Look! Up in the Sky! It's a Bird! It's an Angel! It's Barbette!

Vander Clyde (c.1899-1973) aka Barbette

Photo by Man Ray (1925) / Poster by Charles Gesmar (1926)

Where there is loveliness of appearance, then there is no fraudulence ...

  

I.

 

Once upon a time, a young boy in Texas, named Vander, made a fateful visit to the circus and instantly decided that he wanted the life of a performer. Thinking he might make a good high-wire walker, Vander spent many hours practicing at home on his mother's steel clothes line. 

 

After graduating high school, aged 14, Vander began his circus career as one-half of a famous aerialist team called The Alfaretta Sisters. The fact that he was male wasn't deemed a problem, as he was happy to dress as a girl, agreeing with his new female partner that audiences preferred to watch women in colourful and elaborate costumes perform dangerous acrobatic stunts, rather than men in plain leotards [1].    

 

After he had devised a solo act, however, Vander decided to go it alone and exchange the world of circus for vaudeville, working under the mononym Barbette, which he thought had a mysterious French ring and certain neutrality to it. 

 

 

II. 

 

Barbette made her debut at the Harlem Opera House in 1919. After performing in full drag and maintaining the illusion of femininity until the end of the act, Vander would then pull off his wig and strike exaggerated masculine poses (as if only playing the part of a man) to the (shocked) amusement of the crowd [2]. 

 

After several years on the vaudeville circuit, Barbette made her European debut in 1923. Initially performing in London, it was Paris where, like many American artists belonging to the so-called lost generation [3], Barbette was truly to find herself, appearing at venues including the Casino de Paris, the Moulin Rouge, and the Folies Bergère. She was soon the talk of the town.   

Unfortunately, on a return visit to London, Vander was caught in flagrante delicto with another man. This resulted in the Palladium cancelling his contract and in Barbette being unable to work in England ever again. However, her adoring fans and famous admirers across the Channel simply shrugged in a typically Gallic manner when hearing of the incident.   

 

 

III. 

 

One of these admirers was the avant garde artist Jean Cocteau, who, by his own admission, was completely captivated by Barbette, whom he described as a queer combination of actor, angel, and bird: No mere acrobat, but one of the most beautiful theatrical performers alive today, whose artistry is comparable with that of Nijinsky. 

 

In fact, so impressed was Cocteau with Barbette's astonishing ability to slide back and forth between man and woman - thereby revealing the fluid and performative aspect of gender - that he wrote a seminal essay on her in 1926, in which he beseeched his fellow artists to learn from Barbette if they wished to understand the true nature of artifice [4].

 

To illustrate the essay, Cocteau commissioned a series of photographs by Man Ray - another American in Paris - which captured not only aspects of Barbette's performance, but also the pre-show process of gender transformation. Cocteau also cast Barbette in his experimental first film Le sang d'un poète (1930), where she appears dressed in Chanel. [5]

 

 

IV.

 

Sadly, all glittering careers must come to an end and a combination of age, injury, and illness obliged Barbette to bring down the curtain on her life as a performer at the close of the 1930s. 

 

Happily, however, a new life opened up as an artistic director at various circuses and Vander also worked as a consultant on a number of Hollywood films, including Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot (1959), where he coached Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon on the art of drag [6]. 

 

In his final months, Vander ended up living back in Texas, with his sister. Having been in often severe pain for many years, he committed suicide (by overdose) in 1973. In an interview with Francis Steegmuller four years prior to his death, Vander explained his thinking behind the character of Barbette:

 

"I’d always read a lot of Shakespeare […] and thinking that those marvelous heroines of his were played by men and boys made me feel that I could turn my specialty into something unique. I wanted an act that would be a thing of beauty - of course it would have to be a strange beauty." [7]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Although Barbette entered the circus ring or, later the theatre stage, dressed like a showgirl, she would obviously remove her headdress, cape and gown, before taking to the high wire and trapeze. 

 

[2] As Chase Dimock notes:

      

"Barbette does not simply reveal his male identity and return to his true self, instead, he pantomimes and performs the masculinity supposedly revealed by removing his wig. His male sexed body and its expected postures and actions are revealed to be as much a product of artifice and performance as the female persona he adopts on stage."

 

The thing that is most interesting is that even after the big reveal and Barbette rebecomes Vander, s/he still retains their allure as an object of desire. Dimock interprets this in Kantian terms:

 

"While Barbette initially lures the desire of those drawn in by his pleasing make up and costuming, he is still able to retain the beauty of femininity after removing these items. Therefore, the attraction of Barbette is deeper than the pleasing veneer of femininity that he wears; it comes from an attraction to the pure form of beauty that he realizes through his acrobatic stunts and graceful movements. If Barbette could sustain his feminine form after all of the socially constructed signifiers of femininity had been stripped from his body, then it stands that Barbette had discovered some universally attractive structure of beauty that kindles desire irrespective of gender constructs." 

 

See Dimock's excellent essay; 'The Surreal Sex of Beauty: Jean Cocteau and Man Ray’s "Le Numéro Barbette"' (2 June 2011), in the As It Ought to Be archive: click here.   

 

[3] Gertrude Stein is usually credited with coining the term Lost Generation to refer to a group of American expatriate writers and artists drifting round the capitals of Europe during the 1920s. It was popularised by Ernest Hemingway, who used it in the epigraph for his 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises. 

 

[4] Jean Cocteau's 1926 essay on the nature and artifice of the theatre was originally published in Nouvelle Revue Française. It can be found alongside Man Ray's photographs and a New Yorker profile of Barbette written by Francis Steegmuller (see note 6 below), in the book Le Numéro Barbette, (Jacques Damase, 1989).

 

[5] Barbette also inspired the characterization of "Death" in Cocteau's later film Orphée (1950). Clearly, Cocteau was in love with Barbette, though whether they consummated their brief affair I don't know.   

    

[6] For a recent post on Some Like It Hot - in which I compare the drag performance of Curtis and Lemmon with that of Kenneth Williams and Charles Hawtrey in Carry on Constable (1960), click here.

 

[7] Vander Barbette, quoted by Francis Steegmuller in 'An Angel, A Flower, A Bird', The New Yorker (20 Sept 1969): click here to read online.

 

 

That City of Dreadful Night: D. H. Lawrence's Letters from Paris

Paris est toujours une bonne idée

 

 

I. 

 

I'm currently reading a big fat book of essays, short stories, and poems by over seventy authors, edited by Andrew Gallix [1], exploring the fascination that writers from the English-speaking world have for the French capital - although, as becomes clear, they are mostly enchanted by a myth of their own invention, rather than by Paris as a place that can be located on a map.       

 

Of course, not all English writers have been enamoured with the City of Lights. D. H. Lawrence, for example, famously wrote in 1919: "Paris is a nasty city, and the French are not sympathetic to me." [2] 

 

Five years later, however, Lawrence had changed his tune: "Paris isn't so bad - to me much nicer than London - so agreeably soulless" [3]. 

 

Indeed, in almost every letter and postcard sent to friends at the beginning of 1924 from Le Grand Hotel de Versailles (on the Boulevard Montparnasse), Lawrence was saying much the same thing: "Paris looking rather lovely in sunshine and frost - rather quiet, but really a beautiful city" [4]. He even cheerfully informed his mother-in-law that the Parisians were very friendly [5]. 

But of course, Lawrence being Lawrence, there were sudden (and frequent) mood changes during his short stay in Paris, as this letter written to Catherine Carswell illustrates:

 

"Today it is dark and raining, and very like London. There really isn't much point in coming here. It's the same thing with a small difference. And not really worth taking the journey. Don't you come just now: it would only disappoint you. Myself, I'm just going to sleep a good bit, and let the days go by [...] Paris has great beauty - but all like a museum. And when one looks out of the Louvre windows, one wonders whether the museum is more inside or outside - whether all Paris, with its rue de la Paix and its Champs Elysée isn't also all just a sort of museum." [6]   

Several days later, and Lawrence is still lying low in Paris (whilst Frieda buys some new clothes), but feeling a little more positive about the city and its residents:

 

"Paris is rather nice - the French aren't at all villain, as far as I see them. I must say I like them. They are simpatico. I feel much better since I am here and away from London." [7]

 

And so, despite informing one correspondent that the city was far from gay, Lawrence mostly enjoyed his short stay: "Paris has been quite entertaining for the two weeks: good food and wine, and everything very cheap." [8]  

 

II.

 

In 1929, Lawrence returned to Paris where he oversaw publication of a new (inexpensive) edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover to try and stop the pirated editions then in circulation. If, five years earlier, he had been mostly positive in his response to the city, now he was as hostile to it as he was to most (if not all) large cities:

 

"I don't a bit like Paris. It is nowadays incredibly crowded, incredibly noisy, the air is dirty and simply stinks of petrol, and all the life has gone out of the people. They seem so tired." [9]   

 

Sadly, of course, it was Lawrence himself that the life had almost entirely gone out of; he was to die eleven months after writing this, aged 44, in Vence (428 miles south of Paris, as the crow flies).           

 

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Andrew Gallix (ed.), We'll Never Have Paris, (Repeater Books, 2019). If I ever manage to work my way through the book's 560+ pages, then I'll doubtless post some kind of review of the work here on Torpedo the Ark.  

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Lady Cynthia Asquith, 18 November 1919, in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. III, ed. James T. Boulton and Andrew Robertson, (Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 417. It should be noted that Lawrence hadn't at the time of writing this letter actually been to Paris and wasn't to make his first trip there until January 1924.

[3] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Mark Gertler, [2 February 1924], in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. IV, ed. Warren Roberts, James T. Boulton and Elzabeth Mansfield, (Cambridge University Press 1987), p. 567. 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Catherine Carswell, [24 January 1924], in Letters IV, p. 561. 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Baroness Anna von Richthofen, 24 January 1924, in Letters IV, p. 561. In the original German, Lawrence wrote: "Paris ist doch netter wie London, nicht so dunkel-grau. Die Leute sind ganz freundlich."

[6] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Catherine Carswell, [25 January 1924], in Letters IV, p. 563. 

      This letter has parallels with a short essay written at the same time in which Lawrence asserts that whilst Paris is still monumental and handsome, it has lost its true splendour, and become "like an old, weary peacock that sports a bunch of dirty twigs at its rump, where it used to have a tail". He blames this sorry state of affairs on: (i) modern democracy; (ii) too much bare flesh on display in French works of art;  (iii) an overly rich diet; and (iv) the dead weight of history and its architecture.

      See: 'Paris Letter', in Mornings in Mexico and Other Essays, ed. Virginia Crosswhite Hyde, (Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 141-146. The line quoted is on p. 143.

      As for the idea of Paris disappointing: 

      "Disappointment, according to Stuart Walton, is actually a 'constitutive factor' in English speakers' experience of France, and its capital in particular: 'It is at least as important to the British, for example, that Paris should fall short of what they expect of it as it is to the Parisians that les Anglais have never really understood it' (p. 332)." 

      See Andrew Gallix's Introduction to We'll Never Have Paris, p. 29. And see also the TTA post 'On Disappointment' (24 May 2020) in which I discuss (amongst other things) le Syndrome de Paris: click here.  

        

[7] D. H. Lawrence, letter to S. S. Koteliansky, [31 January 1924], in Letters IV, p. 565. 

[8] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Hon. Dorothy Brett, [4 February 1924], in Letters, IV, p. 568. The fact that Paris was, at one time, cheap to live in, was absolutely crucial:

      "Hemingway described Paris in the 1920s as a place 'where there was a way of living well and working, no matter how poor you were', adding that this was 'like having a great treasure given to you'. That treasured lifestyle was swept away by the onset of the Depression in the 1930s. As Will Ashon remarks, artists thrive where there is 'affordable, preferably semi-derelict, real estate. Which is to say, you can't be an artist in Paris, anymore, or in London either' (p. 301)." 

      See Andrew Gallix, Introduction to We'll Never Have Paris, p. 24.   

 

[9] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell, 3 April 1929, in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VII, ed. Keith Sagar and James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 234. 

Those interested in knowing more about Lawrence's 1929 visit to Paris - and how his stay at 66, Boulevard de Montparnasse has now been officially commememorated with a plaque - might like to read Catherine Brown's blog post of 29 May 2019, available on her website: click here.     

 

And those interested in Lawrence's wider relationship with French culture, might like to read the following essay by Ginette Katz-Roy: 'D. H. Lawrence and "That Beastly France"', in The D. H. Lawrence Review, Vol. 23, No. 2/3, (1991), pp. 143-156. This essay is available to download or read online via JSTOR: click here.   

 

 

Musical bonus: the debut single from Adam and the Ants, Young Parisians (Decca, 1978): click here. 

 

 

Aujourd’hui, Juliette Gréco est morte

Juliette Gréco by Erwin Blumenfeld (1951)

 

 

Juliette Gréco - the face (and voice) of chic postwar Paris and muse to numerous Left-Bank poets and philosophers, including Jacques Prévert and Jean-Paul Sartre - died today, aged 93, and, despite the fact she refused to collaborate on Malcolm's Paris project (I only sing in French), that's still sad news for all of us who loved everything about her; from her style to the fact she was an Aquarian.

 

 

Play: La Javanaise - a song originally written and composed by Serge Gainsbourg for Juliette Gréco in 1962, after they had spent the evening together listening to records and drinking champagne. It was released as a single in March 1963 (with Gainsbourg's own interpretation of the song as the B-side). Click here to listen, or here to watch her performing the song on French TV in 1972.      

On Disappointment

Philosophy begins with an experience of disappointment 

- Simon Critchley

I. La déception

It's arguable, I think, that the human condition is ultimately marked by a sense of disappointment; for our expectations and hopes are never quite fulfilled and everything, everyone, and everywhere lets you down in the end (I was going to say even the things, people, and places one loves most, but, of course, it's especially the things, people, and places one loves most). 

Some psychologists, concerned with decision analysis and who study disappointment in terms of causation, naively believe that we might not only learn how to deal with the stress and anxiety that it induces, but avoid disappointment altogether. But I'm afraid that's not possible: life is disappointing (and death isn't all that it's cracked up to be either).

Best, then, to curb your enthusiasm and acknowledge that the world is imperfect and indifferent (if not actually malevolent); meaning that all great expectations are false (nothing good awaits you) and all high hopes are in vain (God is dead and you, my friend, are not special).   


II. Syndrome de Paris

Is there any city on earth that disappoints more than Paris?

The French capital is, in fact, so triggering of disappointment that a Japanese psychiatrist, Dr Hiroaki Ota, working at the Sainte-Anne Hospital Centre, coined the term pari shōkōgun [パリ症候群] in the 1980s and even published a book on the phenomenon. 

Syndrome de Paris is a condition exhibited by some individuals - particularly Japanese tourists - who, when visiting the city, discover to their dismay that it's not as sexy, nor as stylish, nor as romantic as they anticipated. The condition is often characterised as an extreme form of culture shock and produces symptoms including acute alienation, anxiety and paranoia (as well as nausea, vertigo, and rapid heartbeat).

In 2004, Libération published an article on the syndrome in which Mario Renoux, president of the Franco-Japanese Medical Association, blames popular culture and the media for creating this syndrome by endlessly perpetuating a myth of Paris rooted in la Belle Époque, rather than present the contemporary reality of crime, overcrowding, outrageous prices, air pollution, poor service, etc. This leads to huge disappointment and, for some, physical and mental disorientation.  

III. Une aventure parisienne

Of course, those with some knowledge of 19th-century French literature will not need shrinks and medical professionals to inform them about this ...

In his short story Une aventure parisienne (1881), Maupassant tells the tale of a "little provincial woman who had led [...] a boringly blameless life [...] looking after her family" [41], but whose heart was ravaged by an all-consuming desire to experience life in Gay Paree. Above all, she was fascinated by the promise of illicit pleasures:

"From where she lived, she looked on Paris as representing the height of all magnificent luxury as well as licentiousness. Throughout the long, dream-filled night, lulled by the regular snoring of her husband [...] she conjured up the images of all the famous men who made the headlines and shone like brilliant comets in the darkness [...] She pictured the madly exciting lives they must lead, moving from one den of vice to the next, indulging in never-ending and extraordinarily voluptuous orgies, and practising such complex and sophisticated sex as to defy the imagination. It seemed to her that hidden behind the façades of the houses lining the canyon-like boulevards of the city, some amazing erotic secret must lie." [42]  

After long and careful preparation, the woman decides she simply has to go to Paris ... But she is, of course, quickly disappointed:

"Up and down the boulevards she walked, seeing nothing particularly wicked or sinful. She cast her eye inside all the well-known cafés [...] But she found nothing that might lead her to the great orgies she imagined actresses and artists enjoyed all the time." [42-3]

Then, however, her luck changes and she bumps by chance into a famous author in a shop selling colourful Japanese ornaments, trinkets and knick-knacks (or bibelots as the French call these things). Seizing her opportunity, she latches onto Monsieur Jean Varin and cleverly persuades him to take her first for a walk in the park and then for a glass of absinthe. Naturally, she was wild with joy.

Then he takes her to dinner and, afterwards, to the theatre. Finally, they retire to his home and, without speaking, climb the stairs to his bedroom, where she quickly disrobes. Alas, things do not go well. She was as sexually naive and inexperienced "as only the lawful wife of a country solicitor can be", whilst he - no longer young, no longer handsome, no longer elegant - was "as demanding as a pasha with three tails" [46], which, even if I don't quite know what that means, I'm assuming to be very demanding indeed.  

Afterwards, by the light of a Chinese lantern:

"She looked in dismay at the tubby little man beside her, lying on his back with the sheet draped over his hot-air balloon of a belly.

      While he snored like a pipe-organ, with comic interludes of lengthy, strangulated snorts, the few hairs he possessed, exhausted by the onerous responsibility of masking the ravages of time on his balding skull during the day, now stood perkily on end. A dribble of saliva flowed from the corner of his half-open mouth." [47]

She got up and dressed as soon as dawn finally broke. As she does so, M. Varin also wakes. It took a few seconds for him to recover his senses, but when he does so, he asks her what her game is. To this she replies: "'I always wanted to know what it was like to be ... wicked ... and actually ... it turns out to be not all that much fun ...'" [47]

With this confession of disappointment, she ran from the room and out into the streets of Paris once more, just as an army of sweepers advanced towards her:

"They swept the pavements and the cobblestones, driving all the litter and filth into the stream of the gutter. [...] And as she ran through street after street, still they came to meet her, moving like puppets on a string with the same mechanical, mowing movement. She felt as though something inside her, too, had now been swept away. Through the mud, down to the gutter and finally into the sewer had gone all the refuse of her over-excited imagination.
      Returning home, the image of Paris swept inexorably clean by the cold light of day filled her exhausted mind, and as she reached her room, sobs broke from her now quite frozen heart." [47-8]

See: Guy de Maupassant, 'A Parisian Affair', in A Parisian Affair and Other Stories, trans. by Siân Miles, (Penguin Books, 2004). All page references given in the text refer to this edition.

Notes on Malcolm McLaren's Paris

I.

We are, of course, far removed in time from the Paris that enchanted so many writers and artists in that period between 1871 and 1914 known as the Belle Époque; the Paris that continued to haunt the cultural imagination as a culmination of luxury and corruption [1] - as well as radical thinking - for many years afterwards.  

Indeed, for Malcolm McLaren, Paris always remained the capital of the 21st century. Or, at any rate, the place in which he felt most at home and often sought refuge: Paris loves anyone the English hate.


II.

In 1994, McLaren released a unique musical tribute to the city. Part easy-listening soundscape, part love letter, the album - entitled, somewhat unimaginatively, Paris - was loosely inspired by the work of Erik Satie, Saint-Saëns, and Serge Gainsbourg. As well as expressing his great passion for the city itself, it revealed his fondness for the grandes dames of French film and music.

McLaren's biographer, Paul Gorman, describes Paris as the most mature work of his career: "Paris presents bewitching melodies, rhythms and lyrics with warmth, reflection and humour ..." [2] Interestingly, Gorman also reminds us of Malcolm's own concept of the album:

"'It was a way of acknowledging a debt that the English try hard not to make. I don't honestly believe that any of the bands that made up the British invasion of rock 'n' roll would ever have happened without the Parisian tinge, that extreme angst, that very dark, vengeful, bored attitude. I don't even believe that Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison would have existed without having some kinship spirit to what was one of the most influential, nihilistic and valid forms of rock 'n' roll philosophy which the French invented.'" [3]

To seek the origins of rock 'n' roll in existentialism, rather than rhythm and blues, is, I think, a daring and original move and almost as amusing as his claim that it was Oscar Wilde who first discovered rock 'n' roll in America in 1882. [4]


III.

Towards the very end of his life, McLaren gave us another work - this time a film installation - in which his Francophilia is again made evident; one that took its title from a famous text by Walter Bejamin which he mistakenly misread as Paris, Capital of the XXIst Century. Although he later realised his error - Benjamin had, of course, written nineteenth not twenty-first - McLaren wisely decided to stick with his more contemporary title.     

Whereas Benjamin sought in all seriousness to uncover (and critique) a dreamlike history of modernity understood in terms of urban architecture and commodity fetishism in 19th century Paris, McLaren was more interested in taking a delirious and playful stroll through the city via a collection of old 35mm films consisting mostly of cinematic commercials.

I'm not quite sure what the German Marxist philosopher would have made of the English punk anarchist and his work; for if McLaren sometimes expresses a desire to rebel against consumerism and what he terms karaoke culture, at other times he seems to delight in bad taste and banality and secretly acknowledge - contrary to his own statements on the subject - that art ultimately draws its inspiration not from authenticity, but insincerity. [5]      
        

Notes

[1] I think the French original reads une apothéose de luxe magnifique et corrompu and is a line found in Maupassant's short story Une aventure pariesienne (1881).

[2] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, (Constable, 2020), p. 664.

[3] Malcolm McLaren, speaking on Australian TV, quoted by Paul Gorman, ibid., pp. 669-70. 

[4] See Paul Gorman, ibid., pp. 572-74.

[5] Paul Gorman is right to point out that while McLaren often appears to oppose karaoke with authentic cultural expression, he recognised that they needn't always be mutually exclusive:

"'Karaoke and authenticity can sit well together, but it takes artisry to make that happen. When it does, the results can be explosive. Like when punk rock reclaimed rock 'n' roll, blowing the doors of the recording industry in the process. Or when hip hop transformed turntables and records into the instruments of a revolution.'" - Malcolm McLaren, '8-Bit Punk', Wired, (November 2003), quoted by Paul Gorman, ibid., p. 693.

Musical bonus: Malcolm McLaren and Catherine Deneuve, 'Paris, Paris', from the album Paris (1994): click here. Video directed by David Bailey. Anyone who can listen to this song and watch this film without tears in their eyes has a heart of stone. 

Believe in the Ruins: Reflections of a Gargoyle on the Great Fire of Notre-Dame de Paris

croire aux ruines ...

I.

It's a shame that the fire at Notre-Dame only destroyed the roof and spire, leaving the towers and most of the building still standing. It would have been better for the people of France - better for all of us - if the whole thing had been razed to the ground.

I say this not as some kind of cultural barbarian or iconoclast, nor simply to be provocative; but, rather, as someone in agreement with D. H. Lawrence, who writes in one of his Etruscan sketches:

"We have reached the stage where we are weary of huge stone erections, and we begin to realise that it is  better to keep life fluid and changing, than try to hold it fast down in heavy monuments. Burdens on the face of the earth, are man's ponderous erections."

Like Lawrence, I love to see small wooden temples, that are unimposing and evanescent as flowers. Buildings - particularly religious buildings - should aim to be modest and charming rather than grand and impressive, preserving the natural humour of life: "And that is a task surely more worthy, and even much more difficult in the long run, than conquering the world or sacrificing the self or saving the immortal soul."   

Lawrence continues:

"Why has mankind such a craving to be imposed upon! Why this lust after imposing creeds, imposing deeds, imposing buildings, imposing language, imposing works of art? The thing becomes an imposition and a weariness at last. Give us things that are alive and flexible, which won't last too long and become an obstruction and a weariness."

Even Notre-Dame, if we're honest, standing in Paris for centuries on end, had become a colossal dead weight - stuffed full of priceless treasures and cultural artefacts, but dead treasures and dead artefacts, belonging to another time, another people.

And one suspects that those who claim to revere the past and seek to preserve it - along with those billionaires and politicians who are now pledging obscene sums of cash to rebuild the cathedral (whilst continuing to ignore the deprivation in many parts of the city and its suburbs) - do so simply because they are unable ultimately to face up to the challenge of modernity to make it new.   

II.

Lawrence, of course, was ambiguous (at best) on the question of cathedrals - from Lincoln to Milan - long before his trip to see the Etruscan tombs in 1927.

In The Rainbow, for example, his novel of 1915, Lawrence stages an amusing conflict between Anna Brangwen and her husband Will, in which she destroys his passion for Lincoln Cathedral with her own gargoyle philosophy ...

Will is physically excited by the cathedral and willingly allows himself to be transported by it to another world. But to Anna, it's merely a thing of the past and she rather resented his ecstasy, wishing he might curb his enthusiasm.

Lawrence writes:

"The cathedral roused her too. But she would never consent to the knitting of all the leaping stone in a great roof that closed her in [...] it was the ultimate confine [...] She claimed the right to freedom above her, higher than the roof. [...]
      So that she caught at little things, which saved her from being swept forward headlong in the tide of passion that leaps on into the Infinite [...] the wicked, odd little faces carved in stone, and she stood before them arrested.
      These sly little faces peeped out of the grand tide of the cathedral like something that knew better. They knew quite well, these little imps that retorted on man's own illusion, that the cathedral was not absolute. They winked and leered, giving suggestion of the many things that had been left out of the great concept of the church."

Understandably, Will is unimpressed with such thinking and has little or no time for the carved faces; his wife was "spoiling his passionate intercourse with the cathedral" and this made him bitterly angry:

"Strive as he would, he could not keep the cathedral wonderful to him. He was disillusioned. That which had been his absolute, containing all heaven and earth, was become to him as to her, a shapely heap of dead matter [...]
     His mouth was full of ash, his soul was furious. He hated her for having destroyed another of his vital illusions."

Anna's nihilism, however, inasmuch as it's a counter-idealism, is an active negation of the negative and of nothingness. Thus, despite Will's initial anger and despair, gradually he became more responsive to the call of the gargoyles than to the perfect surge of the cathedral itself, realising that outside the cathedral "were many flying spirits" that could never be contained within the holy gloom.

"He listened to the thrushes in the garden, and heard a note which the cathedrals did not include: something free and careless and joyous. He crossed a field that was all yellow with dandelions [...] and the bath of yellow glowing was something at once so sumptuous and so fresh, that he was glad he was away from his shadowy cathedral.
      There was life outside the church. There was much that the church did not include. [...] He thought of the ruins of the Grecian worship, and it seemed, a temple was never perfectly a temple, till it was ruined and mixed up with the winds and the sky and the herbs."

And so, my advice to the good people of Paris is this: either finish the job and demolish the rest of Notre-Dame, or leave it as a lovely ruin, roofless, and at the mercy of the elements.

See:

D. H. Lawrence, 'Sketches of Etruscan Places', in Sketches of Etruscan Places and Other Italian Essays, ed. Simonetta de Filippis, (Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 32-33.

D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow, ed. Mark Kinkead-Weekes, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 188-89, 190, 191. 

Jamie Reid archive 

vam.ac.uk 

Miss Alba Banana: What's Not to Love?

 Paris and Petticoats   

She's French ☑

She lives in Paris ☑

She loves vintage fashion ☑

She's very beautiful ☑

She has an amusing name ☑

She appreciates that truth is a sophisticated play of appearances  ☑

She knows, like Nietzsche, that the greatest and rarest of arts is to give style to one's character ☑

In sum: Miss Alba Banana ticks all my boxes. 

A Sex Pistol in Paris

One of the more amusing scenes in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle features Sid Vicious wandering the streets of Paris in the spring of '78, confronting locals including a policeman, a prostitute, and a young female fan working in a pâtisserie.

One is tempted to describe it as a provocative form of punk dérive - a mode of experimental behavior, theorised by Guy Debord, in which individuals aimlessly stroll through the city and allow themselves to be seduced by the attractions of urban society and random encounters with strangers. 

I'm not saying that Sid gave a shit about psychogeography - or that he needed lessons from anyone on emotional disorientation - but, as a Sex Pistol, he was well-versed by Malcolm in the art of creating situations that challenge the predictable and monotonous character of everyday life and he cuts an undeniably unique figure as a spiky-haired flâneur, beer bottle in hand, and wearing his favourite swastika emblazoned red t-shirt ...

See: The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, dir. Julien Temple, 1980: click here to watch the scenes of Sid drifting round Paris as discussed above. 

For a related post to this one on Sid's performance of 'My Way', click here. 

Reflections on the Death Mask (With Reference to the Case of L'Inconnue de la Seine)

 L'Inconnue de la Seine (c. late-1880s) 
A favourite pin-up of necrophiles

I. How Even the Dead Can Continue to Make an Impression

Napoleon, Nietzsche, Alfred Hitchcock, James Joyce, and Malcolm McLaren have at least one thing in common: they all left behind them a death mask, which, for those who don't know, is a post-mortem portrait sculpted from a wax or plaster impression made of an individual's face shortly after their passing (either with or without their permission).

Although such masks have a long tradition, I suspect that most modern people find them a bit creepy and would happily consign them to some dark corner of the uncanny valley out of sight. But, even today, we find them displayed in libraries, museums, and art galleries.

Dead kings, politicians, philosophers, poets, and even notorious outlaws including Ned Kelly, have all been commemorated in this manner. One of the most famous death masks, however, is that of an unidentified teenage girl known as L'Inconnue de la Seine ...


II. The Unknown Woman of the Seine

At the end of the 19th century, the mask of a pretty young suicide fished out of the Seine became a must-have fixture on the walls of fashionable people's homes and inspired numerous literary works. The story goes that a pathologist working at the Paris Morgue was so enchanted by her serene beauty that he felt compelled to immortalise her features.  

Rilke and, later, Albert Camus both compared her eerily joyful expression to the enigmatic smile of the Mona Lisa, whilst, in The Savage God (1972), Al Alvarez notes that L'Inconnue was the erotic ideal for an entire generation of girls in the pre-War period who morbidly based their look on hers.

And, amusingly, the face of the world's first CPR training mannequin - known as Resusci Anne and designed by a Norwegian toy maker - was modelled after this unknown adolescent corpse (thus adding a darkly perverse element to the already slightly queer act of administering the kiss of life to a rubber doll).


Note: 

Anyone interested in having a death mask - or a memorial sculpture - made of themselves or a loved one (which can be cast in a variety of materials, including marble and bronze), should contact the British sculptor Nick Reynolds, who is renowned for his work in this field and has produced masks of, amongst others, the film director Ken Russell, actor Peter O'Toole, and his own father, Bruce Reynolds, mastermind of the Great Train Robbery: click here. 

Bliss it Was in that Dawn to be Alive: Reflections on the Event of May '68

For all its romantic idealism and revolutionary fanaticism, there's still something about May '68 that I can neither fully renounce nor denounce.

Indeed, fifty years on, and it seems to me that there's still something glowing red and magnificent, like a burning ember, at the heart of this irreducible and indeterminable event - albeit an event which, as Deleuze and Guattari say, failed to unfold on a collective level; something which deserves not merely nostalgic recollection, but active rekindling.

For as a punk-provocateur, reared in the politics of the Situationist International, I still think that offering creative (sometimes criminal) resistance to the status quo and challenging all forms of orthodoxy is the only ethical thing to do with one's life. In other words: It is right to rebel (a slogan originating in Marx, Mao or Marcuse, but which I learned from Malcolm McLaren).

But Johnny, what are you rebelling against?

Well, against all forms of reactionary stupidity for a start. And against that long list of words which begin with the letter C and induce boredom, including: capitalism, consumerism, cliché, conformity, convention, comfort and convenience. 

I was told recently that I would never make a very good philosopher, as I'm too impatient to read slowly and too shallow to care about fundamental ideas: "You're part blogger, part comedian - always looking for a catchy turn of phrase or an amusing punchline."

That's probably true: I certainly love those fabulous slogans that were sprayed on the walls of Paris: Il est interdit d'interdire! Soyez réalistes - demandez l'impossible! And, most famously, Sous les pavés, la plage! If this makes me a Marxist of the Groucho tendency, then so be it; as someone born in May '68 it's hardly surprising after all ...


Notes 

Deleuze and Guattari, 'May '68 Did Not take Place, Two Regimes of Madness, ed. David Lapoujade, trans. Ames Hodges and Mike Taormina (Semiotext(e), 2007, pp. 233-36. 

As I say above, for Deleuze and Guattari May '68 was (is) a pure event; i.e., an unstable condition without cause that opens up a new field of possibility or becoming. It might be quickly co-opted, but there's something in it that can never be outmoded; thus May '68 is, in a sense, still unfolding now/here. One is tempted to say something similar of punk - which is why the slogan punk's not dead is, technically correct (if not for the reasons that many adherents of the movement believe). And it's why even Joe Corré, despite his uniquely privileged (or accursed) position, cannot declare its passing; no matter how much shit he burns nor how many piles of ash he assembles in a Mayfair art gallery.  

Love Unlocked

A happy couple on the Pont des Arts before the removal 

of the love locks on June 1st 

The decision taken by the municipal authorities to remove the hundreds of thousands of love locks from the Pont des Arts is a triumph of practical common sense over romance; evidence that even in Paris health and safety matters more than affairs of the heart. 

Having said that, there was something rather frightful about all that congealed weight of feeling (be it sincere or otherwise) and the obscene brass symbolism of l'amour. It reminded one of how gangrenous and burdensome love becomes when it is fixed in place and full of insistence. As one commentator wrote, the bridge was starting to groan under this display of collective egoism. 

But, on the other hand, one has to be careful not to be snobbish or superior here; I certainly don't pretend or wish to imply that love as I experience it is in some way more authentic, more noble and more beautiful because it doesn't come with a lock and key. Nor do I find the metal locks ugly as things in themselves; when glittering in the sunshine they constitute a rather pretty and impressive form of three-dimensional graffiti or folk art. 

So, in sum, I have mixed feelings about their removal. Probably, if it had been up to me, I would have left them and allowed the bridge to collapse in suicidal complicity, bringing this love story to the tragic conclusion that it deserves.