Arborcide in the U. K.

Jamie Reid: Anarchy in the U. K. flag design 

for the Sex Pistols first single on EMI (1976) 

Reimagined by Stephen Alexander (2023)

 

 

I.

 

An anonymous reader writes:

"I was disappointed to see you buying into lazy eco-propaganda in a recent post [1] concerning the multi-million redevelopment of Plymouth city centre. As a resident, I can assure you that this revamp is not only necessary to ensure the future of the city, but long overdue. 

      It's unfortunate that a number of trees have had to be removed. But, as you mention in the post, the council have pledged to replace these and consider a wider planting scheme in the future, thereby addressing the concerns of people like yourself who seem to think that protecting trees and the needs of wildlife matters more than growing the economy and providing people with the urban infrastructure that enables them to lead pleasant, prosperous and productive lives."              

 

 

Obviously, I don't want to disappoint anyone. Nor do I wish to buy into lazy eco-propaganda. However, as dendrophile, I think it more than unfortunate whenever a healthy mature tree is cut down. 

 

And, further, I don't believe a word that's spoken by any elected official of any political stripe, be they a humble town councillor or a prominent MP, so any promise to protect the natural environment or plant more trees is one that I view with scepticism to say the very least. 

 

And a report by Tom Heap on the Sky News website this morning nicely illustrates why I am justified in such cynicism, exposing as it does the shocking fact that over half-a-million newly planted trees have been left to die next to a new 21-mile stretch of road between Cambridge and the market town of Huntingdon ...

 

 

II. 

 

As part of a £1.5 billion upgrade of the A14, completed in 2020, National Highways boasted of planting 850,000 saplings to replace the mature trees they destroyed during construction of the new carriageway. 

 

But they have now been forced to admit that almost three-quarters of these saplings have since perished; for it turns out that young trees need care in the early stages of their life if they are to survive and grow, not just sticking in a hole in the ground and then left to look after themselves.        

 

National Highways admit in an internal review that this is an unusually high fatality rate and blame it on poor soil and climate change resulting in extreme heat. 

 

But, actually, this low survival rate is mostly due to the fact that developers - like politicians and city councillors - are only ever concerned with numbers and not with ensuring that the right species of tree - at the right age of development - is planted in the right kind of soil, etc.  

Anyway, National Highways is planning to replant this autumn; at an estimated cost (to the tax payer) of £2.9 million - and they promise to take better care of the trees this time over a five year period: we'll see ...

 

Finally, here's something else that my correspondent might like to consider (or dismiss as simply more eco-propaganda if they so wish):

 

"Across the country, planting rates are [...] running at less than half the 30,000 hectares per year that was pledged by the Conservatives at the last election. So fewer saplings than hoped with troubling survival rates. Bad news for our nature and climate aims." [2]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The post to which they refer is entitled 'Murder! Murder! Murder! Someone Should Be Angry' (17 March 2023): click here. 

 

[2] Tom Heap, 'Half a million trees have died next to one 21-mile stretch of road, National Highways admits', on the Sky News website (18 March 2023): 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.

 

 

Just Because the Sky Has Turned a Pretty Shade of Orange and Red Doesn't Mean You Can Simply Point a Camera and Shoot ... Or Does It?

Golden sunset and red sunrise over Harold Hill 

(SA / Dec 2022) 

 

 

I. 

 

For many serious photographers, these two snaps taken from my bedroom window - a golden sunset and a red sunrise - constitute perfect examples of cliché. 

 

That enormous numbers of people enjoy looking at such pictures doesn't alter the fact that images of dusk and dawn have virtually zero aesthetic value; their mass production and popularity only confirming their banality. 

 

As one commentator notes: 

 

"Their very ubiquity is what seems to repel; photography has tainted what it sought to cherish through overuse. It miniaturises natural grandeur and renders it kitsch." [1]

 

If you're a reader of Walter Benjamin, you might explain how mechanical reproduction devalues the aura - by which is meant something like the uniqueness - of an object or event [2]; if you're a fan of D. H. Lawrence, you'll probably start shouting about Kodak vision and how this prevents us from seeing reality, just as cliché inhibits the forming of new perspectives [3].  

 

Now, whilst sympathetic to both of theses authors, I also want to be able to take my snaps and share them with others in good conscience. And so I feel obliged to challenge those who are hostile to photography per se - even if, on philosophical grounds, I share their concerns.

 

And I also feel obliged to challenge those who are dismissive of certain genres of amateur photography - pictures of flowers, or cats, or of the sun's risings and settings - out of cultural snobbery; i.e., those who sneer at aesthetically naive individuals and speak of the wrong kind of people making the wrong kind of images.

           

 

II. 

 

I'm thinking, for example, of the Marxist academic, writer, photographer and curator, Julian Stallabrass, who is interested in the relations between art, politics and popular culture and who sneeringly entitled a chapter of his 1996 work on the widespread popularity of amateur photography 'Sixty Billion Sunsets' [4].

 

As Annebella Pollen notes: 

 

"Stallabrass's denigration of mass photographic practice is based on what he perceives to be its overwhelmingly conventionalised sameness (unlike elite art practices, which are positively polarised as avant-garde, creative and distinctive)." [5]

 

In other words, because Stallabrass sees every sunset photograph as essentially the same, he dismisses them all as "sentimental visual confectionary indicative of limited aesthetic vision and an undeveloped practice" [6]; in other words, stereotypical shit. 

Unfortunately, this attitude is echoed by many other critics and theorists convinced of their own cultural superiority. If you thought postmodernism did away with such snobbery, you'd be mistaken - which is a pity. 

 

For whilst I may agree that just because the sky has turned a pretty shade of orange and red one is nevertheless required to do more than simply point a camera and shoot in order to produce an image that is also a work of art, there's nothing wrong with just taking a snap and plenty of snaps have genuine charm and, yes, even beauty. 

 

In the end, even a bad photograph can seduce and what Barthes calls the punctum - i.e., that which is most poignant (even nuanced) in a picture - is often the failure, fault, cliché, or imperfection. Perhaps, in this digital age of imagery shared via social media, we therefore need to rethink what constitutes a good or bad photograph.    

And, ultimately, Stallabrass is simply wrong: no two sunsets (or dawns) are ever the same and no two photographs of sunsets (or dawns) are ever the same; there is an eternal return of difference (not of the same or to the same). 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Annebella Pollen, 'When is a cliché not a cliché? Reconsidering Mass-Produced Sunsets', eitherand.org - click here. 

 

[2] See Walter Benjamin's essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' (1935), which can be found in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zorn, (Bodley Head, 2015).

 

[3] See D. H. Lawrence's essay 'Art and Morality' (1925), which can be found in Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 161-68. 

 

[4] Julian Stallabrass, Gargantua: Manufactured Mass Culture, (Verso, 1996). 

 

[5] Annebella Pollen, 'When is a cliché not a cliché? Reconsidering Mass-Produced Sunsets', op. cit.

 

[6] Ibid.

 

 

Reflections on a Heron

Grey Dawn (SA/2022)

 

 "O melancholy bird on a winter's day ..."

 

 

As I've said before on this blog, those of a philosophical disposition have always appreciated that grey is the most beautiful of colours in all its neutrality; one which has long played an important role in fashion and art. Those who perceive only an absence of colour lack sophistication and subtlety [1]. 

 

Thus, whilst it's nice to wake-up to a sunny blue sky overhead, I wasn't displeased this morning to pull back the bedroom curtains and see a grey heron sitting on the roof of the house opposite against a grey sky. 

 

Surveying the world in all its stillness and silence, this elegant bird eventually flew off with slow, controlled wingbeats, its long legs trailing behind it, mosquito-like, and its long neck retracted into an S-shape; a creature from another time.  

 

Happily, herons are still quite common - even in the UK, one of the most nature-depleted nations on earth, having lost half of its wildlife and plant species since the Industrial Revolution - and, thanks to their inteligence, they can adapt fairly well to city life [2]. 

 

Hopefully, therefore, they'll be around for millions of years after mankind; just as they were around for millions of years before we evolved on the scene.     

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See the post 'Sing if You're Glad to be Grey' (16 Oct 2015): click here. 

 

[2] A large population of grey herons can be found living in Amsterdam, for example, and seem to be well-adjusted to urban life in the Dutch capital. See Julie Hrudover's photographic essay in The Guardian (5 June 2017): click here.

 

 

Derealisation

Derealisation (A Cursed Image)
SA (2021)

 

 

After a Greek art student described the photos on my Instagram account as cursed images, I was encouraged to investigate this term and write a short post on the subject [1].  

 

However, whilst in some instances this description might seem appropriate, I don't think it holds true for all of the pictures and I certainly wasn't aiming at producing images that could be categorised as such; nor do I like to be seen as a follower of trends. 

 

Further, it could just as easily be argued that the photos are, in fact, symptomatic of my disordered mental state and represent how I perceive the world, rather than exemplify a deliberate aesthetic. 

 

This is why the images are, for example, often lacking in depth of feeling or emotional resonance; why there's no sympathy or sincerity in them, even when contemplating corpses. It's as if everything were seen from an ironic perspective by someone who is detached, distant, and dissociated from reality. 

 

I don't know if this is caused by some kind of brain dysfunction, but it's pretty much how I've always seen things - even as a very young child observing the world of animals, grown-ups and school friends. 

 

It might have something to do with my birth sign (Aquarius), or it might be due to the fact that I spent so much time watching TV that eventually I saw real life as if it too were being played out on a screen - who knows? 

 

And, indeed, who cares: it's never been something that's particularly bothered me or caused any anxiety. In fact, my ability to be objective - to see things with a little coldness and cruelty - made me feel not only different from other children, but superior - like an alien being, or a god. 

 

And what young boy doesn't want to feel like that? [2]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See 'A Brief Note on Cursed Images' (21 September 2022): click here. Readers interested in judging my photos for themselves should go to: @stephenalexander9383

 

[2] I'm thinking here of Nietzsche's remark: "One would make a fit little boy stare if one asked him: 'Would you like to become virtuous?' – but he will open his eyes wide if asked: 'Would you like to become stronger than your friends?'" 

      See §918 of The Will To Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, (Vintage Books, 1968), p. 485. 

 

My Name is Victor Frankenstein

Peter Cushing as Victor Frankenstein in  

The Curse of Frankenstein, dir. Terence Fisher, 

(Hammer Films, 1957) [1]

 

 

Although I have never read Mary Shelley's famous novel [2], I am of course familiar with the story of Victor Frankenstein and his monstrous creation [3] and, indeed, have always had an affinity for this noble and unorthodox young scientist - part thanatologist, part alchemist [4] - obsessed with generating new life from dead material.

 

For far from being the prototypical mad scientific genius, as portrayed in numerous cinematic adaptations of the novel, Frankenstein is actually a tragic figure, driven by a beautiful obsession.

 

And if, when things don't quite turn out as planned and he inadvertently endangers his own life and those of his family and friends, he comes to bitterly regret his unnatural experiments, nevertheless one has to admire him for challenging the judgement of God in the manner of a modern Prometheus.

 

But the primary reason I identify with Frankenstein - apart from his intelligence, curiosity about the world, and refusal to be bound by laws and conventions, is because I essentially use his technique as a writer. 

 

That is to say, I cut up dead bodies of text and stitch stolen ideas together in a diabolical manner. My creativity lies - if anywhere - in then being able to provide the electric spark or lightning flash of inspiration which makes the assembled piece of intertextual fiction-theory breathe with new life [5].

 

This might not make me an original [6] talent - any more than Frankenstein's work made him a god - but it does produce some interesting results, does require a certain degree of skill and hard work, and does make me, in a sense, both an artist and alchemist. 

 

  

Notes

 

[1] Readers might be interested to know that Frankenstein's first appearance on screen was in a silent short film released in 1910, dir. J. Searle Dawley, and starring Augustus Phillips as the good doctor and Charles Ogle as the Monster. 

      This was followed in 1931 by the famous Universal version of the tale, dir. James Whale, starring Colin Clive in the role of Frankenstein, opposite Boris Karloff as the Monster. Both actors reprised their roles in the 1935 sequel, Bride of Frankenstein (also dir. by James Whale).

      As much as I love Clive's portrayal, I have a particular soft spot for Peter Cushing's performance in The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), opposite Christopher Lee as the Creature, which is why I've used his image here. Cushing went on to star as Frankenstein in five more films for Hammer, subtly revealing different aspects of the character in each.

 

[2] I'm referring of course to Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), written by Mary Shelley (whilst only eighteen years of age). 

 

[3] For those who aren't familiar with Shelley's figure of Victor Frankenstein, here's a brief character description and story outline:

 

According to the 1831 edition, Victor was born in Naples, but he describes his distinguished ancestry as Genevese.

      As a youth, he was intrigued by the works of famous alchemists such as Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus and longed to discover the so-called philosopher's stone; a mythical substance that could transmute base metals, such as lead, into gold and which was also an elixir of life, promising physical rejuvenation and immortality. 

      Later, however, Victor abandons alchemy for mathematics, which, he thinks, provides a more secure foundation upon which to base an understanding of the world. However, whilst at University in Bavaria, Frankenstein rediscovers his love for chemistry - this time in its modern form - and he makes a number of significant scientific discoveries; including discoveries about the bio-chemical nature of life, which enable him to animate non-living material. This research culminates in his creation of a being resembling man, but whom he comes to regard as a mixture of creature and demon.

     Rejecting the responsibility to care for his creation, the monster decides to seek revenge upon his maker; he murders Frankenstein's youngest brother, his best friend, and strangles Victor's bride, Elizabeth, on their wedding night. 

      Feeling that he has nothing left to live for, Frankenstein vows to destroy the creature and pursues the latter all the way to the North Pole, where he, Victor, eventully dies. Somewhat surprisingly, the monster is so overcome with sorrow and guilt, that he decides to commit suicide, before then disappearing into the frozen Arctic night.    

 

[4] One is tempted to also think of Victor Frankenstein as a Romatic poet, particularly as Mary's lover at the time of writing - and soon to be husband - Percy Shelley, inspired the character; for not only did the latter sometimes use the pen name of Victor, but, whilst a student at Eton, Shelley had conducted chemical experiments involving electricity. His rooms at Oxford were also filled with strange scientific equipment.  

 

 [5] It's been pointed out to me that my understanding of Frankenstein's monster as pieced together from body parts taken from numerous stolen corpses and reanimated by the use of electricity, owes more to the movies than Shelley's novel. In the latter, apparently, Frankenstein discovers the secret principle of life and it's this that allows him to painstakingly develop a method to vitalise inanimate matter, though the actual process is left rather vague. Neverthless, Frankenstein does assemble body parts, so I think my comparison stands and there's no need to split hairs, Maria.        

 

[6] Along with authenticity, originality is one of the concepts I despise the most: I don't care if my posts on Torpedo the Ark lack originality. And besides, as the Irish writer Oliver Goldsmith once wrote in The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), we can "pardon the want of originality, in consideration of the exquisite talent with which the borrowed materials are wrought up into the new form". 

      Or, as Roland Barthes would argue, the post-as-text is not expressive of an author's unique being. It's explainable only through other words drawn from a pre-given, internalised dictionary. Every new post is therefore, in some sense, already a copy of a copy of a copy whose origin is forever lost and meaning infinitely deferred. 

      To put that another way, if, as I do, you accept the idea of intertextualité, then questions of authorship and originality go out of the window and Síomón Solomon is right to claim in his brilliant study, Hölderlin's Poltergeists (2020), that every piece of writing is already a translation at some level and the author, whilst masquerading as a unified subject, is actually a multiple assemblage - like Frankenstein's monster - who speaks with many tongues (some of which are forked).

 

 

And Fungal Life Shall Triumph

And Fungal Life Shall Triumph

(SA/2021)

 

 

To be honest, I draw no inspiration whatsoever from COP26: both delegates and protestors leave me equally disdainful and remind me to renew my membership of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT).   

 

Phallic-shaped mushrooms growing through my neighbour's driveway, however, bring tremendous cheer and fill me with the hope that life will ultimately triumph over concrete, tarmac, and asphalt. 

 

For as Lawrence wrote, whilst brute force crushes many plants, they always rise again: "The pyramids will not last a moment, compared with the daisy."*

 

And my neighbour's attempt to create a perfectly barren space in which to park his big black shiny car, will be in vain thanks to some rapidly growing toadstools.      

  

 

* D. H. Lawrence, Sketches of Etruscan Places, in Sketches of Etruscan Places and Other Italian Essays, ed. Simonetta De Filippis, (Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 36.  

 

 

Reflections Beneath an Old Tree at Halloween

Halloween Tree (SA/2021)

 

 

It's amusing how, at Halloween, everyday objects can take on a slightly spooky aspect (and I'm not just talking about the cat). 

 

Indeed, some things, like the tree at the end of my road, actually possess a sinister quality; the naked, twisted branches reaching upwards remind one of Lawrence's description of bare almond trees sticking grimly out of the earth like iron implements and feeling the air for strange currents [1].

Faceless and silent, trees terrify in their primeval beauty and the manner in which they combine natural, supernatural, and even unnatural elements - just ask the Roman soldiers as they entered the German forests:

 

"Brave as they were, the veterans were filled with mysterious fear when they found themselves in the dark, cold gloom of [...] the northern, savage land." [2]     

 

The ancient Germans practised Baumanbetung and would nail the skulls of their enemies to sacred trees. For tree-worship always entails human sacrifice and even the Tree of Life is dark and terrible and its roots, thrust deep into the soil where dead men rot in darkness, feed on blood.      

 

Again, this naturally enough horrified the Romans, despite the fact that they were no shrinking violets themselves when it came to acts of atrocious violence:

 

"And the soldiers shrank: shrank before the trees that had no faces [...] A vast array of non-human life, darkly self-sufficient, and bristling with indomitable energy. [...]

      No wonder the soldiers were terrified. No wonder they thrilled with horror when, deep in the woods, they found the skulls and trophies of their dead comrades upon the trees. The trees had devoured them: silently, in mouthfuls, and left the white bones." [3]  

 

Happy Halloween!  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'Bare Almond Trees', The Poems, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 253  The poem can be read on allpoetry.com by clicking here.

      See also the related verse, 'Almond Blossom', in which Lawrence develops his gothic-industrial dendrophilia, asserting that "Even iron can put forth, / Even iron." Poems, pp. 259-262. It can be found on the Poetry Foundation website: click here. 

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, Movements in European History, ed. Philip Crumpton, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 44.  

[3] D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 87. 

Fragment from the Dementia Diary: Day 2000

Ich und meine Mutter (SA/2021)

  

 

Day 2000 - much like any of the previous 1,999 days spent here (continuously) since 2 April, 2016:

 

08.00: get my mother up, washed, and dressed ...

 

09.00: do my mother's breakfast and administer medication ...

 

10.00: do the shopping and pick up my mother's prescription from chemist ...

 

11.30: start preparing my mother's midday meal ...

 

16.30: start preparing my mother's tea ...

 

19.30: do toast and tea for my mother's supper ...

 

20.00: administer more pills ...

 

21.00: put my mother to bed ...

 

In between the above routine tasks: do the washing up; do the laundry; clean the house; do the gardening; pay the bills; make cups of tea, take my mother to and from the toilet, feed the cat, etc. Very little time to read, write, think, or breathe.  

 

As I said on Day 1, I repeat now: caring is tedious and depressing. Any small joys are fleeting and what we extol as blessing depends on what afflicts us as plight [Heidegger].  

 

 

On Being an Odonto-Medical Wonder

Stephen Alexander:  

The Colour of Pain (2021)

 

 

I. 

 

The first post published on Torpedo the Ark was entitled Reflections on the Loss of UR6; a poem in which I considered the violent act of tooth extraction and the subsequent sense of trauma as your tongue probes the empty space where once a molar had been. 

 

What the post didn't mention, however, was that the verse was based on an actual incident. Nor does it inform readers that the tooth extracted - UR6 - possessed such an unusually deep and powerful root that my dentist had real problems removing it (much to her professional embarrassment). 

 

Indeed, the root was of such an unusual length and size that it and the tooth were featured in a dental journal.

 

 

II. 

 

I was reminded of this latter fact recently whilst sitting having my lower right leg photographed and filmed with professional equipment in the Emergency Department at Queen's Hospital, for possible use in a medical journal and/or as teaching material for medical students. 

 

Not that there's anything particularly interesting or aesthetically pleasing about my leg as a limb in itself. But the swelling, deep bruising, and inflammation, is, apparently, of a highly unusual and perplexing nature; it could be superficial thrombophlebitis; it might simply be an infection of some kind or a ruptured vein; or it may betray a DVT - even though the position is all wrong. 

 

(No one wanted to mention the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, though this remained an unspoken subtext.)

 

Whatever the cause, I signed a consent form agreeing that images of the discoloured leg could be used in a case study and I find that my discomfort is lessened by the knowledge that my unidentified limb - just like my anonymous tooth - serves the cause of medical science in some small way. 

 

Now pass those pre-filled syringes so I can inject an anticoagulant into my stomach ...  

 

 

Blasse Tage: Attempt at a New Translation and Notes Towards a Theory of Translation

Mascha Kaléko (1907-1975) 

Photo: Deutsches Literaturarchiv (Marbach)

 

 

I. 

 

Whilst I'm appreciative of Andreas Nolte's efforts at bringing the work of German-Jewish poet Mascha Kaléko to a much wider (English-speaking) audience, I have to admit I'm not always comfortable with his attempts to translate her verses line by line and word for word; "keeping the content unchanged, using similar phrases and syntax, and trying to maintain the poet's often very strict meter and rhyming scheme" [1].  

It's not that this nothing added, nothing taken away approach sometimes results in a rather odd-sounding English that troubles me. Rather, it's the implication that by staying as "close and true to the original" verse as he could manage, he somehow channels the spirit of the author. For Nolte subscribes to a myth of presence; i.e., the belief that if one listens closely enough one can hear the voice (and know the thoughts) of the dead speaker behind and within the text. 

 

It's because Nolte believes in linguistic transparency, universal themes, and timeless emotions, that he also believes Kaléko's work and his ultra-faithful translations "can still reach deep into the hearts and minds of today's readers". It's because I don't believe in such things and don't subscribe to a myth of authorial presence - i.e., don't care about communing with the holy ghost of Kaléko and doing justice to her emotional sincerity - that I prefer translations that Nolte would probably dismiss as loose depictions and prosaic deviations. 

 

 

II. 

 

For me, as for Paul Ricoeur, translation is primarily a work of remembrance and a work of mourning [2]. In other words, one attempts to salvage something from the past (and, just to make it even more difficult, from a past spoken in another language) and one learns to come to terms with loss; for inavariably in the attempt to carry across one will leave something behind (no one is infallible and no translation is ever perfect - it's simply fantasy to believe otherwise). 

 

I also think that sometimes one expresses one's fidelity to a writer one loves by an act that seems to smack of betrayal. There's simply no point in attempting a literal translation of individual words and working line by line - what matters is the text itself and the vision of the world expressed. That's what you must try to translate and this sometimes requires being a bit devious and a bit daring. A good translator, in my view, is always prepared to take a risk and work with a smile on their face; aware of their own limitations, but not apologetic for them. 

 

And to those who assert that being able to speak and read only one language fluently prohibits one from ever really being a translator - You merely interepret other people's translations - I'd remind them of Thomas Kuhn's remark that even knowing two (or more) languages does not automatically make one a translator: it might be a necessary skill, but it's not a sufficient condition.

 

 

III. 

 

Finally, we come to my attempt to translate one of Mascha Kaléko's most famous poems. I provide the original German afterwards so that readers who wish to judge the success or failure of my effort can do so, but, please note, this is a first draft only and there are certain lines - including the final line - which I will doubtless revise.  

 

 

Faded Days

 

All our faded days

Accrete in silent nights

Forming a great grey wall.

Stone sits upon stone seamlessly.

All sorrows of vacant time

Are locked within the soul.  

 

 Dreams arrive and dissolve

 As day breaks in ghostly fashion.

 In us remains the eternally hesitant

 Grasping for coloured shards,

 And in the shadows of faded days

 We live, because undying.   

 

 

Blasse Tage [3]

 

Alle unsre blassen Tage 

Türmen sich in stiller Nacht 

Hoch zu einer großen Mauer. 

Stein fügt immer sich an Stein. 

Alle leeren Stunden Trauer 

Schließt sich in die Seele ein. 

 

Träume kommen und zerfließen 

Gleich Gespenstern, wird es Tag. 

In uns bleibt das ewig zage 

Fassen nach den bunten Scherben, 

Und im Schatten blasser Tage 

Leben wir, weil wir nicht sterben.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Andreas Nolte, Mascha: The Poems of Mascha Kaléko, (Fomite, 2017), lines quoted above are on pp. 7, 25, and 21.  

 

[2] Paul Ricoeur, On Translation, trans. Eileen Brennan, (Routledge, 2006).   

[3] This verse was originally published in Mascha Kaléko, Das lyrische Stenogrammheft, (Rowohlt Verlag, 1933). It can also be found Mascha Kaléko: Sämtliche Werke und Briefe (Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2012).  

 

Musical bonus: Dota Kehr, Blasse Tage (feat. Uta Köbernick), based on the poem by Mascha Kaléko: click here.  

My Pagan Self Revealed (Reflections on a Mexican Devil Mask)

I am a disciple of the philosopher Dionysus 

and would rather be a satyr than a saint

I.

I have already written elsewhere on Torpedo the Ark about how, for me, the way to move beyond the ruins of the late 1970s was not via a poppy new romanticism or a shameless embrace of free market capitalism, but, rather, towards a post-punk paganism inspired by a wide range of influences including Nietzsche, Lawrence, Jung, Crowley, McLaren, and Jaz Coleman.*

Thus, after 1982, I defined myself less as an anarchist and more as an anti-Christ and the task, as I saw it then, was to aggressively confront Occidental reason and Christian morality with its absolute Other by promoting a pessimistic vitalism tied to an anti-modern politics. 

In other words, safety pins were replaced by horns on head and the vintage Mexican devil mask that I can be seen holding in the photo above became the face of my soul; i.e., my essential self is a concealed self, a disguised self, the product of playful dissimulation. This is what Wilde refers to as the truth of masks and those who are profound enough to be superficial will understand the philosophical importance of this fact.  

II. 

The native peoples of Mexico have had a thing for the making and wearing of masks for millennia; i.e., long before the Spanish arrived - or the tourists. Obviously, the masks had a ritual and magical significance and were worn during religious ceremonies and festivals. Sometimes they had human features; sometimes animal.

And sometimes they incarnated deities, demons, or devils; the latter often having real horns and images of snakes, lizards, or frogs added to the usually grotesque facial design.

Although my mask is hand-carved from wood, traditional masks were also made from other materials including clay, leather, and wax. After the Conquest of Mexico (1519-21), the Spanish outlawed indigenous beliefs, but Christian evangelisers were happy to exploit the love of masks, dance, and spectacle to propagate their faith amongst the natives.

Often, however, rather than successfully replace old cultural traditions with entirely new forms, masked events became a strange amalgamation of paganism and Catholicism. It was Carnival - but not as the Europeans originally understood it.

Today, masked festivals remain very popular and prevalent in parts of the country with large numbers of native peoples and old customs and beliefs live on, if only in a commercialised and aestheticised form.           

* Note: Readers interested in this earlier post to which I refer - with my reflections on Pagan Magazine - can read it by clicking here. And for another post on the truth of masks, click here. 

Brave

Marvel Studios / Paramount Pictures

Yesterday, on the bus, someone looking (and sounding) like Mickey Rourke as Ivan Vanko sat behind me. As he stood up to leave, he tapped me on the shoulder and asked for directions to the police station.
      'It's over there,' I replied, pointing out of the window.
      Expressing his gratitude in a slightly over-effusive Slavic manner, he offered me his hand to shake; a provocative gesture in present circumstances. It felt like a challenge that one was obliged to accept.  

      'I like you,' he said. 'You don't wear mask and are not afraid like these other idiots. You are a brave man, like me.'

      

Stephen Alexander (May 2020)

This post is part of the Adventures on the 174 project. 

 

On This Day I Complete My Fifty-Sixth Year

Richard Westall: Lord Byron (1813)

Oil on canvas (36" x 28")

National Portrait Gallery (NPG 4243)

I would describe my character as more ironic than Byronic. However, there are many things I admire about the Romantic English poet and traits which we might be said to have in common, including, for example, a fondness for animals.* 

We are also, Byron and I, astrological kin; each blessed by being born beneath the sign of Aquarius. But, like him, I'm also prone to a certain melancholy whenever another birthday rolls around and another step taken towards the Abyss: 


My days are in the yellow leaf;

The flowers and fruits of Love are gone;
The worm - the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone!**


That just about sums up how I'm feeling today ...

Still, as Byron also noted, the great object of life is to feel something, even if that something is pain or existential angst. Only when the heart is completely unmoved by anything should one consider seeking out a soldier's grave.

Notes

* Byron loved his dog, Boatswain, so much that when the latter contracted rabies, he nursed him without any thought or fear of infection and, although deep in debt at the time, he commissioned a large marble monument for Boatswain at Newstead Abbey when the dog succumbed to the disease. Byron also kept a tame bear whilst a student at Cambridge, thereby amusingly circumventing rules forbidding the keeping of pet dogs. At one point he even considered applying for a fellowship on the creature's behalf. 

** Byron, 'On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year', written on 22 January, 1824: click here to read in full on the Poetry Foundation website.  

Reflections on a Black Cat (In Memory of Pluto)

She is a very fine Cat; a very fine Cat indeed!  
Photo: SA / 2020

I.

Ever since she first wandered into the house and, subsequently, my affection, this beautiful black cat has brought something greater than good luck or prosperity; something that might even be described as a form of solace.

Indeed, I'm now of the view that angels have whiskers rather than wings. Or that even shape-shifting demons can bring us comfort and companionship in times of great distress, far exceeding the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere man.

II.

Of course, I'm not the first to have noticed this, or to have a particular fondness for satanic black cats. Samuel Johnson, for example, was very attached to his feline companion, Hodge, and Edgar Allan Poe also owned a sable-furred familiar, which he described as "one of the most remarkable black cats in the world - and that is saying much; for it will be remembered that black cats are all of them witches".*

Poe also wrote a very disturbing short story entitled 'The Black Cat' (1843), featuring a pussy called Pluto; "a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree", who sadly has the misfortune of having a drunken madman for an owner ...**

One night, the latter - who is also the narrator of the tale - comes home pissed out of his head as always, and takes umbrage at the fact that the cat is avoiding him. He tries to grab hold of the terrified creature, but the latter bites him. And so the man takes out a knife and, with the kind of sadistic cruelty that shamefully characterises humanity, cuts out one of the cat's eyes:

"The fury of a demon [had] possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame [...] I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity."

From that moment on, the animal understandably flees in terror at his master's approach. At first, the man, who, prior to this incident, had been very close to his cat - "Pluto was my favorite pet and playmate. I alone fed him, and he attended me wherever I went about the house" - feels deep remorse and regrets his cruelty. But this feeling gives way to irritation and a spirit of perverseness:

"Of this spirit philosophy takes no account. Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart - one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?" 
 
Thus, one day, in cold blood, he takes poor Pluto into the garden and hangs him from a tree; tears streaming from his eyes, and with the bitterest remorse eating at his heart; "because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin - a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it [...] even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God."

Strangely, that same night his house catches fire, forcing the man and his wife to flee. Returning the next day to examine the smoking ruins, he discovers an image of a gigantic cat with a rope around its neck imprinted on the single wall still standing.

Poe could, I think, have ended the story here. But he doesn't. Continuing the tale, the narrator tells us how, some time later, still feeling guilty and beginning to miss Pluto, he adopts a similar looking cat - it even has an eye missing. However, he soon regrets doing so, as the animal merely amplifies his feelings of guilt and bad conscience:

"I soon found a dislike to it arising within me. This was just the reverse of what I had anticipated; but - I know not how or why it was - its evident fondness for myself rather disgusted and annoyed. By slow degrees, these feelings of disgust and annoyance rose into the bitterness of hatred. I avoided the creature; a certain sense of shame, and the remembrance of my former deed of cruelty, preventing me from physically abusing it. I did not, for some weeks, strike, or otherwise violently ill use it; but gradually - very gradually - I came to look upon it with unutterable loathing, and to flee silently from its odious presence, as from the breath of a pestilence."

Then, one day, the cat gets under his feet causing him to nearly fall down the cellar stairs. Enraged, the man grabs an axe with the intention of killing Pluto 2. He is stopped from doing so by his wife - which is good for the cat, but bad for the woman, as, in vexed frustration and possessed by evil thoughts, he vents his murderous rage on her instead, burying the axe deep in her brain: "She fell dead upon the spot, without a groan."

He decides to conceal the body behind a brick wall in the cellar - "as the monks of the middle ages are recorded to have walled up their victims" -  rather than bury it in the garden, for example, and run the risk of being seen by nosy neighbours.

Unfortunately, in his haste to dispose of the body, he accidently entombs the cat and when the police come to investigate the woman's reported disappearance and search his house ... Well, you can guess what happens: a loud, inhuman wailing - "half of horror and half of triumph, such as might have arisen only out of hell" - gives the game away. Tearing down the wall, the police discover the rotting corpse of the wife and the howling black cat sitting atop the body. 

Poe's tale, then, is in part a revenge fable; the revenge of the feline object. And the narrator not only deserves his fate on the gallows, but to be denied his place in heaven which, as Robert A. Heinlein once remarked, is determined by how we behave toward cats here on earth ...


Notes

* Edgar Allan Poe, 'Instinct Versus Reason - A Black Cat', in Alexander's Weekly Messenger, vol. 4, number 5, (Jan 29, 1840), p. 2. Click here to read online.

** 'The Black Cat' was first published in the August 19, 1843, issue of The Saturday Evening Post. It can be found in vol. 2 of The Works of Edgar Allan Poe (The Raven Edition) and read online courtesy of Project Guttenberg: click here. 

For further reflections on the figure of the black cat, click here. 

Ailurophilia: On Baudelaire's Erotic Fascination with Cats

Théophile Steinlen's 1896 design for the famous 
Parisian nightspot Le Chat Noir

Poets, like witches and philosophers, love cats and many have written odes to their mysterious companions, including Rilke, who imagines himself suspended like a prehistoric fly in the golden amber of his cat's eyeball.* However, it's Baudelaire who is perhaps most famous for his obsessive love of cats.**

And it's Baudelaire who best understands not only their Satanic-nocturnal nature, but also their undeniable eroticism, equating the feline with the feminine (and vice versa) until it becomes impossible to know at times if he's writing about his favourite pet or his favourite mistress.

Either way, both seem to promise those things he valued most: poetic truth and sensual pleasure; the former being something that develops out of the fleshy materiality of the latter, rather than pre-existing as some kind of disembodied ideal.      

Here's one of Baudelaire's cat poems that hopefully illustrates what I've been attempting to say, followed by my own attempt at a translation into English that invariably loses something in the process, but which, hopefully, adds something that isn't found in other translations ...

Le Chat

Viens, mon beau chat, sur mon coeur amoureux;
Retiens les griffes de ta patte,
Et laisse-moi plonger dans tes beaux yeux,
Mêlés de métal et d'agate.

Lorsque mes doigts caressent à loisir
Ta tête et ton dos élastique,
Et que ma main s'enivre du plaisir
De palper ton corps électrique,

Je vois ma femme en esprit. Son regard,
Comme le tien, aimable bête
Profond et froid, coupe et fend comme un dard,

Et, des pieds jusques à la tête,
Un air subtil, un dangereux parfum
Nagent autour de son corps brun.


The Cat

Come not with claws, beautiful cat,
As you leap into my affection;
Allow me to plunge into your eyes
Of metallic crystal.

When my fingers gently stroke along
Your head and supple spine,
My hand thrills with the pleasure
Of touching your body electric.

I sense the same spirit as in Her: her gaze
Like yours, dear creature, is one of cold
Intensity, piercing like a banderilla.

And, from head to toe,
A subtle yet dangerous perfume,
Envelops her dark skin.


Notes

* See Rilke, 'Black Cat' in Duino Elegies (1923): click here to read online. 

** If memory serves me correctly, Baudelaire devoted no fewer than three poems to cats in Les Fleurs du mal (1857) and they make appearances in many of his other poems too. As might be expected, therefore, the theme of Baudelaire's cats has proved a popular - and fertile - one amongst literary critics and theorists (Roman Jakobson and Claude Lévi-Strauss famously co-authoring a structuralist reading in 1960, for example).

To read an online edition of Les Fleurs du mal provided by Project Gutenberg, click here. 

Alternatively, visit fleursdumal.org - a site dedicated to Baudelaire and his work that not only contains every poem of each edition of Les Fleurs du mal, but a selection of English translations (for those, like me, whose French isn't very good). 

For another post on the love of cats, click here.  

Kinderpost

Frank Meisler: Kindertransport - The Arrival (2006)

Photo by Stephen Alexander (2019)

I. Opening Remarks

Kindertransport - The Arrival is an outdoor bronze memorial by the Israeli architect and sculptor Frank Meisler, who was himself evacuated from the Free City of Danzig as part of the Kindertransport programme, travelling with a small group of other children to safety in England (his parents, arrested three days after his departure, were eventually murdered at Auschwitz).   

Commisioned by World Jewish Relief and the Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR), the work was installed on the forecourt of Liverpool Street Station in 2006 and commemorates the 10,000 Jewish children who escaped Nazi persecution and arrived in London during 1938-39.

II. Nazi Pigeons

Pigeons, of course, don't care about any of this; they'll shit on anyone's history. 

It would be mistaken, however, to assume the bird in the above picture is displaying an avian form of anti-Semitism - indeed, the pigeon (or dove) has an important role within Jewish religious mythology and is usually regarded as a symbol of hope (think of Noah and his Ark). The pigeon was also an acceptable sacrifice to God for those who couldn't afford a more expensive offering. 

The Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria may have found the birds a little overly bold and impudent, but, other than that, there's no enmity between them and the children of Israel.    

Having said that, it's true that the Nazis were also fond of pigeons - Heinrich Himmler was not only Reichsführer of the SS but also President of the German National Pigeon Society - and many trained birds were drafted into the Nazi war effort.

Indeed, so concerned were British secret services about the airborne threat posed by Nazi pigeons, that they became the subject of covert operations, with scores of pigeon lofts targeted for destruction in occupied Europe. MI5 even had its own trained force of falcons ready to intercept any Nazi pigeons that strayed into British airspace; they would patrol over the Scilly Isles and the Cornish coast for two hours at a time.

It's possible, therefore, that the pigeon pictured befouling the Jewish memorial is descended from a Nazitaube - though I would have thought this extremely unlikely and not something to be overly worried about; indeed, for me, of more concern, is the ominously glowing presence of the McDonald's logo in the background ...


III. Golden Arches

Instantly recognisable wherever you travel in the world, McDonald's Golden Arches probably shouldn't fill one with a similar sense of horror as that of a Nazi swastika - the stylised letter 'M' doesn't signify mass murder and malevolence - but, for some reason, it does.

Partly, that's due to the fact that even as I gobble down my Sausage and Egg McMuffin, I'm conscious of the true cost and devastating consequences of such deliciousness; for the natural environment and animal welfare, for example. Corporate capitalism isn't simply fascism with a smiley face, but neither is it the unequivocal force for good that its proponents like to claim and California über alles is just as troubling (in some respects) as the prospect of Deutschland über alles.

And partly, it's due to the influence of Jake and Dino Chapman upon my imagination. For everytime I see the Golden Arches, I can't help recalling their post-apocalyptic Nazi-McDonald's hellscapes (which is distracting, to say the least, when trying to reflect upon Meisler's work - even more so than the presence of a pigeon).