Reflections on a Sleeping Cat

And there is a sleeping cat, very quick! [1]

 

 

It is important to understand that the Lawrentian notion of peace does not imply inertia or a certain deadness. It's more a condition of the heart; a feeling of at oneness with one's surroundings; of being a creature in what he calls the house of life [2]. 

 

Like a cat asleep on a chair or stretched out in the sun, yawning. Cats, I suspect, have a much greater sense of peace than most people. 

 

Similarly, they have a certain quickness about them that men and women often lack; an invisible flame of impersonal presence that flickers in their every movement (even when they appear to be at rest) and which keeps them in a fluid and ever-changing relationship with all other objects.

 

Notes

  

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Novel', Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 183. 

      The photo is of Phoevos the Cat, asleep on the chair and so preventing me from being able to type this post whilst sitting comfortably at the desk.

[2] See the poem 'Pax', in D. H. Lawrence, The Poems, Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 614. 

      This late poem is somewhat problematic for me by its use of the term God, but I share his thoughts on the peacefulness of a sleeping cat.

For a related post - 'On the Quickness and Allue of Objects' (28 August, 2019) - click here. 

On the Quickness and Allure of Objects

Phoebe Stadler: Saucy (c. 1920)

collections.vam.ac.uk

Was ist Schnelligkeit? asks Heide. And it's an interesting question.

I suppose, for me at least, the quality of quickness is something I understand in relation to the work of D. H. Lawrence and in terms of an object-oriented ontology.

In his essay 'The Novel' (1925), Lawrence describes the quick as an invisible flame of impersonal presence that flickers in the words and deeds of the individual. Unless, that is, they belong to the legions of the undead; living corpses with ready-made sensations who drive to work, chew their fast food, stare at the screen, and engage in idle talk that merely passes the word along (what Heidegger calls Gerede).

These men and women are awfully lifelike, but lifeless; for they have no quickness, writes Lawrence.

It's important to be clear on this point: the corpse-bodies Lawrence fears have not become less than human, but, strange as it may sound - unless one hears this phrase with Nietzschean ears - all too human (which is to say, all too limited and cut-off). Quickness is, therefore, certainly not the same as human being; in fact, it's the non-human element of man which is found in all things.

Lawrence likes to call it the God-flame, but I prefer to describe it as object-allure, if only because I find his religious language unhelpful and off-putting.* Either way, it means we have two types of object: (i) those that are quick (though not necessarily alive in the conventional organic sense of the term) and (ii) those that are dead (again, not in the sense that they lack or have lost life, but in the sense that they aren't quick or very alluring - and so don't really affect us in the same way).

Lawrence writes:

"In this room where I write, there is a little table that is dead: it doesn't even weakly exist. And there is a ridiculous little iron stove, which for some unknown reason is quick. And there is an iron wardrobe trunk, which for some still more mysterious reason is quick. And there are several books, whose mere corpus is dead, utterly dead and non-existent. And there is a sleeping cat, very quick. And a glass lamp, that, alas, is dead." 

Thus, interestingly - according to Lawrence - there are degrees of quickness; though he claims not to know how or why this is so, even if he knows for certain that it's the case. Probably, he speculates, the quickness of the quick lies in a "certain weird relationship" between objects; one that is "fluid, changing, grotesque or beautiful".

Again, I would discuss this relatedness in terms of allure; objects attract and lead other objects, including ourselves, into temptation and it's in this way that we and all things come into touch. The more they entice us, the stronger their allure, the quicker they are; the more we come into touch - with "snow, bed-bugs, sunshine, the phallus, trains, silk-hats, cats, sorrow, people, food, diphtheria, fuchsias, stars, ideas, God, tooth-paste, lightning, and toilet-paper"** - the quicker we are.

Of course, even dead objects retain some power of attraction and can seduce us - they like to be tickled as Lawrence puts it - but ultimately they lead us not into touch but into the void. Dead objects, in other words, tease but don't deliver the goods; they are indifferent to those doing the tickling and drain the quick of their quickness. They are strange attractors, like black holes.       

Notes

* I like the word allure as it is drawn from the language of seduction, which is the appropriate language in which to discuss objects philosophically. One might also note that the modern English word quick is of Germanic origin and is related not only to the Dutch term kwiek, meaning sprightly, but the German word keck, meaning saucy; another term belonging to the language of seduction. In sum, quickness goes beyond merely a question of speed - it's more than Schnelligkeit - just as it's more than vitality.

** With the use of a list like this, composed of seemingly random objects, Lawrence wishes to show that there are no absolutes; all things exist relative to one another upon a flat ontological field and/or within a general economy of the whole. We can call this a democracy of objects, like Levi Bryant, or a democracy of touch, like Lawrence.  

D. H. Lawrence, 'The Novel', Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 177-90. Lines quoted p. 183.

D. H. Lawrence, 'Cry of the Masses', Poems Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 511-12.

Notes on the Material Remains of My Father

I respect and admire the fact that my father walked naked and light his entire life; owning nothing and leaving nothing behind when he died; no great legacy, no treasured possessions, not even an urn full of ashes.

In fact, his material remains pretty much amass to no more than a few black and white photographs, an old radio (or wireless, as he always called it), a pack of playing cards, and some rusty little tins in the garden shed covered in cobwebs containing assorted nails, tacks, and screws.

What's astonishing about these objects - particularly the old tobacco tins - is how powerfully they resonate when I draw close to them. Even though just humble, everyday, mass-produced items they have an authenticity to them, or a thingness, that any Heideggerean would instantly recognise and appreciate.    

Lawrence describes this as quickness - a quality that can be contrasted to deadness, but which doesn't only belong to living, organic or natural objects. That is to say, even a rather ridiculous-looking iron stove, for example, can be quick. Or, as in this case, an old tin of 2" nails.

Why? Because it exists in perfect relationship to its environment and to the rest of the things in the shed; a pair of garden gloves, a rake, a crack in the wall, a box of matches, a house-spider ... etc.

Further, the tobacco tin has had what Lawrence terms soft life invested in it via years of use and transferred touch. It has become one of those lovely old things that sparkles with magical allure and which remains warm with the spirit of a kind and quiet man who loved a smoke.