On Gender-Based Violence (With Reference to the Case of Lawrence, Bibbles and Frieda)

viopet.org

According to Dr Núria Querol, International Coordinator of animal protection society VioPet, domestic animals are as likely to be subjected to gender violence as women and if you want to understand more about the physical and psychological abuse of the latter, then you would do well to examine the mistreatment of the former at the hands of sexually aggressive men.

Indeed, refusing to make any distinction between human and non-human animals, Dr Querol argues that women and pets are equally victims of precisely the same kind of brutality; both, if you like, are subordinated as bitches and expected to tremble at the sound of their master's voice or raised hand. More often than not, if a man beats his dog - or worse - then he'll also be prone to hitting his wife or girlfriend. 

This is illustrated by the disturbing case of the writer D. H. Lawrence and his little black snub-nosed dog, Bibbles. 

In 1922-23, Lawrence and his wife, Frieda, were living on a ranch in New Mexico and had recently acquired a puppy of whom he was extremely fond. However, as one commentator notes, fond or not, Lawrence insisted on being the dog's absolute master and this occasionally resulted in violence. One incident, witnessed by two young Danish artists staying as guests of the Lawrences, is particularly disturbing ...

After going off with a handsome Airedale for a short romantic liaison (she was on heat), Bibbles discovered just how furious with rage and jealousy her master could become. Regarding her indiscriminate loving as an act of personal disloyalty - if not, indeed, rather weirdly, infidelity - Lawrence chased Bibbles out of the house and savagely "kicked her through the snowdrift into which she had blundered".

Then, catching hold of her by the scruff of the neck, he picked the poor creature up and threw her as far as he could. Only an intervention by one of the Danes prevented him from continuing the assault. John Worthen is not alone amongst Lawrence scholars in wondering how someone "so sane, sensible, caring and loving ... and who hated bullying", could mistreat a dog so viciously.   

Whilst recognising the fact that Bibbles was female surely mattered, Worthen says nothing more on why this should be so significant. Instead - controversially I think - he suggests it was because Lawrence "loved the dog too much" that he temporarily "lost himself in need and rage".

Presumably, it was because Lawrence loved Frieda too much that he often hit her as well. Not that Worthen believes we should be overly concerned about this, because, as he points out, the domestic violence between them "was something they had managed to incorporate into their marriage" and Frieda "was never frightened of him for more than a few seconds at a time".

We are encouraged thus to turn a blind eye to Lawrence's violence (as we are to other unpleasant and problematic aspects of his character and writing); to convince ourselves that animal cruelty and wife beating is somehow acceptable if carried out by a man of genius and great sensitivity in the name of love or phallic tenderness.   

Or if, as in this case, the incident inspires a memorable poem; art serving to justify the violence and redeem the suffering caused. 

       
See: John Worthen, D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider, (Penguin / Allen Lane, 2005), pp. 282-85.

And see also 'Bibbles', in Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923), which can be found in the Cambridge edition of the poems, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (CUP, 2013) - or read by clicking here (in a censored form - the word bitch being repeatedly - and ridiculously - replaced with a row of asterisks).   

Ghost Town

Stephen Alexander (2016)

Ghost Town, by The Specials, was a great punk single and, thirty-five years later, it continues to powerfully resonate within the cultural imagination. Indeed, its haunting melody and stark lyrics came back to me earlier today as I walked past the now derelict, burnt out pub and former Harold Hill landmark, The Pompadours.

For I'm of a generation that does recall the good old days before the ghost town, when locals danced and sang and the music played in a de boomtown.

Well, that's perhaps pushing it a bit ... But, nevertheless, I do remember a time before the great closure of the pubs and clubs began; a time when there was a genuine sense of community and not that ersatz thing which politicians and people in the liberal arts and media like to extol the virtues of; a time when people knew their neighbours (without necessarily liking them) and would socialise with one another over the garden fence and across the bar of their local boozer.  

Of course, there are many reasons why the pubs are closing - not just here in Essex, but all over the UK at the astonishing rate of four a day. Just as there are many reasons why, for example, the homogeneity and solidarity of white working class life - which often revolved around the pub - is not only disparaged and despised, but slowly being demolished in the name of ethnic and cultural diversity.

When you return here - as I have returned - and experience the daily conditions under which people are expected to live, you begin to understand the visceral resentment and rage that characterises so much public and political discourse today; indeed, one does more than understand - one begins to sympathise ...    

Can't go on no more / The people getting angry ...


Ghost Town, The Specials (2 Tone, 1981), written by Jerry Dammers, © EMI Music Publishing / BMG Rights Management US, LLC    

Note: The Pompadours opened in 1959 and was one of nine pubs on Harold Hill. To be honest, it was always something of a shithole full of dubious characters and with a reputation as a difficult pub to manage; the sort of place neither of my parents would ever dream of setting foot in. It closed its doors for the last time earlier this year. A plan to demolish it and build yet more low-rise but high-density housing was rejected by Havering Council after opposition from local residents. The future of the site is now uncertain.     

On Ecosexuality

Elizabeth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle

Here Come the Ecosexuals

For those of you who don't know, Elizabeth Stephens is an interdisciplinary artist, activist and academic whose work explores themes of sexuality, gender, and politics.

Former prostitute and porn star Annie Sprinkle, meanwhile, played an important role in the sex positive feminist movement during the 1980s and has since built up over thirty-five years of experience in erotically charged entertainment, education, and performance art. 

Today, Sprinkle and her partner Stephens are committed to queering the environmental movement and to this end have declared themselves to be ecosexuals. They have also written an ecosex manifesto and established a new field of research and aesthetic practice called sex ecology.

Central to their philosophy is the notion of replacing the metaphor of Earth Mother with that of Earth Lover, in the hope that this might "entice people to develop a more mutual, pleasurable, sustainable, and less destructive relationship with the environment". This means not only treating the Earth with kindness and respect, but also engaging in libidinal relationships with the material world; hugging trees, caressing rocks, being pleasured by waterfalls, etc.

Now, you might be thinking at this point that, as someone who has written enthusiastically on floraphilia, I would happily and unconditionally offer my support to Stephens and Sprinkle - but you'd be mistaken. Unfortunately, I have a number of problems with their project, but these might, for the sake of convenience, be boiled down to just two: firstly, I don't share their idealism and, secondly, I don't like the way they attempt to impose a unified and recognisable sexual identity upon a diverse range of paraphilias and polymorphously perverse practices.

Let's examine each of these points in a bit more detail ...   

1. Like many others before them, including nature worshipping Romantics and blood and soil loving Nazis, Stephens and Sprinkle quickly fall into idealism and, related to this, anthropocentric conceit as they project their own egos (their own politics, their own prejudices, their own peccadilloes) into everything; not just the Earth, but the Sun, the Moon and the Stars to boot. Their ecosexuality is thoroughly - and disappointingly - allzumenschliche.

They would do well, in my view, to learn from Lawrence on this, who, with reference to the case of Thomas Hardy, warns that to try and subject the earth to your own idealism always ends badly - not least of all for you as an idealist. He writes:

"What happens when you idealize the soil, the mother-earth, and really go back to it? Then with overwhelming conviction it is borne in upon you ... that the whole scheme of things is against you. The whole massive rolling of natural fate is coming down on you like a slow glacier, to crush you to extinction. As an idealist.
      Thomas Hardy's pessimism is an absolutely true finding. It is the absolutely true statement of the idealist's last realization, as he wrestles with the bitter soil of beloved mother-earth. He loves her, loves her, loves her. And she just entangles and crushes him like a slow Laocoön snake. The idealist must perish, says mother-earth. ...
      You can't idealize mother-earth. You can try. You can even succeed. But succeeding, you succumb. She will have no pure idealist sons [or, in this case, daughters]. None.
      If you are a child of mother-earth, you must learn to discard your ideal self ... as you discard your clothes at night."

Put simply, the Earth doesn't want to nourish you like a child nor accept you as a lover or spouse; it is massively and monstrously indifferent to your existence and your longings.

2. One of the joys of floraphilia is that it's a paraphilia and not a legitimised form of love; the prefix para implying not only that it exists alongside the latter, but that it's abnormal. And that's how I like it and want it to remain. To be pollen-amorous is to allow one's desire to free float on the passing breeze; it is to become-flower, which is to say, beautiful and soulless. It's not about constructing some new form of sexual identity and of tethering the latter to an essential truth.

Foucault, of course, brilliantly analysed the dangers and disadvantages of this with reference to the birth of the modern homosexual, arguing that homosexuality only "appeared as one of the forms of sexuality when it was transposed from the practice of sodomy onto a kind of interior androgyny, a hermaphrodism of the soul. The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species" subject to an entirely new discursive regime.

I'm sure Stephens and Sprinkle are aware of all this and so it surprises me to say the least that they insist on positing ecosexuality as a primary drive and identity, or some sort of ontological category into which all other sexual positionings - GLBTQI - can ultimately be collapsed (because we are all natural beings and all sex is ecosex).

I wish them well, but I also wish they'd exercise a little more philosophical caution and nuance ...       


Notes

D. H. Lawrence, 'Dana's "Two Years before the Mast"', Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003).

Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality 1: The Will to Knowledge, trans. Robert Hurley, (Penguin Books, 1998). 

Readers interested in knowing more about the work of Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle and reading their ecosex manifesto can visit: sexecology.org

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Naomi (Notes on a Japanese Novel)

I.

Sadly, I have to confess my slight disappointment with Tanizaki's novel Chijin no Ai, often translated into English as A Fool's Love, but more commonly known as Naomi (1924). 

For ultimately, talented though he is, Tanizaki is no Nabokov and the book pales in comparison to the latter's tragi-comic masterpiece, Lolita (1955). Joji isn't a fascinating monster of depravity like Humbert and, unlike poor Dolores Haze, the teen waitress Naomi - object of Joji's erotic obsession - fails to capture our hearts (by which I mean arouse our compassion, not just our affection or illicit desire). 

At the end of Tanizaki's book, we are left mildly amused; we are not ravished or made to feel complicit in corruption as readers. There is no dark perversity present in Naomi, no great cruelty or crime. And there is no death.

Having said that, Naomi remains a novel of some import - not least for what it tells us about Japan during the interwar years, as it struggled to come to terms with modernity and the encroaching influence of Western culture. For Naomi is not simply a greedy and manipulative good-time girl with Eurasian features who likes to dance and take lovers, she's the future made flesh come to challenge old conventions, institutions and values with her high heels and hedonism.

Perhaps not surprisingly, therefore, the book was received enthusiastically by young, progressive readers who dreamt of the appearance of emancipated women with chic Western hairstyles smoking cigarettes on the cosmopolitan streets of Tokyo unencumbered by centuries of tradition; they even termed this Naomi-ism. But more conservative readers weren't so pleased and the government censors were soon alerted to the existence of this less than wholesome work.


II.

The story, in brief, is that of a rather dull 28-year-old electrical engineer, Joji, who falls for a stylish 15-year-old girl, Naomi, working at a local café. She accepts his offer to place herself under his care and guidance and, eventually, to become his wife. But she doesn't accept that this should in anyway restrict her freedom to come and go as she likes - or, indeed, to love whom she wants. When this invariably results in conflict, it is Naomi who emerges triumphant and Joji who must submit.

From the first, it's obvious what Joji finds attractive about Naomi: her sophisticated-sounding name and the fact that she has something exotically Western about her appearance: "And it's not only her face - even her body has a distinctly Western look when naked", he tells us.

Indeed, despite a certain playful innocence in their relationship, Joji is not blind to the beauty of Naomi's flesh and the wonderful proportion of her limbs; the graceful arms and long straight legs. He derives much pleasure from habitually bathing his young mistress in the washtub and observing how her figure grows strikingly more feminine over time.

Joji's ablutophilia isn't his only kinky method of finding physical satisfaction from his relationship with Naomi, however. He also enjoys engaging in a spot of pony play and having the girl ride on his back whilst he crawls round the room on all fours; giddy-up! she'd cry, and for reins she'd make him hold a towel in his mouth.

Essentially, however, Joji's a foot fetishist and likes most of all to caress, kiss and lick Naomi's lovely soft, white feet (particularly the toes, heels, and insteps). Even after he discovers that she's been deceiving him, Joji can't resist the temptation of Naomi's bare feet. For the opportunity to once again glimpse them peeking out from beneath her kimono, he can forgive her anything and overlook the fact that she was a born prostitute and prick tease:

"Naomi was always whetting my desire ... and luring me to the brink, but then she'd throw up a rigid barrier beyond which she wouldn't step ... no matter how close I thought I'd gotten, there was no penetrating that final barrier."

This continued teasing with which the novel culminates, results at last in a form of male hysteria. Joji grows more and more exasperated and obsessed by the thought of the woman, recalling the tiniest details of Naomi's anatomy: "the shape of her nose; the shape of her eyes; the shape of her lips; the shape of a finger; the curve of her arm, her shoulder, her back, or her leg; her wrist; ankle; elbow; knee; even the sole of her foot ..."

These memories of her flesh have a terrifying capacity to arouse his carnal feelings and seemed in some sense even more vital than the real body parts. Thus it is that this masturbatory fantasia of mental images - supplemented by the many photographs he took of the girl back in happier times - makes Joji dizzy and delirious with desire:

"I saw Naomi's red lips everywhere I looked ... Naomi was like an evil spirit that filled the space between heaven and earth, surrounding me, tormenting me, hearing my moans, but only laughing as she looked on."

In the end, all of Joji's fetishistic pleasures come together and ironically result in his absolute submission. Looking at Naomi fresh from her morning bath, he admires her delicate, pure, vivid white skin. She asks him to shave her body, including her underarms, but without laying a finger on her skin. It quickly gets too much for poor old Joji and he begs her to stop teasing; throwing the razor aside, he then throws himself at her feet and cries: let me be your horse.

For a moment, Naomi hesitates. She stares at him in silent, unblinking astonishment and with an element of fear (worried that he's gone insane): "But then, with a bold, audacious look, she leaped savagely onto [Joji's] back" and forces him to concede to all of her demands; he'll do whatever she says; he'll give her as much money as she needs; he'll let her do whatever she wants; he'll stop calling her Naomi and call her 'Miss Naomi' instead.

These things agreed, she shows him mercy and let's him fuck her: soon, both were covered with soap.


III.

Several years later, Joji in his role as slave-narrator concludes:

"I've known all along that she's fickle and selfish; if those faults were removed, she would lose her value. The more I think of her as fickle and selfish, the more adorable she becomes, and the more deeply I am ensnared by her. I realize now that I can only lose by getting angry.
      There's nothing to be done when one loses confidence in one's self. In my subordinate position, I'm no match for Naomi ... She seems strangely Western as she goes around spouting English ... Often I can't make out what she's saying. ... Sometimes she calls me 'George'.
      The record of our marriage ends here. If you think my account is foolish, please go ahead and laugh. If you think that there's a moral in it, then, please let it serve as a lesson. For myself, it makes no difference what you think of me; I'm in love with Naomi." 


Junichirō Tanizaki, Naomi, trans. Anthony H. Chambers, (Vintage, 2001). All lines quoted are from this edition.

This post is dedicated to my friend and fellow philosopher, Naomi G.

On the Politics of Movember

You might have thought that the Movember Foundation - a charity dedicated to improving men's health and raising awareness of issues around male well-being - would be able to stage its events without attracting too much controversy or critical attention. But you'd be wrong. For even growing a moustache for thirty days can have prickly and pernicious political implications.

Indeed, according to Arianne Shahvisi and Neil Singh, the annual campaign which encourages men to proudly or humourously display facial hair during November and raise money for research into male-specific cancers, such as prostate and testicular cancer, is divisive, gender normative and racist. The problem, as they see it, is essentially twofold:

Firstly, women are effectively prevented from joining in the event, as females with facial hair are regarded as totally unacceptable within our culture (apart from the bearded ladies who appear in circus freak shows). Women who have attempted to show solidarity by relaxing their own shaving etiquette, have often been subject to vile and violent abuse across social media. No one, it seems, wants to see women with hairy legs or upper-lips.

Movember thus lacks inclusivity and serves as a reminder that "women should think carefully before subverting their sexually objectified bodies to join in with boy's games". What's more, the phallocentric decision to fetishize the moustache "reinforces the regressive idea that masculinity is about body chemistry rather than gender identity, and marginalises groups of men who may struggle to grow facial hair, such as trans-men".

Secondly, Movember sends out a very negative message to those minority-ethnic men who sport beards and/or moustaches as cultural and/or religious signifiers and for whom facial hair is neither optional nor something of a joke. For such men, including the millions of UK Muslims, Movember reinforces the othering of hairy, dark-skinned foreigners by the (usually) clean-shaven, white majority and invites laughter in and at their faces.

Thus, for a white man to temporarily grow a moustache as part of a sponsored activity is undeniably racist; at the very least, it displays the same kind of insensitivity and ignorance as shown by those who think it funny to wear blackface or appropriate certain symbolic items of clothing as fancy dress.

And so it's no real surprise to discover that Movember culminates in a number of gala costume parties that showcase what the movement is ultimately about: "white young men ridiculing minorities, and playing up to the lad culture within which the charitable practice has become embedded ... [whilst] female attendees take on the uniforms that now seem fit for any occasion, yet really for none at all: Playboy bunnies, air-hostesses, nurses, cheerleaders ..."

Sadly, because of its laddish tactics and macho bluster, it's doubtful that the Movember Foundation even succeeds in getting male health issues taken more seriously. One might suggest that if they genuinely want to change things and enable men to live healthier, happier lives then they might think more, for example, about deconstructing gender norms that encourage jerkish and destructive behaviour. 


See: Arianne Shahvisi and Neil Singh, 'Why Movember isn't all it's cracked up to be', essay in the New Statesman, (27 Nov 2013). Click here.

For those interested in knowing more about the Movember Foundation (UK), click here.

 

In Praise of Shadows and the Beauty of Japanese Ghost Girls (A Post for Halloween 2016)

A Japanese Ghost Girl or Yūrei [幽靈]

The Land of the Rising Sun is also the Land of the Falling Shadow; a place in which the gathering gloom of twilight and the brilliance of daybreak are held in equal regard and darkness causes no anxiety or discontent. The Japanese accept the moon at midnight and resign themselves to the presence of bats, ghosts, and witches, etc.  

Perhaps no one writes more profoundly in praise of shadows than Junichirō Tanizaki. He understands that the power and the beauty of the object - its allure - is tied precisely to that aspect of it which is forever concealed in darkness and which withdraws from sight (that is to say, its occult aspect).

Take, for example, the fairest and most seductive of all objects - woman - who is arguably never so lovely as she is when at her most spectral, like a phosphorescent jewel glowing softly in the night that loses its magic in the full light of day. In the erotic imagination of the Japanese male, woman is inseparable from darkness; cosmetically enhanced and concealed in the folds of her robe or gown; her raven black hair framing (and often hiding) her white face.       

This is not, typically, a Western aesthetic. For Westerners, beauty is that which shines forth, which radiates, which loves, like truth, to go naked and which can be perceived by the eye. There is, thus, something obscene about our theory of beauty in that it ultimately rests on indecent exposure (not least of sun-kissed female flesh).

And we really rather despise shadowy existence: our quest for enlightenment never ceases and we spare no effort to eradicate even the faintest trace of darkness. Indeed, as Jean Baudrillard pointed out, we would, if we could, leap over our own shadows into a world of pure lucidity and transparency in which to accomplish perfect self-actualization.

Thankfully, however, a being devoid of their shadow, of their mystery, of their object-allure, is no more than a mad fantasy. No matter how bright we make the lights, no matter how much we bare our flesh and reveal our innermost thoughts and feelings, we'll never transcend the night or escape the shadows.

Happy Halloween ...


See: Junichirō Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows, trans. Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker, (Vintage, 2001).

Let Them Sing Carols

Ding dong merrily on high ...

The phrase Let them eat cake may never have passed the lips of Marie Antoinette, but it's still commonly attributed to her and has significantly helped tarnish her reputation within the popular imagination. 

Similarly, Angela Merkel's suggestion this week that German citizens address their growing anxiety over the perceived threat posed by Islamism to their way of life - be it secular-liberal or Christian-conservative in character - by singing a few Christmas carols accompanied by someone playing a flute, is likely to prove something she'll never live down and which will be remembered long after her disastrous Chancellorship has ended.

Admitting there are very real concerns - and very real grounds for concern - over her policy of admitting over a million Muslim refugees into Germany last year alone, Merkel told an emergency congress of CDU members in Wittenberg that the way to counter terrorism, rising crime and the creeping Islamisation of European culture, was for German families to gather round and break into a rendition of Silent Night.

Unfortunately, however, all isn't calm and all isn't bright and we can none of us afford to sleep in heavenly peace whilst the barbarians are at the gates and the enemy is already within ...   

Science is Universal

When not writing in praise of shadows and the superiority of the traditional Japanese toilet as a place of spiritual repose and poetic inspiration, Tanizaki likes to dream - somewhat dangerously, I'd suggest - of an Oriental science that would stand in radical opposition and contrast to the knowledge forms and mechanical innovations developed in modern Europe:

"Suppose for instance that we had developed our own physics and chemistry: would not the techniques and industries based on them have taken a different form, would not our ... everyday gadgets, our medicines ... have suited our national temper better than they do? In fact, our conception of physics itself, and even the principles of chemistry, would probably differ from that of Westerners; and the facts we are now taught concerning the nature and function of light, electricity, and atoms might well have presented themselves in different form."

Now, to be fair, Tanizaki immediately pulls himself up at this point and admits that he is merely indulging in idle speculation on matters of which he's entirely ignorant. But it needs to be emphasised just how mistaken and insidious this view is - not least of all in this age of irrationalism, relativism, and anti-scientific stupidity in the name of diversity, otherness, and traditional wisdom.

For whilst each and every nation can have its own cuisine, its own art, its own cinema, etc. it cannot have its own science in the sense in which we today talk about and understand science; the scientific method isn't peculiar to one group of people and the facts it discovers about the world aren't merely local interpretations. Ultimately, science is universal and not determined by race, religion, ideology, or culture. There's no such thing as Soviet biology or Chinese medicine; nor is there Christian evolution, or feminist physics.           

When scientists talk about the Big Bang, for example, they are not simply playing a language game or indulging in empty metaphor; nor are they constructing an oppressive grand narrative. They are, rather, attempting to conceptualise the universe as it exists in mind-independent actuality. By observation and experimentation carried out within a theoretical context, they are making a noble effort to verify that their statements about the world are as objectively true as it's possible for statements to be (whilst still remaining open to falsification in the light of new evidence).

Science is universal not because it's a humanism, but because it describes an inhuman universe ...

See: Junichirō Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows, trans. Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker, (Vintage, 2001), p. 14.

Aux Chiottes with Junichirō Tanizaki

Junichirō Tanizaki (1886-1965) was one of the great figures of twentieth century Japanese literature. His work has two main obsessions: erotics and cultural identity and is thus of obvious interest and appeal for the present writer. 

Whilst a young man, he was very much the modern dandy and keen to lead a western lifestyle. But, during his thirties, he became increasingly interested in the traditions and artistic practices of his homeland (particularly the Kansai region) and he is perhaps best known today outside Japan not for his fiction, but for an enchanting little essay - In Praise of Shadows - in which he sketches out his aesthetic credo.

Tanizaki was neither a reactionary nor an eccentric. He didn't violently reject the necessities of modern life and - unlike D. H. Lawrence - he writes enthusiastically of the blessings of scientific civilization.

For example, he's surprisingly relaxed on the subject of electric lighting; "the sight of a naked bulb beneath an ordinary  milk glass shade seems simpler and more natural than any gratuitous attempt to hide it" [6]. Indeed, gazing out from the window of a train at twilight as it passes through the lonely countryside, can give even the most humble of lamps a decidedly elegant glow.

On the other hand, Tanizaki has no time for the snarl of an electric fan and insists they remain out of place in a Japanese room. Similarly, no modern stove will ever look right. What's more, gas stoves are noisy and produce headaches, whilst electric stoves, "though at least free from these defects, are every bit as ugly" [7].

As for the question of bath tiles, Tanizaki admits they are practical and economical, but their sparkling whiteness can completely ruin the beauty of the bathroom if the latter is mostly made of fine wood. But this isn't a major worry for him and he's prepared to compromise. The toilet, however, is another matter and the source of far more vexatious concerns.

For Tanizaki, the toilet is the key room of the Japanese dwelling place - not the kitchen, or the bathroom. And whilst the parlour may have its charms, it's the noble Japanese kharsie that "truly is a place of spiritual repose", standing apart as it does from the main house "in a grove fragrant with leaves and moss" [9].

At first, you think he's joking. But then it becomes apparent that Tanizaki is writing in earnest in praise not only of shadows, but of the shithouse: "No words can describe that sensation as one sits in the dim light ... lost in meditation or gazing out at the garden ... surrounded by tranquil walls and finely grained wood ..." [9]

He continues:

"There are certain prerequisites: a degree of dimness, absolute cleanliness, and quiet so complete one can hear the hum of a mosquito. I love to listen from such a toilet to the sound of softly falling rain ... And the toilet is the perfect place to listen to the chirping of insects or the song of birds, to view the moon, or to enjoy any of those poignant moments that mark the change of the seasons. Here, I suspect, is where haiku poets over the ages have come by a great many of their ideas. Indeed one could claim with some justice that of all the elements of Japanese architecture, the toilet is the most aesthetic. Our forebears, making poetry of everything in their lives, transformed what by rights should be the most unsanitary room in the house into a place of unsurpassed elegance, replete with fond associations with the beauties of nature. ...
      Anyone with a taste for traditional architecture must agree that the Japanese toilet is perfection." [9-10]

Having said that, Tanizaki concedes that wood-flooring and tatami matting is hard to keep clean, so one might be better off installing all the latest mod-cons after all. Certainly, he wants a powerful flush system - even at the cost of destroying all affinity with nature and good taste! But excessive illumination and cleanliness in the toilet, however, is just too antithetical to the Japanese sensibility; "what need is there to remind us so forcefully of the issue of our own bodies ... the cleanliness of what can be seen only calls up more clearly thoughts of what cannot be seen" [11].

When it comes to constructing a toilet of great beauty that serves as a place of philosophical reflection, then "the distinction between the clean and the unclean is best left obscure, shrouded in a dusky haze" [11].
 

See: Junichirō Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows, trans. Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker, (Vintage, 2001). Page numbers given in the text refer to this edition.     
  

Thanks to Katxu for suggesting I read the above work.

Carlo Rovelli: Seven Brief Lessons on Physics (A Review)

It's no surprise that Carlo Rovelli, a theoretical physicist, should feel comfortable discussing very large things on the one hand - the architecture of the cosmos - and very small things - elementary particles - on the other.

No surprise either that he should choose to discuss both within the pages of a single book. For, like many of his colleagues, Rovelli is keen to promote the possibility of a unified theory of the universe in which the principles of general relativity and quantum mechanics cease to contradict one another.   

What is a surprise, however - and something of a disappointment - is that he should choose to do so in such a slim volume and that the critical consensus is so overwhelmingly favourable. I have to admit, I would've liked a bit more; in aiming for rapidity one sometimes ends up flirting with vapidity.  

Further, where others located a sparse and elegant beauty in his writing, I have to admit I found something cloying and romantic. Ultimately, I don't really want science masquerading as poetry, anymore than I expect poetry to pose as a form of logical analysis. And whilst I don't mind attempts at producing popular science books or TV shows, I don't want things to become folksy and patronising.

In other words, Carlo, if you wish to place your intellectual project within a nutshell that's fine by me - but please, signor, not inside a Kinder Sorpresa ...

Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, trans. Simon Carnell and Erica Segre, (Penguin Books, 2016).