Image by Zena McKeown (2012)
Strangely it always becomes necessary to speak about the phallus when thinking about the sun: for what is a hard-on other than the body of man declaring: I am the Sun. As Bataille writes, the verb to be and the integral erection tied to it is ultimately nothing other than an articulation of amorous solar frenzy.
For an erection, like the sun, is something that rises and falls and scandalizes, being equally obscene, equally demanding; a quasi-miraculous phenomenon resulting from a complex interaction of factors, often triggered by some form of sexual stimulation, though this need not always be the case.
Indeed, often the happiest of erections are ones that arise spontaneously and in all innocence and, interestingly, Lawrence explicitly reverses the idea that love calls potency into being. On the contrary, he suggests, it is power that gives rise to love; power that comes to us from outside and enters us from behind and below, where we are sightless and do not understand. And so, to be sun-fucked is, also, to be sodomised and some of us might once more think of Bataille and his notion of the solar anus.
Of course, however we get it, most of us want life and the feeling of power; although, ironically, the latter comes via the expenditure and exercise of power and not from its possession. When one is powerful, like the sun, one gives oneself away and life only comes to us when we dare to live and squander resources. For life does not mean length of days: "Poor old Queen Victoria had length of days. But Emily Brontë had life. She died of it."
That's a fantastic thought, isn’t it? Life kills! And energy eventually escapes its entrapment within form and is liberated back into the solar flux. For that’s all life is; a temporary arrest of sunlight. And death? Death is nothing but a release of power and what Nietzsche describes as a festive return to the actual.
Those who live with the greatest intensity and imitate the sun often die young, burning out like tiny stars. Those who go on and on into old age either lack vitality, or they are monsters of stamina - like Picasso. As a rule, it is better to live fast and die young than live like one who has never known the power of the sun; nor the love of another in whom the sun can be glimpsed.
Note: Line quoted is from D. H. Lawrence, 'Blessed are the Powerful', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (CUP, 1988), p. 322.
For an erection, like the sun, is something that rises and falls and scandalizes, being equally obscene, equally demanding; a quasi-miraculous phenomenon resulting from a complex interaction of factors, often triggered by some form of sexual stimulation, though this need not always be the case.
Indeed, often the happiest of erections are ones that arise spontaneously and in all innocence and, interestingly, Lawrence explicitly reverses the idea that love calls potency into being. On the contrary, he suggests, it is power that gives rise to love; power that comes to us from outside and enters us from behind and below, where we are sightless and do not understand. And so, to be sun-fucked is, also, to be sodomised and some of us might once more think of Bataille and his notion of the solar anus.
Of course, however we get it, most of us want life and the feeling of power; although, ironically, the latter comes via the expenditure and exercise of power and not from its possession. When one is powerful, like the sun, one gives oneself away and life only comes to us when we dare to live and squander resources. For life does not mean length of days: "Poor old Queen Victoria had length of days. But Emily Brontë had life. She died of it."
That's a fantastic thought, isn’t it? Life kills! And energy eventually escapes its entrapment within form and is liberated back into the solar flux. For that’s all life is; a temporary arrest of sunlight. And death? Death is nothing but a release of power and what Nietzsche describes as a festive return to the actual.
Those who live with the greatest intensity and imitate the sun often die young, burning out like tiny stars. Those who go on and on into old age either lack vitality, or they are monsters of stamina - like Picasso. As a rule, it is better to live fast and die young than live like one who has never known the power of the sun; nor the love of another in whom the sun can be glimpsed.
Note: Line quoted is from D. H. Lawrence, 'Blessed are the Powerful', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (CUP, 1988), p. 322.
