La Chronique Scandaleuse 2: The Case of Denise Poncher and Her Vision of Death

Denise Poncher before a Vision of Death

 Illumination from The Poncher Hours (c. 1500)

by the Master of the Chronique scandaleuse

(Tempera colours, ink and gold on parchment) [1]

 

I. 

 

As Bataille once said: Nothing is more scandalous than death ... 

 

So it's not so surprising that the anonymous artist known as le Maître de la Chronique scandaleuse should contribute a terrifying vision of death to an illuminated manuscript called The Poncher Hours that he collaborated on with several other artists in or around 1500. 

 

 

II. 

 

Born some date after 1487, Denise Poncher was a member of an elite French family; her father served as a treasurer for the crown and her uncle was the bishop of Paris. Like many young women of her class, she desired her own personalised prayer book (or book of hours); items which were very much in vogue during the late Middle Ages, particularly in the French capital which was famous throughout Europe for producing the most exquisite works.  

 

Probably commissioned as a wedding gift - there are numerous references to marriage and motherhood in the text - The Poncher Hours is written in French and Latin and contains some astonishing illuminations, beginning with a full-page vision of the Virgin enframed by a mandorla and flanked by St. Barbara and St. Catherine.   

 

But the most striking and, as I have said, most scandalous image, is the vision of death showing a fashionably dressed Mlle. Poncher kneeling, prayer book in hand, before a skeleton with bits of rotting flesh still hanging from the bones and - in full grim reaper mode - holding several scythes. 

 

Just to complete the nightmare scenario, three persons whom Death has already claimed lie on the ground nearby, "covered with bloody wounds and staring with wide, sightless eyes" [2].

 

Doubtless the picture was intended to serve as a stark reminder of human mortality and of the importance of saying one's prayers in order to ensure the soul's salvation. But, to a modern mind, it's of highly questionable taste and not the sort of thing a young woman on her wedding night should have to worry about. 

 

Unless that is, like Bataille, you happen to believe that death and sex are intimately entwined and that eroticism is a saying yes to life conceived as merely a very rare and unusal way of being dead ...

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] The Poncher Hours was acquired by the J. Paul Getty Museum in 2011: click here to visit the Getty website from which I gleaned much of the information used in the writing of this post.    

[2] Elizabeth Morrison, 'Marriage, Death, and the Power of Prayer: The Hours of Denise Poncher', in The Getty Research Journal, Vol. 6, (University of Chicago Press, 2014), pp. 143-50. Click here to access via JSTOR. Morrison is senior curator of manuscripts at the J. Paul Getty Museum.   

 

To read part one of this post - on the case of Claude Le Petit - click here.  

 

This post is for the artist Heide Hatry; a woman with her own distinctive vision de la mort.   

Asphyxiophilia: Reflections on the Case of Gerald and Gudrun

Oliver Reed as Gerald and Glenda Jackson as Gudrun in 
Women in Love (dir. Ken Russell, 1969)

I. Asphyxiophilia

As someone who has always had trouble swallowing and breathing, I've no practical interest in the subject of erotic asphyxiation (or asphyxiophilia as it's also known). That anyone should wish to strangle the object of their affection, or intentionally restrict their own supply of oxygen - even for the purposes of sexual stimulation - is a disconcerting thought. 

However, it seems that a lot of people are aroused (or at least intrigued) by the prospect of gasping or making gasp; they long to induce and/or experience the delirious, semi-hallucinogenic state known as hypoxia (a state that intensifies orgasm). This can be achieved via various methods, including hanging, suffocation, or strangulation.

Obviously, the practice can be dangerous and there have been a number of well-documented fatalities resulting from erotic asphyxiation (particularly when engaged in as a solosexual activity). Thus, as in so many other things, caution is highly recommended (one of the key words in Deleuze and Guattari's lexicon that is often overlooked); living dangerously doesn't mean dying stupidly.       


II. Strangulation

Strangulation accounts for a small but significant number of murders. It can involve the use of a ligature, such as a rope or an electric cord, or it can be accomplished manually for a more intimate and truly hands on experience.   

Research on homicidal strangulation suggests that most of the victims are female and that in the majority of cases the perpetrator and the victim are known to one another, often having a family relationship. Studies also show that men who strangle women frequently do so in order to facilitate rape or to express violent sexual emotions such as jealousy.


III. The Case of Gerald and Gudrun

As a murderous motif, we might say that strangulation is the perfect coming together of sex and violence. No wonder then that it attracted the attention of D. H. Lawrence whose erotic vision is often tied closely to his thanatological musings (i.e., shot through with death). This is well illustrated in what I believe to be his finest novel, Women in Love (1920).   

Gudrun and Gerald have travelled to the Alps in order to meet their fate: only one of them will leave the mountains alive. Initially, they are accompanied by Ursula and Birkin, but this latter couple soon leave, finding the malevolent whiteness and silence of the snow unbearable.

The relationship between Gudrun and Gerald becomes increasingly frosty, to say the least. His heart turns to ice at the sound of her voice; she chills whenever he physically comes close. Even for psychrophiles, this is not a good sign. As Gudrun says, their attempt to be lovers has been a failure.

It's not long before Gerald's cold passion of anger induces murderous thoughts and Gudrun is rightly afraid that he will kill her: "But she did not intend to be killed. A fine thread still united her to him. It should not be her death which broke it."

Gerald's snow-estrangement continues until, finally, he snaps and Lawrence writes a disturbing scene that must surely delight readers with a penchant for erotic asphyxiation:

"He took the throat of Gudrun between his hands, that were hard and indomitably powerful. And her throat was beautifully, so beautifully soft. Save that, within, he could feel the slippery chords of her life. And this he crushed, this he could crush. What bliss! Oh what bliss, at last, what satisfaction, at last! The pure zest of satisfaction filled his soul. He was watching the unconsciousness come into her swollen face, watching her eyes roll back. How ugly she was! What a fulfilment, what a satisfaction! How good this was, oh how good it was, what a god-given gratification, at last! He was unconscious of her fighting and struggling. That struggling was her reciprocal lustful passion in this embrace, the more violent it became, the greater the frenzy of delight, till the zenith was reached, the crisis, the struggle was overborne, her movement became softer, appeased."

Gudrun, however, isn't dead. At the last moment, full of self-disgust, Gerald releases his grip and then drifts off, unconsciously, into the snow, where he lies down to sleep and to die (perchance to dream).

The next day, Gudrun is pale-faced and impassive: unwilling to speak; unable to shed a tear ...

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, ed. David Farmer, John Worthen and Lindeth Vasey (Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 452, 471-72.

Helinä Häkkänen, 'Murder by Manual and Ligature Strangulation', Ch. 4 of Criminal Profiling: International Theory, Research, and Practice, ed. R. N. Kocsis (Humana Press Inc., 2006). Click here to read as an online pdf. 

For a related post on psychrophilia, out of which this one emerged, click here. 

Surprise musical bonus (a classic slice of late '70s punk): click here. 

Surprise comedy bonus (a darkly hilarious clip from an '80s TV classic): click here.

In Memory of The Woman Who Rode Away

Kate Millett famously condemns 'The Woman Who Rode Away' as an insane pornographic fantasy - which, in some ways, it is.

But even if there's something a little lurid and misogynistic about it at times, we can do without the kind of psycho-sexual analysis which suggests that all Lawrence's writing is animated by an unconscious element of voyeurism and sado-masochistic relish.

Charges such as this ignore the fact that, in Mexico, Lawrence discovered a religious sensibility which threatened to extinguish all that he was too. And so the tale is not merely about the drugging and murder of a desperate housewife in search of adventure. Rather, it makes a sacrifice of white-faced modernity itself, even as it mocks the romantic idealism of those renegades who turn against their own race, culture, and historical experience and seek out an impossible return to the primitive.

Of course, as one critic points out, it's never easy to "disentangle the patterns of primitive religious ritual ... from those of the kind of sexual titillation which depends on the dehumanization of its object".* But we're obliged as readers of Lawrence to at least try ...

At the heart of all religious practice and belief - I'd suggest - lies an almost fetishistic obsession with death. This becomes most apparent in sacrificial rites which are not only often elaborate, but extraordinarily cruel in character and designed to reveal the flesh, to mark the flesh, and, ultimately, to consume the flesh. 

And, let’s be clear, when I speak of the consumption of the flesh, I mean this literally; human sacrifice very often involves cannibalism. If the victim isn't quite viewed as butchers' meat, nevertheless he or she is frequently feasted upon. 

Now, whilst we may find the desire to cannibalise one another completely alien, it's worth remembering that even the Christian communion involves the eating of flesh and drinking of blood: Christ is sacrificed and ritually consumed by his followers. Indeed, the conquistadors, who provided many of the accounts we have of Aztec practices, were both thrilled and horrified to note how such a savage and cruel religion presented many points of analogy to the doctrine and ritual of their own faith.

The key, however, to all acts of sacrifice, is that they allow us as mortal or discontinuous beings to experience a sense of life's inhuman never-endingness; that is to say, via the death of an individual, the continuity of existence is confirmed. Christianity is fundamentally mistaken not in sacrificing its central protagonist, but in denying us the pleasure of this death.

One of the things Lawrence does in 'The Woman Who Rode Away', is give readers license to imaginatively exercise in good conscience those drives which direct us towards carnal pleasure, including the forbidden pleasure of anthropophagy. 

So, yes, it’s true that the woman who rode away is abused and victimized - and yes it's disingenuous to speak of her having submitted voluntarily to the above - but any sensational aspects should not obscure the story's religious dimension; in fact, they fully belong to it. Further, it should be remembered that within pagan religious culture the fatal element within eroticism was acutely felt and fully justified linking sex with sacrifice.
 
Thus, rather than try to disguise our discomfort as readers or mistakenly call for censorship, we should accept it. Anguish is one of the great religious feelings and has always accompanied human sacrifice. Bataille reminds us that within Aztec society anyone who couldn't bear to see victims being led to their deaths and allowed their anguish to collapse into pity, would be subject to punishments. Young and old alike were expected to stare death in the face and to share in the tragedy and horror of life.

In sum: I understand (and share) feminist concerns with works that portray women being raped, tortured, murdered or, in this case, ritually sacrificed - but isn’t it refreshing to think that female blood can also have redemptive power?

Besides, whilst the woman who rode away is passive in comparison to the priest who actively wields the knife, the latter too ultimately loses himself in the ritual (just as in the act of love). The ritual of sacrifice destroys the self-contained character of all participants (just as coition leaves both parties fucked). In a crucial passage, Bataille writes:

"In sacrifice, the victim is divested not only of clothes but of life … the victim dies and the spectators share in what [her] death reveals. This is what religious historians call the element of sacredness. This sacredness is the revelation of continuity through the death of a discontinuous being to those who watch it as a solemn rite. A violent death disrupts the creature's discontinuity; what remains, what the tense onlookers experience in the succeeding silence, is the continuity of all existence with which the victim is now one.”

The woman who rode away seeks this oneness; she is tired of living out of touch. In death, she achieves her freedom and fulfilment and she shares this with those who witness her death. Only a violent death which is carried out as a solemn and collective religious act has the power to allow men and women to experience immortality and live the life of the stars and the gods.

Or, as Bataille puts it, "divine continuity is linked with the transgression of the law on which the order of discontinuous beings is built" - namely, the commandment not to kill. Human sacrifice brings life and death into harmony, opening the former onto the latter whilst simultaneously transforming the latter into something paradoxically vital.

But this is not, of course, an argument for dusting off the obsidian knife and even Lawrence, thankfully, rejects violent, authoritarian theocratic culture at last and questions those writers who remain obsessed with the transgression of limits and only palpitate to thoughts of murder, suicide and rape ...  


See:

Georges Bataille, Eroticism, trans. Mary Dalwood, (Penguin Books, 2001).

D. H. Lawrence, The Woman Who Rode Away and Other Stories, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn, (Cambridge University Press, 1995). *Note: The Penguin edition of this text (1996) has an introduction by Neil Reeve and he's the critic I'm quoting here.

On Orgasm and the Will to Merger (Another Thanatological Fragment)

Man can find his individual isolation or discontinuity hard to bear. Thus he often seeks primal unity, or a return to universal oneness. But this will to merger is, of course, a sign of fatigue and decadence; a thinly disguised longing for oblivion.

Lawrence is clear: "The central law of all organic life is that each organism is intrinsically isolate and single in itself". When this is no longer the case - when individual singularity breaks down - death results.

And yet love, of course, is a vital attraction that brings things together into touch ...

This obliges us, therefore, to admit the relationship between Eros and Thanatos and acknowledge that the French description of orgasm as la petite mort is not merely a metaphor.

As Nick Land writes:

"Orgasm provisionally substitutes for death, fending off the impetus toward terminal oblivion, but only by infiltrating death into the silent core of vitality … The little death is not merely a simulacrum or sublimation of a big one … but a corruption that leaves the bilateral architecture of life and death in tatters, a communication and a slippage which violates the immaculate [otherness] of darkness."

When we come, we open ourselves onto this otherness and to the possibility of personal annihilation; losing identity in a spasm and an exchange of shared slime.

Despite the primary law that dictates singularity, the greater truth is that we need one another and we need love. Thus the secondary law of all organic life - according to Lawrence - is that "each organism only lives through … contact with other life". 

Of course, if we go too far in this direction, then love is no longer vivifying, but destructive and deadly. Men might live by love, but so too do they die, or cause death, if they love too much or allow their love to become infected with idealism.

Lawrence values coition precisely because it is a coming-close-to-death, but not a form of merger; a meeting but not a mixing of separate blood-streams. There is no real union during sexual intercourse and, once the crisis is over, the discontinuity of each party remains intact.

But such intimacy brings us to the very point of fusion and leaves us changed, or wounded by the experience (which is why love is often poignant, painful, and transformative all at the same time).

Orgasm gives us a clue regarding the return to the actual and the deep communion that awaits us. It is, as Bataille says, a betrayal of life as something individual and distinct.

Thus, ultimately, the truth of eroticism is ... treason.

See:

Nick Land, The Thirst for Annihilation, (Routledge, 1992).

D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature, ed.  Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003).

Note: this is a revised extract from a paper presented at Treadwell's on 28 Feb, 2006 as part of a lecture series entitled Thanatology. Those interested in reading related thanatological fragments can click here and here.