Forest Bathing

A Walk in the Woods by Frosted Moonlight 

 (SA/2024)

 

 

Having taken an early morning stroll in the woods by the light of a frosted moon, I'm sympathetic to the claim made by many dendrophiles that being in the company of trees is beneficial to one's physical and mental wellbeing. 

 

That even a short walk in the woods - depressing  as this can be when one sees all the litter and fly-tipped items including paint pots, pushchairs and printers - can help lower blood pressure, keep sugar levels balanced, boost immune systems and even improve cognitive function.     

 

Of course, the Japanese living in a land that is still two-thirds covered with a vast number and diversity of trees, have known this for many years and have even coined a (relatively recent) term [1] for finding oneself by losing oneself amongst them: shinrin-yoku - known in English as forest bathing. 

 

But the Japanese are not unique in recognising the health benefits of this practice; the Roman author Pliny the Elder, for example, argued that the scent of a pine forest was extremely beneficial to those suffering with respiratory problems or recuperating from a long illness. 

 

And I've written on several occasions about D. H. Lawrence's great fascination with trees: click here, for example. 

 

Like Lawrence, I'm conscious of the fact that you can never really know a tree - something which is so much bigger and stronger in life than we are - but only "sit among the roots and nestle against its strong trunk" [2], in silent contemplation [3]. But that's good enough for me. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The term shinrin-yoku was coined in 1982 by Tomohide Akiyama - Director of the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries - who, worried by increasing urbanisation, hoped to inspire the Japanese public to reconnect with nature and protect their forests by reminding them of the free health benefits that the latter afforded them.   

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 86. 

[3] Having said that, Rupert Birkin does rather more than sit in silence with his favourite young sapling; see chapter VIII of Lawrence's novel Women in Love (1920). I discuss dendrophilia in its erotic (and daimonic) aspect in a post published here on 3 October 2020: click here.  

Continuous as the Stars That Shine ...

Osterglocken (SA/2023)

 

"When all at once I saw a crowd / A host, of golden daffodils ..." 

 

I. 

 

Often known by its Latin name - Narcissus [1] - the daffodil was as highly regarded in the ancient world as it is within the modern era: Greek philosopher and floraphile Theophrastus, for example, often mentioned them in his botanical writings; as did the Roman author and naturalist Pliny the Elder. 

 

However, it was left to the 18th-century Swedish botanist Linnaeus to formally identify them as a genus in his Species Plantarum (1753), at which time there were only six known species, whereas now there are over fifty (although the exact number remains disputed) [2].   

 

And it was left to the British Romantic poets to really establish the cultural and symbolic importance of the narcissus in the modern imagination. For with the exception of the rose and the lily, no flower blossoms more within the pages of English literature than the daffodil; Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats all wrote of the eternal joy that these flowers can bring.  

 

 

II. 

 

But surely everyone - not just William Wordsworth and the Welsh - loves to see daffodils flowering in the spring, don't they? 

 

At any rate, I love them: I love their bright golden colour and the manner in which a trumpet-shaped corona is surrounded by a six-pointed star formed by the tepals; and I love the fact they come up every year, regardless of external conditions, nodding in defiant affirmation of life.    

But my love of daffoldils is also a class thing; the common daffodil growing by the roadside and at the bottom of the garden has none of the ornamental superiority or cultivated pretension of the tulip (a bulb that is in my mind forever associated with the nouveaux riches in 17th-century Europe). 

 

 

III.

 

When I was a child - and neighbours still had front gardens, not driveways - I used to love stealing daffodils every Easter to give to my mother and I was touched that MLG should remember this and placed a single yellow flower in my mother's coffin prior to her funeral; she would have liked that [3]. 

 

And, of course, even without the personal context, such a gesture would have been entirely appropriate. For whilst daffodils often symbolise rebirth and resurrection, so too are they closely associated with death ...

 

The ancient Egyptians, for example, used to make decorative use of narcissi in their tombs, whilst the ancient Greeks considered these flowers sacred to both Persephone and Hades. Indeed, the former was said to be picking daffodils when she was abducted by the latter and taken to the Underworld.

 

The fact is, like many beautiful-looking things, daffodils are highly toxic, containing as they do the alkaloid poison lycorine - mostly in the bulb, but also in the stem and leaves - and if you ingest enough lycorine then death will follow a series of very unpleasant symptoms including acute abdominal pains, vomiting, diarrhea, trembling, convulsions and paralysis.  

 

So do make sure, dear reader, that you know your onions and never confuse these with daffodil bulbs ... 

    

 

Notes

 

[1] According to Greek myth, the beautiful-looking young man of this name - Νάρκισσος - rejected the romantic advances of others, preferring instead to gaze fixedly at his own reflection in a pool of water. After his death, it is said that a flower sprouted in the spot at which he spent his life sitting. 

      Interestingly, although the exact origin of the name is unknown, it is often linked etymologically to the Greek term from which we derive the English word narcotic (Narcissus was essentially intoxicated by his own beauty). 

      As for the word daffodil, this seems to be a corruption of asphodel, a flowering bulb to which the former is often compared.

 

[2] In 2006, the Royal Horticultural Society's International Daffodil Register and Classified List identified 87 species. But according to the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families produced in 2014, there are only 52 species (along with at least 60 hybrids). Whatever the correct figure might be, the fact is that many wild species have already become extinct and many others are increasingly under threat due to over-collection and the destruction of natural habitats.

 

[3] When my mother died last month, aged 96, she had been living with dementia for almost a decade and it might be noted in relation to our topic here that daffodils produce a number of alkaloids that have been used in traditional forms of healing and one of which - gelantamine - is exploited in the production of a modern medicinal drug used to treat cognitive decline in those with Alzheimer's.     

 

 

This post is for Maria.

 

 

On Being Licked into Shape by Bears, Cats, and Virtuous Women

 

'Bears couple in the beginning of winter, and not after the fashion of other quadrupeds; for both animals lie down and embrace each other. The female then retires by herself to a separate den, and there brings forth on the thirtieth day, mostly five young ones. When first born, they are shapeless masses of white flesh, a little larger than mice; their claws alone being prominent. 

The mother then licks them gradually into proper shape.' 

 

- Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, 8. 54

 

I.

 

Because cats have psychic ablities, they know when we are feeling out of sorts and will sometimes seek to comfort their human companions. Thus it is that my cat has recently taken to not just sitting or lying on me and touching my nose with hers, but incorporating me into her grooming cycle. 

 

Sensing that I'm physically and mentally at a low ebb after more than 2,300 days of caring for my mother without a break or any assistance, I feel she is literally attempting to lick me back into shape and not merely demonstrating her affection or attempting to strengthen the bond between us.

 

II. 

 

Interestingly, this idiomatic expression arose from the endearing belief held in medieval Europe that bear cubs were born as formless lumps of flesh and had to be licked by their mothers into their kyndely ursine shape. 

 

Whilst such an idea can be traced back to the writings of the great Roman author Pliny the Elder (who cheerfully discussed it as fact in his Naturalis historia), the first mention of this belief in English is in The Pylgremage of the Sowle, a 15th-century (part prose) translation of the 14th-century French verse composition Le Pèlerinage de l’Âme, by Guillaume de Deguileville.     

 

In this text, the narrator asks his guardian angel why a devout woman is licking a deformed pilgrim. The angel replies that, just like baby bears, human beings - thanks to original sin - are also born imperfect and so need to be licked into shape by the tongue of one who knows the Word of God; otherwise they remain, as the French say, ours mal léché. 

 

But I think I'd rather that - i.e., rather retain something of the Old Adam with all his flaws and failings - than be licked into moral perfection - and submission - by a virtuous woman.        

 

 

And Venus Among the Fishes Skips

Ana de Macedo: the Venus of Alentejo

Photo used with permission from her Instagram account 

@ana_macedo

 

 

 I. 

 

Venus rising from the sea - or, as the Little Greek would say, αναδυομένη Αφροδίτη - is, of course, one of the iconic figures within the cultural (and pornographic) imagination of the West.  

 

According to Athenaeus, the idea was inspired by the ancient Greek courtesan Phryne [1], who liked to let down her hair and step naked into the sea, particularly during the time when the Eleusinian Mysteries were being celebrated, or festivals held in honour of Poseidon . 

The renowned painter Apelles created a much-admired picture of this event [2], whilst the equally renowned scuptor Praxiteles - who was one of Phryne's many lovers - is believed to have used her as the model for his statue of Aphrodite (the first life-sized nude female form ever sculpted in ancient Greece). 

 

Although some historians have pooh-poohed the story of Phryne's skinny dipping in the sea as sensationalised fabrication [3], I can happily believe it, and see how it might inspire artists. For as D. H. Lawrence writes, we glimpse the gods in the bodies of men and women [4] ... 

 

 

II. 

 

In his poem 'The Man of Tyre', for example, Lawrence describes a man watching as a woman who had waded into the pale green sea of evening in order to wash herself, now turns, and comes slowly back to shore:

 

 

Oh lovely, lovely, with the dark hair piled up, as she went deeper,

      deeper down the channel, then rose shallower, shallower,

with the full thighs slowly lifting of the wader wading shorewards

and the shoulders pallid with light from the silent sky behind

both breasts dim and mysterious, with the glamorous kindness

      of twilight between them

and the dim blotch of black maidenhair like an indicator,

giving a message to the man. 

 

So in the cane-brake he clasped his hands in delight

that could only be god-given, and murmured:

Lo! God is one god! but here in the twilight

godly and lovely comes Aphrodite out of the sea

towards me! [5]

 

 

However, Lawrence also catches sight of the gods in the bodies of animals too. Thus, in the poem 'Whales weep not!', he informs us that Aphrodite is a happy hot-blooded she-whale:

and Venus among the fishes skips and is a she-dolphin

she is the gay, delighted porpoise sporting with love and the sea

she is the female tunny-fish, round and happy among the males

and dense with happy blood, dark rainbow bliss in the sea.

 

 

These are surely some of the loveliest lines in Lawrence's poetry and, crucially, they encourage us to reconsider (i) the relation we have to ourselves and our own flesh; (ii) the relation we have to others and their bodies; (iii) the relation we have to animals; and (iv) the relation we have to the gods.

 

And, surely, that's the purpose of art, isn't it?    

 

 

Fresco from Pompei, Casa di Venus, 1st century AD 

A classic example of Venus Anadyomene

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Phryne, whose real name (somewhat ironically) was Mnesarete, was born c. 371 BC and became a notorious member of that highly educated class of companion women known as hetaerae [ἑταῖραι]. She is perhaps best remembered for her beauty and for her trial for impiety (a capital offence), where she was defended by the orator Hypereides (another of her lovers). 

      When it seemed as if his arguments might be falling on deaf ears, Hypereides removed Phryne's robe and bared her breasts before the judges in order to arouse their pity. This seemed to do the trick; the judges decided they could not condemn a priestess of Aphrodite to death. And so Phyrne was acquitted. Little wonder that modern poets and artists have continued to find her irresistable.     

 

[2] Sadly, this picture is now lost. It is mentioned, however, in Pliny's Natural History [XXXV, 86-87] According to the Roman author, Apelles employed Pancaspe (aka Campaspe) - mistress to Alexander the Great - as his model. 

 

[3] See for example Christine Mitchell Havelock, The Aphrodite of Knidos and Her Successors: A Historical Review of the Female Nude in Greek Art, (The University of Michigan Press, 1995). 

 

[4] See the post 'I Shall Speak of Geist, of Flame, and of Glimpses' (29 Sept 2021), where I speak of Lawrence's idea of glimpsing something divine in mortal being with reference to his poetry. 

      And see also 'The Southend Venus' (26 Aug 2016) and 'The Southend Venus (Alternative Version)' (27 Aug, 2016), where I write of glimpsing the goddess in the girl on a beach in Essex. 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Man of Tyre', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 606-607.

[6] D. H. Lawrence, 'Whales weep not!', in The Poems, Vol. I, ibid., pp. 607-608. Lines quoted p. 608.

 

 

For a related post to this one, discussing Rimbaud's poetic take on the idea of Venus anadyomene, click here.