness memorable events are passing them by; no one wants to be left out of the loop. And so, in a sense, FOMO is justified. However, as Nietzsche reminds us, life is all about making choices and to choose is to forgo.

 

In other words, whatever you decide to do (or not to do), you are instantly renouncing all other possibilities and everything else that would follow as a result. Thus, human life will always produce feelings of regret because it will always involve the existential dilemma of choice. 

 

We are, if you like, Fomo sapiens and even those showoffs who compile lengthy bucket lists, don't get to go everywhere, do everything, meet everyone, etc. Having said that, however, we can refuse regret, like Edith Piaf, and we don't have to let FOMO become a pathological form of anxiety. If we can curb our enthusiasm, so too can we curb our fear of missing out.

 

And who knows, there may even be an endless number of parallel universes, with countless versions of you, doing all the things you think you are missing out on doing here in this life, in this world [2] ...         

 

 

Notes

 

[1] If you read the Wikipedia entry on this topic, you'd think that the fear of missing out is a relatively new phenomenon; one first identified by a marketing strategist in 1996. But that, of course, is nonsense. Social media may have intensified the experience - and the acronym FOMO may be of recent invention - but the fear of missing out has long predated the internet. 

      Indeed, readers of D. H. Lawrence will be familiar with the character of Owen Rhys; an American playboy and poet, keen to experience all that Life might have to offer, no matter how sordid or ghastly. Owen is constantly: "Swept with an American despair of having lived in vain, or of not having really lived. Having missed something. Which fearful misgiving would make him rush like mechanical steel fillings to a magnet, towards any crowd in the street. And then, all his poetry and philosophy gone with the cigarette-end he threw away, he would stand craning his neck in one more frantic effort to see - just to see. Whatever it was, he must see it. Or he might miss something."

      - See D. H. Lawrence, The Plumed Serpent [1926], ed. L. D. Clark, (Cambridge Unversity Press, 1987), p. 28. And see also my recent post written in defence of Owen Rhys: click here.

 

[2] This is just one of the consoling theories - I almost wrote fantasies - of quantum physics. In brief - and as far as I understand it - according to the Many-Worlds Interpretation, every event that has multiple possible outcomes splits the world into alternate realities (none of which interact or influence one another in any way). Obviously, it's a highly contentious idea - one which many theorists dismiss as not merely flawed (because based on an overly-simplistic account of quantum mechanics), but absurd. Stephen Hawking, however, was a fan, describing the MWI as self-evidently true. 

      Those who wish to know more about this can click here to read an entry on the subject in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.    

In Defence of Owen Rhys and the American Way of Life (The D. H. Lawrence Birthday Post 2021)

 

Portrait of Witter Bynner (1919) upon whom D. H. Lawrence 

based the character of Owen Rhys in The Plumed Serpent (1926)

 

 

I. 

 

Whilst there may be some aspects of the American way of life I feel uncomfortable with, I would, nevertheless, prefer to live in the United States than in the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan; or, indeed, in any country where political power is exercised by religious leaders who act in the name of a deity with whom supreme authority is said to rest.  

 

And that's because, when all is said and done, theocracy is just about the worst of all forms of government. And that remains the case even when the theocracy is neopagan in character, full of dark gods waiting in the outer darkness, as imagined by D. H. Lawrence in The Plumed Serpent (1926).

 

Hopefully, I have made my thoughts on this novel and some of its central characters clear in a number of earlier posts: click here, for example, or here. So, in order not to simply repeat old material, I'd like in this post to offer a few thoughts on one of the minor characters; Kate Leslie's American cousin, Owen Rhys ... [1]

 

 

II. 

 

Rhys is a 40-something homosexual [2] with a Chinese jade collection and a very definite bald spot; a poet, keen to experience all that life might have to offer, no matter how sordid or how upsetting he may find it. He is, writes Lawrence, possessed of an almost maniacal will-to-happiness and a determination to treat everything as a game. 

 

It's fairly obvious that the narrator of the novel does not approve of him. And whilst Kate is really fond of her cousin, how could she respect him, when he was so empty and "waiting for circumstance to fill him up" [3]? 

      

Ultimately, Owen tried her patience and she was relieved when he had to return to the United States [4] - or the great death-continent, as Kate likes to imagine it [5].

 

Be that as it may, Rhys and his young lover, Bud Villiers, are surely preferable to Ramón and Cipriano, the spiritual and military leaders of the revolutionary fascist movement that aims to reintroduce Aztec gods back into history via an awakening of racial mysteries and the establishment of a theocracy on national socialist lines [6].      

 

And whilst Rhys may display many of the characteristics that Lawrence associates with sensational white America - such as the insidious modern disease of tolerance and the fear of missing out - we might ask ourselves if these traits are really so bad when compared to the atrocities committed by armed militants using terror to impose their religious beliefs? 

 

Better the cult of the dollar, than the cult of Quetzalcoatl; better the World Trade Center, than any sacred site or holy place; and better Owen's desire to play with his own emptiness, than Ramón's portentous prognosticating ... [7]   

 

Notes

 

[1] The character of Owen Rhys was based on the poet and translator Witter Bynner (1881-1968), who associated with many of the leading literary figures of his day, including Lawrence, to whom he and his lover Spud Johnson were introduced by Mabel Dodge Luhan.   

      Bynner had moved permanently to Santa Fe in the summer of 1922. The following year, he and Johnson joined the Lawrences on a trip to Mexico. Whilst Lawrence fictionalised elements of this in The Plumed Serpent, Bynner published a memoir based on recollections of his time with Lawrence entitled Journey with Genius (1951). 

      For full details of the Lawrence-Bynner relationship, see the third volume of the Cambridge biography, D. H. Lawrence: Dying Game, 1922-1930, by David Ellis, (Cambridge University Press, 1998). See also the essay by D. A. N. Jones, 'Whacks', in the London Review of Books, Vol. 4, No. 4, (4 March, 1982): click here to read online. 

 

[2] Although in The Plumed Serpent the question of Rhys's sexual orientation is left vague, in the first version of the novel - Quetzalcoatl - Lawrence tells us that he was a "confirmed bachelor [...] by conviction and practice", a common euphemism for a male homosexual. It is also revealed that Rhys has a pederastic penchant for young Mexican boys: 

      "He lay for hours on the sands cooking like a beefsteak and surrounded by a swarm of little boys [...] spanking their little posteriors and being spanked back by them, letting them climb over him and dive from his shoulders when he was in the water, letting one of them sit on his naked chest as he lay on the sand."

      Owen also took nude photographs of those boys who would let him, "in all imaginable poses".

      See D. H. Lawrence, Quetzalcoatl, ed. N. H. Reeve, (Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 35 and 128. 

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, The Plumed Serpent, ed. L. D. Clark, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 28.

      In a passage cut from the published novel, Lawrence expands upon the above at length and in detail, leaving the reader in no doubt as to how Kate sees her cousin Owen (and the USA):

       "Owen, what was he doing? With his poetry, and his very secure income, and his socialism, what did he amount to? A parlour socialist, of which there are so many in America. Why? What did he want? 

      She felt it very vividly. He wanted to destroy the soul out of life, by preserving the shells of living human beings. He hated the old divinity of man, the old divine authority which is in the soul of every living man, and which the soul of every living man gratefully recognises. Every living woman too. [...] Her woman's soul was weary, aching, vacant. She wanted again to be given to the living god. 

      And Owen, she knew, hated her for this desire. He hated her because she felt a natural ridicule of his unheroic attitude. A parlour socialist! A playboy of the western world. Play-boying, and nothing else. What was there here for a woman? 

      What was more, his soft, heavy, play-boying hatred of the divine inspiration which carries with it a divine authority. He hated religion in any form, even the simple instinct of religion. He liked aestheticism because it was a toy to play with.

      The hollow, grinding gap of negation that was the middle of him! Yet in this way he was a good fellow, superficially kind and good-natured. But at the middle of him, the grinding void of negation, grinding against any sort of positivity.

      Grinding to destroy the old god-power in man, the old god-authority. Grinding, grinding to reduce the living, creative quick to dust. Then grinding on and on, with mechanical benevolent insistence, to keep all the shells of human beings alive. The great American benevolence! Preserve life, preserve all life, but only when the soul has been killed out of it [...] 

      The great, hideous American activity! Democracy!"

      Kate even resents Owen for sunbathing, collecting things on his travels to take back home, and for snapping endless pictures with his Kodak camera!

      See The Plumed Serpent, textual apparatus [78:13], pp. 498-99 and cf. with what Lawrence writes in chapter III of Quetzalcoatl, p. 46.

 

[4] The character of Owen Rhys departs from the pages of The Plumed Serpent at the opening of chapter V. He has a rather more significant role to play in the first version of the novel, although he also drops out of Quetzalcoatl almost completely at the half-way point.  

 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, The Plumed Serpent, pp. 77-78.

 

[6] The description of Ramón's plumed serpent movement as form of national socialism is provided by a German hotel manager speaking to Kate in chapter VI of The Plumed Serpent, see pp. 101-03. 

      It's interesting to note that although the above character appears in the earlier version of the novel, he doesn't use that phrase, describing the movement instead as a type of bolshevism masquerading as a religion. I suspect that's probably because Lawrence only heard of Hitler and the Nazis following the Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923, i.e., several months after completing Quetzalcoatl, but a year before he began rewriting the book.

      It's interesting also that Kate refused to accept the hotel manager's judgement: "She had seen Ramón Carrasco, and Cipriano. And they were men. They wanted something beyond. She would believe in them. Anything, anything rather than this sterility of nothingness which was the world, and into which her life was drifting." [103] 

      And that, of course, is precisely the appeal and false promise of political fascism and/or religious fundamentalism. People would rather believe in anything and anyone - no matter how specious -  than face up to the challenge of nihilism: "She felt she could cry aloud, for the unknown gods to put the magic back into her life, and to save her from the dry-rot of the world's sterility." [103]           

 

[7] See D. H. Lawrence, Quetzalcoatl ... The phrase 'portentous prognosticating' is on p. 52. As for Owen Rhys having a vacuum at the middle of him, see the deleted MS passage from chapter III in Appendix I. Lawrence makes it clear that Rhys treasured his own emptiness and found in it his greatest strength, freedom, and joy.